Thunder God (10 page)

It came as no surprise to hear that they had passed away. I had been gone so many years and they had not been young when I left, but hopeful doubt had always flickered in the corner of my mind, immune from all sensible thought. Now, with the acceptance of their deaths, that corner of my mind grew shadowy, folding into darkness like the closing of a butterfly’s wings.

‘And Kari?’ I asked, afraid to hear what he might say.

‘Alive and prospering,’ he announced, ‘despite the fact that she walked away from her job with the tailor only a few days after you left. Your parents tried everything to talk her out of it, but she is as stubborn as her mother and as much of a dreamer as your father ever was. It is a shame they never lived to see how she makes her living now.’

‘And how is that?’ I asked.

‘With plants,’ replied Olaf. ‘Little weeds and flowers which she gathers from the woods and upland meadows. She brews them up or grinds them into powder, and uses them to cure the aches and pains of every grumbling sniffler in our town. At least one of us found what we were looking for up in those fields.’

‘I would like to meet her,’ said Cabal.

‘I dare say you will meet everyone in town, whether you want to or not. It is a small place. We do not get many visitors, and none like yourself, I am sure.’

‘Is she married?’ I asked.

Olaf rolled his eyes. ‘If she were not so set in her ways, she would be.’

‘Did she turn you down?’ asked Cabal.

He glanced up, and it seemed for a moment as if he might take offence. But then he smiled. ‘I have not given her the opportunity.’

‘And Ingolf?’ I asked. ‘How is he?’

Olaf held his hands out around his belly. ‘Like a naked bear.’

The closer we came to Altvik, the more nervous I grew about seeing them again. I had been forced to imagine their lives in all the years I had been gone and did not know how far astray my mind had led me from the truth.

Before I could ask more about them, Olaf began speaking of how Altvik had never recovered from the raid. The old trading ships were not rebuilt or replaced. Now Olaf’s was the only one. He also said that Guthrun, the blacksmith, had taken over from Tostig as priest.

‘Who did he choose for an apprentice?’ I asked, not doubting that the answer would be Olaf himself.

‘Nobody,’ he replied abruptly.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘Because Guthrun is an idiot!’ said Olaf, struggling to control his temper. ‘Guthrun will be glad to tell you all about it, although I expect you have no interest in that business now.’

‘In fact I do,’ I said.

Olaf looked away. ‘Well, it is no way to make a living, I can tell you.’

‘It is not meant to make a living,’ I explained. ‘It is something I promised to do.’

Olaf grunted. ‘Do you know what keeps its promise in this world?’ Without waiting for my answer, he hauled out a heavy leather bag from under his tunic and tossed it into my lap.

I opened it and glimpsed inside old English sceattas and other coins from as far away as Samarkand and Damascus.

Cabal looked over my shoulder and whistled quietly. ‘Even the Emperor would not turn up his nose at that pile.’

Olaf watched me closely while I sifted through the coins. He seemed torn between needing me to see his wealth and fearing that I might help myself to it.

When I handed it back, Olaf tucked the bag under his clothes
again. He patted his belly where it rested. The coins clinked musically, as if he had swallowed a sack of broken glass. ‘I might not be against sharing some of this with you,’ he said. ‘Can either of you crew a boat?’

We told him we could, having both spent time on the Emperor’s Black Sea ships.

He immediately offered us a job, and went on to explain that his old crewman, whose name was Ivar, had just deserted him, having fallen in love with a woman who danced for a living back in Hedeby. It made Olaf so irritated to recall this, that he could not get the story out of his mouth without spitting, and he spat so much that by the time he had finished his story, the dockboards around him were spattered with saliva.

‘He has a shock coming, anyway,’ said Olaf. ‘That dancer is a man dressed up as a woman. So do you want the job, or are you both planning to starve to death in Altvik?’

Even though Cabal and I had saved some money by sharing the cost of our travels, we had spent most of our savings to get even this far. With no idea how long the rest would last, we accepted.

As we neared the region of the Trondelag, Olaf made detours up the fjords to remote trading posts, where houses hugged thin strips of land beneath the cliffs.

Cabal stood at the bow staring up in amazement at these vast walls of rock, and at waterfalls which painted white stripes down into the blue-green water.

It had been so long since I had seen this land myself, that I felt as if I were seeing it for the first time as well.

Olaf had no time for gawking at the fjords. At the trading posts, he did a brisk trade in belts woven from horse-hair, bone fish-hooks and glass beads, especially the red ones, glowering like plucked-out dragons’ eyes from the leather bag in which he carried them.

He did some buying, too, especially of honey, which was sold in earthenware pots sealed with melted wax. The merchants who knew Olaf were dismayed to see him approaching. I watched some of them close up shop as soon as his ship came into view. It all had to do with the way he conducted his business. When buying goods, Olaf’s tactic was to linger, politely but idiotically refusing to acknowledge the prices he had been told. He would keep mentioning a lower price, as if he had not heard the other number. At the moment when it seemed to me a fight was inevitable, he would suggest a slightly higher amount, but one still much lower than the asking price. The exasperated merchants always gave in.

It did not bother Olaf in the least to be thought of as a half-wit. His acting was always well thought-out and tailored to test the limits of whoever’s patience he was trying to wear down. The game was not to go too far, only to exhaust them. He even brought in Cabal and me as accomplices. Our job was to wait until Olaf turned his back and then have a loud conversation about how difficult Olaf could be but that he was an honest man at heart. I never saw Olaf walk away from those dealings without getting what he wanted.

He seemed to be doing well for himself, and I was glad that his old bitterness towards me seemed forgotten. I hoped we could be friends again, as we had been in the old days.

It was twilight when we dropped anchor in the bay at Altvik. The glaciers of the Grimsvoss glimmered in the dusk. An ice-blade moon was rising from the snowy peaks. Silhouettes of buildings clustered by the water’s edge, smoke drifting lazily above them.

‘Olaf,’ I said. ‘My parents’ house. Is it still standing?’

He shrugged. ‘More or less.’

‘Does Kari live there?’

He shook his head. ‘Not in that draughty old hut. She had a new place built.’

‘Nobody else has claimed the house?’

‘No. Everyone thinks it is haunted.’

‘By what?’

He grinned, teeth white in the dark. ‘By you, of course!’

‘And the temple?’ I asked.

‘It is a wreck. I would not even go inside if I were you. The roof might fall on your head.’

‘But Guthrun …’

‘Guthrun has done nothing!’ he snapped. ‘You might as well see for yourself.’

Olaf said he would sleep on the boat, so he could keep an eye on his goods. ‘You can sleep here as well, if you want.’

But Cabal needed to walk the stiffness from his joints, and I was too restless to sleep. Fatigue from months of lying on the decks of ships or sitting in carts or walking in
mosquito-humming
forests had all been shaken from my bones by the sight of this place.

‘Make sure you are back by sunrise,’ said Olaf, ‘to help me unload the cargo. Remember you work for me now.’

Borrowing a skiff that Olaf kept on board, we rowed ashore. As we moved through the quiet water, the only sound the creaking of our oars, I glanced back at the silhouette of the walrus skull tied up on the prow of Olaf’s ship. In the gentle pulse of waves, the bone face tilted slowly back and forth. It looked like an old man, nodding himself to sleep.

Olaf stood at the bow, watching us make our way in.

‘It is good to see you again,’ I said to him across the bay, which lay so still that the sound carried without me having to raise my voice.

He raised his hand and nodded, then hawked and spat over the side.

Cabal and I jumped out into shin-deep water and dragged the boat above the high-tide line.

The houses hunched under their thick turf roofs. The sound of tiny waves slapping the beach echoed among the buildings. Here and there a sliver of light showed through a crack in a shutter. Two dogs wandered down to the beach and sniffed at Cabal. Then, exhausted by the effort, they flopped down in the dirt and closed their eyes.

We walked up through the main street, passing the alehouse. From inside came the sound of quiet laughter and the sour reek of ale.

As we moved on up the hill, it became clear to me that Olaf was right about the town never having recovered. Many of the buildings were in poor repair and the streets were ankle-deep in mud.

Cabal said nothing, but from his silence I could tell he was not impressed by what he saw.

I thought of the Emperor’s palace of a hundred rooms, of the Hagia Sofia and the way its vaulted roof seemed to float on a cushion of sunlight. It all seemed like the substance of a dream, just as the Emperor had said it would be.

I stopped suddenly and turned to Cabal. ‘I forgot to ask where Kari lives.’

‘Tomorrow, my friend,’ he said. ‘You will frighten your poor sister to death if you show up on her doorstep now. Let her see you in the light of day.’

I had waited so long for this moment that now I had to stop myself from banging on every door until I found her. But I took Cabal’s advice and forced myself to be patient.

When we reached my parents’ house, I saw the stone Olaf had told me about. It looked like a tall man shrouded in a cloak, broad-shouldered underneath the folds of rock. Carved on the chest was a serpent with its tail in its mouth. Between
the lines of the serpent’s body were a line of runes,
lichen-patched
with age, which read: ‘A mother set this stone in memory of her son, who vanished in a distant land.’

‘How does it feel to be a ghost?’ asked Cabal, running his thumbnail through the moss which had filled in the words.

I shook my head. ‘We are both ghosts, you and I.’

‘Are we going in?’ He shivered in the night mist which was settling on the ground.

‘Not yet,’ I told him. ‘There is a place I want you to see.’ I had made up my mind to share with him the secret of what lay beneath the temple floor, whatever it turned out to be. He had put his life in my hands by travelling north with me, and I wanted to repay his trust.

As we walked out across the moonlit fields, I explained everything to Cabal.

‘No wonder you were so anxious to get back here,’ he said.

When we reached the temple, I was shocked to see the place almost in ruins. The doors were missing and much of the earth had come away from its walls, revealing the bare rock, like a skeleton showing through a body left to rot out in the open.

Inside the temple, the ground was pocked with the
hoof-marks
and droppings of sheep. The benches were either missing or broken, stamped apart by generations of boys released from the watchful eyes of their parents. The pillars still stood, fierce eyes defiant as ever. Moonlight shone through a hole in the roof. Its pale glow lay like frost across the wooden faces.

While Cabal gathered wood for a fire, I gave thanks for a safe journey home. I pressed my ear to the ground and lay there for a while, hearing the quiet thunder of the earth.

As the faint glow of Cabal’s fire spread across the walls, I studied the ground, in case it might offer some clue as to where this thing might be buried. I used the blade of my sword to
scrape away at the dirt in a few places, but turned up nothing.

‘There is only one way to do this,’ said Cabal. ‘We must dig up the whole floor.’

He started at one end and I started at the other. Using pieces of broken bench as shovels, we heaved clods of earth against the walls, showering the rotten benches.

I was digging close by the pillars, making my way down through layers of ash and bone from years of sacrifices.

We kept working half the night, pausing only to wipe the sweat from our faces and to stoke up the fire.

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ asked Cabal.

I stopped my shovelling, then slowly straightened my sore back. I looked around the room. The ground was gouged with holes where we had started digging and then given up. Loose dirt lay piled against the walls. ‘There is only one temple,’ I said. ‘It has to be here.’

‘Maybe the old man was lying to you.’

I dropped my make-shift spade and pressed my blistered fingers against my closed eyelids. I was exhausted.

Cabal grunted, then returned to his digging.

A moment later, I heard his makeshift shovel glance off something which made a different sound than the stones we had unearthed so far.

‘Look at this,’ he said.

It was a piece of black rock, shiny like glass.

I reached for the black hammer around my neck and pulled it from the warmth between my body and my shirt. The hammer was made from the same kind of stone.

Cabal dug around the rock, trying to dislodge it, but it was bigger than he thought.

I didn’t know what to make of it and went back to digging by the pillars. A short while later, I also hit a piece of the same black rock which Cabal had just uncovered.

Now Cabal and I began digging a trench towards each other. We began to realise that the rock stretched all the way across the room, an arm’s length down under the earth. The whole temple was built upon this huge slab of black stone.

My breathing grew shallow and fast as the shock of our discovery set in.

I remembered what Tostig had said – that it was the only thing ever to pass bodily from the world of the gods into our own. It must have fallen from the sky. I tried to imagine it, cocooned in flames, shrieking with speed, and the tremor which must have shaken even the vastness of the mountains as it slammed into the earth. From that one terrifying moment, the Norse faith had been born.