Kings of the North Read online

  In fact Richard was master over all Normandy, and no one was master over him, no matter what had just happened on his beach. The Queen of Norway, he thought, and some words of an old tale rose into his mind. He had heard the name Corbansson before too, with a different forename.

  What this Corbansson had done, back there on the beach, the old Normans would have understood. Richard’s father would have understood, who had favored Vikings above all others. The present Richard rode over the bluff, his men coming after him, and the tall stranger with the long white hair walking beside him, his two followers on their horses just behind.

  Nonetheless, Richard was supposed to be a Christian, and this would not sit well with the Christians, especially the King of France. He said, “You are not staying here within my country.”

  The tall man walked beside him, keeping up effortlessly with the long-striding horse. “I am going to England.”

  “Ah.” Suddenly Richard’s interest sharpened. He glanced at the man beside him, the homely face, the pale hair hanging in its matted braids almost to his waist. “Why?”

  The tall man shrugged and said nothing. They were riding away from the beach, along the road that wound north. In the dark the broad country spread around them, picked out here and there with the faint lights of home fires. Richard said, “You are Ethelred’s man?”

  Corbansson gave him a brief sideways glance. “I am no one’s man. Is Ethelred Edgarsson then still King of the English?”

  “Yes. My sister is his queen.” Richard remembered something else. “I have heard this name before – Corbansson. Together with Sweyn Forkbeard’s.”

  “I pulled an oar once for Sweyn Tjugas,” the tall man said. “I have not seen him in a dozen years or more.”

  Richard frowned. He wondered if mere chance brought this Viking with the strange name here now, on his way to England. For a long time Richard had been playing his own game in England, in which marrying his sister Emma to Ethelred had been a key move. Between him and Sweyn Forkbeard, the King of Denmark, and Ethelred, the King of the English, there had grown a dense, constantly shifting web of ambition that many would-be spiders danced upon. Emma had been more use in this than he had expected. He wondered if the white-haired stranger was a spider or a fly.

  In any case it did no harm to help him along. He lifted one arm and pointed.

  “Yonder is my hall, where I am stopping now. You are going on your way. Here.” He took a ring from his finger and held it out. “Show this to anyone who bars you or anywhere you need help. Go north on this road and in three days’ time you will come to Sainte-Valerie. There you will likely find a ship to take you to England.”

  The tall man took the ring, “Thank you.” Even in the dark Richard saw the piercing attention of his look. He had the sudden sensation that the tall man was looking straight through his eyes into his mind.

  “I need no thanks. I am getting you out of here. Give the ring to the priest at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Sainte-Valerie.” Richard lifted his arm. “Farewell.” He swung his horse around and galloped off toward a distant cluster of lights, glad to be getting away from this.

  * * *

  They walked along the road awhile, in the dark, until they came to a stone barn. There was nothing inside but old straw, and Leif and Laissa flopped down on that and were asleep almost at once. Raef went to the other side of the barn and sat down.

  Remember what I taught you.

  Nothing. A handful of chants and phrases. “You won’t need these after a while,” she had said. “When you’re used to it.” He had never gotten used to it.

  Part of it was the way he had always been. He had always felt laid open, exposed, as if his body were inside out, his nerves on the outside, stretching into the world. He had always known more than he should. Often he could tell what the people near him were thinking, what the land around him was shaped like. Gunnhild had said, “Yes. You have your mother’s gift, her wide-mindedness. And you were born of an act that shattered her body, so you were more of her mind than her body.” Then she taught him another mysterious rhyme, which did nothing.

  She had tried over and over to teach him how to leave his body behind, to follow his nerves outward into the world. “You can do this!” He couldn’t. Finally she slapped him, shouted, “You are such a coward, Raef!” and walked off. A moment later, astonished, he found himself floating along beside her, in a strange blue twilight where she seemed almost transparent, his own body lying slack and empty on the floor behind him.

  Now she would teach him nothing more.

  He sat in the dark, longing for her. Across the wide barn Leif began his whistling snore. Raef thought of going over there and rolling the fat man over or stuffing something into his mouth. Instead he closed his eyes and let his mind drift.

  He could stretch out some little way without even leaving his body. His senses grazed over Laissa; he had wanted to lay her under him for a long while now, but he had known her first as a child, and she had grown up day by day before him, so he still thought of her as a child. In the past sometimes when he dealt with women that way, they gained some momentary power over him, and he was wary of that also. When she was deep in sleep he spread his mind down on her, covering her from head to foot, and she moved, opening, her lips parting. She did not waken, but her hand slid down between her legs. He felt, in her belly, a rising lust.

  Let her dream. He let go, his mind drifting past her, his body behind him now. Across the cold meadow and the horses grazing, through rows of trees and another hall, where men lay sleeping, mounds of dense, bloody, sweating flesh. The cold air was blue under the rising moon. The air tasted of grapes and lime. Like a wave in an ocean of light he flowed on past the wall, in all directions, through peasants in their huts with their sheep and goats beside them, their heads on their pigs, past haywains, sleeping cattle, a fox trotting down a road with a chicken in its jaws. A monk praying among monks sleeping. In the other direction, he lapped up against the rock mound, where he had left Gunnhild.

  She was gone. He knew that at once, drifting through the piled stones. But even as he knew that, he felt something coming over the misty sea toward him, and he caught a stiff of something more horrible even than the stink of death.

  The reek panicked him; instead of pulling his mind back into his body he let his whole awareness flow to that one place, beside Gunnhild’s empty grave. Like a child running to its mother. As if she could still help him. Out over the sea, through the milky moonlight, rushed something churning and filthy like a foul smoke. He could not make it out. It seemed either to have no form or size or to be many forms and sizes, changing faster than he could see. Yet he could see it even in the dark, somehow.

  He turned and fled in a blind terror, trying to get out of her way. She stopped behind him at the grave. The rocks and sand flew up and around in a fury, a whirling wind in the center. She was looking for Gunnhild. He forced himself to face her.

  Before him was only a prickling in the air, a whirling, and then a shriek so loud it pierced his head like a lance. He shouted back to make another noise, to be there. He shouted his name at her. She swarmed at him, a swirling filthy mist with claws.

  She needs a female body. He thought, Maybe she cannot hurt a man. Testing this he ran straight ahead, into the choking awful crackling miasma.

  The thick gritty air battered him from all sides, up and down, like huge fists. He whirled helplessly in a black and terrible mist; his mind stretched toward some limit, some safety, and found nothing, nothing.

  “Raef!”

  The call came from somewhere outside and roused him. He clutched at that, who he was: himself.

  All around the mist burned, hotter than fire, searing his lungs, his eyes boiling.

  He had failed already.

  “Raef!”

  raef, he thought, raef, raef, raef

  he held to that last flicker

  * * *

  The sun was rising. Leif got up; they had brought in
their saddles and packs and he got some bread, drank from the rain barrel at the corner of the barn, and sat down on the threshold. The horses were grazing nearby. The new sun felt good. Across the stretch of grass a strange man was walking toward him.

  “You!” this stranger called. “What are you doing here?” He spoke a kind of Frenchified dansker, like many of the Normans.

  Leif did not stand up. He knew of the duke’s ring, and he had no fear of this farmer. He said, “We’re only passing the night. We’ll be gone as soon as my friends wake up.”

  The farmer stuck his hands on his hips. “Be gone now, or I’ll call my men.”

  Leif suspected there weren’t too many of these men. He said, “The Duke of Normandy gave us word. I can fetch the ring he gave us, if you want.”

  The farmer’s face altered slightly at the name of his lord. His eyes pushed past Leif into the barn; he started forward, and Leif swung his arm out to bar him.

  “They’re still asleep.” This was true of Laissa, but he wasn’t sure what to call what Raef was doing. He could see Raef from here, sitting on the straw, staring into space, as if he had gone somewhere else entirely. Leif had called to him, when he himself woke up, and had gotten not a flicker of attention, and he knew better than to press it. The farmer’s mouth was working, uncertain.

  “We’ll start on the road before too long,” Leif said to him. “We’ve done nothing to harm you.”

  “My lord the duke sent you?” The farmer crossed himself.

  “He gave us a token, if you need to see it.” Leif glanced over his shoulder. Laissa was awake, was rising up from the packed straw in the dim space and stretching her arms. Leif stood up, to keep the Norman farmer from being able to see her; as she grew and her body rounded, he imagined that every man wanted her. He saw them all seizing her, and he remembered what she had been, before. He looked back over his shoulder again, wondering where the ring was. The new sunlight spilled into the room behind him, and Laissa turned toward him and smiled. Raef still sat motionless on the other side of the room. Probably he had the ring. Laissa turned toward him. “Raef.”

  “Leave him be,” Leif said. “He’s dreaming again. He hates being wakened.”

  The farmer said, “These are your horses? Only two?”

  “My friend prefers to walk.”

  Laissa stood, her head turning toward the door, and then looked back at Raef. Leif said, “Don’t worry, he’ll come to soon; he doesn’t do this much in the daytime. Laissa, come on and eat something.”

  She was standing there, but she was looking at Raef, not at him. She went across the room to the other bench, sat before Raef, and looked into his blue eyes.

  “Raef,” she said, again, and leaning forward gripped his shoulders, and then she cocked one arm back and slapped him.

  Leif gave a startled grunt. The farmer signed himself again. Raef jumped almost clear off the bench, still cross-legged, his skin flushing all over, his whole body knotting up, and his long arms reached out and caught hold of her. He was jerking and thrashing, as if in some kind of fit, and Laissa in a panic clawed at his hands on her arms, trying to fight out of his grasp. Leif rushed to help her, but before he reached her the fit suddenly ended, and Raef sat still on the straw, his hands biting Laissa’s arms, his wide blue eyes blinking, his breath sobbing in his throat.

  His hands opened. She reeled backward from him, her hands on her upper arms where he had held her. Leif took a step and was between them, a hot churning anger in his liver.

  Raef put his hand to his face. He said, “We have to get out of here.”

  Leif said, his voice stiff, “Then let’s go.”

  Raef rose and went out the door; he gave the farmer an incurious glance and went to the rain barrel at the corner. Leif saw the farmer’s eyes slide down to Raef’s hand, to the heavy ring on his finger, and again the Norman signed himself, and he backed away. Raef scooped cold water into his hands and splashed it over his face.

  Laissa came out, and Leif turned toward her. She stood there, her jaw hanging open, her eyes stunned. Her hands lay on her arms, but he could see the bruises already darkening her skin. Over by the wall Raef bent to drink from the barrel, ignoring them, as if he had not just savaged her. A hot reproach bubbled up in Leif’s throat, but he could not bring it out. The farmer turned suddenly and went away. Leif went out to catch the horses.

  Chapter Two

  They went off into the north, following the road, Leif and Laissa on their horses and Raef walking along. A girl with Laissa’s yellow hair passed them, driving a cow to pasture, the tether rope wrapped like a crown around her horns. In a long narrow field people gathered onions. The weeds were already standing high in the fields on either side, leathery leaves, gross hairy stalks and pods with thorns. Just across the ditch a brown goat was eating brambles, its sides swelled out unevenly wide. The road led up onto the bluff, into sight of the sea, blue under the sun, the wind curling the waves over into whitecaps.

  Although he could not see it, Raef knew there was land close beyond the horizon, breaking the sea’s surge: the southern coast of England. Where the Lady was. His mind cringed from even the memory. He thought he knew why Gunnhild never told her purpose in leading him here; it was not because of his anger, but because she was afraid he might shirk the task.

  Beside him, Leif said, “You hurt her.”

  Raef felt a surge of rage. He throttled down the will to knock Leif off his horse. On the Icelander’s far side, Laissa turned to look at him. His hand fisted, the Norman duke’s ring heavy on his finger. He lowered his eyes from the mottled bruises on her arms.

  He said, “I couldn’t help that. I couldn’t stop it.”

  He bit his lips together, fighting down his temper, which he knew was mostly fear. There was no way to tell them what had happened. He said, clipped, “From here on, until we get to Jorvik, things could get dangerous. Maybe I won’t even make it that far. If you want you can take your own road. You and her.”

  Laissa looked from one of them to the other. Leif rubbed briefly at his face. He said, “When you get to Jorvik – what’s there?”

  Raef shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Ah, so much you don’t know.”

  He knew nothing, except that his enemy was stronger than he in every way. He had no idea even what she was. He avoided Laissa’s questioning gaze.

  Now that he could lose Leif, he saw the good friend the fat Icelander had been all this time, how he had rowed them out of danger in Thessaloniki with three Imperial dromons after them and Raef himself unconscious in the hold. How he had forced the gate in Rome, heaved the rocks down to block the trail in the mountains, found horses for them outside Rheims when Laissa was too sick to walk at all. Mostly, in spite of Leif’s whining and fussing, his jealousy over Laissa, Raef did not want to be alone again.

  He thought of losing her too, and his heart clenched.

  But he feared to take the others into what he saw before him. He told himself it was better if they left. He thought then at least no one would see him fail. They continued on.

  * * *

  Toward evening the duke’s ring got them a place at an inn beside the road. While the men went off to put up the horses, Laissa went around the yard until she found the kitchen house.

  Through the open door came a clamor, voices shouting, and she went to the threshold. Inside the cook was beating a scullion with his iron spoon and the kitchen maids were clustered by the table laughing and calling out advice.

  “Please,” Laissa said. “Please, I’m hungry.”

  The uproar faded a moment; the girls swung toward her, wide-eyed, and the cook paused a moment, his head turned toward her. He went back to smacking the scullion. One of the women called, “Come here, child, come eat.”

  She went in toward the table, where there was a pile of bread and several cheeses still in their wraps. One of the women came over and broke off a piece of a loaf for her.

  “Are you alone? That’s ver
y dangerous. Who are you?”

  Laissa began her well-practiced explanations. “I am a stranger. But I think my family must be from here. I think I was taken away when I was a baby. I think my father may have taken me away, maybe on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher. When Hugh was your king. My father died on the way. Now I look for my mother.”

  Like the women at the last place, they gathered her in like a baby, fed her more bread and some cheese and a cup of small beer, cooed and sighed at her. “What is your name?” someone said.

  Around a mouthful of good sharp cheese she said her name, hopeful. But already their heads were shaking, their mouths sad, their eyes soft on her. “That is not a French name.”

  She said, low, “But I hear this French. I understand – more than I say. I must go everywhere – someone will know—”

  “Alais,” someone cried out, in the crowd of women.

  There was a sudden hush. A little girl tittered. The old woman said, “Oh, Hawisse, shut up.” She bent toward Laissa, confiding. “She’s a little off, Hawisse. She churns the butter.” Her finger made a wheeling by her ear.

  “Alais,” Laissa said, softly, her eyes lowered, as if she tasted the name. “Alais.”

  “There’s nobody named Alais here,” the old woman said.

  “It’s her name backward,” called the woman in the crowd.

  Everybody gasped. The old woman said sharply, “Hawisse, that’s witchcraft. I told you, shut up.” She turned to Laissa. “We can’t help you, dear. We’d like to, it’s a sad story, but nobody remembers anything.”

  The little girl said, “Nobody here ever goes anywhere.”

  “It’s all right,” Laissa said. “I’m sorry. It’s all right.” She walked out into the courtyard again.

  Alais, she thought. Alais. Her heart leapt in a wild excitement. That was her real name. She knew that was her real name.