He laughed. He raised his hands over his head, not to signal them. He would never have to signal them again, or call to them, or wheedle or beg for their attention. When they saw this they would know, once and for all, what he himself had not quite dared to know until now, that he was their sachem, that they belonged to him.
She came out of the trees toward him.
He stood still, astonished, under the force of her look. She was pale as sunlight. Her hair floated around her like a gray mist. She wore leaves and flowers like a veil around her white body. Around her neck on a string hung a flat glistening bead the size of his palm. Her bright eyes held him. Her lips curved into a smile. His loins fluttered. He had never been with a woman, but he knew he would be with her. Yet he had no power to move. She came up to him, smiling, and reaching out took his wrists and lowered his hands to his sides. She took hold of the amulet bag, opened it, and shook the pebble out of it. He trembled with a rushing excitement. Her wild scent enveloped him. Under his loincloth his manhood was stiff and hot and aching. She stooped to lay the pebble on the altar mound. She took the shining circular bead from around her neck and laid it down there, too. Then she straightened, and reached to take him by the hands, and rough with her own hunger she drew him down onto the ground.
C H A P T E R T E N
Corban lost track of the time at sea. Day after day went by the same. The little ship was true as an arrow, and the weather stayed fair almost all the way. Rowing sometimes, sailing much, they ran to the east over a sea lively with fish, great cod whose schools stretched over the horizon, whales dozing like black blisters on the water’s surface, flickers of flying fish, sharks weaving through the sea coursing for blood.
After a while there rose ahead of them a mountain range of clouds, towering into the sky in white billows. Sailing eastward, countersunwise, they slid beneath the cloud mountains, looking up through the white mass, and entered the broad warm blue river of the midocean, where there were no fish.
Here nearly every day storms blew up suddenly from nowhere; after a sudden gust laid the ship over, they took down the sail and put the oars out. Rowing hard along the ocean stream, they were borne far northward before they could slip free and raise the sail again in kinder water.
They sailed over the drowned mountains, and beyond that the land began to rise again, and poke here and there out of the watery surface, flecks of sand and cliff and rock, then larger massy chunks, Skye, Orkney, Mainland, England, until they came to the broad shelving edge, no thicker than their heels, where the ocean at last ended at the edge of the world island.
Following what he remembered of Ulf’s lore, and more and more what he knew to be some strange gift of Raef’s, Corban fought through the narrow channel in between Denmark and Norway, where the seas rushed together in rips and rogue waves and sudden eddies. Beyond, in calmer, closer water, with Raef at the helm, they followed a stream of other ships southward through a clutter of low green islands. To the west lay the long hilly shoreline, fringed with white beaches. Finally that shoreline broke, and among a vast solemn parade of other ships they rowed up a briny river and into some lakes strung together like jewels in the green land, and in the farthest lake they came at last, nested in its wooden walls and pathways, noisy with the trade of a thousand nations, to Hedeby.
The boys’ eyes were wide and round as eggs even before they landed. Corban steered the ship to a place at the very end of the long curving beach, where he found a mucky shelf of shoreline too narrow for a larger craft. While he got the ship up on the land and stowed the gear, the boys stood knee deep in the water, goggling open-mouthed at the great city before them, the stacks of its buildings, the thick clog of traffic along the waterfront, the steady uproarious smoky smelly din that overhung it all.
Corban remembered how Hedeby had amazed him when he first came here—it had seemed then an enchanted city, where anything could happen, where he could find anything he could imagine. Now, compared to his island, the enormous sky, the silence under the great trees, the cool salt wind, the city seemed cluttered and crowded and dirty.
When he thought back, all he remembered was happiness, Benna’s smile, Benna’s hands, Benna’s voice, his and Benna’s children, and all around them the peace and sweet beauty of the island. He could bring to mind the terrible snowstorms and the awful grating hunger and the deaths of the two little boys, born between Conn and Aelfu, but it was the summer happiness of his life there that endured in him.
All the way coming here, he had thought how he could get back there, get that place back again, and free his home of the evils that had somehow followed him. What he had left here unfinished and unanswered had poisoned his life, even the new life he had tried to make so far away. He had to make amends, settle his debts, bring what he had done here to some end. Then he could go home to Benna and the island, and everything would be as it had been.
The boys swayed dreamily from side to side as they gaped around them. Corban laughed, feeling the land rocking under him, too; they would get solid on their feet soon enough. Leaning down into the ship, he reached deep into the close space under the prow and got out the money pouch that Ulf had given him and the sealskin bag with the furs, and slung that over his shoulder.
“Come along.” He beckoned to Conn, still standing in the water where he had stepped out of the ship. “Get your boots on, and whatever else you need, and let’s go.”
The boys twitched out of their startled amazed stillness. They rummaged around in the ship for their tall bear-paw boots; Conn had the cloak Ulf had given him, but Raef wore a tunic of deerskin. Corban followed them up the short rise to the boardwalk that ran along the edge of the harbor and saw them already drawing curious looks from the passers-by.
Conn was still gaping at everything. On the boardwalk, he slowed down and drifted over to stare at an enormous dragon that was drawn up on the shore, its high coiled prow carved into patterns of snakes, and doing so he almost ran head-on into a man walking the other way, who thrust him off and strode on without a word or even much interest. Corban came up behind him and herded him along. Raef had his head down, his shoulders hunched; he had seen the people staring and smiling. Even here in Hedeby they looked strange.
They swung out to pass a crowd of people in front of a merchant ship, much like Euan’s ship, where naked men roped together in lines were unloading bales of wool. On the other side of the boardwalk, for a hundred yards in either direction, stood great stacks of wool, barrels one on the other, sacks in mountains, and, in pens made of poles, men and women.
Corban bit his teeth together. He had forgotten the evils of this place. One hand on Conn’s back, he pushed his son ahead of him past the steady stream of walking people coming the other way. Ahead the wooden path widened into the open square where the big road from the west reached the harbor.
“Straight down this way, here. Stay to the one side, follow the people.”
He turned the corner, looking down the broad western road, his eyes filled with the rhythmic bobbing of the crowd walking away from him, the parallel stream walking toward, the orderly confusion of the city, like one vast beast crawling all through Hedeby. For a moment it overwhelmed him, and he could not think even how to take another step.
Straight ahead, he thought. Do what you can find to do. Herding the boys before him, he plunged down the boardwalk into the crowd.
Conn strode along, laughing and pointing, his eyes sparkling, but Raef hated this place immediately. The smell turned his stomach and the constant racket hurt his ears, and he felt the people around him like a coil of brambles, poking and scratching and catching on him, their looks like snags, their voices like a net of sound.
It made no sense, anyway, from the wooden walkways that made you walk in lines to the jostling hundreds in their lines to the awful smell of rot. He knew nothing good could happen here. He trudged along after his uncle and his cousin, while Conn cried out joyfully at every new sight, and Corban walked along easy as if on th
eir own island.
Not easy. Corban was changing with every step, it seemed to Raef, who skulking after him had him always under his eyes. Corban seemed to be growing taller, and yet he walked with shorter, harder steps; he carried himself closer, as if he put on some bony armor. There was a little frown constantly on his face, always figuring something out. He seemed taut, not watchful so much as waiting for something he could not watch for.
They walked inland up a long boardwalk crowded with people, and with the most amazing array of things among the ordinary piles of bowls and cloth—odd tools, little boxes full of sparkling stones, strange figures and shapes, like something his aunt might have made, beautiful and tantalizing, figures as real as life, like nothing living he had ever seen.
He thought he had seen nothing, until now.
Through the awful stench a sudden mouthwatering flavor tickled his nose. Then they were walking by heaps of some golden brown stuff, made in different shapes, giving off a lovely warm aroma that stopped him in his tracks, enveloped.
“Bread,” Corban said to him, and pulled him on. “Remember? Ulf brought some once.” His uncle turned them into a narrower way, a strip of wooden boards flat on the ground between walls of twisted tree branches. Now in the rows of boxy wooden fences, square-cornered houses, they came suddenly to a gap, and there Corban stopped short.
Raef took one look into this empty place and recoiled. The strip of land ran away from him between two fences, with houses on either side, but even those fences and houses seemed to lean away from this plot of ground. Once a building had stood here, but only two cornerposts and a piece of the wall were left. Brambles and weeds grew up over it all, thickets of thorny berry vines, vines scrambling up over the ruin of the house, some spindling new trees struggling above the brush, their branches already dying.
The place was cold, and dark—even now, in the height of the day, with the sun shining down—and it was silent. No bird sang here, no butterflies skittered over the brambles, no mice nibbled at the seeding grass. Raef glanced at Corban, startled, and saw him studying the place, his lips tight, the frown deeper between his eyes. People hurried up and down the boardwalk past them, and Raef saw that they who lived here went as quickly and as far away as they could by the gap in the fences.
Corban wheeled. With Conn and Raef at his heels he plunged into the passing crowd, and after only a few strides he caught up with a lanky boy, years younger than Conn, striding along carrying a bucket in either hand. Corban swung around in front of this boy and stopped him.
“Wait, here—” Corban fingered up something from his belt, something small and glinting, and held it out to the boy. “Let me ask you a few questions.”
The boy plucked the bit away. “What? I have to go.”
“That spot back there, that empty ground—why has no one built anything there?”
The boy’s eyes widened, alarmed; he cast a look down the boardwalk. “That place. Who would build there? Everybody knows it’s haunted.” He made to run off, but Corban caught his arm.
“Haunted. How?”
“By a witch. I don’t know much. Lights at night, people say. Noises. Please.” The boy leaned against Corban’s grip, his eyes sleek with fear. “Let me go.”
Corban opened his hand, and the boy sped off. Raef wrapped his arms around himself, wondering what Corban was doing. Corban turned, looking back down the boardwalk at the gap; then he turned his gaze first to Conn and then to Raef, studying them as if he had just noticed them there.
“Pap,” Conn said, “what are we doing here? What’s this place got to do with anything?”
Corban’s face kinked with annoyance. He had a little pouch in his hand, which jingled when he pushed it into his belt. “Well,” he said, “we have to start somewhere.”
Then he threw his head back, his eyes wide. “Watch out!” He grabbed Conn by the arm and pulled him around, and swung to put Raef behind him, too.
Raef gasped. Up the boardwalk a man was striding toward them, drawing his sword as he came.
“Corban!” this man yelled. He was tall, rawboned, older than Corban, with a wild grizzled shock of red hair; there was something wrong with his mouth, and Raef could barely understand his sputtered, shouted words. “How dare you come back here! Did you think I would forget?”
“I’m unarmed, Eelmouth!” Corban shouted. “These boys are unarmed!”
“Ah,” Eelmouth shouted, slobber flying from his lips. He had no teeth, Raef saw, that was it, his mouth just a hole in his face, through which words volleyed. He stopped square in front of Corban, his sword raised. “But you can kill a man with his own weapon, can’t you?”
“Hold on, here.”
This voice came from behind Raef, who turned, trying to get out of the way. A man taller than he was by a foot went by him and pushed between Corban and the furious Eelmouth. Conn started forward and Raef grabbed his arm. A crowd of other men surrounded them all, each carrying a sword or an axe in his belt; clearly they were followers of the tall man.
They all wore cloth shirts and leggings and leather shoes. Raef felt again the shame of his boots of bear fur, his deerskin shirt; he went hot all over, as if he were sick.
“Damn you, Palnatoki,” Eelmouth said. “I’ve got a right to kill him—he betrayed me.”
“There’s no feuding in Hedeby,” the tall man said. “You know that.”
“I did nothing to you, Eelmouth,” Corban said. “You know why I did what I did.”
“You set us up,” Eelmouth shouted, lunging forward, and the tall man Palnatoki gripped his shirt and straight-armed him away.
“I said no feuding.”
The redheaded man tore his angry gaze from Corban and aimed it at the tall man. “And who are you to command me, halt old man?” But he thrust his sword into its scabbard on his belt. He jerked his chin at Corban. “I’ll see you later, Irish.” Highshouldered, he sauntered off down the boardwalk; the crowd of men surrounding them parted to let him pass through midst, but their gazes trailed after him, and they muttered his name.
Palnatoki watched him go a moment, then swung around toward Corban. “You are Corban Loosestrife,” he said.
Conn’s elbow dug into Raef’s side; Raef jumped. Corban said, “Yes, I am.”
The tall man grunted. He was homely, with a broad, dished face, a wide nose, and pale hair in two hanks by his ears. He said, “Well, then, I think you should come with me.”
Corban was starting down after Eelmouth, rapidly vanishing into the crowd. He said, “I have something to do. And I am not what you think I am.”
“Pap,” Conn said.
Palnatoki smiled, putting his head a little to one side. He said, “I know who you are. You should come with me. Eelmouth is a bad enemy.”
“I can deal with Eelmouth,” Corban said.
Palnatoki’s smile widened, like a crack opening. “I am offering you my protection. Don’t make me use a strong arm.”
Raef’s throat tightened. Corban turned from staring after Eelmouth to look at Palnatoki, and then at the men surrounding them, as if he had only now noticed them. “Well, since you put it so,” he said mildly. “We’ll come.”
Palnatoki clapped a companionable hand to Corban’s shoulder. The threat faded from him; Raef felt easier at once, and wondered if he had imagined it. The tall man said, “Very good. then. Let me make you welcome to Hedeby. I keep a great hall here. You will be my honored guest. And your sons, here, also.”
Corban snorted. “As you say, sir. Lead on.”
Conn’s legs had been shaky at first, almost threatening to throw him down, but now he felt good, walking again, glad to be on land. Glad to be here. He could not keep from smiling, looking all around him at Hedeby.
He knew this place already. He had been here all his life. In his mother’s stories and pictures, in his parents’ casual talk, in Ulf’s visits, surely he had heard these names and caught glimpses of these places since he could remember, and all of it tinged with a haze of
glory.
Now it was real. Now it was around him, the faces of the other people, light-skinned like him, with pale eyes like his. Here were the buildings that Corban had copied, back on the island. Here he heard his own language all around him. Back on the island they had been strangers, different from everybody else, everybody else’s enemies. But this place, here, this was where he belonged.
So he followed his father with a light step, in spite of Raef’s glooms and the crowd of strangers and Palnatoki’s velvety threat. Whatever happened here, he would understand, he would be able to deal with it. He thought, I have been waiting my whole life for this.
The crowds of people passing by them were almost all men, but then suddenly coming down the wooden pathway toward them were some girls, carrying buckets. They were young, like him, with long pale hair twined with colored cloth; he could not take his eyes from them, from the soft shape of their bodies in their long embroidered gowns, and their cheeks pale as his mother’s. His blood sang. They burst into giggles; one of them started boldly back at him, smiling, and they darted past, laughing, tossing their heads, leaving behind them a stray fragrance, and a curious ache all through him.
Looking around, he saw Palnatoki’s men laughing at him, and his spirits sagged a little. Just looking at them, he knew how rude his clothes looked—at least he had the good cloth shirt that Ulf had given him, although it was stiff with salt and sweat, but his legs were bare, except for his bear-paw boots, which he had begged his mother to make for him, but now wished on anybody else’s feet save his. Everybody else, he saw, wore low-topped shoes, leggings smooth over their knees, bright woven shirts, and gold rings on their arms, and gold chains around their necks, everybody but him.
They knew Corban here, though, and in spite of the little threat Palnatoki had made, Conn could see that he honored his father, who certainly wore no gold. Still Conn chafed over his lack of rings and chains. They came to a high wall of earth and sod and passed through a hole in it, and then were outside the city. He turned to look back, seeing the wall snake away from them, the jumble of roofs beyond.
The Witches’ Kitchen Page 14