He smiled up at her from the bed like a delighted baby she was tucking in. “Me.” Turning his head to one side he was instantly asleep.
Arre straightened. A little warning tingle spread through her nerves. It might not be the best idea, Euan taking her case to the Archbishop. Euan had always to be sniffing after power, or the illusion of it, and that had brought him crosswise of the Archbishop in the past. But the course of things was going out of her hands now—if she had ever had any control over it. She closed the right half of the bed, to give him some quiet while he slept, and went down the hall to send someone out to the shambles, to fetch them a roast for their supper, now that Euan would be home.
Conn said, “Now we have to leave, for sure, tonight.” He wheeled toward Raef; they were walking up through the Coppergate, the crowded market street loud with the yells of vendors and hucksters, the crush of people struggling to buy. “What an evil this churchman is—to cast her out! Of all people—the best among them!”
Raef hunched his shoulders. “Tonight. That’s too soon. What about Aelfu and Miru?”
Conn cuffed him. Raef loved comfort all too much. “We can’t stay—not if it means trouble for her. You’ve got to see that. There.” He nodded up ahead of them. “That’s Gunnhild Kingsmother’s house.”
“I guess so. There’s Eelmouth,” Raef said.
They had come to the top of the Coppergate, where it ended at the main road; in the old house on the right Gunnhild Kingsmother was staying. The house had a tall overgrown wooden fence around it, and in the gateway of this fence, her man Eelmouth sat, drinking from a wooden cup and eating nuts.
Conn nudged Raef, and they went up toward the gateway. Eelmouth did not move when they greeted him. Conn braced up at this; he had been Sweyn’s second in command for a while, and nobody treated him like a boy anymore. Still slouched against the doorjamb with his legs outstretched, Eelmouth looked from him to Raef, and stared at Raef.
“Your brother here I think she will not see, but you she will.”
“What?” Raef said. His voice squawked. He threw Conn a startled look. “No—he and I, we go together.”
“Well, then,” Eelmouth said, “come with me.”
He got up and led them into the hall. It was not a big house, but well set up, with a floor deep in clean rushes, a warm fire, and onions and garlic and great smoked hams and bacon hanging in abundance from the rafters. At the hearth Gunnhild Kingsmother was sitting on a bench.
She had changed her rags for a long gown, all sewn with crystals that glittered when she moved, and her hair was brushed and braided; she looked much younger, smooth and bright. Conn bowed to her, amazed at her beauty, the even bloom of her skin, the symmetry of her cheekbones, and her splendid eyes. She gave him half a look, and stared at Raef.
“Sit,” she said. “Eelmouth, call for some ale for these young men.” Her attention turned briefly to Conn. “You are Conn Corbansson?”
“Yes,” he said. “And we—”
She cut him off with a glance that somehow stopped the words in his mind, and turned to Raef. “You are Raef, and also Corban’s son?”
Raef cleared his throat. His voice squeaked. “Yes.”
“I think not. I had never seen you before the other day, and yet I know your face as well as my own I think you are the son of Eric Bloodaxe, my husband, who was King of Norway once.”
Conn gaped at her, and then turned and stared at Raef as if he had never seen him before. Raef had flushed to the hairline, his gaze on the floor, his hands twining around and around each other, and he muttered something.
“What?” she said. “You are a King’s son, boy, speak up.”
He jerked his gaze up to meet hers. “I don’t know.” But suddenly he straightened his shoulders. A servant had come with the ale, and Gunnhild bade her give each his own cup. The servant set the pitcher down and left.
She said, “Who is your mother?”
Raef said nothing. Knowing him tongue-tied, Conn spoke for him. “He is my father’s sister’s son. Nobody knows who his father was. She was taken away by Vikings and sold into slavery. My father won her back in a mind-war with the witch of Hedeby, before they all went into the west. Raef was born in the witch’s house.”
She still did not look at him, but watched Raef, and her face softened. She seemed to lean toward him a little, to send forth some aura that embraced him. Conn shivered; he thought he could have been in Denmark, or under the ocean, for all she cared.
She said, still, always, talking to Raef, “Where is she now, your mother?”
“She’s—” Raef made a little gesture with his hand, opening up words. “She’s home. On the island. It’s all right. She’s better there than here.”
“For whom?”
Raef looked startled. “For her:’ he said, and Conn said, also, “Yes, for her. Even with everybody gone. She never needed us:’
The Queen watched Raef steadily a moment in silence. She said, “Eric’s last son, born almost as he died. You are the image of him as a young man. But you have nothing of his mind. Which is not perhaps altogether an ill thing.”
The ale made Conn’s head swim; for an instant he thought he saw golden rooftops somewhere, and heard a horn blow a long low sensuous note. The Queen herself reached for the pitcher and filled his cup again, and Raef’s. She said, “Your mother, now, what is her name? What is she like?”
“May. She’s mad,” Raef said. “She lives in the woods, she runs naked there, birds feed her.”
“I see.” Gunnhild twined the end of her braid around her finger. “But you see her. And you have some of her power:’
“No,” Raef said, with a twitch.
She smirked at him. Conn cleared his throat. He wanted to end this sparring, this weird unfolding, give himself some room to think it all over; he was seeing layers in this that shocked him. He stepped forward toward her, speaking to her. “We are here to find out where Corban is.”
Her gaze never left Raef. She said, “I saw him last going down under a swarm of them at the wharf in Hrafnsbeck. Maybe they killed him there. If not, Hakon’s next move is surely to go back to Norway, to lay hands on what he has won, and likely he won’t take Corban. Even if Hakon knew what Corban was, since he’s turned Christian now, he has no use for him. And Corban outfoxed him. Hakon won’t forgive that.”
“You said—” Conn and Raef spoke together and Raef stopped at once and Conn went on, “That he wasn’t dead. Back at the river bar, where we met you first.”
“I don’t know what happened to him at Hakon’s hands. Hakon is a vicious man. We were friends once; I know him very well.” She curled and curled the braid around her finger, now studying them both. There was a long silence. Conn found himself watching the pattern of lights on her gown; images flashed through his mind, too fast to capture.
Gunnhild spoke suddenly. “All right, then, go, if you’re going to stand there like a lump.” She waved her hand at them. “Go.” They left.
Outside, his head much clearer, Conn said, “Do you believe her?”
“About what?” Raef said. They went out to the street.
“That about Eric Bloodaxe.”
Raef licked his lips. “Yes.” He met Conn’s eyes. “Shouldn’t I?”
“Well,” Conn said, walking fast. He felt as if this new father had grown up suddenly between them, turning Raef into a stranger. Yet he had always known Raef wasn’t his brother.
He saw also that Raef had changed, somehow, bathed in Gunnhild’s words like one of his mother’s story-heroes dipped in dragon’s blood. Conn said, “Corban’s always been your true father.”
Raef muttered something and looked away. Conn strode along, heading for the river bar, struggling in his mind with this thing he had known one way and not cared about, and now knew differently and it changed everything.
Gunnhild had done this. He still felt the weight of her presence, the cold honey smoothness of her voice.
Now Raef seemed utterly ch
anged. Conn, who had always known exactly what Raef was thinking, wondered now how to speak to him. Cautiously he said, “She sounded us like a ditch, but we didn’t get much out of her.”
Raef shrugged. “Corban’s at Hrafnsbeck, she thinks.” His voice sounded steadier.
“Where’s that?”
“Down along the fjord somewhere, east of Hedeby.”
“You know, this—what she said—” Conn stared at him, intent. “Are you still with me—about going to help Pap?”
“Yes,” Raef said. “I’ve been—” He rubbed his hand quickly over his face. “I’ve been thinking. All that other stuff—I don’t care about that. Raef Corbansson, forever.”
“Good.” Conn swung his arm around Raef’s shoulders, glad. “You’re better than a brother, anyway. Now, listen—this -is what you have to do.”
In the middle of the afternoon Arre went into the pantry found Raef there, stuffing loaves of bread into a sack.
Startled, she blurted out, “What are you doing?” and he dropped the sack and spun around, his big hands flopping, and his face red. She looked at the shelf; he had taken all the bread, a dozen loaves.
“What are you up to?” she said, stooping for the sack. “Not even you can be this hungry.” When he yammered something, edging toward the door, she got in his way. “Now, Raef, you can’t lie to me.”
His shoulders slumped. He said miserably, “I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t.”
“We need food. We’re going to Denmark—to find Corban.”
“You and Conn,” she said.
His jaw jutted out. “You can’t stop us. We’ll go even if we don’t have bread. Corban’s in trouble. We have to help him. It’s partly Sweyn’s idea, too; we’re to spy for him a little in Denmark. And we can’t stay here and make trouble for you:’
She lifted the sack in her hands, thinking of Euan, of Sweyn. This would simplify the whole matter for Euan. The little girls were less of an ember in the Archbishop’s eye than the boys. And Corban might need them. “Yes,” she said and looked up at him.
“I think you should go. I’ll help you. When are you leaving?”
“Tonight.” He reached out and touched her arm. “I didn’t want to steal from you, Arre. Or lie. I’m sorry.”
She nodded. “No, I understand. You’ll need something to drink, too, and some blankets, and maybe we can find you some money. Come with me.”
Aelfu crept in under the big quince thicket at the edge of Arre’s garden, where no one could see her. They were calling for her, up in the house, to come and say good-bye to her brothers. She moved carefully in among the thorns of the quince, but still they scratched her arms and cheeks, sharper than rose thorns.
They weren’t her brothers. Certainly Raef was not. She curled up in the middle of the great thorny thicket and put her head on her arms.
Their voices faded. They were going away. For a moment a great fat lump hurt in her chest and she blinked and blinked to keep from crying. Everybody went away. It did no good to cry.
Everybody went away. She closed her eyes tight, and her thumb slipped into her mouth. Soon they would come and take her away, too, and everything she loved here would be gone.
Shutting her eyes she curled up around the hollow place in her center. She hurt, there, as if she were hungry. Better to stay here and die, just here, like this. She shut her eyes tight and squeezed herself into a knot and held her breath, waiting to die.
She didn’t die, she gasped for breath, and shivered on the cold ground. She began to be tired of being here. Arre was calling her again, and now beneath Arre’s call came Mirtes voice, lighter and smaller.
“Efu—Efu—”
“I’m coming,” she said. Suddenly she had to get to Arre, to her sister, more than anything She crawled out from under the quince bush. “I’m coming—”
Conn and Raef took the dragonfly down the river early in the afternoon, gliding away on the swift-flowing brown water past banks shrouded with tangled winter-dead willow boughs; by sundown they were rowing into the broadening stream that led to the sea. The shore was all fen country, and finding no place good to put ashore, they followed the current down into the bay, one sleeping and the other awake all night through. At daybreak, they rowed together out through the shallows and bars at the river’s mouth, rounded the southern spit, and rode through the crash of surf onto the great salt breast of the sea.
They rowed well out from the land, and then Raef stood his oar up. “We should raise the sail.”
Conn let his oar trail in the water. The sea rolled under them; he loved the feeling of the swell lifting the boat. “We should follow the coast south. The wind’s out of the west.”
“That’s what I mean.” Raef pointed to the east. “The wind’s dead fair for Hollandstadt if we go that way.”
“Sweyn brought us up here following the coast.” Conn frowned at him. It was his raid, but he was remembering how Corban had heeded Raef on such things. “You and Pap. Open sea, all the way. We can’t find—”
Directly overhead a scream sounded, shrill as the wind whistling through a keyhole. Conn jerked his head up, looking into the sky. “That’s a red hawk. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so far from the land. That’s an omen for you, Raef, it’s headed east.”
Raef was staring up at the great bird soaring toward them. “Red hawks don’t fly out to sea.” He stood up, his eyes suddenly round. “It’s coming at us.” The hawk stooped toward them, hurtling from the sky so fast and straight Raef shrank down and Conn looked around wildly for something to hit it with, and then at the foot of its stoop, a foot above the sea, it spread its wings, gathered up all its speed into a rising, wheeling turn, and landed neatly on the sternpost.
Conn’s mouth dropped open; he leaned on his oar, astonished. The hawk’s breast was speckled like ermine. Black tipped her russet tail feathers. She folded her wings, and glanced at Conn, and cocked her narrow head to stare at Raef. “I’m glad I found you. Where do you think you’re going?”
Conn brought in his oar and got to his feet. “We’re going to rescue my father. What are you doing here, Gunnhild Kingsmother?”
“You should have talked to me first,” said the hawk. “You’re going to need help.” She spread her wings, teetering a little on the curled prow. “I am better at this than I used to be. Once it took all my strength just to hold the shape.” Gliding from the height of the prow, she swooped down to land on the gunwale next to Raef. Her feathers ruffled up along the back of her head, and her eye fixed on him.
“I can see much better than you what’s going on in Denmark. If you take me across the sea, I will find Corban for you.”
“Done,” Conn said, excited; he thought this was a very good sign. He nodded to Raef. “We’ll raise the sail.”
They sailed due east. The hawk perched on the stern above the steerboard and directed occasional sharp remarks at them from there. Raef fed her bits of bread, which she was hungry enough to eat. Conn dozed.
Raef watched the hawk covertly. Since she told him who his father was, his mind had been seething. In spite of his promise to Conn he thought the name over and over: Raef Ericsson, Raef Ericsson. She also gripped his mind, which he thought she intended. He remembered what she had said, that he had some power.
He blurted out, “I wish I could fly.”
Gunnhild said, “I had forgotten how it lifts the heart. Then when we were running from Hakon, the thought came into my mind, and the next moment, I was in the air, soaring.” She preened the feathers of her breast, pulling each carefully through her great curved beak. The sun was going down. Along the eastern horizon a low line of clouds showed, like a detached mountain range. Raef had tied down the steerboard, and only sat with his hand on the pole; the dragonfly ran true before the wind, working over the steep short seas.
“Could I fly?” he said.
“I don’t know:’ she said, and shook herself smooth. “You are already well on the way to denying whate
ver gift you have. That’s the way of it with most people, they’d rather be ordinary.”
That stung him; he had always thought there was no one like him anywhere in the world. “What power does Corban have?”
“Corban!” Her beak gaped. He realized she was laughing. “Corban has no power. Except the very greatest, which is he knows it when he sees it”
“But you said—”
“Tush. You have to stop thinking you understand what I say:’
He was silent a while. Everything she said to him seemed like a scolding. Under that, something deeper, as if she had to cover thin skin with a rough hide.
She spoke again, as if she overheard his thoughts. “I had six sons. All that mattered to me. I gave my daughter up for nothing to some Orkney lout; then I swore I would see my sons the Kings of Norway. Four of my sons each wore the crown, but they all turned Christian, and now they all are gone. The last two are nothings and will do nothing. My daughter is far away, Christian, too, and I have only Eelmouth. It’s a hard thing, growing old.”
“But you’re a witch,” Raef said. “You can keep from growing old.”
“No, I can’t,” she snapped. “I can do much but not that.” She was watching him. She said, in another voice, “Yet looking at you I remember Eric, as he was, and as I was. That’s something.”
He said nothing, glad of the gathering darkness. She said nothing more; he guessed she was sleeping.
Conn woke, and came to take the helm. “You’re certain on this course,” he said.
“We’re drifting a little north,” Raef said. “Not much. Better if we don’t go straight at Hollandstadt anyway.”
“How do you know this?” Conn burst out. “I’ve never even seen you use an instrument.”
Raef swelled up with breath; he thought Conn had never admired him before. He tried to keep his voice even. “I’ve been there. I just go back there.” His voice sounded foreign to himself, as if he were another person, listening. Raef Ericsson listening to Raef Corbansson.
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