The Soul Thief

by Cecelia Holland

  Mav stuffed her fist into her mouth, to keep herself from singing, but the leap of the wolf brought from her a shriek that sounded through the whole house. She panted for breath, she throttled herself again, struggling to keep silent.

  Her brain burned. Over and over again she felt the incandescent burst of his rage. The tidal surge of anger sizzled along all her nerves, screaming to be heard; she clenched her jaws against the rising tide of song, stuffed the coverlet into her mouth, but the song was bursting up, uncontrollable.

  She dared not sing. Anything she told the Lady now could damn them all. The lady wanted Corban on Eric’s side; if she knew then Corban’s rage, she might turn on him and Mav both. But the song was prying open her throat, spilling up and out of her in a great thunderous howl, telling the Lady all that happened, all that Corban did and knew.

  She could not stop singing. Frantically she sought some other way to do this. She could think of something else to sing. Someone else. Her mind gathered, pushing that way. She had always sung to Corban, closer to her than her own skin. Now there was someone else she loved as much, and she lowered her head, and wrapped her arms around the great round womb-home of her baby.

  As she did, he fetched her a solid kick against her side, and like the spring from the rock, the song gushed forth.

  The world cracked. Her spirit soared up. Suddenly Corban and his hate and rage were gone, her mind cooled, wide forests and sea opened up before her, a flow of incomprehensible images she had never seen before. All the brighter, the livelier, that she had not seen them. Under her cradling arms the child turned and thrashed against her, and she held herself around him and sang out the worlds where he would walk.

  The Lady sat on her stool by the girl’s bed, and held her hand. She had known immediately that this was not the true singing, not what she wanted, and yet she could not stop listening, her breath catching in her throat, her mind swept along in this river of dreams.

  The music filled her imagination, a great sweep of sound, blazing color, visions as real as if she were there. They rowed past a mountain of blue crystal that towered up above them; pieces of the crystal broke off and crashed down into the sea, and the ship rose on the wave from it. In the icy blue sea there swam great monsters, and the men in the ship did battle with them.

  They went among copper-skinned people, with long black hair. A girl kept walking toward her, a copper-skinned girl with gray eyes. This was in a great forest somewhere, and there was a strange house. Corban Loosestrife stood beside the house, wearing his red and blue cloak.

  She could make no sense of this. It flooded over her so fast she could scarcely keep up with it, each place bursting upon her like a flash of dream, then suddenly gone, and another rising.

  She saw a little settlement, burning. The towering blue crystal mountain appeared again, the rolling blue sea. She saw a night sky, with strange stars. In the gray dawn, blank treeless dun hills rose up above the sea, gaunt as earthen bones. Then the sea was glittering with sunlight, and ships sailed against each other across the green waves. She saw row on row of dragon ships, surging forward on banks of oars like the striding legs of giants.

  Opposite them sailed lines of strange ships, with high boxy prows, and eyes painted below the railings. The dragons strode swiftly toward them; it seemed that they would crush the strange ships in a single attack.

  Just before the ships closed, from the other fleet came up a steady stream of balls of fire, like suns hurled through the sky, trailing flames and smoke. The fireballs exploded on the dragons, spitting out gouts of burning stuff, and the sea boiled and flames gusted up, and men burned, and rolling black smoke blotted the clear blue sky.

  That copper-skinned girl was walking toward her again, speaking of something, something she needed. That was another place entirely.

  The Lady took hold of Mav, and shook her a little. “Show me Eric,” she said. “Show me Gunnhild.”

  The girl ignored her. When the images poured on, the Lady yielded to them again, half-drunk on their splendor. She was in the middle of battle, with sweaty, grunting men all around her heaving up their weapons and sagging under blows. Beneath her feet the ship heaved and rocked, she could hardly keep her feet. Men died around her. Many screamed to Jesus.

  Even in the song, that name pierced her. She half-turned, fending it off.

  Up through some dank and dripping pine forest she climbed, and stood on a headland and looked out over the edge of the world, where the sea poured over into the abyss, wreathed in fog, with a thunder that made the ground shake under her feet. She turned her head and saw the copper-skinned girl beside her, watching her.

  On some great western lake a dragon ship set forth, but at the oars sat dark-skinned men, not danskers, their hair like a dog’s roach. She watched them row into the west, into the sun’s eye, the water golden around them and notched with shadows where the blades dipped.

  Then before her, on the High Seat of Norway, sat an old woman, holding a crown on her knee, and it was Gunnhild.

  The Lady gave out a hoarse cry. She shook herself from her blissful daze, and seized Mav by the shoulders and shook her. “Wake up! Wake up—”

  Mav swung heavily around to face her. Her eyes were bright as lamps, silver as the moon, round and huge. From her open mouth came a deep resounding voice, not her waking voice.

  “Do not touch me.”

  The Lady’s body recoiled, but she kept her hands on the girl’s thin bony shoulders. “You are telling me of things to come—I command you, by this hold I have on you now, tell me of Bluetooth, what is to come with him.” Still in her mind, like an afterimage, she saw Gunnhild, old and worn, on the throne of Norway, holding an empty crown. “Tell me!”

  The girl stared a moment from her silver eyes, and then sang, and the Lady jerked her hands away, startled, because in the streams of music she saw King Harald Bluetooth in a white shirt, kneeling, and a man with a cross in his hand sprinkling him with water.

  “Ah!” she cried. “Show me no more of that!”

  Then Mav laughed, and her eyes dimmed, and she pulled herself out of the Lady’s grasp and sank down on her bed and was still, her arms around herself. The Lady stood. She had no more taste for any of this, suddenly, and she went away to her cupboard in the back of the hall.

  Soon Bluetooth came to her, as he often did, and wanted something bought or sold, and something found or lost, and as always, news of Jorvik. The Lady put him off. What she had seen of times to come with him seethed in her mind. She was helping him toward the end that he would destroy her. In her little sitting place, between her cupboard bed and the long wall, she gave him wine to drink, and let him be comfortable, but she watched him narrowly the while.

  Suddenly she could bear it no more; she burst out, “So you are to become a Christian, hah?”

  He startled, and his face darkened. He made some fuss with the wine cup. Finally he said, “I have given it deep thought.”

  “Ah, you fool,” she said, furious. “They talk so well, the Christians. Have they poisoned your mind too? What gain will you have of them, for what they will cost you? These archbishops are no better than anyone else.”

  “Oh, they are,” he said. He settled himself again in the chair, and his eyes turned toward her, cold and intent. “They are. I have done some study of it, and I have learned that Christ is the true god of kings, never mind Odin or Thor. Christ, who drives out all his rivals. As there is only one God, so there is to be only one King, you see.”

  “Bah,” she said, frightened. She could fool him easily, when he tried to be clever; but when he was being stupid she had no way with him. “You would uproot all we are, for one little advantage.”

  “I cannot turn from this, it is a sword of great price.” He was getting up. He gathered his cloak around him. “When you have more word of Eric, summon me. I will hear that.”

  She growled at him. He had just said he would betray her, and still he expected her to serve him. She let him go by hi
mself to the door.

  When he was gone she thought it all out carefully. As always there were different ways to look at it. Eric Bloodaxe had been sprinkled with the Christians’ water, and had never really turned from the old gods. She stroked her chin, feeling her way through this. Possibly there was an under way and an over way.

  But she knew that Bluetooth did nothing as Eric did; and the Christian priests were already much afoot in Denmark.

  There was no place for her in the Christian church, which was a matter of faith, of blind belief, rituals and relics, fear and order, not of knowing. Certainly not of her kind of knowing. She wondered if her time here was coming to an end. Bluetooth, like all men, only half-believed in her anyway.

  But she had seen Gunnhild on the High Seat of Norway. That seemed to mean she had succeeded here, somehow—with Bluetooth or in spite of him. Then the great work was not lost, after all, but only gone along some more crooked path.

  What she knew now made everything different. It mattered less to her now that she have her way with Eric, and bind Bluetooth to her, than that she get the brother back here, so she could force Mav to yield to her. She would go nowhere without Mav, especially now, with her power blooming. Wherever she went, such a power as that would be worth kingdoms.

  There was much to be done still, in spite of Bluetooth. She touched the gold ring on her arm, bidding herself be patient, and keep on.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The priest said, “God’s will be done. It is God’s will that makes Eric king over us—”

  The score of people facing him stirred, restless. Benna in the back of the group tightened her lips, but said nothing; she was here in her father’s stead, and now that he was buried in the churchyard, ought not to be; but no one so far had made any mention of it. At least there were three or four other women here; Euan’s mother stood over by the altar, in front of a row of candles.

  From the other side of the church a deep voice bellowed, “No, it was not God, it was our good archbishop, wanting to keep the English off us. And where is Wulfstan now?” A ripple of humorless laughter went up.

  The priest’s hands rose up and down like doves along the front of his black robe. “God have mercy on our archbishop.”

  “God have mercy on us!” the deep voice bawled.

  “We must bear our burdens with patience,” the priest cried. “Ask God what he wishes of us—”

  He would talk like this forever, Benna saw, and she took a step closer and called, “You must go to Eric, and beg him to relieve us.”

  At once she put her hand over her mouth; she had not meant to speak out, but now she had, and all around, people turned and stared at her—the bakers, the cobbler, the butchers, all men.

  But they were nodding, and agreeing. Voices rose, repeating what she had said. “You must go to the King!”

  The priest said, “This is a mere woman here, does she counsel priests and kings?”

  Benna flushed, her anger spurred up once again; she had spoken once, she might as well keep going with it. “As I am a mere woman, so I need the protection of my King, and my priest. Will he give it to me or no?”

  Now around her everybody let out a yell. To her surprise, the apothecary’s widow, Euan’s mother, turned around and smiled at her, and nodded.

  The priest swayed back and forth, looking in his long black robe as if he had no feet. His face was screwed up, mouth twisted and eyes half-shut. “It will do no good,” he said. “God is testing us, and you are failing it, my good people—”

  The deep voice on the far side of the crowd called, “Stop hiding behind God! Go to the King! We’ll go with you. Or we’ll go without you, Father, you can choose.”

  “But choose wrong,” the cobbler yelled, “and you’ll see damned few of us at Mass!”

  The priest gasped at the oath, but the rest of them hooted and yelled, high-spirited, now that it was the priest they confronted, and not Eric or his men. Benna glanced around at them, her spirits flagging. It was easy to yell and cheer to each other. Making Eric pay heed would be much harder.

  They went out of the church into the deep summer afternoon sunlight. As she went along, the cobbler came by and said, “Well spoken, Benna,” and around him other people nodded at her. Many more people were gathered in the churchyard, waiting for them, and she looked for Arre.

  Her basket on her arm, her sister stood trading quick words with a restless crowd of town boys, Euan’s friends. Euan was not one of them. When she saw Benna her face lit with her smile, and she quit the eager mob of boys and came across the yard.

  “How did it go?”

  “I don’t know,” Benna said. “The priest has to go up there and beg the King to help us, that’s all I know.”

  At that moment the priest himself came out of the church, and everybody cheered. The priest looked wan as milk. He lifted his hand and blessed them with a limp unhappy hand. Grimly he went off down the street, and the crowd walked after him.

  “Let’s go to Corban’s house,” Arre said. “It will take him a long while to get the King to listen, maybe all day.” She crooked her arm through Benna’s.

  “Corban,” Benna said, stiffening. She had not seen him since he came back to Jorvik. He had given her the looking glass, she had sent him a drawing, but nothing else had passed between them. He did not want to see her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him; she had made a fool of herself over him the last time. “Maybe—”

  “Come along,” Arre said, firmly. “Look, there’s Grod.” Calling to the old man, she towed Benna off down a lane toward Corban’s street.

  Euan said, “This is how it works. How much did you pay for those fleeces, there?”

  Corban had spent the morning buying fleeces Arinbjorn had brought in from the country; he went through the pile, naming each price. “This was four pence, and that one three.” As he spoke each price, the boy’s long knobby fingers pushed the beads back and forth along the abacus. When he had gone through all the fleeces, Corban straightened, frowning at him, and Euan held the square frame up toward him, the beads strung out along the wires.

  “That is how much you paid for all of them. Four tens, and two—so forty-two pence.” He laid the square on his knees again and played on it like a harp, and lifted it up again. “This is how much you owe the King—two tens, and one, so twenty-one pence.”

  Corban scratched his chin. This did not seem such a great power to him; he marked his tally sticks, and with the Lady’s endless money in his purse he didn’t see that it mattered much anyway. But he saw that Euan thought the abacus was wonderful. The boy was handling it again now, his fingers dancing on the beads, his pale short-sighted eyes intent. Corban said, without thinking much about it, “Euan, will you come and work for me, here?”

  The boy lifted his head, blinking at him. “Doing what?”

  “Counting fleeces,” Corban said. “Other things, as they come up.”

  The boy pulled off his cap and stroked his hand over his long brown hair. “My mother needs me. Things are very hard right now, you know.”

  “I know. Do you have anything to eat?”

  “I—” Euan pulled the cap down over his forehead again, and turned back to the abacus. His long fingers toyed with the beads. “We have bread,” he muttered.

  “You do. Where do you get it?”

  The boy would not face him, but pored over the abacus as if it told endless secrets. “A friend of my mother’s, from outside the wall.”

  “I will give you money, if you will buy—”

  “No.” Euan was shaking his head, and now he did look up. “My mother said I was not to tell you. There is hardly enough now for us, and if you offer, with your money, he will sell it all to you, and leave none for us.”

  Corban folded his arms over his chest. He saw some hard ugly joke in this. He wondered if all matters of money, everywhere, were not some hard ugly joke. Euan said, “I’m sorry.”

  “No reason,” Corban said. “You have told me wha
t I need to know.”

  In the door then came Arre, with a basket over her arm, then Grod, and behind them, Benna. Corban straightened; he was walking toward her before he realized it, a great stupid smile on his face. She turned toward him, and as their eyes met, she smiled too, and his heart jumped.

  Arre said, “I have brought you some turnips and onions, Corban. Gifu went hunting; perhaps she’ll have meat when she comes back.” Grod had brought the cup and the jug and she reached for a drink.

  “Thank you,” Corban said, looking at Benna. “Without you I would starve, Arre.”

  Benna said, “Thank you for the looking glass.” Her hand rose toward her throat; he saw she had the little round glass on a thong around her neck.

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said. “I’m very glad to see you.”

  Beyond them, Euan was saying, “What happened at the church? Did the priest offer to do anything? I doubt it much.”

  “No,” Arre said, “he didn’t offer, but they got him to go talk to the King, and there’s a great crowd on the street now waiting for him to do it. Rogn and Ralf were there, they were looking for you.”

  Benna said, “You would not come across the river to see me, though.”

  “I—” Corban looked at the others, Arre and Euan and Grod, standing there drinking the ale. Abruptly they were all moving toward the door, talking in a rising clamor of their voices.

  But Benna stayed, watching him.

  “That’s a very handsome coat,” she said.

  He ran his hands down the front of his fine red coat, which fit him so poorly, and was always too hot. Abruptly he shrugged out of it. “You don’t understand. There’s so much going on—” He turned his head toward the door, where her sister and Euan and Grod had gone out. “Where are they going?”

  “The priest has gone to talk to the King,” she said. “To get him to help us.”