Bookweird

by Paul Glennon

  “Don’t even think of taking it away from this counter,” she warned.

  As Norman took the sheets, he realized that his fingers were shaking. The contact list had four columns: a name, a phone number, an email address and a home branch. Norman scanned them all quickly. He had no idea what he was looking for, and nothing leapt off the page. After flipping through them once, he started again and looked through them more methodically, focusing on the ones that had “itinerant” in the home branch column, guessing this meant they had no home library and were called in when someone was sick, like the day Mrs. Balani had been out. It was generally hopeless—who knew if “Martin Wyeth” or “Paul Bryznicki” was a tall teenager who always wore black? It was possible that “R. Russet” or “Prem Pahlajra” had holes in his ears that you could pass pencils through, but how could you know? Norman ran his finger across the line for each of them, checking their phone numbers and email addresses in case they meant something. It was desperation time now. Wyethm at whatever dot com didn’t really help, but Norman’s finger hovered over one address: reynard_russet@libro.li. Something about that made him stop.

  “Mrs. Balani? Reynard means ‘fox,’ right?”

  “Yes,” she said, without looking away from her computer terminal. “It’s from the French word renard.”

  “Can I borrow the phone, please?”

  Norman’s hands still hadn’t stopped shaking. If anything, they trembled more than ever as he dialled. The phone rang three times before an answering machine kicked in.

  “Hello, you’ve reached Reynard. I’m either reading a book or out getting a new piercing right now, so leave a message. And if I were you, I’d read up on my Anglo-Saxon. See ya.”

  Norman hadn’t really known what he was going to say, and the beep of an answering machine prompt always gave him a kind of stage fright.

  “Erm, this is Norman, you know the kid with…the kid with the ah…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The, ah—” He tried to remember what Fuchs had called it. “—the bookweird problem. I’d like to talk to you. You can reach me at…” For some reason he hesitated to give Reynard his phone number. The weird librarian had intruded too much already into Norman’s life. He didn’t want to invite him further. “I’ll be at the library all afternoon.” The second beep told him that his time was up.

  Norman didn’t doubt that Reynard’s message had been left for him—he had better read up on his Anglo-Saxon. It wasn’t hard to figure out what that meant. It meant that Reynard knew about The Battle of Maldon. Did it mean he was going there next? Maybe he should learn a little more.

  If he was going to have to wait here for Reynard, he might as well follow his advice. Scanning the article in the encyclopedia, Norman found that a lot of the stuff about the Anglo-Saxons was familiar. Was it possible that despite trying to ignore his dad, some of his rambling stories had actually got through? It was true, his father had told him all this—that the Anglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes, that they had given their name to the country England and the English language. So they spoke English; that was reassuring.

  Norman hunkered down in the history aisle to wait and to start filling in the details. The Angles and the Saxons had come from the continent and taken over from the Britons, who had ruled the British Isles before them. Norman filed this as an “interesting fact” because he’d always thought that “British” and “English” meant the same thing.

  King Alfred was the first king of England and was called the Great, even though he seemed to be most famous for hiding in swamps. They were defeated by William the Conqueror in 1066, a date that Norman thought he remembered. It didn’t seem like a good thing for him that the conquerors were called Normans, from a place in France, but the lucky thing was that the Battle of Maldon had been in 991, when the Anglo-Saxons were more bothered with Vikings than Frenchmen and the King was someone called Aethelred the Unready.

  “That’s where Dad got the name for the cat,” Norman muttered to himself. “It’s still a stupid name for a cat.”

  This Battle of Maldon thing was more confusing than he thought. Norman tried to read the poem in what he guessed was the original but was confronted with bizarre letters that weren’t even in the English alphabet—curvy d’s with slashes through them, elongated p’s and lots of vowels stuck together.

  I thought this was supposed to be English! he thought.

  Finding a real English version didn’t help much either. It seemed to start halfway in, and mostly it seemed to be a list of all the people who were there and all the insults and boasts they had made. His father had told him that the poem celebrated “the great English character in the face of adversity,” but even after reading it, Norman couldn’t tell how they had actually won. That part seemed to be missing.

  Would he be expected to understand these people if he arrived in the poem? Would he be expected to talk in rhyme? Norman had never been in a poem before and wasn’t sure how he would have to behave. And he had no doubt that that was where he was going the next time he fell asleep. He just hoped that he could last until Reynard arrived and he could go home. The stifling air of the library was making him drowsy, and the sea of ’s, ’s and ’s wasn’t helping. To be safe, he’d stuffed a copy of a bicycle-safety pamphlet into his pocket. It was best to be prepared with an escape route. He held out for the better part of two hours. His last thought as he dozed off was to wish that he hadn’t left his coat in The Magpie. Anglo-Saxon England sounded cold.

  The Battle of Maldon

  A jacket would have been nice. So would some rubber boots. Anglo-Saxon England wasn’t just cold; it was wet and muddy. Today’s wake-up spot was a ditch beside a hayfield. Norman woke up dry enough, but he got up and stepped forward into an ankle-deep soaker. “Jeez,” he muttered, pulling his sneaker out with a squelching sound. The extra weight on his other foot drove it too into the mud. “Make that two soakers,” he said aloud. He stepped back to the hayfield side of the ditch and prepared to long-jump it. Nearby, a group of grazing rabbits rose on their hind legs, startled by the sounds of his fight with the mud. It was hard, after Undergrowth, not to see them as somehow human. Norman squinted and wondered if that was a staff the large brown rabbit was holding or whether it was just a stick in the mud. The flash of blue and silver in the grass could have been a flag, perhaps, maybe the blue banner of Logorno. Was he back in Undergrowth? Was he far from Malcolm?

  A cry from the road that ran beside the ditch turned his attention.

  “What are you doing down there, boy?” Norman understood the sense of the question after a while, but not immediately. It was the strange almost-English of his dad’s old poem. His vision of Undergrowth faded away.

  “I said, what are you doing? Are you a fool, lad?” the man on the road repeated slowly. He wore a sort of leather and chain-mail armour and carried a steel helmet behind him on the saddle of the small, shaggy horse he rode.

  His daydream about the rabbits forgotten, Norman shook his head slowly and replied even more slowly, “I was sleeping.”

  The armoured man’s face registered his confusion. Nor man’s speech must have sounded just as strange to him. He dismounted his horse and peered over the edge of the ditch to frown at Norman. “Get out of that ditch, lad, and come up here,” he ordered.

  Norman did his best. He could hear the man chuckling as he scrambled across. There wasn’t enough room to get a good run at the ditch. He cleared the deepest parts, but the far embankment was still muddy enough to cause him to slip and muddy his jeans from his shin to his knees.

  “Here, lad, have a hand.” A hand reached down into the ditch, grasped his firmly and yanked him up. He’d been hauled up with such force that it was a surprise to find himself looking almost directly into the eyes of the man on the road. The man seemed just as surprised. His bright blue eyes narrowed and blinked.

  “You’re quite the beanpole, aren’t you,” he growled, tugging his beard. “Are you a boy or a man?”

  “I’m el
even,” Norman eventually replied.

  “Well, you speak too oddly for my ear. Where do you hail from when you aren’t sleeping in other men’s ditches?”

  Norman was stuck for a safe reply. Where was it safe to say he came from? He hesitated and stammered for a while before the man gave up.

  “You are well addled, boy. Have you taken a blow to that high head of yours?”

  Norman nodded. If it gave him time to get his bearings, he could blame his disorientation on head injuries.

  “Well, do you know your name?” the man asked more softly.

  Reassured, he replied without thinking, “Norman.”

  The man started at the sound of this. His hand reached instinctively to the hilt of his sword. “That’s an ill-omened name. Was your father struck on the head too when you were born?” He shook his head in disbelief that any good Saxon would call his son Norman. “Now I look at you, you’ve the look of a young North Man, you do. It would explain the ungodly height of you. What was your father called?”

  Norman stuttered his reply. “Edward—my father is Edward.”

  “That’s an English-enough name. Good enough for a king. Where is this Edward the Ill-Namer?”

  “I don’t know,” Norman muttered. This too had the benefit of being true.

  The armoured man frowned. “Well, Son of Edward. I am Aetheric. Many men would leave you here in your ditch, but I don’t send my two cattle a year to the Bishop unwillingly. We’re Christian men here. It’s what separates us from the Vikings. You had best be coming with me.”

  There didn’t seem much point arguing with this. Aetheric handed Norman a rough canvas sack. “See how you do with that,” he commanded. “If you handle it as far as the abbey, I might let you carry my sword the rest of the way to Maldon.” Norman blinked, not understanding how this was supposed to be a reward.

  Aetheric was not silent on the road to Maldon. He talked endlessly about his journey, walking beside his horse and leading it by its reins in order to make conversation easier. For the first while he could not help giving Norman the occasional disbelieving look, but he seemed to get more comfortable with the strange sight of the boy in his jeans and sneakers. It was good for Norman to listen to the older man talk. It attuned his ear to the strange version of English that Aetheric spoke.

  “I am a kinsman and thane to Brythnoth, that earl that as we speak amasses his troops at Maldon. There we shall drive away the sea thieves that have harassed our shores this summer long. My brothers go ahead of me, but think not that it is through cowardice that I dawdle. My wife gave me a son, not more than two days ago, and I had to be on hand to make sure that he did not have a fool’s name.” Aetheric punched Norman in the arm and grinned. Norman guessed that it was supposed to be a friendly shot, but it hurt either way. Aetheric laughed as Norman rubbed his biceps. “I can see you’ve not spent much time in the field, lad. Perhaps your father means to send you to the monastery, as I send my cows.” The short, swarthy man laughed again at his joke. Norman just smiled in a way that he supposed reinforced the burly little man’s impression that Norman was not quite right in the head.

  At least Aetheric didn’t follow through on his promise to let Norman carry his sword. The canvas sack was heavy enough. When they passed the church at the hill, Aetheric merely crossed himself and carried on. By the time they crested the hill at Maldon, Norman was too tired to be excited by the sight of the sea or of the small band of men who were assembling at the shore. He had seen too many movies with hundreds of extras and thousands more soldiers drawn in by computer to be impressed by a few hundred men in metal hats and breastplates. Aetheric smiled proudly as he looked down, though.

  “There are my kinsmen. They have all come. Our boasts in the mead hall were not hollow. It will be a fell day for sea thieves today.”

  The stocky warrior actually spat as he insulted the raiders. Norman followed his eyes out to sea. In the mouth of the river, not far from the shore where the Saxon troops were forming up, was a small island. The bows of two long boats moored on the island could be seen from here. Perhaps there were more.

  “Vikings,” Norman whispered. His pulse was racing now. Something about the shape of that hull and that square sail meant danger to him.

  “Aye,” affirmed Aetheric. “This lot are Danish, but don’t you worry. They will not blight these West Saxon shores much longer. Brythnoth is a great earl and a fearsome fighter. This black-water river will be red with Danish blood before sunset.” Somehow this image did not reassure Norman at all.

  Aetheric immediately sought out his own family and retainers. Norman stood by idly watching as they slapped each other on the back and congratulated Aetheric on the birth of his son. Only when everyone else had been greeted and saluted did anyone pay attention to Norman. Nobody said anything, but the glances from the men were curious and suspicious. The younger they were and the shorter, the more suspiciously they regarded him.

  “Aye, you’ll have noticed the beanpole. Would that he had width to match his height. He’d have made a fine fighter. There’s time yet, perhaps. He says he’s only eleven, but he’s been struck on the head at least once, so you can’t rely on his counting.” The men all guffawed, the boys even more, and Norman felt himself reddening in anger. Aetheric noticed immediately.

  “I see there’s some fight in you, after all. Perhaps your father spoke too soon when he promised you to the monks.”

  The warrior nodded to one of the older boys. “Wulfmaer, why don’t you see if you can teach the sapling to draw a bow.”

  The boy called Wulfmaer scowled. He looked as vicious as his name. A head shorter than Norman but obviously a few years older, with scruffy long hair and a snarling lip, he had the same angry look as the kids Norman avoided in the schoolyard. He grunted and motioned for Norman to follow him to a far end of the field.

  Wulfmaer’s instructional technique involved firing a dozen arrows at a hay bale while Norman looked on, then sending him to fetch the arrows. Next it was Norman’s turn. He did his best to remember how Wulfmaer had held the arrow and the bow but had to endure the older boy’s snickers as he fought with each arrow. He stung his fingers on the bowstring and scraped his forearm with every second release. None of his arrows hit the hay bale. When he was out of arrows, Wulfmaer sent him to fetch them all again. This sequence continued. They would take turns shooting the arrows, but only Norman ever fetched them. He paid closer attention to the way that the Saxon boy notched the arrow each time. Wulfmaer wasn’t nearly as fast or as accurate as Malcolm or the other stoat archers of Undergrowth, but there’s only so much you can learn from a weasel’s bow technique that can be applied to human hands and fingers.

  Despite Wulfmaer’s dismal teaching methods, after six or seven rounds Norman was putting half of his arrows into the hay bale. This seemed to bother Wulfmaer. For once several of his own arrows had gone wide of their mark. Norman was gathering them from the mud beside the target when he heard the whistle of another arrow. He turned just in time to see it pierce the hay. Shocked, he turned to see Wulfmaer standing smugly with the bow at his side.

  Norman reacted instinctively. “Hey, what do you think you are doing? You could have killed me!” he shouted. He strode angrily back to the shooting area. “Idiot,” he shouted as he grasped the bow. He couldn’t help himself. The Saxon boy might not have understood a word he said, but he knew he was being insulted and he wasn’t about to hand over his bow.

  Norman’s anger at being shot at got the better of him. “It’s my turn, jerk. Give me the bow.”

  Wulfmaer let go of the bow, but only to fling it behind him. Norman could see what was going to happen next. The other boy clenched his face as well as his fist before he swung. Norman was already in guard stance. He parried Wulfmaer’s wild swing with a side block and followed with a backfist. The Saxon boy might be stronger, but Norman the advantage of height, arm length and two years of karate lessons. It was a yellow-belt move, and he did it as instinctively now as he
would in the dojo—only in the dojo they all wore pads and mouthguards and were careful to avoid the face. Norman was shocked that he’d actually done it. He watched dumbfounded as Wulfmaer wiped his nose with his hand and found it streaming with blood. The Saxon boy’s eyes widened in surprise. His lip curled in animal ferocity, and Norman could see him coiling himself to bull-rush and tackle him. If the older boy got in close and got him to the ground, his superior strength and weight would settle this fight easily.

  They were interrupted by the sounding of a horn. The sound snapped both boys’ heads toward the beach, where the troops were forming up in rows. Wulfmaer appeared to consider finishing this fight but thought better of it. He flared one nostril and pointed a threatening finger at Norman’s chest that promised he’d sort this out later.

  Norman reached the beach first. The tide had gone out and revealed a narrow causeway between them and the island where the Vikings had moored their boats and encamped. A single Viking had crossed the causeway and stood now just feet from the shore. One figure emerged from the crowd of Saxon warriors at the end of the causeway. He was neither taller nor more handsome than any of the warriors around him, but something made him stand out. Others around him had finer armour and flashier swords, yet none had the same bearing of authority. He raised a spear in the air and the host around him first roared then fell absolutely silent.

  “You hear what answer we’ve given you. If you want a tribute, we’ll give you one. How about we pay you in spears and swords? Tell your heathen lords that this is Aethelred’s country and I am Aethelred’s Earl and I will fight to defend this homeland of ours. You’ll not leave here without a fight.”

  So this was Brythnoth, the leader Aetheric boasted of. The Viking messenger was nearly a head taller. The white scars that crisscrossed the Viking’s face showed that he was no stranger to battle, but this Brythnoth was fearless. He scoffed at the Viking’s demands. There was not a trace of fear or indecision in his demeanour or voice. It was no wonder they’d written a poem about this day. Norman’s father had called him a tenth-century Churchill, whatever that meant. When the roar went up from the Saxons, Norman joined in.