Maidensong

by Mia Marlowe

  Rika’s throat constricted. “Oh, Helge.” She dissolved in sobs.

  “There now. Little Elf, don’t take on so,” her voice was thin, already disembodied. “I was there when you opened your eyes, so I was. Now you’re here to close mine. It’s fitting.”

  “What will I do without you?” Rika realized how she’d come to depend on Helge, even to enjoy her chattering and scolding. It had been nice to have someone to fuss over her, someone to mother her. Magnus had been wonderful, but Rika had never known a woman’s gentle care till Helge came to fret over and coddle her. And now, the old woman was dying because Rika had attracted a deadly foe. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.” Rika buried her face on Helge’s bony chest.

  “Hush, child.” Helge laid a thin hand on Rika’s head. “I’ll not have you thinking that. But if you would make an old woman happy, there is something you could do for me.”

  Rika raised up to look into Helge’s pale eyes.

  “Forgive your father, lamb.” Her chest tremored with a suppressed spasm. “Not because he deserves it, even though he does. The punishment that man has laid on himself over the years was far more than you could dish out for him, so it was. Forgive him for yourself.”

  “Helge, I—”

  “Don’t let the root of bitterness take hold of your heart, Little Elf.” Her voice drifted to a mere whisper. “It’s stronger than Yggdrasil once it takes a firm hold and it’ll only tear you apart piece by piece, like a root rips through rock.”

  “I’ll try.” Rika forced the words out.

  “That’ll do, lamb.” Helge breathed deeply, pulling Rika close to her heart again. The old woman patted Rika’s hair in slow, feather-light strokes. Then Helge rested her bony hand on Rika’s head. “Ja, that’ll do.”

  Her old friend fell silent and it took Rika a moment to realize that Helge’s chest no longer rose and fell. Tears pushed at her eyes, stinging, demanding to be released. There seemed not to be any air in the small room. Rika gasped, then collapsed in ragged sobs and wept for Helge.

  After she cried herself out, she felt Al-Amin’s hand on her shoulder. Her gut churned and her ears burn. Grief turned to anger. “Who has done this thing?”

  “I shall try to find out, but it will be difficult, for such a one who could lay a trap of this kind is also capable of covering all trace of blame.” Al-Amin sounded weary.

  “Once I tell Farouk-Azziz, he will be furious,” she said with surety. “It was someone in this house, you said. The hospitality of Farouk’s household has been compromised. He’ll force the truth from them.”

  “He would try, and no doubt someone would confess to the crime, but I promise you, my lady, it would not be the guilty party. Such things are arranged for a price and the family of the confessor would reap the benefits, but we would be no wiser and you no safer.” The eunuch leaned down and covered Helge’s body with a fine linen sheet.

  “Then what can we do?”

  “Do? We do nothing, my lady,” Al-Amin said. “Your safety now lies in subterfuge. The death of an old woman will cause little comment and the killer will wonder whether the poison went astray, but he or she will not know for certain. By not raising an outcry, we will not put them on alert. They will think themselves safe to try again and, trust me, they will assuredly try again.”

  “So far, you give me no comfort,” Rika said, wiping her eyes with an end of the sheet.

  “But we will be on alert, my lady,” Al-Amin said. “You will eat nothing that I myself have not prepared for you. I will accompany you at all times.” He gnawed his bottom lip for a moment, then gazed at her with a directness that unnerved her. “There will be no more late-night baths.”

  Panic flooded through her. Al-Amin knew. But when she met his eyes, they were an unreadable blank slate.

  “Agreed,” she said.

  “In this household, you may trust myself and the master. I know you have little to do with him, but I’m sure your father, Torvald, would see to your safety as well.” Al-Amin ticked the names off on his fingers. Then his features drew up into a grimace of distaste. “I suppose we may also rely on the Norse barbarian and his friend, that little Roman priest.”

  “I’m sure we can,” Rika agreed.

  “All others are suspect,” Al-Amin said. “Please be guided by me in this, my lady. I would see you safe and, to my mind, only one thing will accomplish it.”

  “What is that?”

  “You must leave this house, my mistress,” he said sadly. “You must return to the North. I believe it is in your mind to do this thing, is it not?”

  “You know me well, Al-Amin.”

  The eunuch sighed. “Then I will help you, my lady. I have but one request.”

  “By now, you know that I can deny you very little.”

  Al-Amin rubbed his hands together quickly. “I have always heard that the North is very, very cold, and undoubtedly no pistachios will grow there, but when you go,” he smiled at her sadly, “please take me with you.”

  Rika threw her arms around Al-Amin’s neck. “Of course you will come and we will buy you new clothes, very warm clothes. Perhaps you will learn to love hazelnuts just as much as pistachios.”

  Overwhelmed by her display, he let himself pat her back stiffly. “And now, my lady, we must see to Lady Helge’s final resting. Shall I arrange for her to be interred in one of the mausoleums or would you prefer she be buried outside the city gates?”

  “That is not the way of the Norse people. We do not leave our loved ones under the ground to become food for worms,” Rika said. “Neither do we keep them in stone boxes to molder and decay. We send them to Paradise on the wind with dignity and with fire.”

  “My lady?”

  “Send for Torvald,” she said decisively. “I need to speak with ... my father.”

  Chapter 41

  Compromises had to be made. In accordance with Farouk’s customs, Helge’s funeral was a rushed affair. In the North, her body would have been interred in the cold, black earth for ten days while graveclothes were fashioned and suitable belongings assembled. In a frigid climate, the old woman’s body would darken, but not decay, in that short length of time.

  But Islam decreed a quick disposition of a dead body, so Helge would be sent off in the clothes she died in. Rika conceded that the rich silk was certainly fine enough. In Sognefjord, a soul boat would have been specially constructed to bear Helge’s remains to her reward, but Rika had to settle for Torvald purchasing a small coracle from a boatwright in the Harbor of Theodosius.

  “Your devotion to a servant is striking,” Farouk-Azziz said, as he walked beside Rika in the small procession. His tone told her he also found her devotion unnecessary. Ahead of them, Bjorn, Torvald, Al-Amin and the priest bore the slight burden of Helge’s corpse on a flat slab of wood as they marched slowly toward the harbor. In their other hands, they each carried a lighted torch.

  “She was more than a servant. She was my friend.” Rika clutched the armful of evergreen branches closer to her, inhaling the fresh clean scent. It cleared her head. In the face of death, the living always took refuge in enhanced delight of the senses.

  She was grateful for the way the bourka shielded her from the stares of the curious. She’d heard the cacophonous wailing of paid mourners, trailing caskets in funeral processions through the city. It seemed false to her. Her grief was private and not the subject of public display.

  The bourka also allowed her to gage Farouk’s expressions unremarked. The Arab was clearly ill at ease. She knew he considered this ritual thoroughly pagan. Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike all held burning a body abhorrent. Nonetheless, a crowd of onlookers fell in behind her to see this unusual and, to their minds, spectacularly barbaric custom.

  When they reached the Harbor of Theodosius, they walked to the farthest point on the spit of land where the small boat was secured. Bjorn and Torvald gently settled Helge into the swaying craft.

  “We have no godi,” Torvald whispered.
>
  “I will serve,” Rika said, pulling off her bourka. Farouk-Azziz started to object, but she silenced him with a look. “It is necessary. We have no Norse priest, so a skald will have to do.”

  Rika bowed her head, recalling the rite to her mind. In that moment, she realized that she truly no longer believed in the gods of Asgard. They were pale stories, alternately amusing and terrifying tales fit for nothing more than warming a hall on a cold winter’s eve. But Helge had believed, so Rika would declaim the rite with all the passion of the faithful. It was the last good thing she could do for her friend.

  “In our time of grief, we call upon the gods.” Rika lifted her arms skyward. “Hear, All-Father Odin. Give ear to us, Thor the Thunderer, and spurn not our tears, Freya, Lady of Asgard! We ask you to receive the soul of this Helge, one whom we have loved.” Her voice crackled with emotion. “She shall be sorely missed.”

  Rika put a curled fist to her forehead, her right breast and then her left in the prescribed gesture to invoke the trio of deities. She felt hollow as she did it.

  “She who is worthy shall return to her own people. Helge is the worthiest of the worthy. May her soul find peace and joy and the best of company in the Shining Lands. This we pray. So mote it be!”

  “So mote it be,” Bjorn and Torvald murmured in unison.

  Rika slipped the amber hammer over her head and knelt to tie the leather straps around the dead woman’s neck. It seemed fitting that the little amber talisman should venture into the next world with Helge. “Take this hammer of Thor, beloved one. May thy soul be so protected wherever thou travel.”

  When she stood, she saw Torvald’s lips press into a tight line, but he nodded his head in agreement. He stooped to slip a golden coin of Miklagard into Helge’s cold hand as Rika continued.

  “Take this coin, beloved one. May it give thee good fortune and safe passage to the Hall of Lights.” As Rika declaimed the rite, she gave an evergreen bough to each member of the party assembled. Only Farouk refused to take one, his furrowed brow making it clear that he wanted nothing to do with this incomprehensible ritual. She supposed she could have spoken the rite in Greek instead of Norse, but she was doing this for Helge, not for him.

  “As the tree is ever green, may thy soul live forever refreshed,” Rika said as she laid her bough across Helge’s body. The other mourners followed her example. “Behold thy soul’s boat, dear friend. May thy journey between the worlds be swift.”

  Rika nodded to Bjorn and he stepped forward with his torch to light the dry kindling beneath Helge’s body. The other pallbearers dropped their torches into the coracle as well, to speed the burning. Bjorn untied the craft and shoved it into the waves, where it bobbed and dipped, floating farther from the land. A wind whipped over the sea and the flames roared upward, the licking fire assuring Helge’s soul of a speedy passage.

  “So now let us joyous be,” Rika said with tears streaming down her cheeks. “For the soul blooms as a fire flower. It takes wing as a bird. Our good friend has gone and, if we too are worthy, we shall meet her again in the Shining Lands, where there is no want of any good thing.” Rika wished she could believe the words coming out of her mouth, but the deadness in her heart told her she did not. “So mote it be,” she whispered.

  She watched the burning vessel till the last of its blackened spars sank beneath the waves. When she turned to go, Rika was stopped by a hand on her shoulder. It was Bjorn’s friend, the little priest named Dominic.

  “May I add my poor prayer to your ceremony?” he asked respectfully.

  Rika nodded, not sure what Helge would have made of it, but she was intrigued enough to allow it.

  Dominic bowed his head.

  “Jesu, Lover of our souls,” he intoned. “We commend to your care the spirit of the woman Helge. Judge her not by her deeds or her creed. None of us will pass into Paradise by that measure. But with your own grace cover her and receive her, for all we poor mortals can do is walk by the light we have received and trust that the Judge of all the earth shall do rightly.” Dominic raised his eyes and smiled. Then in halting Norse he added, “So mote it be!”

  Rika smiled back at him, her heart strangely lightened by his simple prayer. “So mote it be.”

  As they walked back along the banks of the River Lycus to the home of Farouk-Azziz, Bjorn nudged Torvald in the ribs. “Did you see?”

  “Ja,” Torvald answered softly. “And we had better make our plans for tonight.”

  Bjorn nodded.

  Before the funeral party had left the harbor, on the distant swells of the Sea of Marmara, Bjorn and Torvald had recognized the shape and sail of the very ship they’d hoped to see. The Valkyrie was returning to Miklagard and would be tied up in the Golden Horn by nightfall.

  Chapter 42

  Torvald left the house immediately after the ceremony to meet the Valkyrie and forestall Ornolf. If the big balding Northman returned to the Arab’s house, the question of Rika’s conversion to Islam would be forced to a head and the noose around her would tighten all the more. Rika tried to accompany her father to the harbor, but Tariq stopped her at the big double doors.

  “The master feels you should remain in seclusion for a time,” Sultana’s eunuch said, “mourning being best observed in privacy. He also requests you refrain from riding as you have done of late. Since you are seeking to acquaint yourself with our ways, I am surprised that Al-Amin did not instruct you in the unseemly nature of such behavior.”

  By her side, Al-Amin bristled at this slighting remark on his mistress’s conduct.

  “By the master’s orders, if you wish to go abroad in the city, you will make use of a covered chair or a cart and driver in the future.” Tariq’s smile was oily and ingratiating. “I am considered a driver of exceptional skill and my mistress wishes me to offer you my services in this regard.”

  Rika thought she’d sooner mate with a snake.

  Torvald hugged her briefly and whispered, “Don’t despair. We’ll think of something.” His thin lips curved into a shy smile as he added, “Daughter.”

  He hadn’t dared call her that before.

  Rika and Al-Amin retired to her chambers. She peeked from time to time from the window of the room that had become her prison and watched for some sign of Bjorn or her father.

  Her father. How odd to think of Torvald like that and yet he was. To honor Helge’s dying request, she’d made peace with the old man.

  Torvald had buried his face in his hands and wept. “How can you forgive this old fool? I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “But I do,” Rika had assured him, wiping away tears of her own. Helge had been right. That small hurt that never quite went away was finally stilled. Magnus’s place in her heart had not dimmed one jot, but Rika found that she also had room in it for this deeply repentant man as well.

  The sun was already sinking when she saw Torvald return.

  “Al-Amin, please go to the stables and see what my father has learned.”

  “Mistress, I would not leave you alone.”

  “I’ll bar the door and admit none but you,” she promised.

  Rika paced and fretted until he returned. In furious whispers, Al-Amin told her the plan that Bjorn had devised to get them all out of the house of Farouk-Azziz.

  “But I do not like this, my lady,” he complained. “It is too risky.”

  “Bjorn is right. We must go in stages,” she argued. “If we all tried to leave together it would surely cause an uproar. There’s no other way to get us all out of this house safely.”

  Al-Amin stiffened into an erect posture. “Then I will stay behind, my lady.”

  “No.” Rika’s eyes widened. “Farouk-Azziz will know you have assisted in my escape.” From the time she’d spent with the Arab, she knew he could be charming, but beneath the polished exterior, a hardened core of tempered steel was barely submerged. His wrath would be terrible.

  “I would not leave you alone,” Al-Amin said. “How can I trust your care to tha
t barbarian?”

  “That barbarian was entrusted with my safety for the long, weary journey here,” Rika assured him. She thought of Bjorn leaping after her into Aeifor. No matter what, he’d see her free. Even if their plan failed tonight, at least she’d die with him.

  It was enough.

  A short while later, she watched as Al-Amin and the little priest led her horse to the big double doors.

  “My mistress wishes me to sell it since she has displeased the master by riding,” he explained to Tariq, who continued to guard the entrance. “If you don’t let us pass immediately, the hostlers will have closed up shop and the horse buyers will all be in their cups for the night.”

  “And it takes two of you to sell a horse?”

  Al-Amin rolled his eyes at the other eunuch. “I am an accomplished rider as you well know, but I’m no groom. The day I stop to shovel up horse manure in the street is the day I curl up my toes.”

  Tariq laughed and swung the doors open wide. Al-Amin minced past Sultana’s eunuch with Dominic leading the gelding after him.

  “Two away,” Rika whispered. Three souls left.

  * * *

  Link boys cried in the streets, offering to light the way for well-born traffic through the dark city for the price of a small coin. Rika heard Torvald call to one of the urchins in heavily accented Greek. She looked out the window in time to see her father slip out the double doors. Tariq bolted them behind him. Even though she stayed well in the shadows, she didn’t miss the direct glare the eunuch sent toward her window.

  “Three away,” she said softly.

  * * *

  “Rika, will you not eat?” Farouk entreated through her door.

  “Not tonight.” She leaned against the portal, her heart hammering. “It is the custom of my people. I must fast for my friend.” Despite Magnus’s teaching, the lie came swiftly to her tongue. In the North, funerals were as good an excuse as any for a people devoted to food and drink. Feasting and drunken stupor were more common than fasting to celebrate a life gone by. “You must excuse me for a brief time.”