by Alys Clare
‘I’m a healer,’ I said.
His eyes widened. ‘A healer.’ He nodded, as if something had just become clear. Then, before I had time to ask, he pushed the platter towards me and urged me to start eating.
‘Of course,’ I said through a mouthful, as the first sharp edge of my hunger eased off, ‘I should have known better than to risk such a provocative remark to a man as violent as Einar.’
Olaf looked at me, and in the dim light I made out a quizzical expression. ‘Violent?’
So that was the game we were going to play, I thought. The crew were going to pretend they had no idea what their captain had done; that he had broken his way into several dwellings and committed assaults and a couple of murders. ‘Violent,’ I repeated firmly. ‘Two dead, one of them my aunt, one my sister’s mother-in-law. I suppose,’ I added with heavy sarcasm, ‘he would say they got in the way. Perhaps they provoked him.’
Olaf opened his mouth as if to speak, muttered something and then stopped. ‘Do not judge him until you know,’ he said.
Oh, yes, there would no doubt be some justifying explanation, I reflected angrily. Einar would say that he’d been forced to act as he did, since finding whatever it was he sought was more important than any other considerations.
He still hadn’t got his hands on it, I remembered. And now he seemed to be pinning his hopes on persuading the truth about the object’s whereabouts out of me.
Which was going to be a problem, since I had no idea where or what it was.
I looked down at the last scraps of food on my plate. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry any more.
I had been lulled into the illusion that I was going to be all right with this extraordinary band of mariners. Despite the fact that their leader, this Einar, had assaulted and killed in his quest for the object he sought, despite the fact that they had jumped on me, bundled me into their boat and were now sailing away with me, whether I liked it or not, they had treated me kindly. I had been fooled by soft sheepskins, warm blankets and decent food. Yet only that morning Einar had hit me so hard that I’d been unconscious all day.
From some dark hiding place, fear crept out and swirled around me, enclosing me in its tightening coils.
I must not let them see I was afraid. Must not even allow this Olaf, posing as a cheery, friendly ship’s cook, to read my true mind.
I turned to him. Gathering my courage, praying that my voice would sound convincingly firm, I said coldly, ‘And now, Olaf, I would like you to tell me who you all are, what you want from me and my family, and where you are taking me.’
He looked at me, and I thought I saw compassion in his eyes. ‘You must not ...’ he began. Then he stopped. For a few moments he sat in frowning, silent thought. Then he said, ‘There is a purpose. We—’
‘A purpose, yes, of course there is!’ I hissed furiously. ‘You’re going to try to beat out of me what you believe I know, which is the whereabouts of this thing that Einar’s been hunting for!’ A shaft of pure dread momentarily froze me, as images of that huge fist being raised against me again filled my mind. I clenched my jaws together against the wobbling. ‘I’ll tell you right now, it won’t do any good, because I have no idea what it is you’re after or where it is!’
‘Hush.’ He breathed out the word on a sort of soft whistle, like a man soothing a spooked horse. Suddenly I felt his hand take mine, giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘You have every right to feel afraid and angry,’ he went on, his deep voice quiet and gentle, ‘and to demand to know where we are taking you.’ He paused, and for one wonderful instant I thought he was going to tell me.
I was wrong.
After a long moment, he said, with an unmistakable air of finality, ‘I am not permitted to explain. But—’ He broke off, and even from where I sat, I sensed the struggle between obeying his alarming captain’s orders and answering my questions. Then he said, ‘You are a clever young woman. Think about everything that has happened to you since we took you, and decide for yourself if we are—’
Again, he stopped. It was very strange: as if, from somewhere quite near at hand, someone – Einar? – was aware of the conversation and was somehow controlling how much Olaf was allowed to say to me.
Even stranger was that, on that beautiful ship flying over the waves in the silvery moonlight, I fully believed this to be possible. If the ship and her crew were indeed under the command of a man who had such power, then, I reasoned, the way in which I was most likely to guarantee my survival was to do exactly what I was told. And, if I was to avoid any more blows to the head, it would be wise to stop antagonizing the ship’s captain.
Olaf stood up, stooping to collect my platter and mug. ‘Sleep,’ he said. ‘We have a long way to go.’
I settled down, pulling the covers over me. The stiff, stinky cover had once again been spread over me, I noticed. The air was damp with spray, and I realized now that this topmost cover had been treated with animal fat – which accounted for the smell – for it was waterproof. My face was wet, but elsewhere I was fairly dry. There was no covered accommodation on board, unless you wanted to go down below the deck level into the hold. Better to be up here exposed to the elements than shoved in down there; I was vastly relieved that Einar hadn’t felt it necessary to imprison me. There was no need, of course; there was no way to escape except by throwing myself into the sea. Whatever the future held, I was not that desperate. Not yet ...
I thought about what Olaf had said. He’d told me to think over all that had happened, and decide for myself. Did he mean what I hoped he did – what, indeed, had already occurred to me? That making me comfortable, feeding me and refraining from shutting me up in the hold were significant? Was I to deduce from this treatment that I was more of a guest than a prisoner?
But they’d snatched me out of my pleasant existence against my will! And I knew without any doubt that Einar wanted something that he believed my family possessed. I was still very afraid that he intended to force me to lead him to it.
Why, then, asked the voice of reason in my head, is he even now speeding away with you as fast as he can, leaving your home and your kin far behind?
It was a question I just couldn’t answer.
I closed my eyes, but sleep was a long way off. How long since I’d been taken? This was only my second night on board, so nobody I loved would be worrying about me yet. I thought of my mother, then my father, who had been so desperate to keep me safe that he’d escorted me back to Gurdyman’s. What would my poor father suffer, once he knew I was missing? But that thought was far too painful, so I arrested it. Perhaps I’d be back again before anyone knew I was gone. Unlikely as it seemed, it was something to cling on to.
I slid a hand inside my under gown and my fingers found the ring that Rollo gave me, which I wear on a leather thong round my neck. Rollo: my mysterious stranger, who drops into my life with no warning, and, equally unpredictably, out of it again. Rollo: as of last year, my lover. Rollo: part of me till I die. Shaped like a serpent devouring its own tail, the ring is made of solid gold. I don’t dare wear it on my hand because, apart from being a constant temptation to thieves, it looks like a very magical object. Rollo told me it belonged to his grandmother, and she was a witch. I thought he might have been joking, because so far the ring had shown not the least sign of magical power.
Now, grasping it in my hand, it comforted me simply because Rollo had given it to me. He had carried it with him for many years and through many dangers, this heirloom of his bloodline, and the fact that he’d wanted me to have it filled my heart with joy. I had no idea where he was, or when I would see him again. I only knew that, as long as we both lived, our lives were entwined and our fates lay together. Sooner or later, he would find me. Or, perhaps, I thought as the ship sped me along to an unknown future, I would find him ...
I was drowsy now. In that half-state between waking and sleeping, small fragments of dreams flitted through my mind. I saw the village, and there was Edild, speaking softly to Hrype.
As if it had been an extension of that vision, all at once I sensed a warm, furry body snuggling next to me. My spirit animal had come to comfort me and, knowing Fox, he would stay close all the time I needed him. Yes, he was probably part of my dream, but I didn’t care.
The voyage went on, and I counted three more nights. There was nothing much for me to do, although I did help Olaf with some of his more straightforward tasks, such as doling out the food and scrubbing the wooden platters with sea water after the crew had eaten. As we worked together, he began to instruct me in that strangely familiar language he and his crewmen spoke, and I realized that I knew quite a lot of it already. There have always been traders who visit the fens, and I’d come across many more since spending so much of my life in Cambridge; unwittingly, I must have been absorbing this alien tongue.
I think Olaf saw that time was hanging heavily for me, and took pity on me. When there was something for my hands or my mind to do, it was easier not to feel anxious and scared.
I studied Malice-striker and her crew. The ship was indeed a living thing, just as I had first suspected, and my initial rush of love for her did not diminish. She was some twenty paces long, perhaps five paces across at her widest, although she tapered gracefully fore and aft. It was as if whoever had built her kept in his mind and his heart a memory of her predecessor, that long, lean hound of a ship that I had seen in my dream vision. Her hull was strengthened by a series of fourteen ribs, with extra ones at the prow, stern and just before the mast. The cargo hold yawned in the gap between the fore and aft decks. As far as I could see, other than ballast there was nothing down there except for the crew’s supplies and their small, well-wrapped bundles of personal belongings. Everyone slept as I did, up on deck in the meagre shelter afforded by the ship’s high sides.
The crew totalled eight: five more in addition to Einar, Olaf and the tattooed man with the bronze beard whose name was Thorben. Nobody, apart from Olaf, paid much attention to me. They all looked much the same to my eyes, being to a man big, brawny and with a lot of light-coloured hair, blond-ish or auburn-ish. In age, they ranged from old Olaf down to a white-fair lad who was probably younger than me. Einar seemed to be making a particular effort to ignore me. I hoped it was because he felt bad about having hit me. I feared it was because he did not want to risk getting to know someone he was going to have to interrogate once we reached wherever it was we were going.
There was an awful day, perhaps halfway through the journey, when land was close at hand to our left (I’d learned from Olaf to refer to that as port). The wind was howling, the seas were huge, and half the crew, including me, were set to baling out the vast quantities of water flooding into the ship. Everything was soaking wet, and, on that exposed deck, there was nowhere to shelter.
I couldn’t have been the only person on board to be frightened, and, indeed, I caught more than one of the crew muttering prayers and casting hopeful eyes upwards towards the realms of the gods and, more frequently, forward to that magnificent dragon at the prow. They, however, had the advantage of experience. Olaf – kindly Olaf – put it into words, taking a precious moment’s rest from working hard enough for three men to take my hand and say, ‘Einar is a skilled mariner, and this is but a small storm. Together, he and Malice-striker will bring us through.’
He was right. The storm blew itself out, the furious black clouds melted away and the destructive waves slowly flattened. The wind blew powerfully from behind us and to our left, constantly and steadily filling the sail. Looking back, I saw what I thought was a faint black smudge. If it was the last tip of land, then already we had left it far behind.
More days passed. I felt anxious all the time, desperate to know where we were going. If only I’d learned more from Gurdyman and made more study of his map, I might have had some idea. We had sailed north – that I knew – and now, to judge by the sun’s position, I guessed we had turned north-west. If there was anything out there except sea, then I had never heard of it. I took a glance at the food and water supplies when I thought nobody was looking, and, at a rough estimate, I calculated we had enough for a few more days. We were living on dried fish and meat, both salty and strong, neither very appetizing. The fresh water had run out, and now the choice was weak beer or sour milk. It occurred to me that, had it not been for my presence on board and the possibility that I’d try to run away, the crew would surely have made landfall while they still could to take on fresh supplies. That, no doubt, would be what they usually did.
We sailed on for four more days. Early in the morning of the fifth day, the young crewman on watch in the prow called out something in a voice made high by excitement. All the others took up the cry, yelling the same word repeatedly, jumping around in a sort of heavy-footed dance, slapping each other on the back and giving each other the sort of hugs that could crack ribs. It was Olaf who thought to explain to me.
‘Land is in sight!’ he said, and I thought I saw the suspicion of tears in his eyes. He pointed, and, following his extended arm, I could make out a vague, dark hump on the horizon.
He muttered something, but softly; it sounded almost like an incantation. It would not have surprised me if it was, because what I thought he said was, ‘The Land of the Silver Dragon.’
EIGHT
Gurdyman emerged from almost a fortnight of intense study. So profoundly had he lost himself in his work that it was as if he had been in a trance; as if he had gone through the veil into another world, leaving the concerns and emotions of normal existence far behind.
A part of him had truly seemed to detach and set off down the roads, paths and secret trackways that he was trying to plot. He had gone into the northern lands, where the ground is permanently frozen, where great white bears pad on silent feet, where the night sky lights up with sheets of brilliant pinks, reds and greens. He had gone south, to where the sun beats on the arid sand and men’s skins burn brown and black.
It was with a considerable effort that he dragged himself out of his phantom world and back into the crypt beneath his house. It took him some time to ground himself, and for a time he was disorientated. He forced himself to eat – there was no food in the house that had not turned bad, and so he had to emerge and buy supplies – and, once his belly was full, he lay on his cot and slept dreamlessly for the remainder of the day and all of the following night.
He awoke in the morning refreshed and fully himself. It was only then that he wondered where Lassair was.
How long had she been gone? He thought back, and a stab of alarm went through him. She had said she would only be away for a few days ...
Perhaps she had been detained in her village. All manner of things could have happened to make her stay longer than she had anticipated: some difficulty or, God forbid, sickness, in her family. A sudden crop of illness or injuries among the villagers, so that her aunt needed the girl’s help. An injury to Lassair herself; you could not walk from Aelf Fen to Cambridge on, say, a sprained ankle.
But Gurdyman could not reassure himself. In his heart, he knew that something was wrong. What should he do? He could wait for Hrype to come visiting, which must surely happen soon, since it was some weeks since he had last arrived unheralded at Gurdyman’s door. Hrype would probably say that Lassair was safe and well at home, and there would be no more need to worry.
Try as he might, Gurdyman could not make himself believe that she was in her village.
The alternative was for Gurdyman to make the journey to Aelf Fen to let Lassair’s family know she was missing.
It was something from which he shrank. As his concern for his pupil grew, he sat down in his sunny courtyard and made himself confront the reasons why he did not want to leave the town.
He did not like walking; that was the main reason. It was years – decades, possibly – since he had ventured further than the busy quaysides of his own town. He did not feel at ease out in the open countryside, for he had become detached from the natural world.
He filled a pewter cup w
ith cool, white wine, slowly sipping it. Have I, then, made myself a prisoner within my own walls? he wondered.
With a jolt of apprehension, he remembered the intruder. He saw again himself and Lassair, hiding in the crypt beyond the secret door. Supposing the intruder had been lying in wait for her? But she had thought it safe to set out alone for her village, believing that the man had given up and gone away, and Gurdyman recalled that he had seen no reason to dispute it.
But he had been very preoccupied, back then ...
A painful stab of guilty fear touched cold against his heart.
The fear deepened as he thought back to what he and Hrype had discussed, the last time Hrype came to see him. Is that what this is? he wondered, dread chilling him. No: he must not allow himself to dwell on that. There were many possible reasons for Lassair’s absence, and he should not think the worst until he had to.
I should have stopped her, Gurdyman thought. Had he not been so obsessed with his work, he would have realized she might be going into danger, and reasoned with her to wait until word could be sent to her father to come and fetch her.
He dropped his face into his hands.
After a short time, he stood up. Lassair was very possibly in danger, and he was the only one who realized it. Her family had not known she was on her way, and so would not appreciate that anything was amiss. Only he could raise the alarm.
He walked back inside the house and set about packing a small bag with the necessities for the trip. As he did so, he smiled grimly at the thought that he, who loved to pore over maps and charts and the details of other people’s travels to the furthest corners of the world, should be so very reluctant to leave his safe, secure house and undertake the half-day’s journey, along a very well-travelled route, to a small and doubtless friendly fenland village. He who once had been willing – eager – to go anywhere that anyone was prepared to take him ...