by Alys Clare
I hesitated. Ought I to tell him? I could see no reason not to; there was nobody else left to be hurt by my failure, so I might as well share it with him. There was always the faint hope that his fury might set off the sort of apoplectic seizure that kills a man stone dead. With his loyal band of men all around, Skuli’s death wouldn’t help me, but at least there would be one less murderous devil in the world.
‘I went to find the little healer,’ I said softly. ‘I found out where she lived, and I walked all the way. But she wasn’t a healer, she was a shepherd. And she was dead,’ I added with vindictive emphasis. ‘If she ever knew about your shining stone, Skuli – and I doubt very much that she did – then I got there too late to ask her.’
He was shaking his head slowly from side to side, as if in denial of my words. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no. She must have hidden it somewhere ...’ Wildly he turned to look at his men, ranged around him. ‘We’ll go to this place you found, find her house, take it apart until we find the hiding place, and—’
‘She never had it,’ I said loudly, speaking over his rising panic. ‘Aren’t you listening, Skuli? The only small clue I had regarding the stone’s whereabouts has proved useless.’ I felt my face stretch in a smile. ‘You will never get your filthy hands on it.’
As I watched, I saw something break in him. He opened his mouth, but no words emerged. He raised his great head, eyes staring up into the sky. He muttered something – it sounded as if he was apologizing – but I could not make out the words.
A tear spilled out of his eye, running down his face to lose itself in his beard.
Then, abruptly, he returned from whatever dark place his thoughts had taken him to. He nodded at the two men holding me, and they forced me to my knees.
Then Skuli drew a large knife from its sheath on his belt. He held it up to the growing light, and its edge glistened. I could tell, all too clearly, that it was very, very sharp.
With a strangely detached part of my mind, I wondered where Thorfinn and Einar were, and the crew of Einar’s ship. They had promised to watch over me, but now, in the time of greatest danger, they were nowhere to be seen. I was on my own.
I concentrated on sending out my love. To my sisters and my brothers; to my beloved Edild; to Hrype. To my mother; to my father. As his face appeared before me, I whispered, ‘I am sorry, Father.’
If he was by some miracle still alive, he would grieve for me the most deeply. I imagined his big, strong arms around me; I imagined reaching up to kiss his dear face.
I sent all the rest of my love to Rollo. I’m scared, I admitted, saving the confession for him. I’m terrified. I’m going to die, and I shall never see you again. I’m very afraid it’s going to hurt, and I don’t know what’s going to be waiting on the other side.
I saw my Granny. Quite clearly, standing just behind Skuli on the track. She smiled at me.
With her dear face a clear, final image, I closed my eyes and waited for death.
In the village, a small group of bloodstained, stunned men watched the sun come up. As soon as they could, they were going to hurry along to the church. Nights like the one just past did not come very often, and they felt an urgent need to kneel before their God.
They had been ready. As night fell, their leader had gathered together his eldest son and some of the toughest of his friends, warning them what would happen. ‘None of you must feel compelled to stay,’ he had said. ‘You have families of your own, and do not need to suffer wounding or death to defend mine.’
Everyone had stayed.
The attack had come with horrible suddenness. The big, bearded men seemed surprised to have met such opposition. They fought back hard, but they had been beaten off. Besides, once they had seen that only grown men (and one large, furious woman armed with a heavy iron pot) had been in the house, they had turned and fled.
Now all was quiet. Now the ragged band of defenders waited for whatever the new day would bring.
SIXTEEN
‘And I can’t see how our future together will be, if, indeed, we can ever be together, for she has her studies, both in her village and in a nearby town, and I am fully engaged in work for an exacting but generous paymaster, and so—’
Rollo broke off in mid-sentence, seized by cold fear so paralysing that it was only with an effort that he could breathe. Lassair. Oh, no ... He could see fragmented images. A road, faintly lit by the rising sun. A blur of shapes, which were moving with swift, violent gestures. The glint of light on drawn swords.
It was early morning, and his mother had arrived with breakfast on a tray, wanting to hear more about the strange woman with whom her son had apparently fallen in love. He had thought he’d told her all there was to tell the previous evening, when they had talked together long into the night. Yet she had returned for more, and he had been trying to answer her question as to what he and Lassair planned to do next, when the terrible moment of fear had hit.
He sat now, straight-backed, every muscle tense as if he was about to plunge into action. He had felt something similar on his way home the previous day, yet it had been nowhere near as powerful as this.
He knew, without stopping to ask himself how he could be so sure, that Lassair was about to die.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
Barely aware of himself, he gave a moan of pain. Instantly Giuliana was beside him, a cool hand on his wrist, looking up into his face with anxious dark eyes. ‘What is it, my son?’
He met her gaze. Of all people, she was perhaps the one most likely to believe what was happening to him. Whether or not she was truly a strega, she was certainly open-minded enough not to dismiss it out of hand.
‘Lassair’s in great danger – mortal danger,’ he whispered. ‘I think ...’ He could not bring himself to put it into words.
Beside him Giuliana waited, holding his hand. He felt the aftershocks of the terror work their way through him, and, glancing at his mother’s face, he thought she felt them too. Then, abruptly, everything went still.
Calm, of a sort, descended.
After what seemed a very long time, Giuliana said, ‘What are you sensing now, Rollo?’
‘Nothing.’ His voice broke on the word.
His mother squeezed his hand. ‘Perhaps the moment of peril has passed?’ she suggested.
He thought it was a faint hope. He said, his voice barely a whisper, ‘Or else it is all over and she is—’
But his mother put a hand over his mouth before he spoke the word. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Do not even admit the possibility.’
He felt a moment of anger. ‘It is better to know if she—’
‘No.’ Giuliana spoke more forcefully now. ‘My son, you are many miles from this young woman whom you love, and it will be a very long time before you know what has been happening back in her country. You must convince yourself that all is well, and not allow yourself even to consider otherwise.’
He met her eyes for a long moment. ‘I want to go now,’ he whispered. Pain ripped through him; sudden, acute. ‘Aaagh, I feel as if I’m being torn apart.’
Compassion filled her eyes. ‘Can you not return?’ she asked.
‘I could,’ he said, ‘but my task here is not really complete. I was planning to go on east, and seek audience with Emperor Alexius.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, that would be the logical thing to do,’ she agreed. ‘His land is at the frontier between the Christian and Muslim worlds, and, besieged as he is, will be better able to provide the answers that your King William seeks to know.’
Rollo would have said he was beyond surprise at his mother’s uncanny ability to be aware of things that she had not actually been told, but he discovered he wasn’t. How did she do it? He had no more idea now than when he’d been a mystified and awestruck child, more than a little frightened by his mother’s magic powers.
She was watching him steadily. ‘What do you feel now?’
He closed his eyes, concentrating on Lassair. ‘I .
.. it’s not clear.’
She sighed, and ran a hand over her face. Then, once more looking at him, she said, ‘Have you anything of hers?’
He glanced down at his hand. The woven leather bracelet she had given him had not left his wrist since he began to be so very anxious about her. ‘Yes,’ he said softly.
Giuliana looked at the bracelet. ‘It is beautiful,’ she observed. ‘Did she make it?’
‘Yes.’
Silently she held out her hand. He drew his own away; he did not want to take off the bracelet. Not now ...
His mother made an exasperated noise. ‘If you want me to help you, son, I need to hold an object that holds her essence.’
‘If I want you to help me?’ he repeated stupidly. Had she suggested it? Had he missed that?
She was holding out her hand. Mutely he removed the bracelet and placed it in her palm. Her long fingers folded around it and she closed her eyes.
The cool, sunlit room was utterly silent as Giuliana put herself into the required trance.
I knelt before Skuli, waiting for the sword cut that would end my life.
Nothing happened.
I did not dare open my eyes, for I was clinging on to my courage with my fingertips, and if I saw the sword raised above me, I knew my terror would overcome me and I would somehow disgrace myself.
I waited for death.
Then, breaking the terrible silence like a great sheet of ice cracking under stress, I heard a clash of arms, swiftly followed by a shout: a great war cry. There were whoops and yells, and the harsh, metallic sound of metal on metal.
I opened my eyes, but my fear had affected me so deeply that what I saw made no sense. There seemed to be men everywhere; big, burly men, most of them long-haired and bearded, many wearing leather protective gear, all of them bearing swords. They were fighting – desperately, fiercely.
And very close to where I knelt.
Faint, my head spinning and vertigo rising like nausea in my throat, I threw myself sideways and scrambled to the side of the track. I managed to crawl up the bank that rose up to the right, and forced a way in beneath the scrubby, stunted trees that made up the hedge. Then I turned to watch.
Already recovering at least a portion of my senses, I realized, not without surprise, that I recognized some of the newcomers. I’d seen that stubble-headed giant with the tattoos on his arms before; I was quite sure of it.
I put my slowness down to the fact that I’d just had a very close embrace with death. The men were Einar’s crew; of course they were. Even as understanding dawned, there was Einar himself, pounding down the track, yelling at the top of his voice, his sword in his hand already dripping blood from some recently accomplished, victorious encounter.
Skuli was engaged with one of Einar’s men, and the man was getting the worst of it. Einar shouted at him and, although I didn’t understand all the words, the meaning was clear: get away from him, he’s mine!
The crewman stepped back – a swift expression of relief crossed his bloody face – and Einar stepped into his place.
Part of me wanted to watch, but I’d never seen close fighting before and soon I realized, sickened, that watching wasn’t such a good idea after all. I turned away from the savage ferocity of Einar and Skuli’s battle, only to be met with the same sight everywhere I looked.
Then, horrified that it hadn’t occurred to me before, I remembered Hrype. Where was he? Frantically I stared down the track to where he had fallen, but he was no longer there. His blood still stained the ground, although the smooth pool it had formed was already scuffed and smeared.
He could not still be alive. Could he? He must have been carried to the side of the track, for I was certain he could not have made his own way.
I edged along the top of the bank, searching for him. He must be on this side, I reasoned, for on the other side the ground was soggy and sloped quite steeply down into the water. It was no place to take a wounded man.
But all right for a dead body, came the thought.
No!
I hurried on.
I could see something on the bank just ahead of me: a long shape, lying on its side on the bank and wrapped in a cloak.
I leapt forward, already fumbling with the buckles of my satchel. I knelt down beside him, my hand going straight to his neck to feel for the life’s beat that pulses there, beneath the angle of the jaw. At first I felt nothing. Then my trembling fingers felt a very faint movement.
He was alive.
Gently I turned him over so that I could see his face. His eyes were closed and there was a big bump on his forehead. It was likely, I decided, that he had struck a rock on the track as he fell.
But where was the wound that had felled him, and caused him to bleed so profusely? Even as my mind formed the question, my hands were going down inside his tunic, feeling for the wetness of blood.
There. I had it: a deep cut on the back of his left shoulder, perhaps two hands’ breadths down. Gently I probed the wound, very afraid that I would find a broken-off arrow shaft, and the arrow head deeply embedded in Hrype’s flesh. But there was no such thing. The wound had, I guessed, been made by a thrown knife, which had since fallen out.
Whoever had thrown it had been aiming for the heart. Such a throw – from behind, at someone quite unaware of impending attack – was cowardly in the extreme. The sort of act typical of someone who had chosen to follow a man prepared to hurt and maim babies and children in order to achieve his goal.
I turned my mind from such angry, agonizing thoughts. I was a healer with a wounded man on my hands, and it was up to me to stop the bleeding and try to save Hrype’s life. Turning him so that the damaged shoulder was uppermost, I tore aside his garments and, reaching into my satchel for a pad of soft, wadded fabric, pushed the sides of the cut together with one hand and pressed down on the pad with the other. I would wait, then look, then repeat the pressure until the blood flow eased enough for me to stitch the wound.
As my concentration focused, the sounds of furious fighting seemed to fade. The cut wasn’t as bad as I had initially feared. Quite soon I was able to put in a neat row of stitches, which I then soused with lavender oil against the dangerous red inflammation that often follows such wounds. I wrapped Hrype up in his cloak, rubbing his cold hands with my own.
I sat back on my heels, watching my patient.
It was only then that I realized everything had gone rather quiet.
I spun round, staring down on to the track. It was empty of fighting men, but I could see three bodies lying a little way along, beneath the overhanging boughs of a hazel tree. Further on were four more.
Seven dead? Could it really be so?
I felt sick.
Just as I was wondering whether there was anything I ought to have done for them – could still do – I became aware of a shadow over me. I looked up. Einar was standing on the bank beside me.
‘I just saw the bodies,’ I said in a horrified whisper.
‘Yes,’ he said calmly. ‘Six of his; one of mine.’ He paused, and a look of pain crossed his face. ‘Snorri,’ he added, half to himself, for the name meant nothing to me. ‘He was growing old, and his reactions were not as fast as they once were.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said gravely.
‘It is not your fault, Lassair.’ He sighed. ‘None of this is your fault. It is we, indeed, who should apologize to you, for you have unwittingly become embroiled in a feud between the two branches of my family, and this should not have happened.’
How right he was, I reflected. And what worse things was I going to face, once I got back to my village? But that thought was too awful to allow, and my mind sheered away. I would deal with it when I had to.
He stared down at Hrype. ‘How is he?’ he asked, his question dragging my mind back to the patient who was my immediate concern.
‘He’ll live,’ I replied. ‘He must be borne back to the village as quickly as possible. I don’t want him to get cold.’
&nbs
p; Einar nodded. ‘Soon,’ he said.
I had the sense that he was preoccupied, his mind busy somewhere other than our conversation. ‘Are there any other wounded whom I can help?’ I asked.
‘A few minor cuts and bruises,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘Nothing that can’t wait.’
I felt a chill run through me. ‘Wait for what?’
He held out a hand, inviting me to get up. I put my hand in his, stepping down from the bank to stand beside him.
‘There is a task for you to perform,’ he said, his voice deep and grave. ‘Come with me.’
He led me to a place just beside the track where several of his crew stood in a tight circle. They were obviously guarding something, or someone. As Einar and I approached, the circle opened to reveal Skuli, his hands bound behind him, kneeling on the ground.
There was a deep cut – probably a sword slash – in the top of his upper arm; the right one. His sword arm. It was bleeding, and the blood had soaked into the wool of his tunic.
I thought that Einar wanted me to tend the wound, but that was odd because I’d just asked if anyone else needed help and he said no.
Einar was still holding my hand. Now he put something in it: the hilt of a long, heavy knife with a sharp-edged blade.
His men stood in a silent circle, watching, waiting.
Then Einar said, ‘This man Skuli, who now kneels before you, was on the very point of taking your life when we arrived to stop him. By the ancient laws, his life is now yours to claim.’ With a strong hand, he closed my fingers round the hilt of his knife.
I stared down into Skuli’s eyes.
He faced me as, not very long ago, I had faced him. I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes open, but he was braver. The light blue eyes bored into mine and I saw no fear; no undermining touch of cowardice.
But I saw something else: I saw the clear taint of madness. Whatever drove him, it rode him hard and unyieldingly. It had already forced him to do dreadful deeds, and I feared it would continue to do so until he managed to achieve whatever he felt he must do to force it into submission.