by Jude Fisher
Breta stared helplessly along the table, her cheeks flaming, but the subject of this tirade was currently feeding his new wife with a morsel of chicken from his own plate and was oblivious to his mother’s remarks. She tried to think of something to say to the old woman, but was reprieved by the return of Lilja Mersen bearing a new pitcher of the bitter dark wine they pressed from the grapes grown in the chalky valleys around Fairwater. At Auda’s gesture, goblets were filled around the table; but when Lilja came to the new queen’s shoulder, she stumbled and cried out a great curse. Wine splashed all over the Rose of the World – over her hair, which still lay smooth and unbound like any maid’s, spilling over her shoulders – over her pale robe, and over the ermine stole, which soaked up the liquid greedily, turning it an ugly, sodden red. Little runnels of the wine ran unchecked down the Rosa Eldi’s white flesh, to disappear in dark runnels beneath the embroidered bodice into the milky space between her breasts.
Conversation ceased.
Auda gasped; and looked stricken. Her eyes went wide, as if shocked at the clumsiness of her maid. Then she leaned across the table and grasped the Rosa Eldi by the wrists so tightly that the pale woman cried out. But rather than uttering any word of apology, instead she declared: ‘Blood will come from the South, and mar the snows of Eyra; white skin will gape and run red. Sorcery has risen: wild magic all around. Fire will fall on Halbo. Hearts will wither; many will die.’
Then her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell sideways in her chair.
If it had been staged, Breta Bransen thought, having watched the interplay between Auda and her hand-servant, it was beautifully done. Even so, it was surely incumbent on her as the one closest to the old queen to enquire as to her health. ‘Are you well, my lady? Can I help you in some way?’
But the old woman neither stirred nor spoke. Curious, Breta took up her hand in her own large grasp. It felt limp and frail, the pulse beneath her fingers beating as light and as fast as the wings of a moth trapped under the skin there. And still Auda did not move. She looked across the table in some distress, but the King was intent first on the damage done to his wife’s costume, and then to that done to her composure; for when the old woman had uttered her pronouncement, the Rose of the World had gone still as stone, her green eyes had become huge and she had begun to tremble from head to toe. It was Brin Fallson who came quickly to the old queen’s side, who lifted her head and peered beneath her quivering eyelids and declared that she had fainted and must be removed to a place of comfort and quiet.
Breta watched as the man to whom she would be bound – tonight and beyond – took considerate charge of the situation, sent a boy to fetch the King’s own healer, dispatched servants to stoke the fire in Auda’s own hearth, and to lay out for her there food and wine of which she might partake when she recovered sufficiently, and carried the old woman from the room as carefully and lightly as if she had been a child; and thought for the first time that after all she might not have made such a bad bargain for the rest of her life.
The feast had been brought swiftly to a close; drinks supped up, food left for the dogs. The married pair were seen off to their room with rather less ceremony and high spirits than would usually have been expected. Lacking a living mother, Breta had been forced to ask the Rosa Eldi to tie the first knot – a figure-of-eight for eternity – and through it thread the ends of the blue cord that would bind her right hand to her partner’s left; but the new Queen of the Northern Isles had never knowingly tied a knot in all her life, and Breta was forced to make the initial working for her, then explain the path the cord must follow thereafter. It had felt less than auspicious.
Her father tied the green cord to Brin’s wrist and then turned to his daughter. He squeezed her hand as he made the intricate knot, and dropped his normally booming voice to a whisper: ‘He’s a good man, my dear. He won’t hurt you.’
Breta felt tears prick her eyes, but she nodded quickly and kept smiling as the King stepped up and blessed her with a kiss on the forehead and the final knot – usually a complicated affair involving a double-sailmaker’s and Sur’s anchor, for good wind and safe ground – but in this case a simple sheepshank finished with a hitch, which he completed in barely two seconds, before running after his own swiftly departing wife.
The Rosa Eldi felt an unaccustomed pain gnawing at her temples. The blood beat there, hot and angry – if blood was what flowed inside her. She had begun to wonder. Since Virelai had stolen her away from Rahe, since they had left Sanctuary in that tiny boat, with her locked in the oak casket in which the Master used to keep her hidden, she had drifted as if in a dream, taking little notice of the world or the people around her: it was all too confusing, too strange. She took little notice of time passing, either. Life had been better when they had travelled with the nomads, for at least then Virelai had been unable to sell her body to any man who wished it: no money passed hands amongst the Wandering Folk themselves, though several of the men had asked whether she might wish to spend some time with them. But Virelai had seen them off angrily when he had seen there was no profit to be made from their interest, and she had been left to herself. Just before they arrived at the Allfair the daughter of the old seer – Fezack Starsinger’s girl, Alisha, who had sometimes shared her body with Virelai – had come to her one morning and asked if she had need of a charm against conception. And when the Rose of the World had asked what she meant by this, Alisha had laughed and shown her the little pouch of dried herbs she wore about her neck. ‘Like this: toadflax and chervil and Creeping Gilly. Wear one of these and you’ll not need to worry about babies.’
Even then, the Rosa Eldi had been puzzled. Did the herbs repulse children, as the scent of an orange seemed to repel a cat? Alisha had clapped her hands together and laughed. But when she had seen that the pale woman meant the question seriously, she had questioned her further. Did she have her normal courses? And when this, too, was met with incomprehension, Alisha had done a bit of explaining, about the tides and the moon and the movement of blood around a woman’s body, and how the womb prepared itself anew each month ready for a man’s seed to take root there. The Rose of the World had frowned and replied, ‘I have no blood,’ before turning and leaving Alisha standing open-mouthed outside the door of the wagon.
Now she wondered if that statement were no more than the simple truth. She had learned rather more about the world in the intervening months. It had been four moon-cycles since Ravn Asharson had taken ship with her from the Moonfell Plain, four moon-cycles during which he had spilled his seed in her nightly, and often several times in a day. And yet her belly remained as flat as a plate, her waist as neat as ever. Girls at the court who had wedded and bedded their men since she had arrived in Halbo already bragged of their fertility and gone around showing off the growing curves of their bodies. She had learned to prevaricate with the women who discreetly asked to take her linen for washing by telling them she liked to see to her own things. But from the snippets of conversation she had overheard even tonight, tongues were beginning to wag. And the Lady Auda would only become more insistent as time went on.
‘Babies to save his throne,’ she crooned to herself, though she did not fully understand the old woman’s import.
‘What did you say, my dove?’
Ravn had entered the chamber silently behind her: she whirled around, her hand flying up to her mouth.
‘Who am I?’ she asked then.
It was a question she had not needed to ask him in some weeks. Ravn crossed the chamber, caught her gently by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length where he could see her face clearly by the light from the wall sconces.
‘You are the Rosa Eldi, the Rose of the World, the Queen of the Northern Isles and of my heart.’
Usually this quieted her; but not tonight.
‘And am I not enough for you?’
Ravn frowned. ‘What do you mean? You are all I have ever wished for, the most beautiful woman, the most perfect wife any man �
� any king – could want.’
‘But you need babies to save your throne.’ She said it without intonation, let the words make their own sense to him.
‘Babies to save my throne? Ha! Children from you: babies to seal my succession; babies to stop the wolves circling.’ He grinned at her, his teeth white amid the close black beard. ‘What are you telling me, my love?’
She could not help but mirror his expression: it was an automatic response.
His whole face lit up. It was as if someone had started a fire inside him: his eyes blazed with expectation, with sharp, uncontrolled joy. Golden candleflame reflected in his dark irises, softened the hard planes made by his cheekbones and long jaw. He flung his head back and released a great laugh into the vault of the ceiling.
The Rose of the World watched this sudden outpouring of delight with a sinking heart. Whatever it was she had asked he had misunderstood: but now she had the gist of it, and it was too late. When he enfolded her in his arms and carried her tenderly to the bed, she could think of nothing to say to him. When he undressed her with undue care and ran his hands wonderingly down her concave flanks, she merely smiled and smiled. But when he laid his head on her belly and slept there without touching her further, water began to leak from her eyes. She blinked them furiously, jolted from this sudden access of emotion by the sheer unfamiliarity of the sensation. The tears ran down her face and into her mouth. They were hot and salty, unexpected.
Then she remembered something.
It was nebulous and impossible to place; but it was a memory, nevertheless. She stood staring down at a great rock-choked chasm. Dust was still settling, and there was a dull, distant booming sound beneath the noise of the falling rocks. She remembered a physical pain in her chest, a sensation in her throat as if she had swallowed one of the falling stones herself, a painful prickling at the eyes, and then the same hot, salty water gathering and spilling. Dust had covered her feet. It was red and fine. It clung to the hem of her white robe. Her feet were bare. A drop of water fell, as slowly as a feather, splashed down onto her foot, leaving a white mark amongst the red. And then a rough hand had pulled her away, and she had stumbled blindly, her eyes hazed by the first tears she had ever wept.
Sixteen
Survivors
Only about half the crew of the Snowland Wolf, the finest ship Morten Danson ever built, made it back to Rockfall.
Tam Fox was lost; and so were Silva Lighthand and Min Codface and half a dozen of Elda’s finest tumblers and acrobats, whose skills counted for nothing in the depths of that swallowing sea. Bella, the Firecat, and two of the other women survived, along with the tumbler, Jad; and the shipmaker on account of whom the entire expedition had been formed. One of the ship’s boats remained intact; the rest of the survivors clung to the broken mast and bits of floating timber until they were hauled aboard it by Urse, a new gash marring his already-spoiled face. Katla Aransen had sat in the bow for hours, even after Urse and one of the male acrobats whose name she had never known took an oar apiece and rowed away, shivering and scanning the choppy waves for any sign of the mummers’ leader, her brother and new sister-by-law, Jenna Finnsen. Despite the evidence of her own eyes – for the last time she had last seen Halli and Jenna they had been inextricably bound together by their handfasting cords and were being swept over the side of the vessel – it still seemed impossible to believe they had drowned. And Tam Fox had such life force, such a power of personality and physique that he could surely not have perished. She saw, for a second, his face above her in the darkness, his braids swinging wildly and his eyes shining in the moonlight, and then shut her eyes and pushed the image away.
They rowed for three days without sustenance. On the second day it rained and they turned their faces up to the sky and drank whatever they could catch.
The rowers changed places every few hours. Saltwater blistered their palms. Some of the women cried, but the sound of their weeping left Katla feeling hollowed out, empty. She gripped her oar and stared at the grey waves and felt nothing. Was she so unnatural? In the space of a few minutes she had lost her beloved brother, her friend and – she had no idea how to think of Tam Fox. So she tried not to think about him at all.
For Jenna, she felt curiously little: seeing her brother grieving over her silly inconstancy seemed to have diminished whatever friendship they had once had. Memories of Halli, however, washed around her: the sea reminded her of him – it was his element. A hundred times, more, they had rowed out of the harbour at Rockfall in the little wooden faering Aran had made for Halli when he was six. They had fished around the skerries and further out, where they were not supposed to venture. They had brought back mackerel and pollack, and occasionally, after something of a struggle, some big seabass. He had once caught a garfish and, as the strangely beaked creature flapped madly around in the bilges, had leapt into the water in sheer panic just to get away from it, leaving Katla to grab the thing, remove the hook from its mouth and be rid of it. Except, of course, that instead of simply casting the fish back in, Katla had waited for Halli to surface once more and had thrown it right at him. It had caught him neatly on the head. She could still remember the wet slap of it, Halli’s anguished howl, the great splash he had made as he dived away from the snapping creature. He was such a strong swimmer, he’d got halfway back to Rockfall before she’d been able to turn the boat around and overtake him. She grinned at the memory of it, at Halli’s furious face, at how he’d pulled her overboard and made her swim home; how they’d dripped into the hall like a pair of drowned cats, only to be scolded by their mother for ruining the new rushes she’d laid that afternoon.
‘That’s more like it, girlie.’ Urse leaned across and patted her knee. ‘See the bright side. They’re with Sur now, and we’re still living and breathing his air.’
She smiled bleakly, unsure as to which was the preferable state. Some while later they encountered a fishing vessel netting in the seas around Cullin Sey and were taken aboard and carried under full sail back to Rockfall.
Of the rest: sailing into the home bay, where the two shipyard barges were already moored; the faces of the folk gathered at the quay, curious as to why two great timberloads should have arrived ahead of the faster vessel; staggering into the hall on Urse’s arm; her mother’s wailing, Aran’s silent, black-browed misery, Fent’s pale-faced shock, the unnatural quiet of the steading as everyone tiptoed around, not knowing what to say, she remembered blessedly little, but drank a pitcher of milk, promptly threw up, and slept like a dead woman for the best part of two days.
‘It should have been me,’ Fent said for the ninetieth time. ‘The seither’s curse was meant for me, not Halli.’
Katla was bored with hearing him, tired of talking about it; she felt frayed and exhausted. Fent had made her describe the creature’s attack, their defence, the capsize and the aftermath so many times now that the sequence of events was beginning to take on a false shape in her mind, as if somehow in the retelling he were stealing the truth of it away from her, jealous of her crucial role. It was almost as if her twin craved some part of the drama he’d been absent from, was trying to claim some part of it for himself. ‘You can’t really believe that. It’s just superstition.’
‘Katla!’ He looked appalled. ‘Don’t say that: if you say such things you’ll bring disaster on our heads for sure.’
‘What greater disaster could there be? Truly, Fent, it was just a great narwhal or something like, and much bad luck. There was nothing anyone could have done differently.’ She picked up a piece of wood and hurled it across the pasture for Ferg, but the old hound merely watched the arc of the stick with mild interest and then sat down heavily to lick his parts. He had not left her side since her return, and his mute presence had been of greater comfort to her than any amount of words or human contact.
‘But what about the barges?’ he persisted. ‘Surely they would have witnessed the attack.’
‘The Snowland Wolf made a stop on the journey back,�
�� Katla told him, tight-lipped. She wasn’t going to be drawn into describing the passage of that night, not to Fent. Misgiving fretted at her, a sharp little pebble rolling around and around her skull. Irritated and impatient, she pushed it away. ‘The barges sailed on before we left: they wouldn’t have seen a thing.’
It had been curious how everyone else’s memory of the sea-creature had varied, as if they had been attacked by a dozen different beasts. Even on the ship’s boat, within hours of the incident, their memories of what had occurred had begun to veer away from what Katla herself recalled. And from there, the entire episode had taken on its own life; as the survivors added their own details, and these were embellished by the listeners and passed on in a subtly (or not-so-subtly) different version to folk from other settlements and visiting traders, to women at the market or travellers passing through. She had overheard Fotur Kerilson telling the eldest of the Erlingsons that the Snowland Wolf had been overturned by a freak wave, and knew that Urse – whose version up until recently had been circumspect in the extreme – must have struck up acquaintance with the old man; but Stein Garson would have it that the ship had been attacked by a shoal of merwomen wreathed in weed and skulls, come to add to their dwindling collection of sailors and fishermen. After all, there had been many months of fine weather now, and no ships lost from the isles since the Eider went down off Fail Point.
For her part, she could see little point in fuelling speculation by adding her own bizarre observations of the thing to the fireside tales; and no one but her appeared to have noticed its eyes. As the days wore on she had begun to think this particular detail had been her own misapprehension, some trick of the light, or of her own devising. But then she remembered the weird energy she had sensed in the wood of the ship and the waters beneath its keel, the absolute certainty she had had on first sight of the thing that it was no natural creature, and she was overcome once more by a terrible sense of doom. She found herself increasingly unable to shake the feeling that there was something wrong in the world, something warped and out of true, and that some aspect of that wrongness had chosen to manifest itself to her, and in the process had taken her brother, his betrothed and Tam Fox, as well as half his troupe. It was this very sense that made her so abrupt with Fent now: he had pressed on a wound too close to the bone.