Raven

by Giles Kristian

  ‘The floor!’ I blurted.

  ‘Shhh!’ He flapped a hand at me. I remembered the mouse that had scampered across a small bare patch of the floor. There had been no rushes there because they had slid off when the trapdoor had been opened.

  ‘The Christ brides were hiding beneath the floor,’ I said, ‘which was why Wiglaf never got to finish his prayers.’

  ‘When I realized that the poor sisters were below our very feet I knew I had to get you all out of that place or else risk one of you discovering them. I thought you had seen, Raven. I feared you were going to reveal their hiding place, but it seems you are as dim-witted as the rest of them, for which, this time, I thank the Lord.’

  I ignored that. ‘Wiglaf and Penda wouldn’t hurt nuns,’ I said.

  ‘And Bjarni? And you, Raven, would you?’ I scowled because I had put Abbess Berta on her enormous arse with a savage blow. ‘Men are ruled by anger and lust,’ Egfrith said. ‘You must have seen the men’s eyes when you told Sigurd there were nuns living to the north of here.’ He shook his head. ‘The lust of a man is his shame.’

  ‘You tell yourself that when you are shivering alone tonight,’ I said, thinking of Amina.

  ‘Listen to me, Raven. Tell Halfdan and Gunnar that your gods have warned you not to go to the north of the island.’

  ‘You want my gods to help you?’ I said, almost smiling.

  ‘Tell them that you suspect there are Frankish warriors patrolling the place. Tell them anything but stop them going to the convent. Do this for me, Raven, if not for your own soul. I will not forget it. I will pray even harder for your salvation—’ He broke off because Hedin Long-face had emerged from his shelter to empty his bladder and now the Norseman stood behind him gathering warmth from the fire. Egfrith leant in closer, so that I felt his breath on my cheek. ‘I believe Christ will look kindly on you for saving his daughters,’ he said.

  ‘I will do what I can,’ I said. Not because Egfrith was asking me but because no matter how hard I had tried I had never forgotten the black-haired girl from Caer Dyffryn and what I had done to her. ‘But not now. I will talk to them in the morning when there’s less chance of them telling me to go and screw a bearded goat.’ Egfrith nodded, appeased for now at least. ‘Now leave me alone, monk,’ I said, ‘Amina will be getting cold.’

  I crouched, pulled aside the bad-weather skin and crawled into my shelter. Then I cursed. Because Amina was asleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IN THE MORNING I WOKE EARLY. I HAD SLEPT BADLY, BESIEGED BY dismal dreams that I did not remember when I woke, though their claws were still in me and I could not step out of the cold, dark mire of them as I watched the sun hoist itself in the east, shivering against the damp mist that wreathed the camp. In the stillest depths of the night I had woken and for a few confused moments had thought it was Cynethryth not Amina breathing gently beside me. Perhaps that is why I had determined to seek her out at dawn and try if I might reach the girl I had once known, behind the Cynethryth I hardly recognized.

  The fire’s warmth had barely seeped beyond skin and flesh to chase the ice from my bones when Egfrith breezed over to me, his pale cheeks bristling with the beginnings of a beard.

  ‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ I said, which was a lie.

  ‘I did not think you would,’ he answered, which was also a lie – he would not otherwise have been waiting for me like a hound at a rabbit hole.

  All around, men and women were stirring as the camp came awake. The low murmur of conversation was strewn with yawns, farts and the hawking and spitting of phlegm as men cleared throats.

  ‘It would be better to catch them early. Before they slope off.’

  ‘I need to speak with Cynethryth first,’ I said, and Egfrith must have known I would not budge on that, or else he was intrigued as to what I wanted with her, for he cocked an eyebrow and extended an arm, inviting me to get on with it.

  Cynethryth had built her shelter on the camp’s eastern edge next to Asgot’s, which was recognizable for the many animal skulls hanging from a length of twine around the lean-to’s entrance. The largest were fox and badger skulls but there were many others: hare, stoat, yellow-toothed rat. The smallest were birds’ skulls, many of which had belonged to crows and ravens, and these hung threaded through their eye sockets. They looked like sharp white arrowheads.

  Cynethryth’s wolf Sköll was nowhere to be seen, which was the first clue that Cynethryth was not in her shelter.

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked Bothvar, who was sitting on his sea chest making a fish-hook from a piece of bone.

  ‘I thought you had a new woman these days, Raven,’ he said with a grin, not taking his eyes from the small hook. ‘One of those pretty dark whores you’re keeping all to yourself when you should be sharing.’

  ‘Have you seen Cynethryth?’ I asked. Bothvar shook his head, his skin as grey as cold ashes, and so I called out to Asgot but there was no answer from his lean-to. A wind cut through the camp, rippling the skins of the shelters and causing some of the godi’s animal skulls to clatter against one another.

  ‘They could be off hunting,’ Egfrith behind me suggested.

  I turned to him, my mind glimpsing again the old godi’s eyes when we had talked of the convent to the north.

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ I said.

  I fetched my spear and helmet and slung my shield across my back and when Olaf saw me arming he asked what was going on. I told him I was heading out to look for Cynethryth, but Olaf had been around too long to believe that that was all there was to it and in the end I had to tell him that I feared Cynethryth and Asgot had gone in search of the convent. He swore and strode off to find Sigurd, leaving Egfrith and me standing there like tree stumps.

  ‘What makes you think they’ve gone north, Raven?’ Sigurd asked, clutching a fleshy boar rib left over from the night before.

  ‘You know Asgot,’ I said. The jarl nodded slightly at that. ‘As Father Egfrith will tell you, a place full of Christ brides is unlikely to be far from a fort or even a town. If the nuns get word out about us we’ll be sleeping with one eye open for the rest of the winter.’ I glanced at Egfrith.

  ‘It is true, Sigurd,’ the monk said, scratching his bristly cheek. ‘The good sisters are sure to sell cheese, milk and bread to local folk. That is usually the way. They will have a protector. They must. And he will have spears.’

  That was Egfrith’s second lie that morning. From what I knew, convents were like monasteries and very often to be found far away from normal folk. Something to do with shunning the corrupted is how I’d heard Egfrith speak of it. ‘Sin is like a stinking fart, Raven, it spreads quickly,’ he had once told me. But Sigurd seemed to consider the monk’s words and eventually he nodded purposefully, chewing as he said, ‘Fly then, Raven. And make sure Asgot does not bring more Franks down on our heads.’ He grimaced. ‘I have met enough Franks to last me till Ragnarök.’ Those in earshot agreed with that. ‘Go with them,’ he said to Black Floki, who nodded and went to fetch his war gear as Egfrith went to gather up whatever it was he would need.

  Sigurd and Olaf shared a look and Olaf patted his belly and nodded at the rib in Sigurd’s hand. ‘I could eat some of that myself,’ he said, ‘if that greedy son of a troll bitch Svein hasn’t eaten it all, nose, arse, bones and balls.’

  I was ready to leave and so I stood there, spear butt in the mud as I watched a crowd of rooks and crows hugging the edge of the darkness that still clung to the west. A few gruff notes carried across the fen as the black shapes rose into the grey with the guilty aspect of killers leaving a murder. I could feel Sigurd’s eyes on me.

  ‘So you fear that Asgot and Cynethryth might poke a bees’ nest? That we may have to fight the Franks again?’

  I looked into the fjord-depths of those blue eyes. ‘Better to avoid a fight if it can be done,’ I said. I had heard him say the same thing many times.

  He nodded. Then silence rushed in.

  ‘You must let her go
, Raven,’ he said after a while.

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Cynethryth. She is not the same as she was. We all change, Raven, like boulders worn away by the sea. Chaos has shaped her and she is lost to you.’

  My blood simmered then because it was not for any man, not even Sigurd, to know my thoughts, let alone give them voice. But now it had been said it was like an oar blade in the water and needed pulling.

  ‘Asgot has been gnawing away at her ever since we left Wessex,’ I said, almost spitting the words. ‘She barely even speaks to the monk these days. I preferred it when she prayed to the White Christ. Now Asgot fills her head with his black seidr.’

  ‘He does have some power,’ Sigurd admitted. ‘The old wolf should have died many times in many fights. And yet he lives. Cynethryth was lost, Raven, but it was Asgot who found her. Not you.’ That pierced my heart like steel.

  ‘He has led her from the dark into the mire,’ I said, ‘and one day I will kill him.’

  Sigurd took three steps, reached out and gripped my shoulder. ‘Go and find her,’ he said, his eyes boring into mine. ‘And then let her go.’

  Someone called my name and I turned to see Black Floki standing amongst the knee-high bristling grass, his shield on his back and his spear gripped loosely. Behind him Father Egfrith waited, a small sack across his shoulders and a stout juniper staff in his hand.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I said, turning my back on my jarl and setting off into the marsh.

  It was cold. The sun was rising pale and watery and we kept it on our right so that we knew we were walking north. By midday it was low and lost somewhere behind a frigid wan sky that stretched in a silent echo of the desolate, wind-scourged fen. But several skeins of geese passed noisily overhead and so long as we tramped in the opposite direction we could not go far wrong. Besides which, every now and then we saw footprints still visible in the waterlogged earth and some of those prints belonged to a large wolf, which was how we knew for certain that Asgot and Cynethryth had come this way. What was more alarming, at least for Egfrith, was that there were too many tracks. Floki had been the first to see it.

  ‘There are four, maybe five men walking behind the girl, the godi and the wolf,’ he had said, squatting in a foul-smelling reed bed, unravelling the tracks with the practised ease of a fisherman unsnarling his net.

  ‘We must hurry!’ Egfrith said, understanding at once, and because he was not lugging war gear he took up a half-walk, half-run gait which had our shields bouncing on our backs and made me glad I had not put on my brynja. I was sure he would have gone on without us if we had fallen behind and yet I had a fair idea what Asgot would do if the monk tried to stop him walking into that convent. So I kept up even though the soft ground sapped my strength.

  ‘This is one way to stay warm,’ I huffed to Floki as we splashed through shallow water, our shields breaking the stiff reeds as we passed. Egrets waded carefully, stabbing down with their black bills now and then. A weasel emerged at Egfrith’s passing and regarded me for a moment before making for cover in its hooping run. Then on to boggy ground where short grass sprouted tenaciously and curlews quee’d and tittered, teasing worms from the mud with their slender bills that were curved like the blaumen’s swords. Suddenly the sky above filled with screeching as a huge flock of gulls passed over us from the west heading for the seashore.

  ‘We’re going to lose them in this!’ Egfrith called. The mist that hung over the flat land was thickening. It almost looked like water, as though the tide had swept in to claim the land once and for all.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ I called back, for I recognized a great spread of red saltwort scrub – the day before Egfrith had said that the Franks call the plant Saint Peter’s herb and I had thought that just about said it all: that Óðin should have the mighty ash and the oak, and a Christ saint should have a pathetic sprawling bush.

  The brightest part of the dull sky was in the west when we came to the lake with the ancient causeway. Grey plovers and sandpipers waded at the margins and grebes floated along using their feathers as sails to catch the wind.

  ‘Perhaps they went round?’ Egfrith said hopefully, scanning the horizon east and west. ‘We could yet head them off.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I said, brushing a fat spider from my breeks. My cloak had been wicking water and was soaking and heavy now, so that I was wishing I had left it behind even with the cold. ‘A wolf wouldn’t swim this.’

  ‘But then that beast is no ordinary creature,’ Egfrith admitted through a grimace. ‘I’d wager Asgot has worked some foul spell on it.’ Like he has done to Cynethryth, I thought but did not say, as I steadied myself on the first rotting post and waded into the clear, numbing water. Once across, we shivered through the meadows of wind-stirred grass and up the low rising ground to the apple trees, whose buds sheltered from the cold in tiny fur-like coverings.

  It was amongst those sleeping trees that we found them. The first I knew of it was when Egfrith stumbled and fell to his knees. For a heartbeat I thought he had tripped but then he let out a low, whimpering moan.

  ‘Oh dear God! Oh God. What have they done?’ He was wringing his hands and we caught up with him and peered through the gnarly trees. There were dark shapes hanging amongst the branches. ‘You have murdered God’s daughters,’ Egfrith sobbed, hanging his head and clutching his face, barely able to look upon the carnage. Sourness churned in my gut and I put a hand on Egfrith’s shoulder, perhaps to steady myself. The Christ brides hung by their necks, their blue faces and bulging eyes accusing all in turn as their corpses twisted in the wind. Seven hung there, their bare feet skimming the grass that glistened and steamed with piss.

  I remembered when I had found Ealhstan hung in a tree to die, his guts undone and strung up round the trunk, a victim of the godi’s blood-lust. This time those watching were Danes and now they looked at us, the awe at what they had done still greasing their eyes. Asgot had finished his rites and now stood talking with one of the others as I left Egfrith where he was and walked into that death grove.

  ‘Raven, these Frankish bitches tried to use Christ seidr on us,’ a Dane called Arngrim said, shaking his head in bewilderment. But I ignored him because I was looking at Cynethryth. She was standing close enough to one of the hanging corpses to reach out and touch it and she paid me no notice as I came to stand beside her.

  ‘Be careful, men,’ Asgot said. ‘The last time we did this Raven went berserk and killed a man named Einar. Sigurd let him get away with it too.’

  I felt some of the Danes’ eyes on me but I was looking at Cynethryth.

  ‘Why, Cynethryth?’ I asked. A crunching sound made me look past her, where Sköll had chewed a fleshy lump through to the bone. I grimaced at what or who that flesh might have belonged to. ‘These Christ brides did you no harm,’ I said. ‘Cynethryth?’ I touched her arm and she flinched as though I had burnt her.

  ‘Raven,’ she said, her eyes meeting mine, and for a brief hopeful moment I thought I saw the old Cynethryth in those green eyes. But as soon as that ember had appeared it hardened and died. ‘They cannot harm anyone now,’ she said, her lips twisting into a grin.

  ‘They harmed you?’ I said.

  She shook her head. Not these, I thought, but others like them. Cynethryth was staring at the bloodless face of the young woman, whose neck was horribly stretched. She had been Cynethryth’s age more or less.

  ‘Listen, Raven,’ Asgot hissed, his breath clouding in the frigid air. ‘He is here. He has come to this place.’ The old godi’s eyes flashed in the way they only did when death was in the air. He was talking about the All-Father and although I could hear nothing other than the creak of the hang-ropes and the twisted branches and the men’s breathing and Cynethryth’s wolf eating, I could feel the seidr that had been worked there. The grove was heavy with it.

  ‘We should hang the monk up with them,’ a Dane called Boe suggested, pointing at Egfrith who was on his feet now but bent double and retching.

&nbs
p; ‘If you touch him I will kill you, Boe,’ I said, and for a heartbeat Boe bristled at the threat. Then he showed me his palms and grinned.

  ‘Heya Raven, I did not know he was your friend,’ he said.

  ‘He is,’ I said, glancing back at the monk who was walking towards us now, dragging his sleeve across his mouth as his eyes flicked from one dead nun to another.

  ‘This is powerful seidr, Raven,’ Black Floki muttered with a nod, his left hand instinctively resting on his sword’s pommel. ‘Killing seven Christ brides like this.’

  He was right. The gods were sure to notice a thing like this. It was like lighting a great fire for the mid-winter Yule feast to summon the spirits of the dead.

  ‘We have bought much favour for the voyage ahead,’ Arngrim said. ‘The others will be pleased.’

  ‘I’ll wager Tufi wishes we had done it sooner,’ a Dane called Ottar said, stirring subdued ayes from the others.

  ‘Sigurd wants us all back at the camp,’ I said as loud as I dared in that grove where Óðin lingered, brought there by Asgot though not Asgot alone. Cynethryth had played her part in it too. I had not seen her do it but I knew it was so. The Danes trod lightly around her as they did around Asgot. She was as immersed in that potent seidr as the rest of us. She was letting it seep into her being, like pine resin into new strakes and you would never know that she had once been a Christian. ‘Did any of the Christ brides escape?’ I asked.

  ‘No, they are all here,’ Ottar said, marvelling at the gently swinging bodies. Two crows were sidling closer to a corpse, stopping now and then to cock their heads and eye us.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then let us leave now before it gets dark. I would not like to lose my way in the marsh and run into the vengeful spirits of these murdered women. Do not forget we are in Frankia.’

  ‘Raven is right,’ Asgot said, ‘the White Christ has some power here. It is done and we should go.’

  ‘Let me bury them!’ Egfrith pleaded, his shrill voice threatening to disturb the seidr-balance. ‘Have some pity for the dead and let me cut them down.’ Asgot hissed at him like a cat and Arngrim swore under his breath.