Raven

by Giles Kristian

  ‘That’s just it, Raven,’ he said, clutching at Serpent’s sheer strake, ‘I cannot leave. My damned pride will not let me. I have met Alcuin of York, the greatest scholar of our times. I have spoken with Karolus Magnus, the Emperor of Christendom. I may yet live to see the glorious domed churches of Constantinople.’ I frowned. ‘Miklagard, Raven, the heartbeat of the eastern Roman Empire.’ He shook his head. ‘A curious mind can be a burden. Did you know that we must soon pass the mouth of the Tiberis river?’ I shook my head. I had never even heard of it. ‘That river leads to Rome itself. Sigurd knows it because I told him.’ I glanced at Sigurd, who was now in the foreship working the bowline while Olaf wound the tacking rope around the boom, lashing it to the clamp. The two men were enjoying themselves, each seeming to anticipate the other’s next movement. ‘Even now your jarl is weighing in his mind the risks against what might be won. Rome’s glory has faded, her eminence overshadowed by her sister empire in the east, and yet she must surely make Aix-la-Chapelle look like the humblest village.’

  ‘You think we should sail up this Tiberis?’ I asked, scanning the shoreline for the turbid, angry water that would betray a river’s mouth. I saw no river. A ravenous flock of screaming gulls wheeled above something dark that the sea had coughed on to the sand.

  After a while Egfrith said, ‘I think my reasons for wanting to go to Rome would be very different from Sigurd’s.’ His eyes flashed hungrily for a heartbeat. ‘But, yes, I would see the city with my own eyes after reading of it in vellum leaves.’ He closed his eyes, then nodded slowly as though in answer to a voice I could not hear. When those eyes opened again they were dulled by a layer of ice. ‘Greed is greed, lad. Whether it is a heathen’s silver-greed, or a failed monk’s hunger to visit the places he has only ever imagined in his feeble mind. At least I now see why I have failed. I failed because I was too ensnared in my own ambitions to give myself fully to the Lord’s work.’

  ‘Well you did not kill those nuns,’ I said, not knowing what else to say. ‘That much I do know. And if your god is as mild and forgiving as you say, he’ll overlook a little wanderlust.’ I stood and made my way over to Knut, hoping to draw from the steersman some inkling as to whether or not Sigurd was going to take us up the river Egfrith had spoken of. ‘As for making Christ slaves of us all,’ I added over my shoulder, ‘there is still time.’ And even the gloomy monk chuckled at that.

  Eight days later, after a night of heavy rain and dark dreams, we left behind the clear blue coastal waters and the boundless vault of the sky and entered the mouth of the Tiberis. We stowed Jörmungand, and the other ships did the same with their own prow beasts, because we did not want to risk offending the local spirits who we suspected must be ancient and perhaps still powerful. In the end Sigurd had held a ting, a meeting where all were allowed their say, and the word from each ship was that almost every man had voted to sail up the river come what may.

  ‘How could we go back to Wessex and tell our kinfolk that we had sailed past Rome because we were too pale-livered to clap eyes on it for ourselves,’ Wiglaf had said, which was the way the rest of us felt about it too. So now we were rowing. Hard. Because somewhere far to the east, spring meltwater was engorging the river and now our arms were having to overcome the force of the current. And as I rowed, I tried to summon again the pictures that had filled my mind as I slept, for though the form of the dreams had dissipated like smoke, a grim, dread feeling had clung to me from the moment of waking. Even now, as I pulled at the oar, my heart hammering, the dream’s claws were still in me, but I could not see the rest of the beast.

  Where river and sea entwined, we had passed whole villages of crumbling stone, long ago abandoned. Perhaps, too often attacked by sea-raiders, the folk had been moved inland, leaving their homes to the slower but no less certain onslaught of creeping vegetation. Now, beyond the silt-stirred mouth, the river’s banks were thick with evergreens and gorse that billowed down to the water’s edge as though the whole verdant valley sought to drink the fresh water. The sun, rising somewhere beyond the river’s source, infused thick blankets of morning mist with red dye, and above that, swaths of cloud, thin as the blauvifs’ shrouds, curled out of the east, hung to dry below a grey and golden sky.

  The low roar of the sea became a murmur and then faded away completely, taking with it the shrieks of gulls and the languid whisper of waves on the shore. All sound was subdued, so that even as we bent our backs to the oars we were aware of some ancient and weighty seidr clotting the air. Our oar blades plunged in their ceaseless way, stitching Serpent’s course through the dark water, the staves clumping in their ports, and men’s laboured breath further fogged the air about us.

  ‘At least this damn spate means we shouldn’t run into any shoals,’ Bjarni said through a grimace.

  ‘Still, it’s not much of a river,’ Gap-toothed Ingolf put in. ‘I’ve pissed more ale the morning after a good feast.’

  I knew what Ingolf meant. Every tale I had ever heard of the Romans told of the enormous buildings against which, it was said, men looked like insects. I had not believed most of it, thinking that like all tales those had grown legs in the telling. That was until Frankia. In Frankia I had seen things I would not have thought possible: churches and halls of stone that you would have believed could only have been built by giants. And according to Egfrith, those places were as nothing compared with the ancient constructions of Rome. Which was why I expected more of a river than the one we now navigated, for it did not feel like the ‘artery to the heart of the world’ as Egfrith had put it.

  The river snaked northwards. We passed a fighting galley crammed with blaumen coming downriver, its oar banks beating quickly on the back of the current, and although Völund might have been able to learn something from them, he did not get the chance, because we were yelling curses at them and they were yelling back. It was harmless enough, though some of the Danes neglected their rowing long enough to loose a few arrows at the blaumen for the sake of appearances. We passed three heavily laden barges being pulled against the current by oxen, and their drivers were struck with terror when they saw us, but we did them no harm nor even stopped to discover what cargo the barges held. Because the wind had changed. In the morning the wind had been against us and this, coupled with the current, had meant we had to row. But now the wind was coming from the west and Sigurd decided there was enough of it to make it worth hoisting the sails. You could have walked along the bank and beaten us to Rome, but we did not mind for it gave us time to put on brynjas and swords and string bows. We did not know what we would meet up this river and it is always better to prepare for a fight that does not come than to fight unprepared.

  And so it was under sail that we came to Rome, our shields lying at our feet in case we should need to slot them in the rail or make a shieldwall. It was late afternoon and the wind that had blown us up the Tiberis had drawn a shroud of black cloud across the roof of the world, so that we had put on our greased skins over our mail. We did not have to wait long. Caught in that black shroud above us was a broiling hailstorm which now came in a great rush, driving into the river and pelting us angrily, the pebbles of ice thudding on to the deck and bouncing off the sheer strakes. Within moments, ridges of hail had gathered against Serpent’s ribs and amongst the oars piled in their trees. Svein was happily catching the ice in his mouth until a hailstone struck a tooth, making him curse in pain. Father Egfrith sheltered under a spare shield, the hail tonking off the iron boss, and I watched the yellow river thicken and swell and absorb the countless ice stones piercing it. Then as quickly as the hail came it vanished. Brown light seeped through the trees lining the banks and the smell of those trees filled the air. Men grabbed gourds and drinking horns because they knew what was coming.

  Serpent pushed on, the other ships behind, their crews quiet because the trees had thinned and, on the next coil, where the river slowed, we could see wharves jutting out on both sides. A white flash as quick as a blink was followed by a cra
ck that decayed with a rumble that seemed to go on for ever. Then the rain came. At first it hissed against the river’s surface, but before long, rods of water were plunging deep into the river and the noise was immense.

  ‘So this is Rome!’ Sigurd shouted from the prow. His sopping hair daubed his head, sticking to his cheeks and beard as he looked up at the great crumbling wall that filled the world along the bank on our steerboard side. It was pitted and much of its brownish brick skin had come away, revealing bloodless flesh beneath, but it was huge, at least nine times a man’s height. ‘How can men build such things, Uncle?’ Sigurd called through the rain’s roar. Olaf did not answer at once because like the rest of us he was standing now, beard soaked, jaw unhinged, eyes wide and staring at the wall.

  ‘Such a wall as this must protect Asgard,’ he called back after a time. Every hundred feet or so along its length stood a square tower and it was at these points that we could see that the wall was some two spear-lengths thick.

  ‘Against this, Offa’s wall would look like a pig fence,’ Penda said, scratching the short hair at the back of his neck.

  The Tiberis snaked north-east and we passed between the walls, for that bulwark carried on along the far bank, running north to enclose Rome. Which meant that we were now inside the ancient city.

  ‘Well that was easy enough,’ Bram Bear said, sweeping his soaking hair back over his head. We had not even been challenged.

  ‘What good is a wall Gymir would struggle to peer over if you’re going to let savages like us just sail through it?’ Olaf asked, peering through the rain fog for signs of a trap.

  ‘It’s a bloody rat’s nest,’ Gytha said, wide-eyed.

  We had all emerged from hats and bad-weather gear now, caring nothing about the driving rain or that we were wet through to our bones. For we did not want to miss any of the wondrous sights around us not already hidden behind the veil of rain and grey mist. Wharves lined both banks, stretching off towards the next bend of the river, and they thronged with vessels of all shapes and sizes and groaned beneath the weight of barrels and great long pots up to a man’s waist and crates and two hundred types of cargo, from chickens and pelts and spices to grain, stone and timber. Horses whinnied, stamping against the quay because they knew they were going to sea and feared it. Men bartered, made last-minute deals or argued about a ship’s capacity or the likely journey time or the weather. Soldiers pushed amongst the crowd after eel-slippery thieves they would never catch. Whores with red lips and blackened eyes paraded arrogantly, silver-lust battling whatever pride they still clung to, and men stood holding barrel lids over smoking braziers, trying to keep their hot food dry. We had sailed into a thick soup of every kind of smell and one moment your mouth watered and the next your eyes streamed and you thought you would retch.

  ‘Oars!’ Sigurd called, for Olaf had been reefing the sail to slow us with so many other ships about, and now the rake was juddering down the mast as he and three others lowered the yard and the sodden sail. We took to our sea chests and sliced the blades into the river to slow Serpent further, watching that our oars did not hit any other vessels. Behind us, Fjord-Elk and the snekkjes did likewise and we were lucky that, although the wharves were lined with ships, few of those craft were in the channel, because the wind was still blowing towards the city and their captains were waiting for it to change.

  Buildings lined both banks beyond the wharves, some with their red-tiled roofs fallen in and white walls crumbled, others still in use by their looks. Yet others were rising anew from the debris of the old, their ancient shaped stones climbing skyward one atop another once again, but overall the impression was one of decay. On our steerboard side the ground rose, though our view of the city was partly obscured by long stone buildings that appeared to have been repaired countless times and which followed the river for as far as I could see. Open on their river sides, they were stacked to their roofs with goods and guarded by ruddy-skinned warriors with spears, clubs and hand axes. Out of the rain, men sat at tables writing. Others counted barrels in or out that were lugged by bare-chested, muscle-bound slaves whose skin glistened with rain and sweat. Some pushed carts or led back-bowed asses, horses or oxen to and from the wharf.

  Another ancient wall bent eastward off our steerboard side and this one had soldiers on its heights who would glance down at the chaos below every now and then but mostly seemed oblivious of it. At the wall’s base a great gate yawned like an open mouth, through which spewed a continuous stream of men, women, children and animals.

  ‘We’ll find a mooring further on,’ Sigurd called, pointing off Serpent’s port bow beyond the long line of swarming vessels. So we rowed on until the wooden wharf ended and the old cracked stone wharf began. There were few vessels this far up, for much of the quayside was under water, another effect of meltwater flowing off faraway hills perhaps. Besides which, the wooden wharves were nearer to the gate and so were bound to be more popular.

  ‘Bram, Svein, Bjarni, take your oars and make sure there’s not another level to that quay that could rip our belly open,’ Olaf said. ‘Bring her in nice and easy, lads, there you go. Folk will be watching and we don’t want to give these Romans a good story to spout over their ale tonight.’ At the stone wharf’s high end there was a berth easily long enough for Serpent, though not for the other ships as well. They would have to moor alongside, hull against hull, so that their crews would all end up walking over Serpent to get to shore. I have seen this lead to fights when a man’s belongings go missing after other crews have tramped past his gear. But we were a Fellowship, every man oath-tied to each other, and I could have laid every bit of silver I had on my sea chest and gone ashore knowing I would find it untouched when I returned.

  Beast heads had been carved into the stone wall and we argued as to what kind of animals they were, for they had a wolf’s teeth, a mouth more like a bear’s and broad, fur-wreathed heads. In those snarling, teeth-filled maws were set iron rings through which we passed our mooring ropes and we had barely finished the knots when the reeve turned up demanding the port tax. He came with another man, who carried a sack over one shoulder, and twelve bored-looking soldiers, and none of them seemed the least bit surprised at the sight of us or our ships that crawled with motifs clearly not carved by Christian hands. The reeve was a small, brisk, bald man with busy hands, who reminded me of a squirrel as his keen eyes probed our four ships for clues as to what manner of men we were. He seemed unimpressed with what he saw, which Penda suggested was because it was clear from our ships with their relatively small holds that we had not come to do any serious trading. But luckily for us it was not long before he and Father Egfrith found either end of a great twine of the Latin tongue so that they were able to follow the thread and meet in the middle.

  ‘I have told Gratiosus here that we have travelled very far and braved dangers of every kind in order that our eyes may feast upon the sights of his wondrous and ancient city,’ Egfrith said to Sigurd, a thin smile hiding in the beard I was still not used to seeing on his face.

  The jarl nodded. ‘How much does he want, monk?’

  Egfrith’s smile grew now. ‘Gratiosus says he is used to dealing with our kind. The price for Serpent and Fjord-Elk is six solidi and three solidi for the two smaller ships. But he knows barbarians do not trade in coins so he has brought scales.’ Then he said something to Gratiosus who clicked his fingers at which the man with the sack came forward and pulled from it a large pair of scales, setting them down carefully on the quayside. ‘If we wish to pay in silver we must simply balance the scales,’ Egfrith said with a shrug. Now Sigurd smiled, because Gratiosus had been rummaging in the sack himself and now produced a large brick of iron which he held up for all to see before bending and placing it into one of the scales’ silver bowls.

  ‘That lump must weigh more than Svein’s head,’ Bram muttered.

  ‘Let me put my cock in the other dish, Uncle, that will do it,’ Hedin called, rousing chuckles all round.


  But Sigurd being Sigurd had already prepared for this moment. ‘If that’s all this Roman wants let’s be done with it,’ he said, throwing his sodden cloak off his right shoulder to reveal his arm. Which bore seven silver warrior rings, each one thicker than a man’s thumb. At his signal Bothvar dropped the plank on to the wharf and so it was that with four long strides Sigurd was the first of us to set foot in Rome. He gave Gratiosus and his men that wolf’s grin, then twisted five of the silver warrior rings off his arm and dropped them all on to the scales. The iron brick almost took to the air as the other bowl clattered against the stone quay and Gratiosus’s eyebrows, too, leapt in astonishment. Then, just because he could, Sigurd pulled off another silver band and tossed it into the dish with the others that were already half submerged in rainwater.

  Gratiosus stared at Sigurd as though he did not know whether to run for his life or embrace the Norsemen, then spoke in a voice that was more breath than sound.

  ‘What did he say, monk?’ Sigurd asked, half turning back to Serpent.

  Egfrith swept the rain from his face, then made the sign of the cross over his chest. ‘He said, welcome to Rome.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I WAS WALKING ALONG THE STONE-PAVED STREETS OF ROME! Gratiosus had sent us a guide: a man of about my age with sun-browned skin, warm eyes and a quick smile. His name was Gregororovius, but none of us could remember that let alone say it, so we called him Gregor. Every man had itched to go ashore, but we could not leave the ships unguarded and so lots had been drawn to choose the fourteen men who would stay behind. Those men had cursed their ill luck and moaned and flung insults at the rest of us as we readied to go ashore. Then we had followed Gregor through a gateway he called the Porta Trigemina, framed with smooth stone pillars as tall as oaks, and in passing I had pressed a palm against the cool stone, wondering how many other jaw-slack visitors to the ancient city had done the same.