Varanger

by Cecelia Holland

  He said, “I am told you come from far to the west. May I ask you a few questions?”

  Conn said, “Who are you?” and got up and went away. Raef leaned against the wall behind him, staring rudely into the stranger’s face, the neat little black beard, the eyes large and round and soft. He seemed guileless, maybe a little stupid, like a child. Abruptly Raef knew this was not so.

  He said, “Who are you?” unlike Conn, wanting an answer.

  “My name is Rashid al-Samudi,” said the dark man. “I am a guest of the posadnik. I would very much like to ask you a few questions, if I could.”

  “What questions?”

  “Could we perhaps go inside? I cannot endure the cold.”

  Raef did not want to go inside, with the bad air and the dark, but the stranger interested him. He got up and led the way down the steps and through the door. At one end of the tiny room, below the one narrow end window, were some benches, where other men already sat, curled around their cups. Bjorn the Christian was one of them, and some other Varanger. Raef pulled an empty bench over by the door and sat as close to the open air as he could.

  “Sit,” he told the man in the white headcloth. “You’re not from here.”

  “I am from far south of here,” Rashid said. “Where men ought to live.” He settled himself gingerly onto the bench, tucking his cloak carefully over his legs. He took a flat pouch from inside the cloak and laid it on his lap. His shoes were stitched red leather, soaked now from walking through the snow. His hands were small and soft and round at the tips, with short black-rimmed nails, the fingers smeared with black. “I had never seen a river turn hard as rock until I came here. Tell me your name, as I have told you mine.”

  “Raef Corbansson,” Raef said, and put out his hand. “How do you know about me?”

  “At the posadnik’s table I heard that some men had arrived from the far west. I asked around.” Rashid took his hand in a brief, soft grip, instantly released. Raef half-expected him to wipe his hand afterward on his robe. “I am trying to learn as much as I can of the world, and you can help me. Tell me where are you from?” From the flat pouch he took a sheet of pale gray birch bark and a stick of charcoal.

  “West,” Raef said. “As you said. Across a lot of water. It gets cold there, too. What’s the name of your country? Where they don’t like to shake hands?”

  Rashid al-Samudi had been using the charcoal to make marks on the bark, but he looked up suddenly, and said, in a less considered voice, “Baghdad. It seems such a dirty practice.” His eyes veiled, hiding his feeling, as if he withdrew behind some door again. “What’s the name of where you came from, in the west?”

  “It has no name,” Raef said. “We were the first people to go there—the first people like us. There were other people, but not like us, and I never knew what they called it.”

  “Not England, then. Or Ireland.”

  Raef laughed. “No. Much farther west than that.”

  The man of Baghdad frowned at him, his eyes narrow. “I have heard of a place called Greenland.”

  “So have I,” Raef said. He could win this game with no trouble.

  The long grave face before him quickened in a grimace of frustration, and opening the flap of his pouch he removed another sheet of his birch bark and held it out toward Raef. “Show me what you think the world looks like. If you made a drawing of it, the whole world.”

  Raef stared at him, his jaw dropping open. It amazed him that anybody thought he could do such a thing; an idea of the whole world flashed through his mind, the endless sweep of the forest, and windblown ocean waves, the sky that went on forever, the countless beasts and people, and he gave a puzzled laugh. Then Rashid smiled, and laughed also, and said, “No. A chart. Just the shape. The outline?”

  Raef laughed again, uncertain. He had never thought of this before, drawing the shape of the world, but as he considered it the notion appealed to him. He took the birch bark, and laid it on his knee, and thought a moment. Then he made a circle on the piece of bark, and put Denmark in the middle, with Norway above.

  “Here is Hedeby.” He put a mark for Hedeby in the center of the papery gray surface, in the south of Denmark. “Here is Rome.” Another mark far down at the bottom of the circle. “Here are the ocean islands.” He drew shapes, one for England, one for Ireland, and Orkney, and Iceland, and a few others because he knew there were others but not how many; he said the names aloud, and as he did, the world appeared in his mind like a jeweled circle. He said, not knowing how he knew this, “Whoever holds England, Denmark, and Norway holds the whole world, or all that matters.”

  The other man gave a muffled sound that might have been a laugh. He said, “And that’s where you come from.”

  “No,” Raef said. “Here is where I come from.” He drew a vertical line at the far left edge of the circle, far beyond the islands, and put a mark there.

  “Hunh.” Rashid leaned keenly forward to look.

  “Here is where we are now,” Raef said. He put another mark midway between Hedeby and the right edge of the circle, and turned the bark around to the other man “Show me this Baghdad.”

  Rashid’s eyebrows were arched like church windows. He said, “I have never before contemplated Hedeby as the center of the world.” He took the charcoal, straightened the birch bark carefully, and made a mark down below the circle, on the edge of the bark straight down below Holmgard. “Here is Miklagard.”

  “No,” Raef said, surprised. “Miklagard—that’s Rome, I put that on.”

  Rashid looked up at him, his hand poised, and his eyes shining with intense interest. “Miklagard, what you call Miklagard, is Constantinople, the city of the Greeks. Where your basileus, there, came from.”

  “I thought that was all Rome,” Raef said. He shook his head, bemused. “It seems I’m very ignorant.”

  “Well,” Rashid said, still looking at him, “what you say is true, however. In a way, Constantinople is Rome, also—Roumi, we call it.” He studied Raef a moment, his lips pursed. “I have not been to Hedeby. Is it larger than Novgorod?”

  “Holmgard,” Raef said. “Yes. Much bigger. The houses are above ground. Better weather. Better food. Are you going there?”

  “I would if I could,” Rashid said. “I would go everywhere. It is my life’s work to seek knowledge, and a high and noble way of my people, and the Caliph in Baghdad, may Allah give him every victory, enjoys my correspondence.” His long, grooved face contorted into a sudden grimace. “Enjoyed it. But now there has been a . . . Anyway. I must go back to Baghdad, when the river flows again.” He looked down at the birch bark sheets on his knees. “Well. This is much for me to think about. I hope we may speak again sometime.” He slid the bark pieces carefully into the pouch and got up.

  Raef said, “I’ll talk to you.” He wanted to ask him what Baghdad was like, and where else he had been. He felt suddenly there was something like him in Rashid. He put his hand out again, and Rashid looked at it, smiled at him, and put his fingers to Raef’s fingers.

  “Peace.” Gathering his cloak around him he went out the door.

  Raef sat thinking about what had just happened; almost at once somebody who had been sitting in the dark across the room got up and sat down next to him.

  It was Helgi. He had one of the house’s wooden cups in his hand, and he held it out. He said, “You know, I never liked Einar.”

  Raef drank deep of the cup; if he sipped the wotka it stayed in his mouth too long and burned his tongue and he had learned to toss each swallow back into his throat. He gave the cup again to Helgi. “Whatever you say.” The wotka hit him like a wave of heat along all his nerves.

  Helgi sat silent a moment, and then said, “Rashid, there, what did he want?”

  “Where I came from. Like that. Who is he?” Raef got up, unable to bear the stinking air inside anymore, and went up the steps.

  Helgi followed him, talking. “A friend of Dobrynya’s. He’s from somewhere down in the hot lands. You have to w
atch out, he’ll get his hands down your drawers.”

  Raef wheeled toward him, startled. “Yours?”

  “No! No. But I’ve heard.” Helgi hitched around at his belt, pulling his drawers up more snugly. He sat down beside Raef, and offered him the cup again. “He’s got some strange god he wants Dobrynya to follow. The La, he calls him. Where’s your brother?”

  “Chasing a girl,” Raef said.

  “That will get him in trouble here,” Helgi said.

  “Conn loves trouble,” Raef said. He drank the rest of Helgi’s wotka, remembering he had no more money. “Do you have any dice?”

  Helgi drew back a little, wary; Raef had been picking him over with the dice for months. His eyes glazed a moment as he weighed making friends with Raef against the prospect of being picked over once again. Finally he said, “For drinks, that’s all.”

  “That’s all I want,” Raef said.

  The weather turned stonily again, shutting them back down into the sunken hall, close and foul as a nest, Conn listened to stories, got steadily trounced playing Thorfinn at chess, brought in wood, wrestled with the other men, and sometimes just sat on the sleeping bench by the door and looked across the room at the women.

  Two of Thorfinn’s women slaves were crones, shapeless and worn, but the third, Alla, was a girl of Conn’s own age. She was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. Her face was molded smoothly over the curved shapely bones and her eyes were as blue as sunny days. Her full mouth always had a half-smile to it, as if at some secret happiness. Her hair was pale, not scruffy white like Raef’s but shining and golden, braided neatly in two plaits down her back. He caught himself looking at her more and more, and more and more, he wanted her.

  He wanted to cherish her, to hold her tenderly in his arms, and keep her safe from any harm; at the same time he wanted to tear her limb from limb and devour the pieces. This was like a war in his belly. All day long, with the other women, she sat at her loom and wove Thorfinn’s wool into cloth, and Conn grew almost sick with longing for her.

  She knew he was watching. She glanced up once and caught his eye and looked hastily away, and on her cheek the blush shone fair as sunrise on soft white snow.

  There was no way to talk to her. Thorfinn kept all the women close under his eye. All Conn could do was look at her and ache.

  The weather broke again, and just as before, all the people, Holmgard and Novgorod, rushed out into the snowy marketplace, built a bonfire before the great oak tree, and began to eat and drink and dance. The cold was so bitter they danced only around the fire, and two drunken men froze to death right under the oak tree while everybody else was still celebrating.

  They went to the bathhouse, packed with other men, and sweltering from the fire, whacked each other with birch boughs, and rolled naked in the snow until their skin was red as fever. They diced and wrestled, fought and slept and drank. Raef walked around and around the place, trying to quell the restless itch to move, to get going again, to go anywhere else. Day by day, he thought, the year was turning, but the cold and the snow still covered them, and the river was like a rock in its bed.

  Conn said, “I keep dreaming somebody’s trying to bury me. I think it’s Thorfinn.”

  Raef said, “Thorfinn seems to be burying you pretty regularly at chess.” They had come down to the shore of the river, just inside the earthworks. Ahead, on the broad expanse of the river, half a dozen men were gathered. “What are they doing down there?” In the long light the shadows of the men there stretched along the ice like long thin giants.

  Conn said, “Those are Varanger. That’s Leif, the Icelander from Marten’s hall. What’s that he’s got?”

  Down on the ice, among the little group of men, one stooped and picked up something in both hands. “Looks like a rock,” Raef said. He pointed down the river. “See?”

  Conn frowned, not seeing, and down there big-bellied Leif marched bent-kneed two steps forward and slung the stone in his hands onto the ice, so it slid smoothly off along the river. Its shadow was darker and bolder than the stone itself, easier to track. Some fathoms down the ice, it rapped smartly into another stone resting on the cleared surface, which spun away.

  Conn grunted, seeing now. He yelled, “Leif!”

  Out on the frozen river, the four Varanger paused at their game, and Leif called, “Hey! Come play with us.”

  Conn started eagerly forward. “Come on. This looks like fun.”

  “Not me,” Raef said. He could see this would be harder than it seemed at first, with a high possibility of humiliation. He watched Conn bound down the filthy snow of the shore onto the ice, where for a moment he slipped and wobbled off balance, his arms wheeling in the air. The four Varanger whooped at him Conn went in among them as if they had always been friends. A moment later he was picking up a large smooth stone from the pile on the ice.

  Raef went on by himself, along the shore. He turned around to see Conn with the stone in his hands step forward and hurl the stone, lose his balance, and fall hard on his backside. The stone slid only a few feet down the ice. The watching Varanger roared derisively. Raef turned forward again and went on along the shore.

  The ships were drawn up a little higher, eight dragons without their heads, tightly covered with canvas, and a clutch of the hollowed-out logs the Sclava used. He went around by Thorfinn’s ship, tipped on its side and wedged fast with blocks, its topside swathed in striped cloth. The old snow crunched under his feet. He put his hand on the gunwale by the steerboard, imagining the ship alive again, and sailing; through the cold wood he struggled to feel the rush of the sea under her keel, and the wind singing past.

  Under his hand the ship was cold and still. He walked up amidships, where the canvas cover was a little loose, and pulled the lacing tight again.

  When he touched the lace he realized someone else had been there, had undone it, and then, under the ship, in a patch of loose snow, he saw a single print, less than a day old, of a shoe with a pointed toe. He stiffened, looking around. At once he thought of Magnus, doing something to Thorfinn’s ship.

  There was only one footprint. He snugged the canvas down again, thinking Magnus would not send only one man to do evil. He felt uneasy here, still, as if somebody were watching him. Out there on the river he heard a distant chorus of yells from the stonesliding game. Thinking about Magnus, he went on around the end of the line of ships and almost walked into Pavo’s horse.

  He backed away several steps, looking up at the Tishats, sitting impassively in his saddle, watching him narrow-eyed.

  “What you do here?” Pavo said.

  Raef said, “I’m just walking around.” The memory swarmed into his mind of this man striking Conn down, and his back tingled, every muscle tightening. “I’m not doing anything, Pavo, leave me alone.”

  The big Sclava did not move. His whip was coiled over the pommel of his saddle. He was bundled in a fancy fur-lined coat, a fur cap on his bald head, his feet in high soft black boots. His eyes glinted like chips of ice.

  “Where Raven?” he said.

  “Raven.” Raef realized he meant Conn, with his thick black shaggy hair. He jerked his head back toward the river. “Playing some game.”

  Pavo grunted. He straightened, and the little horse under him moved neatly, swiftly forward and circled around Raef, so close its tail lashed his chest. “You no trouble. Hear?” With his coiled whip he tapped Raef on the shoulder. Then with a leap the horse was up the bank, past the ships, gone back into the city.

  Raef backed up toward Thorfinn’s ship again, watching him go. Big as he was, Pavo rode light as a hawk on the wing. When he was gone from sight Raef stretched his leg out and smudged away the footprint under the ship, and then went back, to watch Conn play the stone game.

  Early the next morning he went with Janka to feed the horses in their pasture, and when he forked up a swatch of the hay he uncovered the scrawny black-haired boy Vagn, who had been sleeping underneath.

  Janka screeched. Vagn made
no sound, but dashed away through the horse pen. Janka threw a snowball at him, screaming after him in hunnish.

  Raef bent back to the work of feeding the horses. Janka strutted around a moment, as if he had run off an ogre.

  Raef said, “He was just trying to keep warm.”

  “My place,” Janka said. “This my place.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Raef said. “It’s Thorfinn’s place. But he lets you go around however you please, mostly, doesn’t he.” Throwing the bundle of hay into the pen, he saw, where Vagn had run through the old snow, a new line of footprints, with pointed toes. The horses were gathering along the fence, snuffling and whisking their tails.

  Janka said, “I keep horses.” He thrust out his chest. “Thorfinn know I know horses.”

  “You could run away.”

  The hun grunted at him. Industriously he bent with his fork for more hay. “Now, too cold.”

  “In the summer, then,” Raef said. “In the summer he isn’t even here.”

  “Too far,” Janka said.

  Raef said nothing; he thought of the boy Vagn, sleeping in cold ships and hayricks Janka was staring at him, his mouth twisted.

  “Thorfinn good, he no whip, he feed me. Why go off?”

  Raef heaved an armload of hay to the horses. “You’re a slave here,” he said.

  Janka growled at him. “Better than him!” He waved an arm after the vanished Vagn. “Better than him, though!”

  “No, you’re not,” Raef said. He stuck the fork down into the hay and went back toward the hall, leaving Janka snarling and muttering behind him.

  With the weather still very cold and dry, they went out to get wood again. The stocks of wood nearby the city were all used up, and they had to go farther to find more, out onto the great frozen lake to the south. It took half the day just to reach the wood stores. They pulled the sledge up on the riverbank, built a roofless hut out of snow, and started a fire in the middle. Conn gave the orders and worked harder than anybody else, driving them all along. Raef helped him split the oak logs and load the sledge. He needed the work to keep wain! and he caught Conn’s worry that they were far from the shelter of Holmgard. The slaves hauled in small wood and broke up limbs of trees. Janka kept the fire in the hut going.