Alys Clare - Blood of the South

Slowly Edild nodded. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, that is how it must have been.’ Then, frowning, she said, ‘But why, when Harald sent his daughter away to England, did he let her and her maidservant believe they were going to find a noble, rich household where they would live in luxury? He knew they wouldn’t. He knew they’d only find us.’

I thought about what Sihtric the monk had said: There was never anyone like Harald for building up a tale, and we always took everything he said with a pinch of salt. ‘He exaggerated,’ I said softly. ‘So far from home, who was to know if he made his family out to be richer and more powerful than they really were? In time, no doubt, like many braggarts, he came to believe his own boasting. I don’t think,’ I concluded, ‘that he’d deliberately have misled his beloved daughter.’

For some time, neither of us spoke. Then, taking a breath and squaring her shoulders, Edild bestowed a last gentle pat on the dead woman and turned away. ‘I shall leave her be. The kohl we found among Rosaria’s belongings is sufficient to suggest she could have poisoned her mistress; whether or not she did, it hardly makes any difference now.’ She met my eyes. ‘God will judge her,’ she murmured.

Then she led the way across the crypt to the steps, and we left our dead kinswoman to the peace of death.

The earthquake that hit the north-western tip of the Anatolian plateau that September morning brought down a long section of the ruined walls of ancient Troy. The group of twenty-three northerners who had been standing at the foot of the plateau when disaster struck got off lightly; only two of them died.

The remainder, leaderless, terrified almost to madness, at first tried with frantic hands to extract their fallen comrades from the huge heap of earth and stones. But it was hopeless. The ground was still shuddering, and, pausing only to scratch a few hasty runes on to a block of fallen masonry, they fled.

As they hastened back to Gullinbursti , carrying the unconscious and helping the injured and dazed, a pair of ravens soared overhead.

Rollo came to himself two days later. His head ached so badly that he groaned aloud. Exploring his skull with nervous fingers, he found a lump the size of an egg on his forehead and a long ragged cut running up into his hairline. His left leg hurt, too. Risking a glance at it, he saw that his ankle had been put in splints and bandaged.

He dared not even start to think what sort of injury those wrappings concealed.

But I am alive , he thought.

He thought back to the moment of disaster. He had seen the high cliff that formed the edge of the plateau begin to quiver, and then, as it had melted before his horrified eyes, he had dashed forward to try to pull Skuli back.

Now, as he gazed around the deck, slowly counting heads, he understood that he had failed. Skuli was gone; so was Tostig the singer, who had been at Skuli’s side as they approached the place Skuli had convinced his crew was Asgard, home of the gods. Fat Eric now held the tiller, but he wasn’t laughing any more.

Gullinbursti was under sail, and a stiff breeze from out of the south-east sped them along. It was a blessing, for the depleted crew, shocked and grieving, were as yet in no state for the hard physical work of rowing. Perhaps, Rollo thought vaguely, the gods, having punched Skuli and his men very hard in the face for their audacity, were now feeling a little remorse, and sending them a favourable wind.

Conversation was limited to everyday matters. Nobody seemed ready to talk about what had happened. Brand the cook, apparently having made up his mind that good food was the best cure, spoiled them every evening with meals that were irresistible, and, whenever supplies of fresh foods ran low, he insisted on putting in to shore to replenish his stores.

And so Gullinbursti made her way home. As they rounded the southern tip of the Peloponnese, Rollo took his first stumbling steps unaided along the ship. As they headed west for Sicily, he won the argument with Brand – who as the oldest and most experienced mariner had taken the role of master – and finally took his place as a working member of the crew. His broken ankle prevented him from rowing, so Brand set out to teach him how to steer.

The days passed. Sometimes the wind failed, and then the hours of daylight were sheer hard slog. At the tiller, Rollo began to learn his craft, and now found he no longer had to concentrate to the exclusion of everything else. With time to think, he went back in his mind over the preceding, extraordinary weeks.

It was too painful to dwell on what had happened on the plateau, and Skuli’s madness still had the power to shock. Instead, Rollo turned his thoughts to Harald.

What a tale he had told! With his inner eye, Rollo saw once again the old man’s face as he had described his marriage to his beautiful wife, and his boundless joy when the baby girl born to them grew up in her mother’s image. His happiness when the daughter – her name was Agathe – made a good marriage to an intelligent and perceptive Saracen doctor; the summit of all his hopes when her baby, Harald’s grandchild, was a boy.

But then violence had spread through Miklagard. Frightened into panic by the rumours of the Turks at the door, the people had turned on each other, seeking out, as mankind will always do, those who worshipped God in a different way and using them as a focus for the angry attacks they could not make on the real enemy. And Ismail Adil Adnan, Agathe’s gentle, courageous, compassionate husband, had been brutally slain; attacked and cut to pieces by the blood-hungry, mindless mob.

Then, with tears in his eyes, Harald had told Rollo how he had made the great sacrifice: fearing that the baby, as a child of mixed blood, would also be a target for the mob’s fury, he had made his beloved daughter and her son flee the overheated, dangerous city, sending them, with only a servant woman for company, far away to the only kin he had.

You saved my life, old man , Rollo thought. And as you nursed me back to health and strength, you opened your heart and shared your soul with me.

He’d had little to offer in return, but what he did have was probably the best possible gift. The memory of that was good, and Rollo gave it free rein.

He had said to the old man, ‘Be comforted. Agathe’s long voyage won’t be in vain.’

As he had heard the words, Harald’s face lit up. ‘Members of my family survive?’ he whispered tentatively, as if it were almost too much to hope for.

‘Indeed they do, and they are thriving,’ Rollo said gently. He described Lassair and her family, striving to remember all the names. ‘Your sister Cordeilla is dead -’ he heard the big man gasp, the small sound quickly suppressed – ‘but she lived to a good age, revered and loved by her family.’

‘When did she die?’ Harald asked, his voice shaking.

Rollo searched his memory for the detail. ‘Two years ago. She’s buried on the secret island.’

There was a long silence. Rollo, reluctant to break it, gave the man the time he seemed to need, and, eventually, he raised his head and looked straight at Rollo. His eyes were full of tears.

‘She’d have had two of her brothers there to keep her company, if I’d tried harder,’ he said. ‘But it was all such a mess after the king fell. The men had flocked to him, protecting him, driving forward with him, and the heaps of corpses were thickest around him.’ He bowed his head, his face working with emotion. ‘I know Sigbehrt was right beside him,’ he said quietly, ‘because I heard him shout that great cry he always gave when his blood was up, and I saw him standing, so tall and proud – they used to call him the Mighty Oak – just before he was cut down. And, wherever Sigbehrt was, Sagar wouldn’t be far away. He was an archer, really,’ he went on, some of the life returning to his face as he became swept up in his memories, ‘and his nickname was Sureshot. But when it came to close fighting, he was pretty handy at that, too, and anyway, since he was older than Sigbehrt – the oldest of the three of us – he reckoned it was his job to look after Sigbehrt and me.’ He chuckled. ‘It always looked so comical, seeing Sagar fussing round Sigbehrt, when Sigbehrt was a head and a half taller and twice as broad.’