Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

She was old, at least as old as he, and the deeply-shadowed furrows of her face added still more years. Her ragged hair was grey and untied, hanging in frayed bunches, and her skin shone with tears. Dressed only in a woollen shift, she fell back onto a stool and gestured me to take a bench. I reached out a hand to stroke her arm, but she recoiled in loathing and huddled herself away.

‘Did Sigurd kill him?’ she asked.

The question startled me, so much that I could do little but flounder for a minute before admitting: ‘Yes.’ And then, struggling to impose myself: ‘Why should you think so?’

‘My husband always feared it, that Sigurd would find his secret and murder him in a fit of rage. Every day in the last ten years, since Sigurd joined the Varangians, Aelric feared him.’

She scratched her scalp through her thin hair, and shivered as though a draught had blown over her.

‘Why did Aelric fear him?’ I asked. ‘What secret could he have kept that would have inflamed Sigurd so? Was his purpose with the Emperor always. .?’

‘The Emperor?’ Aelric’s wife — Freya, I remembered was her name — gave a bitter laugh. ‘What did Aelric care for the Emperor? Or Sigurd, for that matter?’

‘Sigurd loves the Emperor like a father.’

‘Love?’ Freya spat on the floor. ‘None of you act from love — but from hate. Sigurd does not love the Emperor; he hates the Normans, and with a merciless passion. Why else would he not forgive Aelric, who brought him into the Varangians and was like an older brother to him?’

‘But what had Aelric done?’ I was bewildered; it was like trying to knead oil, reasoning with this woman.

She ignored me. ‘He knew it was returning. So did I. Ever since Asgard appeared at our door three weeks ago it haunted him. Aelric, who served the Emperor long after most of his companions would have hung up their armour and taken a farm in the country. Will Sigurd still be standing his watch when he is as old as Aelric? Never.’

‘Who was this Asgard? Another Varangian?’

‘He came three weeks ago, and Aelric changed. His smile vanished, and his shoulders sagged; he would hardly eat. At first he did not speak of it, but I knew, for what else could Asgard have to talk to him about? Then Asgard called again and took him away: to meet his friends, he said. And now he is dead, the most loyal man who ever carried an axe. My husband.’

I leaned closer, trying to find some thread to guide me through the fog of her babble. ‘And what was this secret of Aelric’s that Asgard wanted to talk of?’

Freya straightened, defiance kindling within her. ‘Why should I tell his secrets to a stranger, the crow who croaks his death?’

‘Because all our safety depends on it — and yours especially. If you do not tell me others will come, and they will not be as gentle as I. Before he died, Aelric betrayed the Emperor and the Varangians, and that will not be forgiven lightly.’ I had not wanted to touch on Aelric’s treachery, and it had been a sound instinct, for Freya plunged her face into her hands at the sound of it.

‘My husband was an honest man who served his masters faithfully,’ she sobbed. ‘If they were devious, or evil, or made him defy his nature, then God will judge them , not him. And you call yourself gentle — you, cursing his name to me while my tears are warm, before he is even laid in the ground. Get out of my house, and allow me my grief without poisoning it.’

‘I cannot. I must know. .’

‘Out! Out!’

She would not be consoled, certainly not by me, and until then I would get no sense from her. I left her to her tears, and hurried back to the walls. It seemed the night had lasted an eternity, but Sigurd was still there, pacing the ramparts and scanning the dark horizon with vacant eyes. Neither of us offered a greeting.

‘Do you know a man named Asgard?’ I asked. ‘Maybe a Varangian, or someone from the palace.’

Sigurd’s scowl, if it were possible, deepened. ‘I know Asgard,’ he grunted. ‘He was a Varangian, until a few years ago. I expelled him myself for stealing from us, thieving in the barracks.’

‘Did he know Aelric?’

‘They escaped England at the same time, and arrived in the city together: Asgard and Aelric, their wives, a few others. Most are dead now.’

‘But not Asgard?’

Sigurd raised his hands in ignorance. ‘I could not care. I heard that he kept a stall in the fur market, selling mangy pelts and skins that the Rus traders could not persuade any others to take. Maybe he’s still there, maybe not. He was a worm, and we were well rid of him.’

‘He did not keep in contact with any of your men?’

‘They would have spurned him. Stealing from your messmates is like stealing from the church — except that we have no obligation to forgive. Why all this curiosity? Do you want a cheap shawl for your daughter?’

‘He visited Aelric several times in recent weeks. Freya blamed him for a change in Aelric’s mood, and I think he may have carried messages for the monk.’

Sigurd snorted. ‘The monk? The monk is a phantom, Demetrios, an apparition. The sort of man you blame when there are no other excuses.’ He paused, pondering this. ‘Asgard, on the other hand — he’s real enough. Seek him in the market.’

The furrier’s market was a dismal place next morning. A fine rain had been falling since dawn, and however hard the vendors tried to keep their wares under awnings the pelts still grew mottled and bedraggled. Only the richer merchants escaped, those whom the guild favoured with places under the eaves of the stoa: they sat shivering at their tables, rarely rousing themselves to tout for custom. The stink of treated hide drifted down from the far end of the market, where the tanners and leather workers kept their stalls, and with the mouldering air of animal carcasses as well it was no wonder there were few buyers.

Rain trickled down the back of my neck and soaked the shoulders of my tunic, while my boots grew ever more like sponges underfoot. The faces of dead animals stared plaintively from every rack and trestle: rabbits and hares hung by their ears, long-snouted wolves piled above each other, deer whose antlers had already been sold to the ivory-carvers, and — on one stall — an enormous bear mounted on a pole.

I stopped at several stalls to ask after Asgard, and received a predictable pattern of replies. He was on the west side of the market, one man claimed; no, the north insisted his neighbour. Perhaps he had given up his stall altogether and abandoned the trade, suggested another, for the quality of his wares was second-rate and he rarely saw his customers twice. Some had seen him but could not remember where, and others knew of him but had not seen him that day. It was a common pattern of response, but on that mournful day, with rain constantly dripping in my eyes, it seemed more than usually futile.

Nor were the merchants amiable company. They say in the provinces that a shepherd comes to resemble his flock, and here the same was true. All the men I encountered were lumbering and hairy, with wide, untrusting faces and thick beards, some smeared with fat to keep them dry. Many must have been the bastard sons of Norse traders, and they fragmented their language with peculiar sounds which seemed to owe more to the tongues of beasts than men.

At last, though, I found my quarry. He did not warrant a shop in the stoa, nor even a covered stall in the square. He huddled in a corner in a rat-eaten fur cloak, his grey hair splayed flat across his skull and his blue eyes squinting almost shut against the rain. A tray bearing the skins of small vermin was laid out before him.

‘How much for a stoat’s pelt?’ I asked, affecting to examine his merchandise.