Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

‘Fourteen obols.’ The line of his eyes became rounder, watching me carefully.

‘Too expensive. Do you have anything else to sell me?’

He blinked. ‘Alas, nothing but what you see. The guild does not allow me any more.’

Wincing slightly at the dank feel, I lifted the dead stoat in my hand and weighed it thoughtfully. As I studied it, my right hand strayed to the pouch on my belt and pulled out a golden nomisma.

‘I do not need your rats,’ I told him, dangling the pelt by the scruff of its neck and discarding it. Asgard’s eyes ignored it, fixed on my right hand. ‘I need knowledge. Information. An observant man in a crowded market must witness many things.’

‘Some things. When I am not occupied with the needs of my trade.’

I picked out another fur and swung it in my hand. ‘Are these local furs?’

I could see that he did not like the meandering direction of my questions, that the doubt in his eyes was turning to suspicion, but he could not keep from reciting his sales chatter. ‘Local? Indeed not. They are brought by the mighty Rus, from the wild forests of the north, down great rivers and across the Euxine sea to grace your garments. You will not find pelts of a higher quality anywhere in a thousand miles.’

Though I guessed the words were seldom used, they still sounded tired and hollow.

‘You clearly know their provenance well. Are you one of these Rus?’

‘No,’ he admitted carefully. ‘But they are my kin. I am from the kingdom of England — Britannia, as some of you call it, an island just beyond the Russian shores.’

‘Where the holy Emperor, may he live a thousand years, recruits his bodyguard?’

‘The same place. In fact, I served the Emperor myself, once, as one of his Varangians, carrying my axe in his service. He chose me for my honesty.’

‘Truly?’ I wiped a lock of hair out of my eyes. ‘I am looking for a man who knows of Varangians. Or rather, a man who seeks to know more of them. A monk who travels the city bargaining with guardsmen past and present. Have you seen such a man?’

The gold coin I had been holding slipped from my fingers and landed noiselessly on a pile of fur. I did not pick it up. It agitated Asgard; he cast his eyes down, then to one side, and fidgeted with the clasp of his cloak. Always, though, his gaze leapt back to the glittering nomisma in his tray.

‘Why should I know that?’ he croaked. ‘There are many Varangians in this city, and many who have left after a lifetime of loyal and honourable service. Who would come to a distant corner of a stinking market, a space which even the whore-born guilds do not value enough to rent for more than an obol, to ask questions of a luckless merchant?’

‘A man who placed great value on what that merchant might tell him,’ I answered. ‘As I do.’

Two more gold coins dropped before him.

‘No,’ the old man whispered. ‘No. I have not seen your monk.’

‘Yes you have. You led him to your old comrade Aelric, and revealed some terrible secret which compelled Aelric to betray everything he valued. Do not deny it.’

Asgard was shuffling back now, glancing about for a path to escape. I followed him, tipping over his tray and scattering his pelts over the wet stone.

I pulled out my knife. ‘I will know what you have said and done, Asgard. You can take either gold for it, or steel. Do you know a Varangian captain named Siguard?’

Asgard’s thin jaw opened wider. ‘Sigurd? He is a berserker, a madman. He would kill his own mother if she stepped too near the Emperor for his liking. I served under him in the guard.’

‘And now, through the treachery you concocted with Aelric, you have ruined him. If you do not tell me what you have done, he will come with his axe to make you answer.’

All this time I had been advancing on Asgard as he retreated; now, he found himself with his back to a broad column. I watched him squirm against it, and stood ready to strike if he tried to run.

But running was no more in Asgard’s character than fighting: there was no strength in his time-ravaged limbs and he knew it.

‘He will kill me,’ he pleaded. ‘The monk swore he would kill me if I told any other.’

‘If the monk has finished with you, he will probably kill you anyway. At least I will give you a chance to live.’

‘But I did no wrong. I did not betray Aelric — he did that himself. I never murdered my countrymen, or put innocent families to death, or burned homes and crops and poisoned wells so that the land would lie empty for a generation. Not I, no. Why do you point your blade at me, when it is Aelric’s neck which should feel its edge?’

‘Aelric’s neck has felt its last blow.’ My words were short, brusque — what were these horrors he ascribed to the genial Varangian? ‘Do not try to save yourself by blackening the names of the dead.’

‘If he is dead, then that is the least justice he was due. A man lives by his loyalties, and he had none.’

‘Then your head should join his, for if you conspired with the monk then you betrayed the Emperor just as much as Aelric.’

‘The Emperor?’ Asgard gave a horrible, cackling laugh. ‘What do I care for the Emperor? For some years he paid me to serve him, and then he did not. But Aelric did not betray some jumped-up Greek — he betrayed his own people. His real kin. The English.’ Somehow, through his obvious fear, Asgard managed to contort a vicious smile.

‘Aelric fought with your king against the invaders.’ I remembered his confusing tales of Normans and Norsemen. ‘Was that a lie?’

The fur-merchant shook his head. ‘It was true enough. But what he did not tell you was that three years after the invasion, when the Bastard conqueror came north to wreck the land, Aelric’s lord supported him, and Aelric with him. There were more than Normans up there — Englishmen turned on their neighbours too. Some say they were the worst, the fiercest. Aelric always held that he did it because his thane ordered him, but who is to tell the truth of that?’

‘Aelric spoke of this? To the Varangians?’

Again that awful sneer. ‘Not to the Varangians. If you so much as admired a Norman whore you’d be out of their ranks with your head cracked open. But he spoke of it to me, on the long nights during our flight from England. He used to wake up crying in the night remembering the things he had done, needing to confess. They were ugly stories, too, but I kept them secret. Then they threw me out of the barracks and he did not raise a word to protect me, after I’d kept him safe all those years. So when the monk came to my stall, asking if I knew any of the guards who were disloyal, or might be, it did not take much of his gold to draw out Aelric’s name.’

‘And then you took this monk to Aelric’s house? You forced him to betray the Emperor?’

‘I forced him to do nothing. I persuaded him to share a drink with me. When he came, I introduced him to the monk. The monk explained that if Aelric served him faithfully, he might die but his wife would live in comfort; otherwise, he would die in ignominy, his past treachery revealed, and his wife would have to whore herself to Normans simply to live. Once Aelric had agreed, and the monk had rewarded me for my work, I left them to their own business.’

‘Where was this meeting?’ So great was my anticipation that I moved closer, almost pricking Asgard with the point of my knife.

He whimpered, and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his cloak. ‘At a tavern near the harbour. He arrived after us, alone. I never saw him after that.’

‘So you do not know where he can be found? Did he not leave instructions in case you thought of another victim from whom he could extort disloyalty?’