Two Ravens (11 page)

He pushed her hand violently away; the three courtiers by the wall shrieked with laughter. The man-woman smiled disdainfully at him and said a long sentence of French that set the other men to roaring with laughter. Bjarni stood lump-footed, his hands at his sides. His face was hot. The woman sauntered away from him, swinging her hips, and gave him a coy look. The courtiers slapped their knees and doubled up over their giggling.

Bjarni stared at them, his blush cooling in his cheeks; he began to be curious. They glared back, taking offense. The woman said something in a honeyed voice and the others laughed obediently. Several other men came into the room.

These were just as strange to Bjarni, three men in middle or ripe age, dressed in black with brimless black caps on their heads. Their beards and the sides of their hair were braided. The first of them spoke in French to the courtiers.

The woman replied. The newcomer glanced at Bjarni and nodded to him and turned back to the courtiers, and they spoke. Bjarni went to the door and down the stairs.

While he was in the yard the three older men in black came down after him, and the leader of them approached him.

“Are you here to see the king? He is hunting. He will be back by nightfall,” he said in English. “Are you not the sorcerer ?”

“I am not a sorcerer,” Bjarni said.

The spare, pale face stretched into a pleasant smile. “Not even a Pythagorean? I am Aaron. You are perhaps Norse?”

Bjarni told him his name and homeland.

“Iceland,” Aaron said. “I see the king’s interest in you. Aside from your remarkable feat with the wolf. I have heard that in Iceland the summer sun never sets, and the winter sun never rises. Is that so?”

“It goes down and comes right up again,” Bjarni said. “The king’s interest. He has an odd selection of interests.”
 

“Let no one tell you about the king. I for one will say no word against him. He has protected my people. The Christians may be put off by that.”

“You are not Christian?” Bjarni asked.

The old man’s look sharpened, intent. “I am a Jew.” He motioned toward his black cap and the dressing of his hair.

“I ask you to pardon my ignorance,” Bjarni said.

“You may lose your ignorance here,” said Aaron. “Are you not a Christian?”

Bjarni marked the crowded yard around them and made no answer. He said, “Thank you. I shall heed your advice.” He put out his hand. Aaron touched it with a cold white palm. His hands were smooth and small. He and his friends moved away across the yard, and Bjarni returned to the inn.

THAT NIGHT, when Bjarni was half-asleep, someone slid into the bed with him. At first he thought it was Gifu.

A hard wet mouth came down on his. He smelled verbena. With a swing of his arm he flung the stranger out of the bed.

The room was dark; he could hear Gifu in the corner laughing. The stranger, babbling in French, tried to reach the door. Bjarni got him by the hair, threw open the little window over the bed, and stuffed the Norman out headfirst.

Wailing, the Norman fell down to the yard below. Bjarni stood on the bed to look after him. Gifu popped up beside him. Half a dozen men were gathered in the yard. The one who had crawled into bed with Bjarni was sitting in the mud under the window. The others fell on him, shrieking, and hauled him away across the dirt to a horse-trough and threw him in.

Gifu laughed again. Bjarni shook his head. “I don’t think these people have any shame.”

“You are nothing but a farmer.”

Down in the yard the Normans were dunking one another successively in the horse-trough. Bjarni pulled the shutter fast over the window and went to bed again, but their screams and yells and laughter kept him awake for another hour.

The next day was rainy, and the king did not hunt. He called Bjarni to play chess. Bjarni won the first two games. The king beat him in the third, and shook Bjarni’s hand and took the silver ring from his finger and gave it to him. The Norse priest was there; they spoke through him.

“It is noised about Lincoln that you have certain powers,” the king said.

Bjarni was setting up the chessmen again on the board. He said, “All lies.”

“You need not put me off,” the king said. He leaned on one elbow over the chess-game, his eyes darting from the men to Bjarni’s face. “In my kingdom no man suffers for what he honestly believes. You must have seen how I have gathered unusual men around me.”

“I have seen it,” Bjarni said. “But I am being honest. I have no powers, only the strength of my back.”
 

“You disparage yourself,” the king said. “What think you of Jesus Christ?”

As the Norse priest passed on the words, he screwed up his mouth, as if he tasted poison. Bjarni said, “I know little of Christ. Of the Christians, I know a little more, enough not to speak against their god in a place where there are so many of them.”

He put his queen’s pawn forward, to distract the king with the game. The king put out his same pawn.

“What think you of Moses, and of Mohammed?”

“They are only names to me, names in old stories.”

The king’s eyes gleamed. He said, “In my opinion, they are all frauds, every one, beguiling the weak-minded with their talk of salvation.”

The priest spoke that unwillingly. Bjarni moved out his queen’s knight. “If you believe so, then it is true, for you.”

“What do you believe?”

“I believe in castling as soon as possible,” Bjarni said, “and in attacking on the king’s side.”

The king laughed. The game was well begun, and they turned their attention to it. There was no more talk of gods. Bjarni won the game. For that, the king gave him no gifts.

AFTERWARD, on the stairs going down, Bjarni came on the Norse priest; he said, “Why do you let him speak such calumnies of your god through you?”

“Ah, you horse-eating pagan,” the Norseman said. “It is your fault.”

They went down together without speaking again. Then at the door the priest turned to Bjarni.

“He is the king. Only a fool denies the king. You ought to remember that.”

He left the tower ahead of Bjarni. They separated, going across the wide crowded yard in the rain.

GIFU HAD TAKEN to straying around the city while Bjarni was at the king’s court. One evening she did not come back to the inn.

He went to the reeking stableyard. Her horse was gone. In the late twilight, when the streets were thronged with people coming in from the fields outside the city, he climbed the hill to the Norman tower.

At the back of the tower, above the midden, and far from the great door where the king went in, there was a pen where the city lawmen kept prisoners. Bjarni let himself through the gate. Above the reek of the midden, he smelled hot metal. Ahead, beside the pen, three men were standing at a little fire heating a brand.

The pen was made of withies. Inside it half a dozen people stood linked arm to arm with rope. One groaned; another swore; a third wept; a fourth argued with someone who was not there. The fifth was Gifu.

She saw him. She rushed toward him; the rope caught her. “Bear,” she cried. “Bear, they took my horse.”

He drew his knife and cut her free. The three lawmen left the brand in the fire and strode toward him. One drew his sword. Bjarni took her by the hand and started toward the gate.

In loud French the three men challenged him, blocking his way. The man with the sword wore a coat of iron links over his shoulders. Bjarni stood a head taller than the tallest of them.

Gifu hugged his arm to her side. “They said I must have stolen the horse—tell them we got it honestly. Make them give me back my horse.”

He looked around at the three men, ranged in a half-circle across his path. He clenched his fist. One by one their voices stilled, and their faces lengthened with doubt. The sword gleamed in the faint light from the fire. He stepped toward them, and the man with the sword backed away. One step behind, the others retreated after him. Bjarni led Gifu away around the tower.

GIFU NAGGED HIM to get her horse back. He kept her close by him, for fear she would be taken again. He had tired of Lincoln and thought of going on to London. He had been gone from home more than half the year. He dreamt of Hiyke, but in the dream he could not see her face, and Hoskuld stood behind her.

The king fell sick. He sent for Bjarni.

The tower was silent. The air had an unhealthy smell. In the king’s bedchamber the king’s friends stood solid against the walls. Red William lay propped on cushions, his hair combed over his shoulders. The cup in his hands was jeweled with rock crystal. He saw Bjarni above the heads of the others and summoned him to the bed.

The Norse priest was not there. The king lay back on his pillows and called in a fretful voice. His minions stirred and shifted their feet, and one came forward through the others, sliding by Bjarni to the king’s side.

It was the man who dressed as a woman. Now he wore men’s clothes, but his face was painted with red cheeks and lips and dark eyelashes. He spoke in English.

“The king is mysteriously sick. You have the gift—that is known. How may we break the curse?”

The king’s blue eyes bulged; he looked gaunt. Bjarni looked him over, wondering if he were truly cursed. “He does not look fey to me,” he said. Inside the collar of the king’s nightshirt a string of hide encircled his neck. Bjarni reached down and lifted the string. He drew a piece of iron, a cross, and a clove of garlic out of the king’s nightshirt.

Some of the men behind him gasped. The king caught hold of his hand.

Bjarni laughed. “Tell him he is sinking under the weight of his faith.” He let Red William have the charms again, and the king stuck them away under his shirt. The high color tinged his face.

Bjarni said, “Tell him that he will not die in the straw. That is marked all over him. Who can ask more than that?”

“His grace says you are impudent. He does not understand you. Make yourself plain.”

The king looked angry. With his hand Bjarni saluted him and went out of the room.

THE KING WAS WELL AGAIN the next day. He called Bjarni into the tower and thanked him for destroying the curse.

“I did nothing,” Bjarni said. “The king saved himself.”

The king put a bag of money on the table before him. He said, “There is a ship at Grimsby to take you back to Iceland.”

“Thank you,” Bjarni said, surprised. “You are generous to me.”

The king smiled at him. The Norse priest was translating for them. He said, “His grace says that you have asked nothing of him, and therefore he knows that you are to be trusted. He wishes you to make his name known in your country and to tell your friends and others of the power and the wealth of the King of England. Will you do so?”

That seemed easy enough, and Bjarni agreed to it. They were in the same small room where Bjarni had first spoken to Red William. Two little pages stood by. The king gestured to them, and they brought a beautiful long coat of velvet and lay it on Bjarni’s shoulders, and they put on him a fancy belt and good boots. The king rose in his place. One of the pages brought him a sword.

“Kneel,” said the king.

Bjarni said, “First tell me what this is all about.”

“His grace will knight you and accept you into his service as his man.”

Bjarni began to take off the coat. The king lowered the sword, his face ruddy. Bjarni said, “I am sorry to disappoint him, but I have never knelt down to anybody, except my father.”

The king leaned on the sword. He shouted something at Bjarni, which the priest translated with a smile.

“You will have no ship. You will have to swim back to Iceland.”

Bjarni shrugged. He slung the coat over the table, next to the bag of money.

The king’s blazing blue eyes dimmed. He spoke sharply to a page, who went out. The priest knotted his fingers together. The king sat down again and fixed his gaze on Bjarni. There was a silence.

At last the king spoke. “His grace says that he should have expected this of you. Perhaps to a sorcerer wealth and power are so easy they mean nothing. Take the gifts. Take the ship. The word of such a man as you will have great weight in Iceland; he would rather be spoken of honestly by you than praised by a thousand sycophants.”

Bjarni stood a moment, wondering what to say, and the remaining page brought the coat and helped him put it on again. The page who had gone returned with wine and cups. The king drank from a cup and passed it to Bjarni, who also drank, although he knew nothing of the rite. He thanked the king many times, took the bag of money, and left.

When he reached the inn again and went up the stairs, the door to his room was shut, and through it he heard two voices, Gifu’s and a man’s. Gifu was giggling. Bjarni went to the end of the corridor, where there was a window, and stood looking out over the thatches of the town. Eventually a strange man came out of the room behind him, doing the laces of his shirt.

Seeing Bjarni he stammered some words of French and hurried away to the stairs. Bjarni went into the room.