Bracelet of Bones (19 page)

The pilot looked around at everyone as if he were telling them the most terrible story. To begin with, Solveig couldn’t take her eyes off him, but then she pretended that she too had a mustache. She pulled at both ends, then she began to curl it. “Yous see!” she announced, mimicking Mihran’s voice, and several of the crew guffawed.

The rocky banks on either side of the river rose into sheer walls and then into high granite cliffs. The river narrowed and darkened and raced as if its very life depended on it.

Ripping, thought Solveig. Tearing. Sluicing. I can sometimes feel my blood sluicing around my own body.

Higher soared the cliffs, and when she stared up at the strip of sky, Solveig saw how bright and white it was. As if all the color has been squeezed out of it, she thought. The cliffs are getting higher and higher, and over there they’re even hanging over themselves. Down here, it’s like a gloomy, echoing passage.

Then Torsten swung the boat around upstream. Mihran jumped onto a rocky ledge, and Sineus followed him. Quickly they roped the boat to a granite stack, and the pilot told the crew to be very careful as they lowered themselves into the water.

“Just enough water,” he said. “Shallows between bank and deep stream.”

“One more time!” Odindisa cried. “Seven’s the most powerful number. Seven and nine.”

Red Ottar stripped and stood in the bows brandishing his pole as if for battle.

“Come on, Solveig!” he bawled. “River maiden!”

Solveig gave him a slow smile, cautious and then trusting.

“Golden girl!” Red Ottar pronounced.

Solveig looked at him, quite astonished.

Then Red Ottar swung himself over the bows and lowered himself into the clutching water.

“Hurry up!” he told Solveig. “We started this together, and now we’ll finish it.”

Solveig pulled her grubby woolen tunic over her head and then, throwing modesty aside, untied her sleeveless shift, rolled it up, and pulled that off as well. She followed Red Ottar into the water and took her place on the opposite side of the bows from him, nearer to the rocky ledge and the cliff.

Solveig stared out across the racing deep streams. She stared at the gloomy cliffs. Then she threw back her head. She squinted.

And up on the high, bright skyline, she saw what she saw: men and horses.

“Look!” she gasped, jabbing her pole upward.

At once a whistling arrow spit into the water just in front of the bows. Then another stabbed into the mast and stuck there, quivering.

Sineus yelped. A third arrow had passed through his left foot and pinioned it to a crevice on the rock ledge. The Slav just gaped at it, wild-eyed.

Torsten yelled and kept yelling, frantically waving to everyone to take cover.

Red Ottar raised his eyes and he roared. He roared at the Pechenegs. Then he called on Thor to save him and his companions.

The arrow went straight in through his open mouth. It pierced his windpipe, and Solveig could see the point sticking out at the top of his spine.

Red Ottar’s grip on the bows loosened. He turned toward Solveig and tried to say something, but all he could do was to blow a bubble of poppy-bright blood. Choking, he slipped into the water, and the quick, cold current shipped him downstream.

19

M
ihran took over.

He hoisted himself on his forearms, swung both legs over the gunwale, stood up on the deck, and commanded everyone to get back into the boat; he ordered Bruni and Slothi to sit to their oars. He helped Edwin drag Sineus back from the rock ledge, screaming with pain, and he instructed Torsten to steady the boat until everyone was aboard, then to push off and grab the steering paddle as soon as he had tumbled in over the stern.

At once the nearest of the swift, dark streams clutched the boat. The silken water sucked at her, straightened her up, and Solveig saw the boat quickening, quickening until she was racing between rocks and boulders. For a moment, it seemed as if she were no longer floating but flying, rapid and silent, like some great seabird, just above the surface of the water.

But then the boat slewed sideways, and Torsten dug his paddle into the stream and tried to swing her around again.

He wasn’t to know a submerged rock was lying in wait. The paddle crunched and smashed, Torsten was pitched onto his face, and the boat swung right around and was carried downstream stern first.

Then Solveig saw the river was widening. The soaring cliffs stepped back, and the water slackened. It snuffled and chuckled around them, and Solveig grasped the gunwale, light-headed.

She felt an arm being planted firmly around her shoulders. It was Edwin, and for a while the two of them stood side by side and gazed at the almost dawdling water.

“As if it had never been,” Edwin said slowly.

But they both knew it had, all of it, the arrow through Red Ottar’s windpipe, Sineus’s wound, the seventh terrifying cataract, and they knew nothing could be the same again.

Solveig turned to Edwin. “Sineus?” she asked.

“I snapped the shaft and pushed the arrow right through,” he said, gravely crossing himself. “Thy will be done.”

Ashen-faced and without further bidding from Mihran, the crew went quietly to their stations. Bruni and Slothi repositioned their chests and manned their heavy oars, Torsten lowered himself into the hold to search for his spare steering paddle, Odindisa knelt at the side of another stricken young man, Bergdis unhooked her swinging cooking pot and stared grimly into it . . .

“You were in the bows,” Edwin said to Solveig. “What happened?”

But Solveig had only just begun to tell him when they saw a body, spread-eagled, lying in the arms of an oak tree that had fallen into the river. It was Red Ottar. The Pecheneg arrow was still sticking out of his mouth.

Edwin and Solveig called out, they pointed, and it was as if they’d woken their companions from a sliding dream. Bruni and Slothi back-paddled fiercely, and Odindisa and Solveig sat to the second pair of oars. The four of them swung the boat right around again, Brita and Bard ran to the bows, and Bergdis reached out her arms and held them there as if she were a goddess welcoming Red Ottar to Asgard.

The oarsmen rammed the boat right into the heart of the tree, and the thicket of branches stayed her just as they had cradled and stayed Red Ottar’s body. Torsten and Mihran both went over the side, and, keeping their balance on the slimy trunk, they edged toward Red Ottar and grabbed him under each shoulder.

Many hands reached down, many pulled him up.

What now? thought Solveig. What next? What are we going to do?

For a while the companions stood shoulder to shoulder around their leader’s corpse. Everyone was silent. Everyone felt unguarded and uncertain. They felt naked and afraid.

“Row,” Mihran told them, “row and keep rowing. Now water is calm, but Pechenegs still . . .” Quickly he checked each bank, and so did all the crew. “We row until dark, then we’ll be safe, we can tie up.”

“We must build his pyre,” Bergdis told them that evening in a husky voice. “We must set Red Ottar free.” Then she landed a heavy, scaly hand on Edith’s left shoulder. “Poor girl!” she said.

Edith gave a start; then she gulped.

“Saint Gregorios,” announced Mihran.

“What?” asked Bergdis.

“The most holy island.”

“A Christian island?”

Mihran shook his head. “The emperor of Miklagard calls it that. It is most holy because all the Rus and the Vikings make sacrifices there.”

“Where is it?” asked Bergdis.

“Two days from here.”

Bergdis looked around at the circle of her companions.

“There’s a great oak tree,” Mihran told them. “As old as this world, almost. All travelers make sacrifices there.”

“A sacrifice of our own leader,” muttered Bruni.

And for once Torsten agreed with him. “Yes, that’s a sacrifice too many.”

“We’re like-minded, then,” said Bergdis. “We must wrap him in skins and lay him in the hold.”

“Away from the flies,” Odindisa said.

“Is it safe on the island?” Brita asked.

“No more Pechenegs,” Mihran told her. “They are behind us. All the Pechenegs are behind us.”

“But what’s ahead of us?” asked Edith, shaking her head.

Bergdis stared at her. “Our fates,” she replied.

“At such times,” said Torsten, “it’s unwise to scan the horizon. We’d do better to be sure of the next stretch.”

“From Saint Gregorios,” Mihran told them, “is only four days to reach the Black Sea, and from there . . .”

Bergdis swiped his words away. “Who says we’re going on?” she demanded. “Many of us believed it was a mistake to sail south from Kiev.” Once again, she closed her hand over Edith’s shoulder. “Torsten’s right. First things first.”

Several of the crew averted their gaze and stared at their own feet, as if they knew what she was about to say.

“I will not ask who wishes to die with Red Ottar,” announced Bergdis in a stony voice. “I will not ask . . .”

Torsten gave a heavy sigh and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“. . . because there is no choice.”

“What do you mean?” asked Solveig.

“I mean,” said Bergdis in an expressionless voice, “that Red Ottar had only one slave.”

Solveig turned to Edith. She stepped right over Red Ottar’s body.

“Your shadow!” cried Odindisa. “Keep away from him!”

Solveig gazed lovingly at Edith: her cheeks rosy as apples, her dark eyes rounded, glistening like blackberries. She thought of the baby kicking inside her.

Solveig grasped Bergdis’s right hand and removed it from Edith’s shoulder.

No one said anything. Not one word.

Solveig rounded on her companions. “Torsten! You, Bruni! Slothi!”

“Quiet, girl!” said Bergdis in a cold, rasping voice.

“Aren’t you going to stop her?” Solveig demanded. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“This is how it is,” Bergdis said. “This is how it has always been.”

“Who says so?” Solveig challenged her.

Then Brita bravely crept up to Solveig and clutched her right hand.

“Who?” wailed Solveig.

Bergdis gave Brita a freezing look. “From now on,” she told her, “you must wash Edith’s feet. You, Odindisa, you must ready her clothes for the pyre. You, men. You know how it is. Each of you must say to this . . . slave woman: ‘Tell your master this is because of my love for him.’”

Solveig listened, horrified.

“Slothi!” she screeched. “You’re a Christian. You can’t just stand by.”

“Solveig,” hissed Bergdis.

Solveig took no notice. “Edwin!” she wailed.

Edwin at once raised both hands. “You are Norsemen,” he said. “I am not.” Then he fixed Solveig with a long, calm, meaningful stare.

“Edith’s English,” said Solveig rather more calmly. “You’re English. She’s Christian and you’re Christian.”

Now Edwin gave Solveig a warning look.

“Gag her!” rasped Bergdis. “How dare you speak against me and against the gods?”

But just as no one had spoken up for Edith, no one moved against Solveig.

“Men!” said Bergdis contemptuously. “You’re not men. You’re half men.”

Still no one moved.

“Unless,” said Bergdis slowly, “Solveig wishes to take Edith’s place.”

In the branches of the fallen oak, little birds twittered.

“Or to die with her.”

“No,” said Torsten. “That’s not right. Solveig’s the daughter of a freeman; she’s not a slave.”

Bergdis thrust up her chin and turned her grisly attention back to Edith.

“Men,” she said, “you Torsten and Bruni, Slothi, Mihran . . .”

“Not me,” said Mihran.

“Edwin.”

The Englishman shook his head. “Not I,” he said.

Bergdis snorted. “Sineus! He’s groaning down in the hold. You then, Bard. Be a man! All of you, grip each other’s hands so the slave woman can stand on them. I’ll give her the words to say.”

The three men and Bard did as Bergdis ordered them, and so did Edith.

She’s like a sleepwalker, thought Solveig. Like her own ghost already.

When Edith repeated the words that Bergdis gave to her, she sounded as if her voice came from the Otherworld.

“Look!” she intoned. “I see my mother and father.”

And then: “Look! I see my master sitting in Asgard. How green it is, how beautiful. Men and young boys are sitting
there with him. Red Ottar has summoned me, so let me go and serve him.”

“Put her down!” Bergdis ordered, and Bard at once scuttled back to his mother’s side.

“What was that?” asked Solveig in a woeful voice.

“What do you think?” Bergdis retorted.

Solveig just trembled.

“She was looking from this world into the next,” Bergdis told her.

That was when Solveig saw that Bergdis was wearing the same bracelet—the one made of the bones of little fingers—that she had worn when she sacrificed the chicken after they’d escaped from the ghost ship and the night storm.

Solveig gulped and sobbed. She turned away, but Edwin caught her by the elbow.

“Comfort Edith,” he said in a low voice. “Yes, comfort her. But don’t challenge Bergdis. She’s very dangerous.”

Then the Englishman guided Solveig back to the circle standing around Red Ottar.

“Raise your eyes!” commanded Bergdis in a harsh voice. So Solveig lifted her heavy lids, but Bergdis was speaking to Edith. “Raise your eyes to Asgard, where your master awaits you.”

Edith obediently raised her eyes.

Why, thought Solveig, her heart banging in her chest, it’s not now, is it?

But then she remembered they were going to build a pyre . . . She remembered the most holy island . . . two days downstream.

Around Solveig, her companions were already beginning to go about their business. Torsten went over the side and unlashed the remains of the smashed steering paddle and fixed a new one in its place. Brita and Bard halfheartedly bailed out the hold. Edwin and Odindisa were kneeling on either side of Sineus. And before long, Bruni and Slothi pushed out the boat from its green cradle and then sat to their oars.

This life, thought Solveig. So sweet. So fearsome. So painful. What was it Edith said about expecting the worst and grasping whatever joys there are?

She stared at the dizzy little whirlpools made by the end of Slothi’s oar each time he pulled it through the water, and then she looked up at the lamb cloud almost immediately above her head. She breathed in the fragrant scent of the linden blossom, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

When Solveig went to sit in the bows, Edith was as cheerful as she was subdued.

I couldn’t be brave like that, thought Solveig. Not if I was going to die. How can she be? She can’t escape. Not in this wilderness. Where could she go? Or does she suppose we’ll be able to save her? Why did the men say nothing? Slothi’s a coward—he doesn’t believe Edith should be burned, even if the others do. But they don’t, anyhow. I think they’re afraid of Bergdis.

A cataract of thoughts tumbled and raged through Solveig’s head while Edith sat beside her and told her how she wouldn’t have to cook another meal in her life; and how she believed she would see her own husband and not
Red Ottar in the afterworld; and how she was going to ask Edwin, if ever he went back to England, to find Wulf and Emma and tell them everything that had happened; and how she knew a woman who could actually have conversations with birds. And Edith pointed out all the bride-white blossoms and blood-red berries and death-dark yew trees they passed on their way downstream.

During that day and the next, more reasonable now but no less troubled, Solveig sometimes talked quietly to her companions.

She asked Bruni, then Odindisa, and then Torsten how it could be right to sacrifice Edith. She told them she understood men died in battle for their beliefs or to follow their leader, as so many had done at Stiklestad. She said she knew women and children often got caught up in a fight between men, as Edith herself had been when Swedes raided a Danish village in England.

She said that if a man had been killed for no good reason, it was right for his family to avenge his death. But why, asked Solveig, why is it right, how can it be right to put someone to death who has done no wrong?

“How will Edith’s death help Red Ottar? He was so pleased . . . Wouldn’t he have wanted Edith to mother his child? Edith’s innocent. How can it be right?”

Again and again Solveig asked her companions, but answers came there none.