Bracelet of Bones (20 page)

“It’s the good and bad Red Ottar did in his life that matters to the gods,” Solveig declared. “Isn’t it? How can Edith’s death help him? How can it?”

Slothi agreed with Solveig. “It’s wrong,” he said. “It’s against God’s law. The Bible tells us ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but Edith’s blameless.”

“You said nothing,” Solveig accused him. “Not one word.”

Slothi nodded. “You were brave,” he said. “Maybe braver than you realize.”

“I said what I felt,” Solveig replied.

“Exactly,” said Slothi. “But Solveig, you must learn what you can do. And can’t do.”

Solveig didn’t reply.

“You can do nothing for Edith,” Slothi told her. “Accept. You have to accept. That doesn’t mean you think it’s right.”

Solveig shook her head furiously.

Then she talked to Edwin.

“I’ve seen this before,” he told her. “You haven’t.”

“What happens?” asked Solveig in a small voice.

Edwin shook his head. “There’s no need for you to know,” he said calmly. “It is foul.”

Solveig started to tremble.

“To take away a life—that’s sometimes necessary. In England as in Norway, there are laws, and to commit the worst crimes means you must die. But no, not like this. Never like this.”

“Tell me,” said Solveig, shuddering.

Edwin put his hands on both her shoulders. “Torsten and Bruni . . . the men may have heard about it,” he confided in her, “but I could see by their faces they’ve never witnessed it. Never taken part in it. If they knew what they’ve got to
do . . .” Edwin paused. “I’ll tell you again, Solveig. Beware of your own life. Beware of Bergdis.”

Solveig nodded, and Edwin raised a forefinger to her left cheek and wiped away a tear.

“The Angel of Death,” he said very deliberately.

Solveig gave a start.

“With her bracelet. Her filleting knife. You understand?”

Solveig nodded.

“You must leave her to me.”

Bergdis was the first to disembark at the island of Saint Gregorios. She marched everyone to the massive old oak tree, and there, with Edith standing next to her, she told them, “The oak tree rises, the oak tree falls. Here and now, it’s our duty to build the pyre at once, to make our sacrifice and set Red Ottar free.”

Edith gave Solveig a fond look. A lingering look.

She’s giving me her strength, thought Solveig. It should be the other way around. She swallowed loudly. My name is Sun-Strong, but I’m not.

But then Solveig saw Edith give her fellow countryman a wild look, a flicker of sheer terror, as if she could see her death and the manner of it. Edith put her hands to her throat, then slid them to her ribs.

Edwin drew in his breath. He lurched forward. He pushed his bulky body between Edith and Bergdis.

Bergdis’s eyes glittered.

“No!” said Edwin very clearly, very loudly. “Red Ottar can make his own peace with the gods.”

Bergdis hissed.

“He needs no help from this woman. This blameless woman. This loyal woman, with Red Ottar’s own baby leaping in her womb.”

Bergdis stared wildly around her. “Men!” she barked, beckoning them with both hands. “Silence him! This stranger. In the name of Red Ottar! In the name of the gods!”

“This blameless woman,” repeated Edwin, his voice rising. “Your companion. Your friend.”

Bergdis reached for her belt. She grasped her knife, but Edwin at once gripped and stayed her hand.

Then the Angel of Death screamed. She kicked Edwin’s shins; she banged her head and left fist against his broad chest.

But Edwin refused to let her go. He gritted his teeth. He tightened his grip, and she was helpless.

20

S
olveig closed her eyes.

She could see herself standing hand in hand with her father, staring into the heart of the hilltop fire. Asta and Kalf and Blubba were there, and so were a dozen fjord farmers and their families.

The fire was so fierce that Solveig felt her cheeks, her whole face, burning. The cool night air sizzled with sparkling fireflies, and the deep orange ball of the sun sat on the horizon.

Midsummer, she thought. There’s no dark. There’s all the time in the world.

Solstice. The day I love best in the place I love most—my hand wrapped inside my father’s . . .

Solveig wrinkled her nostrils at the acrid smoke.

Then the singing began. But it wasn’t the raucous chorus of fjord farmers and not their cheers and hullaballooing as the huge ball of the sun slowly bounced up from the horizon. It was chanting, the same words over and over again,
“He rises to you, he rises, we must remember him. He rises to you, he rises, we must remember him.”

Solveig squeezed her father’s hand; she dug her nails into his palm.

“Ow!” said a voice.

Then Solveig opened her eyes and at once recalled where she was and who was singing. Edwin frowned at her and wrung his right hand.

The dark wood smoke rose in a steady column from the pyre, and Red Ottar’s companions stood in a circle around his burning body. Solveig stood to Edwin’s right, Edith to his left; Bergdis was kneeling on the other side of the pyre.

“Red Ottar!” exclaimed Torsten. “I’d gladly have sailed with you on many journeys. My first journey with you was my last.”

Many of the companions joined hands. They stepped around the funeral pyre, chanting again, “He rises to you, he rises, we must remember him.”

“Red Ottar told me the truth,” Bruni declared, “and that’s true friendship. Nothing’s worse than a liar, and no true friend tells you only what you want to hear.”

Once again all the companions except for Bergdis sidestepped and shuffled. “He rises to you, he rises, we must remember him.”

“Red Ottar!” Odindisa called out. “Quick to anger. Quick to forgive. You were always forthright, fair in your blood, fair in your bones.”

“He rises to you, he rises, we must remember him.”

When it was her turn, Edith said simply, “Red Ottar! I didn’t care to die with you, but I came to care for you.” Then she placed her hands over her womb. “Red Ottar,” she sobbed, “now and in days to come, you’re with me, quick and dead.”

Around and around. “He rises to you, he rises, we must remember him.”

“Red Ottar!” said Solveig. “I’ve cut these words for you.” She tossed into the flames a wafer of ash wood incised with runes. “Red Ottar!” she repeated, and now she was singing. “Clear-minded. Fair-minded. You honored your word. You barked at me and made me strong. My foul-weather friend.”

“He rises to you, he rises, we must remember him.”

Bergdis was so wild with fury, so racked with pain, she was unable to praise Red Ottar. All she wanted to do was to pour venom and gall on the heads of her companions, but what she actually did was glare and grind her teeth and say nothing. Not one word.

The thick gray plume of smoke rising from the pyre began to waver and wobble.

Once more the companions rubbed their smarting eyes and joined hands. “He rises to you, he rises, we must remember him.”

Bergdis tore at her own face. She gouged it. She screamed, and her scream cut Solveig to the heart.

One by one, Red Ottar’s companions sat down on the grass around the pyre.

They had unlocked their thoughts; they had poured out the feeling in their hearts. But now, as the day’s light faded,
there was silence. Silence and, hidden in the ancient oak tree, one crow cawing.

For a long time, the companions sat staring into the pyre.

The acrid smoke dwindled. At last it thinned to no more than a silver stream.

Heaven swallowed it. The air began to clear.

When Solveig and her companions slowly straggled back to their boat, they saw little orange-green balls bobbing all over the horseshoe harbor.

How strange, thought Solveig. First I saw the heavy orange solstice sun, and now I can see hundreds of little suns in the water.

“Oranges,” Mihran told Solveig.

“Are they markers for nets?”

The river pilot shook his head and spoke with his hands.

“You can eat them?” exclaimed Solveig.

“Very tasty,” Mihran told her. “Sweet, bittersweet.”

Solveig pursed her lips and sniffed at her grubby tunic and bare arms. “Like that smoke,” she said. “Oranges . . . why are they in the water, then?”

“Rotten,” replied Mihran. “One goes green and soft, then many more go green.”

“It’s the same with apples,” Solveig told him. “In Norway we say a person’s a rotten apple.”

“Better get rid,” the pilot said. “These oranges were going from Miklagard to Kiev, Novgorod, maybe. They were thrown overboard.”

“And we’re going to Miklagard,” Solveig said, “but not Red Ottar. Not Vigot.”

“Who will come?” asked Mihran. “Who not?”

“What do you mean?” asked Solveig, startled.

It wasn’t long before the arguing began.

“How long do we have to hole up here?” Bruni demanded. “Let’s get the wind in our sail.”

“That’s what I think,” Edwin agreed.

“Onward!” exclaimed Bruni. Then he turned to Mihran. “How far is it, did you say?”

“Three four days to the Black Sea,” Mihran replied. “After that, seven days most to Miklagard.”

Solveig bit on her lower lip. Eleven days, she thought.

Torsten searched the faces of his companions one by one and then cleared his throat. “No!” he said in a loud voice.

Everyone looked at him.

“I’m not going on.”

“Why not?” asked Bruni.

“And neither is this boat.”

“Who are you to say?”

Torsten drew himself up. “I’m the helmsman,” he replied.

“That’s just what you are,” Bruni retorted. “The helmsman, not the skipper.”

“We’re in great difficulty,” declared Torsten. “Red Ottar. Sineus. We’re two men short.”

“It’s downhill from here,” asserted Bruni. “Mihran says so.”

“He said it was downhill when we reached the Dnieper,” Torsten replied. “We’ve already overstepped the mark. Only
a fool oversteps it even further.” The helmsman turned to Slothi. “Well?”

Slothi tugged nervously at his wispy mustache. “We can’t go on unless we all agree,” he said, “but we can’t go back unless we all agree.”

“In which case,” the helmsman said, “we’ll be tied up here forever. Bergdis?”

“Back,” snapped Bergdis without raising her eyes.

“We’ve come this far for one reason,” mumbled Slothi. “We’ve come to trade. That’s why we’ve come. But . . .”

Odindisa waved his words overboard. “Torsten’s right. We’re in danger. As it is, we may never get home.”

“I want to go with Solveig,” piped Brita.

“Think again,” Bruni urged them. “We’re Vikings, on the doorstep of Miklagard. The best market on middle-earth. Isn’t that true, Mihran?”

“True,” said the river pilot.

“Life’s for living!” declared Bruni. But then he looked at Bergdis and the rest of the crew and wished he hadn’t said that. “To go forward may be dangerous,” he added, “but it’s dangerous to go back. The cataracts. The Pechenegs.”

“It’s dangerous to keep company with you,” Torsten said in an even voice. “That much I know.”

Bruni snorted.

“No!” declared Torsten for a second time. And then, in his ringing voice, “I’m not going on.”

“Well, now,” said Edwin with a thoughtful smile, as if he were playing a game of chess and trying to work out a tricky move. “I have to go on myself. I’ve no choice. I’m carrying a message for King Yaroslav.”

“Someone can carry it for you,” said Torsten.

Edwin shook his head. “I fear not,” he said ruefully. “I am the messenger and I’m the message.”

“All your fine words,” the helmsman told him. “One day you’ll tie yourself in knots.”

“But Sineus,” said Edwin, “I think he’ll do best to stay here. When I get back, I’ll help him . . . hobble back to Kiev.”

“Well, now, Solveig?” asked Torsten.

Solveig returned his gaze. “I’d like us all to be able to agree,” she replied. “I do wish we could. You know, all of you, why I’ve come. Do you think I can turn back now?”

“So that’s three of us,” said Edwin.

“Three?”

“Where I go, Edith goes,” the Englishman declared in his reasonable, good-humored way.

Solveig’s heart lifted. “Praise Freyja!” she exclaimed.

Edith gave Solveig a look of relief, exhaustion, sisterliness.

“Four,” announced Mihran. “Four of us. I will help you, Solveig. That’s what I promised you in Ladoga.”

“You did,” said Solveig.

“You’re not telling me you’re going to Miklagard just because of Solveig,” Odindisa accused Mihran. “You’re Edwin’s guide. The king has already paid you.”

Mihran chose to ignore Odindisa. Instead, he informed everyone that he knew the harbor men on the island and could recruit a river pilot and volunteers to help Torsten get the boat back to Kiev.

“I can’t go on without this boat and without our merchandise,” said Bruni angrily, “but I don’t want to go back. Back through the cataracts! Back through the arrow storm!”

Odindisa held up her fists. “Will you two men hold fast to your promises to Red Ottar? Can you not keep the peace? ‘We must remember him’—that’s what you chanted. ‘We must remember him.’ If you want to honor Red Ottar, do as he asked of you and make peace. At least until we all get home.”

Torsten gave Bruni a level look and rubbed his chin.

“The feud’s yours, not mine,” Bruni muttered.

Quite late that evening, Mihran walked right around Saint Gregorios with Solveig, Edith, and Edwin, and Brita came too. “I’ve hired a small boat for us,” he told them.

“Already!” exclaimed Solveig.

The river pilot snapped his fingers. “Very small. Just a tree trunk, hollowed out. A little sail.”

“It’s all we need,” said Edwin.

“You, Edwin, you help me paddle and sail her.”

Edwin put his hands together in prayer.

“Joke!” said Mihran. “You, Solveig.”

“Yes,” Solveig said eagerly. “Yes, I will. Can we see her?”

“Too dark,” said Mihran, waving his arms. “It’s that one over there. Tucked in at the end, next to the bigger one. Yous see in the morning.”

“When can we leave?” Edith asked him.

“Dawn,” said Mihran.

“Tomorrow!” exclaimed Solveig. “But I wanted to carve a rune stone to Red Ottar.”

“The sooner the better.” Mihran narrowed his eyes. “Bergdis!” he muttered.

“Where?” asked Edith, alarmed.

“Here,” replied Mihran, “she is everywhere.”

“I’m watching her,” said Edwin.

“You sleep on shore,” Mihran told him and Edith. “Somewhere safe. But now, go aboard. Make your farewells.”

Aboard again, Solveig pulled out her bag of bones from her chest and just squeezed the bottom of it to check that her gold brooch was there. She wrapped up her bits and pieces of grubby clothing inside her reindeer skin and put her hand to her throat and fingered the glass bead Oleg had given her. Then she looked lovingly around her.

This boat, she thought. I know every inch of her, and how she moves, and the sounds she makes. What will happen to her without Red Ottar? Who will love her as he did?

I think he cared more for this boat than for any of us. How proud he was when he showed me around and slapped and stroked her. Once, I saw him standing alone in the bows, talking to her.

Edith told me that Red Ottar had no children, and that’s why he was so glad about their baby. So who will own the boat now? Slothi and Bruni? Not if Torsten has any say in it.

While Solveig was standing and thinking in the half dark, Torsten approached her. She knew it was he by the way he walked. Even when the boat was tied up, he rolled along as if he expected the deck to lurch and shudder at any moment.

“Torsten!” she said, and she put a hand on his left arm.

Torsten waited. Around them, the warm night air breathed lightly.

“I’ll come back to Sigtuna.”

“With us?” exclaimed Torsten.

“No, no! I mean . . . after.”

Torsten grunted.

“When you told me you’d sailed east with my father, I knew it was an omen. Like a red sky at night. That’s when I believed the fates were on my side.”

“The fates blew us together,” the helmsman observed, “and now they blow us apart.”

“Tomorrow, at dawn,” Solveig said.

“So soon?” said Torsten. “Well, it’s better that way. This is a sorrowful place. None of us has any reason to stay.”

Then he wrapped Solveig in a bear hug, and when she stepped back from it, she told him, “You’ve been . . . well, my guardian. Almost my boat father. I hope that you and my blood father will meet again one day.”

Then Mihran joined them, and Solveig listened while he told Torsten about finding four men willing to join the crew.

“And a river pilot,” Mihran told him. “They’ll come to see you early in the morning. Now I tell you what you pay them.”

“Ah!” said Torsten. “Slothi can count better than I can. Slothi!” he called out. “Come over here.”