Two Ravens (10 page)

“I should not let you steal.”

She laughed. Squirming out of his grip, she ran away across the plain toward her horse.

Near the ale-shop there was a grey wolf chained to a tree. A loose ring of men stood watching it. A stout stick was bound between its jaws. The wolf lay with its head on its paws, its back to the tree. Every few moments it snarled in a low rumble like stones rolled in a keg.

“That’s the biggest wolf in England,” said a man nearby.

Bjarni had never seen a wolf before. “It looks of an ordinary size to me.”

The man strode up to him. “That wolf could take down a horse.” He was drunk, and head and shoulders shorter than Bjarni.

“I could take down a horse,” Bjarni said. “I could take down that wolf.”

“You’re mad.”

Bjarni took his wallet from his belt and jangled it.

“Mad.” The Englishman wheeled. “Hear! Listen to this—this fool says he will fight my wolf.”

The other men pressed around them. The Englishman who claimed the wolf sneered up at Bjarni.

“Now shake your purse at me.”

Bjarni opened his wallet, took out six shillings, and passed them under the Englishman’s nose.

“By yourself,” the Englishman said. “With no weapon.”

The others began to argue if it could be done. The Englishman stuck out his hand to Bjarni and they shook on the wager.

More men were crowding around the tree. Gifu had ridden her horse over behind them to watch him. The Englishman called for help. He and two others used a heavy staff with a fork at one end to pin the wolf to the ground and took the stick from between its jaws.

The wolf lunged up, throwing its weight against the staff, and knocked it aside, and the Englishmen scurried out of the way. The wolf reared against its chain. Its growls made the watching women shriek.

Smiling, the Englishman strutted over to Bjarni again. “Think once more, big man.”

Bjarni tossed his wallet over the heads of the crowd to Gifu. He hitched his belt up with his thumbs. To the Englishmen, he said, “After I go within the chain’s length of the tree, if I leave again without winning, the bet’s lost.”

“You are mad.”

“What are you doing?” Gifu cried.

Bjarni walked up to the wolf. It crouched back, baring its teeth. Its yellow eyes were like beacons. When he came within its range it flew at him. He ran past it, jumped across the swinging chain, and as the wolf wheeled to meet him gripped its fur with one hand, behind the ear.

The beast snapped at him. Its breath reeked. He lifted it off the ground at arm’s length. It was much heavier than he had expected. He seized its tail with his free hand and laid the wolf down on its side between two roots of the tree and put his knee on its shoulder. With the other hand he held its head to the ground.

“Enough?” he said to the Englishman.

The little man was wagging his head from side to side. “Enough,” he said. “You have won.”

They put the stick between the beast’s jaws again and tied it, and Bjarni let it go. The Englishman paid him. The watching crowd boomed with deafening cheers. A fat woman plowed through the fringe of people and kissed him.

“Come into the bushes, dear, I want a taste of that myself!”

Gifu clutched his arm. He got the wallet back from her and put the money into it. Fists pounded on his back and shoulders and hands waved around him, trying to touch him, and passing tankards up to him. He drank off three cups of ale as they came to him. A horseman wedged his way through the crowd and shouted at him in French.

Bjarni tucked his wallet into his belt. He turned away from the rider, whom he could not understand. Another woman gave him ale and he drank.

“Bear,” Gifu cried. “Didn’t you hear him?” Her face was pink. “He’s from the king. He has a message from the king, Bear!”

He lowered the flagon of ale. Beyond the waving arms and heads, the fair-haired Norman king was watching him from the back of his horse. Their eyes met. King William smiled. Bjarni gulped down the rest of the ale.

DRUNKEN, LAUGHING, the flower-decked boys and girls hauled the King of the Green by his hands down to the river and threw him in. They cheered.

“When will you see the king?” Gifu asked. She turned her horse away from the river.

“At sunset.”

“I’ll go with you.”
 

“No.”

“Oh, you must. You must let me go. Please?” Leaping down from the saddle she clutched his arm and hung on him. “Please?”

He pushed her away.

“It isn’t fair!” she cried.

The King of the Green was trying to swim across the river. The wickerwork costume buoyed him up so high he could not make headway across the current. His court jeered at him from the bank. Bjarni started along the plain toward the road. He had not decided yet if he wanted to meet the king.

Gifu trotted after him, towing the horse. “Are you going there like that?”

He looked down at his hide coat. “I am covered,” he said.

“You look like a common lout,” she said. “A serf.”

“What would you have me do? Twist some branches together?”

“Come with me,” she said.

He followed her up a narrow track in the hill toward the town on its summit. Bjarni could not remember its name; Gifu knew the town as if she had always lived there. She took him through the wooden gate into the city and led him down the streets that wound along the hilltop until she came to an inn. While he stood in the doorway of the common room, she went around the place demanding to speak with the innkeeper.

Fat and bald, the innkeeper came into the common room. “Who are you?”

Gifu put her hands on her hips and stuck out her chin. “Now, mark me, I shall say this only once. The king has summoned—has asked my master to wait upon him. You see him there. Probably you saw his deed today with the wolf. We are far from home—strangers here. We shall need your best bed. In a room. And a fair meal, when we have seen the king.”

Bjarni slid his thumbs under his belt. At the heavy tables around the room, the men had lifted their chins out of their alebowls to stare at him. The innkeeper blinked at him.

Gifu clapped her hands together. She stalked past the innkeeper to shout at him again. “Hurry! The king waits even now to speak to him. We have great news for him—signs, omens. We must make ready.”

The innkeeper bustled to his work. “This way.” Bowing, he led Bjarni up the plank stairs and took him along the corridor at the top to a small room with a bed and a window. Gifu strutted around it.

“Well. This will do, for the while.” She returned to the innkeeper, whose bulk filled the doorway. “Now. He will need fit clothing.” She tugged on the innkeeper’s brown coat. “This will serve.”

The innkeeper hesitated only a moment. He said, “The king.” Stripping off his coat, he held it out to Bjarni, who put it on. The coat caught him under the arms. He stretched his shoulders carefully.

“We are of a size,” the innkeeper said, smiling, to Gifu.

She gestured vaguely under his nose. “If you say so. We want a good meal, now, remember. A roast, and a soup, and a stew—pies—”

Bjarni went past the innkeeper to the door. “Make the bed,” he told her. He left the room.

THE KING OF THE ENGLISH was in his middle age, and spoke only French. His chair was carved with dancing lions. At his right hand was a Norse priest in a black gown, who translated what was said.

“His grace the king welcomes you to his kingdom, to his city of Lincoln, and to his court.”

Bjarni thanked him.

“His grace asks your name and your lord’s name.”

“I am Bjarni Hoskuldsson, and I am Icelandic. We are all equals in my country; I have no lord.”

The king fondled his shining yellow hair. His pale eyes bulged, set wide apart, intelligent. He spoke.

“His grace asks how you came to England.”

Bjarni did not want to tell him that. He said, “I was shipwrecked.”

The king sat back in the deep chair. He put one foot on a stool before him. The boot was caked with yellow mud. He and the priest talked back and forth in French. The king seized eagerly on something the priest said.

“His grace wishes to know if you play chess.”

“I play chess,” Bjarni said.

“Then his grace will have a game with you.”

Pages brought in a table with a checkerboard top and a box of men. Bjarni and the king played a game of some twenty-five moves, and Bjarni won.

The king looked angry. The high color rose in his cheeks. It was for that he was named the Red, not for his hair.

“His grace says you play excellently well.”

Bjarni said, “Chess is our delight, in Iceland. Chess and law. The king plays a good game.”

“He seldom loses.”

“He is the king.” Bjarni began to put away the chessmen in their box. They were carved of stone, and even the pawns had faces. He had never seen so fine a set, not even Eirik Arnarson’s.

“His grace asks if you have a king in Iceland.”

“No. As I said, we are free men there.”

The Norse priest frowned at him. “The King of Norway is your rightful ruler.”

“Is he?” Bjarni shut the lid of the chess box. “I have never met him.”

The king tapped the priest impatiently on the arm. The priest listened to a flight of words in French.

“His grace wishes you to join his court.”

“I am on my way home to Iceland.”
 

“You could serve no greater prince than King William. He is king of England, duke in all but name of Normandy, overlord of Scotland and Ireland. Soon he will overmaster France. There will be a new Emperor in Europe, with no Pope to share his honor and his power.”

Bjarni bowed his head slightly to the Norman on the throne. “Then I wish him good fortune.”

To his surprise the king laughed. He made some remarks to the priest.

“You will stay at least awhile. His grace will see that you are lodged and kept. You and your lady wife. Perhaps he will help you on your way home again. You are dismissed—he will expect you at court tomorrow.”

Bjarni stood silent before the king; he had intended to take the road again that evening. Yet his fate had brought him here for some purpose. He nodded to the king.

“Tell him I will come.”

The king raised his eyebrows at him, looking half-surprised, and spoke through his nose to the priest. The Norseman said, “You should kneel before his grace.”

Bjarni said, “I would not ask him to kneel before me.” He went to the door and let himself out. On the landing of the stairs, just outside, he heard the king laugh.

WHEN HE RETURNED to the inn, Gifu had a table set in their little room. She made him sit down at it, and with a shoeless child to help her she brought in the dinner. Bjarni fell to eating. He kept the little boy running back and forth for ale. Midway through the meal, the boy dropped the pitcher and it broke. Gifu slapped him.

“What a mess!”

The boy knelt to mop up the spill. Bjarni said, “Leave him alone, Gifu. Come and eat.”

She had gone for a broom; she swept the pieces of the pitcher into a heap. “Don’t you dare offend him,” she said to the child. “He is a sorcerer. He walked up out of the sea after a terrible storm. When the Vikings came, he cast a spell over our whole village, and the Vikings ran away.”

The boy threw a white look at Bjarni. He mumbled something. Bjarni sat back, the remnants of his dinner littering the table before him. Gifu sat on the stool opposite him and stuffed food into her mouth. The child crept toward the door.

“Here.” Bjarni stood, picked up the boy by the arm, and set him down on the chair. “Eat.” He went down the stairs to the common room of the inn and found another pitcher of ale.

He climbed the stairs to the second story and went down the hall to his bedchamber. The scullion had gone, the table was cleared, and Gifu lay on the featherbed, her white arms thrown out. Bjarni shut the door.

“Why do you lie?” he said.
“A sorcerer.”

“It keeps them in their place,” Gifu said. “To know I travel with a prince of nature.”

In the morning of the day following, Bjarni went up to the castle to the king, expecting to find something akin to the courts of stories: an interminable banquet. Instead he came into a wide bare room stinking hot from the fire on the hearth, where two or three courtiers lounged sleepily in corners. The men were gaudy in long full coats; the one woman had covered her hair with a white linen coif, not a tress showing, and her face was so smoothly painted she seemed like a statue of horn. Bjarni wandered around the hot room awhile, looking at the hangings on the walls. The woven figures in the hangings were more what he expected: men riding to war and building towers and sitting at table. The pretty courtiers were watching him with a drowsy interest. The woman spoke to him in French.

“I speak no French,” he said.

She strolled toward him, lifting her skirt in one hand. The men were smiling behind their hands. Bjarni sniffed at the light fragrance of verbena in the air. The woman murmured something and put her hand on his sleeve. Her eyelashes fluttered. She was like no woman he had ever seen, and he looked closer at her and saw she was a man.