Bracelet of Bones (14 page)

“On the right day!” said Mihran with a cheerful smile.

“Yes,” agreed Solveig. “‘Everything has its own time.’ That’s what a priestess told me once.”

Then the whole crew trooped back to the boat. Though the days were slowly getting warmer, the nights were chill. Solveig curled up under her reindeer skin, but it was some time before she grew drowsy.

We all laughed at Smik, she thought. Well, everyone except Vigot. Laughter’s a kind of medicine. He made us all contented.

14

“Y
ou thief!” exclaimed Bergdis. “Take your hand out of my pot!”

Vigot jerked back his right hand and licked his fingers.

“Just checking!” he said.

In the narrow confines of his boat, Red Ottar seldom missed anything. “A man with light fingers . . .” he began grimly, “a man who steals something small may well steal something larger.”

Vigot avoided Bergdis’s eye. He started to hiss a tuneless tune and then tied one of Oleg’s shining bronze hooks to his fishing line.

Before long, Red Ottar was embroiled in a heated discussion with Odindisa. Solveig could hear them as they paced up and down the quay.

“No means no!”

“You asked me!”

“Woman!” yelled Red Ottar. “I changed my mind.”

“You’ll regret it.”

“No.”

“I’ll put a curse on it.”

“Don’t you threaten me,” Red Ottar shouted.

“Red-haired,” Odindisa taunted him. “Hot-tempered. You’re as bad as Thor.”

“I’ll sew your lips together.”

“And just as stupid.”

Solveig listened with a mixture of fear and admiration. Odindisa and Bergdis are the same, she thought. They’re as spirited and strong as he is.

She knew what the row was about, of course: the four-eyed brooch, the one Red Ottar had intended to give to Edith before he changed his mind.

“He’s always changing it.” Solveig could see herself lying in Odindisa’s lap and listening. “Like a weather vane. To begin with he’ll be angry . . .”

“You witch!” roared Red Ottar, and he turned his back on Odindisa and stamped back aboard.

Solveig couldn’t help herself: she just laughed.

Gorodishche, Gorodok . . . on they went, on, stopping overnight at bleak little trading stations with names chock-full of consonants and growling gutturals.

“I can’t say them properly,” Solveig told Mihran. “They’re as lumpy as porridge.”

The crew had to row most of the time because there wasn’t enough wind to fill their sail, and by the midafternoon of the fifth day after leaving Ladoga, they were so
weary from struggling upstream that Red Ottar told Torsten to usher the boat to the riverbank.

Mihran sprang from deck to bank as if he were a goat. Then Torsten threw him a rope, and the pilot wrapped it around the trunk of an obliging silver birch.

Half the crew spread-eagled themselves in the bows and stern, Bergdis complained that a cook’s work was never done and men were nothing but scrots and stomachs and bigmouths, Slothi began to play a drifting song on his flute, and Solveig opened her sack of bones.

It’s time I finished this comb, she thought. It just needs whittling and sanding. This walrus, it’s so hard.

Before long, Red Ottar came over to inspect what Solveig was carving, but then Mihran jumped back over the gunwale and landed lightly beside them.

The river pilot held up four fingers. “Dangers,” he said.

“Well?” asked Red Ottar.

“Portages . . .” said the pilot, ticking off his first finger. “Wild beasts . . . Ruffians . . . Fourth danger!”

“What fourth danger?”

“Water.”

Red Ottar frowned. “What’s dangerous about water?”

“Too much,” Mihran said. “Mokosh keeps us safe, but the Lord of the Waters, he is too strong.” Mihran raised his arms level with his shoulders. “I’ve never seen so much water in this first week of May.”

Red Ottar frowned. “Why is that dangerous?”

Mihran put two fingers to his lips and whistled, and Torsten came over to join them.

“I try to explain to yous,” Mihran said. “The current is so strong we go too slow these days. Already we are two days late.”

“Too late for what?” asked Torsten.

Mihran sighed. “If we come to Kiev too late, we do not have waters to come back. Water is very high now, but quickly it sinks very low.”

“So what are we meant to do?” asked Red Ottar. “Fly?”

“We must come to Kiev as soon as we can,” Mihran replied. “Then you have plenty of time to buy and sell.”

“In that case,” said Torsten, “we mustn’t stop for long at Novgorod. Not for three days, as we planned.”

Mihran nodded. “Is your decision,” he told Red Ottar, his dark eyes shining. “Is your boat!” And with that, he politely backed away and gave the skipper space to talk to his crew.

“We don’t know these waterways,” Red Ottar said. “Mihran does. What’s the point of hiring a river pilot if we ignore his advice?”

“None,” said Torsten.

“What do you say, Solveig?”

“Me?” said Solveig, surprised.

“You,” said Red Ottar.

“Well . . .” she began, “well, if you asked Odindisa, she’d say we must make a sacrifice. To the water spirits.”

“I’m not asking Odindisa,” said Red Ottar.

“Oh!” said Solveig. “I say what my father says: ask someone who knows, then follow his advice.”

“Provided you trust him,” the skipper said slowly. “Provided he’s not giving you advice to profit himself.”

“How?” asked Solveig.

“In this instance,” said Red Ottar, “so he could pocket my money and be free for hire again.”

“Is that what you think?”

“No,” Red Ottar said, “probably not. All right, it’s decided. But I can’t say I welcome this turn of events. Just when everyone needs a rest, we’re going to have to redouble our efforts.”

Mihran showed all his white teeth. “Better prices in Kiev!” he exclaimed. “Skins yes, amber yes, brooches yes, weapons yes.”

“Yes, yes,” said Red Ottar, swatting him away.

“Slaves yes.”

“We have no slaves,” said Red Ottar. “Not for sale.”

Mihran shrugged his shoulders. “Slaves no, honey yes, wax yes.”

“River pilots yes,” added Red Ottar. But his mouthful of sarcasm escaped Mihran.

“Unless . . .” he began, but then he paused and wound his mustache around his right forefinger.

“What?” asked Red Ottar.

“Unless,” repeated Mihran, “yous like to go to Miklagard.”

“Never!” retorted Red Ottar.

The pilot gave him an inviting smile. “Prices not better. In Miklagard, prices are best!”

Red Ottar snorted.

“Best best.”

“Like your skins, Ottar,” Torsten told him. “Everything’s good but some things are better, and a few . . .”

“No,” the skipper said. “I won’t consider it.”

“Won’t,” asked Torsten, “or haven’t?”

“Both,” Red Ottar snapped. Then he rounded on Solveig. “Did you put Mihran up to this?”

Solveig gazed at Red Ottar wide-eyed and shook her head.

“Yous come home with silk satins spices silver . . .” Mihran continued.

“Satins! They’d suit you, skipper,” scoffed Vigot.

“No!” said Red Ottar very definitely. “How far is it, anyway?”

“Downstream,” said Mihran. “All the way from Kiev to the Sea Black.”

“Black Sea,” Torsten corrected him.

“Yes, downstream . . .”

“And upstream all the way back,” Red Ottar said.

Solveig made so bold as to lay her good right hand on Red Ottar’s arm. “Will you . . . think about it?” she asked him hesitantly.

“Stop all this chatter,” the skipper told Mihran, “and guide us to Kiev. That’s what we’re paying you for.”

As Red Ottar had foreseen, his crew was unenthusiastic about having to hurry on. When they berthed overnight at Novgorod, except for Vigot they all felt too weary to go ashore at all.

“Yous see everything when you come back,” Mihran promised them. “Now, we stay like one short breath. Next time, one hundred breaths.”

Just a little south of Novgorod, the River Volkhov reached its source—the wonderful shimmering sheet of Lake Ilmen.

“Fifty-two rivers feed her,” Mihran told the crew. “Only this river drains her. You’ll see.”

What the crew saw was that they would be able to sail across the lake. Bruni and Vigot and Slothi found new energy in their tired limbs to unroll the sail, haul it, and secure it.

For days it had been so dark, so narrow, as the boat plowed her way slowly upstream through the canyon of the dense forest, and now the world around the boat was open and breezy.

Solveig leaned over the gunwale and peered into the limpid depths. The boat skipped along, creaking and flapping and yapping, and then Brita excitedly called out to Vigot that she’d caught a huge fish. He helped her haul it in, and Solveig thought of times she had been out fishing with her father and stepbrothers in Trondheim fjord.

Blubba, she thought, you knew how I felt after my father had gone. And when you told me what your wish was, you made me weep. Well named, you are, wrapped in your own fat. I’d be glad to see you again.

Oh! Spring will be shining in the fjord now.

Spring, when we prop the door open. We lift the rushes, sweep out the cobwebs and ashes, we ransack our long room. Then we brush the dairy and the forge and clean out my father’s shed on the staithe . . . I bring to the table aconites, violets . . . and I strew them on my mother’s grave. Spring, and we sing, we dance . . .

Solveig’s heart ached.

Edwin’s right, she thought. I must ask myself questions. Questions are the best way of preparing, so that whatever happens, you’re half ready.

Sailing across Lake Ilmen, the crew told each other they had never seen such light—light so bright, said Odindisa, that it would surely be too strong for night. Hope lifted their hearts, and around them Solveig counted eight little skiffs. The man fishing in the nearest one waved to her, and she smiled and waved back.

A flock of small birds kept them company. Solveig and Brita watched the way they skimmed so close to the surface of the water that their wing tips almost touched it, and they saw how they all rose and swooped as one.

“How do they do that?” asked Brita.

Solveig shook her head. “They just know,” she said.

It took the whole day to cross the lake. Before the boat entered the mouth of the River Lovat, Mihran called the crew around him: “Better you know. In Garthar we say, ‘Better the witches and demons you know.’”

“Better than what?” asked Brita.

“The ones you don’t know,” Mihran said, and he gave her a flashing smile. “Now! Lovat is twice as long as Volkhov, and each day is more difficult. River narrow and narrower.” Mihran squeezed his neck and opened his mouth. “We sail for two days. Then you row and row and I guide you between rocks, past mud banks.”

Odindisa looked at her husband, and he grimaced. But they weren’t the only ones to wonder whether Red Ottar had been wise in deciding to travel as far as Kiev.

“And after this,” Mihran went on, “we have to pull and push and roll this boat—”

“What do you mean?” demanded Bard.

“Over dry land. Wet-dry land. We come to the headwaters . . . you say headwaters?”

“Get on with it,” Red Ottar told him.

Mihran nodded. “Headwaters of the Dnieper, the great river that runs you downstream.” Mihran was opening his arms, and his voice was rising. “Downstream to Kiev. Downstream to the . . . the Black Sea.”

“How long?” asked Red Ottar.

“Gods willing,” said Mihran, “twenty-two days to Kiev.”

“Twenty-two!” exclaimed Bergdis, and she gave a low whistle.

“If this river is not too much water, we reach Kiev on the last day in May. Soon we must row and pray Mokosh goes with us, but now we sail, we talk, we laugh, we eat, we drink, yes?”

“Can we fish again?” Brita asked Vigot.

“Onward!” said Red Ottar gruffly.

Once more Solveig opened her sack. After she’d felt in the bottom to check that her gold brooch was still there, she rummaged around for her violet-gray glass bead and a piece of leather. She cut off a fine strip, strung the bead, and slipped it over her head. It swung between the swell of her breasts as she worked at the half-carved pin, the one she had been trying to pierce when she had jabbed her awl into the heel of her left hand, and before long the shining
bead caught Vigot’s eye. He didn’t want to look at it, and he couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“What are you looking at?” Solveig asked him.

“Nothing.”

“Liar!”

“A sweet country,” said Vigot.

Solveig immediately blushed and crossed her hands over her growing breasts.

Vigot gave her a lingering smile.

“Seen this bead before?”

“No.”

“You have,” said Solveig, her voice rising. “In Oleg’s workshop.”

“Let’s have a look at it.”

“Keep your hands off me!”

“Keep your temper!” retorted Vigot, grinning.

“And on the quay?” persisted Solveig. “When the dogs attacked me.”

By now, Solveig was speaking so loudly that most of the crew was listening.

“I told you,” Vigot replied, “I’ve never seen it before.”

“You’re lying,” cried Solveig. “You know you are! This is my third eye, and your eyes, they’re thief eyes.”

Vigot sucked in his cheeks and spit onto the deck.

“Swear you didn’t pick it up. Swear you didn’t sell it.”

“There’s nothing to swear.”

Bergdis stood up. Like a large, tubby cat she reached out her claws toward Vigot. “Ahhh!” she growled very slowly and deliberately. “But there is, Vigot. There is.”

Vigot stared at Bergdis with stony eyes.

“I know something you do not,” she gloated.