Raven (23 page)

And so it was under sail that we came to Rome, our shields lying at our feet in case we should need to slot them in the rail or make a shieldwall. It was late afternoon and the wind that had blown us up the Tiberis had drawn a shroud of black cloud across the roof of the world, so that we had put on our greased skins over our mail. We did not have to wait long. Caught in that black shroud above us was a broiling hailstorm which now came in a great rush, driving into the river and pelting us angrily, the pebbles of ice thudding on to the deck and bouncing off the sheer strakes. Within moments, ridges of hail had gathered against
Serpent
’s ribs and amongst the oars piled in their trees. Svein was happily catching the ice in his mouth until a hailstone struck a tooth, making him curse in pain. Father Egfrith sheltered under a spare shield, the hail tonking off the iron boss, and I watched the yellow river thicken and swell and absorb the countless ice stones piercing it. Then as quickly as the hail came it vanished. Brown light seeped
through the trees lining the banks and the smell of those trees filled the air. Men grabbed gourds and drinking horns because they knew what was coming.

Serpent
pushed on, the other ships behind, their crews quiet because the trees had thinned and, on the next coil, where the river slowed, we could see wharves jutting out on both sides. A white flash as quick as a blink was followed by a crack that decayed with a rumble that seemed to go on for ever. Then the rain came. At first it hissed against the river’s surface, but before long, rods of water were plunging deep into the river and the noise was immense.

‘So this is Rome!’ Sigurd shouted from the prow. His sopping hair daubed his head, sticking to his cheeks and beard as he looked up at the great crumbling wall that filled the world along the bank on our steerboard side. It was pitted and much of its brownish brick skin had come away, revealing bloodless flesh beneath, but it was huge, at least nine times a man’s height. ‘How can men build such things, Uncle?’ Sigurd called through the rain’s roar. Olaf did not answer at once because like the rest of us he was standing now, beard soaked, jaw unhinged, eyes wide and staring at the wall.

‘Such a wall as this must protect Asgard,’ he called back after a time. Every hundred feet or so along its length stood a square tower and it was at these points that we could see that the wall was some two spear-lengths thick.

‘Against this, Offa’s wall would look like a pig fence,’ Penda said, scratching the short hair at the back of his neck.

The Tiberis snaked north-east and we passed between the walls, for that bulwark carried on along the far bank, running north to enclose Rome. Which meant that we were now inside the ancient city.

‘Well that was easy enough,’ Bram Bear said, sweeping his soaking hair back over his head. We had not even been challenged.

‘What good is a wall Gymir would struggle to peer over if
you’re going to let savages like us just sail through it?’ Olaf asked, peering through the rain fog for signs of a trap.

‘It’s a bloody rat’s nest,’ Gytha said, wide-eyed.

We had all emerged from hats and bad-weather gear now, caring nothing about the driving rain or that we were wet through to our bones. For we did not want to miss any of the wondrous sights around us not already hidden behind the veil of rain and grey mist. Wharves lined both banks, stretching off towards the next bend of the river, and they thronged with vessels of all shapes and sizes and groaned beneath the weight of barrels and great long pots up to a man’s waist and crates and two hundred types of cargo, from chickens and pelts and spices to grain, stone and timber. Horses whinnied, stamping against the quay because they knew they were going to sea and feared it. Men bartered, made last-minute deals or argued about a ship’s capacity or the likely journey time or the weather. Soldiers pushed amongst the crowd after eel-slippery thieves they would never catch. Whores with red lips and blackened eyes paraded arrogantly, silver-lust battling whatever pride they still clung to, and men stood holding barrel lids over smoking braziers, trying to keep their hot food dry. We had sailed into a thick soup of every kind of smell and one moment your mouth watered and the next your eyes streamed and you thought you would retch.

‘Oars!’ Sigurd called, for Olaf had been reefing the sail to slow us with so many other ships about, and now the rake was juddering down the mast as he and three others lowered the yard and the sodden sail. We took to our sea chests and sliced the blades into the river to slow
Serpent
further, watching that our oars did not hit any other vessels. Behind us,
Fjord-Elk
and the snekkjes did likewise and we were lucky that, although the wharves were lined with ships, few of those craft were in the channel, because the wind was still blowing towards the city and their captains were waiting for it to change.

Buildings lined both banks beyond the wharves, some with
their red-tiled roofs fallen in and white walls crumbled, others still in use by their looks. Yet others were rising anew from the debris of the old, their ancient shaped stones climbing skyward one atop another once again, but overall the impression was one of decay. On our steerboard side the ground rose, though our view of the city was partly obscured by long stone buildings that appeared to have been repaired countless times and which followed the river for as far as I could see. Open on their river sides, they were stacked to their roofs with goods and guarded by ruddy-skinned warriors with spears, clubs and hand axes. Out of the rain, men sat at tables writing. Others counted barrels in or out that were lugged by bare-chested, muscle-bound slaves whose skin glistened with rain and sweat. Some pushed carts or led back-bowed asses, horses or oxen to and from the wharf.

Another ancient wall bent eastward off our steerboard side and this one had soldiers on its heights who would glance down at the chaos below every now and then but mostly seemed oblivious of it. At the wall’s base a great gate yawned like an open mouth, through which spewed a continuous stream of men, women, children and animals.

‘We’ll find a mooring further on,’ Sigurd called, pointing off
Serpent
’s port bow beyond the long line of swarming vessels. So we rowed on until the wooden wharf ended and the old cracked stone wharf began. There were few vessels this far up, for much of the quayside was under water, another effect of meltwater flowing off faraway hills perhaps. Besides which, the wooden wharves were nearer to the gate and so were bound to be more popular.

‘Bram, Svein, Bjarni, take your oars and make sure there’s not another level to that quay that could rip our belly open,’ Olaf said. ‘Bring her in nice and easy, lads, there you go. Folk will be watching and we don’t want to give these Romans a good story to spout over their ale tonight.’ At the stone wharf’s high end there was a berth easily long enough for
Serpent
, though not
for the other ships as well. They would have to moor alongside, hull against hull, so that their crews would all end up walking over
Serpent
to get to shore. I have seen this lead to fights when a man’s belongings go missing after other crews have tramped past his gear. But we were a Fellowship, every man oath-tied to each other, and I could have laid every bit of silver I had on my sea chest and gone ashore knowing I would find it untouched when I returned.

Beast heads had been carved into the stone wall and we argued as to what kind of animals they were, for they had a wolf’s teeth, a mouth more like a bear’s and broad, fur-wreathed heads. In those snarling, teeth-filled maws were set iron rings through which we passed our mooring ropes and we had barely finished the knots when the reeve turned up demanding the port tax. He came with another man, who carried a sack over one shoulder, and twelve bored-looking soldiers, and none of them seemed the least bit surprised at the sight of us or our ships that crawled with motifs clearly not carved by Christian hands. The reeve was a small, brisk, bald man with busy hands, who reminded me of a squirrel as his keen eyes probed our four ships for clues as to what manner of men we were. He seemed unimpressed with what he saw, which Penda suggested was because it was clear from our ships with their relatively small holds that we had not come to do any serious trading. But luckily for us it was not long before he and Father Egfrith found either end of a great twine of the Latin tongue so that they were able to follow the thread and meet in the middle.

‘I have told Gratiosus here that we have travelled very far and braved dangers of every kind in order that our eyes may feast upon the sights of his wondrous and ancient city,’ Egfrith said to Sigurd, a thin smile hiding in the beard I was still not used to seeing on his face.

The jarl nodded. ‘How much does he want, monk?’

Egfrith’s smile grew now. ‘Gratiosus says he is used to dealing with our kind. The price for
Serpent
and
Fjord-Elk
is six
solidi and three solidi for the two smaller ships. But he knows barbarians do not trade in coins so he has brought scales.’ Then he said something to Gratiosus who clicked his fingers at which the man with the sack came forward and pulled from it a large pair of scales, setting them down carefully on the quayside. ‘If we wish to pay in silver we must simply balance the scales,’ Egfrith said with a shrug. Now Sigurd smiled, because Gratiosus had been rummaging in the sack himself and now produced a large brick of iron which he held up for all to see before bending and placing it into one of the scales’ silver bowls.

‘That lump must weigh more than Svein’s head,’ Bram muttered.

‘Let me put my cock in the other dish, Uncle, that will do it,’ Hedin called, rousing chuckles all round.

But Sigurd being Sigurd had already prepared for this moment. ‘If that’s all this Roman wants let’s be done with it,’ he said, throwing his sodden cloak off his right shoulder to reveal his arm. Which bore seven silver warrior rings, each one thicker than a man’s thumb. At his signal Bothvar dropped the plank on to the wharf and so it was that with four long strides Sigurd was the first of us to set foot in Rome. He gave Gratiosus and his men that wolf’s grin, then twisted five of the silver warrior rings off his arm and dropped them all on to the scales. The iron brick almost took to the air as the other bowl clattered against the stone quay and Gratiosus’s eyebrows, too, leapt in astonishment. Then, just because he could, Sigurd pulled off another silver band and tossed it into the dish with the others that were already half submerged in rainwater.

Gratiosus stared at Sigurd as though he did not know whether to run for his life or embrace the Norsemen, then spoke in a voice that was more breath than sound.

‘What did he say, monk?’ Sigurd asked, half turning back to
Serpent
.

Egfrith swept the rain from his face, then made the sign of the cross over his chest. ‘He said, welcome to Rome.’

I WAS WALKING ALONG THE STONE-PAVED STREETS OF ROME!
Gratiosus had sent us a guide: a man of about my age with sun-browned skin, warm eyes and a quick smile. His name was Gregororovius, but none of us could remember that let alone say it, so we called him Gregor. Every man had itched to go ashore, but we could not leave the ships unguarded and so lots had been drawn to choose the fourteen men who would stay behind. Those men had cursed their ill luck and moaned and flung insults at the rest of us as we readied to go ashore. Then we had followed Gregor through a gateway he called the Porta Trigemina, framed with smooth stone pillars as tall as oaks, and in passing I had pressed a palm against the cool stone, wondering how many other jaw-slack visitors to the ancient city had done the same.

‘Good of that Roman to send us a guide,’ Bram said as we passed between two long red-tiled buildings and into an open space, so that for the first time we could see something of the city. ‘But he could have sent us one that speaks Norse.’ Gregor spoke good enough English, though, and I found myself appointed translator for those who did not understand that tongue. Whenever he pointed something out those Norsemen
and Danes would roll their hands at me in a hurry-up gesture or huff or scratch their beards in irritation because I was not quick enough explaining what we were looking at.

‘He’s here to keep an eye on us, Bram, you great ox-brained brute,’ I said, ‘because that harbour master took one look at you and decided that a man who has more beard than face needs to be watched.’

‘And he’d be right,’ Bram said, ‘because— What in Óðin’s Eye is that?’ He was looking at a round stone building that was ringed with glistening columns and had a roof like that of a roundhouse only this was made of hundreds of red bricks instead of straw.

‘It was a temple to the old Roman god Hercules,’ I translated, ‘but now it is a White Christ church.’ Some spat at that or touched amulets or sword hilts, for they had liked the sound of the hero Hercules who was half man half god and they thought it a poor thing indeed that his temple had been taken over by a god who had never even held a sword. As for ourselves, we had left our mail shirts, helmets and shields on the ships but had brought swords and long knives, though we did not expect trouble. Rome, it seemed, was well used to the likes of us. You only had to look around to see that whatever it once was, Rome was now like a snarled net. There were more types of folk in Rome than there were types of fish in the sea. As we walked amongst its crumbling glory I saw men and women of every skin colour you could imagine, from shaven-headed blaumen to the ruddy-cheeked and red-haired. I saw a woman with the slitted eyes of a cat and yellow skin. I saw fine-boned men who were as pretty as the blauvifs we had lost. Some even had painted faces like women, which we all agreed was a bad thing for a man to do. I saw others who were black as soot with great bushes of curled hair on their heads and eyes like Völund’s, as yellow as butter, and I passed yet other men who had brown hawk-like eyes and long noses and deep, sun-scourged lines in their skin, and these I imagined were the descendants of the
old Romans, because they had a haughty, knowing look about them. There were also crews fresh off the water like us, men who walked the streets wonder-struck, their necks craning, taking in every enormous pillar and building and statue. Many were armed like us and we were glad we were not bladeless amongst the twist and tangle of it all. Rome was as chaotic as a battle and I said as much. Even the air seemed to crackle like dry kindling just lit, and there was a sense of violence just happened or about to erupt.