King and Emperor

Chapter Fourteen

As the dinghy approached the quayside, Shef realized that there was a considerable reception committee waiting for him. He could not see the prince himself, Benjamin ha-Nasi. But Solomon was there, and men he recognized as members of the prince's entourage, the captain of his guards. Their faces were grave. Trouble of some sort. Could it be that the flight that they must have seen went against one of their religious rules? Were they about to tell him to take the fleet and go? They seemed to have no aggressive intention. Shef composed his face into a mask of rigid severity. As the boat was pulled up to the steps he leapt nimbly out, straightened, marched up, Skaldfinn the interpreter at his heels.

Solomon did not waste words. “We have found a man dead in the city,” he said.

“My men cannot have done it. They were at sea, or on their ships in harbor.”

“Your woman might have done it. But she is gone.”

Shef's face paled, for all his forced composure. “Gone?” he said. It came out as a croak. “Gone?” he repeated, more firmly. “If she has gone, it was not of her own free will.”

Solomon nodded. “That may be. This letter was left with a boy from the Christian quarter. He was paid to deliver it to the captain of the city guard, and to say it was for the one-eyed foreign king.”

Presentiment hanging over him, Shef took the paper—paper indeed, he noted—unfolded it. He could read Latin letters, with some difficulty, as a result of his childhood education, ineffective though that had been. Yet he could make little of what he read.

“Nullum malum contra te nec contra mulierem tuam intendimus,” he spelled out carefully. “Skaldfinn, what does this say?”

Skaldfinn also took the letter, read through it, brow furrowed. “It says, ‘We mean no harm against you or your woman. But if you wish to have her back, come at the second hour of the day following this to the tenth milestone on the road to Razes. There we will tell you what we would have of you. Come alone.’ It adds, in different writing—poor writing, it seems to me, and worse Latin—'She killed a man when we took her. Her blood is forfeit.' ”

Shef looked round at what seemed suddenly to be an immense crowd, all silent, all watching him. The hubbub of the market had ceased. His own men had come up from the dinghy and were close behind him. He knew, somehow, that the men on his ships lying at anchor had realized something was wrong and were lining the sides as well and watching him. Years ago he had decided on impulse to rescue one woman, Godive, from the slavers. But then no one had seen him do it, except Hund, and the thane Edrich, dead long since. He had no doubt in his mind that he had to rescue Svandis now. But this time he had to persuade people that what he was doing was right. He was less free as a king than he had been as a thrall.

Two things he was sure of. First, Brand and Thorvin and the others would not let him go alone. They had seen him vanish too often before. If he did not go alone, would the kidnappers kill their hostage? The other thing he was sure of was that there, in the crowd, there would be agents of the men who had taken her. What he said now would be reported. He had to make it look reasonable to them. Acceptable to Brand and Thorvin.

He turned, looked behind him. As he suspected, other boats had followed him over. Brand was climbing the steps, looking baleful and angry and bigger even than ever. Hund looking puny and anxious. Cwicca and Osmod too. They had cocked their crossbows, had the air of men picking their targets. Some he could rely on. Some to be swayed.

Shef aimed his voice at Brand, but pitched his voice high, to carry if it could even across the water to the watching ship-crews.

“You heard the letter Skaldfinn read, Brand?”

Brand twitched his silver-mounted axe “Battle-troll” in reply.

“Years ago, Brand, you taught me the way of the drengr, when we marched to York and took it. Does the drengr abandon his comrades?”

Brand saw in an instant which way the questions were going, and who they were aimed at. He himself, Shef knew, would cheerfully have dropped Svandis overside as a sacrifice to Ran, goddess of the deeps. Nor did he consider her a comrade, but a stowaway. But once she was considered as a comrade, a shipmate, however junior, then public opinion among both Vikings and English alike was utterly solid against any desertion or sacrifice, and most solid among the most junior, the rank and file, the oar-pullers and shield-carriers.

Before Brand could frame a temporizing reply, Shef went on, “For how many comrades must an army march?”

Brand had no choice in answering this question. “One,” he answered. An automatic pride straightened his shoulders, made him glare round at the watching southerners.

“And for that one must the leaders too risk their lives?”

“All right,” he said. “You're going after her. But not alone! Take the fleet. And if these pigs' fry try to stop you…” He stepped forward, axe half-raised, anger at being out-maneuvered translated instantly to anger at any show of resistance. The guard captain's hand dropped to his hilt, spears snapped forward from the crowd.

Solomon lifted a hand and walked between the two groups. “We did not take the woman,” he said. “The killing and the rape took place inside our city, and we too have an injury to avenge. If you have need of our assistance, it will be granted. But what do you intend to do?”

Shef knew by now. This time, as he raised his voice, it was aimed at the listener in the crowd who must be there, the one left behind to report on how the message was taken. He spoke in his simple Arabic, the lingua franca of this coast. It would be understood.

“I will go to the milestone, if someone will show me the way. But not alone! I will go one of thirteen.”

As Skaldfinn translated, Shef realized Hund was at his elbow. “Who will you take?” asked the little leech, his voice strained.

Shef put an arm round him. “You, old friend. Cwicca and Osmod. Skaldfinn must come. I will leave Hagbarth and Thorvin to command the fleet. And Brand must stay too, he is too heavy on his feet for the mountain roads. But I will ask him and Cwicca to pick the best axemen and bowmen in the fleet.”

Solomon too was close beside him. “If you are prepared to trust me, I would come too. I have at least an idea of what this may be about.”

“I'm glad someone does,” said Shef.

They filed out of the city the next morning, as the first streaks of light crept into the sky and the birds in the fields began their eager song. The men were at least well fed and rested, even Shef, though he had hardly slept at all the night before. The long weeks of sailing with hardly a hand needing to be raised, and with the burdens of rule necessarily far away, had left him a layer of endurance that had not yet been touched.

Solomon and Skaldfinn followed him, with Hund, who had hardly said a word since the news of Svandis's abduction, by his side. Behind the four of them came nine others, five of them crossbowmen selected from the English crews. Cwicca and Osmod led them, as was their right. As he checked the men's gear before the start Shef had been surprised to see the villainous squint of Steffi among the picked men.

“I said the best shots in the fleet,” he snapped to Cwicca. “Steffi's the worst. Send him back and get another one.”

Cwicca's face shifted to the glassy obstinacy he used when confronted by a direct order he did not like. “Steffi's all right,” he muttered. “He was mad keen to come. He won't let you down.”

“Crossbowman! He couldn't hit a cow's backside with the butt-end of one,” snarled Shef. But he did not persist with his order. Loyalty worked both ways.

Shef was happier with the close-combat bodyguards picked by Brand: all Scandinavians, two Danes, a Swede and a Norwegian, all men with long records of success against men as big and strong as themselves. The Norwegian was a cousin of Brand himself. Looking at him, Shef could see the marbendill strain in him, the mark of the sea-troll, in his eyebrow-ridges and the flat-set teeth. He did not remark at it. Styrr, as he was called, had killed two men already in England for laughing at the way he ate, and been exonerated. One of the Danes acted as the leader of the little group, his experience showing in his expensive jewelry and the scars on his forearms. Shef had asked him his name.

“Bersi,” he replied. “They call me Holmgang-Bersi. I've been out five times.”

“I only one,” said Shef.

“I know. I saw it.”

“What did you think?”

Bersi rolled his eyes. Shef had won his holmgang outside the gates of York, and against two men, but hardly in classic style. “I have seen better contests.”

“And I have killed greater champions,” replied Shef, not ready to concede advantage. But Bersi and Styrr and their mates were a reassurance to him. There was no doubt of the courage of the warriors here in the southern lands, but Shef could not see the slightly-built, cotton- and linen-garbed Spaniards, whether Jew or Moor or Christian, holding their own for more than seconds against the barbed axes and iron-shod javelins tramping along behind him. He was safe at least from casual murder. And he bore with him at least a threat of revenge for Svandis.

By the end of the second hour the heat of the day was rising and Shef's troop looked less formidable than it had. The men were puffing, as they had been hurried along at a steady five miles an hour since dawn, taking turns to ride or trot alongside the overburdened mules that Solomon had provided. Sweat trickled from their hair and into the thick beards. Soon the sun would be shining directly on the mail of the Vikings. They would have to decide whether to shed it or roast. But at least the milestone was in sight, and not too far from the time set. Shef looked round. If there were to be an ambush, this was the most certain place for it. Cwicca and his men had dismounted and were walking more easily now, heads up, crossbows cocked, alert for the first flash of lance or arrow.

From the scrub came a trill of sound. Like a bird-call, but less artless. The sound of a flute. Hair rising on the back of his neck, Shef swiveled his one good eye to see where it came from. A boy standing there. He had not been there a moment before. Was this some creature of the mountains, some half-god, like the marbendills of the northern waste or the Finnish sorcerers from the snow? Five crossbows were covering the lad now. Three too many for security. Shef turned and looked deliberately in a circle. If the boy was a distraction, there would be an attack coming from some other point. Holmgang-Bersi had got the idea at least, had moved off the track, javelin poised.

But there was no-one else. The boy stood motionless till he was sure no-one would shoot from fear, then trilled his flute again, called out to Solomon. Shef understood not a word.

“He says, follow him.”

“Where to?”

Grimly, Solomon pointed up the side of the mountain.

Hours later, Shef began to wonder whether the boy with the oatstraw flute were not some particularly devilish trap sent to kill them slowly. They had abandoned the mules and set off up the hillside grumbling. Now, the sun directly overhead, not a word was spoken. It had been an unremitting climb up a slope as steep as the thatched roof of a house, but covered in thorn scrub and sliding stone. The thorns held you back, caught in every scrap of clothing, where the boy seemed to glide beneath them like an eel.

But they were not as bad as the stone. After a while Shef realized he and all his men were making detours, going out of their way to avoid the scorching heat of the stone in full sunlight, burning bare hands and starting to sting through leather shoe-soles.

Even the stone was not as bad as the slope. None of the Northerners were fit for walking after weeks at sea, but even a Finn from the moors would have struggled to keep climbing after the thigh muscles had long since gone past pain, after everyone had given up the thought of walking ever again, concentrating only on hauling themselves up the hillside with arms and legs together.

But it was thirst that would kill them. Thirst and heatstroke. Dust rose off the ground, into nostrils often only a foot from it, coated the mouth and choked the throat. All had carried skins of water at the start. The first halt had come after less than a mile. They had become steadily more frequent as the climb went on. At the third halt Shef, already croaking, had told the Vikings peremptorily to strip off their mail and leather, make bundles and carry it on their backs. Now he was carrying one man's for him. Styrr, he saw, Brand's cousin, had gone steadily redder and redder until he was the shade of bilberry-juice. But new he was death-pale. The water was gone. And still the wretched boy kept vanishing, returning, whistling them in this direction or that. Shef turned to Cwicca, keeping up a trifle better than the others, also carrying other men's gear besides his own.

“Next time that little bastard comes back,” Shef rasped. “If he takes off again, shoot him. Solomon”—the Jewish interpreter seemed less troubled at least by heat and thirst than the others, though he too was gasping and staggering with fatigue. “Tell him. Rest and water. Or he's dead.”

Solomon seemed to say something in reply, but Shef ignored him. The little bastard was back. Shef reached painfully to grab his one garment, but he twisted aside, swept an arm impatiently, started to scuttle forward. Cwicca had him in wavering sights. And there, just above, there seemed to be a crest with the boy disappearing fast over it.

With his last strength Shef struggled over it. Saw in front of him a small, mean village of a dozen houses, of stone that looked as if it had grown from the rock all around. More important than the houses, the flat green in front of it. By the side of it, trickling from the rock, a spring running into a stone cistern. Suddenly and clearly through the relentless noise of the cicadas in the scrub, Shef could hear the tinkle of water running.

He turned back, saw his men straggled out for a hundred yards down the hillside. He tried to call out to them, “Water!” found the word stick in his throat. The nearest saw it in his eyes, came on with renewed energy. Far down the slope Styrr and Bersi, Thorgils and Ogmund crawled hopelessly on.

Shef slid down the hill, seized the nearest, muttered “Water,” in his ear, pointed him to the crest-line. Slid on to the next. Styrr had to be half-pulled the last fifty feet, and when he reached the top, even with Shef's shoulder under his arm he staggered like a drunk on the level ground.

They were making a bad show, Shef realized, whoever was watching. They looked less like a king and his bodyguard than they did a troop of beggars with a dancing bear. He heaved Styrr more firmly upright and snarled at him to pull himself together, look like a drengr. Styrr simply tottered towards the water, was met by Bersi with a bucket. He threw half of it over the gasping giant, thrust the rest into his hand.

“He will die if he swills cold water in that state,” remarked Solomon, holding an empty dipper. Shef nodded, looked round. The rest had drunk, seemed able to think of something other than their thirst. He himself could smell the water, felt the urge to throw himself at it and into it as the others had clearly done.

They were being watched. If this had been a trap it would have worked. For long minutes there his men would have offered no resistance to sword or spear or arrow, unless it had been between them and the water. Shef stiffened himself pridefully, took the dipper full of water that Cwicca passed him, forced himself to hold it without apparent awareness. He walked towards the ring of watching men with his head up.

They had bows and axes, but they did not look formidable. Mere working and hunting tools, and the men who held them, some thirty or so, looking like shepherds or fowlers, not warriors. No signs of rank were visible, but Shef had learnt to watch men's bearing. That one there, the greybeard with no weapon: he was the chief.

He walked towards him, tried to speak sardonically, to say, “You brought us by a weary road.” The words would not come out. He lifted the dipper, rinsed the dust from his mouth, felt it swirl across his throat. The urge to swallow, constricting, almost overpowering. He would show them who was master, of himself at least. He spat the water on the ground, spoke his piece.

No understanding. The eyes had widened when he spat out the water, but just a furrowed brow when he spoke. He was speaking the wrong language. Shef tried again in his simple Arabic.

“You took our woman.”

The greybeard nodded.

“Now you must give her up.”

“First you must tell me something. Do you not need water?”

Shef lifted the dipper, looked at the water in it, threw it on the ground. “I drink when I choose. Not when my body chooses.”

A slight ripple from the listening men. “Tell me then. What is that you wear on your breast?”

Shef looked down at the sign of his god, the pole-ladder of Rig. This was like the scene he had undergone long ago when first he met Thorvin. More was meant than was being said.

“In my language it is a ladder. In the language of my god and the Way I follow, it is a kraki. I met a man once who called it a graduale.”

They were listening now, very intently. Solomon was at his side, ready to translate. Shef waved him back. He must not lose the intimate contact, even if all the two could speak was mangled Arabic.

“Who called it that?”

“It was the emperor Bruno.”

“You were close to him? He was your friend?”

“I was as close to him as I am to you. But he was not my friend. I have had his sword at my throat. They tell me he is close to me again, now.”

“He knows about the graduale.” The greybeard seemed to be talking to himself. He looked up again. “Stranger, do you know of the Lance he carries?”

“I gave it to him. Or he took it from me.”

“Maybe, then, you would take something from him?”

“Willingly.”

The tension in the air seemed to drain. Shef turned and saw that his men were on their feet again, weapons raised, looking as if they might be able to resist attack, or even, as they reckoned the limited odds against them, begin one.

“We will return your woman. And feed you and your men. But before you return”—Shef's flesh shrank at the thought of retracing their steps, downhill or up—“first you must pass a test. Or fail it. Either is the same to me. But to pass it might be good for you, and for the world. Tell me, your god, whose sign you bear: do you love him?”

Shef could not help the grin from spreading across his face. “Only an idiot would love the gods of my people. They are there, that is all I know. If I could escape them, I would.” His grin faded. “There are some gods I hate and fear.”

“Wise,” said the greybeard. “Wiser than your woman. Wiser than the Jew at your side.”

He called an order, men began to bring out bread, cheese, what looked like skins of wine. Slowly Shef's men sheathed or uncocked their weapons, looked questioningly at their lord. But Shef had seen Svandis coming limpingly towards him, wearing only the slashed and blood-stained tatters of her white dress.

To the Jewish scholars and counselors of the city-state of Septimania, the departure of their colleague Solomon—off in the mountains somewhere, escorting the king of the barbarians on some pointless chase—came as a relief. Doubt was already strong as to whether Solomon had been wise in bringing the strangers to them. Yet it could be represented as a service to the Caliph, their nominal overlord, to revictual and resupply men who had once been his allies, and who were at any rate enemies of the Christians now pressing so close. Nevertheless one matter at least was outstanding, a worry to both prince and council.

The affair of the young Arab Mu'atiyah. It was clear that he was a subject of the Caliph Abd er-Rahman: as indeed were they, the Jews of Septimania, at least in theory. Did they not pay to the Caliph the kharaj and the jizya, the land-tax and the poll-tax? And did they not guard their gates against his enemies and those of his Faith, the Christians and the Franks? It was true that that guard did not extend in any way to limiting trade with their near-neighbors, true too that the tax payments were made according to calculations done by the council itself, which would not have passed muster with the Caliph's own tax-collectors, none of whom any longer courted embarrassment by appearing in the city. Nevertheless—so said the majority on the council—there was no precedent for imprisoning the young man merely to prevent his return to his master.

As the council debated, the old prince watched his learned men, stroking his beard. He knew what Solomon would have said, had he been here. That the Arab would immediately flee to his master and report that the Jews had made common cause with the barbarians, the polytheists, that they were providing a base for a hostile fleet which had fled from contact with the Greeks and now planned its own attacks on the peaceful countryside. Little of that was true, but that was how it would be presented, and how it would be believed.

In any of the Christian dukedoms or princedoms of the border country, such a matter would have been the simplest thing in the world. Ten words, and the Arab would disappear. If he ever were inquired about, polite regret and ignorance would be expressed. And the baron or duke or prince would have thought no more about it than about pruning his roses.

In a Jewish community, that was not possible. Not even desirable. Benjamin ha-Nasi approved of what his wise men would decide, though he knew it would be a mistake. A mistake in the short term. In the long term the fortress of the Jews, the place where they had kept their identity in the long centuries of flight and persecution, was the Torah and the Law. As long as they held to that, history had taught them, they would survive—as a people if not as individuals. If they abandoned it, they might thrive for a while. Then they would merge with the sea around them, become indistinguishable from the lawless, unprincipled, superstitious believers in Christ, their false Messiah.

Tranquilly the prince listened to the arguments, conducted as much to allow all members of the council to show their learning as to affect the final decision. Those who were putting the case for continued detention, in the way that Solomon might have done, were doing so passionately but insincerely, according to a convention understood by all. Against them was the deep reluctance of any Jewish community to order imprisonment as a punishment. Freedom to go as one pleased was one of the inheritances from the desert which they shared with the Arabs their cousins. It was the other side of the horror of exile from the community which was the council's ultimate threat against their own.

The learned Moishe was summing up, and preparing his final peroration. He was the Amoraim, the interpreter of the Mishnah. “And so,” he said, looking round fiercely, “I will now speak of the Halakhah, which is the ultimate conclusion of this matter debated. First it was spoken and passed on from generation to generation, now it is written and fixed for ever. ‘Treat the stranger within your gates as you would your brother, for this you will be thrice blessed.’ ”

He ended, looking round. If his audience had not been constrained by the dignity of their place and cause, they would have applauded.

“Well spoken,” said the prince finally. “Truly is it said that the learning of the wise is a wall to the city. And that it is the folly of the unlearned that brings woe upon it.”

He paused. “And yet, alas, this young man is unlearned, is he not?”

Moishe spoke up. “By his own account, prince, he is the wonder of the world for learning. In his own way and his own country. And who should condemn the customs of another country, or its wisdom?”

Just what you were doing this morning, thought Benjamin to himself. When you gave us your opinions on the follies of the ship-barbarians, with their king who tears a book to find out what it is, and asks the price of the paper not of the contents. Nevertheless…

“I shall do as the feeling of the council directs,” said Benjamin formally. He crooked a finger to his guard-captain. “Release the young man. Give him a mount and the food he needs to reach the Caliph, and escort him to our boundaries. Charge the cost against our next payment of the land-tax to his master.”

The young Arab, who had squatted at the side of the room listening without understanding to the Hebrew exchanges that would determine his fate, recognized at last the tone and the gesture. He sprang to his feet, eyes blazing. Seemed for a moment as if he meant to burst out in complaint and accusation—as he had done fifty times already in his short captivity—but then thrusting it back in a transparent rush of policy. It was obvious what he meant to do: rush off to make every bitter denunciation to which he could lay his tongue. Revenge himself with words for every slight that had been put upon him, real or fancied, by the barbarians of whom he was so jealous. Jealous of their flying of kites.

The prince turned his attention to the next case. It was true about the learned, he reflected. They were a strength. And the unlearned were a plague. But worse than both, alas, were the class to whom both the Arab Mu'atiyah and Moishe the learned belonged. The class of clever fools.