Land of the Silver Dragon

TEN

Always leave them wanting more, my Granny Cordeilla used to say. I knew, even before Freydis turned away and melted into the shadows, that she would not complete her tale that night. Her audience did not appreciate that she had gone, however; several of them sat, bemused expressions on their faces, staring round as if she was suddenly going to reappear and tell them the conclusion.

I wondered, suddenly, if there would be a conclusion. As if some inner part of me knew better than my conscious mind, I was quite sure there wouldn’t …

But it was a fleeting thought, there and gone before it had time to lodge.

It seemed to take Freydis’s audience some time to return from the imaginary world to which she’d transported them. I wasn’t the only one to sit blinking stupidly as I came back to reality. Around me, people began to make desultory efforts at clearing up, and I went to help.

I wondered where I would be taken to sleep. I guessed it would be back to the second, smaller room, where I’d rested in the afternoon, since it seemed to be exclusively for women; presumably, the unmarried ones. I was right, and presently Thyra came to escort me back to the place where I’d slept earlier. Settling down in the warm, soft sheepskins, the light from the hearth gently illuminating the room, I was vaguely aware of other women and girls coming to bed. I was on the very edge of sleep when a sudden, frightening thought struck me.

These strangers might have been welcoming and hospitable to me. I might have just spent a most enjoyable evening with fine food and drink, entertained by an exceptional storyteller. Yet one of these people — apparently a high-ranking one — had come to my faraway home and committed very grave crimes, including two murders. If, as it appeared, Einar had gone on his mission with his father’s full knowledge and approval, then surely it made them all guilty.

I realized, with a sick sense of fear, that I could not allow myself to relax my guard. With a great effort, I forced my anxious thoughts to grow still and finally fell asleep.

Sometime in the night I was thrown awake by a vivid and disturbing dream about a tall, light-haired, bearded man who went ashore as one person and came back as someone different. After that, sleep was a long time returning. When it did, the dreams were even worse.

Gurdyman had decided it would be best not to alarm Lassair’s family by bursting in and announcing he was very worried about her because she appeared to be missing. Instead, he found a place beneath an ancient oak tree from which he could watch the village unobserved, and then sat down to wait for Hrype to appear.

He hoped fervently that his old friend was nearby. If not, he could be in for a very long wait.

As it transpired, however, he did not have to restrain his impatience for long. Quite soon, he saw Hrype emerge from behind a small, well-kept house on the edge of the settlement, whose garden was full of tidy herb beds: Lassair’s aunt’s house, he guessed. Standing up, he put his hands to his lips and blew a hooting whistle.

‘Not the most unobtrusive of calls to make in daylight hours,’ Hrype observed, reaching the top of the incline and coming to join Gurdyman under the oak. ‘Had there been any of my fellow villagers within earshot, it might have penetrated even their dull and unobservant minds that it’s rare to hear an owl in the daytime.’

Then, catching a good look at Gurdyman’s face, he stopped. The levity, and the surprised pleasure at unexpectedly seeing his friend, drained away. ‘What’s wrong?’ he demanded urgently.

Gurdyman told him. ‘She’s not here, then,’ he added. There was no need to ask; Hrype’s reaction told him that what he had so dreaded was true.

Hrype was standing a little apart from him, half turned away, looking down towards the village. ‘I might have known nothing that wasn’t life-threatening would have prised you out of your house and brought you into the country,’ he muttered. Then, spinning round, ‘Please, don’t think I don’t appreciate it.’

‘I don’t,’ Gurdyman said quietly.

There was silence. Gurdyman observed his friend, watching him go through the possibilities. Dismissing, probably, the easy answers. The ones that said, there’ll be an obvious explan-ation; she’ll have run into that Norman of hers and gone off with him for a few days. Or, she’ll have met some poor soul on the road in need of healing, and gone back with them to their home to take care of them.

For one thing, Lassair would not have done either of those things without getting word to her loved ones. For another, it wasn’t a few days. It was more or less a fortnight.

Gurdyman sighed. He knew, even before Hrype spoke, that his friend would have reached the same conclusion that he had. Nevertheless, he waited for Hrype to admit it.

‘I believe,’ Hrype said eventually, ‘that you and I might have prevented this.’

Gurdyman nodded. ‘I believe that, too.’ He met Hrype’s eyes. ‘It is not easy to live with.’

The silence resumed.

The next day, some of the young women whose accommodation I was sharing took it upon themselves to look after me. The morning was bright and sunny and, I guessed, as warm as it got up in those northern latitudes at that time of year. Which in fact wasn’t really very warm at all, for the sun’s strength was feeble up here. In the girls’ cheerful, giggling company, I was led away into the low hills behind the farmstead, to where, to my amazed delight, a spring of natural hot water came bubbling up out of the black ground, forming a steaming, broiling lake. The girls shed their clothes and their inhibitions, plunging in mother-naked with squeals of mock-horror at the temperature of the water, urging me to join them. I didn’t need much urging.

There must have been some code of conduct that reserved specific times for the two sexes, for no men or boys came to join us. After a while, however, I was feeling so relaxed, and enjoying the experience so much, that I wouldn’t have minded if they had.

Back at the farmstead, one of the older women approached, bearing my own clothes, laundered and neatly folded. Taking them and thanking her, my first instinct was to go and change into them immediately. But, by the time I was back at my sleeping place, I was no longer so sure. Sensing someone watching me, I turned, to see Asa standing in the doorway.

Her cool, aloof expression was momentarily softened into a smile, and I saw how beautiful she was. ‘The gown which Thyra gave you becomes you,’ she said. ‘It, and the other garments, is a gift, and yours to keep. We will understand, though, if you prefer to put on your own clothes once more.’

I looked down at myself. The cream and brown robe was lovely; probably the best-quality garment I’d ever worn. It, and the apron and under linen, felt right, somehow. I felt very comfortable in them, and, in a strange way, it was as if I was used to wearing them. It occurred to me suddenly that it wasn’t only the clothes that felt familiar; or, possibly, they were a symptom of something larger. The fact was, I felt at home here in the farmstead. I got on with these people; I seemed to understand them, although I had no idea why. In some unfathomable way, they were familiar.

I had already resolved the question of how it was that, with Olaf’s help, I had managed so quickly to pick up a working knowledge of their speech. From all that I had observed, it was clear that these people regularly visited my own country. Einar and his crew, for example, obviously knew the waters around the fens, and Thorfinn appeared to have heard of Cambridge. These facts did not surprise me, for the Norsemen had long traded with my own countrymen, and it seemed quite possible that I had been absorbing speech and accents similar to those of my hosts since I’d first been able to hear and understand.

I still had no idea why I was there or what they wanted from me. Yet, some time during the day and the night since my arrival, and despite my constant efforts to remind myself what Einar had done, it occurred to me that I’d stopped being afraid. I felt almost that I was one of them. Under the circumstances, it seemed right to go on wearing my new finery. Then, I would look like one of them, too.

Still, the fact remained that I had been brought here against my will and without my agreement.

As all this flashed swiftly through my mind, I realized I hadn’t answered Asa. I returned her smile, and said, ‘I am most grateful for the gift. I will pack my own garments away, and continue to dress as my hosts do.’

She gave a quick nod of acknowledgement (of approval?) then turned and slipped away.

Later in the day, Thorfinn sent for me. He greeted me courteously, and I had the sense that his swift glance took in quite a lot. He proposed a ride; two tough-looking, shaggy ponies stood ready outside the homestead.

We crossed the valley, surmounted the gentle slope at its lip and then rode off along the coastal plain. Reaching a place where a small river flowed out from the hills to meet the sea, we turned inland. As we jogged along, Thorfinn spoke of many things: the landscape, the climate, the problems of growing enough food during the short season to feed the people in the long winter months. I guessed he hadn’t brought me out there to discuss the weather and food production, and, sure enough, presently he drew rein at the top of a low rise, turned to me and said, ‘Did you enjoy Freydis’s story?’

‘Yes, very much,’ I replied. ‘Although I confess it gave me bad dreams.’

‘Bad dreams?’ he shot back.

It was as if he knew. ‘Well, powerful dreams,’ I amended. That was putting it mildly; in my sleeping self, I had experienced a voyage such as Thorkel’s, and in nightmare visions I had travelled inside my soul and been forced face to face with aspects of myself and my past that were neither nice nor welcome.

‘Powerful dreams,’ Thorfinn repeated thoughtfully. He was staring at me, right inside me. I had the sense that he was seeing me very clearly.

It was not a comfortable feeling. ‘What happened to Thorkel?’ I asked, more to stop his probing than because I thought he’d tell me. ‘Did he manage to get his ship and his crew safely home?’

‘He did,’ Thorfinn said. I sensed a heaviness in his tone, as if some ancient memory disturbed him. ‘In time, he married, and his wife bore him a son.’ He shot me a quick glance, his light eyes holding mine for only an instant. ‘His son, too, was a mariner, and that son’s daughter in her turn bore a son who followed his forefathers to sea.’

I worked it out. ‘So that man was Thorkel’s great-grandson.’

‘He was,’ Thorfinn agreed. Again, he looked quickly at me. It was as if he was constantly gauging my reaction. ‘He was called the Silver Dragon,’ he murmured, ‘and this was his land.’

He must have been a mighty figure, I reflected, for his people still called their land by the same name.

‘What was he like?’ I asked.

Thorfinn looked up into the sky. ‘It is warm today,’ he observed. Only relatively so, I could have added. I wrapped my borrowed sheepskin jerkin more closely around me. ‘We shall dismount,’ he went on, ‘and sit here on the headland, looking out over the sea.’

I settled beside him. The ponies wandered away, and I heard the sound of their strong teeth tearing at the short, tough grass. I’d imagined we would sit there a while, and he would tell me some more about life up there in that inhospitable land. But I was wrong. When, at last, he began to speak, it was to tell me a story that precisely answered my question: the story of the Silver Dragon.

‘You asked what he was like,’ he began. ‘He was, like most of us, a mixture of good and bad. He was a big man; tall, broad-shouldered, heavily bearded, with a head of thick, fair hair streaked white by the sun, the wind and the salt sea spray. That was why they gave him the nickname: they said he looked like a dragon wreathed in its own silvery-white smoke.’ He smiled, as if reflecting on some fond memory.

‘To begin with, he was fearless and intrepid, leading his loyal crew into many adventures as they followed the routes discovered by the forefathers and, extending them, always pushing on, on, discovered new lands. The Dragon had faith in his own abilities: was he not the descendant of great men, mariners who feared nothing and risked every peril in order to push out the boundaries of their world? Besides, the Dragon believed that he carried his own luck with him.’ A shadow crossed the lined old face. In a softer tone, he murmured, ‘It is ever so, that the gods observe those who are brash and overconfident, and, in time, remind them forcefully and painfully that they are but human.’

I nodded. Gurdyman had told me legends from out of the unimaginably distant lands in the hot south, beside the Middle Sea. In the tales, men who began to believe they were gods always suffered. I pictured Gurdyman’s face, trying to recall the word: hubris.

‘What happened to the Dragon?’ I prompted Thorfinn.

He smiled sadly. ‘Knowing that a … a certain path was becoming increasingly perilous, he persisted in following it when he should have turned back.’

‘Like his great-grandfather Thorkel,’ I butted in, remembering Freydis’s tale.

‘Yes,’ he said. The word was barely above a whisper. ‘The result was very painful for him,’ he went on, resuming his story, ‘and for a while he feared he was losing his reason. He-’

‘What about his crew and his ship?’ I interrupted. ‘They must have been in danger, too.’

Thorfinn turned to me. ‘A good question,’ he remarked. ‘The Dragon at that time was a long way from treating his crew in the way that good, loyal sailors deserve to be treated. There was indeed danger for them, for the Dragon’s mind had turned inwards, and he was not as alert to the ever-present perils of the sea as he should have been.’

‘Did he …?’ I began, but Thorfinn did not let me speak.

‘The Dragon returned to his senses just in time,’ he went on, ‘and, understanding at last the desperate chasm that yawned at his feet, he tried to save himself. Abandoning his wild ways, he ceased to sail his ship in anything but the safest, best-known waters, restricting himself and his crew to the tried and tested routes. He, who had been a seafarer in the finest tradition of our people, became a trader.’

The amount of venom that Thorfinn put into that one innocuous word had to be heard to be believed.

‘One spring, when the travelling days had just begun again,’ he said, continuing with his tale, ‘the Dragon took his ship on a long voyage, leaving the home waters and returning to familiar shores, his hold full of wool and ivory to trade for the many things not found in his own land. In a backwater of a port, far away, he went ashore and, still deeply disturbed and not in his right mind, he got very drunk. He began to see visions: terrible images that attacked him like a cloud of demons, causing him to lash out blindly and wildly. His huge fist encountered a local man, and, in short, a ferocious fight broke out, leaving the Dragon badly beaten. Strong and indomitable though he was, he had been set on by ten men, and had come off very much the worse.’

I could well imagine. I shuddered, my healer’s imagination seeing the likely damage.

‘The men felt guilty afterwards, however,’ Thorfinn continued, ‘for they knew who he was — his reputation, indeed, had spread far and wide — and recognized that he was not in his right mind. They had some affection for him, and would not have harmed him had it not been necessary to restrain him and prevent him hurting others. One of them knew of a local woman who was skilled at healing — ’ (How strange, I reflected, for that was just what I’d been thinking about) — ‘and fetched her to tend the Dragon.’ He paused, his eyes staring into the distance. ‘In stature, she was a small woman — tiny, in comparison to the Dragon — yet her heart was brave as a she-wolf’s. She was slender and slight, with deep, dark eyes full of laughter, rosy cheeks and a smile that made men go weak at the knees.’ He paused, a faint frown on his face, as if trying to recall what came next in the tale.

It seemed to take him quite an effort to pick up his narrative. Then, as if the pause had not happened, he said casually, ‘Or so it was said. She was skilled in her craft, and with quick, nimble little hands, she patched up the Dragon’s wounds and, using the painful but efficient method of a round stone under the arm and a hard push, put back his dislocated shoulder. Realizing that he would not be fit to sail for many days, she sent one of the men he had fought to inform his crew, and had four of the others bear him away to her small house, on the edge of a nearby village. There she tended him, bathing his forehead when he sweated in his fever — for, despite her care, one of his cuts had become inflamed — and sitting on his chest when, in his delirium, he would have risen up and fled out into the darkness.

‘She was more than a patcher-up of cuts and a setter of bones, this little healer,’ he went on, his deep voice seeming to thrum in the still air. ‘Her ability to see inside another’s mind, and, moreover, to understand what she saw there, amounted almost to magic. She perceived that the Dragon was troubled by something that ran far deeper than cuts and bruises. For all that she was yet young, she possessed the wisdom of her ancestors, and she understood that it would not be easy to make a man like the Dragon, who prided himself on his great courage, open up to her and reveal what darkened his heart. She bided her time, and gradually, over the days and the long nights, she gained his confidence.’

I imagined how that might have been. How would I have done it? Quietly, calmly, I thought; asking careful, apparently casual, questions; always making sure I disguised what I was really trying to do. It would take a great deal of patience, when your healer’s instinct was telling you in no uncertain terms that a patient was suffering badly and needed your help …

‘In time,’ Thorfinn went on, ‘the Dragon began to trust this bright, funny, confident little woman, who refused to be intimidated by him and who presumed to order him around in a way that nobody, especially anyone female, had dared to do since he was a child in the care of his indomitable mother. As the days went on, his resentment of her began to lessen, and he no longer had to grit his teeth at her chattering. He-’

‘What about her?’ I interrupted, no longer able to contain myself. ‘What did she feel about him?’

Thorfinn turned and grinned at me, as if to say: typical woman’s question. ‘She, too, was warming to him, and starting to overcome her initial aversion to the big, brutal stranger who had lost his temper so spectacularly.’ He paused, perhaps made awkward by this talk of feelings. ‘It would not be exaggerating,’ he said eventually, ‘to say that she was growing quite fond of him.’

The healer falling for her patient — yes, it was not unheard of. Edild had warned me to be on my guard, if ever I were to share the intimacy of treatment with an attractive man made temporarily dependent on me, to watch myself carefully. So far, the only time I had encountered those conditions was in caring for Rollo, and fond did not begin to describe my feelings. I’d already been deeply in love with him.

In a vivid flash of memory, I recalled our hand-fasting. There is no need for this, sweeting, he had said, his expression soft with love, for I am bound to you already. Nevertheless — perhaps because he saw that it mattered to me — he had allowed me to proceed. I’d done it the old way, with our right hands bound by a strip of ribbon and a stub of precious beeswax candle lit by the flames of our two rush lights, symbolizing that what we made together was greater than the sum of our two selves.

Rollo. Where are you? I asked him silently. There was no answer.

I forced my mind back to the present, and to what else Edild had told me on the subject of the healer’s relationship with her charge. She had explained how to deal with attractive male patients who believed they were in love with me. Be brusque, she had said, in the sort of tone that brooked no argument; I could hear her words now, stored within my memory. Leave the man in no doubt whatsoever that you are there to tend his wounds or his sickness, and nothing more.

‘What did the little healer do?’ I asked.

Thorfinn, prompted, went on with his story. ‘She asked him outright what was worrying him. At first, he denied that anything was, but she persisted, and finally, exhausted by pain and distress, he gave in. He was tired that day — it was nightfall after his first attempt at walking further than to the latrine and back — and worn down by the weight he had carried for so long. She fed him strong ale, and, lying there by the hearth, finally he opened himself to her.’

I waited, hardly daring to breathe. There was something in the air … a nervous tension, as if the forbidden was about to be spoken, and the elements of the natural world around us — the black rocks, the wiry grass, the wide blue sky — were anxious with anticipation.

‘The Dragon had in his possession a certain object,’ Thorfinn said heavily, ‘which had been passed down through the generations since the days of Thorkel Jorundsson, the Dragon’s great-grandfather, and was first acquired when Thorkel went ashore in that far land behind the sun.’

I suppressed a gasp: unless I was mistaken, it appeared that Thorfinn was about to continue the tale that Freydis had begun last night. I’d been right, it seemed, when I’d instinctively felt that she would not conclude it. She wasn’t going to, but her father was.

‘In that strange port in a faraway land,’ Thorfinn was saying, ‘a man with dark skin and feathers in his hair offered him a strange ball made of a substance that he said was divine. It was a gift, he claimed, from the gods of his land. In colour it was black, but, held up to the flame of a candle or to sunlight, it would flash out green and gold lights that at times dazzled the eye.’

Thorfinn glanced at me, and then resumed his narrative, slipped so swiftly and easily into storyteller mode that I barely noticed the transition.

‘“What is it?” Thorkel asked the dark-skinned man in an awed whisper.

‘“It is a shining mirror,” answered the man, “and it is very powerful, recognizing no boundaries or limitations. It permits a man to see the stark truth, for nothing may be hidden from it, and it does not hesitate to reveal everything it knows. It is ruthless; it is an object that only the strongest, bravest man may consult.”

‘Thorkel, while sorely tempted by an object described as only fit for the strongest and the bravest, nevertheless was cautious. After all, he knew nothing of this stranger with the feathers in his hair, and it was well known that busy trading ports attracted the unscrupulous and the devious, willing to use any trick to make money. “And what benefit is it to a man, this ability to see within himself?” he demanded. “What advantage would that bring to a mariner like me?”

‘The stranger gave a mysterious smile. “The shining mirror is a stone of divination,” he murmured. “It bestows upon its owner the gift of prophecy.” He nodded at the Dragon’s instinctive gasp. “Moreover,” he continued, “if a man has the strength, it allows his conscious will to search out and harness the unseen forces of the spirit world, so that their immeasurable powers are at his disposal.” Leaning forward, dropping his voice to an intimate whisper, the dark man added, “You could manifest the energies of the spirit world here on earth. What then, mariner, could you not achieve?”’

I shuddered. Thorfinn had conjured up the mood too well. I did not like the sound of this magical stone; not at all. Although I am still a novice in the arts that Gurdyman and Hrype are trying to teach me, already I knew enough to fear anything that offers the power of the spirit world as a tool at the disposal of a mere human being. Over and over again, Gurdyman stresses that the spirits must be treated with deep respect: keep well away unless there is absolutely no alternative, is his constant advice. He doesn’t follow the advice himself, but I suppose — ancient and experienced in his craft as he is — that is his prerogative.

‘And so Thorkel acquired the magic stone,’ I breathed. He must have done, for, had he had the good sense to turn and walk away, this story would never have happened.

‘He did,’ Thorfinn agreed. ‘He gave the stranger with the feathers in his hair a bag of hard-earned gold, and the stranger wrapped the shining mirror in its soft leather cloth, and Thorkel bore it away.’

He was a fool, I thought. ‘What happened?’

‘At first, Thorkel was thrilled with his purchase, and he did not begin to suspect that, from the moment it came into his possession, it had begun to alter him.’

‘His crew saw the change in him,’ I said, remembering Freydis’s tale. He was not the same man he had been when he went ashore, she had said.

Thorfinn nodded. ‘Indeed they did,’ he agreed. ‘But he was their captain; their leader. They were far from their own land, and they knew that they depended on his courage and his skill to get them safely home. And, indeed, the alterations that they observed in Thorkel were but subtle, and did not appear to diminish his abilities as a mariner. It was …’ He paused, apparently searching for the right word. ‘It was his character that had changed.’

He did not elucidate. I wanted to probe, but, almost as if he wanted to forestall my questions, he ploughed on with his tale. ‘The ship and her crew returned to their homeland, and the people welcomed them with great joy, for they were long overdue. After a time, Thorkel withdrew to a small hut up in the hills, where he stayed, suffering great privations, through a long and ferocious winter. He was entirely alone, and to this day nobody can say what he endured. What he endured in his mind,’ he amended. ‘Physically, the damage was all too visible, for Thorkel lost a foot and half of his right hand to the biting cold that stops the blood and kills the flesh.’

I shuddered. I had heard of the condition, but never seen it. ‘What was he like?’ I asked, although part of me felt I would really rather not know. ‘Was he himself again?’

Thorfinn smiled. ‘He was, child. It is likely he understood by then that it was the shining stone that had so affected him, and it seems that he wrapped it up and hid it away.’

I frowned. ‘But it didn’t-’

‘But it did not stay hidden?’ Thorfinn finished my question, quirking an eyebrow at me. ‘No, it did not, for its powers are seductive and it does not give up its hold so easily. Thorkel’s son grew to manhood, and in time he inherited his father’s black stone. It passed on to his daughter, and in all that time the stone was no more than an object of fascination, for its beauty was undiminished. But, for some reason, its powers slept; perhaps, indeed, it was that no one during those long years awoke them.’

‘Until it came into the Dragon’s hands,’ I whispered. ‘And he reacted just as his great-grandfather had done.’

‘He did,’ Thorfinn said heavily. ‘He fell deep under its enchantment, and it took him, helpless, on a terrible journey inside himself. So affected was he by what was revealed to him there that his mind was all but destroyed.’

He fell silent. Deeply shaken by the horror of what he had just said, I dared not speak.

After a moment, he resumed. ‘Had it not been for a chance meeting with a dark-eyed, laughing healer,’ he said softly, ‘the Dragon would have torn himself apart.’