Land of the Silver Dragon

EIGHTEEN

‘She was vibrant with life and full of sparkling magic, the young woman you only knew in old age,’ Hrype began. ‘They tried to control her, her kinsfolk and the village elders, for, loving her as they did, despite her waywardness and her utter refusal to accept restraint or advice, they feared she would stand out like the one tall stem of corn and, like it, be cut down. Then, as now,’ he added, shooting me a glance, ‘it did not do to be too different. When she was fifteen, Cordeilla married a calm, steady man, quite a few years older than her, and in a short time she produced two little sons in exactly his image, with not a spark of magic in either of them.’

‘My uncles Ordic and Alwyn,’ I interrupted. Yes, it was fair to say they had no magic. I wondered if I should tell Hrype that this part of the tale was already familiar to me, but held back in case it stopped his flow.

As soon as he picked up the narrative, I was glad I hadn’t, for the things that he now revealed to me I had neither known nor even suspected.

‘The years passed slowly for Cordeilla, for, although her husband was a good man, the truth was that he bored her. She loved her little sons — of that I have no doubt — but the daily round of washing, cleaning, cooking, and the unremitting toil that was her lot wore her down. Her days were no tougher than those of any other woman,’ he added, perhaps sensing the protest forming in my mind, ‘but Cordeilla’s particular form of suffering was that she no longer had time for the free, wide-ranging thinking that had entranced her in her youth. Her days were just too full and, when she tumbled into bed at night, she was far too tired to do anything but fall instantly asleep.’

Would it be like that if I married and had children, I wondered? Would the daily grind effectively close iron doors in my mind, shutting out the wonder of the world and its endless possibilities? It depends upon who you marry, a very familiar voice said inside my head.

I smiled. I’d hoped Granny was with me just then. It was good — oh, better than good — to know I was right.

‘Then Cordeilla conceived again,’ Hrype went on, ‘and, hopeful this time for a child in her own image, her mercurial spirits rose and she was full of joy. When she miscarried, it seemed to her, for a time, that her world was covered with darkness, and she could find no light.’

Oh, Granny! I whispered silently to her.

Past and gone now, child, she replied briskly. It was not easy to detect the tremor in her voice, but it was there.

Some pains never really go away …

‘Her husband feared for her sanity,’ Hrype’s soft voice continued, ‘and, greatly missing her smile like the noonday sun that had once brightened the monotony and the hardship of his days, he too suffered. Unable to come up with a way to draw her out of her misery, he consulted the elders of the village. One of them, pointing out that Cordeilla came from a line of healers and wise women, said, why not let Cordeilla try to discover whether she shared the gift? To cut the story short, she reached out with both hands for this life-saving rope that was thrown to her, and, hurling herself into the study and practices taught to her, she found a reason to go on living.’

‘Was she good?’ I asked.

Hrype smiled at me. ‘The best,’ he replied.

As I watched, his smile faded. I’d been hoping he’d tell me that this discovery of her skills returned Cordeilla to her true self, but I sensed it did not happen like that. ‘The healing wasn’t enough, was it?’ I said in a small voice.

‘No,’ Hrype confirmed. ‘She mourned still for the lost child, and, in the hope that a new baby would ease her pain, she longed to conceive again. But her husband — no doubt acting as he had been advised, and wanting only for Cordeilla to get better — did not think the time was right for another pregnancy. In his clumsy way, he tried to make her forget the miscarriage, telling her that such things happened; that it was God’s will, and mere humans should not question the decisions of the Almighty. His remarks, far from consoling his wife, pushed her further back into her darkness. Her constant, ill-humoured mood drove her husband away, so that he spent as little time at home with her as he could. There were rumours that he sought comfort elsewhere, and, indeed, if they were true, who can blame him? If Cordeilla suspected or knew, she kept it to herself. Perhaps, understanding his distress and what had caused it, she felt he deserved some comfort. But it did not help: on the outside, she was a dutiful mother, wife and healer. On the inside, grieving, estranged from her husband, she was dying.’

I wondered what it had been about that particular pregnancy, that Cordeilla should grieve its loss so inconsolably. Miscarriages were, after all, a regular occurrence, and while I would not have presumed to minimize the pain they caused, I had observed with my own eyes how most women seemed to overcome their sorrow.

When another baby comes along, said Granny in my head.

Ah. Yes …

There was a short silence, and I felt Hrype was preparing for the next part of his tale. Taking a breath, he spoke. ‘All this time, a bright new star was poised to come blasting across Cordeilla’s sky, in the shape of a giant of a man by the name of Thorfinn Ofnirsson.’

In my mind’s eye I saw Thorfinn as I knew him. Without any apparent effort from me, slowly the image changed. The shock of silver hair that I had observed turned pale blond, here and there streaked white by sun and salt; the creases and wrinkles of age smoothed away. In this earlier Thorfinn, his brows were bound with a plait of leather, beneath which two thick plaits swung either side of his laughing face. Tall, broad and upright, he was in his prime.

‘Thorfinn was a mariner,’ Hrype was saying, ‘one of the finest of his generation, based in Iceland and with close kin on the Faroe Islands. He was the descendant of other sailors and explorers, one of whom made an extraordinary voyage, first sailing north-west from his home to Greenland, then south-west to Helluland, Markland, Vinland, and on, always on, further than any of his kinsman had dared to go or even dreamed of going.’

The land behind the sun, I thought, remembering the words of Thorfinn and his daughter. I knew this story already, for it was Thorkel’s tale. But Hrype, it seemed, knew where the place with the mystical-sounding name was to be found. Where was it? To the west, it appeared. I went over his description in my head, but the words made little sense. I would have to ask Gurdyman. He seemed to know how the lands of the earth were disposed.

I knew what Hrype was going to say next. I waited, keeping silent while he told me again what I already knew. Once more, I listened to the tale of what had happened to Thorkel and his treasure; how and why it had eventually come to Thorfinn. I heard again — and, as before, it pained me — what Thorfinn’s inheritance had led to: his slow, steady disintegration, from the instant when he received a black stone with unimaginable power, once acquired from a dark-skinned stranger with feathers in his hair, right up to the moment when he lay, battered, bruised, broken, beside my grandmother’s hearth.

‘And in the end,’ Hrype concluded, ‘his heart full of despair, Thorfinn understood that he and his shining stone must part. Although it tore out a part of him, he gave it to Cordeilla, and told her to hide it away, out of the earth’s light, until the right hands should come to claim it.’

Skuli believed his were the right hands, I thought, more than half entranced by the power of the story. Furiously resentful of the fact that it had passed down through the female side rather than via his father to himself, he had done his utmost to find it and claim it. He had failed.

And now, the shining stone had been bestowed somewhere quite different …

Suddenly feeling it heavy in my palms, I whispered, ‘It has come into my hands.’

Panicking now, I met Hrype’s eyes. ‘I am surely not the rightful recipient!’ I cried, almost sobbing from fear. ‘You must have been mistaken, Hrype, or else Granny was confused and … and …’

I was never confused! Granny protested firmly inside my head. I knew exactly what I was doing, Lassair child. It is yours.

I wondered if Hrype could hear her too.

I stared at him. ‘Why?’ I said, the word more a breath than audible speech.

For a moment, his face twisted in compassion. Then, appearing to wipe the emotion away, he said, ‘Put yourself, if you can, into Cordeilla’s shoes. Into Thorfinn’s. There you had two people, both suffering, whom circumstance had drawn into close proximity. Both were in need of comfort and compassion. Because of what they were to each other — patient and healer — there had been, of necessity, intimacy between them. Both were young; both were vibrant and attractive.’

He paused, as if leaving it to me to speak the words. ‘They fell in love,’ I said. I knew it was so; it was the inevitable end to their tale.

‘They fell in love,’ Hrype confirmed. ‘For the brief weeks of one midsummer, they were lovers. Then Thorfinn, healed both in body and in mind, sailed away. Cordeilla never saw him again.’

‘Did he not come back to her?’ Tears were rolling down my face. ‘Not even once?’

‘He did not dare,’ Hrype said heavily, ‘for he feared that the temptation to take back his shining stone would prove too great. He truly believed that he could only go on living if he no longer possessed it. Perhaps,’ he added softly, ‘it is more accurate to say, if it no longer possessed him.’

This talk of the stone’s uncanny power was deeply disturbing. Again, I seemed to feel the heaviness of it in my hands. I longed to put it down, but something stopped me. It — it — would not let me. It was as if, I thought wildly, it had to be assured that I was strong enough to deal with it.

I was not at all sure I was.

‘Cordeilla grieved for him,’ Hrype went on, picking up the story, ‘but she had a husband, two small sons and a home to care for, and she had no choice but to gather up her courage and move on. She loved her little boys, and her husband was not a bad man. It was not his fault that he lacked the imagination and the wild flair she needed in a mate. She told herself firmly that she must not waste her life mourning for something she could not have, and she made up her mind to make the best of what she did have.’

I smiled. That sounded like Granny Cordeilla. She had always been a practical, courageous and resolute woman.

I became aware that the pause between one sentence and the next had lengthened somewhat. Alarmed suddenly, although I did not know why, I brought my attention right back to Hrype.

Acknowledging the fact, he nodded. ‘And then,’ he said, ‘Cordeilla discovered she was pregnant.’

I think I knew the truth, instantly, even while my mind was weaving about trying to evade it.

Fighting what I’m sure I had already accepted, I thought, Cordeilla’s husband changed his mind, and the result was this new conception.

Next: She knew the child wasn’t her husband’s, and she quietly aborted it.

Then: The child was born but did not survive.

I forced myself to look at Hrype. ‘Did the child live to adulthood?’

‘He did.’

After that, there was nowhere else to go. No comforting explanation behind which to hide.

My grandmother’s third-born child was my father.

‘Nobody knew,’ Hrype said presently, as if that made a difference. ‘Cordeilla and Thorfinn had been very discreet. In addition, she had shared her husband’s bed during the summer, so there was no reason for him to think the baby was not his. When the child was born, Cordeilla explained its dissimilarity to her husband by telling everyone it looked like her brothers. Which, indeed, it did.’

Slowly I nodded. I hope Hrype saw; I couldn’t have spoken just then, but I didn’t want him to think that shock had closed my ears and I was no longer listening.

‘The years rolled by,’ he resumed, ‘and, a couple of years on, Cordeilla conceived again, giving birth to twin daughters. The elder, as you know, is a true child of her mother, with Cordeilla’s quick intelligence, wits, magical ability and, of course, her healer’s touch. Her appearance, fortuitously, supported Cordeilla’s claim that her third son’s colouring and large frame came from her side of the family, for, although she did not have the large stature, Edild did inherit reddish-fair hair and light green eyes, just like her uncles. The second twin, poor Alvela, was small and dark, like her father and the eldest pair of brothers.’

Hrype paused, looking at me closely as if to gauge my reaction to this astounding news. Deliberately I kept my expression neutral. If he suspected a fragment of what I was feeling, he would probably stop. I could barely endure to learn more, but it would be even worse if I didn’t hear the end.

After some time, he said quietly, ‘Cordeilla loved all five of her children, but Edild and Wymond were the ones she kept closest to her heart. And it was Wymond, of course, with whom she chose to live when she could no longer manage alone.’

She clove to Edild because she was so like herself, I thought, both in character and abilities, and she had the healer’s gift.

And to Wymond — my father — because he was Thorfinn’s son.

If Thorfinn was his father, that made him my grandfather.

It was no wonder I’d grown so quickly to love him.

I was still clutching the shining stone. My grandfather’s stone, left in the care of my grandmother to be passed on to someone who, in the fullness of time, would be the right recipient.

That someone was me, and the awareness of my responsibility was only just beginning to dawn on me. To say I was apprehensive nowhere near described the storm of emotions I was suffering, chief among which was terror.

I wanted to put the stone down.

I didn’t think I could.

Do it, a voice seemed to say.

I gathered all my courage, drew a deep breath and, slowly, carefully, reverently, laid the sacking-wrapped stone on the damp earth.

Instantly I felt so light-headed that I could have sworn my feet left the ground.

I was vaguely aware of Hrype, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the village.

He turned back to face me. ‘Are you all right?’

I nodded.

He reached out and briefly touched my arm, giving it a quick squeeze. His hand was warm, and very comforting. The he said, ‘I’m going to leave you here.’

I was too distraught to ask why. Perhaps he thought I needed some time alone to adjust to all that I had just learned. To adjust, too, to being the new keeper of my family’s great treasure …

He was walking away. Something occurred to me: something vital. ‘Hrype!’ I called out.

He spun round. ‘Yes?’

‘Does my father know?’

Slowly he shook his head. ‘No, Lassair. The only person here to whom Cordeilla revealed her secret was me.’

I had not the least idea whether to be glad or sorry.

I stood there alone, and slowly time passed. I had the sense that I was waiting for something.

Someone.

A mist had fallen, obscuring the moonlight. Presently, a tall, broad figure loomed up out of the darkness.

Thorfinn said, ‘So now you know.’

I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. Then, the tangle of my thoughts straightened itself out a little and I said, ‘You knew too?’ He had to; why else had all this happened?

‘I did,’ he admitted. ‘Not until many years after the child, your father, was born. She sent word, you see. Ships sailed by my kinsmen regularly visited the fens, as indeed they still do, and it was not hard for her to find someone kindly and discreet who knew where to find me and could take a message. Once she knew I would not come back to claim her and my son, she felt it was the right thing to do.’

‘Why would you not come back?’ I was weeping again.

‘I was married, with a growing family of my own. She knew that — knew, too, that I could not abandon them.’

‘You could have just visited!’ I cried. ‘Didn’t you want to see your son? Couldn’t you have spared just a few days — a few hours, even — to see what he was like?’

Thorfinn sighed. ‘It would have been too painful for both Cordeilla and for me,’ he said heavily. ‘But, as to not wishing to see him, I have regretted every single day of my life that I was not able to.’

I knew he spoke the truth; the naked emotion in his voice came from his heart.

He could not see his son, my father, even now; the resemblance between them would be clear, for those with eyes to see it. In a flash I recalled those moments back in Iceland when I had experienced a sense of familiarity about Thorfinn. I understood now why they had happened: in some subtle way, in some deep place inside my head far from conscious thought, Thorfinn reminded me of my father.

He might not be able to see his son, but there was something I could offer. Looking at him with a smile, I said, ‘Do you mind getting a bit wet?’

I stood back and let him go on to her alone. It was a moment of intense privacy, and I didn’t think he’d want anyone with him.

From a distance of a few paces, I watched as, at long last, my grandfather knelt on the ground and, head bowed, joined his spirit once again with that of the woman he had loved and lost.

Back on the mainland once more, I thought I should quickly get Thorfinn back to warmth and comfort. He was well wrapped, but he was wet to the thighs, and I didn’t think it could be good for him. Somewhere, there must be a bed waiting for him; Einar and his crewmen could not be far away.

But my grandfather had other ideas.

Ignoring my protests, he took a firm hold of my arm and led me away from the village, down to a slight rise on the southern edge of the bulge that is Aelf Fen. We drew to a halt, and he pointed out over the restless water.

I followed the line of his outstretched arm. I saw a sleek longship: a dramatic, dark shape against the silvery, moonlit water. She was moving away, slowly and carefully, her swift power reined in, for her crew would be all too aware that they rowed in shallow, unknown and possibly treacherous marshland waters.

Even moving at walking pace, it was clear what she was. A true Norse longship, with shields along the gunwales and a fierce serpent figurehead, she was truly magnificent.

She was all but indistinguishable from the ship of my vision.

‘Malice-striker,’ I whispered.

Thorfinn gave a grunt. There was pain in the sound. ‘No, but Skuli’s ship is very like my own craft, as she was in her prime,’ he said gruffly.

‘I’ve seen your ship,’ I reminded him softly. I had seen both the living ship, with the inner sight of vision, and also what remained of Thorfinn’s Malice-striker, on a faraway shore in Iceland.

It was here, though, in the fens — almost on this very spot — that I had seen the dream ship. There was magic about tonight, too, as there had been then, and such a thing seemed not only possible but entirely probable.

Thorfinn turned to me, about to speak, but I did not let him. ‘I don’t mean the skeleton ship on the shore in your homeland,’ I said softly. ‘I meant my dream vision.’

And, at last, I told him what I had seen.

He listened, accepting my quiet words, as I had known he would, with a nod. ‘I sailed here, long ago,’ he murmured. ‘As you now know.’ The shadow of a grin creased his face. ‘You probably caught a whisper of the shade of that earlier time, for, as with all things, it is still here to see for those who look with the right eyes.’

I looked out over the water again, aware that Thorfinn, beside me, was doing the same. Skuli’s ship was gaining speed. He was going, away from me, out of my life. Without the stone for which he had risked so much and caused such a sum of trouble, grief and pain.

‘Where is he going?’ I asked in a hushed voice. ‘Is he heading for those fearsome rapids, where his grandfather — ’ who must have been Thorfinn’s uncle, I thought suddenly, my mind reeling; his mother’s brother — ‘met his death?’

For some time, Thorfinn did not answer. After a while, and it sounded more as if he were intoning a chant than speaking, he said, ‘They will sail out into the North Sea, then into the great river network that forges its way through the vast continent over there to the south and the east; the route that leads from the Varyani to the Greeks.’

I did not know what he meant. ‘From the Gulf of Finland up the River Neva, through Lake Ladoga, the River Volkhov,’ he sang, ‘on, on, passing out of the northern forests and emerging on to the steppes; by portage to the Dneiper, and on to the great power centre of Kiev, where men of all shapes and hues come to buy and sell. But that is not the end of the voyage, for it goes still on, on, across the Black Sea until at last, if the gods smile on them, they will reach their journey’s end.’

I did not ask where that was. I did not want to break the spell, and, anyway, I believed I already knew.

But my grandfather told me anyway.

‘Skuli and his crew are going to Miklagard.’