Sworn Brother

I looked at Edgar. He was removing his leather leggings so he would be less hampered. He turned towards his lord and saluted him, a short movement of the boar spear held up to the sky, then he faced the thicket, shifted his boar spear to his left hand holding it close to the metal head, dropped to his knees and began to crawl into the tunnel. Straight towards the waiting beast.

We held our breath, expecting any moment the boar's suicidal charge, but nothing came.

'Maybe the boar's already dead in there,' I whispered to Kjartan.

'I hope so. If not, Edgar's only chance will be to kneel and take the charge head on, the spear point in the boar's chest, butt planted in the ground.'

Still there was no sound except our breathing and the whimper of a nervous dog. We strained to hear any noise from the thicket. None came.

Then, incredibly, we heard Edgar's voice in a low, guttural chant, almost a growl. 'Out! Out! Out!'

'By the belt of Thor!' muttered Kjartan. 'I heard that sound when we fought King Ethelred at Ashington, The place I lost my hand. It's the war call of the Saxons. That is how they taunt their foe. He's challenging the boar.'

Suddenly there came a tearing, crashing, rushing sound, an upheaval in the thicket, and the boar came blundering out, unsteady on its feet, weaving and slipping on the ground, its legs losing purchase. It stumbled past us and ran another hundred paces, then slipped one more time and fell on its side. The yelping pack closed upon it now it was helpless. The kennelman ran up with a knife to cut the boar's throat. I did not see the end, for already I was on my hands and knees crawling through the tunnel to find Edgar. I came across him doubled up in agony, his boar spear tangled in the underbrush, his hands clasped across his belly. 'Easy now,' I told him, 'I have to get you clear.' Slowly I dragged him, crawling backwards until I felt helping hands reach over me to grab Edgar by his shoulders and pull him free.

They laid him on the ground and Kjartan reached down to draw Edgar's hands aside so he could inspect the wound. As Edgar hands came away, I saw that the tusks had gutted him. His entrails lay exposed. He knew he was dying, his eyes shut tight with pain.

He died without saying another word, at the feet of his master, the ealdorman whose honour he had protected.

Only then did I know the real message in the wands was not about Edgar's missing daughter. The wands had pointed to the truth, yet I had been too dull to see it. The snake wand had meant death; that much I had understood. But the appearance of Frey stood not for prosperity and fertility, but because the God's familiar is Gullinborsti, the immortal boar who pulls his chariot.

FOUR

London was soggy and miserable under a rain-shrouded sky when I arrived back there a week after Michael's Mass. I was still trying to come to terms with Edgar's death. The festivities in the burh had been dismal, with the ealdorman injured, Edgar dead, and the premature onset of gales and heavy rain showers to remind us that the English countryside is no place to spend a winter. Edgar's death had hit me hard. The wiry huntsman had been so competent, so sure of himself, that he had seemed indestructible. I told myself that he would have accepted his death as a risk of his profession and that he had died honourably and would have found a place in Valholl, or wherever it was that his own Gods rewarded those who died a worthy death. His wife Judith, however, was left numbed by her loss. First her daughter and now her husband had been taken away from her, and she was distraught. Aelfhelm, the ealdorman, behaved nobly. When we brought Edgar's body back to the huntsman's cottage, he had promised Judith that he would remember her husband's sacrifice. She could continue to live in her home, and Edgar's son would be employed as assistant to whoever was appointed the new royal huntsman. If the young man proved as capable as his father had been, then there was every reason why he would eventually succeed his father. Yet when I went to say goodbye to Judith on

the day Aelfgifu and her entourage set out for London, she could only press my hand in hers and murmur, 'Thorgils, take care of yourself. Remember your days with us. Remember how Edgar. . .' but she did not finish what she had to say because she choked and began to weep.

It had rained for most of our journey south-east as our glum little procession travelled the same road that had taken us to Northampton in the spring. And I had another worry. 'Far from court, far from care,' had been one of Edgar's many proverbs and, as the capital drew nearer, I began for the first time to appreciate the danger of my affair with Aelfgifu. I was still very much in love with her and I longed to see her and hold her. Yet I knew that the risks of discovery in London would be far greater than in our secluded rural world. There was a rumour that Knut was shortly to return from Denmark to England now that the summer campaigning season was over. Naturally Aelfgifu as his queen, or rather as one of his queens, should be on hand to greet him. She had chosen to come to London because Emma, the other wife, was installed in Winchester, which Knut regarded as his English capital. Naturally there was gossipy speculation as to which city, and which wife, he would return to if he did come. As events turned out, he did not return to England that winter, but continued to leave the affairs of the kingdom under the joint control of Earl Thorkel the Tall and Archbishop Wulfstan.

While the staff were unloading the carts at the palace, I approached Aelfgifu's chamberlain and asked if he had any orders for me, only to be told that he had no instructions. I was not on the official list of the queen's retinue. He suggested I should return to my original lodgings at the skalds' house, where he would send for me if I was wanted.

Feeling rejected, I walked through the sodden streets, skirting around the murky puddles in the unpaved roadway and ducking to avoid the dripping run-off from the thatched roofs. When I reached the lodging house, the place was shuttered and locked. I hammered on the door until a neighbour called out to say that the housekeeper was away visiting her family, and expected back that evening. I was soaked by the time she finally returned and let me in. She told me that all the skalds who had regular employment with Knut were still in Denmark. Those, like my absent-minded mentor Herfid who had no official appointment at court, had packed up and drifted away. I asked if I could stay in the lodgings for a few days until my future was clear.

It was a week before Aelfgifu sent a messenger to fetch me and I went with high hopes, remembering my last visit to her rooms in the palace. This time I was shown to an audience room, not to her private chamber. Aelfgifu was seated at a table, sorting through a box of jewellery.

'Thorgils,' she began, and the tone of her voice warned me at once that she was going to be businesslike. This was not a lover's tryst. I noticed, however, that she waited until the messenger who fetched me had left the room before she spoke. 'I have to talk to you about life in London.' She paused, and I could see that she was trying to find a way between her private feelings and her caution. 'London is not like Northampton. This palace has many ears and eyes, and there are those who, from jealousy or ambition, would do anything to damage me.'

'My lady, I would never do anything to put you at risk,' I blurted out.

'I know,' she said, 'but you cannot hide your feelings. Your love is written in your face. That is one thing that I found so appealing when we were in the country. Don't you remember how Edgar would joke about it - he used to say, "Love and a cough cannot be hid". He had so many of those proverbs.' Here she paused wistfully for a moment. 'So, however much you may try to conceal your love, I don't think you would be successful. And if that love was constantly on display before me, I cannot guarantee that I might not respond and reveal all.'

Anguished, I wondered for a moment if she would forbid me to see her ever again, but I had misjudged her.

She went on. 'I have been thinking about how it might be possible for us to meet from time to time - not often, but at least when it is safe to do so.'

My spirits soared. I would do anything to see her. I would trust to her guidance, however much it might hurt me.

Aelfgifu was playing with the contents of the jewellery box, lifting up a necklace or a pendant, letting it slide back through her fingers, then picking up a ring or a brooch and turning it so that the workmanship or the stones caught the light. For a moment she seemed distracted.

'There is a way, but you will have to be most discreet,' she said.

'Please tell me. I'll do whatever you wish,' I replied.

'I've arranged for you to stay with Brithmaer. You don't know him yet, but he is the man who supplies me with most of my jewels. He came to visit me this morning to show me his latest stock, and I told him that in future I preferred to have my own agent staying at his premises, someone who knows my tastes' — she said this without a trace of irony - 'so that when anything interesting comes in from abroad, I will see it without delay.'

'I don't know anything about jewellery, but, of course, I'll do whatever is necessary,' I promised her.

'I've asked Brithmaer to give you some training. You'll have plenty of time to learn. Of course he won't instruct you himself, but one of his craftsmen will. Now go. I will send for you when I judge it to be safe.'

One of Aelfgifu's servants showed me the way to Brithmaer's premises, which was just as well because it was a long walk from the palace to the heart of the city, near the new stone church of St Paul, where the land slopes towards the Thames waterfront. Biverside London reminded me of Dublin, only it was very much bigger. Here was the same stench of fetid foreshore, the same jostle and tangle of muddy lanes leading inland from the wharves, the same dank spread of drab houses. However, London's houses were more substantial, stout timbers replacing Dublin's daub and wattle. The servant took me down a lane leading to the river, and if he had not stopped at the door of the building, I would have mistaken Brithmaer's home for a warehouse, and a very solid one at that.

A small spy hatch opened in answer to our knock. When the servant identified himself, the massive door was opened and, as soon as I was inside, closed firmly behind me. The palace servant was not allowed to enter.

I found myself blinking to adjust to the dimness. I was in an antechamber. The place was dark because the barred windows were small and high up in the walls. The man who had let me in looked more like a rough blacksmith than a fine jeweller and I quickly concluded that he was more of a guard than a doorkeeper. He grunted when I gave him my name and gestured for me to follow him. As I crossed the darkened room, I became aware of a muffled sound. It was an uninterrupted chinking and clinking, a metallic sound, irregular but insistent which seemed to come through rear wall of the room. I could not imagine what was causing it.

There was a small door to one side, which led on to a narrow stairway, and that in turn brought us up to the upper floor of the building. From the outside the house had seemed workmanlike, even grim, but on the upper floor I found accommodation more comfortable than in the palace I had just left. I was shown into what was the first of a series of large, airy rooms. It was clearly a reception room and expensively furnished. The wall hangings were artfully woven in muted golds and greens and I imagined they must have been imported from the Frankish lands. The chairs were plain but valuable and the table was spread with a patterned carpet, a fashion I had never seen before. Sculpted bronze candle holders, even some glass panes in the windows instead of the usual window panes of horn, spoke of wealth and discreet good taste. The sole occupant of the room was seated at the table, an old man quietly eating an apple.

'So you are to be the queen's viewer,' he said. By his dress and manner he was clearly the owner of the establishment. He was wearing a dark grey tunic of old-fashioned cut with comfortable loose pantaloons. On his feet were well-worn but beautiful stitched slippers. Had he been standing, I doubted that he would have come only halfway up my chest, and I observed that he had developed the forward stoop of the very old. He held his head hunched down carefully into his shoulders and the hand that held the apple, was mottled with age. Yet his small, narrow face with its slightly hooked nose and close-set eyes, was a youthful pink, as if he had never been exposed to the wind and rain. His hair, which he had kept despite his age, was pure white. He looked very carefully preserved. It was impossible to read any expression in the watery, bright blue eyes which regarded me shrewdly.

'Do you know anything about jewellery and fine metals?' he asked.

I was about to tell this delicate gnome of a man that I had lived for two years in an Irish monastery where master craftsmen produced exquisite objects for the glory of God — reliquaries, platens, bishops' crosses and so forth — made in gold and silver and inlaid with enamel and precious stones. But when I saw those neutral, watchful eyes, I decided only to answer, 'I would be pleased to learn.'

'Very well. Naturally I am happy to accede to the queen's request. She is one of my best customers. We'll provide you with board and lodging — rent free of course, though nothing was said about paying any wages.' Then, speaking to the doorkeeper who had stood behind me, he said, 'Call Thurulf. Tell him that I want a word.'

The servant left by a different door from the one we had entered through and, as he opened it, that same puzzling sound came bursting in, at much greater volume. It seemed to be coming from below. Now I remembered a similar sound. As a boy, I had been befriended by Tyrkir the metalworker and had helped him at his forge. When Tyrkir was beating out a heavy lump of iron, he would relax between the blows by letting his hammer bounce lightly on the anvil. This is what I was hearing. It sounded as if a dozen Tyrkirs were letting their hammers tap idly in a continuous, irregular ringing chorus.

Another burst of the sound accompanied the young man who now stepped into the reception room. Thurulf was about my age, about eighteen or nineteen, though taller. A well-set-up young man, his cheerful countenance was fringed by a straggly reddish-orange beard which made up for the fact that he was going prematurely bald. His face was ruddy and he was sweating.

'Thurulf, be so kind as to show our young friend Thorgils to a guest room - the end room, I think. He will be staying with us for some time. Then you might bring him down to the exchange later in the afternoon.' With studied courtesy the old man waited until I was walking out of the door before he turned back to take the next bite of his apple.

I followed Thurulf’s broad back as he stepped out onto an internal balcony, which ran the entire length of the building, and found myself looking down on a curious sight.

Laid out below me was a long workshop. It must have been at least forty paces in length and perhaps ten paces broad. It had the same small high windows protected with heavy bars which I had seen in the ground-floor antechamber. Now I noticed that the outer wall was at least three feet thick. A heavy, narrow workbench, set high and securely fixed, ran for the full length of the wall. At the bench a dozen men sat on stools. They were facing the wall, away from me, so I could only see the backs of their heads and they were bowed over their work, so I could not make out what they were doing. All I could see was that each man held a small hammer in one hand and what looked like a heavy, blunt peg in the other. Each worker was making the same action, again and again and again. From a box beside him he lifted an item so small that he was obliged to pick it up carefully between forefinger and thumb, then he placed it in front of him. Next he set the peg in position and struck the butt end with his hammer. It was the metallic sound of this blow repeated regularly by a dozen men, which I had been hearing from the moment I had entered Brithmaer's premises.

Looking down on the line of stooped, hammer-wielding workmen as they beat out their rhythm, I wished Herfid the skald had been standing beside me. I knew exactly what he would have said: he would have taken one glance and burst out, 'Ivaldi's Sons!' for they would have reminded him of the dwarves who created the equipment of the Gods: Odinn's spear, Thor's hammer and the golden wig for Sif, Thor's wife, after she had been shorn by the wicked Loki.

Thurulf led me along the balcony to the last door on the right and showed me into a small sleeping room. It had a pair of wooden beds, set into the walls like mangers, and I put my leather satchel on one of them to claim it. The battered satchel was my only baggage.

'What are all those men with the hammers doing?' I asked Thurulf.

He looked puzzled by my ignorance. 'You meant with striking irons?'

'The men in the workshop down there.'

'They're making money.' I must have looked mystified, for Thurulf went on, 'Didn't you know that my uncle Brithmaer is the king's chief moneyer?'

'I thought he was the royal jeweller.'

Thurulf laughed. 'He's that also in a small way. He makes far more money by making money, so to speak, than by supplying the palace with gems. Here, I'll show you.' And he led me back to the balcony and down a wooden ladder, which led directly to the floor of the workshop.

We walked over to the heavy bench and stood beside one of the workmen. He did not lift his head to acknowledge our presence or break the steady rhythm of his hammer. In his left hand was the metal peg which Thurulf called the 'striking iron'. I could see that it was a blunt metal chisel about five inches long and square in section, with a flat tip. With the hand that held the striking iron, the man stretched out to a wooden box on the bench beside him, and used finger and thumb to pick up a small, thin, metal disc. He then placed the disc carefully on the flat top of a similar metal peg fixed into the heavy wooden bench in front of him. Then, as the little disc balanced there, the workman brought the striking iron into position on top of it, and gave the butt of the iron a smart blow with his hammer. Lifting the iron, he used his right hand to pick up the metal disc and drop it into a wooden tray on his right-hand side.

Thurulf reached out, took one of the metal discs from the first box and handed it to me. It was about the size of my fingernail and I saw that it was plain unmarked silver. Thurulf took back the disc, returned it to the box, then picked up a disc from the tray on the workman's right. This too he handed to me, and I saw that on one side the disc bore a stylised picture of the king's head. Around the margin were stamped the letters knut, a small cross, and a leaf pattern. Turning the disc over, I saw the leaf pattern repeated and over it was stamped a larger cross. This time the lettering read brthmr. I was holding one of Knut's pennies.

Thurulf took back the penny, carefully replaced it in the box of finished coins arid, holding me by the arm, led me away from the workmen so we could speak more easily over the constant ringing of the hammers.

'My uncle holds the king's licence to make his money,' he said. He still had to raise his voice to make himself heard clearly. 'In fact, he's just been named a mint master, so he's the most important moneyer in London.'

'You mean, there are other workshops like this?'

'Oh yes, at least another dozen in London. I'm not sure of the exact number. And there are several score more moneyers in towns scattered all around England, all doing the same work, though each moneyer has his own mark on the coins he stamps. That's in case of error or forgery so the king's officials can trace a coin back to its maker. My own family are moneyers up in

Anglia, from Norwich, and I've been sent here to gain experience under my uncle.'

'It must cost the king a great deal to keep so many moneyers employed,' I said wonderingly.

Thurulf laughed at my naivety. 'Not at all. Quite the reverse. He does not pay them. They pay him.'

When he saw that I was baffled again, Thurulf went on, 'The moneyers pay the king's officials for the right to stamp money, and they take a commission on all the coins they produce.'

'Then who's paying the commission, and who supplies the silver which is turned into coins?'

'That's the beauty of it,' said Thurulf. 'Every so often, the king announces a change to the design of his coins and withdraws the old style from circulation. His subjects have to bring the moneyers all their old coins. These are then melted down for the new issue, and the new coins are given out, but not to the same value as those that were given in. There is a deduction of five to fifteen per cent. It's a simple and effective royal tax, and of course the moneyers get their share.'

'So why don't the people just keep their old pennies and use them amongst themselves as currency?'

'Some do and they value their old coins by their weight of silver when they come to trading. But the king's advisers are a clever lot and they've found a way round that too. When you pay royal taxes, whether as fines or trade licences or whatever, the tax collectors only accept the current issue of coins. So you have to use new coins and, of course, if you fail to pay the tax collectors, they impose more fines and that means you have to obtain more coins of the new issue. It's a system of pure genius.'

'Don't people complain, or at least try to melt down their own old coins and stamp out a copy of the new design?'

Thurulf looked mildly shocked. 'That's forgery! Anyone caught making false coins has their right hand cut off. The same penalty, incidentally, applies to any moneyer caught producing coins which are fake or under weight. And the merchants don't complain about the system because the royal stamp on coins is a guarantee of quality. All over Europe the coins of England are regarded as the most trustworthy.'

I looked at the number of men working at the benches, and the porters and assistants who were moving around, carrying bags of silver blanks and finished coins. There must have been at least thirty of them.

'Isn't there a risk that some of the workers will steal? After all, a single penny must represent at least a day's wage for them, and a coin or two would be very easy to carry away.'

'That's why my uncle has designed the premises with that balcony so he can appear from his rooms at any time and look down into the workshop to see what's going on, but the counting is far more effective. A moneyer's job might seem to be nothing but organising a lot of men to hammer out coins while he himself endures the din. But the real chore is the endless counting. Everything is counted in and out. The number of blanks issued to each worker, the number of finished coins he returns, the number of damaged coins, the number of coins received in for melting down, their precise weight, and so on. It's endless, this counting and recounting, checking and rechecking, and everything of value is stored in the strongrooms behind you.' He pointed to a row of small rooms located directly under his uncle's rooms. Brithmaer, I thought to myself, ate and slept on top of his money like a Norse troll guarding his most valuable possessions.

I saw what I thought might be a flaw in the moneyer's defences. 'What about the striking irons?' I asked. 'Couldn't someone copy one of them, or steal one, and start making coins that are indistinguishable from the genuine article?'

Thurulf shook his head. 'It takes great skill to craft a striking iron. The metal is particularly hard. The shank is of iron, but the flat head is steel. To engrave the right image takes a master craftsman. New striking irons are issued by the king's officers when the design of the coin changes. Each moneyer has to buy them from the iron-maker, and return all the striking irons of the older design. More counting out and counting in.' He sighed. 'But recently my uncle was authorised to have a master craftsman engrave irons here on the premises and that's a great relief. After all he's been a moneyer for nearly forty years.'

'You mean your uncle is a moneyer for the Saxon kings, as well as for Knut?'

'Oh yes,' said Thurulf cheerfully. 'He was a moneyer for Ethelred the Ill-Advised long before Knut came along. That's why my uncle has amassed such a fortune. Kings may change, but the moneyers stay the same and go on making their commissions.'

Later that afternoon Thurulf took me to see his uncle at what he called 'the exchange'. It was another sturdy building, closer to the waterfront, where the little stream called the Wal-brook empties into the Thames near the wharves. There I found Brithmaer sitting at a table in a back room, writing figures in a ledger. He glanced up as I came in, again with that bland and careful look. 'Did Thurulf show you the jewellery stock?'

'Not yet,' I answered. 'He showed me the coin makers, and then we went to eat at a tavern near the docks.'

Brithmaer did not react. 'No matter. Now that you're here, I'll explain how the jewellery side of my business operates, so you can do whatever it is that the queen wants.'

He nodded towards three or four locked chests on the floor beside him. 'This is where the preliminary assessment is made. When foreign merchants arrive in London port, they usually visit this office first of all. They need to pay the port dues to the harbour reeve and, as this is a royal tax, they have to pay in English coin. If they don't have any English coin they come to my office. I give them good English silver stamped with the king's head in exchange for their own foreign coins or whatever they have to offer. Most of the exchange work is straightforward, and done in the front office. My clerks know the comparative value of Frisian coins, Frankish coins, coins from Dublin and so forth. If they don't recognise a coin, they weigh it and place a value on the metal content. But occasionally we get items brought to us like this.'

He pulled out a heavy iron key and unlocked the largest of the chests. Opening the lid, he reached in and produced an ornate buckle, which glinted gold in the weak afternoon light.

'As you can see, this is valuable, but how valuable? What is it worth in English coin, do you think? Maybe you would care to give me an opinion.'

He passed the buckle over to me. I knew he was testing me so I looked at it cautiously. Compared to the metalwork I had seen in my Irish monastery, it was crude stuff. Also it had been damaged. I weighed it in my hand. For something that looked like gold, it was remarkably light. 'I have no idea of the value,' I said, 'but I don't think it would be worth very much.'

'It's not,' the old man said. 'It's not genuine gold, but gilt over a bronze base. I would say it was once part of a horse harness belonging to some showy chief, perhaps among the Wendish people. It's amazing what shows up in the hands of the merchants, particularly if they come from the northern lands. Everyone knows the reputation of the Norse as raiders. A merchant may come in from Sweden looking to exchange a pile of broken silver bits and some foreign coins, then find he has not enough value for what he needs, reach into his purse and produce this—'

The old man rummaged in the chest, and pulled out something I recognised at once. It was a small reliquary, no bigger than the palm of my hand and made in the shape of a tiny casket. It was crafted in silver and bronze, and decorated with gold inlay. Doubtless it had been looted from an Irish monastery. It was an accomplished piece of metalwork.

'So what do you think that one is worth?'

Again I exercised caution. Something about Brithmaer's attitude sent me a warning signal.

'I'm sorry,' I said, 'I have no idea. I don't know what it is used for or how much precious metal is in it.'

'Neither did the illiterate barbarian who brought it in to me,' said the old man. 'For him it was just a pretty bauble, and because his wife or mistress could not wear it as a brooch or hang it round her neck as a pendant, he couldn't find a use for it.'

'So why did you buy it?'

'Because I could get a bargain.'

Brithmaer dropped back the lid of the chest. 'Enough. I presume that your job is to be here at the exchange so that, when a merchant or a sailor comes in with something similar, you are on hand to assess whether the queen would like to add it to her jewellery collection. If you go to the front office, my clerks will find a space for you.'

So began a long, tedious spell for me. I was not born to be a shopkeeper. I lack the patience to sit for hours gazing vacantly out of the door or, when the weather allows, to stand in the street, hovering to greet a potential customer with an attentive smile. And because it was the start of winter and the sailing season was at an end, very few ships were working upriver with cargoes from the Continent. So there were very few clients. Indeed there were almost no visitors to Brithmaer's exchange, except for two or three merchants who seemed to be regular customers. When they arrived, they did not deal with the clerks in the front room but were shown directly to see Brithmaer in his office in the back. Then the door was firmly closed.

Whenever the boredom got too great to endure, I would slip out of the building, stroll down to the wharves and find a spot out of the wind. There I would stand and gaze at the waters of the Thames sliding past me with their endless patterns and ripples, and I would mark the slow passage of time by the inexorable rise and fall of the tideline on the river's muddy foreshore, and ache for Aelfgifu. She never sent me word.

By mid-December I was so racked by longing to see Aelgifu that I asked Brithmaer for permission to look through his existing stock of jewellery for items which might catch the queen's eye. He sent me to Thurulf with a note telling him to show me the inventory in the strongroom. Thurulf was glad to see me. We had adjacent rooms at Brithmaer's home, but each morning went our separate ways — I to the exchange, Thurulf to the workshop floor. Once or twice a week we met up after working hours and, if we could avoid Brithmaer's attention, slipped out of the house to visit the taverns by the docks. We always timed our return to be outside the heavily guarded door to the mint when Brithmaer's two night workers reported for duty, and we entered — unnoticed, we hoped — with them. The night workers were both veterans of the moneyer's bench, too old and worn-out for full-time labour. One had an eye disease and was nearly blind, so he sat at the bench and worked by touch. The other was stone deaf after years among the din of hammers. The men spent a few hours each night at their well-remembered places at the workbench, in lamplight, and I would often fall asleep to the patient clink, clink of their hammers. The general opinion was that it was an act of charity for Brithmaer to give them part-time employment.

'What are you doing here at this time of day?' said Thurulf, obviously pleased when I showed up mid-morning with Brithmaer's note. He was glumly counting up the contents of the bags of the old-issue coins stored in the strongroom before they were melted down for new coinage. It was a job he particularly loathed. 'The bags never seem to grow any less,' he said. 'Goes to prove that people are hoarders. Just when you think you've cleared the backlog, another batch of old coins comes in.'

Thurulf put aside the wooden tally stick on which he was cutting the number of bags of coin, a notch for each bag. Locking the door behind him, he took me to where the jewellery was kept. At the far end of the minting floor was the workroom for the craftsman who cut the faces of the striking irons. He was a suspicious, surly figure and unpopular with the other workers, who resented that he was paid far more than them. I never learned his name because he only came to the mint one day a week, went straight to his workroom and locked himself inside to get on with his job.

'There's not enough work in preparing striking irons to keep a craftsman employed, even one day a week,' explained Thurulf, relishing his chance to display his moneyer's expertise. 'When all the striking irons for a new coin issue have been made, another full set of irons won't be needed until the king decides a new design for his coin, and that might not be for several years. In the meantime the work is mainly repairing and refacing damaged and worn-out striking irons. So my uncle decided that his craftsman might as well make and repair jewellery during his extra hours.'

Thurulf pushed open the door to the workroom. It was a cubbyhole equipped with the same sort of heavy workbench that was used in the main workshop, a small crucible for melting metal and an array of punches and engraving tools for cutting the faces of the striking irons. The only difference was the large iron-bound chest tucked under the bench. I helped Thurulf tug this out and heave it up on the bench. He unlocked it, rummaged inside and

And produced jewellery, which he spread out. ‘It’s mostly repairs,' he said, 'replacing a missing stone in a necklace, tightening up the mounts, mending a clasp, straightening, cleaning and polishing an item so that it will catch the customer's eye. A lot of what is here is rubbish — imitation gold, low-grade silver, broken odds and ends.'

He picked through the better pieces on the bench, and selected a handsome pendant, silver with a blue stone set in its centre and an attractive pattern of curved lines radiating from the mount. 'Here,' he said, 'you can see how this pendant is hung on a chain through that loop. When my uncle acquired the piece, the loop was cracked and flattened and our man had to reshape and solder it. Then he went over the decoration lines again with his engraving tool — they were a bit faded — and made them more distinct.'

I took the pendant from Thurulf. It was easy to detect where the mend had been done and the scratches of the new engraving. 'Your man's not very skilled, is he?' I commented.

'Frankly, no. But then most of our clients aren't too discerning, said Thurulf blithely. 'He's a working engraver,, not an artist. Now look at this. Here's something he could repair if only he had the right stones to fill the holes.' He handed me a necklace made of red amber beads strung on a silver chain. After every third bead a crystal, the size of half a walnut, was held in a fine silver claw. Like nuggets of smooth, fresh ice, the crystals threw back the light from flat surfaces cut and polished on them. Originally there had been seven crystals, but now three of them were missing, though the silver mounts remained. Had the necklace been entire, it would have been spectacular. As it was, it looked like a gap-toothed grin.

'I thought you said your uncle's workshop made jewellery,' I commented.

'Nothing complicated,' Thurulf replied, lifting a leather pouch from the chest and unfastening the drawstring. 'This is what we specialise in,' and he pulled out a necklace.

heart gave a little lurch. It was a necklace, made very simply by joining a chain of silver coins together with links of gold. I had seen one around Aelfgifu's neck. It was the only item she had worn on the day we first made love.

'Your uncle said that I could look through the chest to pick out anything which I thought the queen might like.'

'Go ahead,' said Thurulf amiably, 'though I doubt that you'll find much that has been overlooked. My uncle knows his clients and his stock down to the tiniest item.'

He was right. I picked through the box of broken jewellery and managed to find no more than a couple of bead necklaces, some heavy brooches, and a finger ring which I thought might please Aelfgifu. They added up to a feeble excuse to visit her.

"Would it be possible to make up a coin necklace for her?' I enquired. 'I know that she would like that.'

'You'd have to ask my uncle,' Thurulf said. 'He's the coin expert. Even hoards them. But that's what you'd expect from a moneyer, I suppose. Here, I'll show you.'

He tipped the contents of a second pouch over the workbench and a cascade of coins tumbled out in a little pile. I picked through them, turning them over in my fingers. They were of all different sizes, some broad and thin, others as thick and chunky as nuggets. Most were silver, but some were gold or copper or bronze, and a few were even struck from lead. Some had holes in the centre, others were hexagons or little squares, though the majority were round, or nearly so. Many were smooth with handling, but occasionally you could still see the writing clearly and the images. On one coin I read the Greek script that the Irish monks had taught me; on another I saw runes that I had learned in Iceland. On several was a script with curves and loops like the surface of the sea riffled by a breeze. Nearly all were stamped with symbols — pyramids, squares, a sword, a tree, a leaf, several crosses, the head of a king, a God shown with two faces, and one with two triangles which overlapped to make a six-pointed star.

I slid the coins about on the bench like counters in a board game, trying to align a sequence that would make a handsome necklace for my love. Instead I found my thoughts flying out like Hugin and Munin, Odinn's birds, his scouts who fly out across the world to observe and report to their master all that happens. By what routes, I wondered, had these strange coins reached a little box in a strongroom belonging to a moneyer for King Knut? How far had they come? Who had made them and why were these symbols chosen? My fingertips sensed a vast, unknown world that I had never imagined, a world across which these little rounds and squares of precious metal had travelled by paths I would like to explore.

I assembled a row of coins, alternately gold and silver, that looked well. But when I turned them over to check their reverse sides, I was disappointed. Three of the coins were blemished. Someone had dug fierce little nicks in the surface with something sharp. 'A pity about those nicks and pits,' I said. 'They ruin the surface and destroy the images.'

'You find those marks all the time,' Thurulf said casually. 'Nearly half the old-issue silver coins that we get from the northern lands carry those cuts and scratches. It's something foreigners do to them, especially in Sweden and the land of the Bus. They don't trust coins. They think they might be fakes: a lead base coated with silver, or a bronze core which has a gold wash applied to make it look like solid gold. It's possible to achieve that effect, even in this small workshop. So when they are offered a coin in payment, they jab the point of a knife into it or scratch the surface to check that the metal is genuine all the way through.'

I abandoned the idea of making up a coin necklace for Aelfgifu, and instead prepared a package of the necklaces and brooches which I thought might please her. Thurulf wrote down a careful list of what I was taking. Then we left and locked the strongroom, and one of Brithmaer's burly watchmen escorted me and the jewellery to the palace.

I asked to see the queen's chamberlain and told him that I had samples of jewellery for the queen to view. He kept me waiting

an hour before he returned to say that the queen was too busy. I was to return the same day the following week to seek another appointment.

As I was emerging from the palace gate, a leather stump tapped me on the shoulder and a voice said, 'If it isn't my young friend, the huntsman.' I turned to see Kjartan the one-handed huscarl. 'Someone said you had found a job with Brithmaer the moneyer,' he said, 'but by the glum look on your face, it would seem that you had found Fafnir's golden hoard and then lost it again.'

I mumbled something about having to return to Brithmaer's workshop. My escort, the watchman, was already looking impatient. 'Not so fast,' the huscarl said. 'At year's end we hold our gemot, the dedication feast. Most of the brigade is still in Denmark with Knut, but there are enough of us semi-pensioners and a few back on home leave for us to make a gathering. Each huscarl is expected to bring one orderly. To honour the memory of our good friend Edgar I would like you to be my attendant. Do you accept?'

'With pleasure, sir,' I replied.

'I've just one condition to make,' said Kjartan. 'For Aesir's sake, get yourself a new set of clothes. That plum-coloured tunic you wore last time at Northampton was beginning to look very shabby. I want my attendant to be turned out smartly.'

The huscarl had a point, I thought, as I pulled my much-worn tunic out of the satchel when I got back to my room. The garment was spotted and stained and a seam had split. The tunic was getting a little too small for me. I had filled out since coming to England, partly due to exercise and good meals when living with Edgar but more from all the ale I was drinking. For a moment I thought of borrowing something to wear from Thurulf, but I decided I would be adrift in his larger garments. Besides, I was already in his debt for our visits to the taverns. I received board and lodging from Brithmaer but no wage, so my friend was always buying the drinks.

If I was to have a new tunic, I had to pay a tailor, and I believed I knew how to raise the money. Better still, I would be able to show my love for Aelfgifu.

When Thurulf had shown me the amber necklace with its missing crystals, I had immediately thought of my satchel. Closed deep in a slit in the thick leather where I had stitched them three years earlier were the five stones I had prised from an ornate bible cover in a fit of rage against the Irish monks who I felt had betrayed me, before I fled their monastery. I had no idea what the stolen stones were worth, but that was not the point. Four of the stones were crystals and they matched the stones missing from the necklace.

I suppose only someone so much in love as I was would have dreamed what I now proposed: I would sell the stones to Brithmaer. With the money from the sale I could repay my debt to Thurulf and still have more than sufficient to purchase new clothes for the banquet. Best of all, I was sure that once Brithmaer had the stones he would tell his craftsman to set them in the necklace. Then, at last, I would have some jewellery worthy to offer the queen.

With a silent prayer of thanks to Odinn I took down the satchel from its peg, slit open the hiding place and, like squeezing roe from a fish, pressed out the stones into the palm of my hand.

'How many of these do you have,' asked Brithmaer. We were sitting in his private room at the rear of the exchange when I handed him one of the gleaming flat stones to inspect. 'Four in all,' I said. 'They match.'

The mint master turned the stone over in his hand, and looked at me thoughtfully. Again I noted the guarded expression in his eyes. 'May I see the others?'

I handed over three more stones, and he held them up to the light one by one. He was still expressionless.

'Rock crystal,' he announced dismissively. 'Eye-catching, but of little value on their own.'

'There's a damaged necklace in the jewellery coffer which lacks similar stones. I thought that—'

'I'm perfectly aware of what jewellery is in my inventory,' he interrupted. 'These may not fit the settings. So before I make you an offer I'll have to check if they suit.'

'I think you'll find they are the right size,' I volunteered.

I thought I detected a slight chill, a deliberate closeness in the glance that met this remark. It was difficult to judge because Brithmaer masked his feelings so well.

His next question was certainly one he asked every customer who brought in precious stones to try to sell.

'Have you got anything else you would like me to take a look

at?'

I produced the fifth of my stolen stones. It was smaller than the others and dull by comparison. It was a very deep red, nearly as dark as the colour of drying blood. In size and shape it resembled nothing so much as a large bean.

Brithmaer took the stone from me, and once again held it up to the daylight. By chance — or maybe by Odinn's intervention — the winter sun broke through the cloud cover at that moment and briefly flooded the world outside with a luminous light, which reflected off the surface of the Thames and came pouring in through the window. As I looked at the little red stone held up between Brithmaer's forefinger and thumb, I saw something unexpected. Inside it appeared a sudden vivid flicker of colour. It reminded me of an ember deep inside the ashes of a fire which feels a draught and briefly gives off a radiant glow that animates the entire hearth. But the glow the stone gave off was more alive. It travelled back and forth as if a shard from Mjollnir's lightning flash when Thor throws his hammer lay imprisoned within the stone.

For the first and only time in my meetings with Brithmaer, I saw him drop his guard. He froze, hand in the air, for a moment. I heard a quick, slight intake of breath, and then he rotated the stone and again the interior lit up, a living red gleam flickering back and forth. Somewhere inside the jewel was a quality which rested until summoned into life by motion and light.

Very slowly Brithmaer turned to face me - I heard him exhale as he regained his composure.

'And where did you get this?' he asked softly.

'I would rather not say.'

'Probably with good reason.'

I knew that something untoward had entered our conversation. 'Can you tell me anything about the stone?' I asked.

Again there was a long pause as Brithmaer looked at me with those washed-out blue, rheumy eyes, carefully considering before he spoke.

'If I thought you were stupid or gullible, I would tell you that this stone is nothing more than red glass, cleverly made but of little value. However, I have already observed that you are neither simple nor credulous. You saw the fire flickering within the stone, as well as I did.'

'Yes,' I replied. 'I've had the stone in my possession for a while, but this is the first time I've looked at it carefully. Until now I kept it hidden.'

'A wise precaution,' said Brithmaer drily. 'Have you any idea what you have here?'

I stayed silent. With Brithmaer silence was the wiser course.

He rolled the stone gently between his fingers. 'All my life I have been a moneyer who also dealt in jewels. As did my father before me. In that time I've seen many stones, brought to me from many different sources. Some were precious, others not, some badly cut, others raw and unworked. Often they were nothing more than pretty lumps of coloured rock. Until now I have never seen a stone like this, but only heard of its existence. It is a type of ruby known vulgarly and for obvious reasons as a fire ruby. No one knows for sure where such gems originate, though I would make a guess. In my father's time we used to receive many coins, mostly silver but a few of gold, which bore the curling script of the Arabs. So many were reaching us that the moneyers found it convenient to base their system of weights and measures on these foreign coins. Our coins were little more than substitutes, reminted from their metal.'

Brithmaer was looking pensively at the little stone as it lay in his palm. Now that the sunlight no longer struck it directly, the stone lay lifeless, nothing more than a pleasant dark-red bead.

'At the time of the Arab coins I heard reports about the fire rubies, how they glow when the light strikes them in a certain way. The men who described these stones were usually the same men who dealt in the Arab coins, and I conjectured that fire rubies came along the same routes as the Arab coins. But it was impossible to learn more. I was told only that these gems originated even further away, where the desert lands rose again to mountains. Here the fire gems were mined.'

The mint master leaned forward to hand me back the little stone. 'I'll let you know whether I want to buy the rock crystals, but I suggest you keep this gem somewhere very safe.'

I took his hint. For the next few days I kept the fire ruby concealed in a crack behind the headboard of my manger bed, and when Brithmaer decided he would buy the rock crystals and have his workman repair the faulty necklace, I went to the pedlars' market. There, using a fraction of his purchase price, I bought a cheap and ugly amulet. It was meant to be one of Odinn's birds, but was so badly cast in lead that you could not tell whether it was eagle, raven, or an owl. Yet its body was fat enough for my purposes. I scraped out a cavity, inserted the ruby and sealed the hole. Thereafter I wore it on a leather thong around my neck and learned to smile sheepishly when people asked me why I wore a barnyard fowl as a pendant.

My other purchases took a little longer: a tunic of fine English wool, yellow with an embroidered border; a new set of hose in brown; gaiters of the same hue; and garters to match the tunic. I also ordered new footwear - a pair of soft shoes in the latest style, also in yellow with a brown pattern embossed across the toe. 'Don't you want to take away the leather scraps with you, young master, so you can make an offering for your Gods?' asked the cobbler with a grin. The cross displayed in his workshop denoted he was a follower of the White Christ. He had recognised me as a northerner by my accent, and was teasing me about our belief that on the terrible day of Ragnarok, when the hell wolf Fenrir swallows Odinn, it will be his son Vidar who will avenge him. Vidar will step onto the wolf s fanged lower jaw with one foot and tear away the upper jaw with his bare hands. So his shoe must be thick, made from all the clippings and scraps that shoemakers have thrown away since the beginning of time. The cobbler had made his jibe good-humouredly, so I answered in the same spirit, 'No thanks. But I'll remember to come back to you when I need a pair of sandals that will walk on water.'

Kjartan raised an appreciative eyebrow when he saw my finery as I presented myself at the huscarl barracks on the morning of the gemot. 'Well, well, a handsome show. No one will think me poorly attended.' He was looking resplendent in the formal armour of a king's bodyguard. Over his court tunic he wore a corselet of burnished metal plates, and the helmet on his head had curlicues of gold inlay. In addition to his huscarl's sword at his hip, with its gold inlay handle, a Danish fighting axe hung from his left shoulder on a silver chain. In his left hand he gripped a battle spear with a polished head, which for a moment reminded me of Edgar's death facing the charging boar. But the item which caught my eye was the tore of twisted gold wire wrapped around his arm, the same one that lacked a hand. He noticed my glance and said, 'That was royal recompense for my injury at Ashington.'

Kjartan cautioned me as we walked towards the barrack's mess hall, and his words reminded me of Aelfgifu's mistrust of palace intrigue. 'I rely on you to keep silent about what you witness today,' he said, 'There are many who would like to see all the veteran huscarls purged. The tide of affairs is moving against us, at least in England. We have fewer and fewer opportunities to celebrate our traditions, and our enemies would use our ceremonies to denounce us as evil pagans. The Elder Ways offend the bishops and archbishops as well as the king's church advisers. So your task today will be to serve as my cup-bearer at the feast and to be discreet.'

Kjartan and I were among the last to enter the hall. There were no trumpet blasts or grand arrivals and no women. About forty huscarls were already standing in the room, dressed in their finery. There was no sense of rank or social standing. Instead an air of fellowship prevailed. One man I recognised instantly, for he stood a head taller than anyone else in the room, which was remarkable in itself because the huscarls were mostly big men. The giant was Thorkel the Tall, the king's vice-regent. When the group around him parted, I saw that his legs were freakishly long, almost as if he were wearing the stilts some jugglers use in their performances. It made him look ungainly, as his body was of normal proportions, though the arms were long and dangled oddly by his sides. When he listened to his companions Thorkel was obliged to bend over to bring his head closer. He reminded me of a bird I had occasionally seen when hawking in the marshes with Edgar - the wandering stork.

'Where do you want me to stand?' I said quietly to Kjartan. I did not want to disgrace him in etiquette. There was no division of the tables as at Ealdorman Aelfhelm's feast, where the seating arrangement distinguished between commoner and nobly born. Now a single large table stood in the middle of the room, one place of honour at its head, benches down each side. Service trestles had been set up in one corner for the tubs of mead and ale, and somewhere I could smell roasting flesh, so a kitchen was nearby.

'Stand behind me when the company moves to table. Huscarls are seated by eminence of military prowess and length of service, not because they are high born or well connected,' he replied. 'After that, just watch what the other cup-bearers do and follow their example.'

At that moment I saw Thorkel move towards the place of honour at the head of the table. When all the huscarls had taken their places on the benches, we cup-bearers placed before them their drinking horns already filled with mead. I could not see a single glass goblet or a drop of wine. Still seated, Thorkel called a toast to Odinn, then a toast to Thor, then a toast to Tyr, and a toast to Frey. Hurrying back and forth from the service trestles to refill the drinking horns for each toast, I could see that the cupbearers were going to be kept busy.

Finally Thorkel called the minni, the remembrance toast to the dead comrades of the fellowship. 'They who died honorably, may we meet them in Valholl,' he announced.

'In Valholl,' his listeners chorused.

Thorkel unfolded his great length from his chair and rose to speak. 'I stand here as the representative of the king. On his behalf I will accept renewal of the fellowship. I begin with Earl Eirikr. Do you renew your pledge of allegiance to the king and the brotherhood?' A richly dressed veteran seated closest on the bench to Thorkel stood up and announced in a loud voice that he would serve and protect the king, and obey the rules of the brotherhood. I knew him as one of Knut's most successful war captains, who had also served his father Forkbeard before him. For this service Eirikr had received great estates far in the north of England, making him one of the wealthiest of Knut's nobles. Both his arms sported heavy gold tores, which were marks of royal favour. Now I knew why Herfid the skald loved to refer to Knut as the 'generous ring giver'.

So it went on. One after another the names of the huscarls were called out, and each man stood up to renew his oath for the coming year. Then, after the pledges were all received, Thorkel called out the name of three of the huscarls who were in England but had failed to attend the gemot.

'What is your verdict?' he asked the assembled company. 'A fine of three mancus of gold, payable to the fellowship,' a voice said promptly. I guessed that this was customary forfeit. 'Agreed?' asked Thorkel. 'Agreed,' came back the response.

I was beginning to understand that the huscarls ruled themselves by general vote.

Thorkel moved on to a more serious violation of their code. 'I have received a complaint from Hrani, now serving with the king in Denmark. He states that Hakon was asked to look after his horse, specifically his best battle charger, for him. The horse was too sickly to be shipped with the army for Denmark. Hrani goes on to state that the horse was neglected and has since died. I have established these facts as true. What is your verdict?'

'Ten mancus fine!' shouted someone.

'No, fifteen!' called another voice, a little drunkenly I thought.

'And demotion by four places,' called another voice.

Thorkel then put the matter to a vote. When it was passed, a shame-faced huscarl stood up and moved four places further away from the head of the table before sitting down among his comrades.

'All that talk of horses reminds me that I'm getting hungry,' a wag shouted out. It was definitely a tipsy voice. It was beginning to be difficult to hear Thorkel above the general background hubbub.

'Who's the glum-looking fellow at the end of the table?' I asked Gisli's cup-bearer, a quiet young man with an unfortunate strawberry birthmark on his neck. He glanced across to the huscarl sitting silently by himself. 'I don't know his name. But he's in disgrace. He committed three transgressions of the rules and has been banished to the lowest end of the table. No one is allowed to talk to him. He'll be lucky if his messmates don't start throwing meat bones and scraps of food at him after the meal. That's their privilege.'

Suddenly a great cheer went up. From the side room where

the cooks had been at work four men appeared. They were carrying between them the body of a small ox, spit roasted, which they lifted over the heads of the revellers and placed on the centre of the table. The head of the ox was brought in separately and displayed on a long iron spike driven into the floor. An even louder cheer greeted the four men when they appeared a second time with another burden. This time the carcass they carried was the body of a horse. This too had been roasted and its ribs stood up like the fingers of a splayed hand. The roast horse was also placed on the table and its head on a second spike beside the ox's. Then the cooks withdrew, and the huscarls fell upon the food, hacking it up with their daggers, and passing chunks up the table. 'Thank the Gods we can still eat real meat on feast days whatever those lily-white priests say,' a whiskery veteran announced to no one in particular, chewing heartily, his beard already daubed with morsels of horse flesh. 'Makes no sense that the White Christ priests forbid their followers to eat horse flesh. Can't think why they don't ban mutton when they spend so much time talking about the Lamb of God.'

As the pace of eating slowed, I noticed the cooks and other servitors leave the mess hall. Only the huscarls and their cupbearers remained. Then I saw Thorkel nod to the disgraced huscarl seated at the end of the table. It must have been some sort of pre-arranged signal for the man got up from his place and walked across to the double entrance doors. Closing them, he picked up a wooden bar and dropped the timber into two frame slots. The door was now effectively barred from the inside. Whatever was now going to take place inside the mess hall was definitely a private matter.

Someone hammered on the table with his sword hilt, calling for silence. A hush fell over the assembled company, and into that silence came a sound I had last heard in Ireland three years before, at the feast of a minor Irish king. It was an eerie wailing. At first it seemed to be unearthly, without rhythm or tune until you listened closely. It was a sound that could make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck — a single bagpipe, hauntingly played. I listened carefully, trying to locate the sound. It seemed to be coming from the side room where the cooks had worked. As I looked in that direction, through the doorway stepped a figure that made the blood rush to my head. It was a man and his head was completely invisible inside a terrifying mask made from gilded basketwork. It covered the wearer down to his shoulders, leaving only eye holes for him to see his way from as he advanced into the room. He man was wearing the head of a giant bird.

And there was no doubt that he was a man because, except for the mask, he was stark naked.

I knew at once who was represented. The man held in each hand a long spear, the symbol of Odinn, his ash spear Gungnir, the 'swaying one'.

As the bagpipe continued to play, the naked man began to dance. Deliberately at first, lifting each spear in turn and bringing its butt end down with a thump on the ground in time with the music. As the music quickened, so too did the dancing figure, turning and cavorting, leaping in sidelong jumps down one side of the table, then up the other. As the cadence of his dance became familiar, the huscarls took up the rhythm, beating gently at the start and then with increasing fervour on the table with their hands, their dagger handles, and chanting, Odinn! Odinn! Odinn!' The figure whirled, holding out the two spears so they whistled through the air, and he leaped and leaped again. I saw several of the older huscarls reach out and dip their hands in the bloody juices of the horse carcass and mark their own foreheads with a bloody stripe, dedicating themselves to the All-Father.

Then, as unexpectedly as he had arrived, the masked figure darted out of sight back into the room he had come from.

Again the bagpipe began to play, and this time the musician emerged from his hiding place. He was a young man and he was playing a smaller pipe than those I knew from Ireland. He took up his station behind Earl Eirikr and I guessed that the Northumbrian earl had brought the piper with him for our entertainment.

He had also hired a professional mimer, for the next person to appear from the side room with a dramatic leap was dressed in the costume of a hero, with helmet, armour and a light sword. It took only moments for the audience to recognise he was playing the role of Sigurd in the lay of Fafnir. They roared their approval as he mimed the ambush from the trench in which the hidden Sigurd stabs upwards into Fafnir's slithering belly and the gold-guarding dragon dies. Then, in a sinuous movement the actor changed character and became Regin, Sigurd's evil foster-father, who arrives upon the scene and asks Sigurd to cook the dragon's heart so he may eat it. Another leap sideways and the mimer became Sigurd, licking his burned thumb as he cooks the meat, and from that taste learns the language of birds, who tell him that the treacherous Regin intends to murder him. A sham sword fight, and Sigurd killed the evil foster-father, ending his display by dragging away two imaginary chests of dragon's gold. And not entirely imaginary gold either, for several of the huscarls threw gold and silver coins on the floor as a mark of their appreciation.

At this point Thorkel and several of the more senior huscarls left the hall. They must have known that the gemot could last far into the night, and into the next day as well, and that the celebrations would soon grow even more ribald and disorderly. But Kjartan made no move to go, so I kept to my cup-bearer's duties as the evening grew more and more raucous. Prodigious quantities of mead and ale were consumed, and the liquor loosened tongues. I had not anticipated the strength of dislike that the traditional huscarls showed towards the White Christ faction at court. They talked of the Christians as devious, smug and crafty. The special targets for their odium were the queen, Emma of Normandy, and the king's chief lawmaker, Archbishop Wulfstan. A very drunk huscarl pulled out a long white shirt - he must have brought it with him for that purpose - and waved it in the air to attract the attention of his drinking companions. Unsteadily he got to his feet, pulled it on over his own head and mimicked the act of Christian prayer, shouting, 'I've been prepared for baptism three times, and each time the priests paid me a month's wages and gave me a fine white shirt.'

'Easy money,' yelled a companion drunkenly. 'I collected four payments; it's a new version of the Danegeld'.

This drew a roar of drunken laughter. Then the assembly began to chant a name. 'Thyrmr! Thyrmr! Remember Thyrmr!' and the huscarl took off his white shirt and threw it into the corner of the room. 'Thyrmr! Thyrmr!' chanted the men, now completely intoxicated, and they began picking up the remnants of the meal, and throwing the chewed bones and discarded gristle in the direction of the crumpled cloth.

'I thought they were going to throw the bones at the disgraced huscarl,' I muttered to Gisli's cup-bearer.

'He's in luck tonight,' he answered. 'Instead they're celebrating the day that one of the Saxon high priests, an archbishop, I think his name was Alfheah, got himself killed. A man named Thyrmr did it, smacked the archbishop on the back of his head with the flat of his battleaxe at the end of a particularly boisterous feast after everyone had pelted the priest with ox bones.'

This drunken boasting was infantile and pointless, I thought to myself as I watched the stumbling drunkards. It was the response of men who felt outmanouevred by their rivals. This hollow mummery was not the way to protect the future veneration of the Old Gods.

I grew more and more depressed as the evening degenerated into brutishness. The only moment I raised a smile was when the company began to chant a lewd little ditty about Queen Emma and her priestly entourage. The words were clever and I found myself joining in the refrain, 'Bakrauf! Bakrauf!' I realised I was thick tongued and slurring my words, even though I had been trying to stay sober. So when Kjartan slumped from his seat, completely drunk, I beckoned to Gisli's cup-bearer to help me, and together we carried the one-armed huscarl back to his barracks bed. Then I started out on the long walk back through London to reach my own room, hoping that the chilly winter air and the exercise would clear my head.

I scratched quietly at the heavy door of the mint. It was long past the time that Thurulf and I normally returned from tavern, but I had bribed the door keeper, who was by now quite accustomed to my drinking excursions. He must have been waiting by the door, for he opened it almost at once, and I went in, walking as quietly and as straight as my drunkenness would allow. I was just sober enough to realise that it would be foolish to use the stairs to the upper floor that went past Brithmaer's chambers. A creaking floorboard or falling up the stairs would attract attention. I decided to go to my room by the far stair, which led directly from the workshop floor to the balcony. I removed my smart yellow shoes, and holding them in my hand, walked quietly along the length of the workshop, trying to keep in a straight line. In a pool of lantern light at the far end of the workshop, the two elderly men were still at the coining bench. I could see them bent over, tapping out the little coins. Neither of them was aware of my approach — one because eye disease had damaged his sight, the other because he was concentrating hard on his work and, being deaf, would not have heard me even if I had not been barefoot. I was more drunk than I thought and I swayed and swerved in my walk enough to brush against the deaf man. It gave him such a shock that he started upright and fumbled his work. The striking iron dropped to the floor, as he turned to see what was behind him. In tipsy embarrassment I put my finger to my lips, entreating silence. Then, concentrating ferociously as only a drunkard can, I managed to bend over without tumbling headlong, picked up his striking iron from the ground, and returned it to him. A glint of silver caught my eye. It was the coin he had just struck. It too had fallen to the floor. Risking another attack of sot's vertigo, I picked up the coin and put it in his hands. Then with an exaggerated salute, I turned and wove my way to the staircase, then climbed it hand over hand like a novice sailor, and eventually toppled into my manger bed.

I awoke next morning with a vile headache and the taste of stale mead in my mouth. As I was bent over a bucket of well water, trying to wash my bleary eyes, my position bent over the bucket reminded me of something that had puzzled me. I recalled something strange when I leaned down and picked up the old man's striking iron and the dropped coin. I could not remember exactly what it was. Then I remembered: as I placed the coin into the workman's palm, a gleam of lantern light had fallen across it. The freshly minted coin was a silver penny. But the face I saw stamped on the coin was not Knut's familiar image, but someone else's.

Or was I too drunk to know the difference? The mystery nagged at me all morning until I realised that I could check. The striking irons used at night were kept for safe keeping in the jewellery workshop, and so mid-morning I reminded Brithmaer that the crystal necklace should be repaired by now and asked if I might visit the workshop to examine it.

Thurulf opened the door to the strongroom and wandered off, leaving me on my own. A few moments was all the time I needed to locate the striking irons that the two night workers used. They were tucked away out of sight under the workbench, wrapped in a leather cloth. There was also a lump of old wax, tossed aside when the engraver had made moulds for repairing jewellery. I nipped off two little pellets of wax and pressed them between the faces of the striking irons and their counterparts, then replaced the nightworkers' tools. When Thurulf returned, I was admiring the rock crystals in their new settings.

I was so eager to examine the wax impressions that I had scarcely gone a hundred paces on my way back to the exchange when I shook them out from my sleeve. Even the simplest pedlar would have recognised the patterns pressed on them. There was no mystery: they could be found in half the markets in the land, and they lay in the mint's storerooms by the thousand - the king's head on the striking irons was that of King Ethelred the Ill-Advised, dead these four years past. On their reverse, one wax impression bore the mark of a moneyer in Derby and the other a moneyer in Winchester. I was intrigued. Why would Brithmaer secretly be making coins that were out of date? Why would he want coins that were already valueless and should be melted down, and that at a discount?

There seemed no logic to it, and in the tavern that evening I casually asked Thurulf if he had heard of a moneyer in Derby by the name of Guner. He told that the name was vaguely familiar, but he thought that the man was long since dead.

I drank little, telling Thurulf that I was still queasy from the huscarls' gemot. In fact I wanted to look my best the following morning for that was when I had arranged with Aelfgifu's chamberlain that I would return with a selection of jewellery for her inspection.

Aelfgifu was in a mischievous mood. Her eyes sparkled when - at last — she managed to dismiss her attendants, telling them that she would try on the jewels in private. It seemed a feeble excuse to me, but she carried it off, and moments later we were in the private bedchamber where she had first taught me how to love.

'Let me look at you!' she gloated, making me stand back so she could admire the effect of my new tunic. 'Yellow and brown and black. The colours really suit you — you look good enough to eat. Come, let me taste you.' And she walked across and threw her arms around me.

Feeling the softeness of her breasts, I was flooded by my own craving. Our mouths met, and I realised that if my longing had been acute, hers was also. Previously in that room our love had been tender and forbearing, with Aelfgifu leading my novice hesitancy. Now we both plunged into the certainty of our passion, greedy for one another, tumbling together on the bed. Within moments we were naked and making love with desperate urgency until the first wave of passion had spent itself. Only then did Aelfgifu disengage herself and, as always, run her finger down my profile. 'What was it you wanted to show me?' she asked teasingly.

I rolled over to the side of the bed and reached down to pick up the bag of jewellery, and tipped it out on the sheet. As I had hoped, she pounced immediately on the crystal and amber necklace.

'It's beautiful' she exclaimed. 'Here help me put it on,' and she turned so that I could fasten the clasp at the nape of her neck. When she turned back again to face me, her eyes shining to match the crystals, I could have imagined no better place for the gems that I had stolen. Now they lay supported on the sweet curves of her breasts. What would the Irish monks have thought? I wondered.

Somehow Aelfgifu had arranged that we could be alone together for several hours, and in that time we were unrestrained. We made love light-heartedly and often. We delighted in one another's bodies. Aelfgifu was provocative in her response when I covered her with jewellery — the necklace, of course, but also bracelets on her ankles and wrists, a pendant as a belt, and two magnificently gaudy brooches to cup her breasts, all at once.

When we had laughed and loved one another to exhaustion and were lying side by side, I told her about the fire ruby hidden in the amulet of lead — she had lifted it from my neck after the first encounter, saying the lump would give her bruises. She listened to my story and before I had finished, had guessed my intention. 'Thorgils,' she said gently, 'I don't want to have that stone. You are not to give it to me. I have a feeling that stone should remain with you. It has your spirit. Somewhere inside you flickers that same light, which needs someone to make it glow,' and gently she leaned over and began to lick my chest.

Great happiness; great danger — another of Edgar's proverbs. Only two days after my impassioned visit to Aelfgifu, I was shaken awake by Brithmaer's door keeper. A palace messenger was waiting for me in the street, he grunted, on an urgent matter. Groggy with sleep since it was not yet dawn, I dressed in my tunic, elated that this summons to the queen's apartments had come so soon after our last tryst.

But when I opened the door to the street, I did not recognise the messenger standing there in the half-dark. He was sombrely dressed and looked more like a minor clerk than a royal servant.

'Your name is Thorgils?' he enquired.

'Yes,' I replied, puzzled. 'What can I do for you?'

'Come with me, please,' the man said. 'You have a meeting with Archbishop Wulfstan.'

A chill came over me. Archbishop Wulfstan, co-regent of England, was no friend to followers of the Old Ways, and by reputation was the cleverest man in the kingdom. For an instant I wondered what business he had with someone as insignificant as myself. Then a hard knot formed in my stomch. The only person who connected me with matters of state was Aelfgifu.

The messenger led me to the royal chancery, a melancholy building at the rear of the palace where I was shown to an empty

waiting room. It was still only an hour after daybreak when I was ushered into the archbishop's council chamber, yet the king's chief minister was already deep in his work. Flanked by two priests as his secretaries, Wulfstan was seated at a table listening to some notes being read to him in Latin. He looked up as I entered, and I saw that he must have been well past his sixtieth year. He had a seamless face, scrubbed and pink, a few wisps of white hair remained on his scalp and his hands, which were folded on the table, were soft and white. His serene demeanour and the benign smile he directed towards me as I entered gave him the appearance of a kindly grandfather. But that agreeable impression withered the moment he spoke. His voice was so quiet that I had to strain to hear him, yet it carried a menace far more frightening than if he had shouted aloud. Worse was his choice of words: 'The fly that plays too long in the candle singes his wings at last.' I felt as if I was about to faint.

One of the notaries passed a sheet of parchment to the archbishop. 'Your name, Thorgils, is a pagan one, is it not? You are an unbeliever?' Wulfstan asked.

I nodded.

'Would that be why you attended the banquet at the huscarls' mess hall the other evening? I understand that certain gross ceremonies were conducted during the course of the meal.'

'I attended only as a cup-bearer, my lord,' I said, wondering who was the informer who had told the archbishop about the evening's events. 'I was a bystander.'

'Not entirely, I think,' said the archbishop consulting his notes. 'It is reported that at times you participated in the debauchery. Apparently you also enthusiastically joined in the chorus of a blasphemous and scurrilous song, which might be said to be treasonable and is certainly seditious.'

'I don't know what you mean, my lord,' I answered.

'Let me give you an example. The song noted here apparently referred to our noble Queen Emma, and repeatedly, as a Bakrauf.'

I stayed silent.

'You know what Bakrauf means?' Still I said nothing,

'You ought to be aware,' the archbishop went on unrelentingly, 'that for a number of years I served as Archbishop of York. In that city the majority of the citizens are Norse and speak their donsk tunga, as they call it. I made it my business to learn the langage fluently, so I do not need my staff to tell me that the word Bakrauf means the human fundament, or in a more civilised speech, an anus. Hardly a fitting description of the wife of the king of England, do you think? Sufficient cause for the culprit to suffer some sort of punishment — like having his tongue cut out, perhaps?' The archbishop spoke in little more than a gentle whisper. Yet there was no mistaking that he meant his threat. I recalled that he was famous for the virulent sermons he delivered under the name of 'the Wolf. I wondered where this line of questioning was leading.

'Do you deny the charge? There are at least three witnesses to the fact that you participated in the chorus and with apparent relish.'

'My lord,' I answered, 'I was fuddled at the time, having taken too much drink.'

'Hardly an excuse.'

'I mean I misunderstood the meaning of the word Bakrauf,' I pleaded. 'I know that Bakrauf means anus in the donsk tunga, but I was thinking in Latin, and those who taught me Latin told me that anus means "an old woman". They never said that it might also mean part of the human body. Of course I humbly apologise for referring to the queen as an old woman.'

Wulfstan, who had begun to look bored, suddenly became more attentive. 'So Thorgils knows his Latin, does he?' he mumured. 'And how is that?'

'Monks in Ireland taught me, my lord,' I said. I did not add that, judging from his conversation in Latin with the notaries when I came in, my command of the language was probably better than his own.

Wulfstan grimaced. 'Those benighted Irish monks,' he observed sourly. 'A cluster of thorns in the flesh of the true Church.' He noticed the lead amulet hanging round my neck. 'If you studied with the Irish monks, how is it that you were not baptised? You should be wearing a Christian cross around your neck. Not a pagan sign.'

'I never completed the necessary instruction, my lord.'

Wulfstan must have accepted that I was not easily intimidated, for he tried another approach, still in the same soft, menacing voice. 'Whether Christian or not, you are subject to the king's laws while you are in his realm. Did those Irish monks teach you also about the law?'

His enquiry was so barbed that I could not resist replying, 'They taught me — "the more laws, the more offenders".'

It was a stupid and provocative reply. I had no idea that Wulfstan and his staff had laboured for the past two years at drawing up a legal code for Knut and prided themselves on their diligence. Even if the archbishop had known that it was a quotation from Tacitus expounded to me in the classroom by the monks, he would have been annoyed.

'Let me tell you the fifty-third clause in King Knut's legal code,' Wulfstan went on grimly. 'It concerns the penalty for adultery. It states that any married woman who commits adultery will forfeit all the property she owns. Moreover she will lose her ears and nose.'

I knew that he had come to the point of our interview.

'I understand, my lord. A married woman, you said. Do you mean a woman married according to the laws of the Church? Openly recognised as such?'

The 'Wolf’ regarded me malevolently. He knew that I was referring to Aelfgifu's status as 'the concubine' in the eyes of the Church, which refused to consider her as a legal wife.

'Enough of this sophistry. You know exactly what I am talking about. I summoned you here to give you a choice. We are well informed of your behaviour with regard to a certain person close to the king. Either you agree to act as an agent for this office, informing this chancery of what goes on within the palace, or it will be arranged that you are brought before a court on a charge of adultery.'

'I see that I have no choice in the matter, my lord,' I answered.

'He that steals honey should beware of the sting,' said the archbishop with an air of smug finality. He rivalled Edgar in his love of proverbs. 'Now you must live with the consequences. Return to your lodgings and think over how you may best serve this office. And you may rest assured that you are being watched, as you have been for the past month and more. It would be futile to try to flee the king's justice.'

I returned to Brithmaer's mint just long enough to change out of my court clothes, pack them into my satchel and put on my travelling garments. I had come to a decision even as the archbishop set out his ultimatum. I knew that I could not betray Aelfgifu by becoming a spy for Wulfstan, nor could I stay in London. My position would be intolerable if I did. When Knut returned to England, Wulfstan would not need to bring an accusation of adultery against me, only to hint to the king that Aelfgifu had been unfaithful. Then I would be the cause of the disgrace of the woman I adored. Better I fled the kingdom than ruin her life.

My first step was to take the two little wax moulds pressed from the striking irons of Brithmaer's elderly workmen, and bring them to the huscarls' barracks. There I asked to see Kjartan. 'I've come to say goodbye,' I told him, 'and to ask a favour. If you hear that some accident has befallen me, or if I fail to contact you with a message before the spring, I want you to take these two pieces of wax and give them to Thorkel the Tall. Tell him that they came from the workshop of Brithmaer the moneyer while Knut was the king of England. Thorkel will know what to do.'

Kjartan took the two small discs of wax in his single hand, and looked at me steadily. There was neither surprise nor question in his eyes. 'You have my word on it,' he said. 'I have the feeling that it would be tactless of me to ask why your departure from London is so sudden. Doubtless you have your reasons, and anyhow I have a strong feeling that one day I will be hearing more about you. In the meantime, may Odinn Farmognudr, the journey empowerer', protect you.'

Within the hour I was back at Brithmaer's exchange office on the waterfront and I asked if I could speak to him in private. He was standing at the window of the room where he met his private clients, looking out on the wintry grey river, when I made my request.

'I need to leave England without the knowledge of the authorities and you can help me,' I said.

'Beally. What makes you think that?' he answered blandly.

'Because new-minted coins bear a dead king's mark.'

Slowly and deliberately Brithmaer turned his head and looked straight at me. For the second time that day an old man regarded me with strong dislike.

'I always thought you were a spy,' he said coldly.

'No,' I replied, 'I did not come to you as a spy. I was sent in good faith by the queen. What I learned has nothing to do with Aelfgifu.'

'So what is it that you have learned?'

'I know that you are forging the king's coinage. And that you are not alone in this felony, though I would not be wrong in believing you are the prime agent.'

Brithmaer was calm. 'And how do you think that this felony, as you call it, is enacted? Everyone knows that the coinage of England is the most strictly controlled in all Europe and the penalties for forgery are severe. Counterfeit coins would be noticed immediately by the king's officers and traced back to the forger. He would be lucky only to lose a hand, more likely it would be his life. Only a fool or a knave would seek to forge the coins of the king of England.'

'Of the present king of England, yes,' I replied, 'but not the coins of a previous king.'

'Go on,' said Brithmaer. There was an edge to his voice now.

'I discovered quite by accident that the two elderly workers who strike coins at night in your workshop are not producing coins with the head of Knut. They make coins which carry the head and markings of King Ethelred. At first it made no sense, but then I saw coins which had arrived from the northern lands, from Sweden and Norway. Many of them had the test marks, the nicks and scratches. Most of them were old, from Ethelred's times, when the English paid vast amounts of Danegeld to buy off the raiders. It seems that huge numbers of Ethelred's coins are in circulation in the north lands, and now they are coming back in trade. Thurulf spends a great deal of time counting them in the storerooms.'

'There's nothing wrong with that,' Brithmaer murmured.

'No, but Thurulf remarked to me how the numbers of the old coins never seemed to diminish, but kept piling up. That made me think about something else which was not quite right. I had noticed that here in the exchange you accept large amounts of inferior jewellery made with base metals and cheap alloys. You say it is for the jewellery business, yet your so-called jeweller is nothing more than a workaday craftsman. He is an engraver, familiar with the cutting and maintenance of striking irons and he knows nothing about jewellery. Yet I found very little of the broken jewellery. It had disappeared. Then I realised that the engraver had the skill and equipment in his workshop to melt down the low-grade metals, and turn out blanks for stamping into coins.'

'You seem to have done a great deal of imagining,' said Brithmaer. 'Your story is a fantasy. Who would want low-grade coins from a dead king?'

'That is the clever part,' I replied. 'It would be reckless to issue forged coins in England. They would be quickly identified. But forge coins which you then issue in the north lands, where the coins of England are regarded as honest, and few people would detect that the coins were counterfeit. Cutting or nicking the coins would not reveal the purity of the metal. And if it did, and the coins are revealed as fakes, then the coins carry the markings of long-dead moneyers, and could never be traced back to their maker. However, there has to be one more link in the chain.'

'And that is?'

'The link that interests me now. You can obtain the base metals from the cheap jewellery, make low-grade coins, forge the marks of other moneyers, but you still need to distribute the coins in the north lands. And for that you need the cooperation of dishonest merchants and ship owners who make regular trading voyages there and put the coins into general circulation. These, I suspect, are the people who visit your private office, even in winter. So my request to you now is that you will arrange with one of these men for me to be smuggled aboard ship, no questions asked. It is in your interests. Once I am out of England, I would no longer be in a position to report you to the authorities.'

'Would it not be more sensible for me to arrange for you to vanish permanently?' Brithmaer said. He was no more emotional than if he was suggesting a money-changing commission.

'Two wax impressions taken from the striking irons used in the forgery will be delivered to the king's regent if I vanish mysteriously or fail to report by springtime.'

Brithmaer regarded me thoughtfully. There was a long pause while he considered his alternatives. 'Very well. I'll make the arrangements you request. There's a merchant ship due to visit King's Lynn in two week's time. The captain trades from Norway and is one of the very few who makes the winter crossing of the English Sea. I will send you to King's Lynn with Thurulf. It's about time he returned to Norwich, which is nearby. If he meets up with any of the king's officials he will say that you are travelling as his assistant. I will also write a note to inform the ship captain that you are to be taken on as supercargo. It would be hypocritical to wish you a safe journey. Indeed, I hope I never see you again. Should you ever return to England, I think you will find no trace of the conspiracy which you say you have uncovered.'

And with that I left the service of Brithmaer the king's moneyer, and master forger. I never saw him again, but I did not forget him. For years to come, every time I was offered an English coin in payment or as change in a market place, I turned it over to see the name of the maker and rejected it if it had been minted in Derby or in Winchester.

'You Icelanders really get around, don't you?' commented Brithmaer's accomplice as he watched the low coastline of England disappear in our wake. The Norwegian shipmaster had not informed the port reeve of our impending departure before he ordered his crew to weigh anchor on the early tide. I suspected the harbour official was accustomed to seeing our ship slip out of port at strange hours and had been bribed to look the other way.

I barely heard the captain's comment, for I was still brooding on the thought that every mile was taking me further away from Aelfgifu. Unhappiness had haunted me throughout the three-day journey to King's Lynn with Thurulf. We had travelled on ponies, with two servants leading a brace of packhorses and I did not know how much Brithmaer had told his nephew about why I had to travel posing as his assistant or the need for discretion. Our servants blew loudly on trumpets and rang bells whenever we approached settlements or passed through woodland, and I had suggested to Thurulf that it might be wiser to proceed with less ostentation, as I did not wish to attract the attention of the authorities.

Thurulf grinned back at me and said, 'Quite the reverse. If we used the king's highway in a manner that might be considered surreptitious, people would take us to be skulking criminals or robbers. Then they would be entitled to attack, even kill us. Honest travellers are required to announce their presence with as much fanfare as possible.'

Thurulf had brought me to the quay where the Norwegian vessel was berthed. There he handed me over to her captain with a note from Brithmaer to say that I was to be taken abroad, on a one-way trip, and that it would be wise to keep me out of sight until we left England. Then he had turned back to rejoin his family in Norwich. The gloom of parting from a friend was added to my heartache for Aelfgifu.

'Know someone by the name of Grettir Asmundarson, by any chance? He's one of your countrymen.' The captain's voice again broke into my thoughts. The name was vaguely familiar, but for a moment I couldn't place it. 'Got quite a reputation. They call him Grettir the Strong. Killed his first man when he was only sixteen and was condemned to three year's exile. Decided to spend part of it in Norway. He asked me to make some purchases for him while I was in England, but they cost rather more than I had anticipated. I'm hoping you could tell me the best way of dealing with him so he'll pay up without any trouble. He's a dangerous character, quick to anger.' The captain was trying to strike up a conversation so he could find out just who I was.

'I don't think I know him,' I answered, but the word outlaw had jogged my memory. The last time I had seen Grettir Asmundarson had been six years earlier in Iceland. I remembered a young man sitting on a bench in a farmyard, whittling on a piece of wood. He had been much the same age as myself, with middling brown hair, freckles and fair skin. But where I am quite slender and lightly built, he had been broad and thickset, though only of average height, and while I am normally self-possessed and calm by nature, Grettir had given the impression of being hot-headed and highly strung. I remembered how the little shavings had jumped up into the air with each slice of the sharp blade as if he was suppressing some sort of explosive anger. Even at that age Grettir exuded an air of violent, unpredictable menace.

'Troublemaker from the day he was born, and got worse as he grew up,' said the captain. 'Deliberately provoked his father at every turn, though his parent was a decent enough man by all accounts, a steady farmer. The son refused to help out with the farmyard chores. Broke the wings and legs of the geese when he was sent to put them in their house in the evening, killed the goslings, mutilated his father's favourite horse when he was asked to look after it. Cut the skin all along the animal's spine so the poor creature reared up when you laid a hand on its back. A thoroughly bad lot. His father would have thrown him out of the house, but for the fact that his mother was always asking that he should be given a second chance. Typical of a mother's spoiled pet, if you ask me.'

'What made him kill a man?' I asked.

'Quarrelled over a bag of dried food, would you believe. Hardly a reason to attack someone so viciously.'

I remembered the jumping wood shavings, and wondered if Grettir Asmundarson was touched in the head.

'Anyway, you'll soon have your chance to make your own judgement. If this wind holds steady on the quarter, our first landfall will be the place where he's staying with his half-brother Thorstein. Quite a different type, Thorstein, as even-tempered and steady as Grettir is touchy and wild. Got the nickname "the Galleon" because he has a rolling stride to his walk, just like a ship in a beam sea.'

I saw what the captain meant when we dropped anchor in the bay in front of Thorstein's farm in the Tonsberg district of Norway three days later. The two brothers met us on the beach. Thorstein, tall and calm, was waiting for us, feet planted stolidly on the shingle; Grettir, a head shorter, tramped back and forth nervously. He was a squat volcano, ready to erupt. But when our eyes met, I felt that shock of recognition I had experienced half a dozen times in my life: I had seen the same look in the eyes of a native shaman in Vinland, in the expression of the mother of the Earl of Orkney who was a noted sibyl, in the glance of the wife of King Sigtryggr of Dublin, whom many considered a witch, and in the faraway stare of the veteran warrior Thrand, my tutor in Iceland, who had taught me the rune spells. It was the look of someone who possessed the second sight, and I knew that Grettir Asmundarson saw things hidden from more normal people, as I do. Yet I had no premonition that Grettir was to become my closest friend.

We began by treating one another warily, almost with distrust. No one would ever call Grettir easygoing or amiable. He had a natural reticence which people mistook for surliness, and he met every friendly remark with a curt response which often caused offence and gave the impression that he discouraged human contact. I doubt if the two of us exchanged more than half a dozen sentences in as many days as we sailed on along the coast towards the Norwegian capital at Nidaros. Grettir had asked if he might join our ship as he intended to present himself at the Norwegian court and petition for a post in the royal household, his family being distant relatives of the Norwegian king, Olaf.

Our passage was by the usual route, along the sheltered channel between the outer islands and the rocky coast, with its succession of tall headlands and fiord entrances. The sailing was easy and we were in no hurry. By mid-afternoon our skipper would pick a convenient anchorage and we would moor for the night, dropping anchor and laying out a stern line to a convenient rock. Often we would go ashore to cook our meal and set up tents on the beach rather than sleep aboard. It was at one of these anchorages as the sun was setting that I noticed a strange light suddenly blaze out from the summit of the nearest headland. It flared up for a moment as if someone had lit a raging fire in the mouth of a cave, then quickly extinguished it. When I drew the skipper's attention to the phenomenon, I was met with a blank look. He had seen nothing. 'There's no one living up on that headland. Only an old barrow grave,' he said. 'Burial place for the local family who own all the land in the area. The only time they go there is when they have another corpse. It has proved to be a lucky place for them. The current head of the family is called Thorfinn, and when he buried his father Kar the Old, the ghost of the dead man came back and haunted the area so persistently that the other local farmers decided to leave. After that, Thorfinn was able to buy up all the best land.' Then he added tactfully, 'You must have seen a trick of the light. Maybe a shiny piece of rock reflecting the last rays of the setting run.'

The rest of the crew looked at me sideways, as if I had been hallucinating, so I let the matter drop. But after we had finished our evening meal and the men had wrapped themselves in their heavy sea cloaks and settled down for the night, Grettir sidled across to me and said quietly, 'That blaze was nothing to do with the sun's rays. I saw it too. You and I know what a fire shining out from the earth means: gold underground.'

He paused for a moment then murmured, 'I'm going up there to take a closer look. Care to come with me?'

I glanced round at the others. Most of the crew were half asleep. For a moment I hesitated. I was not at all sure that I wanted to go clambering around the dark countryside with a man who had been convicted of murder. But then my curiosity got the better of me. 'All right' I whispered. 'Let me get my boots on.'

Moments later Grettir and I had left the camp and were picking our way between the black shapes of the boulders on the beach. It was a dry, clear night, warm for that time of year, with a few clouds moving across the face of the moon but leaving us enough moonlight to see our way to the base of the headland and begin our climb. As we moved higher, I could make out the distinct humpbacked profile of the grave barrow up ahead of us, curving against the starry sky. I also noticed something else: each time clouds covered the moon and darkness suddenly cloaked us, Grettir would hesitate, and I heard his breath come more quickly. I felt his sudden onset of panic, and I realised that Grettir the Strong, notorious murderer and outlaw, was desperately afraid of the dark.

We followed a narrow path used by the funeral parties until it brought us out onto a small, grassy area around the grave barrow itself. Grettir looked away to our left out over the black sheen of the sea, its surface pricked with the reflection of the stars. 'Fine place for a burial,' he said. "When I die, I hope I'll finish up in a spot like this, where the helmsmen of passing ships can point out my last resting place.' Given Grettir's reputation as a youthful homicide, I wondered what his epitaph might be.

'Come on, Thorgils,' he said and began to clamber up the grassy side of the barrow mound. I followed him until we were both standing on the top of the whale-backed hillock. Grettir produced a heavy metal bar from under his cloak.

'What are you doing?' I asked, though the answer was obvious.

'I'm going to break in and take the grave goods,' he answered jauntily. 'Here, give me a hand.' And he began digging a hole down through the turf which covered the tomb. Grave-robbing was a new experience for me, yet when I saw the furious energy with which Grettir hacked and stabbed at the soil with his iron bar, I decided it would be wiser to humour him. I was frightened of what he might do if I tried to restrain him. Taking it in turns to excavate, we burrowed down to the outer roof of the tomb. When the point of the iron bar struck the roof timbers of the vault, Gettir gave a grunt of satisfaction, and with a few powerful blows punched a hole large enough for him to climb down into the tomb.

'Stand guard here for me, will you?' he asked. 'In case I get stuck down there and need help to climb out.' He was unwinding a rope from around his waist, and I realised that plundering the tomb had been his intention from the moment he had suggested that he and I climb to the headland.

A moment later Grettir was lowering himself down into the black hole and I could hear his voice as he vanished into the gloom. For a moment I thought he was speaking to me, and tried to make out what he was saying. But then I realised that he was talking to himself. He was making a noise to keep up his courage, to compensate for his terror of the dark. His words, echoing up from the entrance hole into the tomb, made no sense. Then came a sudden loud crash, followed immediately by a loud yell of bravado. There was another crash, and another, and I guessed he was nailing about in the dark, floundering and tripping over one obstacle after another, falling over the grave goods in the dark, driven by his determination to carry out the robbery, yet gripped by a sense of panic.

The racket finally ended and then I heard Grettir's voice call up to me, 'Hang onto the rope! I'm ready to climb up.'

I braced on the rope and soon Grettir's head and shoulders appeared through the hole in the roof of the tomb, and he hauled himself out onto the grass. Then he turned round and began to pull on the rope, until its end appeared attached to a bundle. He had used his tunic as a sack to hold the various items he had collected. He laid them out on the grass to inspect. There were several bronze dishes, some buckles and strap ends from horse harness, a silver cup, and two silver arm rings. The finest item was a short sword which the dead man would have carried if the Valkyries selected him for a warrior's afterlife in Valholl. Grettir slid the weapon out of its sheath and in a glimmer of moonlight I could see the intricate patterns a master swordsmith had worked into the metal of the blade.

'That's a noble weapon,' I commented.

'Yes, I had to fight the haugbui for it,' Grettir replied. 'He was reluctant to give it up.'

'The mound dweller?' I asked.

'He was waiting for me, seated in the dead man's chair,' Grettir said. 'I was groping around in the darkness, gathering the grave goods, when I put my hand on his leg and he jumped to his feet and attacked me. I had to fight him in the dark, as he tried to embrace me in his death grip. But finally I managed to cut off his head and kill him. I laid him out face down, with his head between his buttocks. That way he will never live again.'

I wondered if Grettir was telling the truth. Had there really been a haugbui? Everyone knows stories about the spirits of the dead who live in the darkness of tombs, ready to protect the treasures there. Sometimes they take substantial form as draugr, the walking dead who emerge and walk the earth, and frighten men, just as the ghost of Kar the Old had scared away the local farmers. Cutting off a haugbui's head and placing it on the buttocks is the only way to lay the creature finally to rest. Or was Grettir spinning me a tale to account for the noise and clatter of his robbery, his senseless loud talk and the shouts of bravado? Was he ashamed to admit that Grettir the Strong was terrified of the dark, and that all that had happened was that he had blundered into the skeleton of Kar the Old seated on his funeral chair? For the sake of Grettir's self-esteem I did not question his tale of the barrow wight, but I knew for sure that he was more fearful of the dark than a six-year-old child.

Grettir's self-confidence and bravado were still evident the next morning when the camp awoke and he made no attempt to hide his new acquisitions. I was surprised that he even took his loot with us when we went to visit Thorfinn's farm to buy ship's stores. When Grettir brazenly laid out the grave goods on the farmhouse table, Thorfinn recognised them at once.

'Where did you find these?' he asked.

'In the tomb on the hill,' Grettir replied. 'The ghost of Kar the Old is not that fearsome after all. You'd better keep hold of them.'

Thorfinn must have known Grettir's reputation because he avoided any confrontation. 'Well, it's true that buried treasure is no use to anyone,' he said amiably. 'You have my thanks for restoring these heirlooms to us. Can I offer you some reward for your courage?'

Grettir shrugged dismissively. 'No. I have no need for such things, only for an increase to my honour, though I will keep the sword as a reminder of this day,' he said. He then rudely turned on his heel and walked out of the farmhouse, taking the fine short sword and leaving the rest of the grave goods on the table.

I mulled over that answer as I walked back to the ship, trying to understand what drove Grettir. If he had plundered the barrow in order to gain the admiration of the others for his courage, why did he behave so churlishly afterwards? Why was he always so rude and quarrelsome?

I fell into step with him. Typically, he was walking by himself, well away from the rest of our group.

'That man whose death got you outlawed from Iceland, why did you kill him?' I asked. 'Killing someone over something as trifling as a bag of food doesn't seem to be a way of gaining honour or renown.'

'It was a mistake,' Grettir replied. 'At the age of sixteen I didn't realise my own strength. I was travelling across the moors with some of my father's neighbours when I discovered that the satchel of dried food I had tied to my saddle was missing. I turned back to the place where we had stopped to rest our horses, and found someone else already searching in the grass. He said that he too had left his food bag behind. A moment later he gave a cry and held up a bag, saying that he had found what he was looking for. I went over to check and it seemed to me that the bag was mine. When I tried to take it from him, he snatched out his axe without warning and aimed a blow at me. I grabbed the axe handle, turned the blade around and struck back at him. But he lost his grip and the axe suddenly came free, so I struck him square on the skull. He died instantly.'

'Didn't you try to explain this to the others when they found out what had happened?' I asked.

'It would have done no good — there were no witnesses. Anyhow the man was dead and I was the killer,' said Grettir. 'It goes against my nature to heed the opinions of others. I don't seek either their approval or their disdain. What matters will be the reputation I leave behind me for later generations.'

He spoke so openly and with such conviction that I felt he was acknowledging a bond between us, a comradeship which had started when we pillaged the barrow together. My intuition was to prove correct, but I failed to discern that Grettir was also casting the shadow of his own downfall.

The sailors thought Grettir had been a rash fool to interfere with the spirits of the dead. All day they kept muttering among themselves that his stupidity would bring down misfortune on us. One or two Christians among them made the sign of the cross to keep off the evil eye. Their disquiet was confirmed when we got back to where we had moored the ship. In our absence a gust of wind had shifted the vessel on her anchorage and brought her broadside to the rocky beach. The anchor had lost its grip and she had been driven ashore. By the time we got back, the boat was lying canted over, stoved in, sea water swilling in her bilge. The damage to her planking was so severe that her captain decided we had no choice but to abandon the vessel and march overland to Nidaros, carrying the most valuable of our trade goods. There was nothing to do but wade out in the shallows and salvage what we could. I noticed that the sailors took care to keep as far away from Grettir as possible. They blamed him for the calamity and expected that further disaster would follow. I was the only person to walk beside him.

Our progress was dishearteningly slow. By sea it would have taken two days to reach the Norwegian capital, but the land path twisted and turned as it followed the coast, skirting the bays and fiords. The extra distance added two weeks to our journey. Whenever we came to the mouth of a fiord, we tried to reduce the detour by bargaining with a local farmer to ferry us across, paying him with trade goods or, I supposed, some of Brithmaer's false coin. Even so, we had to wait for the farmer to fetch his small boat, then wait again as he rowed us across the water two or three passengers at a time.

Finally came an evening when we found ourselves on the beach at the entrance to a fiord, facing across open water to a farmhouse we could see on the opposite bank. We were chilled to the bone, tired and miserable. We tried to attract the farmer's attention so he would come across to fetch us, but it was late in the day and there was no reaction from the far shore, though we could see smoke rising from the smoke hole in the farmhouse roof. The spot where we were standing was utterly bleak, a bare beach of pebbles backed by a steep cliff. There were a few sticks of damp driftwood, enough to make a small fire if we could get one started, but our tinder was soaked. We slid our packs off our backs and slumped down on the shingle, resigned to spending a cold and hungry night.

It was at that moment that Grettir suddenly announced he would swim across the fiord to reach the farm on the other side. Everyone looked at him as if he was insane. The distance was too great for any but the strongest swimmer, and it was nearly dark already. But, typically, Grettir paid no attention. The farm would have a stock of dry firewood, he said. He would bring back some of it and a lighted brand so we could warm ourselves and cook a meal. As we watched in disbelief, he began to strip off his clothes until he was wearing nothing but his undershirt and a pair of loose woollen trousers, and a moment later he was wading into the water. I watched his head dwindle in the distance as he struck out for the far shore, and I recalled his words that he lived for honour and fame. I wondered if he might not drown in this new act of bravado.

It was well past midnight and a thick fog had settled over the fiord, when we heard the sound of splashes and Grettir reappeared out of the darkness. He was reeling with exhaustion but, to our astonishment, held in his arms a small wooden tub. 'Enough sticks to make a fire and there are some burning embers in the bottom,' he said, then sat down abruptly, unable to stand any longer. I noticed a fresh bruise on his forehead and that one hand was bleeding from a deep cut. Also he was shaking and I got the impression that it was not just from cold.

As the sailors busied themselves with making a campfire, I led Grettir to one side. 'What's the matter?' I asked, wrapping my warm sea cloak around him. 'What happened?'

He gave me an anguished look. 'It was like that business with the food bag all over again.'

'What do you mean?'

'When I reached the other side of the fiord there was just enough light for me to see my way to what we thought was a farmhouse. It turned out that it wasn't a farm, but one of those shelters built along the coast as refuges for sailors trapped by bad weather. I could hear sounds of singing and laughter inside, so I went up and pushed at the door. The lock was flimsy and broke easily. I stumbled in on about a dozen men, sailors by the look of them. Everyone was roaring drunk, lolling about and scarcely able to stand. There was a blazing fire in the middle of the room. I thought it was useless to ask the drunkards for help. They were too far gone to have understood what I wanted. Instead I went straight up to the fire and took the wooden tub of dry kindling that was next to it. Then I pulled a burning brand out of the hearth. That was when one of the drunks attacked me. He yelled out that I was some sort of troll or water demon appearing out of the night. He lumbered across the room and took a swipe at me. I knocked him down easily enough and the next moment all his companions were bellowing and lurching to their feet and trying to get at me. They picked up logs from the fire and tried to rush me. They must have been heaping straw on the fire, for there were a lot of sparks and embers flying about. I pulled a burning log out of the fire and kept swinging it at them as I backed away to the door. Then I made a dash for it, ran for the water, threw myself in and began swimming to get back here.' He shivered again and pulled the sea cloak tighter around him.

I sat with him through the rest of that black night. Grettir stayed hunched on a rock, brooding and nursing his injured hand. My presence seemed to calm him, and he took comfort from my stories as I passed the hours in telling him about my time as a youngster growing up in Greenland and the days that I had spent in the little Norse settlement in Vinland until the natives had driven us away. At first light the sailors began to stir, grumbling and shivering. One of the sailors was blowing on the embers to rekindle the fire when someone said in appalled tones, 'Look over there!' Everyone turned to stare across the water. The sun had risen above the cliff behind us, and the blanket of fog was breaking up. An early shaft of bright sunlight struck the far side of the fiord at the spot where the wooden building had stood. Only now it was gone. Instead there was a pile of blackened timber, from which rose a thin plume of grey smoke. The place had been incinerated.

There was a dismayed silence. The sailors turned to look at Grettir. He too was gazing at the smouldering wreckage. His face betrayed utter consternation. No one said a word: the sailors were scared of Grettir's strength and temper and Grettir was too shocked to speak. I held my tongue because no one would believe any other explanation: in everyone's mind Grettir the hooligan and brawler had struck again.

Within the hour a small boat was seen. A farmer from further along the fiord had noticed the smoke and was rowing down to investigate. When he ferried us across, we went to inspect the burned-out refuge. The devastation was total. The place had burned to the ground and there was no sign of the drunken sailors who had been inside. We presumed that they had perished in the blaze.

A sombre group huddled around the charred beams. 'It is not for us to judge this matter,' announced our skipper. 'Only the king's court can do that. And that must wait until a proper complaint has been made. But I speak for all the crew when I say that we will no longer accept Grettir among us. He is luck-cursed. Whatever the rights and wrongs of last night's events, he brings catastrophe with him wherever he goes and whatever he does. We renounce his company and will no longer travel with him. He must go his own way.'

Grettir made no attempt to protest his innocence or even to say farewell. He picked up his pack, slung it over his shoulder, turned and began to walk away. It was exactly what I had expected he would do.

A moment later I realised that it was what I would have done too. Grettir and I were very alike. We were two outsiders. To protect ourselves we had developed our own sense of stubborn independence. But whereas I understood that my sense of exclusion came from my rootless childhood and from scarcely knowing my parents, I feared that Grettir would grow only more bewildered and angry at misadventures which were unforeseen and apparently random. He did not realise how often he brought calamity upon himself by his waywardness or by acting without first considering the consequences. Grettir had qualities which I admired - audacity, single-mindedness, bravery. If someone was on hand to rein him in, stand by his side in times of crisis, Grettir would be a remarkable and true companion.

Another of Edgar's proverbs echoed in my memory. 'Have patience with a friend,' Edgar used to say, 'rather than lose him for ever.' Before Grettir had gone more than a few steps I shouldered my satchel and hurried to join him.

Grettir's evil reputation travelled before us. By the time the two of us reached Nidaros, the whole town was talking about the holocaust. The men who had perished in the blaze were a boat crew from Iceland, all members of a single family. Their father, Thorir, who was in Nidaros at the time, had already brought a complaint against Grettir for homicide. Nor had our former shipmates helped Grettir's case. They had arrived in Nidaros before us, and had spread a damning account of how he had returned battered and bruised from his swim across the fiord. Of course they barely mentioned that Grettir had risked his life to bring them fire and relieve their distress and, wittingly or not, they smeared his name further by adding lurid details of his grave robbery.

The Norwegian king, Olaf, summoned Grettir to the palace to stand judgement, and I went with him, intending to act as a favourable witness. The hearing was held in the great hall of the royal residence and King Olaf himself conducted the enquiry with proper formality. He listened to the dead men's father state his case, then asked our former companions to recount their version of that fateful evening. Finally he turned to Grettir to ask him what he had to say. Stubbornly Grettir remained silent, glowering at the king, and I felt it was left to me to speak up. So I repeated what Grettir had told me about the drunkards using burning firebrands as weapons. When I had finished, the king asked Grettir, 'Do you have anything to add?'

'The sots in the house were all alive when I left them,' was his only comment.

King Olaf was fair-minded as well as patient. 'All the evidence I have heard today is conjectural, as none of the participants survived except Grettir,' he said, 'and Grettir's statement must be treated with caution as he is the defendant in this case. So it will be difficult to arrive at the truth. My own opinion is that Grettir is probably innocent of the charge of deliberate murder because he had no motive to set fire to the building.'

I was about to congratulate Grettir on the royal verdict, when King Olaf continued. 'I have therefore decided that the best way to settle the matter is that Grettir Asmundarson submits himself to ordeal in my new church and in the presence of the faithful. The ordeal to be that of hot iron.'

I had completely forgotten that King Olaf never missed a chance to demonstrate the advantages of Christianity. A fervent believer in the White Christ, he wanted all his subjects to adopt the faith and follow Christian customs. Trial by ordeal was one of them. Of course, trials to test for guilt or innocence were also a part of the Old Ways, usually by armed combat, man to man, arranged between plaintiff and accused. But the Christians had come up with much more ingenious tests. They dropped the accused into narrow wells to see if the guilty sank or the innocent swam. They obliged others to pluck stones out of boiling water to observe whether the scald wounds then festered; or — as was proposed for Grettir — they made them hold a red-hot lump of iron and watched to see how far they could walk before their hands blistered mortally. And, for some curious reason, they thought it more authentic and righteous if the ordeals by steam and fire were conducted in a church.

A packed congregation assembled to witness Grettir's test. Their expectant faces revealed how notorious my friend had already become. Apparently the stories of his exploits were common knowledge: how he had tackled a rogue bear and killed the animal single-handed, and — in an uncomfortable echo of his present situation - how he had locked a marauding gang of dangerous berserks into a wooden shed and burned the place down, killing them all. Now the audience turned up to see whether Grettir could endure the pain of holding a lump of scorching iron in the palms of his hands while he walked ten paces. I slipped quietly into the church ahead of Grettir, though I had no idea how I could help him. The best I could do, while the congregation chanted a prayer to their God, was to repeat over and over again a galdr verse I had learned long ago, the seventh of Odinn's spells, which will quench a blazing fire.

Odinn heard my appeal, for when Grettir entered the church and began to walk up the aisle to where the priest and his assistant stood waiting by the brazier, a young man darted out from the congregation, and began to caper and dance beside Grettir. He was a fanatical Christian devotee. He was grimacing and shouting, waving his arms and cursing. Grettir was a vile heathen, the youth shouted, he should never be allowed inside a church or permitted to tread on sacred ground. Rolling his eyes and dribbling, he began to taunt Grettir, hurling a torrent of abuse until finally Grettir swung his arm and fetched his tormentor such a crack on the side of the head that the youth went spinning away, pitching face down in the aisle. The congregation gasped. They waited for the youth to get back to his feet, but he lay there motionless. Grettir said not a word, but stood patiently. Someone knelt down beside the lad and turned him over.

'He's dead' he said, looking up. 'His neck's broken.'

There was an awful silence, then the priest raised his voice.

"Violent death in God's House! Murder in the face of our Lord!' he screamed.

Grettir began to retreat slowly down the aisle towards the door. The people's fear of him was so great that no one dared to move. Before Grettir reached the door King Olaf, who had been in the front of the church to witness the ordeal, intervened. He must have realised that his show of Christian justice was turning sour. 'Grettir!' he called, 'no man is unlucky or as ill-fated as you. Your quick temper has destroyed your chance to prove your innocence or guilt. I hereby pronounce that you must leave this kingdom and return to your own country. In view of the provocation you have suffered, you will be permitted a grace period of six months. But you are never to return to Norway.'

For days Grettir and I searched for a ship that would take us back to Tonsberg, where his brother Thorstein lived. But it was hard to find a captain who would accept us aboard. Seamen are more superstitious than most and Grettir was said to be the most luckless man alive. If he did not cause mischief himself, his misfortune would drag down those around him. Nor were his enemies satisfied with King Olaf s verdict. Grettir and I were in a shoreside tavern, seated in a back room and whiling away one of those dark and dreary Norwegian winter afternoons when Thorir's family decided to take their revenge. Five of them burst into the room, armed with spears and axes. Four of the attackers made straight for Grettir, while the fifth turned his attention on me. I was taken completely unawares — before I could get to my feet my attacker had struck me hard on the side of the head with the butt of his spear. I crashed backward from my seat, my head so filled with pain that I could hardly see. When my vision cleared, I saw that Grettir had picked up a bench and was using it as his weapon. His strength was prodigious. He handled the heavy bench as if it was a fighting staff, first sweeping the legs from under two of his assailants, and then bringing the heavy furniture down on the shoulder of a third with a massive thump. The man howled and clutched at his now useless arm. The fourth man, seeing his opening, rushed at Grettir from one side with an axe. Grettir dodged and, as the man overreached, my friend effortlessly plucked the weapon from his grasp. The balance of the contest changed in an instant. Seeing that Grettir was now. armed and dangerous, the attackers jostled one another as they headed for the door. The man who had knocked me down raised his spear to skewer me. Compared with Grettir, I was a helpless target. In a flash Grettir turned and used his free hand to wrench the spear from my attacker, and he too ran out of the door and slammed it hard behind him.

'Are you all right?' Grettir asked as I struggled groggily to my feet. My head felt as if it was split.

'Yes, I'll be fine. Just give me a moment.'

I could hear our opponents just outside the door, shouting insults and calling out that they had not finished with us. Grettir cocked his head on one side to listen. I saw him heft the captured spear in one hand to find its balance point and draw back his arm in the throwing position. Then he hurled the spear straight at the door. His strength was so great that the weapon splintered right through the wood panel. I heard a yelp of pain. Moments later the attackers had gone.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean for our friendship to bring you into danger,' Grettir said to me quietly. 'That was not your quarrel.'

'What is friendship for if not to hold things in common, including another's battles?' I said. Despite my aching head, I felt a new self-confidence welling up within me. I knew that since Edgar's death and my parting from Aelfgifu, I had been adrift, and that my day-to-day existence had been aimless. But now my life had taken a new shape: Grettir had acknowledged me as his friend.