Gullinbursti was under sail, and a stiff breeze from out of the south-east sped them along. It was a blessing, for the depleted crew, shocked and grieving, were as yet in no state for the hard physical work of rowing. Perhaps, Rollo thought vaguely, the gods, having punched Skuli and his men very hard in the face for their audacity, were now feeling a little remorse, and sending them a favourable wind.
Conversation was limited to everyday matters. Nobody seemed ready to talk about what had happened. Brand the cook, apparently having made up his mind that good food was the best cure, spoiled them every evening with meals that were irresistible, and, whenever supplies of fresh foods ran low, he insisted on putting in to shore to replenish his stores.
And so Gullinbursti made her way home. As they rounded the southern tip of the Peloponnese, Rollo took his first stumbling steps unaided along the ship. As they headed west for Sicily, he won the argument with Brand – who as the oldest and most experienced mariner had taken the role of master – and finally took his place as a working member of the crew. His broken ankle prevented him from rowing, so Brand set out to teach him how to steer.
The days passed. Sometimes the wind failed, and then the hours of daylight were sheer hard slog. At the tiller, Rollo began to learn his craft, and now found he no longer had to concentrate to the exclusion of everything else. With time to think, he went back in his mind over the preceding, extraordinary weeks.
It was too painful to dwell on what had happened on the plateau, and Skuli’s madness still had the power to shock. Instead, Rollo turned his thoughts to Harald.
What a tale he had told! With his inner eye, Rollo saw once again the old man’s face as he had described his marriage to his beautiful wife, and his boundless joy when the baby girl born to them grew up in her mother’s image. His happiness when the daughter – her name was Agathe – made a good marriage to an intelligent and perceptive Saracen doctor; the summit of all his hopes when her baby, Harald’s grandchild, was a boy.
But then violence had spread through Miklagard. Frightened into panic by the rumours of the Turks at the door, the people had turned on each other, seeking out, as mankind will always do, those who worshipped God in a different way and using them as a focus for the angry attacks they could not make on the real enemy. And Ismail Adil Adnan, Agathe’s gentle, courageous, compassionate husband, had been brutally slain; attacked and cut to pieces by the blood-hungry, mindless mob.
Then, with tears in his eyes, Harald had told Rollo how he had made the great sacrifice: fearing that the baby, as a child of mixed blood, would also be a target for the mob’s fury, he had made his beloved daughter and her son flee the overheated, dangerous city, sending them, with only a servant woman for company, far away to the only kin he had.
You saved my life, old man, Rollo thought. And as you nursed me back to health and strength, you opened your heart and shared your soul with me.
He’d had little to offer in return, but what he did have was probably the best possible gift. The memory of that was good, and Rollo gave it free rein.
He had said to the old man, ‘Be comforted. Agathe’s long voyage won’t be in vain.’
As he had heard the words, Harald’s face lit up. ‘Members of my family survive?’ he whispered tentatively, as if it were almost too much to hope for.
‘Indeed they do, and they are thriving,’ Rollo said gently. He described Lassair and her family, striving to remember all the names. ‘Your sister Cordeilla is dead -’ he heard the big man gasp, the small sound quickly suppressed – ‘but she lived to a good age, revered and loved by her family.’
‘When did she die?’ Harald asked, his voice shaking.
Rollo searched his memory for the detail. ‘Two years ago. She’s buried on the secret island.’
There was a long silence. Rollo, reluctant to break it, gave the man the time he seemed to need, and, eventually, he raised his head and looked straight at Rollo. His eyes were full of tears.
‘She’d have had two of her brothers there to keep her company, if I’d tried harder,’ he said. ‘But it was all such a mess after the king fell. The men had flocked to him, protecting him, driving forward with him, and the heaps of corpses were thickest around him.’ He bowed his head, his face working with emotion. ‘I know Sigbehrt was right beside him,’ he said quietly, ‘because I heard him shout that great cry he always gave when his blood was up, and I saw him standing, so tall and proud – they used to call him the Mighty Oak – just before he was cut down. And, wherever Sigbehrt was, Sagar wouldn’t be far away. He was an archer, really,’ he went on, some of the life returning to his face as he became swept up in his memories, ‘and his nickname was Sureshot. But when it came to close fighting, he was pretty handy at that, too, and anyway, since he was older than Sigbehrt – the oldest of the three of us – he reckoned it was his job to look after Sigbehrt and me.’ He chuckled. ‘It always looked so comical, seeing Sagar fussing round Sigbehrt, when Sigbehrt was a head and a half taller and twice as broad.’
As if his thoughts threatened to overcome him, he got up, paced to and fro across the little room, and then came back to sink down on to the end of the bed where Rollo lay. He said simply, ‘I couldn’t find them. There were so many of us, all searching for our own dead, and, in truth, given the injuries, it was no easy task. Then the rumours started – William the Bastard’s men were coming back and they were going to finish off anyone they found still lurking around. That cleared away most of the living, I can tell you, and I took my chance and made one final attempt. I must have stared into a hundred dead faces, but I didn’t find either of my brothers.’ He gave a shaky sigh. ‘They lie buried with all the others now, on the field where they sacrificed themselves for the way of life they wanted to see endure. All in vain.’
His head dropped. Respecting his mood, Rollo waited, not speaking. After quite some time, Harald got up again and went over to the table. He picked up an object and, turning back to the bed, held it out to Rollo.
It was a small knife, the fine, sharp blade set into a handle carved in a pattern of curls and swirls which, when Rollo looked closely, resolved into extraordinarily shaped birds and beasts. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘Which one did it belong to?’
Harald smiled; a soft expression of happy reminiscence. ‘Sagar. I found it not six paces from where the king fell.’
Rollo gave the knife back, and Harald, after clutching it briefly in his right hand, laid it back on the table. He coughed a couple of times, then said, ‘So, you tell me I have a very pretty niece.’
‘She’s actually a great-niece, the granddaughter of your sister Cordeilla, but she is most certainly pretty.’ Rollo was staring into Harald’s eyes, understanding why their shape and colour had sparked off memories. ‘She has your eyes,’ he added.
Harald nodded, although he didn’t speak. It seemed to Rollo that, for a few moments, speech was probably beyond him.
As Gullinbursti covered the miles – sometimes flying over the waves as fleet as a swan; sometimes, when the wind failed or blew from the wrong direction, moving laboriously under oars rowed by increasingly exhausted men – Rollo’s mind roamed on. He thought often of Lassair; it was inevitable, given the depth of his sudden and intense friendship with the man who turned out to be her great-uncle. He wondered what she was doing, and if she was thinking of him.
He found himself almost hoping she wasn’t. If he could make himself believe that, what he was about to do wouldn’t make him feel so bad …
He would make his report to King William. He would be very well paid, for what he had to tell his king would please the man greatly, falling in as it did so neatly with how William judged events in the land beyond the seas would develop.