I gathered all my courage, drew a deep breath and, slowly, carefully, reverently, laid the sacking-wrapped stone on the damp earth.
Instantly I felt so light-headed that I could have sworn my feet left the ground.
I was vaguely aware of Hrype, looking over his shoulder in the direction of the village.
He turned back to face me. ‘Are you all right?’
I nodded.
He reached out and briefly touched my arm, giving it a quick squeeze. His hand was warm, and very comforting. The he said, ‘I’m going to leave you here.’
I was too distraught to ask why. Perhaps he thought I needed some time alone to adjust to all that I had just learned. To adjust, too, to being the new keeper of my family’s great treasure …
He was walking away. Something occurred to me: something vital. ‘Hrype!’ I called out.
He spun round. ‘Yes?’
‘Does my father know?’
Slowly he shook his head. ‘No, Lassair. The only person here to whom Cordeilla revealed her secret was me.’
I had not the least idea whether to be glad or sorry.
I stood there alone, and slowly time passed. I had the sense that I was waiting for something.
Someone.
A mist had fallen, obscuring the moonlight. Presently, a tall, broad figure loomed up out of the darkness.
Thorfinn said, ‘So now you know.’
I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I whispered. Then, the tangle of my thoughts straightened itself out a little and I said, ‘You knew too?’ He had to; why else had all this happened?
‘I did,’ he admitted. ‘Not until many years after the child, your father, was born. She sent word, you see. Ships sailed by my kinsmen regularly visited the fens, as indeed they still do, and it was not hard for her to find someone kindly and discreet who knew where to find me and could take a message. Once she knew I would not come back to claim her and my son, she felt it was the right thing to do.’
‘Why would you not come back?’ I was weeping again.
‘I was married, with a growing family of my own. She knew that — knew, too, that I could not abandon them.’
‘You could have just visited!’ I cried. ‘Didn’t you want to see your son? Couldn’t you have spared just a few days — a few hours, even — to see what he was like?’
Thorfinn sighed. ‘It would have been too painful for both Cordeilla and for me,’ he said heavily. ‘But, as to not wishing to see him, I have regretted every single day of my life that I was not able to.’
I knew he spoke the truth; the naked emotion in his voice came from his heart.
He could not see his son, my father, even now; the resemblance between them would be clear, for those with eyes to see it. In a flash I recalled those moments back in Iceland when I had experienced a sense of familiarity about Thorfinn. I understood now why they had happened: in some subtle way, in some deep place inside my head far from conscious thought, Thorfinn reminded me of my father.
He might not be able to see his son, but there was something I could offer. Looking at him with a smile, I said, ‘Do you mind getting a bit wet?’
I stood back and let him go on to her alone. It was a moment of intense privacy, and I didn’t think he’d want anyone with him.
From a distance of a few paces, I watched as, at long last, my grandfather knelt on the ground and, head bowed, joined his spirit once again with that of the woman he had loved and lost.
Back on the mainland once more, I thought I should quickly get Thorfinn back to warmth and comfort. He was well wrapped, but he was wet to the thighs, and I didn’t think it could be good for him. Somewhere, there must be a bed waiting for him; Einar and his crewmen could not be far away.
But my grandfather had other ideas.
Ignoring my protests, he took a firm hold of my arm and led me away from the village, down to a slight rise on the southern edge of the bulge that is Aelf Fen. We drew to a halt, and he pointed out over the restless water.
I followed the line of his outstretched arm. I saw a sleek longship: a dramatic, dark shape against the silvery, moonlit water. She was moving away, slowly and carefully, her swift power reined in, for her crew would be all too aware that they rowed in shallow, unknown and possibly treacherous marshland waters.
Even moving at walking pace, it was clear what she was. A true Norse longship, with shields along the gunwales and a fierce serpent figurehead, she was truly magnificent.
She was all but indistinguishable from the ship of my vision.
‘Malice-striker,’ I whispered.
Thorfinn gave a grunt. There was pain in the sound. ‘No, but Skuli’s ship is very like my own craft, as she was in her prime,’ he said gruffly.
‘I’ve seen your ship,’ I reminded him softly. I had seen both the living ship, with the inner sight of vision, and also what remained of Thorfinn’s Malice-striker, on a faraway shore in Iceland.
It was here, though, in the fens — almost on this very spot — that I had seen the dream ship. There was magic about tonight, too, as there had been then, and such a thing seemed not only possible but entirely probable.
Thorfinn turned to me, about to speak, but I did not let him. ‘I don’t mean the skeleton ship on the shore in your homeland,’ I said softly. ‘I meant my dream vision.’
And, at last, I told him what I had seen.
He listened, accepting my quiet words, as I had known he would, with a nod. ‘I sailed here, long ago,’ he murmured. ‘As you now know.’ The shadow of a grin creased his face. ‘You probably caught a whisper of the shade of that earlier time, for, as with all things, it is still here to see for those who look with the right eyes.’
I looked out over the water again, aware that Thorfinn, beside me, was doing the same. Skuli’s ship was gaining speed. He was going, away from me, out of my life. Without the stone for which he had risked so much and caused such a sum of trouble, grief and pain.
‘Where is he going?’ I asked in a hushed voice. ‘Is he heading for those fearsome rapids, where his grandfather — ’ who must have been Thorfinn’s uncle, I thought suddenly, my mind reeling; his mother’s brother — ‘met his death?’
For some time, Thorfinn did not answer. After a while, and it sounded more as if he were intoning a chant than speaking, he said, ‘They will sail out into the North Sea, then into the great river network that forges its way through the vast continent over there to the south and the east; the route that leads from the Varyani to the Greeks.’
I did not know what he meant. ‘From the Gulf of Finland up the River Neva, through Lake Ladoga, the River Volkhov,’ he sang, ‘on, on, passing out of the northern forests and emerging on to the steppes; by portage to the Dneiper, and on to the great power centre of Kiev, where men of all shapes and hues come to buy and sell. But that is not the end of the voyage, for it goes still on, on, across the Black Sea until at last, if the gods smile on them, they will reach their journey’s end.’
I did not ask where that was. I did not want to break the spell, and, anyway, I believed I already knew.
But my grandfather told me anyway.
‘Skuli and his crew are going to Miklagard.’
NINETEEN
It was wonderful to spend a couple of days in Aelf Fen with my family, just happy to be together, unharmed and safe, as we all put the drama of the past few days and weeks behind us. As people do when they have emerged on the sunny side of bad events, we kept repeating things that had happened, even though most of us knew every last detail by then. It is the way, I believe, that we assimilate traumatic happenings and put them firmly behind us.
My own favourite bit was the description of my mother and her pan. I just wish I’d been there to see it.
I tried, as much as I could, to remain in the shadows and just watch and listen to everyone else having fun. I just wasn’t in the mood for merrymaking. For one thing, I was having to keep several things secret. My parents and my brothers didn’t know about how I’d been abducted by Einar and spirited off to Iceland. Nobody had told them. They thought I’d been in Cambridge with Gurdyman the whole time, and I saw no reason to alter that. If I now revealed the truth, I’d have to explain, and I really didn’t want to do that.