FIFTEEN

Astrid had worked out Folkmar’s weakness, and it had not been hard: food. He would rip, with cracked and yellow teeth, into a side of spring lamb, or veal, or demolish a whole brood of duckling at one sitting. The juices would run down his bristling series of chins, and then he would leer, and burp, and talk and talk and talk.

‘Christ, a weakling? The Christ who was driving the moneylenders from the temple? You want power – my God is destroying whole cities when he is feeling so inclined. You never heard of Sodom? Of Gomorrah? Of the ten plagues of Egypt? Of the Great Flood …?’ And he would tell them, relishing each gory detail like a gobbet of flesh, and Astrid’s appetite, once boundless, shrivelled away to nothing.

Once, with great cunning, she asked if there were any Bible tales about dragons, but his answer – though there was definitely a beast in it – was so confusing, all about ‘revelations’ and sounding more like a vision of Ragnarok, that Astrid was left none the wiser.

She found she was welcome now at the high table, waved over by Haralt to sit between him and Folkmar, as the priest spoke to King Gorm of the benefits of the Christian faith. The only trouble was avoiding Knut. Her elder brother refused to join them, but sat at the lower benches, and was quick to call her over to him and Thorbjorn as they ate.

She had never felt so wanted in her life; it made the horror of mealtimes in the dark, crowding hall a whole lot easier to bear. This was worst when, as now, she had to sit next to Folkmar. They were hip to hip – or rather, her hip was disappearing into the folds of his side.

Sometimes, presumably by accident, Folkmar’s hand ended up on her thigh, and she had to poke it with her knife. Ugh.

Gorm fumbled for his drinking horn, and took a long, slow draught. ‘What I want to know is: would all my subjects have to convert as well? And follow just this Christ alone?’

‘Oh yes,’ smiled Folkmar. ‘It would be a wicked king indeed who is not saving all his people’s souls also. Pagans are not being tolerated.’

‘Pagans?’ piped up Astrid.

‘Pagans,’ explained Folkmar, ‘are like the lost sheep. They is needing – ahem – bringing back to the fold.’

‘Black sheep?’ she asked.

Haralt shot her a warning glance.

This was the point, she knew, that got Leif and her mother really cross. Everyone, they said, had to be free to choose. So she looked up at her father, expecting an angry reply. But Gorm was nodding, deep in thought.

‘I’ve always said we need a better way to keep the jarls in hand,’ he said.

Folkmar beamed, and sunk his face into a whole roast suckling pig. A little blood spattered onto Astrid’s hand. She pretended to ignore it.

‘… So of course I see it would be a disaster if Gorm turned his back on the old gods,’ she said to Leif.

They were sprawled on sweet-smelling straw bales in the stable where she now slept. It was dark, cool, private. The change of room had been, all things considered, an improvement.

‘But all the same,’ she continued, ‘this Christ himself doesn’t sound so bad. The way Folkmar puts it, he seems to be a great warrior.’

She paused. ‘Though there was this time he sent a plague of frogs. Frankly, I think he lost his touch a bit there.’

Leif shot her a strange look. ‘War, wrath, sin. Yes – that’s Folkmar’s god all right. But back at Hedeby, I knew Christians. And there, they spoke of peace, and love, and how to live a humble life and help others.’

‘Well, that doesn’t sound too bad either,’ she said, and looked at him. ‘If rather on the boring side. You never told me you were friends with any Christ-folk.’

‘My grandmother and they were on bad terms. But one – a woman – talked to me a lot. Johanna Svensdottir, that was her name; she was the first to really hear my gift for words, and said that one day I’d go far. She was a good person, and nothing like this Folkmar … But it’s him that’s here, not her.’

Astrid was silent. She had not yet chosen which god to follow above all others.

Leif went on. ‘And we’re not finding out enough like this. His plans – the beast – and why he’s come at all; you saw the way that he looked at the stones. We’ll have to watch when he thinks we’re not there.’

‘How?’

‘Could we not ask your friend Nisse to spy?’

‘No,’ said Astrid at once. Little Nisse had moved to the stables too, and they could hear him scrabbling around above their heads. Clearly the spirit couldn’t stand being near Folkmar. Well, she could understand that all right.

‘I won’t offend him by asking him to do something he’d hate,’ she whispered, to avoid Nisse hearing. ‘Besides, I think it’s sweet he’s come out here with me instead of joining his friends above the great hall. I can’t send him away when he’s chosen to stay. You’ll have to think of something else.’

‘In that case, it’s time I tried some magic.’

It had never worked before, the old shaman’s trick his grandmother had tried to teach him. But then, Leif told himself, he had never sought to work it so close to the Yelling Stones. Everything was so much more powerful here.

He lay under a cloak, in his place on the earthen bench that ran the length of the hall. He closed his mind to the world – bustling thralls, droning flies, dusty light – and concentrated on dark, fear, hunger and the press of small spaces.

Leif found himself remembering the hovel he had shared for most of his life with his Finn grandmother. It smelt of age, and sweat, and wild garlic, and he had sat in a damp corner coughing smoke and cauldron fumes.

That was the world he had always tried to escape – first through his mind, and then at last, for good.

But right now, he had to send himself back there. To imagine himself small, lonely and scared, tucked into a sheltering corner. His nose twitched.

A cat padded past, tail brushing the cloak. And Leif – lost in the trance – quivered with fright.

‘Your king, he is jeopardised – his enemies accumulate around him now, he has not the escape!’

‘It may be as you say, bishop, for there are few here to defend him. Perhaps it is time to strike?’

A single spindle of light shone into Astrid’s old chamber, where Folkmar and Haralt sat closeted together. In the corners, where dust spooled, a mouse pricked up its ears. Deft-stepped, it scurried to the safety of the bed, darting up its headboard, to overlook the pair.

‘It is good advice you are giving me, Highness. If I move now, he is surrounded on three sides and his doom is near!’

Raised on its haunches, the mouse peered through the gloom. The vast priest and the tall prince were hunched about a table, poring over …

A game of hnefatafl! Leif – that is, the mouse – groaned with disappointment. Maybe there was no plot after all?

Then he ducked, as a walrus-ivory piece half his size came flying past his head. Haralt had brought his fist down on the playing board, scattering the pieces.

‘Priest, I tire of this game, of all this talk of kingship! Nothing you have said changes the fact that Knut stands to inherit the throne, not me. And what price then your Christian Kingdom of Denmark?’

‘But, sire, Our Lord tells us that patience is a virtue.’

‘Patience! Is that why you spend half your nights sat outside, just staring at those old stones? To be virtuous?’

‘Prince, you are mocking me. You know the strength of the Yelling Stones as well as any.’

‘Old skalds’ tales!’ said Haralt. ‘My father rules this land through a clever marriage and force of arms, not because of some magic rocks.’

‘So, you do not believe Jelling is a place of power?’

‘Of course it is.’ Haralt almost spat. ‘It lies on the Ox Road, halfway along the length of the realm. It’s close enough to Vejle Fjord to reach the sea and islands quickly, but not so close to need defending from raiders. For a strong ruler, it’s perfect. Now, if only you were to drain the marshes …’

Folkmar waved a fat hand dismissively. ‘No, no. You tease me still. I mean real power, the power that is coming from untold centuries of belief and worship.’

‘Come now, bishop. Surely, this sort of superstition is the first thing to be stamped out, if we get our way and convert the kingdom?’

‘Stamped out? Oh yes, just as you say!’ Folkmar’s piggy eyes were shining. ‘But idols must be being crushed –' he squeezed his fist – ‘because they are powerful. Nothing is to challenge Our Lord’s supremacy.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Haralt. ‘But what about challenging my accursed brother’s supremacy, eh? The man’s a mountain, and what’s more, his men are the best, most loyal fighters this side of Miklagard.’

‘Certainly, Knut holds Jelling in his fist as a bear cradles an apple. But what if he were to depart from here?’

‘Bah! Knut won’t go a-viking, not with Father near his deathbed. He’ll want to be here at the end.’

‘But what I am saying is, were we to make it impossible for him to stay …’

Haralt grinned then, the blue dye in his teeth slashing his smile open horribly. He leant close to Folkmar, brow furrowed, and the mouse leant nearer too, and –

‘Leif! Leif!’ And Astrid was tugging at him where he lay on the bench, and he left the mouse, and the plotters in the dark, and never had his own body felt so heavy and hard. He tried to rise, to force his eyelids fully open, but he was too slow. And dimly he saw that as she turned from him Astrid was crying, the hot tears crumpling her beautiful face.