Hlif ignored Viggo’s extended hand and jumped down onto the well-trampled earth, followed by Skarfr. They brushed the dust and specks of fluff off their clothes and looked around to get their bearings. It would be easy enough to find their way back, as the foundations for the new cathedral were in front of them, within a stone’s throw, with all the noise of masons and their apprentices at work. Not that these stones could easily be thrown. Huge red blocks were being unloaded and added to the stacks all around the site, presumably in some organised plan to which the masons held the key.
Their carter raised his voice above the hullabaloo of builders, traders and customers. ‘Be back here when the bells ring for nones.’ He exchanged nods with his neighbours and was already showing samples of wool to the first customer curious about the content of the sacks.
‘Wait!’ Skarfr chased after Hlif, who was marching towards the only part of the cathedral-to-be which had recognisable walls and a makeshift covering for its roof. The construction filled the north-east corner of the building site, already startling in its height and red sandstone exterior.
They negotiated blocks of stone and boys carrying buckets of water. Skarfr’s shoulders ached in sympathy just watching them but his attention soon shifted to a man splitting a block with a hammer and chisel. He would have liked to linger and watch the stone cutter at work but duty hastened his feet in pursuit of Hlif.
She stopped at the entrance to the covered section and peered in. When Skarfr joined her, he was tall enough to see over her head and gawp at the impossible way the red stone curved. How had those blocks turned into such grace? The Jarl’s Bu was a pigsty in comparison to this building, even at such an early stage. But Hlif was in no mood to appreciate architecture.
‘There’s nothing here.’ All the vivacity and anticipation of the journey had evaporated. ‘They call it St Magnus Cathedral but the rock stacks on the headland are higher than this! Three years’ work and there’s no cross, no shrine. The saint’s bones aren’t here and there’s nowhere to pray even if they were. We might as well go home.’
‘They must be somewhere,’ reasoned Skarfr, as much to gain time among the stoneworkers as to comfort Hlif. ‘People can’t be waiting for the cathedral to be built before they have somewhere they can pray.’
He approached one of the masons, a burly man with a pate as bald as his well-worn leather apron. Waiting patiently for a pause in the tap-tap-tap of hammer on chisel on stone, Skarfr watched the cut lines appear, shallow and even, like a rune marking but no character that he knew.
The man looked up, gruff. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know that rune. Is it your name? Why are you putting it into the stone?’ asked Skarfr, distracted from his mission.
‘You wouldn’t know, would you,’ replied the man smugly, ‘because you’re not a mason. Years in the trade I’ve had, from boy to man, and we,’ he waved his hammer around to include his fellow-workers, ‘came here when we finished Dunholm Cathedral.’
Years with Botolf had accustomed Skarfr to the tone which required awe in response but he opted for information instead. ‘I don’t know where Dunholm is,’ he confessed. ‘Or anything about its cathedral.’
The mason sighed. ‘We were told how backwards you were on these islands but I still can’t believe how little you know. Dunholm is St Cuthbert’s holy place and the cathedral we built there, well, let’s just say it shows that we’re the best. And we earned the place in heaven that we were promised. Not but what it wouldn’t hurt to have better pay here on earth, rather than wait till we’re dead for our reward. How we’ll make it through winter again, laid off in this godforsaken hole till work starts up again in spring, I don’t know.’
He looked around quickly. ‘But that’s dangerous talk. And this, young master long-nose,’ he waved the chisel at the marks he’d made on the stone, ‘is to make sure I get paid what’s due. I’m on piecework, see, and this is no rune. It’s my mark to show which stones I’ve cut. That’s not all we use the marks for but you’d have to become a mason to find out more trade secrets.’
He looked Skarfr up and down, from his rough-chopped black hair to his bare feet. ‘And you don’t look the type to me.’
‘Excuse me, stonemason,’ a haughty voice interrupted. ‘I need some information.’
Unimpressed by Hlif’s manner, the man weighed her up in the same way he had Skarfr, from her unruly red hair escaping from a clean coif, to her dusty feet, also bare.
‘Information is what I’m giving,’ he replied stolidly, ‘and the Lord knows why I’m bothering, when you don’t know the first thing about—’ He struggled for a big enough word ‘about anything. I’m not a master mason though I could be one day. That’s our master mason, over there, talking to Lord Kol.’
The two men indicated formed an island in the stream of activity. The boys with buckets and the men carrying blocks walked around their superiors without breaking stride. The master mason could easily be distinguished by the ubiquitous leather apron and a less tangible air of authority, equal to Lord Kol’s. The man holding the purse-strings to the project built imaginary walls with his hands, only to have the man responsible for the structure’s safety reduce the size of those walls with even firmer gestures.
Skarfr’s stoneworker shook his head in disgust. ‘Always want things done quicker, these lords, and they think we’re all slacking if it’s not finished by Christmas. He’ll be more than lucky if he lives to see it finished.’ He sucked his moustache philosophically. ‘The glory of God takes more than a man’s span of years, and stone takes the time it takes.’
After a quick glance towards the two men in charge of operations, Hlif moved so that her back was towards them.
Answering his puzzled expression, she muttered, ‘Rognvald’s father,’ which did not explain her odd behaviour.
The mason nodded. ‘Aye, the Norðman is father to your Jarl, right enough.’
Hlif drummed her fingers against her skirt. ‘We wouldn’t want you to be accused of slacking because of us,’ she said with an insincere smile. ‘So if you could just tell us where the saint’s bones are, we’ll be on our way.’
The man shook his head again. ‘Where else would they be? In the church of course.’
‘And where’s the church?’ asked Hlif, between gritted teeth.
‘St Olaf’s Church it is, north-east from here, a short walk. It’s Norðman-built in the old-fashioned way but solid enough for its time. Your St Magnus will be one-up on St Olaf when he moves in here.’ He laughed until he choked and told them, wheezing, ‘Dust in my pipes.’
‘You should take a honey and thyme posset,’ Hlif told him, which was as close to kindness as she could manage, her impatience to get going manifest. ‘Thank you.’
Skarfr watched the chisel and hammer return to their work, marking a different block with the same open triangle crossed by a line.
‘Skarfr!’ Hlif called to him. He sighed, then jogged to catch up with her.
‘Why didn’t you want Lord Kol to see you?’
Hlif stopped dead, right beside a pie stall, which Skarfr eyed sideways with a grumbling stomach. As usual, the soggy pastry was wet from leaked filling but it kept the meaty contents as fresh as their baker claimed, judging by the smell. Only the starving poor ate the whole pie but Skarfr was so hungry he was tempted. Of its own volition, his hand fished a coin out of the pouch on his belt and made the exchange with the pie-keeper.
‘Why do you think, stupid?’
‘Because he’d recognise you? And then tell Rognvald you were here?’ mumbled Skarfr through a mouthful of stewed meat.
‘Oh he’d recognise me all right. I’m the daughter of the man who killed his wife’s brother!’ she hissed. Even though they kept their voices down, they were attracting attention, especially from the stallholder whose customers they were blocking. Skarfr took her elbow and moved her on down the row of traders.
‘That’s not your fault.’
‘You don’t understand, do you.’ She lapsed into gloomy silence for the rest of their walk. Both of them kept their eyes on the ground: the hazards of rotten vegetables and animal droppings threatened their bare feet as cows, sheep and horses were driven between pens and purchase.