Hurrying us through streets that were thick with fighters, the mayor’s men returned Putscha and me to the jail, and formed a cordon around it.
I can scarcely describe my feelings. As much as the blow that Harald dealt me seared my flesh, Inge’s words burned still hotter in my brain. Her betrayal was the more unforgivable. Harald was goaded by anger and humiliation which any man may feel. But she! From the very start she’d done nothing but lie to me, and now, just as coolly, lied about me.
As I paced my cell in silent rage, I barely noticed the shouting and clash of arms that sounded nearby—now approaching, now receding, then again coming nearer. It was about twilight that the street directly outside the jail erupted in fighting between the Rus and the hated outlanders. Torches flared, bodies lurched back and forth across the narrow field of vision afforded by our window, and the night rang with shouts.
The glimmering of a chance to escape this wooden prison released me from the prison of my thoughts. Here, at least, was something I could grapple with. “Putscha! Get up!”
He lay, as he had for hours, on his stomach, with his arms outspread; his back livid and oozing blood.
“Let me be.”
“No, listen. We must run for it now while the guards are busy defending themselves; we won’t get a second chance. Here, stand on my shoulders. Your hand is small enough to reach up between the bars of the grating and pull out the bolt. Then lift up the grate and throw down the rope ladder.”
“I can’t move, I tell you!”
From outside came the footsteps of more men running, and the clangor of arms grew louder.
“Up you get, little man—scream all you like, you won’t be heard above the noise outside.”
Scream he did, as I jerked him to his feet and swung him up in the air with a hand under each arm.
“Never mind the pain.”
“What d’you know about pain?” he hissed between clenched teeth.
“Now, now. If it were Ingigerd here instead of me, she’d be standing on your shoulders and you’d be thanking her for the privilege. Feet on my shoulders, now. All right, I’ve got your ankles.” His height added to mine—and neither of us tall—just barely brought his fingers in reach of the bars. “Can you get your hand between them?”
He sucked his breath between his teeth and grunted against the pain. A mere Norseman would have screamed the house down.
“Good fellow! Can you feel the bolt?”
“I have it but it won’t come.”
“Putscha, look out, a torch! Push it away, man!”
“Can’t, too far—”
A flaming brand had landed on the grating. Someone—Swede or Norwegian—meant to cook us. An ember drifted down onto the straw-covered floor, just beyond the reach of my foot.
“The bolt, Putscha, as you hope to live, pull harder!”
A wisp of smoke curled upwards from the straw.
“No—no—wait, I have it!”
“Right. Feet in my hands, now, I’m going to lift you straight up. That’s it, knees on the ledge, keep low or they’ll see you from the street. Can you see the rope anywhere?”
With my hands free, I turned to stamping out the fire—only to send bits of flaming straw whirling in all directions. With a rush and crackle the floor burst into flame in a dozen places at once. In a flash of memory, I was back in my father’s house, our enemies screaming outside, the roof collapsing in flames, my mother’s hair burning, the flames scorching my feet …
My blood turned to water. I screamed and screamed again. “The rope, the rope, hurry, damn you!”
But, instead, the dwarf glared down at me from his safe perch, his bloody lips twisted in a sneer. “Burn, is it? I, Putscha, could take twelve strokes of the knout for all you cared. Twelve strokes, outlander, there’s burning for you. Why shouldn’t I let you burn?”
I danced amid the leaping flames. Seeking escape too, were the roaches and rats—whole tribes of them hidden in the straw. They climbed my legs, crawled under my shirt, and clung to my back.
“For pity’s sake, Putscha, don’t do this to me!”
“What, won’t you call me ‘little man,’? I do love to be so addressed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I’m sure your sorry now. Oh, yes.”
“Please, please, Putschaaa!”
“‘Please’ is it? I don’t reckon there are many you’ve said that to.” He squinted at me against the rising smoke. “Shall I let you live, then? Well, brave druzhinik, here’s your rope.”
I leapt for it and climbed with the strength that only terror lends us; I and pounds of frenzied rats who sank their claws into me. But my cell-mates I could not carry. The woman, her screaming baby under her arm, hung on my belt. I kicked her away—I was long past caring for any human being but myself. I reached the top with the seat of my pants scorched. The rats and other vermin departed at once for safer havens.
All around me buildings flared and the air was thick with flying ash, to which was added the smoke that billowed up from our cell. I could hear the screams of those wretches we had left below.
“Putscha, you filthy little brute, I’ll pay you back for this!” On hands and knees, I made a grab for him, intending to push him back into the flames.
“Hands off!” he warned, backing away with his tiny fists raised in self-defense.
I grabbed for his throat but missed.
“You aren’t safe yet, Haraldsskald. Where will you go, eh? Where will you hide so your master doesn’t find you?” Again, with an acrobat’s quickness, he dodged out of reach. “But I know a place where we can lie low. Food and shelter, anything you like—”
Smoke stung my eyes, the wooden planks under my hands and knees were hot. This was senseless; I could never catch him up here.
“Follow me if you dare!” He made a running jump from the roof. Whether to strangle him or accept his promise of safety amounted to the same decision: I must follow.
Balancing on the narrow ledge, I looked below me. The street was littered with bodies. Warriors hacked and slashed at each other, though it was impossible to see in the cluttered air who was who.
Putscha was disappearing down the street. I jumped and landed running. Dashing this way and that with me hot on his heels, he threaded a maze of back streets—past blazing houses, past mobs of battling men—until we came out at last on the verge of the wild land beyond Lyudin End.
“Stop and let us rest a minute,” I gasped. “Where are you taking me?”
“I’m not taking you anywhere; follow or don’t, it’s all the same to me.”
“Are all footstools as bad-tempered as you, Putscha, or does it take a princess’ heel marks on your rump to make you so high and mighty?”
“Mightier than you, anyway; ‘Putscha pleeease,’ he mimicked me.”
I grabbed for his throat again but he danced out of reach, laughing, and took off downhill into a ravine choked with brambles. They must have torn his raw skin cruelly but he never slowed his pace.
All that dark blue night we pushed our way through woods and marsh, stopping only to drink water in greedy gulps from a brook. As the sky lightened, we arrived at a clearing in the woods. In the center of it stood a tiny hut built all of sticks with a roof of bundled twigs. Tethered before the door a solitary goat cropped the grass.
“It’s to this you bring me—?”
The dwarf drew himself up to his full height and made a face like a thundercloud at me. “Hold your tongue, outlander! The Princess Ingigerd was not too proud to visit my mother—not once but often.”
“Your mother?”
“And see you address her respectfully. Lyudmila Ilyavna is her name. She was born beside the far-off Volga, and the blood of Rus, Slav, and Royal Khazar is mingled in her veins. If you are polite, she will help you. If not, she will eat you up.”
“Eat me! I’ve run all this way to meet a troll hag?”
“Silence, I say!”
At these words the bearskin that served the cabin for a door was pushed aside by a thin hand and a woman stepped into the light. I had expected the mother of a dwarf to be a dwarf; my imagination had already conjured up some evil, shrunken thing like Old Louhi of Pohjola.
But Lyudmila Ilyavna was as tall as I.
She had been a beautiful woman once and was still a handsome one. Her hair, in which wild flowers were twined, fell in two snow white plaits to her waist. They framed a face that was finely shaped and uncommonly smooth for a woman of sixty winters or more. It was more like the face of a maiden, except that the blooming color had faded from it as if from an old fabric washed too often. Her lips, too, lacked of redness, though they were full and rounded. Her eyes were as pale as water.
“My child—? Ahh, what has happened to you!”
She ran and knelt before the dwarf, pressing his head to her bosom. (A bosom, I could not help but notice, that was ample and of a certain firmness.)
“Who is guilty of this? Speak, my darling.”
Seeing them together, I had to remind myself that Putscha was a middle-aged man with a grown daughter of his own and not, rather, some unnaturally grey-headed little boy.
He recited all the events that had led up to our escape.
“And our poor, dear princess,” she asked, “has she escaped as well?”
“Mother, I know not if she’s alive or dead.”
“And Nenilushka?”
“May she dream of the Devil! I have no daughter anymore!”
“Oh, no, you can’t mean that! It’s pain that makes you talk so.”
Still embracing him, though carefully so as not to hurt him, she turned angrily to me. “And you, my princess’s lover—why were you not flogged? Of course, they hesitate to punish a Northman. No, they scarcely dare raise a hand against you, while they beat my poor child nearly to death because of what he is.”
Mindful of Putscha’s warning, I answered as politely as I could: “Good woman, you are hasty. I was betrayed by my own master and ill-used—it grieves me to say so—by that princess you admire. As for your son, he would not be here if I’d not helped him to escape. I beg you to shelter me for just a night or two.”
She looked doubtful. “Darling Putscha,” she said, tenderly kissing his forehead, “I will send him away if you wish it.”
“He can stay,” answered the dwarf sullenly, “provided he makes no more allusions to a person’s size or a person’s office.”
“You have my word on it, little—er, gospodin Putscha,” I said.
We made a cozy party inside the tiny hut. Leaves, berries, and herbs of every sort hung in bunches from the roof together with such familiar stuff as garlic and toadstools. Picking from here and there, she mixed ingredients in a mortar and pounded them to a paste which she applied gently to her son’s back. She allowed me to take one finger of the stuff for my wounded shoulder, and it did numb the pain.
While she was occupied, I had a look round and saw that there were neither icons, candles, nor crucifix on the walls. Putscha might be a Christian—at least, he regularly attended mass with the Princess—but his mother plainly was not.
“And now drink this, my darling, and sleep,” she said, holding a cup of something to his lips. Where had I met that sickly sweet smell before? Ingigerd’s poison! Though hers was, no doubt, a more potent mixture.
In a few minutes the dwarf was snoring loudly.
“Outlander, you may take a drop too, if you like.”
“Not just now, thank you.” I wasn’t so sure of her that I would let her drug me.
“Then it’s time I milked the goat. You’ll excuse me.”
“I’ll come along.”
“Please yourself.”
She sat on a three-legged milking stool and began to pull the teats in a steady rhythm. I sat cross-legged on the grass beside her.
“Lyudmila Ilyavna, your son told me that Ingigerd used to visit certain old women in the villages, but that was a blind, wasn’t it. It’s you who are the witch she comes to for charms and potions.”
Her eyes filled with fear. She said, “I did not like to give her so much of the sleeping drug, but she wouldn’t be put off. You must believe me, gospodin …”
“Don’t be afraid, woman, I’m no hanger of witches. I leave that to the Christmen. I cleave to the old ways, as you do.”
A brindled cat materialized and began to rub against her legs in hope of getting some of the milk. She squeezed a stream into its mouth.
“I have some little knowledge of herbals,” she said carefully. “Putscha makes too much of it.”
“You don’t eat your guests?”
“No,” she smiled, “I don’t.” Her dimpling cheeks looked very girlish.
“What was his father? If a stranger may ask.”
“You mean, don’t you, was his father a dwarf? The answer is no; the dwarfs are all in my lineage. His father was a Rus warrior, Churillo Igorevich, by name. He was as tall as an oak and ruddy as the sun. A fighter and trader who fared all the way to the Volga, from where he brought me back as his bride.”
“To live here in the forest?”
“No, gospodin, to live in Novgorod in a fine wooden house with red shutters and a red rooster on the door. I loved that house. I was still very young. My handsome Churillo enlisted in the druzhina and was greatly prized for his strength and courage.
“Then one day old Vladimir, who was still Grand Prince then, decreed that all the Rus must turn Christian. My husband was one of those few who refused. There was fighting in the streets when the soldiers came from Kiev, and we fled, first to his village, and finally—to escape the whispering of our neighbors—to this lonely spot. I had already given birth to a daughter and here I bore a son—both dwarfs. As I said, they are common in my family, we don’t know why. After the second one—Putscha—was born, my husband hanged himself one night from the elm tree yonder, believing that he was cursed by Vladimir’s new god.”
“Ah, Lyudmila, what feelings, what memories of my own family, your words stir in me. My father too fought against the Christmen and was driven mad by them. And Putscha knows all this?”
“He guesses. From childhood on, he has done everything to harden and strengthen himself. Jumping, tumbling, lifting huge stones by the hour. All to be the son his father wanted. But in his own mind it is never enough.”
And so, I thought, he struts about with his chest stuck out and his little wooden sword in his belt. I sighed inwardly. It would be harder to dislike him now.
“You said there was a daughter, too.”
“Famine and pestilence carried her off some fifteen years ago. It’s just as well. She and her brother behaved as man and wife, you see, since neither could find another dwarf to mate with. Poor Nenilushka was their child. It was during that famine that Putscha sold himself and his little daughter into the princess’ service. We never could have survived otherwise.
“My clever Putscha became the princess’s eyes and ears. And Nenilushka was given to Yelisaveta, who was still a baby then, to be her dolly—one that walked and talked! There seemed nothing against it at the time. And, as the two girls grew up, we hoped that Nenilushka’s weak mind would preserve her from court intrigues. We were wrong.”
“Your family has born too many misfortunes, ma’am.”
“No more than most. Anyway, what is life for heathens but misfortune?”
“Aye, that’s true enough.” Then, in a few words, I sketched my own history and told her of my vow to go home one day and kill my enemies.
“Then I wish you good luck, gospodin. Meanwhile, in such a hard world as this should we not take our pleasure where we find it?”
“To be sure.”
Having finished with the goat, she sat with her hands folded in her lap. Those pale-as-water eyes regarded me gravely under their long white lashes. A red flush rose up her throat and touched her cheeks with color.
“Gospodin Odd, I am not young but would you—?”
“I would with pleasure, Lyudmila Ilyavna.”
She led the way to a shadowy glade beyond sight of the house, in case her son should awaken sooner than expected. I never had a more tender lover than this white-haired woman. She was like cool water to my wounded spirit. Afterwards, I lay with my head in her lap and let her search my hair for lice.
“I can see why they call you Tangle-Hair,” she said.
“You know my nick-name? What else do you know? Did Ingigerd ever talk about me?—not that I care.”
She smiled at that. “What a vain young man you are! Even while you hate her, you want to hear compliments. Well, she said you were as ugly as a tchernobog. What d’you think of that?”
“Hmpf. Did she say nothing good about me at all?”
“I’ll not give away her secrets, even to please you, my friend. I’ll only say, dear Tangle-Hair, that she didn’t exaggerate.” Lyudmila touched me between the legs.
Late in the afternoon Putscha awoke and we three shared a meager dinner of porridge and goat cheese. With the last few drops of thin beer that remained, Lyudmila poured a libation to the domovoi, the guardian spirits, of the house.
Later, as we talked, I said, “I must get back into Novgorod, there’s a man there I’ve sworn to kill.”
“What a great many you have sworn to kill, gospodin Odd,” Lyudmila laughed.
Putscha looked at us in puzzlement a moment; then began to rail at me: “You’ll be putting your neck in the noose if you do—and mine and my mother’s besides. You’re no match for bloody Harald. He’ll flog you until you confess how you got away and where you hid.”
“You shame me, Putscha Churillovich,” I answered truthfully. “I confess that I have not the fortitude of a dwarf.” (His chest swelled with pride.) “But I must manage it somehow. Lyudmila, can you sew me a shirt of invisibility such as old tales tell of?”
“No,” she answered, “but I can do something that will serve nearly as well, if you agree to it. The men of the Volga wear their hair and mark their bodies in a peculiar way, or, at least, did so when I was a girl. I decorated Churillo when we first met because he admired it so; he claimed it doubled his natural ferocity. If you’ll permit me, your closest friend won’t know you when I’ve finished.”
My transformation occupied most of four days.
First, for an hour, she honed the blade of a long, thin knife with which she shaved off my beard until only two long moustaches hung down. Following that, she shaved my scalp, leaving just a horse-tail of hair sprouting from the middle of it, which she tied up in a knot. This took all of an evening.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I will go into the woods to find the berries I need.”
She was away all the next day while I endured Putscha’s boasting and haughty looks. When she returned, more hours were spent in pounding and grinding her ingredients and still more in sharpening a sparrow’s wing-bone to a needle point.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said, “when the light is strong.”
In the cool of the morning I sat outside on the milking stool with my shirt off. She began with the fingers of my right hand, dipping her needle in the little bowl of blue ooze that she had mixed, and pricking my skin with it.
By end of day she had covered both my arms from fingertips to shoulder with a tracery of whorls and spirals that wound in and out without beginning or end.
“Amazing!” I exclaimed, spreading my fingers and holding my arms out before me. “And I’ll take good care not to wash until the need for disguise is past.”
“Oh, don’t bother yourself about that,” said she.
“Eh?”
Putscha let out a snort of laughter.
That night I felt feverish and my skin burned and itched; and the next day I did nothing while Lyudmila doctored me with various ointments and assured me that this was all quite normal. On the following day, feeling much improved, I rose early and made ready to walk back to Novgorod.
“Those fine clothes might give you away though, mightn’t they?” she said thoughtfully. I was still dressed for Harald’s coronation in my very best hat, tunic, shoes, and jewelry, everything fastened with silver and trimmed with fur.
“I’ve saved my husband’s old things.”
“Mother!” Putscha looked shocked.
“Hush! Do you want him to be caught?”
“Give me your man’s clothes, Lyudmila,” I said, “and take these of mine in return.”
“Why, that’s kindly of you, Odd.” She went to a tiny chest that sat in a corner of the hut and took out the clothes, all carefully folded.
Without delay I put on her husband’s well-worn boots, wide trousers, sleeveless tunic (which showed off my beautiful new arms), and broad belt of plain leather with a big buckle of tarnished brass. Around my neck I fastened his torque of twisted wrought iron with a Thor’s hammer pendant.
“His sword and shield I cannot give you,” she said, “they are buried with him. But here is his broad-ax. It has chopped nothing but firewood these many years. May it taste the blood of your enemies.”
“I’m in your debt again.”
“Let us all be still for a moment now,” she said. “It’s a good custom to be silent before someone sets out on a journey.”
We sat for a few moments, gazing silently at the floor. Then, “Good bye, my friend,” she said, rising and kissing me on both cheeks. “And wear this, its power is great.” She hung an amulet of carved bone around my neck.
I returned her kisses more warmly than one is accustomed to do with old women. But she was like no other I had known.