‘You clearly know their provenance well. Are you one of these Rus?’
‘No,’ he admitted carefully. ‘But they are my kin. I am from the kingdom of England — Britannia, as some of you call it, an island just beyond the Russian shores.’
‘Where the holy Emperor, may he live a thousand years, recruits his bodyguard?’
‘The same place. In fact, I served the Emperor myself, once, as one of his Varangians, carrying my axe in his service. He chose me for my honesty.’
‘Truly?’ I wiped a lock of hair out of my eyes. ‘I am looking for a man who knows of Varangians. Or rather, a man who seeks to know more of them. A monk who travels the city bargaining with guardsmen past and present. Have you seen such a man?’
The gold coin I had been holding slipped from my fingers and landed noiselessly on a pile of fur. I did not pick it up. It agitated Asgard; he cast his eyes down, then to one side, and fidgeted with the clasp of his cloak. Always, though, his gaze leapt back to the glittering nomisma in his tray.
‘Why should I know that?’ he croaked. ‘There are many Varangians in this city, and many who have left after a lifetime of loyal and honourable service. Who would come to a distant corner of a stinking market, a space which even the whore-born guilds do not value enough to rent for more than an obol, to ask questions of a luckless merchant?’
‘A man who placed great value on what that merchant might tell him,’ I answered. ‘As I do.’
Two more gold coins dropped before him.
‘No,’ the old man whispered. ‘No. I have not seen your monk.’
‘Yes you have. You led him to your old comrade Aelric, and revealed some terrible secret which compelled Aelric to betray everything he valued. Do not deny it.’
Asgard was shuffling back now, glancing about for a path to escape. I followed him, tipping over his tray and scattering his pelts over the wet stone.
I pulled out my knife. ‘I will know what you have said and done, Asgard. You can take either gold for it, or steel. Do you know a Varangian captain named Siguard?’
Asgard’s thin jaw opened wider. ‘Sigurd? He is a berserker, a madman. He would kill his own mother if she stepped too near the Emperor for his liking. I served under him in the guard.’
‘And now, through the treachery you concocted with Aelric, you have ruined him. If you do not tell me what you have done, he will come with his axe to make you answer.’
All this time I had been advancing on Asgard as he retreated; now, he found himself with his back to a broad column. I watched him squirm against it, and stood ready to strike if he tried to run.
But running was no more in Asgard’s character than fighting: there was no strength in his time-ravaged limbs and he knew it.
‘He will kill me,’ he pleaded. ‘The monk swore he would kill me if I told any other.’
‘If the monk has finished with you, he will probably kill you anyway. At least I will give you a chance to live.’
‘But I did no wrong. I did not betray Aelric — he did that himself. I never murdered my countrymen, or put innocent families to death, or burned homes and crops and poisoned wells so that the land would lie empty for a generation. Not I, no. Why do you point your blade at me, when it is Aelric’s neck which should feel its edge?’
‘Aelric’s neck has felt its last blow.’ My words were short, brusque — what were these horrors he ascribed to the genial Varangian? ‘Do not try to save yourself by blackening the names of the dead.’
‘If he is dead, then that is the least justice he was due. A man lives by his loyalties, and he had none.’
‘Then your head should join his, for if you conspired with the monk then you betrayed the Emperor just as much as Aelric.’
‘The Emperor?’ Asgard gave a horrible, cackling laugh. ‘What do I care for the Emperor? For some years he paid me to serve him, and then he did not. But Aelric did not betray some jumped-up Greek — he betrayed his own people. His real kin. The English.’ Somehow, through his obvious fear, Asgard managed to contort a vicious smile.
‘Aelric fought with your king against the invaders.’ I remembered his confusing tales of Normans and Norsemen. ‘Was that a lie?’
The fur-merchant shook his head. ‘It was true enough. But what he did not tell you was that three years after the invasion, when the Bastard conqueror came north to wreck the land, Aelric’s lord supported him, and Aelric with him. There were more than Normans up there — Englishmen turned on their neighbours too. Some say they were the worst, the fiercest. Aelric always held that he did it because his thane ordered him, but who is to tell the truth of that?’
‘Aelric spoke of this? To the Varangians?’
Again that awful sneer. ‘Not to the Varangians. If you so much as admired a Norman whore you’d be out of their ranks with your head cracked open. But he spoke of it to me, on the long nights during our flight from England. He used to wake up crying in the night remembering the things he had done, needing to confess. They were ugly stories, too, but I kept them secret. Then they threw me out of the barracks and he did not raise a word to protect me, after I’d kept him safe all those years. So when the monk came to my stall, asking if I knew any of the guards who were disloyal, or might be, it did not take much of his gold to draw out Aelric’s name.’
‘And then you took this monk to Aelric’s house? You forced him to betray the Emperor?’
‘I forced him to do nothing. I persuaded him to share a drink with me. When he came, I introduced him to the monk. The monk explained that if Aelric served him faithfully, he might die but his wife would live in comfort; otherwise, he would die in ignominy, his past treachery revealed, and his wife would have to whore herself to Normans simply to live. Once Aelric had agreed, and the monk had rewarded me for my work, I left them to their own business.’
‘Where was this meeting?’ So great was my anticipation that I moved closer, almost pricking Asgard with the point of my knife.
He whimpered, and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his cloak. ‘At a tavern near the harbour. He arrived after us, alone. I never saw him after that.’
‘So you do not know where he can be found? Did he not leave instructions in case you thought of another victim from whom he could extort disloyalty?’
Asgard shook his head so violently that I almost believed him.
‘I will take you to the imperial prisons,’ I told him. ‘Then I will find Sigurd and repeat your story. Perhaps he will remind you of things you have forgotten.’
Asgard cowered back in terror, pressing himself so close against the column he might have been carved on it. ‘Do not take me to Sigurd,’ he pleaded. ‘Not to Sigurd.’ A leering hope entered his eyes. ‘Perhaps there are other things I remember.’
‘What other things?’
Asgard raised his chin in rare defiance. ‘The monk did not leave instructions — but that does not mean I was fool enough not to make enquiries. Asgard always seeks new business.’
I stood very still. ‘What did your enquiries reveal?’
‘That a man who values knowledge will pay for it.’
‘You were involved in a plot to murder the Emperor,’ I reminded him, ‘and your life will be forfeit unless you ransom it with something of singular value. Is your knowledge enough to buy your soul?’
Asgard looked miserably unhappy, but with a knife at his throat and Sigurd’s vengeance to follow, he had little choice.
‘I paid a boy to follow the monk when he left the tavern. A clever lad, and sly. He knew how to find the shadows when the monk looked around. Which he did often, apparently — a suspicious man. But the boy tracked him like a deer, back to a tenement in Libos.’
‘Where in Libos? When was this?’ I raised my knife so that it hovered before Asgard’s eyes. It seemed to make the words come faster.
‘Two weeks ago, perhaps three. I do not know if he has been there since. But that you can find out yourself. It is west from the column of Marcian, near the north bank of the Lycus. A grocer named Vichos keeps his shop on the ground floor.’
I stared into his eyes, trying to judge the truth of his words, but fear had long stripped all honesty from his face and I could not tell.
