sanctus graduale, the other sanguis regalis. Maybe the Grail is just the Holy Blood.”
For some time Bruno remained silent, meditatively touching the blister on his own tongue. Erkenbert watched his face with a growing interest. They had been over this ground several times, and what Erkenbert had not been able to understand was why Bruno seemed so sure of himself and his quest. There were indeed odd features in the Gospel of John and that of Nicodemus. There was nothing for the Grail, though, like the strong recent evidence there had been for the Holy Lance, possessed within living memory by Charlemagne. Nor was there anything like the centurion's letter that Erkenbert himself had seen. Erkenbert had suspected before that Bruno was hiding something.
“How do you get ‘dish’ or ‘chalice’ out of graduale?” asked Bruno finally.
“It is from gradus, a—a stage,” replied Erkenbert. “So it comes to mean a course at dinner, and then what the course is served on.”
, “But gradus doesn't mean a bloody stage,” snarled Bruno. “You're just saying that. It means a bloody step. It means something you step on. And a graduale is something with a lot of graduses on it. And you and I both call that the same thing, whether we talk my German or your English. Same word both languages. I checked. You know what it is! It's a bloody…”
“Ladder,” completed Erkenbert, his voice low and cold. For the first time he saw where his master's thought was leading.
“Ladder it is. Like you-know-who wears round his neck.”
“But how could that become a holy thing? Like the chalice of the Last Supper.”
“Have you ever thought,” inquired Bruno, leaning back in his camp-chair, “what happened after the Crucifixion?”
Erkenbert shook his head dumbly.
“Well, the Romans didn't take Our Lord, did they? I expect my ancestor Longinus”—Erkenbert noted silently the promotion of Longinus from predecessor to ancestor—“he marched off back to barracks, looking at his lance and wondering, I should think. But the body, the body of Our Lord—well, you just said it, it was handed over to the Jews. The friendly ones, that is, not the ones who had him crucified. But if you wanted to know what happened next, you'd have to ask the Jews. Not the Romans, they'd all marched off, not the Christians, they were all hiding. And what do you think was the first thing they'd do?”
Erkenbert shook his head mutely. He had a terrifying sensation that something was building up here, something stemming from the past, from Bruno's own past, with terrible ramifications for the future. He had no idea what it was.
Bruno poured two large goblets of wine from the handy pitcher and pushed one over to Erkenbert. “Thirsty work, talking,” he remarked, his face taking on once more its unexpected glow of amiability and good fellowship.
“Now, have you ever really thought seriously about how to crucify someone? And how you de-crucify them? Eh?”
Shef lay in his hammock slung between the rail and the forward catapult mounting. A faint breeze moderated the heat still rising from the wooden decks, and the ship rocked gently on an almost motionless sea. Round him seventy men slept also, some in hammocks, some stretched out on deck. Above them the stars burned brightly in a clearer sky than any they had seen before.
In his dream, Shef knew he was far, far below earth, or sea, or sky. He was on some kind of gigantic stairway. A stairway so huge that he could only just reach the top of the next step with his fingertips. He might be able to jump, haul himself up, get a knee over the edge and scramble on to the next step. How often could he do that before weariness took him?
And there was something coming up the steps towards him. Something enormous, that dwarfed him as he would dwarf a mouse. He could feel vibrations through the cold wet stone, a thump—thump—thump of enormous feet climbing the stair. A waft of malice and malevolence crept up the stair ahead of the feet. If the thing that was climbing saw him it would stamp down on him as surely as he would crush a poison-spider. A faint light was beginning to glow from down below as well. The thing that was coming would see him.
Shef glanced around, already imagining his own flesh and blood spattered across the stone. No way up that did not lead to being overtaken. No point in going down. To the side. He sprang across, began to grope in the dim light across the side of the stairway. There was something there, a wooden strip or lining. And he was like a mouse. From years before Shef remembered his own vision of himself as Volund the lame smith, and Farman priest of Frey peering up at him from the floor like a mouse from the wainscoting. Now he was the mouse, and Farman—the thumping feet on the stair called Shef back from thoughts of the quiet Wisdom-House to his immediate reality.
A crack in the wood. Shef began to squeeze himself into it, first headfirst, then realizing that that might leave him unable to see the menace behind, pulling out and reversing in, careless of splinters tearing his tunic and digging into the skin.
He was back, covered at least from direct vision. He pulled his head back even further, knowing that nothing shows up so well in the dark as pale skin. There was still a line of sight. As the thump—thump—thump of feet became deafening, Shef saw a face cross his limited vision.
A set, cruel face, marked and pitted with poison. The face of Loki Baldersbane, free from his eternal prison, from the snake ever-dripping venom into his eyes when his loyal wife did not intercept it. The face of someone set on vengeance. Vengeance for unforgivable injustice.
The face passed by, the feet continued their steady climb. And then they stopped. Stopped level with Shef's head. He held his breath, conscious suddenly of the beating of his heart, that seemed to pound like a drum inside the echo-chamber of the little wooden crack. He remembered Brand's huge feet, stamping up and down while the baffled Arab watched. Loki could surely smash in his fragile hiding-place with a kick.
The feet moved on, began to climb once more up towards the light. As Shef breathed again, he heard a second noise. This time it was a slither. The slither of scales across stone. He remembered the awful sight he had seen of the great head striking at him, striking and falling short before it returned to its endless task of torment. Endlessly frustrated by the gods who had tethered it just out of fang-reach. The monster-viper that was climbing now after the one who had so long escaped it had had centuries in the dark to grow in rage. And its eyes were closer to the ground than a god's. And vipers had other senses than sight. Senses designed for catching mice in the dark. Shef remembered the blue swelling face of Ragnar Lothbrok, Ivar's father and Sigurth's too, as he died in the snake-pit, the orm-garth of York.
In panic he forced himself round to try to wriggle deeper into concealment. The crack was widening, he jerked his shoulder through, wondering what might be on the other side. All light had faded, but the slither behind him was coming closer and closer.
He was through. Through what he did not know, but now he was standing in a pit, and looking up. And there, far above him, was a full pale moon with markings on it like a ghastly skull. He could see a wall, a wall facing him, far lower than the cliff behind. But still far too high for him to jump and catch the edge, climb out as he might have done on to the next step of the stairway behind. In a panic now Shef began to run towards it, careless of what might see him. But as he moved there came from all around him, not just from behind, a piercing and universal hiss.
He stopped dead, aware of slithering all around him. He had escaped from Loki and the viper that pursued him. But now he was in a crawling carpet of snake-bodies. He was in the orm-garth of the gods. And there was no way to climb out.
As he stood stock-still he felt a thud striking his thigh, felt the first deep bite of the fangs, the poison spreading into his veins.
Shef sprang from his hammock in one convulsive movement, caught a foot in a cord and crashed to the deck. He was on his feet again instantly, ready to lash out in any direction, a great yell bubbling from his throat. As men around him cursed and scrambled also to their feet, groping for their weapons, he felt a brawny arm close round him, was swung momentarily off his feet.
