‘About as far as I trust you,’ Snorri replied flatly, which I supposed was only deserved. ‘Let me do the talking, at least to begin with. If he’s here, that is, and I’m beginning to think he isn’t.’
‘If he isn’t, where will we find him?’
‘At this hour?’ He nodded in the vague direction of the setting sun. ‘Probably down at the stews by the docks. Whores and slaves are what Dyflin is best known for. Fine girls, there are, from all over Christendom and even beyond, as plump or as skinny as you like. You won’t find better this side of the sea. Probably there are boys as well, if you’re inclined that way; our Lord might judge, but not old Snorri. I’ll show you later where-’
He didn’t get the chance to finish, since at that moment the door opened. Standing there was a sour-faced man of around twenty years, by my reckoning, tall and long-limbed, with fair hair that was tied back, a shaggy woollen cloak of a style that I’d seen many Dyflin folk wearing draped around his shoulders, and a flagon in one hand.
‘Snorri Broklauss,’ he said, without warmth, his words sounding more than a little slurred. He greeted him in English, which, I thought, was just as well. ‘I was wondering how soon it would be before you next showed your face here. You knew that wine you sold me had spoilt, didn’t you?’
The Dane frowned. ‘Spoilt, lord?’
‘It made me sick, Snorri. Sick like a pig, all over my hall. I was spewing all that night and the next day too.’
‘That’ll happen if you try to drink the whole barrel at once, lord,’ Snorri said gravely, his expression even.
For an instant I thought Magnus might strike him for such discourtesy, but instead his expression softened and a smile broke out across his face. ‘So, what have you come to sell me this time?’
‘I’m not looking to sell,’ Snorri said. ‘I’ve come looking for your help.’
‘My help?’ Magnus snorted, and took a swig from his flagon. ‘You want my help?’
‘I want information, or rather this man does.’ The sea captain stepped back and gestured in my direction. ‘He calls himself Goscelin, from Saint-Omer. He has some questions which I thought you might be able to answer for him.’
Ale-addled as he was, it took a few moments for Magnus’s gaze to settle upon me. He looked me up and down, glanced over my shoulder at Serlo and Pons, Godric and Eithne, and snorted again. ‘A Fleming?’
‘So he claims,’ Snorri said.
The other man sneered. ‘And does this Goscelin have a voice of his own?’
He wore no weapons, and yet despite his youth he had the look of a warrior, or at least someone who had witnessed much hardship in his life, and fought many battles, both with the sword and without. There was a certain hollowness in his bleary eyes that matched the ale on his breath, and a world-weariness in his manner that I found strange for one of his age, and for which I couldn’t account. He didn’t strike me as the kind of person who could help me.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ I said nevertheless. ‘Snorri seems to think you might know where to find him.’
‘That depends,’ said Magnus.
‘On what?’
‘How much I know depends on how much you’re willing to pay.’
I had travelled that road before. I had wasted half my worldly wealth in paying spies who offered me nothing in return. Nothing, that was, except for lies. I could ill afford to make the same mistake again.
‘No,’ I said. ‘First you tell me what you know, and then I pay you however much I think that information is worth.’
‘How about this?’ he asked. ‘You give me the name of the one you’re looking for, and I’ll tell you whether or not I know where he can be found, and how much it will cost you. You decide then whether you think I’m telling the truth, and either hand over your silver or leave. Agreed?’
Ale dulled the wits of most men, but clearly not this one. A part of me wondered whether it was better to go and try my luck elsewhere, but how was I to tell who was reliable and who was not? I didn’t know this city, and so I was relying on the opinion of one who did. And he had brought me here.
‘Agreed,’ I said eventually, albeit with some reluctance.
‘So tell me.’
‘I’m looking for a man called Haakon. Haakon Thorolfsson, of the black-dragon banner. I hear he was last seen here in Dyflin around five months ago.’
Magnus’s eyes narrowed. ‘Haakon Thorolfsson?’ His cheeks flushed an angry scarlet, and he spat. ‘What do you know of him?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, confused. ‘That’s why I’m-’
‘Did he send you to taunt me? Is that it? What more does he want from me?’
‘Of course he didn’t send me,’ I said. ‘Why would I be asking you where to find him if he had?’
Magnus swigged again from the flagon, and fixed me with a look of disdain, but said nothing.
‘So you’ve heard of him,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’ve heard of him. A friend of his, are you, or else looking to sell your sword to him?’
Snorri had taken me for a freebooter as well. Was it so obvious, I wondered, that I had become a masterless man, one of those landless, wandering warriors that until recently I had so despised?
‘He’s no friend of mine,’ I replied. ‘And my services aren’t for sale.’
‘What, then?’
‘He stole something that belongs to me,’ I said. ‘I want it back.’
Twenty
We sat in near-darkness on one of the benches that ran along the long sides of the hall, while Magnus crouched by the dwindling flames of the peat fire, his tufted woollen cloak drawn close about his shoulders. The air was suffused with the smell of damp thatch and rotting timbers. Instead of rushes as we tended to use in England, I noticed the floor was covered with a loose scattering of woodchips and moss, which clearly hadn’t been replaced in some time, if the mouse-droppings everywhere were anything to judge by.
‘His fortress is far to the north of here, among what are known as the Suthreyjar,’ Magnus said, satisfied now that we hadn’t come to taunt him, and having accepted my offer of silver.
‘The Suthreyjar?’ I asked.
‘The islands that lie off the coast of northern Britain,’ Snorri offered by way of explanation. ‘They used to be under the control of the jarls of Orkaneya and the kings of Mann, but now they are havens for pirates, the dominions of petty warlords. Those are dangerous seas that surround them, and yet that’s the way one must travel to reach Ysland and the frozen lands beyond.’
‘Haakon is one of those pirates,’ Magnus said, and there was spite in his voice. ‘And one of the more powerful among them, too. He likes to call himself a jarl, but no king ever bestowed that title upon him. He makes his living in the spring and autumn by preying on the trading ships that sail the waters close to his island fastness, and in summer by raiding along the shores of Britain, sometimes selling his services to noble lords and kings in return for rich reward.’
‘How did you come by this knowledge?’ I asked.
Magnus was silent for a moment. In his eye, though he tried to hide it by turning away, I spied a glimmer of a tear. ‘I know’, he said, speaking quietly now, ‘because, to our misfortune, my brothers and I tried to purchase his services for a campaign of our own.’
‘You did?’ Snorri said with some surprise. ‘You, a warrior?’
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘He made off in the night with all the booty we had captured on our raid, leaving myself and my brothers unable to pay our men for their service.’ He took a deep breath. ‘A fight broke out. My eldest brother was killed, the other gravely wounded. He did not die straightaway, but fell into a fever and left this world three days later. I alone managed to escape with my life, together with a few of my oath-sworn followers, as well as some who had
