others got down on her knees before Eithne, clutching at the sleeves of her cloak, while the two elder ones, who with their round, freckled faces and dark, tangled hair were so alike that they were probably at least cousins if not sisters, beseeched her with words I couldn’t understand.
‘Quiet,’ I said, marching forward, hoping that even though they might not understand what I was saying, the force of my voice would be sufficient to still them. I wasn’t disappointed. At my approach they quickly fell silent.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked Eithne, although I could readily guess.
‘They don’t want to return to Jarnborg, lord.’
I didn’t blame them, but we didn’t exactly have a lot of choice. Since they were our prisoners, neither did they.
‘If they want their freedom, they’ll help us,’ I said, and hoped that would prove incentive enough for them. ‘And not just their own freedom, either, but that of every slave in Haakon’s household. Tell them that.’
It was a lofty promise to make, and even as the words left my lips I wasn’t sure it was one I could keep. Still, I needed to win them over somehow, and things would go much more easily if we had their willing support and didn’t need to coerce them.
Again I waited while Eithne, her hands raised in a calming gesture, passed on my promise, and for the answer to come back. For a few moments the slave-girls exchanged nervous glances, whispering to one another and shaking their heads. They had no reason to trust us, no reason at all. Why should they believe anything we told them?
Eventually one of the two elder ones with the freckled faces came forward, her chin held high as she addressed us, though of course we had no idea what she was saying.
I glanced at Eithne, seeking her translation. ‘They’ll do this,’ she told me after a moment. ‘Any foe of Haakon’s is a friend of theirs, Derbforgaill says, and if they can be a part of his destruction, they will.’
‘Derbforgaill?’ I asked, to which Eithne nodded. I still struggled to get my tongue around these Irish names. ‘Give her our thanks, and tell her that we’re indebted to her. To all of them.’
Eithne did so, and thus it was settled. After that we wasted no time. The mist was already thinner than it had been, or so it seemed anyway. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
The others had drawn lots beforehand, since that seemed like the fairest way of deciding who would accompany Magnus and myself, and who would stay behind. Four Danes there had been guarding the slave-girls on their way to the spring, which meant that only four of us could go to Jarnborg; the rest would stay behind and join up with the others when they arrived in the ships. Godric and Ælfhelm had drawn the shortest twigs from the bunch that I’d held in my fist, and so they would join us. I’d rather have had Pons and Serlo alongside me in a fight, but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. For there would be only four of us against a horde of the best warriors that Haakon, one of the most feared pirates of the northern seas, could muster.
I must be stupid to have considered this, I thought. But it was too late to turn back. And we had already travelled so far. Not so long ago I had been with the king’s army in the marsh-country, embroiled in a struggle for power and in the name of the kingdom. Hardly two months later here I was, hundreds of leagues from any place I could call home, in this frozen, wind-battered island on the northernmost fringes of Britain, beyond the dominion of any king or prince: the sole Frenchman in a company of Englishmen, waging a desperate fight against a Danish warlord who until a few short weeks ago had been little more than a face to me.
What strange tapestries our lives weave. I only prayed that Jarnborg did not turn out to be the place where my own tapestry reached its end.
Trying not to dwell on such things, I shrugged on the grey cloak of the man I’d killed and fastened the brooch at my left shoulder in the Danish manner. A few drops of blood had stained the fur on the collar, spilt when I had plunged my blade into his throat, but they were small and hardly noticeable except from close at hand. Nothing could be done about it now. It was a little too large for my frame, but hopefully no one would notice. I belted it tightly so as to conceal my hauberk. None of those we’d killed had been wearing mail, but I wasn’t about to venture into the enemy camp without it. Lastly I removed the garnet-studded golden cross that Father Erchembald had given me and handed it to Serlo for safekeeping. In its place I fastened the leather string with the ivory beads around my neck, noticing as I did so that some of them were inscribed with strange, spindly runes. Perhaps they spelt out a good-luck charm. If so, it hadn’t worked for its owner.
I turned to Magnus, who had similarly attired himself in the garb of the man he’d slain, the one difference being that the necklace he wore was threaded with small pieces of amber and jet rather than ivory.
‘How do I look?’ I asked.
He grinned. ‘Like a Dane.’
I hoped he was right. As disguises went, these were hardly the most elaborate we might have devised, but with any luck we wouldn’t need to fool Haakon and his men for long. I was relying on them believing that we had quit the island, and for that reason being less watchful than perhaps they ought to have been. The last thing they would expect, surely, would be for their enemies to saunter in by the main gates.
And that would be their mistake.
Twenty-seven
And so we set out: Magnus, Godric, Ælfhelm, Eithne and myself. We needed someone who could speak both English and Irish to act as interpreter, and so she took the place of the one called Derbforgaill, since they were not dissimilar in height and in build. She had undone her braid, rubbed dirt into her hair and smudged some across her cheeks too so as to make herself look more like the slave-girl, and then they had exchanged clothes: Eithne’s fine-spun woollen garments for the other girl’s coarse linen shift and tattered, mud-stained cloak.
If putting on a slave’s garb brought back unwelcome memories of her own thralldom, I saw no sign of it. Certainly she seemed nervous, but then so were we all.
‘God be with you, lord,’ Pons said when the time came for us to part ways. Often the light-hearted one, his mood was solemn now.
‘And all the saints too,’ Serlo added. ‘May they keep you safe from harm.’
We could well do with their favour this day. Indeed I reckoned we would need every ounce of aid that the heavenly kingdom could offer us, and more besides.
The same thought was running through my mind when, not long after that, we began the climb up the crumbling track that led towards the iron fortress. The eastern skies were markedly brighter than they had been earlier, and across the fjord the mist was just starting to clear, although it still hung thickly around the crag on the promontory, veiling the tops of its palisades and the gatehouse, which had the strange effect of making them seem taller. A grim sense of foreboding gripped me then, as I gazed up at those dark walls and realised that, one way or another, this was where my fate would be decided.
We’d retrieved the horses that Haakon’s men had arrived upon, but while the path was wide and even enough for us to ride up it, I was all too aware of the sharp precipice to our right, where the ground fell sharply away towards the rocks and the pounding waves below, and so we dismounted and went on foot. Magnus and Ælfhelm led the way, with the girls behind them, bearing their now-filled pails of water on the short poles across their shoulders. Godric and I brought up the rear.
With every step we took towards Jarnborg’s gates, my heart thudded harder in my chest, and my throat grew drier as my doubts began to multiply. All it needed was for one person to challenge us, and they would surely see through these feeble disguises of ours at once. And mine was feeblest of all. While the Englishmen’s longer hair would allow them to pass, at a glance, for Danes, my own, cut short as it was in the French style, clearly marked me out as a Norman. Fortunately one of the corpses had been wearing a helmet with a chain curtain to protect the neck. It was a little too large for my head, but it was better than nothing.
The palisade loomed ever larger before us. Yesterday, from half a mile away, it had seemed formidable
