‘We will be ready,’ I said, cuffing Finn’s ear. ‘Convey my thanks to your master.’
He nodded at me politely, then hesitated. Finn, scowling and rubbing his ear, was glaring at one of the smirking thugs who formed the bodyguard.
‘You may bring no more than three others,’ Niketas said as they left. ‘Suitably comported.’
‘“Suitably comported”,’ chuckled Brother John as we watched them go. ‘How are we to do that at all?’
In the end, I decided Sighvat and Brother John were best and left it at that, ignoring Finn’s demands to be included.
‘He may just decide to lift it,’ he argued. ‘Or send men to ambush you on the way.’
‘He is a merchant,’ I said wearily. ‘He depends on his reputation. He won’t get far by waving a blade and robbing everyone.’
How wrong that turned out to be.
The next day we were escorted by another of Choniates’ household to the expensive end of the city and were greeted by Niketas in the immaculate atrium of a large house. He eyed us with one brow raised, taking in our stained, worn clothes, flapping soles and long beards and hair. I felt like a grease stain in this marbled hov.
Sighvat, who took considerable pride in his appearance – we all did, for we were Norsemen and, compared to others in the world, a byword for cleanliness – scowled back at Niketas and hissed, ‘If you had balls left, I would tear them off.’
Niketas, who must have heard it all before, simply bowed politely and then left. It may be that Choniates was then busy for two hours, or that Niketas was vengeful.
But it gave us a chance to watch and learn in a part of the city where life seemed careless. People came and went in Choniates’ lavish hall with no apparent purpose other than to lean against polished balustrades and laugh and talk and bask in the perfect sun of their lives, warmed, on this chilly, damp day, by heat that came under the floor.
They drank wine from bowls, spilled it, laughingly daring, as an offering to older gods and chided each other for getting it on their expensive sleeves, patting their clothes with sticky-ringed hands. Sighvat and I spent some time wondering if you could get those sticky rings off without cutting their fingers and even more wondering how the heat came up from the floor without the place burning down.
Choniates, when we were finally ushered into his presence, was tall, dressed in gold and white and with perfect silver hair. He conducted affairs in a chair at first, surrounded by men who softened his face with hot cloths, slathered him with cream and then, to our amazement, started painting it with cosmetics, like a woman. They even used brown ash on his eyelids.
He was offhand, dismissive – I was a badly dressed varangii boy, after all, clutching a bundle wrapped in rags, accompanied by a big, hairy, fox-faced man and a tiny, bead-eyed heretic monk who spoke Latin and Greek with a thick accent.
After he had seen the coins, though, he grew thoughtful and that did not surprise me. They were Volsung-minted and the only ones in the world not in Atil’s dark tomb were the ones he turned over and over in his fat, manicured fingers. He knew their worth in silver – and, more than that, he knew what they meant and that the rumours about the Oathsworn were true.
He asked to see the sword and, made bold and anxious to please, I unwrapped that bundle and everything changed. He could scarcely bring himself to touch it, knew then who this Orm was and saw the beauty and the worth of that sabre-curve, even if he did not know what the runes meant, on hilt or blade.
‘Will you sell this, too?’ he asked and I shook my head and wrapped it up again. I saw in his eyes the look I was fast getting used to: the greed-sick, calculating stare of those wondering how to find out if the rumours of a marvellous silver hoard were true and, if so, where it was. The sword, as it was bundled up again, was like the dying sun to a flower as Choniates stood and watched it vanish into filthy wrappings. I knew then that showing it to him had been a mistake, that he would try something.
The barbers and prinkers were waved away; he offered wine and I accepted and sipped it – it was unwatered and I laughed aloud at his presumption. By the end of a long afternoon, Choniates reluctantly discovered that he would get no bargain for the coins, nor any clue as to other treasures.
He bought the coins and trinkets, paying some cash then, the bulk by promise – and extra for trying a cheap trick like getting me drunk.
‘That went well,’ beamed Brother John when we were out on the rain-glistening street.
‘Best we watch our backs,’ muttered Sighvat who had seen the same signs as I had.
Then, as we turned for a last look at the marble hov, we both saw Starkad, quiet and unfussed, hirpling through the gate like an old friend, not exactly fox-sleekit about it, but looking this way and that quickly, to see if he was observed. Even without the limp, which Einar had given him, both Sighvat and I knew this old enemy when we saw him – but, just then, the Watch tramped round a corner and we slid away before they spotted us and started asking awkward questions.
That had been weeks ago and Choniates, it had to be said, had been patient and cunning, waiting just long enough for us – me – to relax a little, to grow careless.
Oh, aye. We knew who had the runesword, right enough, but that only made things worse.
Finn grew redder and finally hacked the pigeon he had been plucking into bloody shreds and flying feathers until his rage went and he sat down with a thump. Radoslav, clearly impressed, picked some feathers from his own bowl and carried on eating slowly, spitting out the smaller bones. No one spoke and the gloom sidled up to the fire and curled there like a dog.
Brother John winked at me from that round face with its fringe of silly beard and jingled a handful of silver in one fist. ‘I have enough here for at least one mug of what passes for drink in the Dolphin,’ he announced. ‘To take away the taste of Finn’s stew.’
Finn scowled. ‘When you find more of that silver, you dwarf, perhaps we can afford better than those rats with wings that I catch. Get used to it. Unless we get that blade back, we will eat worse.’
Everyone chuckled, though the loss of the runesword drove the mirth from it. The pigeons in the city were fat and bold as sea-raiders, but easily lured with a pinch of bread, though no one liked eating them much. So the thought of drink cheered everyone except me, who had to ask where he had got a fistful of silver. Brother John shrugged.
‘The church, lad. God provides.’
‘What church?’
The little priest waved a hand vaguely in the general direction of Iceland. ‘It was a well-established place,’ he added, ‘well patronised. By the well-off. A well of infinite substance…’
‘You’ve been cutting purses again, holy man,’ growled Kvasir.
Brother John caught my eye and shrugged. ‘One only. A truly upholstered worshipper, who could afford it. Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas, after all.’
‘I wish you’d stop chewing in that Latin,’ growled Kvasir, ‘as if we all knew what you say. Orm, what’s he say?’
‘He says sense,’ I said. ‘Love of money is the root of all evil.’
Kvasir grunted, shaking his head disapprovingly, but smiling all the same. Brother John had no mirth in him at all when he met my eyes.
‘We need it, lad,’ he said quietly and I felt the annoyance and anger drain from me. He was right: warmth and drink and a chance to plan, that was what we needed, but cutting purses was bad enough without doing it in a church. And him being a heretic to the Great City’s Christ-men was buttering the stockfish too thick all round. All of which