Wolfsangel. Part 2

The farmer was eager for sleep and wanted to get things over with, so he commanded silence from the women. Still, he could not quite keep quiet himself, so impressed was he with the weight of his spear. Men who have never had to fight love a weapon. They love to hold it in their hands, feel its balance and speculate on the damage they might do, were they called to do it. There is a killer in every cowardly man, waiting for the right set of circ.u.mstances when the time has been drained of the possibility of reprisals and he feels free to act. The farmer was no different and began, as he sat in the warm night, to feel the importance the spear bestowed upon him and, despite himself, to talk.

'When I was a boy it was said no one threw a spear better than I.'

The farmer's wife rolled her eyes because she had heard this story before many times when he was in drink.

'I thought we were being quiet for this wolf,' she said.

'I'm just saying,' said the farmer, 'had I been born higher I would have made a mighty warrior. As a boy I had quite the feel for weapons. The earl himself saw me one day and said he wished half his warriors could shoot a bow as well as I. I was quite the-'

Suddenly he was quiet. In the trees by the farm two gigantic eyes seemed to burn, less a wolf than some fiend from h.e.l.l.

He moved smoothly behind the slave girl. She did not flinch, having endured worse than a wolf had to offer her.

'That is no ordinary wolf,' said the farmer's wife.

'Sound the alarm,' said the farmer. 'Fetch aid, fetch aid!'

'You fetch aid,' said his wife; 'you're the man.'

'If I move it might see me,' hissed the farmer.

'If I move it might see me,' hissed his wife.

'I am needed to till the land. Who will provide for poor Saitada?' said the farmer.

'I will go for aid,' said Saitada.

'Too late. The wolf is among you,' said a voice close at their ears.

The three turned but couldn't for a moment see anyone. Suddenly, so bright and white in the starlit night that they wondered how ever they could have missed him, a young man of around twenty was there. He was strikingly handsome, long-legged and lithe. He seemed to draw the moonlight to him, and beneath it his muscles rippled as if under some silvery sea. For a breath it didn't seem remarkable that he was almost completely naked. All he had to cover his modesty was a huge and b.l.o.o.d.y wolfskin draped across his back, a rear paw cheekily positioned by his hand over that part the nuns shun. His hair was bright red and stood up in a shock.

'Christ's wounds!' said the farmer. 'You nearly made me jump out of my skin.'

'Well, I did jump out of mine,' said the man, sliding away the paw that concealed his shame and then whipping it back again.

'How dare you appear in front of my wife like that!' said the farmer, who was a pious man when it suited him.

'The wolf behind you?' said the strange man.

'Where?' said the farmer. 'Oh Lord, the eyes.'

The farmer turned to run but he had those grim burning eyes in front of him in the wood and the strange and terrible young man behind. He had nowhere to go and, his brain running out of ideas for what to do with his body, he simply flopped to the floor.

'Not eyes,' said the man, 'just torches left by some kind traveller.'

The farmer squinted into the darkness. Now it was obvious: they were just brands.

'As I thought,' said the farmer.

'Fire,' said the pale man. 'That is the way to keep the wolf at bay.' He walked to the wood and returned with the two burning torches. Now he had tied the wolf skin's back paws around his midsection.

'I have covered that serpent that tempted Eve,' he said.

The man held the torches up and looked at the peasants. 'A farmer, his pretty piggy wife and who is this rare beauty? No wonder you panic, old man, to see such a face.'

'I wasn't panicking I was . . . taking advantage of the terrain, that is why I got down.'

'It seems this one knows better than you that fire keeps the wolf at bay,' said the man, holding up his hand to Saitada's chin and studying the scar on her face.

Saitada did not flinch to hear his words because the scorn of a man meant nothing to her. He gently turned the undamaged side of her face towards him.

'Such beauty is a terrible thing,' said the man, 'for no shield can deflect its dart, and even the most nimble of warriors can no more dodge it than you can, old man.'

'You are mocking me,' said Saitada, 'but I am glad of it if it means you will not lay your hands upon me.'

'No, lady,' said the man. 'You are far more beautiful to me than any woman on earth. You have s.n.a.t.c.hed the spool of destiny from the hands of the fates and woven a skein yourself. '

'You speak fine words, sir,' said the farmer.

'High praise from such a judge,' said the traveller with a bow.

'And now you're mocking me!' said the farmer, who like most old men tended to hear only those parts of the conversation that concerned himself. 'I once threw a spear the length of a laine. And it stuck in the mud properly too.'

'Don't worry, ma'am,' said the man to the farmer's wife. 'I shall mock you when I have finished with your husband, but, oh, shall I ever finish with such an example? No, ma'am, you are quite safe, I shall never finish with him.'

'What of that wolf?' said the farmer, whose head had become a little disordered since the stranger's appearance, though he had drunk little.

'I have slain that night-time caller, that freeman of the forests, that furry sir, oh farmer, my manure mangler, my seedy serf, my s.h.i.t smith. But he tore my clothes,' said the man. 'Will you lend me some of yours so that I might cover the splendour the priests would call our shame?' He went to pull the wolf skin away but stopped at the last instant.

'If you have killed the wolf, as I see you have, then I owe you a cloak,' said the old man. 'Here in the house I have one that has served me many winters.'

'I prefer the expensive one you're wearing,' said the man. 'It was woven by the finest hand that ever picked up a distaff.'

'It was woven by me,' said Saitada.

'I know it, lady,' said the man and bowed deeply.

'She is not a lady, she is a slave,' said the farmer.

'She's freer than you will ever be,' said the man. 'Now get me your cloak before I tear the skin from your back and wrap myself in that instead.'

The stranger's words seemed to sizzle through the farmer's mind. He felt as though he was frying in the juice of all his boasts, all his pretensions and weaknesses. He did as he was bid. The pale fellow stretched out his hand to Saitada and it seemed to her that little points of light began to dance around her, tiny silver orbs no bigger than seeds, glinting in a shimmering web. He put on the cloak she had made, drew it around him and began to sing.

Half beautiful is she, like the moon And from her shall spring the moon taker Oh the sun it grows dark at the noon And the wolf in his dreams is a waker This last line seemed to amuse the fellow no end and he burst out in giggles, which Saitada could only share, as if she was a child learning some naughty secret. Her giggling seemed to grow and grow in her until she thought it might never stop.

And then it did stop and the night was silent. Everything had changed and for ever. It seemed to Saitada that she stood in the middle of a glade that was bathed in the silvery light of a flaming moon.

'See the beauty of the garment you have made,' said the man.

He was in front of her, but the cloak was not her cloak but a cloak of feathers that might not have been feathers but silvery flames or just points of light. It engulfed him and lifted him so he seemed to hover a stool's height above the ground. The farmer and his wife were nowhere to be seen.

'You have never been loved,' said the traveller.

'Sir, I have not,' she said.

'And you have not known until this moment that you could be loved,' he said.

'I have not.'

'I can only love your kind,' he said. 'Who could love the princes and the heroes with their murders and their wars?'

'I know no princes or heroes, sir.'

'Bide your time,' he said. 'You'll be sick to your back teeth of them before you're done.' He smiled at her. 'You, my dear, are perfect.'

'My face is not, sir.'

'You chose imperfection - what could be more perfect? You saw your imperfection was perfection and therefore remedied it by imposing an imperfection on yourself thereby becoming perfect again. The logic is imperfectly flawless.'

He descended to the earth, and the cloak he had been wearing became a carpet of white feathers that covered the glade, deep as midwinter snow. She lay down upon it and, having only ever known straw before, was overwhelmed by its comfort.

The stranger spoke. 'To strive to be the best, to excel and have the skalds sing your praises. They're all at it. What better than to spit at what the G.o.ds gave you and spite your fate?'

'I did it because I would not give them a moment's more pleasure from me.'

'They will have no pleasure ever again. Would you know their fate?'

'If it is a bad one.'

'I have repaid them,' said the burning beautiful G.o.d, for now Saitada was sure this was not a mortal before her. 'You should have seen the smith's face when I spoke to him from the fire and he knocked that smelting pot onto his b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. He's got his c.o.c.k out of his breeks for a different reason now, I can tell you. Are you grateful?'

'It is not enough,' said Saitada.

He stretched out his hand and she saw the smith asleep in his bed. He was drawn and pale but something obscured her vision. It was smoke. The thatch was on fire. The smith woke and tried to move but his wounds wouldn't allow him to. She saw him panic as the fire took hold.

Saitada smiled as she watched.

'You are a power, lady, a power,' said the G.o.d. 'The elves sing your fame and the dwarfs of the earth despair for they know that in all their art they will never make anything to compare to your depthless beauty.'

'I would know your name, sir,' said Saitada. She felt something strange sweeping over her, something she had never felt from a man before: love as more than an idea, as something present and intense, like her forgotten mother might have cherished her baby girl.

'My name?' said the traveller. 'Name? Lady, like you my magnificence cannot be contained by just one. First, you must know me better. You must see what I am up against.'

The odour of blood and fire filled the glade. There was a clamour and a hammering like the sound of the smith's shop increased a thousand-fold, metal on metal, metal on wood. Saitada knew it by instinct - the noise of battle. At the edge of the glade stood a tall grey man with a beard, wearing a wide-brimmed hat. He had a patch over one eye and two huge wolves lay panting at his feet, their teeth as big as knives. The expression on the man's face was terrible. Saitada had seen it before. It was the look men wore at c.o.c.k fights or when cheering two dogs to rip into each other, the look the smith's friends had worn as they'd held her down - a look of delight in violence and l.u.s.t for more.

'See Odin, the king of the G.o.ds in his hungers,' said the traveller. 'See how he would know and consume and control. Father, let go!'

The old man said nothing, just stood there frozen in his expression of malicious joy. The traveller went across and flicked the old man on the nose, but he did not respond.

'He would eat the world!' said the traveller. 'He would know it all, devour every mystery until the whole of creation came at his call. He's mad, you know. He drank so deeply of the knowledge well but the waters splashed on that burning hunger and boiled all his brains. Yet still he wants to know, ever more, ever more.'

'I would forget,' said Saitada.

'Of course you would. It's the only sane thing to do. Not knowing is what gives the world its beauty. Who would know why the sun on the dew on a May morning makes the heart sing? That pervert would. Would you have no love, old man Odin, would you snaffle down even a girl's secret heart's desires for a gorgeous flame-haired fellow and spew them out on a table in maps and runes? Would you chart the very stir-rings of the heart? Well, lady, I think we should give this greedy knowledge glutton, this filthy wisdom hog, a right royal bite on the b.u.m, don't you?'

'Yes, sir,' said Saitada, though she didn't really understand what he meant. She only knew she wanted to please him.

'That's where you and I come in,' said the traveller. 'Would you know my imperfections, lady?'

'I know all I need to know of the imperfections of men,' she said, 'though I think you are not a man.'

'Whatever gave you that idea?' he said as the fiery moon turned green and points of emerald light began to dance around the glade. The old man disappeared, then one wolf, then another, its body first, then its head apart from the mouth. Finally the tongue snapped back into the teeth and lips and the glade was empty in a blink.

'I want you,' she said.

'Well, that'd be a clue, wouldn't it? You could never love a man, and yet you love me.'

'I do,' she said.

The pale G.o.d took her in his arms and kissed her. She felt at one with the moonlight, with the stars in the heavens and, stranger than that, she felt all her fears and dreams consumed by the strange traveller and then fed back to her, sweet as honey on his lips.

She took him to her and held him, and as their bodies joined it seemed that so did their minds. A searing laughter filled her up, somewhere between malice and wild delight. But there was love there too. She felt connected to every living thing on earth, felt the earthworms moving beneath her, the forests teeming, the cold s.p.a.ces of the stars delicious and beautiful above her. The world felt precious and the G.o.ds, who she sensed like a pressure at the back of her head, the G.o.ds with their bloodl.u.s.t and their battles, seemed ridiculous, terrible and contemptible.

She stroked his skin, and it was wet with the blood of the wolf pelt. She found the crimson on the white of his flesh fascinating. Her hand was red with the wolf's blood. She licked it and the taste of it seemed to fizz through her, as if tiny bubbles went popping all the way down inside her from her mouth to her knees.

The G.o.d now had the wolf's head over his face. He peered through the animal's bloodied lids with cold eyes. The tongue that slithered from between the dead wolf's teeth was long and lascivious.

'What is your name?' she asked.

'Names are like clothes, lady. I have many.'

'And which one do you wear tonight?'

The G.o.d smiled. She could see he liked her words. He pulled her to him, pressed his wolf lips to hers and said, 'My name is Misery, and would you know yet more?'

'Yes,' said the girl, breathing in his scent, the scent of something beautiful, strange and burned. 'I would know more.'

He flicked at her lips with his tongue and whispered, 'So is yours.'

The next morning the traveller was gone, along with the fine wolf pelt. Around Saitada's neck, tied in a strip of leather, was a strange stone. It was a token, the night caller had said, of his affection and protection. It didn't seem to do her much good.

The livestock had been slaughtered. The dogs were dead and Saitada was blamed for lying with a stranger while the wolf devoured the pigs. The farmer's wife wanted to forgive her, to comb her hair and call her daughter again, but the farmer, brave in the wolfless light of day, wanted revenge.

She was sold with only the clothes she stood up in and the pebble charm the strange fellow had given her to her name. The priests had bought her and told her to make a virtue of her suffering. When they discovered she was pregnant they set to chastise her but found they could not. Something about her, maybe the charm, maybe that eye that seemed to see all their sins, stopped them, and they let her live among them unpunished.

Then Authun had come.

So what stopped Authun's thoughts of murder on the ship? The stone at her neck was no more than a pebble with the head of a wolf scratched on it. Perhaps he had seen the rough little picture - his family sign - and felt some deep-seated fear that this foreign woman was kin. Or perhaps he just felt sorry for her.