together.’
‘Sit with him,’ I growled softly to Bolti.
Bolti gave me a despairing glance, then dismounted and went to the table. The second man was dark-skinned, black-haired and much older than Sven. He wore a black gown so that he looked like a monk except that he had a silver hammer of Thor hanging at his neck. He also had a wooden tray in front of him and the tray was cunningly divided into separate compartments to hold the different coins that gleamed silver in the sunlight. Sven, sitting again beside the black-robed man, poured a beaker of ale and pushed it towards Bolti who glanced back at me, then sat as he had been commanded.
‘And you are?’ Sven asked him.
‘Bolti Ericson,’ Bolti said. He had to say it twice because the first time he could not raise his voice enough to be heard.
‘Bolti Ericson,’ Sven repeated, ‘and I am Sven Kjartanson and my father is lord of this land. You have heard of Kjartan?’
‘Yes, lord.’
Sven smiled. ‘I think you have been trying to evade our tolls, Bolti! Have you been trying to evade our tolls?’
‘No, lord.’
‘So where have you come from?’
‘Eoferwic.’
‘Ah! Another Eoferwic merchant, eh? You’re the third today! And what do you carry on those packhorses?’
‘Nothing, lord.’
Sven leaned forward slightly, then grinned as he let out a huge fart. ‘Sorry, Bolti, I only heard thunder. Did you say you have nothing? But I see four women, and three are young enough.’ He smiled. ‘Are they your women?’
‘My wife and daughters, lord,’ Bolti said.
‘Wives and daughters, how we do love them,’ Sven said, then he looked up at me and though I knew my face was wrapped in black and that my eyes were deep-shadowed by the helmet, I felt my skin crawl under his gaze. ‘Who,’ Sven asked, ‘is that?’
He must have been curious for I looked like a king. My mail and helmet and weapons were of the very best, while my arm rings denoted a warrior of high status. Bolti threw me a terrified look, but said nothing. ‘I asked,’ Sven said, louder now, ‘who that is.’
‘His name,’ Bolti said, and his voice was a trembling squeak, ‘is Thorkild the Leper.’
Sven made an involuntary grimace and clutched at the hammer amulet about his neck, for which I could not blame him. All men fear the grey, nerveless flesh of lepers, and most lepers are sent into the wilderness to live as they can and die as they must.
‘What are you doing with a leper?’ Sven challenged Bolti.
Bolti had no answer. ‘I am journeying north.’ I spoke for the first time, and my distorted voice seemed to boom inside my closed helmet.
‘Why do you come north?’ Sven asked.
‘Because I am tired of the south,’ I said.
He heard the hostility in my slurred voice and dismissed it as impotent. He must have guessed that Bolti had hired me as an escort, but I was no threat, Sven had five men within a few paces, all of them armed with swords or spears, and he had at least forty other men inside the village.
Sven drank some ale. ‘I hear there was trouble in Eoferwic?’ he asked Bolti.
Bolti nodded. I could see his right hand convulsively opening and closing beneath the table. ‘Some Danes were killed,’ he said.
Sven shook his head as though he found that news distressing. ‘Ivarr won’t be happy.’
‘Where is Ivarr?’ Bolti asked.
‘I last heard he was in the Tuede valley,’ Sven said, ‘and Aed of Scotland was dancing around him.’ He seemed to be enjoying the customary exchange of news, as if his thefts and piracy were given a coating of respectability by sticking to the conventions. ‘So,’ he said, then paused to fart again, ‘so what do you trade in, Bolti?’
‘Leather, fleeces, cloth, pottery,’ Bolti said, then his voice trailed away as he decided he was saying too much.
‘And I trade in slaves,’ Sven said, ‘and this is Gelgill,’ he indicated the man beside him, ‘and he buys the slaves from us, and you have three young women I think might prove very profitable to him and to me. So what will you pay me for them? Pay me enough and you can keep them.’ He smiled as if to suggest he was being entirely reasonable.
Bolti seemed struck dumb, but he managed to bring a purse from beneath his coat and put some silver on the table. Sven watched the coins one by one and when Bolti faltered Sven just smiled and Bolti kept counting the silver until there were thirty-eight shillings on the table. ‘It is all I have, lord,’ he said humbly.
‘All you have? I doubt that, Bolti Ericson,’ Sven said, ‘and if it is then I will let you keep one ear of one of your daughters. Just one ear as a keepsake. What do you think, Gelgill?’
It was a strange name, Gelgill, and I suspected the man had come from across the sea, for the most profitable slave markets were either in Dyflin or far off Frankia. He said something, too low for me to catch, and Sven nodded. ‘Bring the girls here,’ he said to his men, and Bolti shuddered. He looked at me again as if he expected me to stop what Sven planned, but I did nothing as the two guards walked to our waiting group.
Sven chatted of the prospects for the harvest as the guards ordered Hild and Bolti’s daughters off their horses. The men Bolti had hired did nothing to stop them. Bolti’s wife screamed a protest, then subsided into hysterical tears as her daughters and Hild were marched towards the table. Sven welcomed them with exaggerated politeness, then Gelgill stood and inspected the three. He ran his hands over their bodies as if he were buying horses. I saw Hild shiver as he pulled down her dress to probe her breasts, but he was less interested in her than in the two younger girls. ‘One hundred shillings each,’ he said after inspecting them, ‘but that one,’ he looked at Hild, ‘fifty.’ He spoke with a strange accent.
‘But that one’s pretty,’ Sven objected. ‘Those other two look like piglets.’
‘They’re twins,’ Gelgill said. ‘I can get a lot of money for twins. And the tall girl is too old. She must be nineteen or twenty.’
‘Virginity is such a valuable thing,’ Sven said to Bolti, ‘don’t you agree?’
Bolti was shaking. ‘I will pay you a hundred shillings for each of my daughters,’ he said desperately.
‘Oh no,’ Sven said. ‘That’s what Gelgill wants. I have to make some profit too. You can keep all three, Bolti, if you pay me six hundred shillings.’
It was an outrageous price, and it was meant to be, but Bolti did not baulk at it. ‘Only two are mine, lord,’ he whined. ‘The third is his woman.’ He pointed at me.
‘Yours?’ Sven looked at me. ‘You have a woman, leper? So that bit hasn’t dropped off yet?’ He found that funny and the two men who had fetched the women laughed with him. ‘So, leper,’ Sven asked, ‘what will you
