Death of Kings_ A Novel - Bernard Cornwell [33]
‘And Jarl Sigurd?’ I had asked her. ‘He came too?’
‘He came last year,’ she said, ‘and he was generous. A Saxon lord was with him.’
‘Who?’
‘How would I know? They didn’t rest their bones in my house. They stayed with the monks.’
‘Tell me what you remember,’ I asked her.
‘He was young,’ she said, ‘he had long hair like you, but he was still a Saxon.’ Most Saxons cut their hair, while the Danes prefer to let it grow long. ‘The monks called him the Saxon, lord,’ the widow went on, ‘but who he was? I don’t know.’
‘And he was a lord?’
‘He dressed like one, lord.’
I was dressed in mail and leather. I heard nothing dangerous in the wood and so went onward, stooping beneath wet leaves until I saw that the path ended at a limestone crag that was slashed by a great crevice. Water dripped down the cliff face, and the stream gushed from the crevice’s base, churning itself white about fallen rocks before sluicing into the woods. I looked about and saw no one, heard no one. It seemed to me that no birds sang, though that was surely my apprehension. The stream’s noise was loud. I could see footprints in the shingle and stone that edged the stream, though none looked fresh, and so I took a deep breath, clambered over the fallen stones and stepped into the cave’s slit-like mouth that was edged by ferns.
I remember the fear of that cave, a greater fear than I had felt at Cynuit when Ubba’s men had made the shield wall and come to kill us. I touched Thor’s hammer that hung at my neck and I said a prayer to Hoder, the son of Odin and blind god of the night, and then I groped my way forward, ducking under a rock arch beyond which the grey evening light faded fast. I let my eyes grow used to the gloom and moved on, trying to stay above the stream that scoured through the bank of pebbles and sand that grated beneath my boots. I inched my way forward through a narrow, low passage. It grew colder. I wore a helmet and it touched rock more than once. I gripped the hammer that hung about my neck. This cave was surely one of the entrances to the netherworld, to where Yggdrasil has its roots and the three fates decide our destiny. It was a place for dwarves and elves, for the shadow creatures who haunt our lives and mock our hopes. I was frightened.
I slipped on sand and blundered forward and sensed that the passage had ended and that I was now in a great echoing space. I saw a glimmer of light and wondered if my eyes played tricks. I touched the hammer again, and then put my hand on the hilt of Serpent-Breath. I was standing still, hearing the drip of water and the rush of the stream, and listening for the sound of a person. I was gripping my sword’s hilt now, praying to blind Hoder to guide me in the blind darkness.
And then there was light.
Sudden light. It was only a bundle of rushlights, but they had been concealed behind screens that were abruptly lifted and their small, smoky flames seemed dazzlingly bright in the utter darkness.
The rushlights were standing on a rock that had a smooth surface like a table. A knife, a cup and a bowl lay beside the lights, which lit a chamber as high as any hall. The cave’s roof hung with pale stone that looked as if it had been frozen in mid-flow. Liquid stone, touched with blue and grey, and all that I saw in an instant, then I stared at the creature who watched me from behind the rock table. She was a dark cloak in the darkness, a shape in the shadows, a bent thing, the aglæcwif, but as my eyes became used to the light I saw that she was a tiny thing, frail as a bird, old as time and with a face so dark and deep-lined that it looked like leather. Her black woollen cloak was filthy and its hood half covered her hair that was grey-streaked black. She was ugliness in human guise, the galdricge, the aglæcwif, Ælfadell.