Two Ravens by Holland Cecelia

Author:Holland, Cecelia [Holland, Cecelia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9781497629653
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 1976-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

THAT NIGHT, when Bjarni was half-asleep, someone slid into the bed with him. At first he thought it was Gifu.

A hard wet mouth came down on his. He smelled verbena. With a swing of his arm he flung the stranger out of the bed.

The room was dark; he could hear Gifu in the corner laughing. The stranger, babbling in French, tried to reach the door. Bjarni got him by the hair, threw open the little window over the bed, and stuffed the Norman out headfirst.

Wailing, the Norman fell down to the yard below. Bjarni stood on the bed to look after him. Gifu popped up beside him. Half a dozen men were gathered in the yard. The one who had crawled into bed with Bjarni was sitting in the mud under the window. The others fell on him, shrieking, and hauled him away across the dirt to a horse-trough and threw him in.

Gifu laughed again. Bjarni shook his head. “I don’t think these people have any shame.”

“You are nothing but a farmer.”

Down in the yard the Normans were dunking one another successively in the horse-trough. Bjarni pulled the shutter fast over the window and went to bed again, but their screams and yells and laughter kept him awake for another hour.

The next day was rainy, and the king did not hunt. He called Bjarni to play chess. Bjarni won the first two games. The king beat him in the third, and shook Bjarni’s hand and took the silver ring from his finger and gave it to him. The Norse priest was there; they spoke through him.

“It is noised about Lincoln that you have certain powers,” the king said.

Bjarni was setting up the chessmen again on the board. He said, “All lies.”

“You need not put me off,” the king said. He leaned on one elbow over the chess-game, his eyes darting from the men to Bjarni’s face. “In my kingdom no man suffers for what he honestly believes. You must have seen how I have gathered unusual men around me.”

“I have seen it,” Bjarni said. “But I am being honest. I have no powers, only the strength of my back.”

“You disparage yourself,” the king said. “What think you of Jesus Christ?”

As the Norse priest passed on the words, he screwed up his mouth, as if he tasted poison. Bjarni said, “I know little of Christ. Of the Christians, I know a little more, enough not to speak against their god in a place where there are so many of them.”

He put his queen’s pawn forward, to distract the king with the game. The king put out his same pawn.

“What think you of Moses, and of Mohammed?”

“They are only names to me, names in old stories.”

The king’s eyes gleamed. He said, “In my opinion, they are all frauds, every one, beguiling the weak-minded with their talk of salvation.”

The priest spoke that unwillingly. Bjarni moved out his queen’s knight. “If you believe so, then it is true, for you.”

“What do you believe?”

“I believe in castling as soon as possible,” Bjarni said, “and in attacking on the king’s side.

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