It was not until late afternoon that he spotted what he was looking for. A group of six guards, talking loudly and laughing uproariously, were heading for the formidable gates. They had clearly been drinking, and were, presumably, going back to their barracks to sleep it off. Hurrying to catch them up, hoping desperately that alcohol would have increased their sense of bonhomie and lessened their suspicions, Rollo called out a greeting and, when the huge men turned round, said quite truthfully, in the language of the cold north, that he was a traveller from England and, finding himself in Constantinople, had decided to seek out fellow countrymen in the emperor’s guard. Several of the Varangians immediately responded, greeting him like a long-lost brother, enveloping him in vast hugs and slapping him on the back. Then, without Rollo understanding exactly how it happened, he found himself being escorted inside the fortress, up a narrow stone stair and into a crowded guardroom.
‘This man’s from England!’ bellowed one of the guards who had dragged him inside. ‘He brings news from the north, and he’s thirsty! Get him a mug of ale, Sibert!’
The guards greeted him enthusiastically, many leaping up to shake his hand or give him a slap on the shoulder, and the promised huge mug of ale was thrust into his fist. Questions were hurled at him, but, since all the guard were speaking at once, he could make out little of what they said. With a grin, he shrugged and took a long pull of ale.
One of the men – an enormous redhead with a round stomach bulging out over his beautifully tooled leather belt and a flagon of wine in one hand – said, his blue eyes wet with emotion, ‘Ah, but it’s good to see men from our homelands. We haunt the quays where the longboats from the north tie up, you know, and very often we encounter distant kin.’
‘Like that wild-eyed madman who’s there at the moment,’ another put in. ‘Not that anyone here’s related to him, or, if they are, they’ve got the good sense not to admit it!’
Other men arrived, word apparently having spread of Rollo’s presence. They crowded round him, demanding to know if he had ever come across Eilif of York, Harald One-Eye of Lincoln or Sigurd the Smith who lived a few miles south of Norwich.
‘Ah, England’s a big place,’ one of the English guards said with a sigh when Rollo admitted that no, he hadn’t actually met any of the men. ‘It’s a shame, though. I’d have loved news of old Sigurd. He was good to me. Like a father, you could say.’
‘Just as well he was, Ottar,’ one of the others said with a great snort of laughter, ‘given that your own father buggered off even while your mother was still straightening her petticoats.’
Ottar aimed a good-tempered lunge at the man, then took another giant slurp from his mug.
It was another aspect of the Varangians’ reputation that was proving accurate, Rollo reflected: their enormous capacity for alcohol. He had heard them referred to as the emperor’s wine bags, and now he was seeing for himself just how accurate the description was.
Something in the recent exchange had snagged at his attention, and while, first with words and then with his fists, Ottar continued to fend off increasingly ribald suggestions concerning his likely paternity, he went back over the conversation.
Eilif of York … the smith who lived south of Norwich … Harald. Yes, Harald: that was what had alerted him. Harald One-Eye. Rollo knew of a man called Harald, who had once fought beside his king and, when that king fell, had fled his native land rather than bend his knee to the man who had felled him. And the man called Harald was Lassair’s great-uncle.
While the shouts and the yells of laughter – and quite frequently of pain – carried on around him, Rollo seemed to enter a small bubble of quiet. Lassair’s face appeared in his mind, and he drank in the grey-green eyes with their watchful expression, the wide, well-formed mouth beneath the small, straight nose, the glorious copper-coloured hair. He saw, too, the pale crescent-shaped scar on her left cheek; the scar she had won when once she had fought beside him.
A huge fist flying past his ear brought him back to the moment. ‘Sorry, mate, I was aiming for him!’ yelled an enormous man clad in bright scarlet, the colour clashing violently with his brilliant ginger hair. With a grin, Rollo leaned back, out of his way.
Harald. It was a common enough name, and it seemed very unlikely that this Harald One-Eye of Lincoln was Lassair’s great-uncle, since the family were firmly convinced that he had long ago left England. But, if indeed he had made his way south to join the Varangians, then might not one of Rollo’s new friends know of him?
There was only one way to find out.
When the wrangling finally subsided and the dozen men sitting around the long table in the guards’ room had refilled their mugs – and Rollo’s – he said, into a gap in the chatter, ‘Someone I know in England has a long-lost kinsman. I’d love to be able to tell her I found out he joined the guard.’
‘Is she pretty?’ one of the men said, provoking a flood of further questions, largely concerned with intimacies which Rollo certainly wasn’t going to discuss. Grinning, he held up a hand. ‘She’s extremely pretty,’ he said, ‘and that’s all I’m prepared to share with you. It’s her great-uncle who may have come here; her grandmother’s youngest brother. He and his two older brothers were at the battle and fought beside the king -’ there was no need to specify which king, or, indeed, which battle; not to these men – ‘and the other two were killed. He left England, never to return.’
Abruptly the laughter and the joking ceased, and the atmosphere in the stark room turned sombre. For a moment, nobody spoke, and the men sat with bowed heads. It was as if, Rollo thought, each one was saying a silent prayer to the past and its griefs. Then Ottar said, with a sigh, ‘Many of our men did the same. What’s this great-uncle called?’
‘Harald,’ Rollo said.
Ottar gave a brief laugh. ‘That’s it? Just Harald?’
Rollo shrugged. ‘It’s all I know.’
‘Well, there’s any number of Haralds. What else d’you know about him?’
Rollo thought briefly. ‘His family are fishermen and eel-catchers. They’ve lived in and around the same East Anglian village for generations, although for sure it hasn’t made them rich.’
‘No, not many of us come from wealthy families,’ Ottar agreed.
‘That’s what we come here for,’ one of the others put in with a belly laugh. ‘Nobody cares what you have or haven’t got when you arrive. If you do your job well, then you’ll soon acquire riches.’
‘Your imperial master values you, then?’ Rollo remarked.
‘We’re his axe-bearing barbarians,’ the man said with fierce pride. ‘Of course he values us! Some of us have been here for generations, and loyalty to the emperors is a family tradition with us. We view it as a sacred trust.’ He nodded emphatically. Then, scowling, he went on, ‘We’ve been busy, over the weeks and months of this interminable summer, what with the rumours and the riots.’ Rollo looked at him quizzically. ‘The Turks!’ he hissed. ‘They grow closer each day, and their presence sparks off unrest among our own citizens. It’s not right!’ he burst out.
‘In what way?’ Rollo did his best to disguise his sudden flare of interest.
‘It’s not right because, until this new menace started to threaten us, men of many different faiths lived here together quite happily,’ the man said angrily. ‘Now, it’s all changing. We’ve had riots, let me tell you; riots between Christian and Saracen, Turk and Jew, and all because people are afraid of what’s to come. It makes them nervous, see.’
‘That and the heat,’ put in another man.
‘Well, yes, I grant you there’s always more trouble when it’s hot,’ the first man agreed. ‘But not like we’ve had this summer! Men have been dragged out in the streets and killed, for no more reason than the manner in which they choose to worship God.’
His angry words echoed in the sudden silence. For some reason, Rollo observed, the other guards seemed uncomfortable at their colleague’s outburst. ‘In such an atmosphere, your emperor must have valued you even more than usual,’ he remarked mildly.