All the house-folk were filled with compassion toward Are and helped him in every way they could think of. The children feared him at first, but soon came to like him. He loved especially to be led down to the river in the mornings and sit fishing on the bank, with someone to help him bait and cast his line. Blackhair was his favorite fishing companion, and Rapp, too, whenever the latter had time, perhaps because, of all the household, they most liked to sit in silence like himself.
Everyone was curious to know more of the bad luck that had befallen him, for Orm had told them all that he had been able to learn during the journey from Kivik. Olof Summerbird sent his men home with his salt, keeping only two of them with him at Gröning; he told Ylva that he would like, if he might, to stay until they had succeeded in discovering more of Are’s secret, as he had the feeling that it might contain matter of some importance. Ylva was happy to let him stay, for she liked him and was always glad when he visited them; besides which, she observed that his eyes turned ever more frequently toward Ludmilla, who was by now a full-grown woman of fifteen, waxing lovelier every day.
“It is lucky for us that you are willing to stay,” said Orm, “for we shall never learn much from Are without your help; you are the only one of us here who knows Miklagard and the people who live in it.”
But, despite all their efforts and those of the priest and the women, they could not elicit much more of Are’s story. The only certain new fact they learned was that what had been done to him had been done on the river Dnieper, in the land of the Patzinaks, near the great portage beside the weirs. But more than that they could not discover; and Olof Summerbird found it difficult to imagine what Byzantines could be doing there.
Then Orm thought of a plan that might help them. Are was skilled in the use of runes; so Orm bade Rapp make a board of limewood, white and smooth, in order that Are might write on it in coal with the hand that had been left to him. Are was eager to do this and worked hard at it for a time; but with his left hand he could write only awkwardly and, in his blindness, he blurred his runes into one another, so that nobody could make out what he wished to say. At length he was seized with anger and flung the board and the coal away and would try no more.
In the end, it was Rapp and the priest who thought of a better method, one day while they were sitting and scratching their heads about the matter. Rapp axed a short beam of wood, smoothed and polished it, and carved on its surface the sixteen runes, very large and clear, with a deep groove separating each from the next. They put the beam into Are’s hands, bidding him feel it; and when he understood what they intended, it could be seen that his heart was lightened. For now he was able to touch rune after rune to make the words he wished to say, and Father Willibald sat beside him with sheepskin and pen, writing down the words as Are spelled them out. At first the work went slowly and with difficulty, but gradually Are came to learn the position of each rune, and everyone sat full of joy and expectation as intelligible sentences began to appear on the sheepskin. Each evening the priest read out to them what he had written down during the day. They listened greedily, and after three weeks the whole story lay written there. But the first part of it, which told where the treasure lay hidden, he read only to Orm.
CHAPTER THREE
CONCERNING THE STORY OF THE BULGAR GOLD
I AM the poorest of men, for my eyes have been taken from me, and my tongue and my right hand, and my son, whom the Emperor’s treasurer killed. But I can also call myself the richest, for I know where the Bulgar gold lies hidden. I shall tell you where it lies, that I may not die with the secret still hidden in my breast, and you, priest, shall repeat it to my brother, but to no other man. He shall then decide whether he wishes it to be repeated for other ears.
In the river Dnieper, where the portage climbs beside the great weirs, just below the third weir as a man comes from the south, off the right bank between the skull-mound of the Patzinaks and the small rock in the river on which the three rosebushes grow, under the water in the narrow channel where the rock-flat is broken, hidden beneath large stones where the rock-flat juts out and hides the bed beneath—there lies the Bulgar gold, and I alone know its hiding-place. As much gold as two strong men might carry lies drowned there, in four small chests sealed with the Emperor’s seal, together with silver in five sacks of skin, and the sacks are heavy. This treasure first belonged to the Bulgars, who had stolen it from many wealthy men. Then it became the Emperor’s, and from him it was stolen by his treasurer, Theofilus Lakenodrako. Then it became mine, and I hid it where it now lies.
I shall tell you how all this came about. When I first came to Miklagard, I entered the Imperial bodyguard, as many Northmen had done before me. Many Swedes serve in it, and Danes too, and men from Norway, and from Iceland also, far out in the western sea. The work is good, and the pay also, though I came too late to partake in the plundering of the palace when the Emperor John Zimisces died, which was a fine plundering, still much talked of among those who took part in it. For it is the ancient custom there that whenever an emperor dies, his bodyguard is permitted to plunder his palace. There is much that I could tell you, priest, but I shall speak only of those things that it is necessary to know, for this fumbling upon a beam wearies me. I served in the bodyguard for a long while, and became a Christian and took a woman to wife. She was called Karbonosina, which means with coal-black eyebrows, and was of good family according to Byzantine reckoning, for her father was brother to the wife of the second wardrobe-master of the three royal Princesses.
You must know that in Miklagard, as well as the Emperor Basil, who is childless, there rules also Constantine, his brother, who is also called Emperor. But Basil is the true Emperor. It is he who rules the land and crushes revolts and goes to war each year against the Bulgars and Arabs, while Constantine, his brother, sits at home in the palace playing with his treasure and his courtiers and the eunuchs who crowd about him. When any of them tells him that he is as good as his brother, or better, he strikes the speaker on the head with his little black staff, which bears a gold eagle on it, but the blow is always light, and the speaker is afterwards rewarded with rich gifts. He is a cruel man when his humor is darkened, and worst when he is drunk.
It is he who is father to the three Princesses. They are held to be greater than all other people in the world, save the Emperors themselves; for they are the only children of Imperial blood. Their names are: Eudokia, who is hunchbacked and disfigured by the pox, and whom they keep hidden; Zoe, who is one of the fairest of women, and who has lusted eagerly after men since she was a young girl; and Theodora, who is weak-brained and pious. They are unmarried, for there is no man in the world worthy to marry them, say the Emperors—which has for years been a source of vexation to Zoe.
We of the bodyguard took it in turns to go to war with the Emperor Basil and to remain in the palace with his brother. There is much that I remember and would tell you, but this telling goes slowly, and I shall now speak to you of my son.