Blood Feud Read online

  I was too intent on what I was doing, to hear a footstep, and movement beside me, but suddenly Demetriades was there. He bent over Anders, and set a hand on his forehead, then felt the painful knot of life beating at the base of his throat. But he only said, ‘Who is he?’

  ‘A man I knew in my days among the Northmen. Anders Herulfson. It is the lung fever.’

  Demetriades had his hands on either side of Anders’s chest, feeling the difficult breath come and go. ‘An old enemy?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I think, not an old friend – Anna was telling me something concerning a dagger.’

  ‘He was delirious.’

  ‘So, and delirious, just chanced to find his way to this house and ask for you by name?’ His hands were moving here and there, testing, probing. ‘No, I’ll ask no more questions.’ He began to tap, the finger of one hand over the finger of the other, as I had been doing, returning again and again to that dull-sounding left side that told of fluid where there should be air, returning to one particular spot in the left side, not far from the little silvery scar.

  Anders coughed again, and more blood and pus came out of his mouth, and I wiped it away.

  ‘He has the lung fever,’ Demetriades agreed, as though I had just said it, and there had been nothing else in between. ‘Do you know why?’

  Even now, he did not cease to be the teacher.

  ‘That scar –’ I hazarded.

  The physician nodded. ‘That for the first cause, I should think at least two years ago. Now, a lung abscess. Oh, it may have been lying dormant a long while, many months, but now, a lung abscess. You should not have missed that.’

  ‘I have not yet had so long practice as you in hearing through my fingers,’ I said.

  ‘Did you not look at his hands? Look at them now.’

  I looked, and saw that the finger-nails that should have been straight, were curved over at the tips, and the part between the base of the nails and the top joints swollen, so that they had a clubbed look. No one knows, though maybe we shall one day, why that happens with a lung abscess. ‘I have looked,’ I said. ‘And I will remember another time.’

  Demetriades stood back from the cot, I with him. ‘He must remain here,’ he said. ‘If he has a chance of life, to move him now even over to the hospital, would destroy it.’

  ‘Has he a chance?’

  He was silent a moment, then he said, ‘Even Lazarus had that. If we could cause the abscess to burst and drain . . . We will try linseed poultices, at least they can do no harm, and may ease him somewhat.’ He began to turn back his loose sleeves as he spoke.

  ‘Go to your bed, Master,’ I said. Indeed he looked as though he might drop himself, with weariness. ‘I can handle that.’

  He hesitated. ‘It is true that you can do as much for him as I can, at this stage.’

  Something made me look at Alexia standing in the doorway. It was as though she had called to me in some way that made no sound. Called with her eyes maybe, for they were fixed on me intently enough for that, with a strange questioning in them. She knew all that her father did not, about Anders Herulfson. Just for the moment, our gaze met, and then, as though she was satisfied, she looked away.

  Demetriades was giving me my instructions, for the poulticing, for giving him the poppy drink if the restlessness or pain increased, and oil of the dried Indian root the Turks call Altum Koku to cool the fever and help to bring up the evil humours in his chest.

  ‘But if there is any downward change, call me at once,’ said the old physician. ‘Come, Alexia, there is no more work for you here, at the present time.’

  And then I was alone, as I had been time and again in that room with sick or injured men. But this time it was different. This time, the man was Anders Herulfson.

  I remember standing and looking down at him, and thinking that he had killed Thormod and now the thing was between him and me. Through all the time since the ambush in the Thracian hills – and surely they had been evil times – he had nursed the thought of killing me, as I waiting here in the city, had nursed the thought of killing him. It could be finished so easily now; a little pressure on the windpipe, and I would feel the life go out, under my hand. And I knew that it was too late; for me as well as for him, it was too late.

  I was sick and shaking, and there seemed to be a tight band round my forehead. How long I stood there, I don’t know. I found that I had thrust a hand into the breast of my sark, and was clinging to Thormod’s piece of amber on its blood-stained thong. I loosed my grip carefully, as though I were loosing somebody else’s, finger by finger; and turned and went out to the kitchen quarters to ask Anna for boiling water and to leave the fire made up so that I could boil more as I needed it, through the night.

  Then I went back, got a little of the Altum Koku down Anders, and began to make ready the linen cloth and linseed.

  The night went on its slow way. Anders was restless, shivering and sweating by turns, muttering of things that made sense to him in the twilight place that he had wandered to, but made none to anyone listening. I kept up the poulticing, rubbed him down with tepid water to cool the fever that was burning him up, wiped away the blood that came when he coughed. It seemed so little, but there was nothing more, save wait, and watch for any change.

  And in the darkest hour of the night, a change came. At the time it seemed a wonderful thing. Suddenly he drew a deep breath, deeper than any I had seen him take that night, and coughed up a great mass of blood-stained filth. The poulticing, it seemed, had done its work, and the abscess had burst! Laying him down again – for I had been holding him while the coughing lasted – and cleaning up the mess, I wondered whether I should call my Master. But there was no need, the abscess had burst; now, if it drained properly, the fever should abate of its own accord; now there was a chance of life for Anders which had not been there before; but in all this, there was no cause to go breaking into Demetriades’ much needed rest.

  Sure enough, Anders’s breathing grew easier, and the fever began to go down almost at once, and not much more than an hour later, turning from measuring out his next draught, I found Anders watching me, eyes bruise-rimmed in skeleton face, but perfectly awake and aware.

  ‘This is an unlikely place and – an unlikely task, to be – finding you in,’ he said, low and dry.

  ‘Let you not talk,’ I said, almost without thinking. I had said much the same thing to so many sick folk before.

  He gave a broken breath of laughter. ‘But I want to talk, and I’ll do what I want – while I can. It can make – but little difference now.’

  ‘I’d not be so sure,’ I said. ‘You are better. Drink this – it will loosen your cough and help you clear the filth out of your chest.’ And I raised him against my shoulder, and held the Altum Koku to his mouth. He looked at me, and I at him, and for the moment not as enemies. It was as though there was some kind of truce between us. Then he drank, and I laid him down again.

  His gaze was still on my face. ‘I thought about this – reunion – all the while I was in – the Bulgars’ hands. Oh yes, they captured me. I’d not be knowing – why they didn’t kill me, save that they – were short of pack animals . . . So I served as a pack pony among the mountains until – I escaped in the spring. A thunderstorm stampeded the ponies, and – I took my chance. I knew – I’d not likely get another.’

  ‘How did you know I was in Miklagard?’

  ‘I didn’t. But with a crushed knee – I reckoned you’d not be on campaign in the mountains – any more. I reckoned if you were – still above ground, the city was the – most likely place to seek you. It’s taken me – all summer, but I got here three days ago, and went to – to the Varangian Barracks for word of you. They told me. Old Thunderfist told me – where I should find you –’

  ‘You went to the Varangians? Knowing there might be those among them who saw how Thormod died?’

  ‘Why not? I am changed. I knew there was little chance that – any would recog
nize me if I did not shout my name.’

  ‘I recognized you,’ I said. ‘I knew you in the dusk, before you spoke your name.’

  He was silent a moment, his eyes still on my face. ‘As I would recognize you,’ he said at last. ‘But then, there is a thing between you and me which is as strong as love.’

  By morning, the fever was a good way down, and Anders was sleeping fitfully. ‘If the evil humours do not build up again,’ Demetriades said, tapping with his fingers and listening once more, ‘it seems possible that we shall yet save this man who is not your enemy.’

  That day, going about my ordinary work, everything seemed unreal to me. I do not think I killed any of my Master’s patients; but half of me was all this while in the narrow white-walled room behind the surgery where Alexia and old Anna were tending Anders Herulfson. Three times during that day, I snatched a moment to see for myself how the thing was going; and the first twice, it was going none so ill, but by evening the fever was mounting again, and when I went to take up my night watch, he was clearly growing weaker. The bursting of the abscess had been only a respite, after all; and the respite was over.

  ‘Maybe one day,’ my master said, straightening from the bed, ‘we shall find stronger weapons against this sickness. Now, there is little we can do but accept defeat, and give him what peace we can for his dying.’ He turned away; and once again I was alone with Anders in the cell-like room with the lamp on the wall throwing the shadow of the crucifix up towards the ceiling.

  The night passed much as the first had done, until a little before dawn. Anders roused from his poppy-drink, and came back to himself and began to talk. His voice was so dry and weak that I had to lean close to catch what he said, but the words made sense again. At first it was only that he wanted water, but when I had given him a few sips and laid him down again, he held on to my wrist. ‘Did Thormod ever tell you how he and Herulf and I – how the three of us listened to travellers’ tales and planned to make our fortunes – see the – Golden City of Miklagard?’

  ‘He told me,’ I said.

  There was a grim shadow of a smile on his mouth, as I wiped away a trickle of blood. ‘He would, of course . . . We never made our fortunes, but – three of us have seen the splendours of Miklagard, though not – quite the same three.’

  He seemed to doze again for a little while, then he opened his eyes wide, fixing them full on my face. ‘When I missed my stroke, two nights ago. Is it only two nights ago? I thought that you would kill me. That was – the way it should be, and – I was ready. Why did you not?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘You and – the old man with the grey beard – you have fought to keep the – life in me – as though it mattered, as though the old wolves had never died in – Svendale. Why, Jestyn?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘Before your God and mine, Anders, I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve gone soft,’ he jibed. ‘Softer than you always were under your battle sark.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He was silent again; and I could see that beneath the jibing, there was some deep trouble in him. After a short while, he said, ‘It would have been better if you had ended it, there – in the doorway. I’m – dying anyway, and now I shall die a straw death – a cow’s death – I never thought I’d come to that. But – maybe that’s why you held your hand. You have a fine vengeance, but – the dagger would have been cleaner . . .’

  He seemed to be finding it harder to breathe; and I raised him and held him against my shoulder. The smell of his breath was like the smell of something already dead. I don’t think he believed it of me, even while he gasped out the bitter words, for he turned his head on my shoulder, as on the shoulder of a friend. But whether or no, I saw that there was no time to waste in protesting my innocence. ‘No straw death!’ I said. ‘Listen! Listen to me, Anders! Thormod’s bee-sting has been slow to kill, but time does not make a straw death. If ever one of the Viking Kind died of his wound, taken in war or feud, Anders Herulfson can claim his company!’

  I was speaking loud and fast, trying to reach him before it was too late; speaking – it was a strange thing – not as the Jestyn I had become, but as the Jestyn of the Red Witch and the Kiev marshes and the Barbarian Guard. ‘Speak my name to Thormod when you meet him. Tell him both the Old Wolves may sit with their heads high in Valhalla, for the Killing Time is finished with honour; and both their sons are worthy of them!’

  I think he heard me. I hope he did, but he had begun to cough, and a wave of bright blood came out of his mouth.

  A great shudder ran through him, and there was a sudden stillness in the room. No more the rasp of painful breathing. And I was once more the Jestyn I had become in the House of the Physician. I felt for his heart, and it was still; and I laid him down. It was near dawn; the rain that had been falling all night had stopped, and the first light was green beyond the small high window. And somewhere in the rain-wet garden a bird was singing.

  I stood looking down at Anders Herulfson, hearing the silence in the room, and the bird singing, and feeling the strange cool emptiness in my heart. I was free of the old feud, the old bondage, and more alone than I had ever been in my life.

  The faintest sound behind me made me turn. Alexia stood in the doorway. She stood on the edge of the lamplight, and her hair hung loose and soft on her shoulders. It was the first time I had ever seen it like that; and for the first time, looking at her, I did not think of the dim silver-framed Madonna; only that I needed her and she had come.

  She said, ‘There will be those among his own kind, who will say that you killed him; and those who will say that it was your right, and your duty.’

  And I said, ‘I have failed Thormod. But I couldn’t kill him.’

  ‘I knew you could not. That is why I left him to you. I did not even tell Father – I knew you could not; but you had to find it out for yourself.’

  ‘How if you had been wrong?’

  ‘Then I think I should have died, too,’ Alexia said.

  And she came across the narrow room and put up her two hands, and took my face cupped between them, so lightly that I hardly felt the touch of her fingers. ‘Listen to that thrush,’ she said. ‘It is a new day, Jestyn Englishman, a new day.’

  I have never been sure whether I did the right thing, or the wrong one, after all. What is wrong in one world is right in another. I failed Thormod, my blood brother; and I do not forget it. But it is all so long ago, now. So long ago . . .

  I went to Demetriades, later that day, and said, ‘I am free of the old bondage. Does your offer still hold?’

  ‘It holds,’ he said. ‘I shall work you as never a master worked his slave, but in the end you will be a better physician than I am.’

  It was certainly true, as to the work.

  The last light of evening has deepened to a moth-wing dusk, behind the dome of St Mary of the Barbarians. Alexia is late with the candles this evening. Some crisis in the household, I suppose. But now I hear her feet on the stair, and the light is spilling up before her, yellow as the gorse that will be in full flower now along the English headlands.

  I can hear in her footsteps that she is hurrying a little; anxious still? She need not be. I have been sitting here in the twilight, remembering, as old men remember the days when they were young, and the men who were young with them.

  But I would not turn back and take another road to another harbouring place. This is where I belong.

  About the Author

  Rosemary Sutcliff was born in 1920 in West Clanden, Surrey.

  With over 40 books to her credit, Rosemary Sutcliff is now universally considered one of the finest writers of historical novels for children. Her first novel, The Queen Elizabeth Story was published in 1950. In 1959 her book The Lantern Bearers won the Carnegie Medal. In 1974 she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and in 1978 her book, Song for a Dark Queen was commended for the Other Award.

  In 1975, Rosemary wa
s awarded the OBE for services to Children’s Literature and the CBE in 1992. Unfortunately Rosemary passed away in July 1992 and will be much missed by her many fans.

  Also by Rosemary Sutcliff

  The Mark of the Horse Lord

  Flame-Coloured Taffeta

  Bonnie Dundee

  Frontier Wolf

  Knight’s Fee

  Simon

  Song for a Dark Queen

  Tristan and Iseult

  Warrior Scarlet

  The Witch’s Brat

  Beowulf: Dragonslayer

  Brother Dusty Feet

  The Armourer’s House

  Sun Horse, Moon Horse

  Sword Song

  The Hound of Ulster

  The Capricorn Bracelet

  The High Deeds of Finn MacCool

  The Shining Company

  The Light Beyond the Forest

  The Road to Camlann

  The Sword and the Circle

  BLOOD FEUD

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17301 3

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2013

  Copyright © Rosemary Sutcliff, 1976

  First Published in Great Britain by Oxford University Press 1976

  The right of Rosemary Sutcliff to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.