Draca Read online

  About the Author

  Geoffrey Gudgion served for over 10 years in the armed forces, and made his first attempts at writing fiction during quiet moments on deployment. He later stepped off the corporate ladder, in the midst of a career in marketing and general management, specifically to release time to write. Freelance consultancy paid the bills. His first novel, Saxon’s Bane, reached #1 in Amazon Kindle’s ‘Ghost’ category, and he now writes full time. When not crafting words he is an enthusiastic amateur equestrian and a very bad pianist.

  geoffreygudgion.com

  Draca

  Geoffrey Gudgion

  This edition first published in 2020

  Unbound

  6th Floor Mutual House, 70 Conduit Street, London W1S 2GF

  www.unbound.com

  All rights reserved

  © Geoffrey Gudgion, 2020

  The right of Geoffrey Gudgion to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-78965-106-5

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-78965-105-8

  Cover design by Mecob

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

  Draca is dedicated to the members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces who struggle with the aftermath of conflict, and to their families.

  All author royalties will be shared equally with the veterans’ mental health charity Combat Stress.

  www.combatstress.org.uk

  Ships came from east-way,

  All eager for battle,

  With grim gaping heads

  And rich carved prows.

  They carried a host of warriors,

  With white shields

  And spears from the Westlands

  And Welsh wrought swords.

  The berserks were roaring

  (For this was their battle),

  The wolf-coated warriors howling,

  And the irons clattering

  – Torbjørn Hornklove

  Ninth century

  Contents

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Super Patrons

  Figurehead Patron

  Illustration

  Chapter One: Arfræningr

  (Old Norse: one stripped of his inheritance)

  Chapter Two: Bálför

  (Old Norse: funeral pyre)

  Chapter Three: Drekahōfuō

  (Old Norse: the dragon head on a ship’s bow)

  Chapter Four: Haugbúi

  (Old Norse: ghost, undead man)

  Chapter Five: Fǣgþ

  (Pron. ‘f-ay-th’. Anglo-Saxon: vengeance through generations; a blood feud waged against the kin of a murderer)

  Chapter Six: Gjálfrmarr

  (Old Norse: steed of the sea)

  Chapter Seven: Veizlu-fall

  (Old Norse: the failure of a feast)

  Chapter Eight: Eiðabrigði

  (Old Norse: the breaking of an oath)

  Chapter Nine: Djöfulóðr

  (Old Norse: possessed by spirits)

  Chapter Ten: Allfeigligr

  (Old Norse: having the mark of death plain on one’s face)

  Chapter Eleven: Dauða-dagr

  (Old Norse: a day of dying, or the day of one’s death)

  Chapter Twelve: Hēr kemr ā til sævar

  (Old Norse: literally ‘here the river reaches the sea’, but with the figurative or poetic meaning ‘this is where it ends’)

  Acknowledgements

  Patrons

  Super Patrons

  Derram Attfield

  Audrey Backer

  Katie Bailey

  Penny Bailey

  Richard Baily

  Michelle Bannister

  Ian Barber

  Jenny Barden

  Ros & Terry Bates

  Beaconsfield Male Book Club 2011-2019

  Denise Beddows

  Alice A. Bicknell

  Christopher G. Bicknell

  Marcus Bicknell

  Susie Bicknell

  Colin Blackwell

  Cornelis Bonnet

  Simon Bowden

  Shirley Bradbury

  Nick Breeze

  Tom Brown

  Jenny Bruce-Mitford

  John Bryant

  Diana Bunyan

  Peter Burke

  Catherine Calow

  Sue Catling

  Alex Chiltern

  Sue Clark

  Jo Coles

  Stevyn Colgan

  Carolynn Croisdale-Appleby

  Justine Cross

  Elwin Cummings-Palmer

  Ivana Ćurković

  Steve Cuthbert

  Susan Cuthbert

  Kari Dorme

  Barry Dudley

  Alex Dunlop

  Sarah Ellis

  Steve & Helene Elting

  Sophie Falcon-Lang

  Rachel Ferguson

  Claudia Fey

  Shona Fraser

  Mike Gage

  Gill Garside

  Alison Gibbs

  Keith Gilham

  Emma Grae

  Rupert Griffiths

  Deborah Gudgion

  James Gudgion

  John Gudgion

  Jill Hackett

  Nigel Hacking

  Debbie Hayman

  Carole Hazlehurst

  Ann Heath

  Frances Hodson

  Andrew Hounsell

  D K Ivens

  Brian Jackson

  Ruth Jenner

  Gareth John

  Sylvia Johnstone

  Andrew Jones

  Janis and John Keast

  Alison Lester

  Michael Lischer

  John MacFarlane

  Rosalind Maclean

  Adrian Martin

  Nigel Masters

  Tony Mattin

  Ann Mayor

  Bill Mayor

  Sophie Mayor

  Andrew McFarlane

  Katy Miklausic

  Rhiannon Mitchell

  Richard Model

  James Moorcroft

  Bob Moyse

  Barbara Northcote

  John O’Brien

  Håkan Olsson

  Kate Orson

  P.D. Pabst

  Gill Pearce

  in memoriam Jonathan Pearce

  Jonathan Pinnock

  Rhian Radice

  Griet Randolph

  Steven Ridlington-White

  John Robinson

  Clive Rogers

  Tim Rogers

  Diane Ruskell

  Carol Rutherford

  Richard Scothorne

  Katy Senn

  Sue Sexton

  Christopher Sharp

  Kerry Slade

  Gary Smart

  Stephen Snaith

  Andrea Stephenson

  Jonathan Sulenski

  Christopher Swinhoe-Standen

  Lisa Telford

  Gill Thomas

  Sally Thompson

  Jonathon Tully

  Bertrand Vivier

  Alun Walters

  Sandra Walters

  William Walters

  Jane Warland

  Sandra Webb

  Brian Wedge

  Edward Weiss

&
nbsp; Alison Wheelhouse

  Suzie Wilde

  Bernie Wilson

  Helen Wilson

  John Wilson

  Simon Woolfries

  James Wrigley

  Figurehead Patron

  Mike Cribb

  Chapter One: Arfræningr

  (Old Norse: one stripped of his inheritance)

  I: JACK

  Jack’s father didn’t recognise him. Not at first.

  Jack saw him coming, and waited at the hospice’s entrance. Harry Ahlquist strode through the car park, tight-jawed, rolling his shoulders as he came as if bracing himself for a fight. The sun could have been in his eyes. It was warm on Jack’s neck, warm enough for the sweat to stick his shirt to his back and to taint the porch with smells of tar and hot metal. And as Harry came closer he glared at his son in the what-are-you-looking-at way in which he might outstare a stranger.

  He finally did a double take and stopped.

  ‘Good grief, what brings you here?’ Harry’s eyebrows folded until vertical and parallel creases appeared in his forehead above the bridge of his nose. The eyebrows were thicker than Jack remembered, still sandy despite the silver over the temples, and they bristled in the old danger signal.

  Jack swallowed, dry-mouthed, ridiculously nervous, like a boy caught playing truant. ‘Hello, Dad. Same as you, I expect.’

  They stared at each other. Neither tried to shake hands.

  ‘How’s Mum?’ Jack had a twinge of guilt about staying away, even though he was staring at the reason.

  ‘Well enough. She misses you. How long have you been back?’

  ‘A while.’ As he knew. That was Harry’s way of reminding Jack of his failings. Jack turned away, refusing to take the bait, and walked into the building.

  ‘You’re limping.’

  ‘Fell out of a truck and broke my leg. It’s mending.’ Jack kept it simple. At least he didn’t need a stick any more. They stood at the door to a lounge room large enough to hold perhaps twenty ill-matched armchairs, some pushed back against the walls, others clustered around a blaring television. About half were occupied by sick, elderly people who looked as if they’d been waiting for something for so long that they’d forgotten what they were waiting for. French windows stood open to the garden, admitting hard sunlight and soft summer smells of cut grass and roses, a sweet layer over the undercurrents of floor polish and stale urine. A uniformed nurse near the door was putting a cup of tea beside a chair, her smile as shiny as the institutional china in her hand. Resilient. Caring but functional.

  Jack caught her eye. ‘Hi, Sandra.’

  Sandra looked up and her smile broadened, probably because she’d recognised someone she didn’t have to watch die. Jack wondered how anyone had the emotional strength to do Sandra’s job: palliative care, with success measured by the gentleness of inevitable death.

  ‘Hey, Jack.’ She frowned past Jack at Harry, clearly wondering who he was.

  ‘This is my father. How’s Grandpa?’

  Sandra winced, and spoke softly. ‘Soon, now. Today’s a good day, so far. We wheeled him into the garden.’ She lifted her chin towards the French windows. ‘He’s talking OK.’

  Jack nodded, relieved. In the early days, there had been regular spaces in between doses of medication when they could talk; the calm between stupor and agony. Now his grandfather was on ad-lib morphine, you had to be lucky. Even when he was lucid, he could be confused. Jack stepped out into the garden, leaving Harry to fire questions at Sandra in brisk, sergeant-major tones.

  Grandpa Eddie sat in a wheelchair on the lawn, face lifted to the sun, eyes shut, with an oxygen bottle for company. Lines trailed from his arm to a drip on a stand beside him. He’d lost so much weight that he’d shrunk within his clothes, and his neck stretched like a tortoise’s through the gaping collar of his shirt. He had almost no hair left, just a few thin wisps of silver fluff, and no eyebrows either. Once he’d had great bushy things, thicker even than Harry’s, as if a pair of rodents had crawled onto his face and nested. Like the hair, they hadn’t come back after the chemo. Jack pulled a chair over to sit beside him, on the side away from the sun, and squeezed his arm.

  ‘Jack, my boy!’ Eddie’s voice was surprisingly strong. Not quite at the level at which he used to bellow into a storm at sea, but still robust enough to belie the yellow skin. His eyes seemed to sparkle from deeper within their sockets, as if the man was shrinking inside himself. Broken veins on his face gave a bizarre parody of health, like an apple-cheeked skull.

  ‘How are you, Grandpa?’ Stupid bloody question. He was dying.

  ‘There are good days, and there are bad days. The good days are when you come.’

  Great. He was making sense. Sometimes he and Jack could have a decent chat; sometimes Eddie would rave as if another person was locked in the same body, someone altogether nastier.

  ‘Are you comfortable?’ How the hell do you ask an old man if he can handle the pain? That’s what the doctors had promised: ‘We’ll keep him comfortable for as long as we can.’

  Eddie didn’t answer. For the first time Jack saw fear in his eyes.

  ‘He’s in the garden, now. He’s coming for me, Jack.’

  ‘Who’s in the garden, Grandpa?’ Sometimes Jack had to humour him. The hospice lawn held nothing more threatening than figures slumped on benches.

  ‘No. My garden.’ Eddie shook his head hard enough to shake the dangling tubes. ‘Harald’s waiting at the cottage.’ Eddie pronounced the name in two, equally emphasised syllables in the Nordic way. Har-Rald. He groped at Jack’s arm, staring at him again as if willing him to believe. Jack smiled in a way that he hoped was reassuring, and nodded past Eddie’s shoulder to where his father was crossing the lawn. Sandra watched from the doorway.

  ‘No, Grandpa, Harry’s here.’ Eddie had always referred to his son as ‘Harry’ rather than ‘your father’, so Jack used the old man’s language. ‘He’s come to see you.’

  Disbelief, then horror, tightened his grandfather’s face into a rictus of fear as Harry’s shadow fell across them.

  ‘How did he find me?’ Eddie kept his eyes locked on Jack, but shook his head from side to side, denying Jack’s words. ‘He’s dead.’ The grip on Jack’s arm tightened as if Jack was a fixed point of safety in the middle of a nightmare. ‘Harald’s dead.’ Beside them, Harry Ahlquist flinched as if he’d been struck on the face. Jack lifted Grandpa Eddie’s hand and nodded towards his father.

  ‘No, Grandpa. Look.’

  Eddie turned, lifting one hand to shield his eyes as he squinted into the sun. Tubes snagged against the oxygen bottle.

  ‘Not here.’ Louder now, almost shouting. ‘He’s following me.’ Eddie tried to get up, lurching away from Harry so that the drip almost fell and Jack had to catch him. Sandra began to walk towards them, frowning.

  ‘Harald died on the beach. He’s DEAD.’

  The shout turned heads all around the garden, and Sandra started to run. Harry squatted, dropping out of the sun’s glare, and reached out a hand to touch the old man on the arm. ‘Pa, please.’ Eddie squirmed into Jack, whimpering, as Harry tried to turn him, and in a moment of sick pity Jack saw liquid dripping from his grandfather’s seat. The tang of fresh urine cut the scent of flowers.

  ‘Pa, it’s your son, Harry.’

  ‘Shot down like a dog.’ The shout became a scream. By the time Sandra eased Harry away, Eddie was gripping Jack’s shoulder hard enough to hurt. It was incredible that someone so sick could have such strength.

  ‘Don’t let him take me, Jack.’ The scream disintegrated into a sob.

  Sandra jerked her head towards the building. Time to go. Jack rose and slid his hand along his father’s shoulders to turn him away. It was the nearest he’d ever come to giving him a hug.

  ‘We’ll try again tomorrow, Dad.’

  Harry shrugged the arm away, his face working.

  *

  Jack rang Charlotte afterwards to say he’d stay in Grandpa Eddie’s c
ottage for the night. It was two and a half hours’ drive home, and the end was close. His wife didn’t sound too fussed. She might even have been relieved. She had a girlie night out planned, it seemed. Pals from the gym. Harry didn’t offer a bed, and it didn’t occur to Jack to ask, so he bought a takeaway and a bottle of cheap wine and wandered through Eddie’s cottage, wishing that his grandfather could drift away peacefully on a cloud of morphine. There was such fear in the old man’s eyes these days. It didn’t seem to be fear of death itself, but as the cancer ate into his brain he’d started raving as if the Grim Reaper lurked in the shadows. Today, it had been Harry, his own son. Two days earlier, it had been ‘a Viking warrior in the trees’.

  But then, Grandpa had always been obsessed with his Viking heritage. He was the kind of guy who taught himself Old Norse so that he could read the old sagas in their original form. The bookshelves in the cottage’s front room were packed with volumes of Viking history. Some of them were antiques, printed in Old Norse with Danish translations. Some had paper bookmarks sticking upwards, each with some cryptic reference written in Grandpa’s arthritic script.

  Jack ran his finger along the books’ spines, reading his grandfather’s life in the shelves above the desk. A small photograph of his parents was wedged on a high shelf between almanacs and magazines, pushed almost end-on so the picture was partly obscured. A middle shelf held framed happy snaps of Jack’s sister Tilly and her children. There was a larger one of Jack at his passing-out parade, his face tight with pride beneath the coveted Commando green beret with the globe-and-laurel badge of the Royal Marines. Dominating the bottom shelf, in between Sagas of the Norse Kings and the mighty Old Norse Dictionary and Grammar, was a big, framed photograph of Eddie’s beloved sailing boat heeling under a press of sail, with a younger Grandpa at the tiller. The sails were traditional, red-ochre canvas; Grandpa refused to ‘sully’ a hundred-year-old boat with modern polyester. There was no other crew in sight, although Draca wasn’t a boat to sail single-handed. They were probably hidden behind the sails, but the photo made it look as if Grandpa was on his own, grinning, one leg braced against the lee side of the cockpit, in his element.