Swimming with Seals

by Victoria Whitworth

  The man who’s been through it knows how hard a companion sorrow is to him who has few dear friends: lonely paths, not twisted gold; a cold heart, not the joys of earth. He remembers men in the hall, treasure-giving; how in his youth his gold-friend weaned him on to feasting. All joy passes: he knows that, the man who has to forgo the beloved wisdom of his lord, his friend. When sorrow and sleep join forces to bind the wretched wanderer it seems to him that he hugs and kisses his lord, and rests his hands and head on his knee, just as he used to in the old days when he enjoyed favour.

  Then the friendless man wakes again and sees before him the fallow waves, the bathing seabirds with their outspread feathers, the driving frost and snow mixed with hail. Then his heart’s wounds are heavier, yearning for the beloved.

  Sorrow is renewed.

  Memory of kinsmen passes through him; he greets them joyfully, eagerly scans the men. Always they swim away. The floating spirits do not bring the familiar songs.

  Care is renewed, over and over, for the man who must send his weary spirit over the bound waves.

  I don’t understand why my soul doesn’t darken when I think through the life of man, how the proud warriors so suddenly departed the hall, just as this world of ours each and every day rots and withers. No one wins this wisdom before he has achieved his share of winters in the world. A wise man must be restrained: not too hot-hearted, nor too outspoken, nor weak in battle, nor faint-spirited, neither fearful nor joyful, nor greedy, nor boastful, before he comes of age. A man must endure, when he makes an oath, until his spirit truly knows which way his heart’s deliberation will turn.

  The wise man knows how ghostly it will be when all the wealth of this world stands waste, just as we now see here and there across the landscape the wind-battered walls upstanding, frost-shattered, the buildings dilapidated. The halls rot, the ruler joyless, the warrior band all cut down, once proud by the wall. Battle escorted some on their road out of here; others carrion birds took to a high island; others still were dealt death by the grey wolf; and some the sad-faced survivor hid in their earthen graves. The Ancient Creator has so handled us that the dwellers in this city have no joy. The ancient work of giants, abandoned.

  The man who meditates on this world and this dark life, wise in spirit, often calls to mind the many dead of long ago, and he has this to say:

  Where is the horse? Where is the man? Where is the giver of treasure? Where is the table set for the feast? Where the joys of the hall? Alas for the bright cup, alas the mailed warrior, alas the pleasure of the lord. How that time has gone, taken under the helmet of night, as though it had never been.

  Now in the place of the beloved warband there stands a wall high with wonder, patterned with worms. The spear-strength, the bloodthirsty weapon, notorious fate: these have taken the men.

  And the storms batter the stone-cliffs, the driving sleet binds the earth, winter’s wailing, when darkness comes. The night-shadow thickens from the north, sending harsh hail to men on earth. All is wretched here, shaped by inexorable fate: wealth is on loan, friends are on loan, here man is on loan, kinsmen on loan, all the substance of this earth falls into the void.

  So spoke the wise man, who sat apart in thought.

  He’s a good man who keeps his word, never over-hastily revealing his heart’s anger to men: not till he both knows the solution and can put it into practice.

  It’s well for him who seeks mercy, comfort from his Father in heaven, where for us all security lies.

  GLOSSARY

  Bioprene – subcutaneous fat

  Bonxie – great skua

  Craigs – cliffs

  Cruisie – oil lamp

  Daberlack – winged kelp, Alaria esculenta

  Dunter – eider duck

  Endolphins – a pun on endorphins, the morphine-like chemical produced by the body

  Grimlings – twilights

  Haaf – deep sea

  Haaf fish – grey seals

  Haar – fog

  Pickie-terno – Arctic tern

  Rost – tidal stream

  Scarfie – shag

  Selkie – grey seal

  Simmer dim – night around the summer solstice

  Tang, tangle – seaweed that grows in the inter-tidal zone

  Tang fish – common seals

  Trow, trowie – supernatural creature, fairy

  White maa – gull

  Yamils – age-mates

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I have accrued vast debts over almost twenty years of visiting Orkney followed by nearly a decade as a resident. Just about everyone I know has fed something into the mix, and for each name I acknowledge here there are others whose words have lodged in crevices of memory so deep that I no longer remember who said them or when. For this I must apologize. General thanks are due to the Orkney Ranger Service; the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and the many experts whom I have badgered for information on marine mammals; and my academic colleagues in Nordic Studies and Archaeology at Orkney College, University of the Highlands and Islands.

  More specific thanks are owed to many people:

  Katie Thompson, Jessica Haydon, Cathy Thompson and our happy memories of Nairobi.

  All my cousins, but especially Clive, Becca and Alex for permission to use the poem ‘Travelling’ by their mother, Barbara Lacey, which appears on p. 260.

  Tom Muir, visionary and storyteller, for feeding my selkie obsession and having faith.

  Anne Brundle: may we all be missed so much.

  Mark Edmonds and Jen Harland, for shelter, inspiration and marine anecdotes.

  Donna Heddle, for giving me the job and throwing me into the deep end.

  Alex Sanmark, for landscape and the gender agenda, together with Anna Paaso: soulmates and partners in crime.

  Lynn Campbell: so funny, so kind; you make being Orcadian into a performance art.

  Kiersty Tams-Grey: words fail me.

  Donncha MacGabhann, for many things, but particularly for the gift of Kells.

  James Graham-Campbell, without whom I would know very little about the Westness brooch or the Broch of Burgar treasure.

  Anouk Busset, for the clapotis and the ressac.

  The Orkney Polar Bears, especially Helen Clarke, our Mama Bear; Anne Gascoigne, Barbara Bailey, Sam Dudley, Becky Ford, Alice Lyall, Yvonne Gray, Amy Liptrot, Kim Dearness, Donna Stephenson, Maya Tams-Grey, Ragnhild Ljosland, Lotty Romaniszyn, Miriam Landor, Lucy Stansfield and Peter Fay; and my London mermates, Jo Smith and Kitty Fedorec.

  Tim Morrison and Kim Burns: so much more than just my students.

  Eleni Ponirakis, Elaine Treharne and Alice Jorgensen, who I hope will approve my ransacking of The Wanderer.

  Joe, who likes what salt water does to me.

  A NOTE ON THE COVER PAINTING

  Tressness Sand Dunes, Sanday (in the collection of the ACE Foundation), Julia Sorrell 2016

  JULIA SORRELL RI, RBA is an artist living and working in Norfolk. In 2015, she was awarded an ACE Foundation TravelArt Award to produce exhibitions of paintings and sculpture based on the landscape and archaeology of Orkney. She has works in many public and private collections in Britain, Europe and the USA. Julia has also written many articles and given talks about herself and her artist parents Elizabeth and Alan Sorrell, and has recently completed a book on her father commissioned by Oxbow Books.

  Preview

  Read on for a preview of Daughter of the Wolf

  Daughter of the Wolf is set during the Dark Ages, in an England ruled by rival kings. Of the lords who serve them, none is more important than Radmer of Donmouth, known as the King’s Wolf, guardian of the estuary gateway to Northumbria.

  When the king sends Radmer on a mission to Rome, Donmouth is suddenly vulnerable, left in the safekeeping of his only daughter, Elfrun, whose formidable grandmother would force her to take the veil, while across the river, treacherous Tilmon of Illingham wants her for his son.

  This is the story of daughters in a man’s wo
rld. The story of Wynn, determined to oust her brother and take over from her father, the smith. Of Saethryth, wilful daughter of the village steward, whose longing for passion will set off a tragic sequence of events and of Auli, whose merchant venturer father plies his trade up and down the coast, spying for the Danes.

  Above all, it is the story of Elfrun, left in charge of Donmouth, uncertain of her father’s fate, not knowing whom she can trust, or whom she can love.

  Can’t wait? Buy it here now!

  1

  ‘End of the field and back?’ Athulf was out of breath, cheeks pink and eyes bright under his rough-cut fringe. Elfrun thought he looked very like the unkempt ponies whose halters he was holding, hot in their shaggy winter coats and the late Easter sunshine.

  She nodded. ‘Dismount and vault three times, turn at the hawthorn tree, same again’ – she gestured largely – ‘finish here. And I’m riding Mara.’ She glared at her cousin, challenging him for possession of their favourite, noting the beginnings of his frown, how that soft lower lip was already starting to pout.

  ‘Come on!’ Both the other boys who had accepted the challenge were already jostling their own mounts into position a few yards away. She knew one of them vaguely, had seen him before at other spring and harvest meetings, but his father’s lands were in distant Elmet, several days from her own home of Donmouth. The other was a stranger, a tall, quiet-faced lad on a gleaming bay mare. They had come trotting up only moments earlier, just as the race was being planned.

  Would Athulf throw a tantrum, with these strangers as witness? Elfrun braced herself even as she laid a possessive hand on Mara’s halter.

  Her cousin surprised her, however. ‘As you like.’ And he tugged Apple towards him.

  But he was looking neither at her nor at the fat-rumped little pony whose bridle he was gripping. His gaze had gone flickering past her, and a look of calculation was crossing his round face.

  ‘Come on,’ the lad from Elmet shouted again, and all at once Elfrun decided that, whatever Athulf had seen, she didn’t want to know. She tugged Mara round and scrambled on to her back, clapping her heels into the chestnut’s flanks and screaming, ‘Go!’ A crazy headlong dash ensued, with hardly time to swing herself down, find her stride and bounce back on to Mara twice, never mind three times, before swinging round the hawthorn tree in its fresh green leaf. Her plaits were coming free, and though she had kilted her skirts they unknotted themselves, flying out and hampering her. No room in her head for anything but the exultation of the moment, not for her bashed ribs, not for the other riders, not for the clamour of rooks that rose raucous from the stand of elms at the bottom of the field; and certainly not for any of Athulf’s funny faces. Elfrun came in a screaming second, mud-spattered and exhilarated. The tall lad on the bay had won.

  But not by much, and he had noticed. ‘Well ridden!’

  She reined Mara in, narrowly avoiding riding into his horse’s rump, grinning in return, flushed and too breathless to answer.

  She might not have won outright, but she had beaten Athulf. Beating Athulf was harder than it used to be, and the pleasure that much greater. Sweeping a tangled skein of hair out of her eyes Elfrun slithered triumphant down from Mara’s sweaty back.

  Her grandmother stood in front of her.

  Abarhild said nothing.

  She didn’t need to. Her face, framed in its neat white linen, was set even harder than usual, and her bony hands were clamped one over the other on the silver-gilt mount that capped her blackthorn stick. Elfrun eyed the distance between her grandmother and herself: she knew full well how fast and hard Abarhild could strike. And how she would be blamed for Athulf getting into trouble.

  The silence lengthened and deepened. Elfrun could feel the hot blood mounting from somewhere near her heart until it had flooded her already flushed cheeks, her palms moistening where they clutched Mara’s reins, her heart thudding and blocking her breath. One of the horses let out a long, stuttering fart, and Elfrun heard a stifled snigger behind her, but she didn’t dare turn to see whether it came from Athulf or one of the stranger boys.

  Abarhild lifted her staff, and Elfrun braced herself, but her grandmother was only gesturing, not lashing out – not yet. ‘Athulf, take that animal. You’ – she stabbed the staff at Elfrun – ‘come with me.’ She turned and began stumping her way up the field in the direction of the Donmouth tents, whose bright roof-poles and finials were visible above the hedge, never once turning to see whether her orders were being obeyed.

  Elfrun thrust Mara’s reins blindly at Athulf. ‘You knew. You saw her coming.’ Her breath stuck in her throat. ‘You could have said.’

  Her cousin just smirked. She turned, hot and wet-eyed with anger and humiliation, and hurried after Abarhild.

  Her grandmother began speaking as soon as Elfrun fell into step, marking each word with a vicious stab at the turf. ‘You – are – fifteen – years – old.’ She stopped, and turned, the sunlight flickering on the gold crosses embroidered on the border of her veil. The Gallic accent that still buzzed around the edges of her grandmother’s voice, even after fully fifty years in Northumbria, was stronger than ever when Abarhild was angry. ‘Is this sin, or just stupidity?’ Her eyes were watery, pink-rimmed and folded deep in her wrinkled face, but Elfrun knew she missed nothing. ‘I thought you were going to show the world your bare arse.’

  Elfrun clapped her hands defensively to her buttocks. ‘You did not!’

  But her grandmother was shaking her head. ‘You have no idea, do you? Look at you’ – another stab with the gnarled blackthorn – ‘bringing disgrace... Strangers...’ She clamped her mouth and breathed in through her nose. ‘Nearly sixteen. Pro Deo amur – for the love of God, Elfrun, where is your dignity? In your good blue dress, too. And in the field next to the king’s tents. This is absolutely the last time I want to have to say this to you.’

  Abarhild glared at her granddaughter, looking for a sign that her words were getting through to her. Elfrun was a good girl at heart; Abarhild was convinced of that. Never been beaten enough, though, or given the responsibility she needed. Elfrun’s father had always been too easy on his only surviving child, and since the girl’s mother had died... Spoiled, she thought now, looking at the wild hair escaping from what had earlier been neat brown plaits, the spatters of mud across Elfrun’s wide forehead, her cheeks’ hectic flush – a flush begot, Abarhild suspected, by excitement rather than shame; and her mouth tightened again.

  Elfrun bowed her head and bit her lip, doing her best to look remorseful, but there was a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  Biting back her anger, Abarhild turned and started walking up the slope again, her stick thumping into the grass and the keys chinking at her belt, and Elfrun hurried to catch up.

  She knew fine well her grandmother would want to see compunction and penitence before any reconciliation or absolution could be offered; and she did feel a scruple of genuine shame. But more, much more, she was angry with Athulf for not giving her some warning. It would have been so easy – a wink, a jerk of the head... She dug her nails into her palms. She would get him, later.

  Abarhild never talked about Athulf’s dignity.

  ‘What was that? Did you say something, girl?’

  ‘Sorry, Grandmother.’

  ‘What?’

  Louder this time. ‘Sorry!’ And somewhere, deep down, against all desire, she had to admit that the world would agree. Abarhild was right; she was getting too old for these games. But admitting it, even to her private self, felt like a betrayal, a little death.

  Abarhild huffed. ‘I’ll have more to say about this later on. Just now there’s no time. Your father wants you.’ A third, lesser sniff. ‘Clean and well turned-out.’

  ‘Where?’

  And now Abarhild did swing her stick, but it thwacked only into the flesh of Elfrun’s calf, not the bone of her ankle, and she knew from this that the worst of her grandmother’s wrath was on the ebb. ‘He’s on his way to
attend on Osberht. You’re to wait with him, until you’re called.’

  ‘The king?’ Elfrun’s eyes went wide. ‘What about?’

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough. Something particularly concerning you.’

  ‘Is there something wrong with the wool? The lambskins?’ Their home of Donmouth was famous for them, their number, their quality, and the way they were processed, both with and without the fleece. Both king and archbishop relied on them, and there was a constant demand from the fine leather-workers in York. The wool, raw, spun or woven, might be Donmouth’s mainstay, but the lambskins were their fame. Under the tutelage first of her mother, and now of Abarhild, Elfrun had been learning not merely the spinning and weaving that every girl started mastering as soon as she was tall enough to hold a spindle, but all the complex economy of wool and parchment, milk and cheese.

  Her mother used to joke that all Donmouth’s glory balanced on the back of a sheep.

  But why would the king ask for her, if all he wanted was to talk about lambskins?

  She opened her mouth again but one look at her grandmother’s face deterred her. By now they were almost back at Donmouth’s little cluster of cheerfully striped canvas. Abarhild’s lips were pursed and her brow drawn tight; and it hit Elfrun that her grandmother was as much in the dark as she was herself.

  2

  Her scalp was smarting from the tugs of her grandmother’s fine-toothed antler comb, her face and hands were glowing and abraded from the coarse linen towel, even her fingertips stung from the gouging Abarhild had been giving her nails. And dressing her down all the while, listing her seemingly endless faults of morals and manners while Elfrun squirmed under her grandmother’s glare and the interested regard of the other members of their party.

  Especially Saethryth’s. The eldest daughter of the Donmouth steward, she had been roped in to dab the mud off the blue dress, and Elfrun still felt hot at the memory of the other girl’s disingenuous cornflower gaze, directed alternately at the spatters of filth on the wool and at Elfrun herself, fidgeting in her linen shift under her grandmother’s litany of shame. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had been any one of the other girls, but Saethryth’s angelic fairness always had Elfrun feeling angular and grubby. And Saethryth’s talent for well-aimed and malicious comments was second to none.