by Jude Fisher
Indeed, Katla noted, there appeared to be a handful of blonde hair caught up in the disarray of carrot peelings and rushes, a few inches away from a hank of dark red hair. She didn’t remember dragging at Kitten’s hair, but there was a certain degree of gratification to be had from the thought that she had inflicted some small damage on those perfect tresses.
Bera returned her furious attention to her daughter. ‘And you are the worst of them all. I ask you to spend your morning completing one simple task—’ She scanned the mess at her feet, where carrots lay scattered among their shed skins, ripped-out hair, trampled reeds and spilled food, then bent and, quick as a striking snake, retrieved one of the peeled vegetables and held it up in front of Katla. ‘See this?’
The carrot was somewhat the worse for wear, but even so it was obvious even to the incurious that the peeling it had suffered had been partial to say the least. Little strips of browner flesh showed dark against the pale orange stem. Katla gazed at it unrepentantly. She shrugged: her blood was up and she was sick and tired of Rockfall, of her mother, and particularly of these grim and stupid chores.
‘So what?’ she heard herself say, as rudely as the hoyden Bera accused her of being. ‘The dirt will come off in the boil; and anyway, whoever heard of anyone dying of eating a little carrot skin?’
It was clearly not a view her mother shared. Bera’s skin flushed a darker red; her eyes sparked a dangerous blue.
‘You cannot cook, you cannot sew, you cannot spin, or weave or mend or be entrusted with the simplest of tasks. And you look – what was it, Magla, you so graphically suggested?’
The big woman stared fixedly at her feet and said not a word.
‘Like “a mangy, fox-haired bitch”. Wasn’t that the phrase?’
The atmosphere was distinctly uncomfortable. Katla could not help but grin at Magla’s embarrassment; was still grinning when her mother turned back to her, her face livid where the older woman had struck her. She watched her mother’s gaze rise to take in the welts her fingers had left on her daughter’s cheek, but if she regretted the blow she had struck, her remorse was by no means apparent.
‘Indeed. Mangy – well, certainly ill-kempt; fox-haired, well you can blame your mother for your colouring, at least; but that is where all resemblance between the two of us ends, Katla Aransen. You seem inherently incapable of shouldering your fair share of the daily tasks, of taking the least little bit of pride in what you do or how you appear – no, that you won’t do, can’t be bothered to do, out of sheer pigheadedness and the strange belief that you are in some way different to the rest of us, with our sagging breasts and soft bellies and our families to raise and care for. What makes you so special, Katla, that you expect us all to run around after you, providing you with food and clothing and shelter? You may be able to hammer out a decent sword and beat the lads at their own games, but somewhere along the path from sweet infancy to standing insolently before me now with your lip curled and a gleam in your eye, you went wrong, my girl. The trolls must have taken you, Katla Aransen, for you are no daughter of mine, I swear. I am ashamed of you, ashamed to the core of my heart. And not just for provoking fights or for this—’
The carrot struck Katla’s arm and bounced off onto the flagstones.
‘If you thought I did not know about you and that . . . that creature Tam Fox, you’d be wrong.’
Bera had hit her full stride now: she was beyond caring what anyone thought, was beyond noticing that every woman in the hall was quivering with the effort to receive and absorb every word she spoke, ready to relay the information to friends and relatives the length and breadth of the Westman Isles just as soon as they had the chance.
‘Ma!’ Katla was appalled. ‘Say no more!’ Shock made her thoughts slow and stupid. How on Elda could her mother have known? Tam Fox was dead and drowned and she had told no one— Memory returned, a thorn in the gut. ‘Gramma, how could you?’ She rounded on her grandmother in fury and watched the old woman grimace.
‘I’m so sorry, my dear, she caught me out.’ Hesta Rolfsen shrugged apologetically. ‘You know how sly your mother can be when she suspects something. And how determined.’
Katla watched a glance pass between them and saw how her mother’s expression contained both triumph and shame, and how her grandmother’s eyes flashed and her chin lifted in challenge.
‘What man would have you now, after you’ve slept with a man like that?’ Bera went on in disgust.
Katla’s indignation boiled over in a great volcanic gush. ‘A man like what?’ she shrieked.
‘Bera . . .’ Gramma Rolfsen warned.
But mother and daughter were in this too similar: neither would back down now: words would be spoken which could never be forgiven or taken back.
‘One of the Old Ones,’ Bera hissed, and around the room women murmured and made the sign against evil. ‘A very devil.’
Katla frowned. A devil? One of the Old Ones? Tam Fox was no seither: he had had two perfectly good eyes and was as human as any man she’d known. Wasn’t he? Something made her shiver, a sudden superstitious chill.
‘You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ Hesta said softly. She touched her fingers to the woven charm of corn and cat fur that hung from the chain around her neck. It invoked Feya, Sur’s kind sister, goddess of grain and good fortune.
‘Dead? That one? I’ll believe it when I see his mouldering bones and festering flesh washed up on Whale Strand!’ Bera snorted. ‘He may have taken my own firstborn down into the waters as a gift to Sur, but I doubt very much he gave up his own soul to the Storm Lord!’
‘You can’t blame Tam Fox for what happened to Halli! I was there, not you: I saw what happened. A sea-monster, risen from the deep—’
‘So you say.’ Her mother’s face was vicious with pain. ‘Ships and sea-monsters and islands full of gold – you’re as bad as any man, seduced away by tales for the simple-minded, abandoning your own for some pathetic adventure far from home and leaving everyone else to get on with doing all the work and making a life for what’s left of your family.’
Something about this seemed unfair, but Katla was too angry to step back and view her mother’s misery with any cool detachment. Instead, she balled her fists and shouted. ‘It’s all your fault anyway! Halli wouldn’t have died if it hadn’t been for you. It was you who drove Father away in the first place, with all your whining and nagging and idiotic, bloody chores. At least he dreamed of something different, something exciting, something . . . amazing. It’s so boring here, with your pathetic attempts to shore up your silly little life – mending pigpens and patching aprons and knowing how to peel a fucking carrot properly – as if it mattered, as if any of it matters! And all these simpering ninnies and their sad plans to trap and marry men and start the whole grim round all over again – I can’t stand it here! Da would have gone mad if he stayed, just as I’m going mad in his stead. I don’t want you, or anyone, making my life – I’m going to make my own life, and it won’t be confined to somewhere as small and safe and stupid as Rockfall. Yes, I’d have sailed with Da if Fent hadn’t stopped me! And how can you blame him for sailing north? You drove him away, cast him out – he told me! Uncle Margan is helping you divorce him and overseeing the settlement!’
Bera’s hands flew to her mouth and her eyes went dark with shock. Betrayed, bewildered, embattled, she stared around the chamber. The crowd of women gazed back at her, sharp-faced with curiosity. This was more entertainment than they had had in years; better by far even than the Winterfest and the mummers.
Gramma Rolfsen regarded her granddaughter miserably. ‘Oh, Katla, how could you hurt your mother so?’
But Katla rounded on her. ‘And you’re no better!’ she stormed. ‘You probably conspired with her to drive him away.’
Hesta’s mouth fell open, but Katla had turned her attention to the other women. They regarded her warily, as avid as a horde of rats, hungry to snatch any more tiny bones of scandal to gnaw upon. If they’d sud
denly sprouted whiskers and fur she’d not have been surprised.
‘What are you looking at?’ she cried. ‘You’re all the same: a load of small-minded, bigoted, hidebound fools. You’ll never do anything for yourselves, never leave the islands, never take a single risk or do anything out of the ordinary. You’ll marry some dull man and spawn a dozen dull children and die fat and tired and lumpen in your own stinking beds. Well, I want none of it and none of you!’
They stared at her in silence; then Kitten Sorensen started to laugh. Katla glared at her furiously, but all this served to do was to set the rest of them off as well, and it was with the sound of their derision, as shrill as the braying of a herd of donkeys, ringing in her ears that Katla Aransen left the steading at Rockfall for the last time.
She ran until she could run no more. She did not even know where she was going until she found herself down on the barnacle-covered rocks at the foot of the Hound’s Tooth with the sea lapping away on the platform down below. Above her, the great granite spike reared up, hundreds of feet tall, glowing an improbable rosy gold in the afternoon sun. There were still flowers in bloom on the seaward ledges despite the lateness of the year: she could see their pale heads nodding in the breeze – sea-pinks and campions, the lavender-blues of scabious and vetch; and amongst them all the bright yellow rosettes of lichen she had only ever seen here in the Westman Isles. Suddenly, her fingers burned. Her palms itched. It was as if the rock were calling to her. Carefully, she slung the shortbow she had snatched up on her way out of the hall over her back and tucked its lower horn into her belt to stop it slipping. She tightened the knot which held her arrows in place, then slung the quiver across the opposite side and adjusted the leather strap until it was snug beneath her breast. Then, throwing her head back, she surveyed the extent of the cliff and the sunlight fell warm on her upturned cheeks. A gull slid past overhead, its shadow falling cold across her for a brief instant, then she stepped up onto the first ledge, inserted a fist into the cool depths of a ragged crack and laughed out loud as a dozen tiny springtails popped out of the crevice onto her arm and away into the rocks below.
The explosion of energy she received from the granite took her by surprise. She had been used, from her earliest years, to experiencing a certain rapture from the rock as she climbed, a certain connection with its surfaces, with its crystals and minerals, its smooth planes and its rough textures, but she had always considered this phenomenon to be some outward expression of her delight in the freedom her upward movement gave her, as if the life-force inside her was too great to be contained by mere skin and simply spilled out into whatever she came into contact with. Now, however, she knew it to be more than this. Whatever the seither had done to her, or whatever she had done to the seither, in that strange, powerful moment of gift and acceptance, had in some way involved a third force, something which had entered the moment from another place, beyond Rockfall, beyond the isles entirely.
Now she felt it again, this time as a constant presence which flowed into the muscles of her arms and thighs and made the usually steep and taxing climb seem a far less challenging prospect. Every time she reached up for a hold and curled her fingertips over the edge it was as if the rock flowed out to meet her and fused for a crucial second with her skin. Every time she poked a toe into a crack or balanced on a tiny incut, it seemed that the granite swarmed outwards, cupping her foot, ensuring that she didn’t slip. It was like dancing – a slow, sensual combination of moves as elegant and formal as a courtly reel, something at which Katla had never excelled because it bored her so much. By the time she reached the summit and wrapped her hand around the final hold there – a huge, frictive lip that curled out and up into the bizarre shape of a rabbit’s head – she could feel the blood beating gently but insistently through every inch of her body. Her head sang, her heart swelled. Sitting on soft pillows of sea-pink with the sun on her face, the tang of the salt-breeze in her nostrils and her feet dangling over the edge, she felt more alive than she had ever felt before.
For a few seconds she was in bliss; then the memory of the argument with her mother came flooding back to eclipse everything else like a black cloud across the sun.
Damn her, Katla thought. She unstrapped the bow and quiver, laid them down beside her on the spiky turf and kicked her heels hard against the rockface. Damn them all. The injustice of Bera’s revelation made her face flame. It was not that she was ashamed of her liaison with the mummers’ leader – far from it, in fact: when she examined the memory of that night and morning, as she did from time to time, taking it out as she might a keepsake cord, knotted with faded flowers and trinkets, all she felt was a terrible sadness at the loss of such a vital man, that she would never again have the opportunity to repeat that thrilling, forbidden coition – but that it was no one else’s business and she hated that they would all tattle about her and think themselves better for keeping their legs closed and their minds set on a good marriage. It would be hard to return to the steading. She considered her options. They were few and far between: she could take a faering, hope the weather stayed fair and row the twenty miles of sea between here and Black Isle. But Black Isle was poor and she did not know what work or shelter she might find there: its folk had enough difficulty fending for themselves at the best of times, and were unlikely to welcome an outcomer, especially the daughter of the Master of Rockfall, who had seduced all their men away on his wild-goose chase. She could row north into the choppier waters past the Old Man and on to Fostrey; but it was a more hazardous crossing and the place was largely deserted. She could stay on Rockfall and throw herself on the mercy of Old Ma Hallasen, for example. She had her bow and her arrow: she could bring in rabbits for the pair of them as part of the bargain. But the idea of kipping down with the mad woman’s goats and her brace of odd cats was hardly attractive. The thought of returning to the steading, however, was worse by far.
Pride: she recognised it in herself and knew it as a failing, drove her to say things she did not entirely intend. But it could also be an attribute which drove her harder than those around her, and as such an advantage and a blessing. Even so, it was difficult to swallow; it sat hard and round in the throat and kept her spine rigid and her head up.
And it was then that she spotted the ship.
It came into view from her right, far out on the ocean, where it had just cleared the long, tapering line of jagged black cliffs which guarded Rockfall’s eastern shores. It was a tiny silhouette at this distance, but even so, she could make out its clean lines and single dark, square sail. Her heart leapt up into her mouth. He had come back for her – of course he had, when he had realised Fent’s cruel trick. Or they had met with ice which was after all too impenetrable at this time of year and had decided to wait till spring to relaunch the expedition . . .
She stood up and shaded her eyes, squinted into the bright sunlight. Should she run down to the harbour to greet them, or wave them in from up here on the Hound’s Tooth? Somehow it seemed fitting that she should do the latter, waving madly from the same spot, give or take a few yards, where her beloved twin had left her bound and gagged.
So she sat and waited for the vessel’s approach, grinning from ear to ear. She would get the chance to see the legendary Sanctuary after all. It was like a miracle, as if the voice she had heard in the rock, as if its presence and its force were watching over her with absolute beneficence. She could not help but grin from ear to ear.
Moments later, the ship tacked sideways to catch the wind and she saw the second sail, smaller, running out to a boom. Her hands flew up to her face. Not the Long Serpent, then; and possibly not an Eyran ship at all. She stared and stared, unable to believe what was coming ever more clearly into view.
At once, she was on her feet and running, yelling at the top of her voice, though there was no one for a mile or more to hear her. Down below, at the steading and around the harbour, women went about their tasks and their gossip without the slightest suspicion that, by the time the
sun had set on Rockfall this night, the course of their lives would be changed forever.
Twenty-eight
Seafarers
Mam ran a hand down the length of Persoa’s smooth back and sighed. Her mind was a delightful, rare blank: this was the closest she came to contentment and restfulness. That evening, just as the sun’s light dipped, they had beached the ship on a wide sandy shore of the island known only as ‘Far Sey’, made a fire and cooked their first hot meal in several days. After half a keg of stallion’s piss, the boiled mutton and wild leeks had been almost palatable: and most of the crew had made their way through a second keg, which had given her and the eldianna sufficient opportunity to erect a makeshift tent out of the spare sail and a framework of branches to keep prying eyes at bay. It had been four days since they had touched one another: shipboard life was hardly conducive to sexual liaisons for any but the most exhibitionist or intoxicated, and Mam had had an urgent need to feel his hands upon her. Now, by the flickering light of three lichen wicks floating in a bowl of seal-oil, she was examining his remarkable tattoo, tracing the lines with surprisingly gentle fingertips for a woman of such massive and ferocious appearance. On his long, lean, dark back, the intricate whorls and curlicues of his tribal markings exploded into an extraordinary riot of colours and shapes. The first time she had seen Persoa naked she had nearly fallen down in amazement: northern sailors sometimes came home from exotic climes with tattoos acquired while they were drunk and disabled in some seedy dockside dive, the generous gift of their so-called friends, and were usually either obscene or misspelt, often both; some made their own simple inked designs when bored at sea; but she had never in all her life seen anything remotely like the hillman’s markings. Mythical creatures and places wrapped his entire torso, front and back, like one of the tapestries in the King’s great hall. Personally, she had little interest in art or, even less, in artists (a more useless collection of self-involved, egotistical and spineless folk she could not even bear to imagine); and no time for those ridiculous tales of gods and goddesses, fabulous beasts and bizarre magics which so seemed to fascinate the rest of the population, both north and south; but even she had to admit that Persoa’s tattoo was one of the wonders of Elda.