by Ken Hagan
Inside the stuffy lodge Hethrun has been toiling over her cauldron, a pot of simmering roots, stored from our winter pickings on the heath above Skagi ness. She will dry the spicy tubers for cough candies, and save the liquor for salves. The kerling is happy at her task, though her eyes are streaming from fumes and fire. If you didn’t know that she had stood all morning over boiling pots, you might think she had been weeping.
Hethrun comes into the cabbage patch to take a breather and sniff the air. ‘Look,’ she says, spotting a figure rowing ashore on the Os. ‘We have a visitor, some boatman from across the fiord, from Kletturvik or from the isles.’
‘What do you think, Hethrun? Maybe he is bringing us a fish.’ The man struggles to pull his rowing-boat out of the shallows. ‘Shall I give him a hand?’ I have no sooner spoken than the stranger falls by his boat in a heap. He has collapsed, out of sight, at the water edge, leaving his boat to drift off the beach. Without waiting for answer, I take to my heels over the sands.
Reaching the man, I run past him, run headlong in a buffeting Os wind, splash into water and drag his boat to shore. After beaching the craft, I turn to the fallen oarsman to see what ails him. He is an old man, stinking of grog. He gasps and holds his chest in pain. He hasn’t brought a fish.
*
We have the man back at the lodge, lying on a bench by the fire. Ikki the cat has gone into a corner, green eyes unblinking, staring at the stranger. Hethrun puts a tincture to the old man’s lips to help him breathe. ‘What is it, man,’ she asks in a familiar way. ‘What has brought you here?’
‘Leif’s son,’ he answers, ‘the lad’s dying. He needs you. We must go to him.’
‘What ails him?’
‘A fever; a palsy,’ is the old man’s slurring reply. ‘He is shaking to death.’
‘You are not in good shape, yourself,’ says Hethrun. ‘I will see to you first.’
‘Never mind me,’ says the greybeard. ‘We must be back at Leif’s steading tonight, or it will be too late. The lad will perish for sure.’
‘If I do go,’ says she, ‘it will be in my own time. I won’t risk my life on a boat with the likes of you.’ She must be acquainted with the stranger, judging by her off-hand manner, and by the scolding, familiar tone of her voice.
‘Say my name, won’t you?’ says the old man indignantly. ‘Hells teeth, Hethrun, you are a bonny lass when you are angry.’
Hethrun leans close to his face, sniffing his breath. ‘What is Leif thinking of to send an old fool like you? Look at the state you are in.’
‘He didn’t send me,’ says the man. ‘I came without his knowledge. How could I watch my nephew die, when I knew that you could help?’
‘You are drunk as a coot. It’s a wonder you didn’t capsize the boat and drown.’
‘Sober or not, I row the lough better than any man alive. I am begging, Thrunny, for old time’s sake. If you have any pity, come back with me on the next tide.’
‘Cuin,’ she says his name at last. ‘You are going nowhere till you have slept it off, I will give you something to stop the tremors.’
Hethrun has decided that we will take the old man’s boat, while leaving him behind. She refuses point blank to have him come with us. She insists that he stay at Suthyre to sober up. She threatens not to go unless he stops whining in her ear. Cuin gives up pleading, but he is anxious for the safety of his boat. He turns his attention to me, telling me how I must make use of the tides over the Os.
He goes on and on as if I had never sat at the sculls of a boat, but something in his voice makes me pay heed. He calls the estuary a lough, the same word Ma would have used for a stretch of water that is salty in some parts, fresh in others, open to river and sea.
Meanwhile, Hethrun fusses over what remedies to take, she mutters to herself, taking this and that off the shelf, stuffing seeds, pods and roots into my egg-bag. Now she hesitates, pondering if dried moss or flowers might serve better.
‘Listen to me, Cuin-rua,’ she says, while standing at the door, about to go. ‘I have no ale or grog in the house, so don’t go searching for it when I am gone. And don’t be a fool to taste what’s in the jars. You will poison yourself, do you hear? — do no end of harm. Worse than a hangover, I can tell you!’
Cuin-rua pulls me close to him and asks in barely a whisper, ‘Where does she keep her bilberry, eh, lad?’ His beard stinks of grog.
‘Under the bed-box, by the fire,’ I hear myself reply.
He winks at me, winks at the cat, and closes his eyes. Ikki howls fearfully at the old man. Strange for Hethrun’s cat to express feelings — good or bad — for anyone but her. The black shape from the hearth flies past me, like a cat possessed, and follows me out through the door.
*
I row across the lough, as Cuin-rua said I should, setting course upstream — away from Osvellir — so that we will drift back on the flow when the Os tide turns. The cat lies cowering at my feet. Hethrun has no love of water. She sits hunched at the stern of the old man’s boat. I have my back to the head of the estuary, dipping blades, pulling hard into the swell. The prow butts the waves. It is not easy to make headway in this wide boat. And there is a fast current where the shore narrows at Laxvik.
This being mud month, the salmon river above Laxvik has been running in full spate, its melt-water flowing into the fiord. When river-flood joins forces with an ebb tide, the waves crest down the estuary like runaway steeds all the way to Klettur Os. The ferryman, who plies the crossing from Laxvik to Osvik, won’t take to the water at this time of year, if the tide is strong.
‘It won’t be easy,’ Cuin had warned; ‘but do as I say and you will be fine. Make as if for Laxvik. Row hard, row like your life depends on it, and get to midway. After that, let the current take you into Osvellir, nice and easy, lift out the oars, and before you know, you will land nice and comfy on the beach.’
‘Cuin is a drunken old fool,’ says Hethrun from the back of the boat, ‘but give the man his due. He knows the tides hereabouts.’
The Os tide has taken us into the shallows at north shore. With a scratching of gravel under hull we float aground on the strand. The jolt throws Hethrun back from her seat. Ikki jumps onto her lap. A motley crowd waits for us on the beach, old folk and infants, gathered near a spit at the end of the strand. They probably expected to see Cuin in the boat, and for him to have beached farther down and not here. Once they see that we have grounded, they hurry excitedly towards us. The children are to the fore, competing noisily to greet the kerling on the shore.
Hethrun sits tight until I carry her dry-shod over the shallows and set her on the beach. She beckons me to lift Ikki from the boat and see him safe on dry land. Once on the sand, the cat snatches a look at the children and makes off in fright.
The youngsters, ragged and poor, swarm around Hethrun. She takes candied roots from her bag, throws treats into waiting hands, and now she turns to the old ones. ‘Listen,’ she says, ‘your guothie has sent for me. I am summoned to take care of his son, a matter of life and death. It might be days, even weeks before I am done at the steading. I will put out word when I am free. You folk can meet me here on the beach.’
*
‘I am Haldis, Leif’s daughter,’ says the bosomy woman at the steading door. Her voice has no warmth or welcome. ‘Father is at the sickbed. You had better come in.’ She hobbles through her doorway, leaning on a stout cane to support her lame leg.
‘Who is this that you brought with you?’ The enquiry — from a man’s voice — comes out of the shadows inside the hall.
The hall is long and wide like a place of assembly — like a hall laid out for a feast or a funeral. It is unlit but for a huge cooking fire in the middle, which burns ready for evening the full length of the hearth. Its long glow casts flame-light on five or six rows of benches and trestles.
‘Without this fine oarsman,’ replies Hethrun tartly, ‘I wouldn’t be here. That uncle of yours is lying drunk at Suthyre. Why send the old fo
ol in that state? He could have drowned himself.’
‘He is no fool, as well you know. And I didn’t send him. He took it upon himself.’
‘Leif Njelson, guothie at law,’ says Hethrun without any touch of rancour, ‘the sound of your voice tells me that I’m not welcome here.’
‘It’s my belief,’ he returns, ‘that, when a body falls sick, it is better left to heal by itself.’
‘If you don’t trust me or my salves,’ says the kerling, ‘I am no good to you or your son.’
Leif’s face comes out of the shadows at the bottom of the hall. ‘I am too long a widower,’ says he, ‘not to have learned the lesson of salves.’ There is pain in his voice. ‘Fourteen years ago, in the summer heat, my dear wife died. She fell ill, birthing our second daughter. The kerling from Osvik tried salves and spells for all the good it did. If you ask me, the nonsense made her sickness worse.’
Hethrun takes no offence. She turns to the door, beckoning me to go. ‘I will see to the fishing folk, lad, before you take me back. Our crossing won’t have been wasted.’
‘Don’t send her away, Da,’ says the young woman who had greeted us at the door. ‘Let her look at Sigi. What harm will it do? Our boy could be at death’s door.’
‘Bring a light,’ says Hethrun. ‘I will look him over. And someone bolt the shit-house door. How can I sniff your brother’s breath with that foul air under my nose?’
At the sound of the kerling’s voice, a young man in the bunk pushes open a shutter of his bed-box and looks out at us, cheeks hollow; eyes sunken from fatigue. He has tremors in his body from head to foot. I have seen the worm-sickness before, but never as bad as this. He holds himself proudly, trying to conceal the shakes.
‘I take it that you are young Leifson,’ asks Hethrun. ‘Heavens above; look at you! But you are not a boy, lad, you are a man.’
‘We call him Sigi.’ These words from a girl who has come bearing a light.
‘Short for Sigurd,’ adds Haldis, less cheerful than the other.
‘Doesn’t he have a tongue in his head?’ says Hethrun.
Sigi forces a grin and studies the kerling up and down. ‘This old girl is a match for you, Haldis.’ Sigi gets a sour look from the older sister, and Hethrun laughs at his response.
‘Everyone tells me you were dying, lad, but there’s life in you yet.’
‘You don’t know him from before,’ says Haldis. Her voice suddenly softens, and she takes her brother’s hand. ‘Big and strong he was before. These terrible tremors, and no strength in him — he can’t keep his food down.’
‘What’s this you put in his bedding?’
‘Duck feathers,’ replies Haldis, ‘Bera and I stuffed his pillows with eider down.’
‘Too soft for a man,’ says Hethrun — she turns abruptly to the younger sister — ‘you, girl! Fetch straw from the barn. I want his mattress and bolsters filled with straw.’
*
Hethrun was up to her usual tricks this morning. She got rid of Leif, sent him on a wild goose chase, so that he won’t be under her feet. And she has sent me off too. She says she needs mountain moss, wants me to gather it fresh. Her remedy, she says, won’t work without moss.
‘Green grisly,’ she says, ‘green grisly moss will ease the boy’s chest. Take Kregin with you, guothie. He knows how to find what I need.’
*
Leif and I are on horseback, on two good-natured piebalds. They are stallions under breeding age, horses allowed to run wild in summer on the heath, as yet only half-tamed. We are riding them on the boggy fell up to Grisedale tarn.
‘At this time of the year,’ says the guothie, ‘it is the only place I know where grisly moss will stay green. Everywhere else is under melt water or burned by frost.’
It occurs to me — after I hear this — that Hethrun must have known our search for grisly moss would take us out all day.
The horses are unshod and sink in the muddy ground. High reeds brush their bellies; prickly heather seeds stick to their hides. The horses shake their tails proudly, holding them erect from the croup, as if they know to keep the ends from snagging on reeds and heather. They frisk in and out of the mire, enjoying a first outing on the heath after being held in Leif’s stables for the winter. Their nostrils and flanks steam in the cool fell air. Come spring, only a month away, they will be set loose on the heath, herding free till winter-fall, picking fights with other stallions of the same age, waiting for their breeding summer to come — next year or year after — and watching older horses vie for the stud mares.
Halfway up-fell, we overtake two shepherds from the steading, driving the guothie’s yearling wethers — a hundred or more — taking them for summer pasture. The wethers are bare-hide at this time of year, robbed of the brown winter fleece. Now that they are shorn naked of their pelts, it can be seen how plump they are.
‘I fatten them on turnips,’ says Leif admiringly, ‘and seaweed on the beach.’
The shepherds wait to be spoken to, with the deference expected from slaves. The guothie chats comfortably, enquiring which dale the two men are heading for, showing concern after their food, their shelter for the night.
‘Grisedale is flooded,’ says one man, ‘us won’t go higher than the tarn.’
‘Well, Ulph, my good man,’ replies Leif, ‘that’s where we are going.’
‘As for meat, master,’ says the other, his naked feet blackened by peat, ‘mistress Haldis keeps us hearty. Sure as my name is Snorri Harelip, she never sees us short.’
‘Snorri speaks true,’ says Ulph with a sly look at the guothie. ‘Thanks to master’s daughter, us live like kings on the fell.’
The slave’s fawning comment brings a smile to the big man’s lips. He rides off at a cheerful canter, briefly forgetful of me, his horse splashing proudly in the mud stream. The guothie, give him his due, has no end of patience: once he heard that I had ridden only on rare occasions, and then solely using an iron-bit between the horse’s teeth, and never gone bareback, he has been walking his piebald flank by flank with mine, teaching me the art of snaffle and rope.
‘Young man,’ he says, as he dismounts to pull my horse from a ditch, ‘tell me about your folks. Where are you from?’
*
‘Leif the Tall’ is well-named for his height. He stands an ell’s length taller than most men. He has to stoop to enter by the gable door, and walks with shoulders hunched while in the hall, otherwise his head would graze the rafters. The guothie is a man to look up to, and not just for being tall. If any of his people come to him, whether to turn over a knotty question of law, to talk lambing or wool, to trade fish or grain, or just pass the time of day, he is all ears. He never turns away or becomes distracted, as I have seen other men of importance do. I understand why Blot dislikes him. Leif is a man of his word.
Bera is her father’s favourite. She is my age, a fine-looking girl with womanly shape. She has a ready smile, though she keeps on a serious face when her older sister is around. Bera will make a handsome wife, but I would never think of her in that way for myself. Her manner is kind and comfortable. She reminds me of my sister Alu.
Haldis is in charge of the hearth and she sees to the dairy girls while they churn butter and stir souring whey in vats. Bera’s work is to weave wool at the loom, adding bolt after bolt to her father’s wealth in cloth. The younger sister rattles her shuttle over the weft from day-meal to dusk: I have never seen a girl’s fingers move so nimbly on a loom.
Leif’s stockpiles of wool-weave are everywhere, the best bolts in colour and weight set aside for trading overseas, neatly layered by Bera on benches at the back of the hall. After dark, Bera turns her hand to needlework. Again she sews quickly. She does it by feel and touch, away from the firelight, sitting on a stool by Sigi’s bunk. With her quilts of patchwork spread in front of her, she stops most evenings by her brother’s open bunk until it is time to climb into the top bed and lock herself in.
There has been no sleep for Hethrun since
she came to Osvellir — she has taken to watching Sigi through the night. She must have her eye on him, she says, ‘while the dark spirits are afoot’. After taking ale and supper at the hearth, she kicks Ikki outside to hunt for his nightly fare, and run the gauntlet of Leif’s dogs. She will snatch a nap by the fire before bedtime to be fresh for her night vigil, staying wide-awake while the rest of us sleep. The family will do anything Hethrun asks. Even Leif follows her instructions to the letter. Thanks to the kerling and her mixture Sigi, has begun to recover.
The liquor strained from flax-seeds and grisly moss is a stinking broth — clotted and gloopy — akin to horse-glue. Sigi eyed the vile remedy, took a sniff, and had nothing more to do with it. Hethrun left bowl and spoon with Bera and gave the girl a look, as if to say: ‘If you can’t get your brother to sup, nothing else will save him.’ Bera knows how to get round her brother. She makes sure, before she retires to her bunk that the bowl of ‘glue’ is supped clean and Sigi fast asleep.
*
Sigi sits with us, cross-legged on the bench, a brown fleece over his shoulders. He refuses to keep to his bed now that he is on the mend. His sisters would have him resting night and day if they had their way, but they can’t hide their relief that he is sitting up and wants to share in the excitement.
Tonight Bera is too excited to sew. The house is abuzz at the prospect of the feast. A feast — no less — is planned for next week in honour of Sigi’s recovery. Cuin takes a sip from his grog, his first of the night, and winks at me across the fire. I have a soft spot for the old uncle. I like to hear him talk and tell stories — his occasional words in the Erin tongue make me think of Ma — but I have been uneasy since hearing he slept four nights in Hethrun’s lodge. I keep wondering if he has drunk the whole stash of her bilberry.
Cuin had to be sent for. The ferryman from Osvik went to fetch him yesterday from Suthyre, but for some reason Cuin didn’t show up in the hall until tonight. No sooner was the old man back than he was tasked to deliver a personal invitation to each of the guests that will be at Sigi’s feast. ‘Get everyone to come, Uncle,’ said Leif, ‘don’t take no for an answer. I want the whole country hereabouts to see that Sigi is back to his old self.’