He could see Harald, the shipbuilder from Orkney, walking with Sigurd – heads bent and arms waving. They were tiny from here. There were new houses dotted about the glen, and storehouses, byres and stables. Children were playing on the turf roof of one longhouse, led in their game of dare by Aed’s son – a big and fearless five-year-old. There was even a smithy now, built by a cheerful fellow called Cinaed, who’d arrived over the mountains with a bag of tools and bleeding feet.
They were coming all the time. Warriors looking for a chief, traders looking for silver, displaced folk looking for a square of turf and someone to protect it for them, monks looking for souls. Success, Aed said, fostered success. And success, Thorfinn added, attracted the less successful buggers to suckle at your hind tit.
Here he was, lording over it all like some fat potentate.
‘Father,’ he said to Padeen, smiling at him. ‘There is a voice in my head telling me I am mortal. All the time. Tell me, did you ever feel like a fraud? Did you ever feel like you were playing a part, and the watchers need only lift your skirts to know you were a lie?’
Padeen sat down beside him, grunting a little as he settled. An old man’s involuntary grunt, Somerled realized with a shock. When did Father Padeen become old?
‘When I was young, yes, perhaps. When I first left my teachers, to spread the gospel. I did feel like a fraud. Like I was unworthy to say God’s words. But that made me unhappy, humble. You, Somerled? I think you find it amusing.’
Somerled smiled at the priest, and slapped his back.
‘It won’t be very funny when I do get found out.’
‘Why should you be? You may think you’re acting a part, but they’ – he swept his hand out to gesture at the scene, from the fishing boats in the Sound, past the children collecting limpets from the stippled rocks at the water’s edge, to the cattle grazing on the grass by the river that ran into the loch at its head – ‘they believe you. And that is more important.’
Somerled looked at the priest. ‘The voice telling me I am mortal. It’s like a song in my head, Father. It sounds like the litany of the Trinity. The same rolling sound.’
‘Have mercy on us, God, Father almighty,’ began the priest, and they intoned it together.
God of hours.
Noble God.
World’s ruler.
Ineffable God.
Creator of the elements.
Invisible God.
Incorporeal God.
Unjudgeable God.
Immeasurable God.
Impassible God.
Incorruptible God.
Immortal God.
Immovable God.
Eternal God.
Perfect God.
Merciful God.
Marvellous God.
Fearsome God.
God of the earth.
God of the fire.
God of the varied waters.
God of the rushing storm-tossed air.
God of the waves from the ocean’s deep house.
God of the constellations and all the bright stars.
God who formed the mass, who began day and night.
God who ruled over hell and its rough crowd.
God who governs with archangels.
Golden God.
Heavenly Father who are in heaven.
Have mercy on us.
The priest sighed, happy. ‘Ah, but I love those words, Somerled. They are what brought me to God, I think. That is what gave St Colm Cille his power, his voice down the ages. Those words that can settle and rouse a man’s soul, and bring him closer to God.’
‘Can words take you closer to God?’
‘Of course.’ Padeen turned and looked at him, surprised. ‘What sets us apart from those cows, Somerled? What makes us the Lord’s beloved? Words and music. Stories. The Lord handed down his wisdom wrapped in stories, because that is how we can make sense of this earth, that heaven. Any fool of a bull can fight, but can he sing?’
As if on cue, the cow on the slopes nearest to them let out a thunderous call.
‘Hey, that milker thinks she can,’ said Somerled, laughing. ‘Look!’ he added. ‘There she is. Ruaridh’s boys sent a signal, and I wanted to see.’
Down the Sound came a galley, a sleek, fresh-painted joy of a boat. Her sails stood stark against the green slope of Mull behind. No shields hanging down the sides, so Gael, not Norse. And the prow held no beast, so she came in a friendly spirit. Aed was down on the landing stage with an armoured crew to make sure of her intentions. She would need to be a crazy berserker to come alone as an aggressor into this place. It would take more than one galley, no matter how lovely, to touch Somerled now.
He saw his mother come out of the makeshift hall and raise a hand over her eyes to squint at the horizon. He watched her pull back her shoulders and lift her chin; he recognized the gesture and was strangely moved by the sight of her readying herself for action. She turned back and began shouting and waving; women and children and chickens scurried about, looking small and almost comical from his eyrie up here.
‘I have to come up here to see anything,’ he said. ‘It’s too easy to be watched. I want to be the watcher. Father, have you been out to the headland? Ardtornish, they call it. The headland of Thor. From there you can see the whole length of the Sound. I am thinking I will build there. Leave this settlement for the quiet folk, and take the warriors to Ardtornish.’
‘It’s terribly exposed,’ said Padeen. ‘But what do I know. Will I get a church?’
‘Of course,’ said Somerled, slapping him on the back.
Padeen stood next to him, peering out towards the ship. ‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know, Father. Shall we find out? Whoever it is will bring news.’
~~~
The chief of the strangers came forward. A fair man, a few years older than Somerled. He looked tired, and battle-grimed. There was dried blood crusted on his fine cloak, and the warriors at his back swayed on their feet with tiredness. They approached each other, a little wary.
‘I am Somerled, Lord of Morvern.’ It felt good to say it.
‘You were not, last time I passed this way.’
‘Well,’ said Somerled, pulling back his shoulders and lifting his chin, ‘I am now.’
The stranger nodded. ‘So I see. Well, greetings, Lord Somerled. I am Mael Coluim, son of Alexander, King of Alba.’
A ripple ran through the gathered crowd. Somerled was thrown off balance, but he found his poise again quickly. This must be the natural son he had heard of, a fire-spark based in Moray.
‘You are welcome.’
He lapsed gratefully into the demands of hospitality, taking refuge in the set pieces required by manners. They were tough, bruised men, these Moray warriors, with a strange, thick lilt to their Gaelic.
In the hall at the head of Loch Aline, Somerled drank a secret toast to the dead man who had built it. He remembered with a lurch of his stomach the soft yield of the man’s heart in his palm.
After the toasts and the first rounds of honeyed cheese and ale, he turned to the man who sat at his right side. They had danced around each other, swapping pleasantries like an inverse shadow of a flyting. But he still had no notion of why the man was here. Or where he was going.
‘What news of Alba?’
Mael Coluim looked at him with guarded eyes, appraising him. At last he shrugged and said: ‘You have not heard?’
‘We face Ireland, not Alba, out here.’
‘Well then. You know that Alexander, my father, died some six years past. And that the English spawn, his brother David, marched to Scone with a power of English lords at his back. He scorned the Gaelic lords. Could barely say the words that made him king. Looked bored as the poets sang of his family. Didn’t understand the great alliterative sweep of their words. English prick.’
Somerled sensed the quiet of the men around them, their leaning in to catch the tale. He watched Mael Coluim’s big hand twisting the stem of his cup, the li
ght catching on his heavy silver rings. Alexander and David had both been raised at the court of King Henry down in England, forced out by their uncle Domnall Ban. Mael Coluim’s father was by all accounts as English as his brother. Perhaps, thought Somerled, he would not mention it.
One of the Moray men growled his assent to Mael Coluim’s words. ‘Sits on the border looking south,’ he said. ‘Never turning eyes to the north. Waiting for Henry to shout from England that his arse needs a kiss.’
‘They say,’ said another, ‘that at his acclamation at Scone, the pretender could not be brought to utter the words. The bishops had to coax him to it.’
‘First thing he does – the very first thing – was give a big parcel of Scots land to a French knight. Robert de Bruce.’
Nods from the Moray men, indrawn breath from Somerled’s crew.
‘Good land too,’ said the man who seemed to be Mael Coluim’s second. ‘Prime grazing. Cattle by the hundred.’
Mael Coluim looked around as if to check that the audience was with him. Satisfied, he said: ‘So I had no choice. My blood is as good as his.’
He told them of the march down to take on David, a band of Moray warriors at his back. His Moray foster brothers at his side. He told them of the battle that broke him, where his men hurled themselves on to implacable Norman lances. He told them of the Norman armour, great coats of metal links that stopped a man moving or running or rowing, but turned an arrow. He told them of the great horses, armoured too and trained for battle, that reared and kicked at head height.
Looking round, Somerled saw his chief men absorbing Mael Coluim’s words. Aed looked serious, imagining a line of screaming Gaels breaking against the Norman horse. Ruaridh and a couple of others looked excited, pumped up; as if they were desperate to test their mettle against such a foe.
Mael Coluim’s story tailed off. It had no heroic punchline, and Somerled was too polite to articulate the obvious. The battles were lost, and Mael Coluim was slinking back up the coast in a borrowed galley, keeping out of David’s way and aiming to reach his foster family in Moray the long way round.
They talked, then, of other things. Of poetry and prayer. But all the time Somerled noticed Mael Coluim’s slight inattention; the constant sliding-away of his eyes and the fight to bring them forward again. Almost like a tic.
As the meal thundered to its close, Mael Coluim’s bard stood up, bowing, and offered a song to the house. In honour of Somerled, whose ancestor was Colla Uais, he would give them the tale of the founding of Airgailla. The bard sang of the three brothers, the Collas, fighting seven battles in one week against the the Ulstermen.
So now I have this hall, and these men, and a great herd of cattle, thought Somerled; now this ancestry of mine is set in stone, written in the runes, carved in Ogham on a cross, scratched in Latin onto parchment, swapped from mouth to mouth of the bards.
But when the fellow sang, he stopped thinking, for this man could make his harp rush and sing like a waterfall, thunder and menace like an army, lull and soothe like a songbird. The familiar story looped around the hall, made unfamiliar by the glorious harmonies. All around him, Somerled watched his warriors gape; these hard-living men undercut by a small fellow with sharp teeth who wielded his harp like an angel. Aed looked close to tears, and even as Somerled watched, the big man gave in and silently sobbed as the words of the dying queen’s lament echoed around the hall.
But there in the shadows, Somerled saw another face. Alfric the Bard, who had never made Aed weep, who had never strung a hall of warriors tight on his harp string, who would never sound like an angel’s twin, dropped from a cloud to make men and women wilt with his song.
The poor bastard. It was writ on his face – the small tragedy of being mediocre.
As the last notes of the song fell away, dropping into a silence more profound than a roar, Somerled stood. He pulled off an arm ring – a heavy, worked silver piece with the head of a serpent devouring its own tail – and threw it to the bard. It was caught with a practised bow, and the man pushed it on to his thin arm carelessly, as if it were his due.
The roar came then; Somerled’s men and their guests happy with his generosity, happy with the song, happy with themselves and their mead-rich, stomach-full, fire-warmed bodies. Only Somerled noticed the empty corner, the unbroken shadow where his bard had been sitting, and his case on the floor, unopened.
~~~
The next morning, as Somerled emerged from behind the curtain and stepped across the snoring, flatulent bodies of the sleeping men – his and Mael Coluim’s all mixed up – everything was made clear: the reason for Mael Coluim’s inattention the night before, his distracted air. Somerled’s sister Brigte was awake and seeing to the hearth, hauling water into the cauldron to set it to boil. Mael Coluim crouched next to her, talking softly. Something he said made her laugh, and she looked up from her task, grinning, her cheeks flushed and her hair escaping to fall over her face in fine blonde strands.
She saw Somerled then, and looked at him with his mother’s clear blue eyes. She blushed, turning near purple with embarrassment. Mael Coluim looked over and he too, this confident, cocksure young prince, turned a shade of red to match the girl. Lord save us, thought Somerled.
~~~
He found her, later, in with the cattle. His mother was milking, her hands working deftly and her forehead resting on the cow’s rough skin.
Brigte stood next to her, stroking the cow’s neck with quick tenderness. If they were talking, they stopped when he walked in, and Brigte looked towards him, unflinching. She was bristling, ready for a fight. She paused in her stroking, and the cow, aggrieved, turned to look at Somerled, harrumphing its displeasure.
He paused on the threshold, abashed by the hostility of his sister, amused by the hostility of the cow. He didn’t really know Brigte, he realized. She had grown into a woman behind his back, while he was looking at other things. He was angry with her, and he did not quite understand why. Perhaps for clouding the political with the personal; for forcing him to worry about the difference between policy and sentiment.
‘Well, Brigte—’ he began.
‘Shut up!’ she shouted. ‘Shut up! Don’t say it. Don’t.’
He took a step back, astonished at the invective. He felt his new leather boot slither in some cow dung, and cursed under his breath.
‘Children,’ snapped Sigrdrifa, her voice sharp behind the cow’s belly, the irritation at being interrupted clear.
They both mumbled something. Somerled inwardly sneered at himself. Playing the great lord with princes, then quailing before his mother. What a fraud he was. What a joke. Mind you, he thought as Sigrdrifa cursed the shifting cow, she is pretty ferocious. Brigte caught him smirking, and she grimaced back.
‘Thor’s bloody hammer, these children of mine. For what are you fighting?’ Sigrdrifa tugged one more time: a dribble. She stood up, pushing herself upright and arching her back. A small grunt of pain; irritation flitting across her face.
Somerled and Brigte looked at each other, conspirators suddenly.
‘Well,’ said Brigte. ‘It’s Mael Coluim. He …’ She trailed off.
‘Yes. Am I not your mother? Do I not know when your bowels move? Tsk. As if I could miss you two making the moony eyes with each, and that old love-slut Freyja dancing in the hearth.’
Brigte reddened, and Somerled found himself reaching an arm across her shoulder.
‘And you, boy. Barging in, looking to tell your sister off as if she was one of those slave girls you scratch your itch on.’
Jesus. Could she make him feel any smaller?
‘What then is your problem, if your sister chooses this imp?’
He gathered his scattered thoughts. ‘It is such a dangerous road. He has no land. He has no legitimacy. He has no silver. He has half a name, a fierce ambition, a grievance against his powerful uncle. He has a family who fight like a sack of rats. If she marries him, we are bound to him against the King of Alba, for all lo
ve.’
‘And what is the King David to us here?’ Brigte said. ‘Are you frightened of him?’
‘No. But you should be. He is the last of six brothers, and yet he is on the throne. A bosom friend of that fiend Henry in England. A fighter. A survivor. A ruthless enemy.’
‘And what would you have me do? Hide behind these mountains? Marry a cow-herder?’ She stamped her foot in a gesture so absurdly childish, it threw him off balance.
‘Not a cow-herder. No. But …’ He trailed off.
‘Are you worried for her, or for you?’ Sigrdrifa’s question was an uncomfortable one.
‘Both. David is too big an enemy. And with Olaf growling at us from Man, can we provoke wrath from all sides?’
‘David has made enemies of the Gaelic lords,’ said Brigte. ‘He is weak everywhere north of the Firth.’
Somerled arched a deliberately provoking eyebrow. ‘Now who told you that, I wonder?’
Sigrdrifa growled as Brigte opened her mouth to retort. ‘Enough. Yes, it will be difficult. She has courage enough for it. You think only warriors have courage.’
She bent down to pick up the pail, holding it carefully as milk sloshed up its sides.
‘You know nothing, Somerled. Nothing. When you men go off raiding, we sit here, with your children, trapped between the sea and the mountains. Eyes watch us from the darkness.
‘We know in our hearts that we are helpless and defenceless against fate – not like you foolish warriors who think you can make your own destiny. Pah. To know that you are helpless, to know that you are defenceless, that your children are defenceless; and yet to rise, to face the sun, to smile, to smooth away someone else’s tears. This is courage, Somerled. And she has it.’
Brigte looked at him, collected and proud, nodding at their mother’s words.
The Winter Isles Page 12