‘As for the rest,’ Sigrdrifa said, shrugging her shoulders violently, so the milk wobbled at the lip of the pail. ‘Her sons will be grandsons of the King of Alba. Grandsons of the King of Alba. What more needs to be said?’
Brigte stepped forward, and Somerled had the odd sensation that he had been ambushed.
‘Listen, brother. Please, let me choose my life. I don’t want to be small, to be obscure, any more than you do. I choose a bold life. I choose a big life. You must let me go.’
~~~
She left barely a week after Mael Coluim had first sailed into the bay with his borrowed galley and his prickly birthright. They pulled away, the leaving song drifting back across the water to where Sigrdrifa stood watching her go.
His mother seemed to wither with each pull, shrink into herself. It was an extraordinary thing; like watching a flower shrivel and close. By the time the galley had rounded the bluff, and the last notes were lost in a tangle of gull cries and wave crash, she had aged. How she had aged. Somerled felt small and weak, standing on the beach. Wordless. Watching his mother, his brave, strong mother, battle her grief and lose.
As she aged, he regressed, until at last he felt a shameful petulance – a child’s fury against a sibling who had caused his mother pain. ‘We’ll see her again soon,’ he said, tripping over the lie even as he said it.
She looked at him, wanting to believe. He waited for the lash of her tongue, for the sarcasm. But she said nothing, and turned her back on the frothy grey sea.
~~~
A few weeks later, a small band of them were sitting on the rocks beyond the beach, idle. They watched the women at their chores. Mebd was outside the hall in the sunshine, churning butter in the keg with big, violent gestures.
‘I thank God daily,’ said Sigurd Horse-face, ‘that I am not a woman.’
‘I thank God daily,’ said Ruaridh, ‘that you are not a woman.’
‘Hey, puppy,’ countered Aed. ‘If he were a woman, you’d still tup the ugly bastard. Stoat that you are.’
‘Probably,’ said Ruaridh, mildly.
‘You’re lucky, Aed.’ Somerled watched Oona as she emerged from behind the hall, trailing children like goslings.
‘Are you bored of Mebd?’ asked Thorfinn. ‘It’s been, what, five years.’
‘She keeps nagging me to let her go home.’
Aed gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘You’re lucky she’s just nagging.’ There were low murmurs at this, as they remembered the girl as they’d first seen her, naked and straddling the body of her dead lord.
Somerled raised his face to the sun, which was hot enough for springtime. He closed his eyes and let the warmth dance on his face. No man who had slept on an open galley in a storm ever took warmth for granted. He smiled, contented. It was a relief to him to be with the few who had started this with him. He could relax with this handful, his brothers in the shield wall. They had been mangled and pulped by the fights they had been in – little Ruaridh had lost part of his nose at the battle for Ardtornish, which gave strangers a rare shudder when they saw him. Thorfinn could no longer raise his shield arm above his shoulder; Sigurd wore a scar across his cheek like a scratch from a dragon. Domnall limped, but his irrepressible boyishness left Somerled breathless and a little envious. Domnall was only a little younger, but with no responsibilities beyond his thirst for blood, booze and sex – in that order.
They were a raggle-taggle band, then, despite the new finery that sat incongruously on their lean bodies. Only Aed, who was beloved of God, remained untouched and seemed born to clank with silver as he moved.
Yet all of this had left them close. Thor’s brothers. Christ’s warriors. Somerled would go to Fergus for counsel, to Padeen for wisdom. He could muster eighty oars, and pack a shield wall two deep.
But to laugh, to relive old battles, these were his band.
Sometimes, too, they could venture beyond laughter, before retreating hastily. Lying back on the rock, with the sun on his face and an afternoon of leisure stretching ahead of him, Somerled thanked the Lord for them.
Aed broke his reverie. ‘Mebd has had no children,’ he said.
‘That could be my fault.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Sigurd. ‘They have ways, women. Your mother, for one. She’s steeped in the old lore. Seidr magic. If the lass wants to go home, she won’t want babies to stop her.’
At the edge of Somerled’s mind, as always, someone else hovered. Someone small and freckled and fierce.
They were silent for a while, as old friends could be. Ruaridh and Domnall threw stones at a marker, seeing who could land the closest.
Aed said: ‘You are set, then, on building a great hall on Ardtornish.’
‘I am. Who could surprise us there? Who could pass without us knowing?’
They nodded. They had all stood lookout there, watching the great sweep of water that made the best sea road from the southern to the northern isles.
Somerled looked out towards his chief galley. The younger boys were out in it, practising their seamanship. He smiled as someone caught a crab with his oar, and the blade jumped violently from the water. He imagined the swearing. He sat up suddenly. Straighter, alert.
‘Sigurd. Why do we steer with an oar on the side?’
‘Hey?’
‘Why? Think on it? Does a dolphin steer with a fin sticking out on the side? Symmetry, that’s the key.’
Sigurd still looked puzzled, but Somerled saw Aed concentrating.
‘But Somerled,’ said Aed. ‘That is how the big boats are always steered.’
Somerled clicked his tongue, impatient. ‘That’s no argument, Aed. The old ways are not always the best.’
He sensed a stirring at this heresy, but ignored it.
Sigurd, his eyes fixed on the galley, said: ‘What do you propose?’
‘A rudder at the stern. Dead centre. Why not?’
They argued about it for a while, trying to imagine it, trying to establish if it would work.
Somerled, irritated, broke in to their debate.
‘Sigurd, talk to Harald the Shipbuilder. The new galley is almost ready. We can try, at least.’
‘He will have a crimson fit,’ said Sigurd.
‘Aye, well, let him. Let’s see if it works. It could help us turn in tighter circles.’
He remembered, suddenly, Iehmarc’s open-mouthed horror and the wild, flying end of the rope as he cut it. He fought to control a shiver.
Across the beach they heard the sound of the women singing, and knew that the weaving had started. The slow beat of the call and response drifted over the sand.
‘See,’ said Sigurd, listening to the words, ‘they think it’s a difficult life to be a woman, and they should know.’
‘True,’ said Somerled.
‘We were thinking,’ said Ruaridh, strangely diffident. He looked towards Aed, who gave him a nod of encouragement. ‘I can find anything,’ he continued. ‘You know that.’
‘Except your own arse,’ mumbled Thorfinn, but they ignored him.
‘Shall I go to Ireland for you, to find her?’
‘Find who?’ asked Somerled, although he already knew.
‘Eimhear. The one they called the Otter.’
EIMHEAR
‘Jesus, Ruaridh. I could swim faster than this.’
‘And can I control the winds?’
‘Can you make the men row?’
‘When there’s wind enough in the sail? Not even for beauty such as yours.’
‘Ruaridh, I knew you when you cried for your mammy over a grazed knee. Do not play bold with me.’
He smiled at me, and looked up at the trim of the sail. He pulled on a rope, and the curve of it tightened and we leaped a heartbeat forward.
‘You always were impatient, little Otter.’
‘And you were always cheeky. I am impatient to be home, that is all.’
‘Home?’ He looked at me askance. ‘But you have never been there.’
‘Is home a collection of
stones and byres, then? Or is it all the creatures that breathe there?’
He nodded as if I were a great sage.
‘Wait until you see it, Eimhear. It is the glory of the world.’
‘He has done well, then, our little lord.’
He turned to me with an unfamiliar, violent earnestness. ‘He is a wonder. Cunning, winning. His men would follow him anywhere.’
‘You do not have to convince me, Ruaridh.’
‘But some doubt him, for his youth. He is changed from when you knew him. More serious. More driven.’
He excused himself and shouted some string of orders. Somerled was not the only one who had changed, it seemed. Little Ruaridh led these men with confidence. It made me feel nervous. All the certainty about this meeting wavered suddenly. Had I dreamed a boy and called him Somerled? Who was this grim warrior waiting for me?
We swung round to settle on a new tack. I let my legs adjust to the roll, and licked the spray from my lips.
‘Almost there,’ said Ruaridh. Above, the grey sky pressed down. The coast seemed a solid black fortress against us; the gloom hid its folds and creases. I scanned ahead with salt-stung eyes.
‘There! The new fort at Ardtornish,’ he said, with pride in his voice. ‘Beyond it, the entrance to Loch Aline.’
I saw the smudge of a fortress jutting out into the sea. I had the strangest sensation that even if I had not been told, I would have known it was his. I smiled at my stupidity, and Ruaridh, catching my mood, laughed with me. We pushed on, and I tried to concentrate on the approach; the rolling of the sea, the glorious spray of it on my face. I tried not to think of what I was leaving behind; the familiarity of my rather dull life among the women of the Ulaid. Sadhbh and Gràinne, who cried when I left, knowing it was likely to be the last time. The graveless resting place of my father.
But most of all I tried not to think about what lay ahead. About the crush of disappointment that could be waiting for me. About the absurdity of my hopes. About the boy waiting for me who did not exist except in my head. About the strange man who really was waiting for me, across this forbidding sea.
1130
SOMERLED
It was harvest time when the arrival of a small galley sent the men crashing down from the fields to find their weapons. Somerled pulled his helmet on with arms exhausted from the haymaking, and a back that creaked and bent like he was sixty, not twenty.
Aed appeared, a wide grin on his face. ‘Looks like Ruaridh. Domnall’s sharp eyes spotted the little fellow capering in the bows.’
Somerled pulled his helmet back off. ‘Alone?’ he said, and Aed’s answering grin unnerved him.
Jesus. What a performance this would be. What an embarrassing idiocy, to be down on the beach with fifty pairs of eyes watching for something out of a bard’s tale, as he and the Otter saw each other and greeted each other like performing bears. What a mistake this was. And why was his stomach churning, worse than before a scrap? Why was there this absurd tightness in his throat? Why was he incapable of walking easily down to the beach like a Christian, instead of this absurd lumber he seemed to have affected from nowhere?
It was a glowering, heavy sort of an afternoon, and the surf was high on the shingle. He could see, as soon as he emerged from the hall, the new galley in the bay, close in and oars backed to keep her steady. There was Ruaridh, waving like a jester from the stern, and there, standing straight-backed and unknowable, was the Otter.
When had he last seen her? Six years ago – when she was thirteen.
And now this nineteen-year-old girl, who jumped into the surf like a boy, trailing her long skirts in the water, was walking towards him across the shingle, and all around them fifty pairs of eyes looked on and waited, like fools breathing in at a song’s penultimate disaster, waiting to breathe out when the lovers were united, when the monster was defeated, when the gods were placated.
I am Somerled. Light thinker. Fate-breaker. Otter … Otter … Otter what?
Now she was in front of him, and Christ, she was as lovely as he had dreamt her. She had grown and filled outwards, so the little freckled girl was eye to eye with him, and full with curves that he dared not look at in front of the watching eyes.
He was dry-mouthed. Helpless. If he was a proper, far-sighted lord, he would have ordered all the watchers, all the gawpers, to fuck off back to the fields, to bury their heads in the shingle, to hide under the sheep until he had worked out what in St Colm Cille’s own name he was planning to say to this girl. This pale, freckled girl with the brown eyes that stared back at him from under a mop of red-flecked chestnut hair that put the autumn sun to shame.
And now they were standing there silent and the moment had stretched too long and too far, and he was sinking like a bog-walker into his own embarrassment, and feeling the flush creeping up his neck and to his cheeks.
Why didn’t she say anything? Someone cleared their throat behind him. Above, the seagulls called and shrieked, as if mocking his inarticulateness, his utter inability to do anything but stare and swallow.
Then he saw it. Her mouth was twitching, and her eyes crinkling. She was trying not to laugh. The thought gripped at his stomach as he saw it through her eyes – the crowds, the stuttering boy-lord, Sigrdrifa coming up behind with arms outstretched, the expectations and the inevitable disappointments. But most of all, the absurd portentous atmosphere that sought to weigh down their first words to each other with some layer of profundity that neither was capable of living up to. It was, he realized, ridiculous.
As he felt the laughter take him, he grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the eyes and up beyond the beach to the wood by the burn, where they sat, hidden, and laughed until the tears came.
~~~
‘Where have you been?’
‘Back over the water. I heard of you.’
‘There? They’ve heard of me across the water?’
‘Is your head too big for your helmet? I was listening for you. Listening for your name. Asking questions.’
‘Why?’
‘Why did you send Ruaridh?’
‘Why did you come with him?’
‘So are we to dance around, Somerled?’
She turned a wide circle on the beach, her arms outstretched and her hair hanging down beyond her waist.
‘Come here, then, Otter, if you want to make it all clear.’
‘Not yet.’
Yet.
‘When?’
‘When I say. When Father Padeen has said the necessary words.’
‘You care for such things?’
‘I am alone in the world, Somerled. If I do not care, who will?’
‘How is your father?’
‘Dead. Yours?’
‘Dead.’
She shivered and looked up towards the hall, towering above them and lit like a beacon. Down here in the bay, it was cold but quiet. They had sneaked out after the toasts, ignoring the winking and leering of those who saw them leave.
‘You look well, Somerled. Success suits you.’
‘Age suits you. You look …’ He failed to find the word.
She laughed. ‘I shall not look to you for endearments, then. The girl. The one who looks so sullen. What is she?’
‘Mebd? She is … she was …’ He failed again. Damn the girl.
‘No matter. I am here now.’
~~~
The next morning, he found Mebd down by the burn, washing great slabs of linen, grinding them white. They always gave her the tasks that called for fury.
‘So,’ she said, looking at him as he walked up. ‘I am to be cast off. Shrugged off like an adder skin.’
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
She shrugged and turned back to her washing, slapping it down on the rock and pulling it back towards her.
‘I’ll set you up with a bride price. Send you home under escort in a galley,’ he said.
‘You will.’
‘I …’
She looked up at him as he
trailed off. ‘Let’s not pretend it was something other than it was. She is pure. She is capable of what your daft, sentimental soul is looking for. Perhaps if I had not been initiated into love by a fat, stinking pig as his mates watched on with total indifference, perhaps I could have moped about on mountains talking about fucking stars.’
The ring he had thought to give her bit into his palm where his fist was clenching. He felt like a fool, an overgrown boy. What had he expected?
She looked at him, and something softened. ‘Well, you were kind, at least. Kindness. Jesus. Why is there so little of it? What did He die for, anyway?’
It was his turn to shrug now, and she melted a little further. ‘Look at you, Somerled. You were so young when you found me, so very young. I thanked God that this boy was the chief. I thought I could contain you, thought I could teach you to be kind. I didn’t have to. That was something. It was already there. So if I’m bitter, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. But you could have let me go home sooner.’
‘Was there nothing you enjoyed about us?’
She started to laugh, but seeing his face, she stopped herself.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
He left her then, beating and slapping the wet linen. She was lying, but he would choose to believe the lie. Her tale was not his tale. Her bitterness not his. Not his.
He took Eimhear hunting later that day. He wanted to get away, to put a fair distance between the two of them and Mebd’s mocking, cool stare. He wanted a barrier of heather and moss and bracken, of scree and rock, between them and her bitterness. Eimhear looked askance at him, knowing that there was something beneath this sudden whim. He took Sigurd to one side before they left, charged him with taking Mebd home, making sure she was safe. Although her people were most likely long dead.
They set out on the horses, heading for a shieling on the slopes of the mountain, where they would find the deer. She rode, as he knew she would, confidently. A childhood spent ranging bareback across the peat and bog. Aed was with them, and Ruaridh. But they kept their distance, bless them.
She sat straight, relishing the ride through the heather, mumbling endearments to her horse – a grey mare with spirit enough to carry her.
The Winter Isles Page 13