Up by the shieling, they dismounted, tethering the horses to a tree, and walked up beside the burn to a place where the water tumbled down rocks in a great fall. They sat by a pool at the bottom, on rocks clear of the spray.
‘I would swim here, in the summer,’ she said.
‘I have,’ he said. ‘It’s cold. Shall we go in now?’
‘Not now.’
He picked up a pebble and threw it into the pool, watching the ripples reach across the face of the water to the rock where she sat.
‘It’s a great joy for me that you are here,’ he said.
She turned to look at him, smiling without reserve.
‘It’s a joy to me, Somerled.’
They heard scrambling behind them, and Ruaridh’s face appeared above the rocks.
‘Deer, Somerled. A big herd. Some tasty-looking buggers, ha ha!’
They followed him through the heather until they came to a strange pocket of land dotted with rocky outcrops that fell away into steep crags that led nowhere. Somerled watched Ruaridh, the little man’s impish face transformed as he was taken with the hunt. He was serious, concentrating. He lifted his head to the wind, checked its course, listened for the deer.
He signalled them to crouch, and they followed him, snaking their way through the wet, snagging brush to the top of one of the rocky outcrops. Nothing. Somerled looked round. To the left, the high mountains. Across the way, the unshrouded summit of Ben Mòr. Through the glen he could make out the sea, glimmering blue under the autumn sun.
He felt Eimhear grab his arm, winding her fingers into the cloth. Down below he saw the first deer walking into view. They stepped high and careless through the heather, pausing now and then to raise their heads to the wind, trusting it to carry the scent of their foes. The stag, muscled and graceful all at once, seemed to be shepherding his herd – watching and nudging and shaking his head impatiently at latecomers. Somerled felt a moment of absurd sympathy for him, as two of the younger deer ignored the rest and strayed away, towards the crag where four arrows were being fitted to four strings.
He glanced sideways at Eimhear, and felt an unexpected surge of tenderness. She was concentrating and focused, her face itself like the point of an arrow. Her eyes were narrowed slightly, and the tip of her tongue poked out of her mouth. He watched her fit her arrow, never taking her eyes from the deer, feeling with her fingers for the notch. With a slow, fluid grace she lifted the bow and pulled back the arrow, squinting along its line towards the deer. Only then did she look at him; a sideways glance and a grin, and a jerk of her head that meant: go on, you fool, stop watching me and watch the deer.
Somerled looked away and towards the deer. He pulled back and let fly, hearing the answering hiss of the others’ arrows taking flight and the thud and squeal of some of them hitting home. The herd were wide-eyed and frightened, running and dodging. He watched the stag check his own flight and wait for the others to catch up, and he willed him well.
Down on the heather, two deer lay still. One was dead, but the other was still alive, looking up at them with wide white eyes, blood-flecked foam at its mouth. An arrow was buried deep in its throat. Eimhear’s arrow, he judged from the cut of the feathers. He offered her his knife and she took it, stepping towards the deer.
But then, in a sudden gesture, she threw the knife aside. ‘You do it for me,’ she said to Aed, and strode away, back towards the shieling.
~~~
She was moody that evening – cross with herself for being too squeamish to kill the deer. He thought about saying something placatory, but the set of her head warned him to keep quiet. Aed and Ruaridh moved further down the slopes, mumbling something unintelligible and setting up their own fire and heather beds under an overhanging crag.
She butchered the deer with a compensatory efficiency. She left most of the carcass intact to make it easier to carry, but sliced out some prime cuts, which she wrapped and buried under the fire. Some slivers she kept, and they crisped them on sticks in the flames, the smell and the smoke mingling to drift down to the sea.
He was shy with her now. The sun was setting into the sea, bathing the hillside in pinks and purples. It looked almost as if her hair was on fire in that glorious light, and her face glowed gold.
They sat in silence for a while, an uncomfortable one that scratched and bothered him but seemed impenetrable. At last she said: ‘And is this how you court a girl in the sunset, Somerled? It’s no wonder you’re unmarried.’
‘But you’re not a girl.’
She laughed. ‘You’re terrible at this. It’s all right,’ she said, holding up a hand as he began to retract. ‘I know what you mean.’
He retreated back into himself, a little cross.
‘So you’ve managed to win yourself a portion of fame, and a host of men, but up here you’re silent and gauche, like a goat boy.’
‘I don’t know what to say to you. Other girls …’
‘Other girls?’
Oh Jesus. A lee shore and a foul tide and a reef approaching.
‘Eimhear, I have been the chief of a band since I was fifteen. Other girls don’t need wooing at sunset. Other girls just … just …’
‘… just flock to your bed because you’re the leader and they want to catch some of your wealth and fame.’
He nodded, miserable about how crass it sounded.
‘And do I need wooing?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No.’
They were silent again for a pace, watching the sun sink into a fiery sea with a hiss that was almost audible. She pushed the embers to one side with a stick and unearthed the meat. He held it on his lap, still in its leaves, and the warmth of it spread through his body. It was growing colder up there, now the sun had gone. The sea was a blue-black blur beneath the darkening sky. The North Star was out already. Watching them. The meat fell apart, tender and delicious. They warmed their mead in the fire, and drank it companionably.
She told him about the years in Ireland. The death of her father, and her small life in the lord’s fort. She told him about the years since the great defeat, with purses tight and tempers frayed. She told him of boredom and loneliness, in a voice vibrating with self-mockery.
‘Why didn’t you come to me at once?’
‘Now, sitting here with you, I don’t know. It made sense then. There were reasons, there must have been. Stupid ones.’
‘And were there not men who wanted you?’
‘Of course there were. But not one who wanted me honestly.’
‘I do, Eimhear. I want you before God.’
‘Somerled. I am a nobody. You are getting on to be a great lord. You should marry well.’
‘But I want you.’
‘Well then. I am here.’
~~~
My kiss across your face,
Across the ear, like this.
My kiss across this eye,
My kiss across this neck.
My kiss across this mouth,
My kiss across this throat.
My kiss across, oh, this breast,
My kiss across, across, across.
Your kiss across my lips,
Across my neck, oh, like that.
Your whisper in my ear,
Oh my Lord, oh my Christ.
My push, your arching,
My pull, your breathing,
My kiss across this breast,
Oh, this breast, this breast.
Your hands across my back,
Your hands across my hair.
Our voices reaching heaven,
Oh my Lord, oh my Christ.
Oh my love.
~~~
The next morning, the dawn came wet and cold. They lay under their cloaks, twisted into each other, joined by skin and the memories of the night just past, listening to the rain spattering against the cold stone of the shieling.
He kissed her neck. ‘I thought you would wait for Father Padeen,’ he said.
‘So did I.�
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She laughed and arched her body into him, seal-supple and warm. ‘I was definitely going to wait. I promised myself.’
‘But I am too alluring,’ he said.
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘Ow, you Otter. Don’t hit me!’
‘But you’re ridiculous.’
‘I’m the chief, you can’t speak to me like that.’
‘If I cannot, who can?’
‘No one. I shall have you all prostrate yourselves, like they do before the emperor in Miklagard.’
She laughed, and gestured at the mossy roof, the stone wall with the rain and wind leaking through the cracks, the heather, which last night was springy and comfortable but now lay sad and hard-packed on the floor beneath them. Skin untouched by skin was hard and goose-bumped.
‘Forgive me, great emperor. I did not recognize your glory in these humble surroundings.’
‘Did you not? And I thought it shone through like a beacon.’
‘Stop talking nonsense, my summer heart, and kiss me. If we’re sinners now, we may as well compound the sin.’
‘Sinful? This? No, my darling. Shall I show you sinful?’
She laughed as she felt his lips kissing her ribs and moving slowly down her belly.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh yes please.’
~~~
After the handfasting, he built a bower by the river, up behind a fold in the hill. They were hidden there. He felt as if God was smiling on them, sending a last gasp of autumn sunshine in such copious abundance that they could lie on warm, flat rocks by the river. They could slip into the cold water and come out shaking, warming each other with lips and hands and sunlight.
God sent a breeze, too, that funnelled through this cleft in the hill, driving away all but the most persistent of midges.
God sent a rain, which forced them inside to listen to its pattering, wrapped in each other.
God sent a fragment moon, so the stars were unveiled and sharp, and they could lie outside in blankets of fur, watching for shooters as their breath pooled in the air above them.
They talked. They talked so much that sometimes Somerled was reluctant to kiss her, in case a break in the talking would mean it could never start again so easily, so freely. He followed her back to Ireland, across the sea, to the stars. They talked of poems and stories, and the children they would have.
When he started to kiss her, he was reluctant to stop. He liked to make her gasp, liked to hear her breath quicken in his ear, to make her feel as if, in the middle of love, she was floating on a warm and violent sea.
The days staggered into each other, until at last they began to talk about going back down the hill.
‘Why must we?’ he asked.
‘You have work to do. Battles to fight. And then you will be king.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because it is your fate.’
‘Fate be damned. I am serious. Why can’t we stay here, as we are? Fishing, and loving, and raising little ones?’
‘Because you would grow old and bored, and start to hate me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because a life with no purpose has no colour. No meaning.’
‘Doesn’t Christ show us meaning?’
‘Christ? No. Salvation. Damnation. Not meaning. We make our own meaning.’
‘What is yours?’
‘You are mine.’
‘Well then. You are mine.’
‘I am not enough.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because that, my summer heart, is not how the world works. The essence of the thing is meaningless. We are here because we are here, because we are here.’
‘Well then.’
‘No. Listen. Why must you fight and lead men and leave me behind? Because the alternative is to have some other bastard telling you what to do. That, you could not stand. And I could not stand watching you take another man’s orders.’
‘Not if you were the reason?’
‘Especially if I was the reason. Besides, if you are another man’s vassal, what am I? A vassal’s vassal. Be damned to that.’
‘So there is no escape for us? No endless bower? No perpetual spring?’
‘None, my darling. You must fight and I must weave.’
‘Perhaps I should weave and you should fight, my fierce one.’
‘Would that I could. Trust me, my summer heart, if you stayed and spun, listening to the wittering of bitter, bored women, you would understand emptiness.’
‘Does it bore you?’
‘Is boredom a word big enough?’
‘But the essence is that both our tasks are meaningless.’
‘It is all meaningless. This life, this death. We’re killing time, my love, until judgement. So we must kill it with style.’
‘But the judging, at the gates, that gives us the purpose.’
‘You think that, my summer heart, if it consoles you.’
‘It is bleak, your philosophy.’
‘The truth is bleak. Mostly. But not all. This is true.’
‘Us? Oh, my love, yes. And not bleak. We must seek out our joy, then?’
‘Yes. And I am here.’
~~~
Back down the hill, at last, to normal life. But a normal life that glowed, that sang its own low song of love beneath the mundane.
Eimhear slotted in at Sigrdrifa’s right hand, throwing herself into the hard work that heralded the onset of winter. Somerled was back with his band, drilling and fighting, cleaning and sharpening; getting ready for their own hibernation and the spring raiding that would follow.
Sigurd returned. He had found Mebd’s mother and her sister, living where they had always lived. She had embraced them and showered them with Somerled’s silver, promised her mother an easier life. She had smiled, Sigurd said, and that smile was fresh and innocent as a twelve-year-old’s, there in the place where she belonged. Somerled put aside his guilt. He added it to the list of guilts and regrets that he would worry about, most likely, when he was old. For now, he was too happy for dark-edged thoughts.
The short days meant long nights. Gathering by the fire, there were the usual tales and songs, the usual rhythmic killing of the dark evenings. But now there was Eimhear. Her hand in his. Her shoulder against his. Her amused eyes meeting his over the mangled poetry as his warriors sought to outdo each other in verse-making.
There was Eimhear’s hair burning in the firelight. Her long legs in the darkness wrapping around his back, and her whispers in his ear as he fought to keep his passion silent behind the curtain. He would dream, as he drifted to sleep, of love in the empty mountains, where he could shout and groan and scream with the joy of her.
There was Eimhear’s face in the still-dark mornings, and the secret smiles that spoke of pleasure enjoyed, and joy to come.
And running through it all was a warning that throbbed in his heart. This is too rare. This is too precious. This cannot last. This is too much blessing.
The year turned, too fast. The cold and dark that kept him here, tethered to her side, began to ease. He cursed the lightness, cursed the warmth.
‘Fool,’ she whispered, in the darkness.
‘Witch.’
‘Is it a spell, then, my summer heart? If it is, you have cast it on me.’
‘I have not. You are me. I am you.’
‘If I am you, can I come raiding with you?’
‘You cannot.’
‘You are full of shit, Somerled. If you were me, you would die of boredom when the men have gone raiding.’
‘Is it so bad?’
‘It is for me.’
‘Because of your deep soul.’
She laughed. ‘No. No. Not my deep soul. Here’s the thing, Somerled. I am tone deaf. Completely.’
He propped himself up on an elbow.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Music. Song. It is painful to me. I see other people’s pleasure, and I am unmoved. Bored.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes. Completely. I didn’t understand, for a long time. Why I was different. I call the time wrong in the waulking songs. Every time. Every single time. It’s not funny.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Well, maybe a little funny. It’s all right when the bards are singing. I can concentrate on the words. Even the hymns. But the working songs … Oh my life. They are all rhythm. No words. No words that count. In fact the words are supposed to be an endless repetitive loop, to work with the rhythm, to match the loom, or the churning, or the kneading. At first I find it irritating. Then it goes on and on and on until it’s in my head, in my belly, and I want to scream. The other women find that the singing is the only thing that makes the grinding repetition of their work bearable. Without the pleasure of the song, I have only the grinding repetition.’
‘You are my woman. You could order them silent.’
‘Really? Order your men not to mock each other.’
‘True.’
‘There’s no solution. You can’t make this better for me. It is what it is.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘I’m a fisherman who hates fish.’
‘A warrior who faints at blood.’
‘A bard who can’t sing.’
‘We’ve already got one of those. Shh, don’t laugh so loud. You’ll wake the whole hall.’
‘Make me silent, then. I am here.’
~~~
The day came at last when Aed’s face told him what he already knew. It was time to go raiding. To set off down the coast and find his men glory and silver. The task of reclaiming his birthright was so close, so near. Some recalcitrant bands, a few Norse strongholds.
He’d sent messengers. To Fergus in Galloway. David in Alba. Olaf in Man. I am the King of Argyll, he wrote. Recognize me. To the lesser chieftains in Mull and Morvern. Up into Ardnamurchan, down into Kintyre. Inland, to the lesser places, away from the lifeblood of the sea. Pay me tribute. They laughed at his audacity, and now he would laugh at their death rattles.
This was his moment. And all he wanted was to stay here, with Eimhear, naked, warm and smiling.
He pulled on his helmet, hard and cold. He hefted his unyielding sword. He set his face in a war growl. He watched his galleys loading, and straining at their moorings. Where he should have felt eagerness, pride, there was only sorrow, regret. What if something happened while he was away. To her? To him? To this bond between them, that was at once so fragile and so unbreakable?
The Winter Isles Page 14