Og was waiting.
‘There are lots of stones where the old people make offerings, but I don’t know why.’
Og translated. Pytheas looked at her as if he could see her secrets.
‘Does your foster mother make these offerings? She is a medicine woman, isn’t she?’
Rian nodded. That much was common knowledge, but she would not be drawn any more on the matter of stones.
Pytheas spoke at length to Og, after which Og said only, ‘He tells a story of some other Greek who bought a slave to stop some king from doing her harm.’
‘Brisei.’ Pytheas patted her on the shoulder. ‘Achilles.’ His other hand was on his chest.
‘He wants you to know he means you no harm.’ With that Og went into his galley area under the shelter at the bow.
Pytheas beckoned to her, speaking in his tongue, pointing to himself, giving his name, repeating a phrase over and over and clearly wanting her to say it back to him. She tried to pronounce the strange phrase, ‘Onopa moi…,’ replacing Pytheas with Rian, and he clapped his hands, beaming, and corrected her. She tried again and again and eventually he was satisfied and moved on to teaching her how to greet him, and how to say goodbye. She learned happy and sad, cold and hot, and finally hungry. So began her lessons in Greek. ‘Hungry’, ‘peinao’, was the trigger for her to seek Og in his galley, where she was set to work helping him to prepare food for everyone.
Eribol
By mid-afternoon they had rounded the Cape at the north and made their way east to a big loch where they began looking for somewhere sheltered for the night. Rian knew the people from here. A cousin of Danuta lived in a beautiful roundhouse known as Three Lochs, next to a trio of lochs with healing powers. But no-one on board asked for her help. Why would they? She was just a slave.
There was frantic activity for a while as the loch was sized up for a mooring spot. The sails dropped, oars were set out and all hands put to them, including Rian’s. She loved to skull but this was harder than any rowing she had ever done in a coracle.
They pulled the boat up on the shore and set up a makeshift camp. They were on the far side of the loch from Three Lochs and no attempt was made to go over to greet the people. Rian wondered why, but said nothing. A spare sail was rigged from a rope between trees and two of the slaves set to cutting birches, with none of the customary ritual to seek permission from the wood spirits. Rian thought to intervene but, registering Ussa’s bad-tempered pacing, decided it was better not to. She begged the Mother silently for forgiveness and spoke in a whisper as subtly as she could to the tree spirits, thanking them for their help.
She was put to work carrying sleeping rolls, food and drink from the boat to the camp. Then she was sent in the near dark to fetch water from the stream in two bladders.
Night fell swiftly and Ussa sat complaining to Toma while Og led the preparation of food.
Toma perched on his bedding roll with his hands clasped on his lap, his boy Callum beside him. ‘Sailing in during darkness? Suicide. You’ve seen the rosts.’
Rian had no idea what a rost was.
Ussa rolled her eyes at him. ‘Well, don’t blame me if the people over there slit our throats in the night.’
Toma smiled. ‘I can’t help it if you’ve made enemies, Ussa.’
Rian wondered what Ussa had done to anger the Three Lochs people but, before she could listen more, Pytheas beckoned her to him. He began teaching her vocabulary for food – meat of various sorts, involving animal noises – until Ussa shouted at him to be quiet. He winked at Rian, who tried to shrink back into the shadows.
But Ussa saw her and snapped her fingers. ‘Fetch my coat.’
Rian scampered to where she had seen Ussa drop it earlier, under the sail rigged as a sleeping tent. She carried it back, her fingers swallowed by the dense white fur. It weighed as much as a dog. She held it out to Ussa, who took it without looking.
Then Og asked her to help cook the bannocks, which at least gave her a chance to look after the fire and be tender to it and thereby perhaps appease the wood spirits. She looked up to see Pytheas’ eyes on her. He grinned. She lowered her gaze back down to the patty of dough but could not help an answering smile breaking onto her face. Ussa said something in her tongue and everyone laughed. Rian wished Pytheas would let her focus on picking up that language, not the one only he used. It might be more use to her to understand the subtleties of Ussa’s jibes and jokes. She could make out some of what was said, as the language they all used wasn’t so different from her own, but they all had strong accents and strange intonation and she missed a lot.
Ussa tapped her on the knee. ‘I said your master should be teaching you to speak Keltic properly so you can understand what we all want from you instead of us having to use your gutterspeak.’ She opened her mouth wide to laugh, reverting to her home dialect and clearly continuing to make jokes at her expense. She was sitting right next to Pytheas, rubbing up to him like a cat.
Rian was saved by Og serving up the meat he had stewed. The silence of eating descended.
She felt a bump as Fraoch sat down beside her. Og handed her a bowl of stew and Rian gave her half of the last bannock. They were good, and there were grunts of appreciation from around the fire. Li waved the remainder of his at Rian, his cheeks full, and said something, presumably his word for ‘tasty’. She repeated it to herself in her head. While Pytheas taught her Greek, there was nothing to stop her picking up what she could of this other language too. It didn’t seem so different from her native tongue and she had already noticed some familiar words.
Fraoch nudged her. ‘They like your cooking,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t mind Ussa’s teasing. She’s like that with everyone, but she has a heart of gold, really. She’ll treat you well if you keep the crew’s bellies happy.’
As soon as she had eaten, Fraoch went off to where she and Gruach were sleeping in their own shelter a little apart from the others, no doubt to get some peace and quiet. A flask of something foul-smelling was doing the rounds of the sailors. Ussa reverted to bickering at Toma. Rian was tired.
She woke to Pytheas leaning over her, pointing towards the tent made of sail. She dragged herself to her feet and gratefully made tracks to bed. It was starting to snow. Pytheas showed her where he had put his sleeping roll and indicated a hide mat and her fleece, next to him. He had lit a little oil lamp and, as she snuggled down, thanking Danuta for the extra layer of warm clothes she had given her, Pytheas got a square object out of his box, a tough leather casing beautifully embossed which opened out to reveal sheets of a smooth material covered with tiny markings. What other treasures were hidden in the luggage of this mysterious man?
‘Periplus,’ he said.
She frowned, mystified. He seemed proud of it, stroking it, and she liked him for his treasuring of this object. Perhaps if he was going to teach her to speak his tongue, he might teach her to read his script as well.
‘Periplus,’ she repeated, although sleep was making her tongue sluggish. He smiled down at her and put his hand on her hair with the same action he had used on the book.
‘Good night,’ he said. ‘Hypíaine.’
‘Hypíaine,’ she repeated.
And then it was morning. Or at least it was the part of the night when Toma decreed they must leave. The tide was back in, starting to lick the boat’s stern timbers. In the half dark Rian rolled up her bedding and tied it.
Og was searching for dry sticks. ‘We need porridge, quick.’
She gathered some slender birch twigs and dead heather stems. She breathed the fire back to life and fed it until the flames danced. Toma grumbled at Og but, when he saw the pot of porridge Rian was stirring, his shoulders dropped a notch and he almost smiled.
Li and Faradh emerged from their beds bleary and confused, and sat gazing into the flames until Ussa smacked them on the backs of their heads, cursing thei
r excessive drinking in words even Rian could not fail to understand. She was beginning to distinguish the various tones that Ussa had in her repertoire: a coarse, guttural register for talking to slaves, a barking shrillness for those like Toma whom she considered should do her will, and a silken sing-song for anyone she was hoping to ingratiate herself with, which seemed to include Pytheas and for some reason Gruach. She is like a dog with three barks, Rian thought, one for sheep, one for the pack and one for the master.
Soon, porridge eaten, they were under way.
As dawn grew the tide lifted the boat free and the slaves began carrying all of the gear back down the shore. The snow had not been much but it was enough to make the stones slippery and there were curses as they slithered about, getting in each others’ way in their haste to spend as little time as possible with their feet in the water. The sun rose behind the hill to the east as Rian clambered on board. The oars bit into the water. Toma called for the last of the ropes to be untied and a burst of sunshine blazed through the birches, crystals of ice glittering. Faradh and Li began to sing as they rowed. Callum tugged loose various ropes and Og joined in, hauling up the mainsail to the rhythm of the tune until Ussa snapped at them all to be quiet. As the sail caught the breeze, Toma allowed Li and Faradh to stop rowing.
Li minced about in a mockery of silence but the bronze tip of Ussa’s well-aimed rod on his fingers took the smile off his face. After that Ussa sat alone in front of the mast and everyone else steered clear of her. Toma was the only one looking cheerful at first, but the beauty of the day could not fail to lift their spirits. It was one of those clear, blue mornings when then world is new again and seems ready for anything.
Toma called for Fraoch and asked her something, pointing at Rian. He showed her a tangle of ropes and she nodded, seeming to understand what was needed. Toma asked Pytheas and he gave a nod of assent. Rian watched with unease as Fraoch began tugging the ropes towards the bench where she had hoped she would be inconspicuous.
‘Help me with these, Rian.’
Between the two of them the bundle slid easily across the deck. ‘Do you know how to fix rope?’
Rian shook her head.
‘No problem. It’s easy. I’ll show you.’
Fraoch sat down on the bench. Rian shuffled along to make room for her, then picked up an end of the rope to look at it more closely. It was much more smooth and flexible than the tough heather rope that she was used to handling.
‘This is a blessing,’ said Fraoch. ‘Easy to look busy and a chance to talk to someone nice for a change.’
Rian didn’t meet her eye.
‘That was a compliment.’ Fraoch nudged her with her elbow.
‘Sorry.’ Rian glanced at Fraoch. She seemed so confident, as if her muscles were somehow filled with a liquid hotter and more powerful than mere blood.
Fraoch nudged her again and nodded towards Ussa, imitating her sulking pout.
Rian let herself smile a little although she felt only dread. But she had nowhere else to go and so she sat very still and paid attention as Fraoch showed her how to mend the ropes. They were made of long, strong fibres: hemp, Fraoch said, which grew further south. It was a marvellous material, more pliable than heather twine and stronger than the nettle fibres she had spent countless hours plaiting to make halters for cattle and handles for bags. Fraoch’s fingers were deft. She split the fibres of the broken ends of rope and twisted them back around each other until they held.
Rian was good at this sort of work and she was soon weaving almost as well as Fraoch. Though her hands weren’t as strong, her fingers were nimble, and the older girl gave her the thinner, lighter ropes to work on. The bigger ones were plied and took the strength of two of them to twist right.
‘It’s satisfying, isn’t it?’ Fraoch said. ‘When my mother died, Ussa told me to make rope whenever I’m unhappy.’
Rian’s fingers slowed. So Fraoch was motherless, too. Her curiosity was piqued but she didn’t want to be friendly. She had watched Ussa and Fraoch together and there was an ease between them that meant Fraoch must be suspect.
They were far out to sea, keeping well off the rocky coastline. Under the keel was a bottomless, black depth. The boat seemed flimsy. It rolled from side to side with every wave and the water slapping its hide skin was endlessly repetitive.
‘When did she die?’ Rian asked, eventually.
‘When I was seven. Ussa taught me to weave my feelings into ropes, one twine of sadness, one twine of love, another twine of anger maybe, whatever I had inside me on the day. It all goes into the rope to make it strong. It works. I’ve always done it like that. Even when you don’t know what to call the feeling, the rope understands.’
Rian tried twisting her hurt into the fibres in her hands, then the sickness in the pit of her belly, which she saw, once it was between her fingers, as fury: dark, bitter fury at Drost. Then there was the sorrow of not being with Danuta and Buia, not being with Beithe, not being in her secret place in the woods. She tried to stop the tears from welling up but they would not be prevented.
‘It’s good to wet the hemp a little sometimes. Let it come out, keep winding it all into the rope.’
Rian sniffed and kept her fingers working.
‘Here.’ Fraoch dug into a pocket on her jerkin and produced a cloth of soft material.
Rian took it and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘Sorry. It’s lovely stuff.’ She rubbed it between her fingers. ‘Shame to snot on it.’ She half laughed between her tears. Fraoch’s concern stung her. There was such unbearable kindness in her face.
‘You keep it,’ Fraoch said. ‘I’ve got another one. It’s good linen, from Kantion, same as the hemp. It used to be an underslip of my granny’s. She’d like me to be passing it on again. She’s generous like that.’
Rian remembered the Sisters at Callanish and felt the same hot glow of adoration for Fraoch that she had felt sitting beside the Spring Dancer that first time. She blew her nose again then folded the linen square and tucked it inside her belt. The feeling for Fraoch was a float, buoying her along. She put her hands back to the rope, sniffed again, and heard the water hushing under the keel.
They sailed on, the breeze not quite directly behind them. For a while a cloud grizzled out the sun but then the sky cleared again, opening out into innocent blue.
Pytheas came with his box and squeezed onto the bench beside Rian as they worked the rope. The girls fell quiet. He seemed to be content to sit without talking, watching their hands, but Rian was conscious of his thigh pressing against hers. He opened his chest and took out his writing tools. He unplugged a bottle and dipped a quill into the liquid inside it. Rian watched with fascination as he scratched on the sheet of what must be parchment. She had only ever heard of it and wanted to touch its smooth paleness.
He spoke to Fraoch and she said, ‘He wants to know if you can guess what he is writing.’
Rian gave a tiny shake of her head.
Fraoch and he conferred. ‘He is telling where he has been. He writes down what you told him yesterday about stones. He is describing this coastline, where we stopped last night, the time of the moon and the high and low tide.’
‘Why?’
Fraoch and he talked at length. Rian tried to follow but could only make out a few words. It was frustrating.
‘I don’t understand what he is trying to explain to me,’ said Fraoch. ‘He says the moon chooses the height of the tide but it is not because she is a goddess, it is something else.’
The moon was a powerful goddess. Rian had no doubt of that. She wondered what Danuta would have said to Pytheas. She also knew the tide was always biggest around the full and new moons. Should she say this to him? Before she could, he was pointing to a scratch mark on the parchment.
‘He says this is moon.’
‘Selene.’
She repeated it after
him and, as she said it, he bounced his quill from tiny mark to tiny mark.
‘Each mark has a different sound,’ said Fraoch, and suddenly Rian understood. It was like Ogham, the script Danuta had taught her for carving into magic sticks.
He showed her another squiggle. ‘Thalassa.’ He spoke so the vowel sounds were clear. ‘ThA-lA-ssA.’
‘A,’ he repeated. He pointed to the corresponding marks and Rian saw that they were the same. Then he scratched four symbols, emphasising the third, which was the A again. ‘Ri-A-n,’ he said. ‘R-i-a-n.’
Her name was there on the parchment, a sequence of four marks. Would she ever get her soul back? It had fallen out of her mouth, which remained open. It was there staring back at her from the magic surface of the sheet spread out on Pytheas’ knee.
Then he was handing her the quill, shifting the page towards her. It was almost more than she could bear. He wanted her to copy what he had written. She took the feather and, as if it was not such a marvel after all, she wrote her name.
Seal Islands
As they approached the Seal Islands the easy sailing came to an end. All the ropes and boxes were stowed away. The water became choppy.
‘There are dangerous currents here.’ Fraoch wound up the last of the ropes. ‘Best not to antagonise Toma.’ She put her finger to her lips and shrank into the corner of the bench. Beside her, Rian gazed out at the islands looming up out of the sea.
Toma began a convoluted song with a short chorus. Callum joined in but when Og added his voice to it Toma asked him to desist. Toma seemed to be using the words of the song to guide him along, as if it was a kind of magic to make the water safe, or perhaps just a way of teaching his boy the way to the anchorage.
The Walrus Mutterer Page 6