Lord of Falcon Ridge

by Catherine Coulter

  There were thirty men, most of them from Malverne. All were warriors, all were ready for anything, all skilled with axes, swords, and guile. All of them had brought goods to trade at Inverness. Merrik hoped for a fine profit from this trip as well as helping Cleve regain what was rightfully his.

  The trading town of Inverness looked much like the town of York some years before. Inverness was smaller, cruder, and its fortifications weren’t as impressive as those at either York or Hedeby or Kaupang. It was more like Birka, Merrik thought, but then he changed his mind. Its paths weren’t covered with planks of wood and thus the ground, when it rained, would be muddy and dangerous. That had to be often. It probably sweated rain here, he thought. It reminded him of Ireland, so very much green from all the rain, but the mist was different here, like fine spiders’ webs, open here, yet opaque over a tree or a rock. The mist was lifting as the morning lengthened toward noon, but not entirely, hardly ever entirely.

  They tied the Silver Raven and the Malverne fellow trading ship to the far dock beside a trading ship from Dublin. Next to it was a vessel from the northern islands called the Orkneys and another from the Shetland Islands.

  Half the men remained on board. Cleve, carrying Kiri in his arms, walked beside Chessa to the center of the small town. There was row upon row of wooden buildings, all of them shops close together selling furs, jewelry, shoes, swords and axes, bows and arrows, some for trading or selling slaves, so much more. There were open-air fish markets, farmers’ goods were arranged beneath leather covers to keep the sun off them, when there was sun. There was noise and activity everywhere, men and women bargaining, shouting, cursing customers who outwitted them, rubbing their hands together when they’d gotten the better of the bargain—once the customer had left their shop, naturally.

  “Where are we going, Papa?” Kiri said, her first words since they’d left the dock. She’d seen Kaupang, but this was new and exciting. This was Scotland.

  “We’re going to find a bathing hut. You’re as dirty as that louse I just picked off Eller’s head this morning. So is Chessa and so am I. I want you smelling like honey again, sweeting, so I can kiss your ear without wrinkling my nose.”

  She laughed and was still laughing when Cleve left her and Chessa with an old crone at a bathing hut. It was a wooden hut with a thickly thatched roof, as were most all the other buildings. Inside it was steaming hot, a huge wooden tub in the middle with woven mats beside it. It looked like Valhalla to Chessa.

  When Cleve, himself now clean, came to fetch them two hours later, a good dozen of the Malverne men with him, he brought new gowns, and for Chessa, two beautiful silver brooches, made only in the Shetland Islands, he told her. They were called silver thistle brooches because of the thistles carved into the sides and top of the brooches. And from Orkney, he gave her a gold finger ring, made of five rods twisted and plaited together. Chessa just gazed at that ring. She’d had fine jewels given to her by her father in Dublin, armlets, finger rings, brooches, many so dazzling with the purity of the gold and silver, the sheer delicateness of their fashioning, that they made Sira jealous, which was always an interesting thing to watch, but this ring was surely the most exquisite she’d ever seen. Despite all the men standing about and the old crone and Kiri, Chessa threw herself into Cleve’s arms, nearly toppling him over so unexpected was her pleasure. “Oh, they’re beautiful, the most superb jewelry I’ve ever seen. You’re wonderful, Cleve, the most perfect man, the best of—” She looked demurely at the men standing behind him, now beginning to frown, and just smiled down at her feet, saying low, but not low enough that they couldn’t hear her, “and you’re such a splendid lover and husband, more than any wife could wish for.”

  It was difficult, but he didn’t strangle her. “Be quiet, damn you, or I’ll thrash you right here. By all the gods, do you want them to kill me?”

  “All right,” she said, smiling at him, “I’ll hold my peace, thought it is all probably true,” and kissed him on his closed mouth. “Aren’t you an excellent lover, Cleve?”

  “I’ll strangle you.”

  “What did you get for me, Papa?”

  It took Cleve a moment to focus on his daughter. He smiled, handing her a small arm ring of shining silver. He let her touch it and stare at it, then slipped it onto her upper arm, tightening it because her arm was very small.

  “Your second papa is the daughter of the King of Ireland. I suppose that must make you some sort of adopted princess too. That’s very fine, Kiri.”

  The men looked jealous and wistful. Chessa knew they missed their wives and children. She wondered if they wanted to kill Cleve again. She imagined all of them had traded their goods for jewelry. But it could be a long time until they returned to Malverne.

  “Och, yer white gentiles!”

  All the men whirled around to face a graybeard who looked as if he should have died twenty summers before. He had a long scraggly beard that hung nearly to his waist, and no hair at all on his head. He wore a black robe that was tied at his sagging middle with a thick rope. He was giving them a big toothless smile.

  “We get many black gentiles trading here,” he said when he reached them, and Chessa thought, Ah, here’s a perfect mate for Old Alna. “They don’t stay long. They go back down to the Danelaw. They’re not fit for our climes.”

  “What’s that, Chessa?” Kiri asked, unable to take her eyes off the old man.

  “I don’t know. Cleve?”

  “We’re from Norway, thus we’re white gentiles. Black gentiles are Danes. We’re taller and have lighter hair, that’s all, that’s the only difference, that and we have more honor than the damned Danes.”

  Merrik smiled down at the old ancient. “I am Merrik, Lord of Malverne, in Norway. We’re bringing our friend home. He’s been gone since he was a small boy. His family rules Kinloch. Perhaps you know of them?”

  It seemed the old man shriveled before their eyes. The scoring wrinkles on his face seemed to deepen. He stared at Cleve and began backing away. “Och,” he said, crossing his fingers in front of him to ward Cleve off. “Yer one of them, one of them fiends what call out the monster.”

  “What fiends?” Chessa said.

  “What monster?” Merrik asked.

  The old man was trembling, his gnarly hands opening and fisting. “The Kinloch, he calls himself the Lord of the Night. He rules as harshly as the earls of Orkney. He orders his men to kill and take what they want. He’s a fiend, a man of evil, lower than the Christian’s devil, who draws nearer to us everyday. We don’t know if the Christian God is more powerful than the Christian devil. Who wants to take the chance? But we’re already got our devil here, and it’s yer kin—the Lord of the Night—the Lord of Evil. Get away, get away from here if yer a part of him and his. Aye, ye are, a monster, just like he is. I see it clearly now. Jest look at ye.”

  “This is interesting,” Cleve said, frowning after the old man, who was surprisingly agile in his escape for one of his advanced years. “I come from the family of fiends? The Lord of the Night? Of Evil? As bad as the Christian’s devil? He must not like my hideous face. This sounds like one of Laren’s tales. Where is Laren?”

  “She will be here shortly. She and Eller were trading soapstone bowls. Ours are the finest in the market. Sarla made them before she became, well, maddened.”

  No one said anything to that.

  * * *

  They left Inverness several hours later, well before it was dark. They sailed down the narrow river Ness, seeing small settlements on both sides of the shore, looking for a deserted cove to stay for the night. At the mouth of Loch Ness, they pulled the warship and the trading vessel into a small inlet that seemed deserted and pulled both boats well up onto the shore.

  The mist became thicker during the evening, the summer air chill. Laren cooked a red deer stew that made everyone groan with pleasure.

  “I remember now,” Cleve said as his knife tip speared another piece of the tender deer meat. “I remember that red
deer abound, as well as rabbits and grouse. With all the salmon and herring in the loch, no one ever starves, even in winter, for it is never as cold here as it is in Norway.”

  “A land of plenty,” Merrik said to Cleve. “But this fog or mist—it’s summer, and just look. We’re shivering off our bearskins. Tomorrow,” he continued, smiling now at Cleve, “we’ll find out what kind of a friend you really are.”

  Chessa was holding Kiri between her crossed legs as she sat close to the fire. She said, “Cleve, tell us about this man who married your mother after your father died.”

  Cleve flinched; he couldn’t help it. “His name is Varrick. You know, what I remember most clearly is the coldness. Even curled next to the fire pit, I was always cold. Everyone in that longhouse was cold. And he was the coldest one of all. He made the cold. I think he’s a white gentile, just like you are, Merrik, despite the darkness of his hair. My mother was a Dalriada Scot. I can see him as if I were a small boy again, standing in front of him, staring up at him—he was a giant to me for I was small—and I knew he must hate me since my older brother and I were the heirs to Kinloch, that he must want us dead, that he would kill us, it was just a matter of time. I was terrified of him. He never hit me, never touched me. He would just look down at me as if I were something of mild interest to him, nothing more. He was big, as are most Vikings, but he was thin I remember, for once I saw him naked in the bathing hut and I could see his ribs. He was very young, no older than I am now. As I said, his hair was dark and he usually wore it loose around his face. His face, by the gods, his face was so cold, just as he was, and he treated everyone with that same coldness, even my mother and my sisters, particularly my elder brother. Everyone was terrified of him, why, I don’t know. He liked to lift me up so my face was right in front of his and he’d shake me—never hard enough to hurt me—and I’d shrivel into nothing. But then he’d smile at me and that made me all the more terrified of him. Many times he hugged me against him and I was so frightened I often forgot to breathe. I remember he told me I was his, only his, and I would be what he wanted me to be. And I wasn’t to forget it, ever.

  “I remember one night he came into the longhouse after standing on the edge of the promontory that overlooks Loch Ness. A storm was raging outside. He was wearing black, I think he always wore black, and there were strange blue markings on his face. No one said a word. But I remember again the coldness of him and of how he made me feel.

  “I remember he hated filth. He wouldn’t allow any blood to be seen on anyone. When the men came in from a kill, they couldn’t show themselves until their bodies and clothes were clean. He abhorred animal flesh, I remember that clearly. I can see him looking at my mother when she once forgot and offered him a platter of roasted deer. He took the platter from her and then put it on the ground at his feet for his dogs. He looked at her and said she would regret that.

  “It’s strange, but before that, I remember laughter and fighting and quarreling, everyone, the men, the women, the children, and everyone shared and worked together.” Cleve sighed. “Then again, I must have been very young. Maybe I dreamed that once everything was different, mayhap it wasn’t. But I do remember my mother coming to my pallet at night and holding me and telling me that one day my brother would become Lord of Kinloch and my brother would see that I served him well and honored me. She had to know that he would rid himself of my brother and of me. She had to.”

  Laren leaned forward, her vibrant red hair glistening in the light of the leaping fire, thick and damp with the mist that hung low over them. “I remember you told us your mother died. Do you remember this, Cleve? Did this Varrick kill her?”

  “I don’t know. She died just before I was taken. I remember thinking when I was well enough to think, Why me? Why not my brother? He was, after all, the heir to Kinloch. But I was the one struck, I was the one left for dead, I was the one found and nursed back to health, then sold as a slave.” He paused, “Look over Loch Ness. Look at how very murky it is. That’s because of all the peat moss in it. Even when there’s no mist, even with a bright sun overhead, you can’t see very far beneath the surface. It’s also said that the loch is bottomless, that any who fall into it will never come up. It’s said that there are caves honeycombing the sides and that bodies wash into those caves and are held there for the monster.”

  “You remember all that?” Merrik asked, knifing down one final bite of the deer stew. “Ah, Laren, that was delicious.”

  Cleve grinned. “Nay, I listened to several men at the market today. A fisherman had just disappeared in the loch. They told me all about it. They made little attempt to find him since they know he’s dead and there’s no hope of regaining his body for burial. Never does anyone venture onto the loch after sunset.”

  “This man you describe,” Laren said, “He does rather sound like this Lord of the Night, this Lord of Evil. He wore black and pranced about in raging storms, he painted his face blue. What sort of markings were they, do you remember, Cleve?”

  “I only remember squares and circles. I was only five or six years old, Laren. Perhaps not even that.”

  “This was all twenty years ago,” Chessa said. “That’s a very long time, but it seems your stepfather is still very much alive. I am anxious to see him. I like the notion of him wearing black and prancing about. It makes my mind spin.”

  “Oh, no,” Cleve said, and slapped his hand against his forehead. “Not more chaos from you, Chessa. Be quiet, and think only calm thoughts.”

  “We’ll discover the truth tomorrow,” Merrik said. He turned to his wife, who was leaning against his shoulder, staring with her skald’s dreamy eyes into the fire. “Have you already begun to weave your tale, sweeting?”

  “Aye, my lord. It is the ending that eludes me. I want to know more about this monster.”

  “There is one,” Cleve said, and every man leaned forward, silent and alert. He felt a ripple of fear, of the unknown, grip them. It gripped him as well. “It’s said that the monster lives in Loch Ness and has for thousands of years. Whether it is good or evil, no one knows. The men who were speaking of the monster said he’s seen not just on clear nights beneath the moonlight, but during the day as well, at any time. It’s said the monster comes out during storms only when it’s called. Perhaps that is why my stepfather is a fiend. They believe he calls the monster out.”

  “This has all the makings of a fine tale,” Laren said, and yawned. “My lord.” She offered her hand to her husband and he pulled her up and into his arms.

  There was no choice that night. Kiri would sleep with her two papas. Cleve wanted Chessa so much he nearly moaned aloud with his need for her. As for his wife, she just looked at him wistfully, kissed him when Kiri turned away, then sighed when the child whipped about and frowned up at her, jealousy clearly writ on her small face. Chessa said, “I’m a princess, Kiri. I can kiss anyone I want to. Even you.” She grabbed up the little girl, tossed her into the air, then caught her and kissed her loudly on her little mouth.

  Laren said to Cleve, “She does well with Kiri. I knew that one day you would wed, but I also knew that Kiri wouldn’t like it at all. You made an excellent choice, Cleve.”

  “Ha,” he said. “I made no choice at all. It was she who picked me with my hideous scarred face and my eyes that don’t match.”

  “I wish you would stop that,” Laren said, shaking his woolen sleeve. “You’re a dangerous-looking devil, aye, that’s true enough, and it makes all the women shiver with the thought of what you’d do to them. As for those eyes of yours, well, if it weren’t for Merrik standing not an inch behind me, I’d leap on you, just like Chessa always seems to want to do.”

  “Aye, and after you’d leapt at me, Laren, Merrik would kill me,” Cleve said. “You think me dangerous, Laren?”

  “Oh, aye,” she said. She said over her shoulder as Merrik just laughed and tugged at her hand, “Your eyes will very likely seal your claim to your birthright. No one could be certain you were the same
child who returned as Cleve, but your gold eye and your blue eye, all would remember that.”

  “She’s right,” Merrik said. “I fear only that this Lord Varrick will simply stick a knife between your ribs or poison you. Now, wife, I’m weary to my bones. But not weary in other places.” He led his wife to their small tent, set apart from the other men’s, her merry laughter sounding in their ears.

  Chessa grabbed Cleve by his ears. “You mustn’t listen to other women, husband, even Laren. Saying she would leap on you if Merrik weren’t close. Bah! They will make your head grow fat and filled with thoughts of your own beauty. You must only listen to me. I will never lie to you.”

  “And what will you tell me, Chessa?”

  “That when you look at me I want to make you part of me forever.”

  He just stared down at her. “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “And I would leap on you even if Merrik is close. As for Kiri—”

  “Papa, I’m tired.”

  “Aye, sweeting, we’ll sleep now.” He sighed again, very deeply. Chessa sighed as well.

  21

  LOCH NESS GLISTENED beneath a morning sun. There was no soft mist to bathe the surrounding green hills and sloping forests of pine and oak beneath a mysterious white veil. The land looked lonely and magical, savage and unforgiving. Chessa could easily see the undergrowth of holly and hazel from the warship. Heather was everywhere, colorful blooms rioting over rocks, very close to the shore. The land had a wild and forlorn look. A golden eagle flew overhead, an osprey close behind it. She heard buzzards squawking. It was warm, the water was calm, and the men rowed smooth and cleanly through it. It was a large loch, fresh water, and very wide. But still the water wasn’t a clear rich blue like the fjords at home, no, just below that clear surface it was dark. Chessa didn’t want to fall in that water.