He had the fleeting impression of dissolving images, the way birds will scatter from bread at the appearance of a dog, and the garden was his, empty, while he stood on the grass bellowing a challenge, waving his sword.
The crisp tickle of grass against his good foot brought him back to his senses, and he lowered his point, sinking onto his knees on the grass. The sword’s tip speared the lawn so that his cheek rested against the cold metal of the basket around the grip.
He began to laugh. Even he knew it was a strange, manic kind of laugh. He’d just realised he was stark bollock naked and chasing Grandpa’s ghosts around the garden with a ceremonial sword.
As his laughter quietened he heard waves against the shingle on the beach, the tumble, spread and fade once again sounding like the soft whisper of many men.
Fa-ey-th… Fa-ey-th…
IX: Diary of Edvard Ahlquist, Volume 39
10 th March Wind SW, 4-5. Showers.
I made a will. Did it proper, with a lawyer.
Harry don’t need the money, he’s done well for himself. Besides, did he really expect to ignore me, then scoop the lot? He’s spent 40 years punishing me, wrapped around his anger until it’s become part of him. Encysted. That’s a word I learned from a doctor.
I never should have married his mother. We were just kids, fooling around. She was a rebel; I was her bit of rough to be flaunted at her parents. Accidents like babies weren’t supposed to happen to spoilt brats like her. At least I stood by her and did the right thing. Her family helped, but God, did I pay for it, year after shrieking year. Always shouting about the smart people she could have married, the doctors or the lawyers.
Ok, so I strayed. Any man would if he had to put up with all that verbal.
Tilly would waste it. No matter how much you give her, she’s always got her hand out for more. She’d be like the lottery winners you see on the telly who have a few years of flash cars and holidays before they’re back on benefits. I’ve left something for each of her kids, though, in trust so she can’t blow it.
But Jack would make use of it. We’ve always been close, him and me. I got my second chance at being a father, and maybe I did it better second time round. Encouraged him. Deep down, Harry was always threatened by Jack. He always had to knock him back.
Right now Jack’s drifting. With this he could start a business, or go to university like he always should have done. And I like to think of him here, in the cottage. It makes the leaving easier.
If the dragon went down with me and Draca, would the warrior leave Jack alone?
X: JACK
On the day before the ‘shakedown’ sail, Jack carried the carving into the boatyard. It wouldn’t seem as if the ship was truly ready for sea until Grandpa’s dragon was once again on her bow.
There had been three days of mounting excitement as the storm blew over.
On the first day, Chippy Alan put the engine back together, crouching on the chart-room’s deck while the rain lashed the skylight and the wind howled in the bare rigging above. Scotty fired on the third heave, and settled into a sweet, steady tick.
On the second day, the barometer rose, and George climbed the ratlines to the crosstrees to help with the halyards and running rigging. Scotty still sang.
On the third day, they bent on the mainsail, the one sail that ‘lived out’, secured to the boom and gaff. They stowed the jibs and foresails in the fo’c’s’le sail lockers. For a while Jack considered abandoning the old square sail, an antiquated rig whose yard meant extra weight, high on the mast, but it really drove the ship forward when the wind was steady on the stern or quarter. In the end he took it. It was how Grandpa had sailed.
The forecast for the following day was a steady westerly, force four, with a moderate sea on the tail of the storm. If the engine still worked, they’d sail. And with a slightly self-conscious air of ceremony, Jack installed the dragon.
It was lighter than its bulk suggested. The arched head in his arms was like a ghost of its former self, encased in an invisible sheath of polymer. Grandpa had treated it like a living thing. He’d wanted it to be with him when the ship was scuttled. Well, maybe Jack would drop it back in the ocean with Grandpa’s ashes. Either that, or give it to a museum afterwards. Sometimes Jack could understand why Grandpa spoke of it like that; the way the light caught its carved eyes could make them seem to follow you if you moved near it, the way the eyes of some oil paintings follow you. It was just a thing, a carved lump of wood, but as Jack carried it to the ship and smelled a sailing wind, he felt an excitement that was more than his own. When he sat in the dinghy under the bowsprit and lifted it into position, its gaping jaws seemed so hungry that they might have bitten a lump out of his shoulder in their impatience to be away.
Jack grinned at Chippy and George, who watched him from the jetty. George frowned back at him with her lips pursed into a narrow, tight line, but he wasn’t going to let her dislike of the carving spoil the moment.
‘Roll of drums!’ Jack held the dragon against the bow, poised over its metal holder. There should be more ceremony to this.
The rumble of distant thunder came so much on cue that Jack laughed, jolting the dragon so that it slipped home of its own volition, mashing the edge of Jack’s hand between the carving’s base and the metal socket. His laughter became a grunt as he freed his hand and cradled it. Blood welled into his palm and trickled between his fingers.
‘You OK?’ Chippy asked. George scanned a sky almost empty of cloud, still frowning.
Jack swore under his breath, pushing a triangular flap of skin back into place. ‘No problem. Looks messy but nothing serious.’
‘That’s weird.’ George still stared at the sky. ‘There ain’t no thunderclouds.’
Jack held the carving in place with his injured hand in its mouth, and tightened the fittings with his good hand.
‘It’s in a hurry. Like me.’ He felt slightly foolish and tried to make light of the moment.
‘Don’t say stuff like that, Jack.’
Jack looked at George. It wasn’t like her to have a sense-of-humour failure. The carved tongue felt slick and sticky against his palm, and he smeared the blood on the dragon’s face before he reached for the next nut.
‘Hey, lighten up. It slipped.’
‘It looks frigging evil.’
Jack looked up, and the dragon seemed to look back at him, a mess of bright red blood sliding down the trough between its tongue and its lips.
‘Hail to the dragon!’ He made it a mock obeisance, folding awkwardly on the dinghy’s seat.
‘I’m not joking, Jack.’ George stormed off towards her office. Jack looked at Chippy, lifting his arms as if to say, ‘What was all that about?’
Chippy didn’t react. ‘You’d better get that cleaned up. Might need a stitch.’ He steadied the dinghy so Jack could climb out one-handed.
Jack paused on the jetty, his mood only slightly dented. He and Chippy stood together, admiring a ship that was finally ready for the sea. The dragon’s head rose above the level of the deck, as high as Grandpa Eddie could have fitted it without interfering with the rigging, as like a Viking figurehead as possible in a ship with foresails. As they watched, a single gob of blood oozed from the dragon’s lip, and hung there as if on a fine, stretching thread until it fell into the water.
* * *
Damage, harm. ↵
Chapter Six: Gjálfrmarr
(Old Norse: steed of the sea)
From the Saga of King Guthrum
King Alfred and his army pursued King Guthrum to Fyrsig, and there made siege. Now Fyrsig stands on good ground within marshes, hence King Alfred could not come against Guthrum, nor Guthrum against Alfred, for the marshes lay between them and a few men could hold the causeway against many. Nor could Alfred attack by sea, for Guthrum’s fleet was the greater, but Alfred had piles set across the harbour mouth and men to guard them so that no Viking ships could escape.
Yet Guthrum and his army suffered not gr
eatly from the siege, for they lay in the halls at Fyrsig while the army of the Saxons must needs endure the winter in the fields about. There were fish to be caught within the great harbour, and fresh water from the river. Furthermore Guthrum sent raiding ships across the harbour, now to the East, now to the West, landing each time a half day’s march from the army of the Saxons and doing scathe in the lands about.
At the Spring festival when night and day are balanced, Guthrum feasted and held sacrifice for the success of the raiding season. Now there was among the Saxon women one who was troll-wise[1] and had been a völva,[2] but was now Christian like all Saxons, by the command of King Alfred. This woman they made to say the poems of seidr,[3] and they gave her the sacred bowls filled with the blood of sacrifice, that in the sprinkling of the hlaut[4] she might see their destiny. The woman spoke the poems and read the pattern of the blood, and proclaimed that the Norns had woven the fates of Guthrum’s people, and their destiny was set; one woman would cause the deaths of half the army, and their deaths would be without honour so their shades would not be chosen for the einherjar.[5] But these warriors who were denied the ranks of Odin would cry out to the gods, and the one that set their fate would be haugbūi,[6] undead, denied even Niflheim, for as many generations as Guthrum had years.
Guthrum liked these words very ill, and said that the woman spoke them as a Saxon who wished to put fear into the hearts of the Vikings so their weapons would be as sticks. Guthrum spared the woman, lest she curse him, but he feasted no more in Fyrsig.
I: JACK
Chippy helped them cast off, throwing the head rope to George on the foredeck. He was smiling to himself at Scotty’s steady purr. George and Jack waved back as if they were heading off to cross the Atlantic rather than for a single-day shakedown sail.
Jack kept Draca on the engine in the harbour. She drew a lot of water, and he wanted sea room around them when they hoisted the sails. He waited until they were far enough beyond the harbour mouth to have a mile of deep water downwind before he turned her into the wind, throttled back and lashed the tiller to hold her there.
Hoisting Draca’s mainsail was a job for two people, especially if one of them had a cut hand. From the beginning, they had to haul the weight of the gaff, the boom that stretched the sail out into its four-cornered shape, and the sail itself was of a canvas thick enough to weather a heavy storm. Draca didn’t have winches, so they had to swig it, heaving the halyard away from the mast to take up the last of the slack while the sail flogged loose, crackling like rifle fire.
Back in the cockpit, George gestured towards the tiller, letting Jack, as Draca’s skipper, feel that moment when they killed the engine, let her fall away from the wind and with the mainsheet hauled home felt that first pull of the sail. Draca curtsied to a swell, sluggish at first until she gathered way, heeled a little and the rudder bit the water. George and Jack grinned at each other, sharing the moment: a living ship under a storm-washed sky, and a silence broken only by the bubbling of water flowing past the hull.
‘Shall we see what she can do?’ Jack lifted his chin towards the foresails, still furled around their roller-reefing gear.
George didn’t answer, but unwrapped a foresheet from a belaying post and heaved at the jib. As the foresails filled, Draca put her shoulder down and charged.
Jack whooped with the joy of that moment. After ten weeks he knew every plank in that boat, every crevice, every stinking corner of her bilges. He’d shaped her, sanded her and cursed her. He’d scraped away her flaws and made them good, and kicked her faltering engine. He’d dressed her in newly mended sails, furnished her with shiny new fittings, and he loved her. Draca was a thoroughbred of the sea, and she showed her breeding in the way she took the wind.
Jack set a course off the line of cliffs that stretched south-west from Anfel Head, meeting a long, heavy swell on the tails of the storm and a breeze strong enough to send wave tops tumbling over themselves and rustling down their lee slopes. For Draca, who’d been built to ride out far more extreme weather, this was a wind to play with. She climbed the side of each wave and soared over into the trough, shoulder-barging the swell the way a porpoise might leap and dive for the sheer exuberance of living. The old lady was back and loving it.
Jack handed George the helm and made his way forward, resting his hand on each rope and stay, feeling the boat’s mood through his fingertips. He used to go forward without thinking, rolling with the boat, scarcely needing to hold on, even in a strong sea. Now he needed to go hand over hand on the grab bars on the skylight roof until he could lurch from them to the stays. When he reached the foredeck, he crawled. His balance was wrecked, but it was worth the effort. He lay flat beside the bowsprit and peered over the gunwale to watch the stem slice the waves. Beside his head the dragon rose and fell, rose and fell like a carved horse on a fairground roundabout. Jack remembered that sail with Grandpa just after he had fitted his new figurehead, and now he understood. The dragon, too, was happy.
‘Squall!’ George’s shout made him look up. She pointed at the darker line racing towards them over the water, and Jack knew he wouldn’t make it back to the cockpit before it hit. He was only at the level of the mast when Draca fell into a trough and spray sluiced around his legs. At the crest of the following wave, the wind became a sudden, angry whine through the rigging and they were blown so far over that the tip of the mainsail’s boom touched the water. Jack was condemned to witness George’s skills as a solo yachtswoman while he was wedged into the angle between the skylight and the deck.
She was good, very good, but it almost seemed that Draca was fighting her. At first George laughed, a high, bubbling whoop as if the life inside her couldn’t be contained, but the tiller kicked in her hand, and her look darkened. By the time Jack tumbled into the cockpit, George had a real battle on her hands, with both feet braced against the lee side of the cockpit, and both hands on the tiller while she heaved hard to hold her course.
Jack reached for the tiller to help her, and the wind dropped. Just like that. It was uncanny. One second they were battling to steer, the next the squall had passed and they were riding the waves as smoothly as ever, with the wind steady on the starboard bow. They looked at each other and George shrugged as if she didn’t quite believe the sudden peace.
‘If I didn’t know better,’ she laughed in a way that made fun of her own words, ‘I’d say your boat has just thrown a hissy fit.’
That wasn’t the only time. They made Draca work, testing her at every point of sailing. It was bonding, in a platonic, working-together way. George not only knew what to do without being told, she was a much better sailor than Jack, the difference, perhaps, between a weekend yachtsman and someone whose life is on the water. She’d never sailed Draca before, but she understood how to set the foresail in a way that made the ship easier to steer, and how to coax the last ounce of power out of her. When Jack had the helm, Draca ran sweetly through the water and he and George would stand braced in the vee between the cockpit’s deck and the lee bench, while the rigging hummed Draca’s happiness. When George took her, the battle began, and Draca’s hum became a howl of rage. It reminded Jack of a time he’d watched a woman tame an unbroken horse. The beast had leaped around a sand school, snorting, snatching at the rope that tethered them together. As soon as the woman thought she’d calmed it, it would be off again, bucking and kicking. Eventually, George gave Draca back.
‘You take her. She knows her master.’
It was a day for fanciful notions.
In the afternoon the wind eased, and they began to relax. Something had changed between them, born out of that shared working of the boat, and they were both putting off the moment when they’d have to turn for the harbour. They hadn’t spoken much, other than about the boat and sailing, but it didn’t seem to matter. The clouds were clearing and they sat in the cockpit in companionable silence, basking in the sun. There was enough space to sit without touching, just, and watch squadrons of gannets streak alo
ng the wave troughs, close enough to see their creamy-yellow heads and bandit-striped eyes. Beyond them, the massive chalk cliff of Anfel Head alternately shone white and glowered grey as clouds passed over.
‘Anfilt Thuna,’ George muttered, as if to herself.
‘Sorry?’
‘The Saxon name for Anfel Head. I found it in a local history book. It means the anvil of Thunor, or Thor.’
‘An vil you tell me how it got the name?’
George groaned. ‘You should be hammered for that. I suppose it does look a bit anvil-y.’ She stood and peeled off her life jacket and fleece. A light perspiration had formed on her forehead. ‘It’s getting warm.’
Jack looked away and began to lash the tiller into position as George stuffed her shirt back into her shorts.
‘Let’s try the square sail.’
Jack went forward with her to set the sail, pleased to find that Draca held her course. When he returned to the cockpit George stayed near the cabin skylight, one hand resting on the boom with her eyes screwed shut against the sun, enjoying the rise and plunge as the waves passed under them, racing to the east and steepening as they neared the land. She’d found the point where the whole ship felt balanced. With such a long swell, Draca would lift her stern and surf down each wave, surging forward until the wave passed underneath and the stern dropped back into the trough. There the boat would wallow, for a moment, readying herself for the next charge forward. The sensation was even better with the square sail set. Most foresails tend to drive the bow downwards, even slightly, but the square sail was a lifting sail. It would scoop wind from the surface, letting the old lady pick up her skirts and run.
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