The Winter Isles Read online

  I ran outside, pulling on my shawl, into the howl of the gale. What was I thinking? Rage against the pilgrim, though he was beneath it. Rage against her, too. That learned princess with slaves for her chores and a free mind that roamed and dug and roamed some more. A furious, violent envy. I looked behind to the hall. Dimly lit, a star-prick against the cavernous horizon. I felt the familiar press of hill and sea and sky, and thought that this time – this time – I would be crushed.

  I found a hollow in the hill, curling myself into it, out of the wind. And I let myself think of Somerled, and when we were young.

  ~~~

  ‘Father, what are the stars?’

  ‘God made them, Eimhear.’

  ‘Yes, but what are they made of? Why do they shine only at night?’

  He was combing out his long beard, and I saw the irritation in his face. I moved closer. ‘Let me do it.’

  He grunted, and I climbed on to his knee, facing him. His face softened, as I thought it would. I took the comb and pulled it through the long hair, with its streaks of auburn and grey.

  ‘Plaited?’

  He nodded.

  I divided the hair into sections, and set to plaiting it. I was awkward with the maths of it; three strands, two hands. His eyes were smiling now; I soothed him with my incompetence.

  ‘Where do they go in the day?’

  ‘Jesus, Eimhear. Who knows? Maybe the fairies steal them. Why does it matter? It’s enough that they are there. It is enough that they help us know which way to go.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  His face hardened again, and I quietened. ‘No matter, Father. There, done.’ I hopped off his knee again, looking at his plaited beard. Lord, but it was rubbish. One thick, proud plait and one little one, like a rat’s tail.

  ‘I’m just … going walking,’ I stuttered.

  ‘Don’t be bothering the priest again while the boy is at his lessons.’

  ‘They won’t mind.’

  ‘Aye, but I do. Why can’t you be friends with the other girls?’

  He pointed over to the long hall, to where two girls my age sat with their backs against the wall. I liked them well enough, but they would care less than Father what the stars were made of. I had to dip in and out of their talk about boys and gowns and marriage prospects – immersion in it would make my ears bleed.

  ‘I am.’ I ran over and kissed him. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ~~~

  There was a moment in the walk up the hill behind the hall I always loved. The ground flattened and then sank down for ten paces, as if you were walking across the bottom of a bowl. In the hollow, the wind couldn’t find you. In the summer, the sun caught in the depression. You could lie in there and feel it seeping through to your bones; until the midges found you, of course.

  They say that Somerled’s father once found himself betrayed by a man. He hunted him down and buried him to the waist in a sheltered spot, and let the midges turn his brain to a single scream.

  The spring was the best, for lying in the hollow. No insects, just the trapped sun. You couldn’t see or be seen there, either. I loved that moment of feeling yourself alone. No eyes watching, no tongues gossiping, no close press of the jumble of families living all together hemmed in by hill and sea.

  I walked on, up the steep back of the hollow. I could see the hall again, and some of the cleansing joy of being alone left me. On I went, following the path of the burn upwards.

  I could hear them before I could see them. Padeen’s big laugh rumbled over the heather. I had a fear they wouldn’t want me, but when I came closer, they turned and smiled. Somerled was sitting on a wide rock, and he shifted over, the invitation clear. I ran the last few paces.

  ‘Father Padeen, what are the stars?’

  ‘And good morning to you, little Otter.’

  ‘It’s been burning me.’

  Somerled grinned at me. ‘Go back to your weaving, little girl. Ow, you can’t hit me, I’m the lord’s son.’

  ‘You’re a fool. Father, please.’

  ‘Well, child. No one knows for sure. God’s mysteries are profound. They move across the skies. You must imagine a series of celestial spheres. The stars, which shine through God’s will, are set in these spheres like jewels in a torque. As the spheres move, the stars move.’

  ‘But who moves the spheres?’ asked Somerled.

  ‘Well, I corresponded once with a man who believed that they were moved by the angels in the Book of Revelations. But in truth, we do not know. God makes them move, and that is as far as we can go.’

  I tutted, impatient with him.

  ‘It’s the answer to everything. God made it so.’

  ‘And that, my child, is because God is the answer to everything.’

  Somerled thought about this. ‘But Father, even though that is true, you can see why Eimhear finds it frustrating. God made it so is the answer when we are ignorant, just as often as it is the answer when it is the true and only answer.’

  ‘But what else do we have? Life is frustrating, child.’

  I knew that, but I said: ‘That’s the type of thing adults always say. Life is frustrating, life is not fair. Get used to it. Well I don’t want to. Why can’t we shape our own lives so they are not frustrating, so they are not unfair? And Father, if you tell me it is because God’s ways are mysterious, I shall jump in the burn.’

  He laughed. ‘Well I shall remain silent then,’ he said. ‘Eimhear, we were talking of mathematics when you arrived. You may join us, if you forget to mention it to your father.’

  I nodded, and settled into the borrowed lesson. Later, we walked back down the hill, the three of us, still talking. Dusk was falling, and the smoke was rising from the long hall. I found myself glad to be home, impatient to fight for my place by the fire and hear the gossip of the day. We raced the last yards, Padeen’s laughter chasing us down the hill.

  ~~~

  He was rotten at swimming, at first. He didn’t always have the patience for learning difficult things. He wanted to be the best too quickly. The quickest, the fastest, the bravest. When he was not any of those things, he dropped out early and made a joke of it. When he was young, people underestimated him, I think. They thought him flippant. They thought him lightweight. They didn’t always see him coming.

  With the swimming, however, he was determined to learn. He didn’t speak, often, of what happened to him when he was missing.

  It happened before we were friends, but I felt his absence. Who could not? He already had a presence, even so young. When he was in a room, the air found him first. When he left, the light leached away. It was not just me who felt it. At least, I think not.

  When he was missing, his mother walked the shore like one of the lost folk, holding in her giant scream of despair. The rest of us did the endless sums. Two days, three days, four. If he was wrecked on the mainland, how long would it take to walk back? How long could a body go without water before it shrivelled? Five days, six. Still she paced. I was envious of him, even when he was thought lost forever. It seemed to me, then, the most glorious thing in the world to have a mother’s mourning.

  When they carried him up the beach, weak and pickled by wind and sun, he was smiling for her alone.

  I asked him about it, later. Out there on the rock was scouring, he said. He had thought he would die, but that was not the worst of it. It was dying without a name that bothered him. Dying small and insignificant, so that, a hand-span of years later, only his mother would remember him. I would remember you, I told him. He smiled at me, and even then I knew that it was not enough for him. Not enough to be mourned by the woman who bore him and the girl who loved him.

  The talks were snatched things, at first. We practised swimming until our lips were blue.

  ‘Hold still,’ I said, letting him go.

  He sank, spluttering. I wrenched him up to the surface.

  ‘How am I ever to make you float?’

  ‘And why must I float, when it’s swimmin
g I want to do? Jesus, I’m cold. Do you never feel it?’

  I shrugged. ‘You have to float. It’s the basis of all of it. If you can’t float, you can’t swim.’

  ‘It’s all the staying still.’

  I laughed at him. ‘It would be good for you to be still, sometimes.’

  ‘Show me again.’

  I upended my legs, wondering not for the first time how something so easy, so very like breathing, could be so troubling. I loved to float. Finding the exact pitch of stillness within the muffled ruffling of the waves.

  ‘Now you,’ I shouted. My ears were deaf with water. I was absorbed in the undulation of my limbs.

  ‘I did it! I did it! Jesus, Otter. You weren’t even looking.’

  ‘Do it again, then.’

  ‘It’s too cold. Besides, I might not be able to.’

  I splashed him. ‘Once you have done it once, you can do it again.’

  He looked at me with his green eyes smiling and his bleached hair slick against his forehead. There was such trust in his expression it made me breathless.

  Quickly he kicked his legs upwards and made himself still in the waves. I pushed myself up and next to him, reaching for his hand to keep us lashed together. Above, the different greys of the sky played tag. Rain threatened. We floated, Somerled and I.

  1124

  SOMERLED

  The boy stared. Somerled stared back. Kill him. Do it. Oh Lord, help me kill. Mother Mary, give my sword arm strength enough. I am Somerled, the summer warrior. Deep thinker. Man-killer.

  His legs began to quiver, a quick, uncontrollable pulsing that took him by surprise. It emphasized the curious detachment he felt of mind from body. While his mind barked orders and mumbled prayers, his body ignored the summons. It shook and procrastinated, fumbling and trembling. And there was the boy, lying still, staring.

  He was a similar age. Fifteen, say. Clear-eyed. He had sleep clinging to his eyelid on one side, and smudges of dirt across his forehead. A snot trail from nose to chin, and reddened nostrils. He has a cold, thought Somerled. Mother would counsel a basin of hot water, swirled with honey. But a poke in the neck with a sharp sword would do the trick. He grinned, then retreated from the joke. Ashamed.

  Perhaps it was his first time with the war-band, too. Perhaps this morning he too had sharpened his blade and practised his throwing, polished his helmet and checked his shield. Each detail necessary, and yet also a prevarication, a distraction from the essential business of being terrified. Perhaps he too had walked with exaggerated confidence, looking slant-eyed at the warriors to the side of him to check he was not dreaming a terrible and longed-for dream.

  The boy looked whole. Unconcerned, almost. As if, walking on a warm day, he’d found a perfect bed of springy heather and settled down for a sun-baked nap. Yet further down, his hands scrabbled at his leaking stomach, as if he could repack the spilling, stinking mess and wish the skin whole again. Somerled looked down at his reddened blade, astonished at the colour. The longed-for, troublesome, vivid redness of it.

  Why did God make blood red? he wondered. To bring out the contrasts? To signal that on the inside we are fire and heat, whatever our outward dull show? If blood were beige, like skin, would it be so shocking to see it spilt? Is it the colour that shocks or the fact of the blood? Why does is dry to be dark and dull?

  Jesus. Get back to the task in hand. Somerled looked at the boy. That expression in his eyes, then. Was it fear, or incomprehension? Was he already halfway to eternal bliss, so that the sharp thrust of a sword would just help him along? Like the gust of a land breeze filling a limp sail, or the bite of oars as the caller wound up the pace. That was all. A sharp prick and it would be done. Over. A kindness.

  Jesus. Mother Mary. St Colm Cille. He was whispering their names over and again, without registering the nervous fluttering of his lips.

  He summoned his will. Commanded his body to obey. He changed the grip on his sword, ready for a downward strike. He nestled the point in the hollow place at the base of the boy’s throat. An inconsequential image came to him of Aedith, the slave girl, and how she arched her neck when he entered her, pushing the back of her head into the sand. The hollow flattened out as her neck stretched, and the contours changed, like dunes shifting in a gale.

  Somerled shook his head. He hoped the boy would give him a sign: that it was all right – he was ready. That the angels were already singing lullabies and picking him off the bloodied peat. The boy’s eyes narrowed as if suddenly registering Somerled’s existence, and he jerked his head away. Too soon. Somerled wasn’t ready, and the point of the sword scored the boy’s neck, drawing beads of crimson blood across his white skin. A necklace.

  ‘Just do it, boy.’ Aed. The champion. He rasped it close to Somerled’s ear, his sour breath strong enough to overpower the stench of the boy’s inside-out stomach. ‘Quickly. Like a sheep.’

  Like a sheep.

  Somerled turned to glance at Aed. He saw the man’s great shaggy mass of hair, and the unkempt beard and the battle-mad eyes. He saw, as if at a distance, the champion watching the lord’s son, to see if he had the balls to take his first kill like a warrior. He imagined the Otter’s contemptuous face, questioning the code, mocking the men. She was right, perhaps, but … I am Somerled. The summer warrior. What am I, if not a warrior?

  He changed the angle of the sword, and forcing his trembling legs to a kneel, he pulled the blade fast across the boy’s throat. He heard the boy gurgle and choke, and watched the blood spill. Like a sheep.

  ~~~

  In the long hall, the warriors’ spears beat the time as they growled the songs. And at his father’s right hand, Somerled sang too, giddy with joy and mead. They sang of St Colm Cille, who’d given them the victory.

  ‘Leafy oak tree, soul’s protection, rock of safety, the sun of monks, mighty ruler, Colm Cille!’ They spat the words out, roaring through the epithets. The steady thump of the spear shafts on the hard-packed floor paced out the words, danced with the flames, pulsed with his heart, until he was lost in the roaring.

  But in his head he sang his own song.

  I am Somerled, summer warrior, man-killer, seal-tamer.

  Over and again he repeated the refrain, until it became fixed and true as the North Star.

  I am Somerled, summer warrior, man-killer, seal-tamer.

  Suddenly they roared his name. The drinking horns were raised, and as they drank to his first kill, he saw the Otter looking at him from the far side of the hall. Something in her expression sobered him. He looked beside him to his father’s mead-washed face. His mouth hung open, laughing at some joke told by Iehmarc, his steward. Somerled saw the man’s mirthless smile, as Gillebrigte creased with laughter. He could see a sliver of gristle caught in his father’s far molar, and he turned away. The sudden sobering came in a rush of despondency that left him gasping for air in the hot, smug hall.

  And what was it, after all? Cattle-rustlers, and not many of them. What was this frenzy of back-slapping, of congratulations? As if they had taken on the Fianna and beaten back the giant-slayers themselves.

  How long had he known that his father was going to fail?

  He remembered the war-band that had set off from Ireland; the galleys full of warriors, packed in like garrulous herrings. Their boasting filled the air, turned the clouds blue with curses and the sun pink with shame for their talk of the women they were leaving. The gulls shrieked overhead as if responding to the callers, a celestial waulking song, and the oars bit eagerly at the sea.

  How passionately he wanted to be like them, the eleven-year-old boy, his blunted child’s sword hanging pathetically at his waist and his small fist pounding the planking in time with their roars. He remembered setting his high treble in competition with the deep basses, singing the rowing.

  The fifteen-year-old Somerled looked back with fond contempt at his younger self.

  His father. Gillebrigte of the Caves. He couldn’t shake the name. They had lived in the cav
es when they arrived on this coast, after their initial rushed assault had failed and they were beaten back into the hills. But they had carved out this sliver of territory, and built a hall. A small victory, sliced from the dreams of conquest and glory.

  Gillebrigte looked the part, at a distance. With his sandy hair and firm chin, his broad shoulders and fine air. His unmistakable air of a man who should be heroic. He swaggered, and he talked and he bragged. In the practice, he was deft. His sword edge was blurred as it moved; his parries were firm, his attacks fierce. He could drink, and eat to keep up with huge Aed and his bottomless stomach. Several of his natural children ran around the hall; Gillebrigtes in miniature.

  So why then did Somerled find that he pitied him? It was a slow burn, this pity. It had begun around the time of his rescue from the island, when his father and his war-band returned five men lighter with nothing to show for their trouble. And over the years, as the numbers began to shrink, and the victories came even less frequently, as the dream of recovering their ancient birthright receded, and as Somerled grew taller and wider, the feeling could not be mistaken.

  He could no longer blame indigestion for his unease when his father called on Alfric the Bard to sing his second-rate songs about their ancestry. He watched his father’s face in the firelight, listening to the roll call of heroes stretching back to Colla Uais and the high kings of Ireland. Even the bard, thought Somerled, was rotten. A man of the clan that served their erstwhile host, the lord of Antrim, he had followed them across the sea, professing a love for adventure, suppressing his lack of any discernible musical talent. A man trapped by his birthright.

  Somerled could no longer blind himself to the signs of his father’s inadequacies: the hesitation before the orders, the scrabbling at small details, the disastrous failure to play his men to their best ability. Gillebrigte misread them at every turn. He mistook sycophancy for cleverness, disagreement for rebellion. He was too prickly and yet too hearty, with forced attempts at overfriendliness that fooled no one but himself.