By the dull embers of the hearth-fire, Skarfr listened to Fergus and Brigid tell tales of Írland, a land so well-tempered in weather that cattle fed outdoors all year round. No venomous creature could live there and if any were brought from elsewhere, they died as soon as they touched bare earth or rock. So potent was its effect that Irish soil could be taken to another country and would pen any such poisonous beast if strewn in a circle around the devil’s creation. The beast would stay there until dead. Even an Irish stick would have the power to draw such a holy circle, so when Irishmen travelled abroad, they would carry a holy staff for their protection.
In this holiest of countries, according to Fergus, miracles abounded. On the mountain of Blandina were two springs, which changed the hair colour of any man or beast bathing in their waters. One spring would turn white hair to black; the other would change all colours to white. If a man should want white wool from black sheep, nothing was simpler than to dip his oddities in the white spring. And an old woman could be rejuvenated by washing her grey hair in the black spring. Skarfr’s cormorant could dive after fish there and surface in swan plumage.
He imagined Hlif plunging into cold Irish spring-water, entering the water as a red-haired maid and emerging as a white-capped crone when she came up for air. He felt strangely tender towards the old woman she would become.
Fergus was already telling new stories of a lake that provided bountiful salmon but only to the righteous, and of an island where no disease or females could exist. Of the willow that bore healing apples in response to St Kevinius’ prayer and kept its God-given gift thereafter. Of the Themar king who gave unjust judgement, in favour of his friends, and whose great town was upturned by the Lord’s wrath, so that towers pointed downwards deep into the earth and heaps of soil were the new buildings.
Skarfr’s favourite was a story of holy Patricius; how one clan howled at him like wolves when he preached his faith. Unable to speak above the clamour, he prayed for God to send them an affliction and show His strength. From that day on, and for seven years afterwards, all members of the clan became wolves each winter. Worse than wolves, as they retained men’s guile while devouring men as eagerly as other creatures.
Although an amazing display of God’s power, worthy of Thórr, this did not seem much of a punishment in Skarfr’s eyes. If the clan were content as wolves and human the rest of the year, there were even adventures to be had from such changing. And uses, such as the wolf and bear-changers who gave Norðmen an advantage in battle.
Skarfr pondered the question as to whether he’d rather be wolf or bear and realised there might be some disadvantages in changing to either. What if he should eat Hlif? That would be a foul return for her intended kindness. And if he died in wolf form, neither Valhalla nor heaven would be his lot. No: shifting shapes was for gods, not mortals.
Sometimes, Skarfr dropped off before the story’s end, and, without knowing how he’d got there, found himself on his own straw pallet, drowsily aware of soft night-time noises from Botolf’s bed behind the curtain. As unlike what had happened against a dark wall back at the Jarl’s Bu as melody from cats calling.
Dream and life merged when he felt the light warmth of a woman’s touch, stroking his cheek. Brigid? His mother? And when he was carried in arms or a giant beak to be gently dropped, somewhere safe. Fergus or a cormorant?
Each morning, Skarfr erased any trace of night-time presence and headed for the beach to check on Sweyn’s longships. When the rover sailed, he would do so early in the day and there was every likelihood that Botolf would return immediately Sweyn had left Orphir, taking saga stories with him and leaving lesser mortals behind.
How Skarfr wished he could follow those stories, sail with Sweyn. Even though his hopes of becoming a skald had ended, stories called to him the way the nine daughters of Aegir were known to lure sailors. He would rather be dashed upon rocks than doomed to such a little life.
Each morning the longships were still there, waterproof covers untouched, and after a fruitless vigil, Skarfr returned to his chores at home.
Now he had allowed himself to see the thralls as people, he devoured every detail of how they looked and how they spoke, their soft pronunciation of the Norn language marking them outsiders as much as their black hair and blue eyes. The combination was not unknown among Orkneymen but spoke of foreign blood. True-bred Orkney hair was every hue of sunshine from ash-white and barley gold through to bronze and sunset red.
Maybe Skarfr was drawn to the black-haired couple because of his own outsider looks, his jet hair, straight as weighted weaving, like his mother’s. He wasn’t sure what colour his eyes were but their reflection in water showed them dark, probably brown rather than blue. But Skarfr was more like Thorbjorn physically than like the thralls. Ness and Scots background probably, for both of them. The thought that he might in any way be like Thorbjorn evoked a shudder.
There was something about the Irish couple and how they were with each other, that soothed Skarfr’s aches. A kindness. Without words, the couple looked out for each other. Fergus lifted buckets of water that were too heavy for Brigid, while she patched a rent in his jerkin. She raised flames from the embers and cooked some of the ling he’d caught out in the bay, hanging the extra fish above the fire to smoke.
When he found his tunic and breeks laid on his bed, smelling of soap instead of fish heads, Skarfr realised that this care had surrounded him too, for years. He’d always been so focused on Botolf – his anger, his teaching, his rare approval – that he’d dismissed the thralls’ daily care for him and his home as irrelevant. Not anymore.
Eight days’ freedom had passed since the disaster in the Jarl’s hall and the sixth day of the week, Laugarday, was always bath day. Usually, Skarfr trudged beside his master the two miles from his isolated longhouse to the cluster of dwellings on the outskirts of Kirkjuvágr, where the bathhouse was situated. Botolf liked him washed and out of sight as quickly as possible so the bard could gossip while Skarfr shivered outdoors, waiting. This Laugarday, Skarfr went to the bathhouse later in the day than was his right so he could keep Fergus company among the male thralls. People might gossip but in their eyes he was a child, and moreover a child whose guardian was absent, so his odd behaviour would arouse little curiosity.
Once in the bathhouse, Skarfr removed his clothes, put them in a pile and sat down beside Fergus on the step below the water level in the stone basin. The water was no longer hot but when a man added a boiling crock-full from the pot over the fire, it became warm enough to suffice. When his turn came, the boy took the soap and scrubbed at his hardened feet, rubbed it over his body and passed it on to the next man.
Naked in the bathhouse, men relaxed. They spoke when words came but mostly they let silence drift like the cleansing steam from the pot above the fire. The scent of juniper burning slipped into Skarfr’s sense of wellbeing. He shut his eyes, listening to the music of foreign tongues, understanding the words only when the talk switched to Norn so as to cross the language barriers between the different nationalities of thralls.
Peat-digging and barley harvest held no interest for Skarfr but his attention was caught by the word ‘wedding’.
‘My master came back from Orphir today, says Sweyn leaves tomorrow and that’s the end of the feasting at the big hall. The wedding took place yesterday so all the little lords are happy as lambkins.’
‘Yesterday?’ Fergus queried, voicing Skarfr’s surprise. ‘I thought it was planned for last Friggsday.’
‘As the head of Inge’s household, Sweyn kept upping the amount he gave as heimanfylgia, her inheritance for her husband’s use, which made Thorbjorn look small in what he’d offered as mundr, the bride-price, and there was no end of outdoing each other, with the Jarl speaking his mind on what was fair and reasonable.
‘Rognvald declared that Thorbjorn’s intended morgengifu, the morning-after gifts, were the most generous he’d ever known. Rumour says he slipped his own coin to Thorbjorn to ensure that was so and Sweyn knew he was beaten. He could not be the more generous because his dowry-offering could always be outdone by Thorbjorn the morning after. What a to-do! The couple finally bound their hands in marriage under the lychgate to the Round Kirk and Inge gave Thorbjorn her father’s sword, as was proper. With the priest’s blessing.’
‘And Frigg’s,’ observed a heavily-accented voice.
‘Rognvald is all Christian piety these days, especially since he took on the cathedral project. St Magnus blesses everything. But the Jarl knows his men well enough and makes no war against the old ways. Thorbjorn married in the kirk but he made sure men witnessed how deep he’d buried the sword, the morning after.’
Skarfr winced. Thorbjorn’s sword-thrust had indeed been witnessed, and not just the one to the central pillar in his longhouse.
‘It’s not just that the Jarl accepts the old ways. He’s not one for making war at all.’
‘He thinks he has two strong men in his camp, brothers by a fine marriage, and instead he’s made a two-headed dragon with a clever woman holding both bridles. If the lady aims their fire at Rognvald, he has no defence.’
‘Why should she?’
‘Well, there were no purple flowers from husband to wife in that marriage nor did she sew him a tunic but all know Thorbjorn could be more than a clerk with Sweyn to back him. And he’s foster-father to the next Jarl. Rognvald’s getting old.’
Skarfr knew only too well how a guardian could control a boy’s life and abuse his fortune and he didn’t believe Thorbjorn’s motive for watching over Harald was born of pure generosity.
‘He’s a few grey hairs but twenty years more still won’t see a white head on him! For the moment, all is as peaceful as Rognvald could want. Thorbjorn can play with his new wife and do his clerking for the Jarl while Sweyn’s off raiding again.’
There was silence. Skarfr wondered what ‘raiding’ meant to these men, knew that each of them had once been an enemy to Orkneymen and perhaps to each other. Killing was not personal and peace was not cowardice. The Thing often pronounced sentence on murder, with blood-price and an end to hostility. Or so the law said. Conversations in the Jarl’s hall had suggested otherwise.
He looked straight ahead at the water, while quietly posing the question he’d been longing to ask. ‘How did you and Brigid come to Orkneyjar?’
The reply was a whisper across the shimmering surface. ‘We lived in the same village. I was on a message from my father to hers, when the raiders came. He worked leather, her father.’
In the pauses, Skarfr imagined the rest. The longships arriving on the beach, the warriors reddening the eagle’s claw, taking what they wanted, taking who they wanted.
‘We were in her house and they wanted girls, so they bound her.’
Skarfr watched his legs wriggle, shortening and lengthening, distorted like a reflection in a metal cup as the water moved. He thought of Thorbjorn.
‘I was young. She was older, quick-witted. She lied, said I was a noble’s son, worth a ransom, so they took me just in case, brought me to Orkneyjar. Botolf bought her and, the gods be thanked, his needs were not those she feared, though he is not an easy master.’
Skarfr trailed his right hand across the water. Five ripples.
‘He said he’d keep me till the ransom came. The bargain was even better than he thought. He paid nothing for me, the ransom never came and he has my service.’
‘What about the man ransom was owed to?’ asked Skarfr. ‘Who took you from the village? Don’t you belong to him?’
‘Died.’ Before Skarfr could ask any more questions, Fergus stood up. ‘The water’s getting cold,’ he said, although another scalding scoop had just been added.
Skarfr took the hint. It was none of his business how Fergus had avoided the noose of false identity tightening around his neck.
His business was to go with Sweyn and become a warrior instead of reciting hundreds of kennings for one. Poets and storytellers didn’t have lives. They just leeched off other people’s. He should fulfil the cormorant’s prophecy to his mother and be the stuff of sagas. Botolf had unmanned him with all that verse.
With a pang, he decided that tonight must be his last night of home fare and Irish tales. Tomorrow, he would wait for Sweyn on the beach and sail with him, become a wave-rider and bring back so much booty from his raids that he could free Fergus and Brigid, who would come back to work for him when he came of age and inherited his mother’s longhouse. He would leave Botolf and curses behind him and there would be no women to confuse him.
‘Skarfr?’
Fergus’ puzzled look made him realise he’d been wool-gathering and he came back reluctantly to the present.
At first light, Skarfr grabbed two of yesterday’s bannocks and wolfed one down with a drink of milk. The other went into his pack, where his spare tunic, a comb, the talisman bone, a knife, a leather bottle and his pipe had already been stashed, along with two silver bits he’d stolen from Botolf’s ‘secret’ box.
He stammered, ‘Thank you,’ to Brigid and Fergus, who looked pointedly at the pack and observed, ‘The master will likely be back this afternoon. He’s not one for an early start if he’s comfortable.’
Skarfr took this to mean that their idyll was over and that he should expect punishment for failing Botolf at the Jarl’s Bu. Even more punishment if he was shirking his duties rather than meekly waiting at home for Botolf to return.
He shrugged. He had no intention of coming back at all. Not until he could claim the house and his life as his own. Until then he’d go a-roving, among real men.
He hoisted his pack onto his shoulders and trotted off on the familiar path towards the beach, undaunted by the drizzle. Rain was no deterrent to an adventurous spirit. Although he wished he had a cloak and was soon wet through, he didn’t remember one mention of dampened enthusiasm in the sagas. Storms, whirlpools and raging seas, yes. But not the light pitter-patter of dagg. Nor the myriad other forms of Orkneyjar rain from eesk showers to bitter-cold aitran.
Nevertheless, he sought shelter on the beach. The shrub-tufted dunes offered none, nor did the grey sands stretching out to the steely sea. The only option was to sneak under the tent cloth protecting Sweyn’s longship and seek permission after the event.
He loosed one of the ties enough to clamber over the side of the beached ship and onto a rower’s bench. It was no harder than those offered to guests in Rognvald’s Bu and he had the luxury of its length to himself so he stashed his pack under his head for a pillow and made himself comfortable.
He shut his eyes and practised his request.
‘My lord, I want nothing more than to sail with you and become a man.’
Truthful but too blunt. Should he start with praise for Sweyn? Along the lines of, ‘All have heard of your exploits, how you captured Jarl Paul…’ No, that story had a doubtful ending and might be taken as criticism.
‘How you defeated a hundred men one-handed in battle and challenged the wolves that chase the sun to race your dragon ship redder than the sunset.’ That was more like it. Heroes merited a proper telling of their sagas. Poetic truth, not boy’s bluntness.
Maybe the allusion was a little obscure for rovers. How well-versed was Sweyn? He hadn’t seemed impressed by the Jarl’s nine skills but perhaps that was because of the manner in which Rognvald had asserted his authority rather than the quality of the lines.
Skarfr racked his brains but among all the stories of Sweyn’s prowess, none came to mind where his retorts were clever lines rather than axe-blows or night-raid.
Skarfr’s thoughts shied away from the other poems recited in Rognvald’s Bu and hoped a week’s drinking had made all present forget the first evening.
No, maybe Skarfr would be better to take a man-to-man bluff approach, say how keen he was to learn from a master, show he could pull an oar and live as lean as need be. With such cheerful thoughts and the rhythm of raindrops for a lullaby, he drifted into a shallow sleep.