‘We’ve a thief!’ The rough voice was followed by even rougher hands, hauling Skarfr up from the bench, dangling him over the side of the ship and dropping him on the wet sand in front of Sweyn.
Ice-chip eyes looked him over. The hero was cloaked against the rain, his hair peeping out from his hood like gold coin from a dark purse.
‘What have you taken?’ Sweyn asked, placing one booted foot on Skarfr’s back, pinning him to the sand with enough pressure to hurt.
‘Nothing,’ gasped Skarfr, arching his neck to hold up his head and avoid taking in sand as he spoke. The boot gave no leeway and he crunched back down on the wet grit.
The same hands that had grabbed Skarfr held up his pack. ‘This was with him,’ growled the man.
‘Search it.’
Sand rasping his cheek, Skarfr watched his possessions tossed over the side of the ship after being enumerated in a guessing game.
‘One. Item: dirty linen,’ yelled Growly Voice.
It wasn’t. Bridget had washed it only two days ago. Skarfr bit his lip, listened to the mew of hungry gulls and put on his I will not cry face.
‘Tunic,’ the men shouted back and they cheered when the item of clothing flew over the side of the ship and proved them right. One of Sweyn’s men wiped his sweaty face on it before dropping it on the sand and calling, ‘Next?’
‘A fine blade!’
‘Sure to be a sword,’ came the reply.
‘No, an axe!’ joked another.
‘Wrong! Guess again!’
Skarfr’s knife was joined on the sand by his leather water-bottle, emptied of what the men insisted was ale, dangerous for a growing lad.
‘Seven saints.’
‘That’ll be beads on a string.’
‘No.’
‘Magic stones,’ guessed another.
‘No,’ crowed Growly Voice, triumphant. ‘It’s the real thing!’ He intoned like a priest, ‘One, Saint Peter’s thigh-bone,’ and over the side of the ship he threw one of Skarfr’s bones. The catalogue continued until the seventh bone was allocated to a vulgar part of saintly anatomy and dumped in the sand.
To much laughter
Then, as the jesting grew stale, came the moment he was dreading.
‘What’s this?’ Growly Voice couldn’t hide his surprise and Skarfr imagined him pulling open the pouch strings, peering inside, pulling out—
‘Well, well, well.’
‘Stop teasing the men and tell us what you’ve found, before I jump in that ship and see for myself. It’s time we caught the tide.’ Sweyn’s tone held an edge but the man in the ship seemed oblivious to the change in mood on the sand.
‘Eight. Item. Wooden mouth-game.’
Skarfr’s heart sank. After a few guesses and more clues, his precious flute was thrown like rubbish onto the sand. Nobody moved to pick it up but nobody suggested it proved he was a thief, unlike—
‘Nine. Item. Pieces of friendship.’
‘Would they be silver?’ queried the quickest of the men guessing.
As Growly Voice yelled, ‘Silver bits!’ Sweyn was already hauling Skarfr to his feet by the scruff of his tunic neck.
Skarfr scrambled to stand quickly enough to prevent his best tunic being ripped. If it was only a seam, Bridget could mend it. But he wasn’t going to see Bridget. He was going to sea.
Be a man, he told himself. Now’s your chance to talk. Especially as he had stolen the silver, or so most people would judge. It was too complicated to explain to Sweyn that stealing from Botolf wasn’t really stealing because the longhouse and everything in it belonged to him, Skarfr.
‘Master Botolf, the skald, sent me to you with the coin, Lord Sweyn. It’s to thank you for taking me roving with you and teaching me the seamanship a man should learn.’
Sweyn’s expressions were not as easy to read as the moods of sky and sea but a small narrowing of his eyes suggested calculation. Skarfr was used to judging his daily fate by such slight changes in a man’s face and he thought the odds on a whipping had lessened.
‘Throw me the pouch, Grith,’ yelled Sweyn, ‘with the strings tight. And if you keep so much as one bit, you’ll wear stripes on your back for a fortnight and have salt rubbed in them.’
Instantly the pouch arced in Sweyn’s direction and he caught it one-handed, with an elegance that Skarfr would have admired in different circumstances. Sweyn loosened the strings enough to check the bag’s contents, then tied it to his belt and grinned at Skarfr, who allowed himself to hope.
‘I learn fast, work hard and I can row. And I don’t eat much,’ he added.
An unexpected ally spoke up.
‘We were all boys once,’ pointed out Growly Voice, ‘and hardened into men on a ship. Maybe he’d bring us luck?’ Then he tempered his support with a practical alternative. ‘And we can always toss him overboard if he’s too much trouble.’
Skarfr swallowed, hoping this was another joke.
‘Luck?’ Sweyn’s gaze swept his men. ‘Don’t you recognise the boy? He’s the skald’s apprentice who forgot his fine words and wet his breeks in Rognvald’s Bu the night before the wedding.’
He sniffed Skarfr and jumped back dramatically. ‘Still stinks of fish.’
Hearty laughter made it clear that all the men there understood the joke, knew where Skarfr had been dumped in Orphir. Skarfr felt the heat crimson his face and wished he were dead but he forced himself to look up and meet Sweyn’s eyes when addressed directly.
‘Do you think you’re lucky, boy?’
‘No,’ whispered Skarfr. ‘I think I’m cursed.’
This time the laughter was uneasy. Some men crossed themselves and others fingered the hammer amulets round their neck – or did both.
Sweyn threw back his hood, let his hair fly over his forehead.
Like a lion’s mane, thought Skarfr. Like one of the splendid beasts from the Old Country Botolf had told him about.
‘No, I don’t think you’re lucky, either. Nor do I think you can row to our rhythm, watch someone’s back or carry enough treasure to be worth your weight on my ship.’ He made a little bow. ‘But I’ll keep the skald’s thank-you and you can tell your master I taught you a lesson and took payment for it.’
With a casual thwack across Skarfr’s backside that was almost friendly, the boy was dismissed. After staggering to a safe distance, he watched the men move about their accustomed duties as Sweyn focused on launching the ship. Skarfr’s dream of joining them was dashed but he could not leave, not while his belongings lay scattered on the beach. Cursed indeed.
A coarse cackle came overhead and three cormorants flew over Skarfr, one so low she could speak to him. He knew her for a liar. He would never make sagas and he refused to listen as she squawked her pagan message. Let her fly and dive with the wave-riders, who were busy stowing the tent cover in a tidy roll.
As if she’d heard him, the cormorant dived as low over Sweyn as she had over Skarfr but with a different message. The hero shouted an order just as the bird was over his head. Then he ducked too late and swore volubly as filthy droppings, grey and white, hit his blond head and trickled down. His orders were even more curt as he wiped at his face with his cloak, no doubt smearing the guano further.
‘Luck, my lord,’ Growly Voice attempted to cheer up his leader as men hid sniggers behind their hands and coughed instead.
‘Luck,’ agreed Skarfr with a sarcastic edge, suddenly feeling more cheerful. Even a god looked less heroic with bird shit on his head.
Belongings and boots were thrown over the side onto the rowers’ benches, and finally the roller blocking the prow was removed and shipped.
‘Run!’ Sweyn instructed and the men on either side of the ship hefted it as if it were an axe, gliding it over the wet sand to the sea where they jumped through the waves into the ship, hauling in the slowest of the band. Oars flashed into rowlocks and after the first bumps, the twenty oarsmen worked to the same rhythm. Wave-riders seeking adventure. Foam-harrowers, Sea-tillers, Storm-bravers.
Skarfr watched the ship until it was a dot on the horizon, then realised it was no longer raining. A pity, as he needed fresh water to wash himself and his belongings. He gathered up his possessions slowly, inspecting each one, trying to turn them back into his things, to brush off the taint of mockery. He turned his spare tunic into a makeshift pouch and packed comb and knife. They were soon joined by six bones but he had to search some time before he found the seventh, chipped. He knew each nick and bump of all seven and this was not his birth talisman, which was intact. His gods were still with him, in their ambiguous fashion.
The pipe was gritty with wet sand and he had no idea how much damage the salt water had done but he dried it as best he could on the tunic he was wearing and added it to the pack, along with what had been protective cloth, now screwed into a ball.
He would have to go back to the longhouse and face Botolf.
‘Skarfr!’
How long had she been there, the cursed girl, Hlif? He flushed. She was picking her way through the grass tussocks towards him, skirts bunched in her hands, in the fruitless attempt to keep the hem clean, just like the first time they’d met
Hah! He was in no state to poke fun at sandy clothes. What must he look like? When she was close enough, he stared her in the eye, daring her to show the pity that still made him flinch from remembering their last encounter.
She stared back, turned it into a cats’ duel of who blinked first.
He lost, blushing again and looking away, but not before he’d studied every yellow fleck in the cloudy grey irises, more in the right than the left, fish in a troubled pool, the shine and movement hiding what lay beneath.
‘Now you know how it is,’ she said, matter of fact. ‘Sweyn and Thorbjorn are two sides of the same coin. Being cursed has its uses.’
Still none the wiser as to whether she’d seen all his humiliation, Skarfr had no idea whether she meant herself or him. He had yet to see the benefits of being cursed.
‘The Jarl will give you work if I ask him,’ she said simply.
His automatic rejection of charity died on his lips, held back by knowledge of the alternative. Not fear. Worse than fear. Resignation. There must be something better.
Before he found an answer, she hammered him with words so fast he wondered how she could breathe and talk. Out they spilled, bang, bang, bang.
‘You can wash, meet my guardian, get work as a table-boy or apprentice bootlicker, I don’t care what! He won’t say no because he owes me but he won’t let me live a normal life because he owns me and I’m tired of it all, tired, tired, tired!’
She paced the sand and even if Skarfr had found the words he wanted, she was too deep in her own outburst to have listened.
When he’d woken that morning, he’d seen his future as a warrior in a dragon ship. Instead, he might be considered as pot-boy. He could always go back to his own longhouse, to Brigid and Fergus. And Botolf.
‘All right,’ he interrupted Hlif’s rant. ‘I’ll work for the Jarl, if he’ll have me.’