The novelty of Rognvald’s court soon wore off as Skarfr scurried about on the same menial tasks he’d carried out for Botolf, but with heavier buckets, more people giving orders and no lessons in skaldcraft. Sometimes he almost missed his brutal master but then he’d remember the physical chastisement that followed tongue-lashings on the slightest excuse, or with none at all. He also remembered the shame of the wedding feast and any urge to recite skaldic verse fled.
Like the legendary Greek hero toiling in the stables, he would serve his time in the lowliest work and redeem his name with some glorious act of courage. He liked how that sounded and was willing to leave the detail of the glorious act for the gods to reveal to him later. Especially when he realised that Thorbjorn had recognised him.
Ordered to accompany young Harald, Skarfr had found it impossible to avoid Thorbjorn. Looking at the ground while the child held his foster-father’s attention worked as a strategy until Harald drew Thorbjorn’s attention to his new friend.
‘I forget the manners you’ve taught me, Lord Thorbjorn,’ the innocent havoc-bringer began. ‘This is a new boy called Skarfr and I’m training him for kitchen work. He wanted to be a skald but he wasn’t any good at it so Jarl Rognvald is buying him from Skald Botolf.’
Thorbjorn gave his foster-son a fatherly pat. ‘I’m sure you’ll teach him well.’ The smile died on his lips as he turned stony eyes to Skarfr. ‘He is lucky to be pot-boy and stir a fish soup.’
Skarfr flushed. Now was not the moment to spar with words as Rognvald had suggested.
‘Yes,’ agreed Harald. ‘And I am lucky to be Jarl. Everybody should know his place.’ A thought struck him. ‘It’s not fish soup today. It’s mutton.’
‘Then fish soup will be for another day,’ promised Thorbjorn, his gaze relentless. ‘In tiny chopped morsels.’ He flexed his arm muscles, flaunting his trained strength.
Skarfr stared back, willing his expression blank, but his insides liquified to soup and mush, nothing as courageous as chopped morsels. His own arm muscles were well-developed from menial tasks but merely slingshot in a string compared with those of the warrior looming over him.
‘Now young man,’ Thorbjorn turned his attention back to Harald. ‘I have a gift for you. Guess what it is and you shall have it.’ He pointed to a wooden box on the ground. It was about three handspans by two.
What a waste of precious wood as mere wrapping for a gift to a spoiled child, thought Skarfr but he was intrigued as to its contents, despite himself. And envious.
The guessing-game was an uncomfortable reminder of how his possessions had been treated by Sweyn’s men but he was sure the box did not contain bones or a spare tunic. Maybe a musical instrument like his pipes or a weapon, a dirk or slingshot. Too big a box for adornment like an armband.
‘A puppy!’ guessed Harald.
And received a smiling headshake.
The second guess was equally unrelated to the type and size of container. ‘Bow and arrows!’
Another headshake but this time Thorbjorn gave a clue. ‘What flies on water but is beached on land? Its head breathes fire and its tail is forked.’
A dragon ship.
Harald gave the answer after long reflection that wrinkled his brow. At Thorbjorn’s nod, he whooped, prised open the box and lifted out a carved longship that was too beautiful to be abused as a child’s toy.
Skarfr looked at the young Jarl’s shining eyes. This child would have his own full-size dragon ship before the pot-boy found a way out of kitchen duties.
‘Carry the box for Jarl Harald,’ Thorbjorn told Skarfr. ‘And see the toy safely stored in my lady’s chamber when he gives you the order.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Everyone should know his place.
‘I want to show Lady Inge,’ Harald told Skarfr, a new peremptory note in his tone. ‘Bring the box.’
Thorbjorn ruffled the boy’s hair while his eyes rested on Skarfr, checking they understood one another. The reprieve was temporary.
‘Look!’ Harald’s face was radiant as he held out the carved wooden longship for Inge’s appreciation. ‘My foster-father made this for me. Here’s the thwarts – they’re the benches where the oarsmen sit – and the oars go in those holes but they’ll fall out so they’ve been stowed on the floor in the boat until I can sit down and play properly.’
Inge took the toy and held it as carefully as if it were made of glass. She inspected the detail: dragon prow and serpent tail, its square sail woven in red and white stripes, a work of love. The planes of her beautiful face were knife-sharp in the northern sunlight and her eyes chips of blue quartz. The pale rose of her mouth did not soften its hard lines. Skarfr held his breath, fearing for the exquisite craft.
With a smile, the lady sailed the ship back to the boy’s open hands, teasing him with dip and rise as if great waves tested the vessel until it dropped suddenly, far below his waiting hands, then soared up into them, cresting the last roller sent by the sea-god.
Harald crowed, triumphant as his ship beached safely in his hands. His eyes shining, he told Inge, ‘You should have lowered the sail in stormy seas like that. You can untie the rope. I’ll show you.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said, her voice honeyed. ‘Your foster-father has made a dragon ship as beautiful as that of Sweyn Asleifsson and you shall be a man just like my brother, whose name is known throughout the civilised world. The best sea-rover and the best warrior, beloved of the gods, whose deeds are both matchless and honourable, who has the best adventures.’
Harald looked down at the ship, puzzlement wrinkling his open face. ‘This is Sweyn’s ship?’
‘Yes indeed,’ confirmed Inge. ‘And its name is the Death-bringer. See the red sail? Red is the colour of blood, to strike fear into all who see my brother’s ship come to their shores.’ Inge happily ignored the white stripes.
Which is why ‘reddening the eagle’s claw’ means ‘killing’ in the language of skalds, Skarfr thought, but did not say. His skaldcraft must remain in his head from now on.
Harald was still puzzling over Thorbjorn’s gift of what he now believed to be Sweyn’s dragon ship. Smoothly, Inge wove glitter into her tissue of lies to make it pretty. ’Your foster-father is the best of carvers and in making words. He is called Thorbjorn Klerk because he is so skilled in carving runes and in making marks of all kinds, reading and writing. Nobody is better than Thorbjorn at recording how many skins of wine have been drunk.’
Harald’s face cleared. ‘So he is the best. I thought so.’
‘At reading and writing. And Sweyn is the best for adventures. Men are made for different fates. When I look at you, I can see what kind of man you will be.’ Such tenderness as she turned on Harald would have melted Skarfr when he first saw her on the beach. But now his insides liquified for a different reason. Although he bore no liking for Thorbjorn, he felt sick at Inge’s manipulation of a child’s feelings in her subtle war against him. Poison could be injected in more subtle ways than the embroidery of a lethal tunic.
And then Inge glanced briefly at him, as if she’d known all along that he was there, watching. Their eyes met, as had happened once before. But this time I will not cry had been replaced by See how I have my revenge? Knowing what Thorbjorn had done, how could he blame her?
‘What do you think I will be?’ asked Harald.
‘I think you know,’ she teased the boy, her attention fully on him now. ‘Would you like to be a Klerk, the best at reading and writing? Or another Sweyn, the bravest of raiders and warriors, but even more famous, because you’ll be a jarl?’
The boy did justice to his foster-father. ‘I think reading and writing is very important,’ he judged, ‘but a man has to follow his own fate and mine is more adventurous than that. Do you think Sweyn will teach me?’
‘I think he will, Harald. I think he will see in you what I see in you. My bravest of warriors, my guardian. Will you swear to protect me always and never let anyone hurt me?’
Once more Harald’s open face showed confusion. Was he remembering what he’d seen by a dark wall? Remembering who had hurt Inge?
‘No matter who it is who wants to hurt me?’ emphasised Inge. ‘You’ll stand in for Sweyn while my brother is away and you’ll protect me?’
Mention of taking Sweyn’s role wiped Harald’s expression clear of any conflict of loyalties.
He put his hand on his heart. ‘I swear.’
‘That shall be our secret,’ she whispered to him, mouthing the words clearly to make sure Skarfr could see what she said. She looked again at Skarfr. Was she asking for his protection too? As well as his silence.
‘You may go back to your work,’ she told him. ‘Harald is staying with me.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ Skarfr stammered.
Inge had already turned back to the young jarl. She sat down on the grass, her skirts spread around her as she spread out a blue scarf as sea between the land masses of Orkneyjar and foreign territories.
‘Let’s sail Sweyn’s longship to Írland to do battle with the savages and bring home treasure.’
Savages. Brigid and Fergus, with their kindness and stories of their homeland. Something else Skarfr must keep in his own head and not talk about.
It was too late to protect Inge and never let anyone hurt her. Maybe Hlif was right and Inge’s revenge would lead to more women being assaulted in some never-ending contagion. As if the gods had marked Thorbjorn’s heroism with some flaw that would cause his downfall, as in sagas. And a man like that would not go down alone. As he watched her lay claim to Orkneyjar’s heir, he almost pitied the man who had hurt her so deeply.
‘Where have you been? Food doesn’t cook itself and fires need fed even more often than people do.’ Arn grumbled at the high-handed ways of ladies and Harald’s dereliction of duty, before setting Skarfr to chores which needed no explanation. The Bu’s need for water entailed an endless trek to the well and back but as he fell into the rhythm of filling, carrying and emptying buckets, Skarfr’s mind was free to consider all he’d seen and heard.
Inge had recognised him and, worse still, so had Thorbjorn. And it wouldn’t be a carved wooden ship coming Skarfr’s way from either lord or lady, so he should stay alert, but there wasn’t much he could do to stave off trouble. There was nowhere he could go. He would have shrugged his shoulders if they hadn’t been balancing buckets hanging from a pole.
He envied the little boy with the golden future. What would he, Skarfr, be? Like Harald, he’d been sure of his future, from Botolf’s apprentice to skald, composing the history of all his Sweyn-like adventures in immortal verse. Making sagas and fulfilling the cormorant’s prophecy.
Then came his public humiliation. Not Óðinn’s mead but Orkney ale had revealed the truth. He only had to think of reciting a poem and his stomach heaved. He’d overestimated himself to Rognvald. He was worse than second-rate, a braggart and simpleton.
Yet, he could not rid his head of the words he could not speak without murdering them. He could hear the music of verse like the rise and fall of Harald’s wooden longship on a pretend sea. He could feel in his blood the connection between kennings and the core of all things, on the loom of history where brave deeds glittered in gold thread.
He liked the phrase, memorised it in silence. So be it, he told himself. He would practise all he’d learned and enjoy his words, in silence. Never embarrass himself and others again. Rognvald was wrong, believing all men to be like himself, seeing failure only as a stepping stone to success.
Skarfr could learn from Rognvald but he could not be like him.
You know who you want to be. The words echoed and Skarfr suddenly realised that Inge had not once mentioned Rognvald. Of course a little boy would be drawn naturally towards youth and adventure, whether Sweyn’s sunshine or Thorbjorn’s dark fire. Rognvald was grizzled, past his raiding days, and of his nine skills, only his poetry could be sure of claiming a winner’s prize. But he was Orkney’s Jarl and Harald’s guardian, the obvious model of virtue for a small boy. Virtue was as attractive as clerking to a boy with a dragon ship called the Death-bringer. It took no great powers of deduction to guess why Inge had not mentioned Rognvald. Just a memory of a conversation overheard on a beach.