When Einar the farmer was finally convinced that the Jarl of Orkney in person sought shelter after a shipwreck, he made the men welcome at his hearth. Food, warmth and a night’s sleep revived most of the men and Rognvald was galvanised by events into composing funny poems to lift their spirits.
Still shivering despite dry clothes and blankets, his skin pitted with small wounds from the pebbles that had struck him, Skarfr listened to the recitation, unable to appreciate it fully but smiling despite the pain.
In spontaneous rhymes and neat kennings, the Jarl joked about the sea nymphs who’d dragged the ships down and were currently examining their prizes with puzzlement. As he named his men and the objects they’d lost to the sea nymphs, every man laughed at the picture he painted of these mythical creatures wearing Hawknose’s oiled hat or pinning hair up with Cerid’s sling used as a hair decoration.
He turned the disaster into a saga story, where all were heroes who’d lived to tell the tale.
When the lady of the house presented him with a fur, he declaimed,
‘Here I shake a shrunken fur coat;
surely ’tis not ornamental.
All our clothes are in the ship-field
and it is too wide to seek them.
Lately all the sea-horses
left we dressed in splendid garments
as we drove the steeds of mast-heads
to the crags across the surges.
‘This bear skin is most welcome for
a bare skin’s all I have that’s dry.
Our clothes are seeded in the ship’s field
of wide waves and will be seen again
only on the white sea-horses
we left such splendid gifts
as we pounded our wooden steeds
against the sea-god’s craggy spears.’
Skarfr was reciting the lines, consigning them to memory as he slipped into a restless sleep, aching and shivering.
The next day he was worse and as he dipped in and out of consciousness he was aware of being carried, on a journey by cart, being carried again, so cold.
And then he began to burn and sweat. He threw off bedclothes, thrashing around in delirium. His whole body was on fire and his head pounded.
Somebody, a woman, forced a vile potion down his throat and he lost consciousness again, only to surface in freezing sweats, no blanket warm enough. Then the flames of the White Christ hell consumed him. He see-sawed between ice and fire.
Then more foul-tasting liquid.
Skarfr wanted to keep flying and resisted the attempt to pinion his wings to his sides.
‘No,’ he protested, flapping in panic.
But they could never imprison a wild bird like himself. He pretended to submit, his wings straight as fins. Then he dived, streamlined as an arrow, so deep they could not follow.
He chased silver shoals that turned and twisted as one creature but they were not fast enough to evade his sleek burst of speed, his own twists and turns. If he was hungry, he’d open his beak and slip a fish down his long throat in one swallow. If he wasn’t hungry, he’d play.
When he needed air, he surfaced far from where he’d entered. By the time they spotted him, called, ‘Skarfr!’ in their soft voices that teased his memory, he’d already dived again.
Deep in a shimmering world where sunlight became fishes, tiny wriggles of gold that disappeared when he ate them.
‘Come back, Skarfr,’ the voice urged, so kind, so gentle, he was tempted.
But he knew such voices were an illusion and the sea called him back, dancing in white lace, opening to him in warm currents that tickled and caressed.
The voice persisted. ‘Skarfr, it’s me, Hlif. I’m here.’
He only opened his eyes a second, to banish the illusion before flying away, but sea-grey eyes held his and if he dived again, it would be into those eyes and he would be lost in them. Hlif.
She was sitting on a stool beside the straw pallet on which he lay, a blanket half over him, half tossed off. Her hand held his, tightening, tethering him to this world.
‘Water,’ he croaked.
Hlif offered the practical response of holding a leather bottle to his lips, wetting them and helping him sip. Whether that was the water he needed or not, he couldn’t say but he felt his wings furl and shrink to finger-size. He flapped them over the blanket and they were fingers. He pulled the cover fully over him, embarrassed at his state of undress, waiting to wake up from this strangest of dreams.
‘You’ve been in a fever for weeks,’ Hlif told him. ‘Rognvald sent you to the healer’s house. He and the others are still in Einar’s farm and will probably stay there for the summer.’
Skarfr looked about him. A tidy longhouse interior, smelling of cleansing herbs, crushed juniper needles, rue and a sweet hint of dried dog-rose petals. But no healer in sight.
‘She was called to a birth, some miles away. I said I’d look after you.’ Hlif glanced away. ‘I said I’m your sister. The Jarl doesn’t know I’m here.’
Skarfr sat up abruptly, which made his head spin. ‘My sister! I don’t have a sister.’
She shrugged. ‘I know but I shouldn’t think anybody else does. I’m on Hjaltland to assess the goods salvaged from the shipwreck and organise their transport to Orphir. Rognvald thinks I’m on my way back there and nobody in Orphir will count the weeks I spend here.’
‘What about the healer? She’ll hear gossip, figure out who you are.’
Another shrug and a mischievous smile. ‘If she does, she won’t tell. She’s one of those women used to keeping secrets.’
Her hand had crept back like a little mouse to nestle against his. He didn’t dare ask what this meant so he shut his eyes. His wings did not grow back. The voice remained, low and honeyed.
‘Word came from Hjaltland that the Jarl’s ships were wrecked. As more news came, I asked about you but could get no sense. Somebody said there’d been one man drowned, a body carried up the beach by Rognvald. Nobody had seen you with the Jarl’s men. The stories were all so confused. Ten men had died, nobody had died – all they wanted to tell me about were boxes of furs!’
She whispered, ‘I thought you were dead.’ Her fingers curled around his, clenching and unclenching. ‘And when I found you here, I still didn’t know whether you’d live. You were burning up with fever.’
Their eyes met. Burning. On fire.
‘I’ve wondered too,’ she said, ‘whether this is the meaning of my vision for your future. I hope so as the danger has passed now.’ She bit her lip, came to some decision. ‘I’ve waited so long for you to grow up and I’m not going to wait any longer.’
He should probably feel insulted but his heart was thumping so loud he could hear it in his ears. ‘You’re younger than me,’ he pointed out.
‘I’ve never been as young as you,’ she retorted, almost the sparring partner of his childhood. Almost.
‘When the fever was high, you called out a woman’s name.’ She hesitated. ‘Never hers. Always mine.’
He heard the scrape of her stool, felt fine wool brush against their joined hands as she leaned over him, one of her gold brooches cold against his chest as her cheek leaned against his, gently rubbed skin against skin. He didn’t dare open his eyes but he pictured her every move, her expression. Her lips touched his, curious and soft, as open to him as the sea in his fever-dreams. Were her eyes open or closed?
He had to look.
They were open. Grey pools, flecked with sunlight, welcoming him. He dived in.
When he surfaced again, she held back, sat on her stool, shook her head. ‘Not yet but soon. You are still weak.’
He would have protested but his body cried out for sleep and the comfort his spirit had taken made letting go of the world easier than he’d known for years.
Each time he woke, he reached for her, afraid she’d vanish. Once he found her curled up in his arms, too tired to watch him any longer. From then on, that was her place whenever she wished. As he grew stronger, her touch grew bolder and neither could say which day they became lovers – just that they had and with no regrets.
Lingering over her smooth shoulders, which had featured in his dreams for so long, Skarfr discovered where there were and, even more exciting, where there weren’t rosy lace freckles on marbled skin.
Holding his face in both hands, she said, ‘There is something you should know.’
He’d been waiting for the catch and he prepared himself. Botolf’s lashings all over again. Always punishment after any pleasure.
‘You don’t see me as I am,’ she told him. ‘I’m squinty-eyed and snub-nosed, with blotchy skin and ginger hair like a wire scrubbing brush. I’m never going to grow above your chest height and will always need help getting onto a pony or into a boat. I can hardly carry a shield, let alone a sword.
‘I can count better than any man and know more about trade than Rognvald does. Men don’t like that, except when they’re trading of course. The only men who have ever looked at me as if I’m a woman are you and Thorbjorn. And he’d swive a goat when his blood’s up.
‘Everybody knows this. Everybody sees me this way. I’m plain and shrewish. I don’t need the curse to stay unwed. That’s the truth and I don’t want you thinking I don’t know so.’
Skarfr could tell she was serious so he bit back his laughter. He didn’t want to make the sort of mistake that had already cost him years of distance from Hlif. Then he told her the truth.
‘I didn’t think you were pretty when we met,’ he confessed. ‘And your looks are different.’
‘Not beautiful like Inge,’ she said.
He didn’t take his eyes from hers. ‘Not like Inge at all,’ he said, ‘but beautiful. Nobody else sees you from the inside like I do. You light up my life. I don’t want you to be other than you are. Perhaps all men see the right woman in this way, beautiful to them, when others see bent noses or coarse hair, blubbery flesh or sharp tongues. I don’t care a sheep’s arse how others see you. You are beautiful to me inside and out.’
His body’s confirmation of this was very convincing. All that Skarfr had learned from other women, he gave to Hlif with a tenderness that was for her alone. And what she gave him was worth the danger they faced. Probably. Skarfr was worried about the risks Hlif took.
‘Rognvald will exile me if he finds out and he’d never let you come with me.’
‘Then we’ll make sure he doesn’t find out.’
Hlif could be very persuasive.