‘Why is everybody being so nice to me all of a sudden?’ Skarfr asked Hlif when they met by Brogar, the furthest ring of ancient standing stones up above the loch. Far enough from the village for them to be together with only ancestral ghosts for company, who were myriad, according to local tales. Being cursed offered a certain familiarity with the spectral world, however unwanted, and Hlif considered the living as more of a threat to their closeness than the dead. Skarfr would have walked through fire and phantom for her sake so here they were.
‘Even the washerwoman smiled at me as she took my dirty clothes this morning.’ And she’d be washing them in the loch nearest Orphir at this very moment, scrubbing and gossiping – not about him, he hoped.
Hlif studied his face, traced his mouth with a fingertip, then answered, ‘It’s a miracle the wind hasn’t set your face in the glower you’ve worn for years now. But I do believe there are smile lines forming … here—’ she pulled lightly at one corner of his mouth, then at the other. ‘And here. It’s a well-known phenomenon. When you smile, people smile back. And they were terrified of you, with your face like a thunderstorm and a sour word whenever you opened your mouth, making a misery of their lives as well as your own.’
Her words teased and stung like the northerly breeze.
She stood on tiptoe to kiss him but he held her back.
‘You know why,’ he told her. Botolf. Lost poetry. Sweyn. Lost dreams. Thorbjorn. Lost love. She knew all his hidden self. He flushed. Perhaps not hidden so well if his melancholy humour had been so contagious.
She nodded. This time, he let her kiss him and his arms closed around her slight body, lifted her easily, powerful and protective. Sometimes he was frightened he’d crush her, so fragile she seemed compared with his glima wrestling partners. But she revelled in his strength, as if he were a mastiff she’d tamed, her secret weapon.
He growled at her, bared his teeth, and she laughed.
‘Why were you never afraid of me?’ he asked her.
‘I know you,’ she replied. ‘From boy to man.’ She punched his chest, a dragonfly landing on a tree trunk. ‘You can be stupid but I’d bet on you winning a fight and you’re a good man.’
Skarfr tasted her words, wondering. Was he a good man? He’d never thought of himself in those terms. But he’d often thought of Hlif as a good woman.
She added quietly, ‘We know what an evil man is like.’
They didn’t name him.
Instead they talked of someone who often spoke of goodness. Rognvald’s projected voyage to Jórsalaheim was on everyone’s lips and Skarfr couldn’t help feeling the buzz of anticipation, even though he would be leaving Hlif behind for years. The saga-story of a lifetime and he would be going.
She seemed resigned to the pilgrimage, more than happy to talk ships, stores, people and planning. Too resigned, he realised later. Too meek.
They would have more than a year together before the parting, which would be temporary, he assured her. With the double standards of a man who wants to eat his bannock and save it for later, he considered the time before the voyage as too long to worry about parting and the length of the voyage itself (unpredictable but at least three years) as a short absence.
Hlif never pointed this out but smiled and made their time together sweet in touch and talk. Not that she always agreed with him but her direct opposition in debate was refreshing. He enjoyed being teased and stung. She made him feel he was worthy of such honesty. And they both knew other ways a woman could behave with a man. No, that was not what he wanted.
Their meetings were all the more precious as they were rare, limited by the time and planning necessary to reach their secret places, discreetly. The Jarl was too busy with his own planning to notice occasions when his ward and his saga-maker were missing at the same time. If anyone of lower rank suspected, ascribed a cause to Skarfr’s cheerful demeanour, they were unlikely to cause ripples by tattling to their betters.
Winter brought its usual fun and this year Skarfr could enjoy the mummery of the Boy Bishop, a young choirboy chosen to mimic Bishop William for a day, strutting in his prelate’s robes, declaring new Holy Days and demanding fanciful forfeits for old sins.
Now that was glowering, thought Skarfr, watching Bishop William’s sour face, mirrored in the boy’s. The lad even had the stooping walk, as close to the original as if he were the Bishop’s shadow, making all but his model laugh as he blessed all around him.
A day’s humility harms nobody and the sin of pride is such a danger to the gifted.
The midwinter traditions would not have been complete without a poetry challenge from the Jarl. ‘By the time I finish reciting my poem, you should have yours ready, on the theme of that tapestry,’ Rognvald pointed to one where an old man wielded a sword, ‘and without using any words from my verse.’
‘The old one standing on the hanging
though full of unspent ire,
rod unsheathed upon his shoulder
will not move one woven step.’
Oddi the Little took up the challenge, chanting,
‘The warrior stoops preparing
one fell sweep
there where the tapestry is cut open.
Yet he’s the one in danger should
the ships’ captains fall to brawling
once more in this hall.’
The brawling captains showed as much appreciation of Oddi’s sly wit as the rest of the audience and Skarfr’s heart ached that his own verses were locked in his head. An aged man in crewel hues, whose sword he cannot use.
Another time the theme was a man’s beard and poetic mead flowed as freely as its bodily form.
And if Hlif avoided the Skottish mistletoe hanging from a beam, she made up for her public modesty with private kisses and Skarfr thought himself the happiest of men. Especially when Rognvald announced an expedition to Norðvegr in the spring and told Skarfr he was to remain in Orkneyjar and report on events there to the Jarl when he returned. Harald was to accompany Rognvald, leaving Thorbjorn in charge.
Skarfr put on a gloomy face, expressed deep disappointment at being left behind and the instant he saw the Jarl’s ship disappear over the horizon, he left word that he’d gone sailing to Papey Meiri. Or fishing off Birgysey. Or visiting friends in Hjaltland. All of which he did, briefly, interspaced with time at the Bu, catching up on events and fulfilling his duty to the Jarl, or in his longhouse, where Hlif would meet him.
They became experts at hiding time. Enough days that they could live together as man and wife, fed and protected by Fergus and Brigid, ignoring the parasite by the hearth, who grew ever more skeletal and no less malignant. He spat impotent threats and vile insults until Skarfr quietly reminded him of what was owed to a host – and the alternative. But he was harmless, a worm indeed. With Hlif beside him, Skarfr even pitied his old master, remembered his verse and his teaching, put the beatings out of mind. Such pity rendered the yellowing eyes more bilious with envy as they watched the young couple’s joy, the older couple’s benevolent ministrations.
Running along the beach where they had first met, Skarfr and Hlif knew the heady brew of freedom. Breaking bread together, discussing sheep with Fergus and how to smoke fish with Brigid, all the daily practicalities of household management were moments as dear as those when they lay together. No pretence.
Was that when a dark shadow passed over Skarfr’s joy? Not fear of the risks they took, for when he was in the Bu, Thorbjorn seemed as self-absorbed as a dragon with its hoard and all was calm in Orphir, sheltered from the storms that gathered in Norðvegr and Skotland.
No, not fear of risks but the knowledge that stolen meetings would never be enough in the future, not now they’d lived together. As Rognvald’s return loomed ever nearer, there was desperation in each embrace, even in their plans for the homestead’s wool production and cheese-making. Every time they lay together was goodbye as they didn’t know on which return to the Bu they would find news of the Jarl’s return and they would be stuck there, under surveillance. They would not be able to sneak away so easily, even for a few hours, and winter would make trysts even more difficult.
Besides, they didn’t want to sneak away.
‘I will change his mind,’ Hlif said.
But Skarfr knew Rognvald’s stance was built on his Christianity and his kindness: unshakable foundations.
‘If you bring the subject up, he’ll think you have someone in mind and he’ll watch you more closely. He has only just dismissed his suspicions of me but if he thought you cared for someone, he might wonder.’
And, although Skarfr had learned enough tact not to say so, what Hlif said about herself was unbelievable but true. Other men did not pay her any attention except as a shrewd businesswoman and trustworthy steward. There were no rivals, for which he was grateful. He needed no other man’s confirmation of Hlif’s beauty and worth. But that made it impossible for Hlif to misdirect Rognvald as to suitors.
Inevitably, the day came, with shouts and bustle at the Bu. Ships had been sighted. The Jarl had returned with his company of foreigners, all set for a wild Orkneyjar winter before setting off on the voyage that would make a saga of sagas.
Skarfr and Hlif had run out of time. Although he never mentioned it, Skarfr kept remembering the malediction Hlif had cast on him when they were children. Now he was a man, he understood that she’d felt slighted by his foolish declaration that he would marry Inge. But her words could not be unsaid and he was no hero to meet the impossible conditions.
I will marry you when my curse is lifted and when you are a skald renowned from the Old Country to this.