She reached up and touched it. ‘Fin?’
Their eyes met, and she saw her instinct was right. She saw him glance at Soyea, who simply smiled.
He bent down and tried to get Ussa to look at him, but except for a few tentative notes on the lyre every now and again, she remained silent and withdrawn.
Manigan pulled a stool close in beside Rian and sat down. ‘What now, for you? Will you come hunting with me again?’
She took his hand. ‘I feel like I belong here.’
He blinked, waiting for her to say more.
‘I’m going to stay.’
‘Good,’ he said.
She turned to check he meant it.
‘This’ll be a good place to spend winter,’ he said.
A smile emptied her face of all its worry. It was decided, then.
The other boats all left together the following day. An easterly breeze blew up out of the sunrise. The preparations for departure were punctuated by discussion of the fickle nature of the winds from the east, the way they always gusted, funnelled down glens into lumps as if to be hurled at passing ships by mountain giants.
Rona was returning to the Winged Isle with Eadha and Ishbel on Aonghas’ heavy curragh, which he sailed with only Mac for help. Rian didn’t know if Eadha was handy on a boat. She knew very little of him, really. But there would be other summers. Rona and he had promised to make her a grandmother and return.
Ishbel the priestess had the look of someone who would be competent with ropes, somehow. Ussa was going with them to learn the lyre and she would be no help on the boat at all.
Alasdair’s curragh would run with the wind directly behind it. He had offered to take Soyea over the Minch to the long island to serve her penance for the killing. She would be out on the moor on her own for a whole moon. The Wren, before she left, held Rian’s hands in her tiny clasp and said, ‘I will be watching over her. She will be healed by it.’
To everyone’s surprise, Donnag had packed a little bundle and demanded to go with them. She wanted to return to her father’s and brother’s home, she said. Taking the spirtle down from where it hung above the hearth she handed it to Rian. ‘This is your home now.’
‘It’s surely Buia’s home now?’ Rian said.
Fin stopped packing the food box and looked up. Soyea, seated on a stool in her grey gown, was watching intently. The Wren too.
All eyes seemed to be on Rian. She proffered the spirtle to Buia, who waved her hand in dismissal. There was nothing Rian could do but place it back on its hook herself. It swung from its leather thong, then settled, and its motion was mirrored by the thump inside her chest.
The third boat to cast off, but the first to get its sail up, was Bradan, reaching north, Manigan at the tiller. Rian watched them leave, knowing exactly what would be happening now: banter between Badger and Kino as they trimmed the big sail, Fin’s monkey asleep on his coat while he tidied up the mooring warps in his quiet way. Once he was ready, he would take the helm. Later, when they found walruses, Manigan was going to teach him the muttering.
Just before climbing aboard, he had said, ‘It will be my last walrus and his first,’ nodding towards Fin, who was waiting with the rope to cast off. ‘And then I will become your wood gatherer and learn to milk the cow.’
She smiled at him through tears and kissed him one last time. Then she pushed his chest. ‘Get away with you.’
He ruffled her hair. ‘Are you sure you’re not coming?’
She nodded.
‘Fair winds,’ she called as the boat floated and its sails unfurled, the two brothers hauling ropes in rhythm.
Buia waved from the broch entrance, her cat draped over her shoulder. Rian walked from the shore up onto the headland towards the stone tower, then looked back out to sea. A boat for each of her daughters, the third for her man. Of course, everything always came in threes in her life. It no longer surprised her. Quite the reverse: it confirmed the rhythms of the world.
Later they would come home, and Manigan and Rian could grow old together, maybe even live happily ever after, just like in the best stories.
She made the sign for fair winds and good sailing and banished the fear that always came when she thought of all the widows made by the Northern Ocean. She remembered the great sea spirit and murmured a wish to it to keep the men safe.
When the sails shrank and dipped over the horizon, she turned back to the broch to tend the fire. She hummed the melody that Toma taught her, all those years ago, which seemed to have been constantly in her head since the night of the lyre dance. The whale’s song. The song of freedom.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It all began with Clachtoll Broch, so my first thanks must be to the Iron Age architectural genius who worked out how to build a 15-metre-high, double-walled, dry-stone tower. John Barber of AOC Archaeology calls him Ug, so thank you Ug. You not only left a remarkable legacy on the shore of my home parish, but you sparked in me a fascination with your period and with the people who built, inhabited and visited your implausibly wonderful building, who are fictionalised here. I must also thank, as well as John, Graeme, Andy, Alan, Charlotte and all the other members of the AOC team, who have helped to bring the Iron Age (and indeed other periods) to life through their work in Assynt and indulged my wonderings about what Pytheas may have found here when he came, way back in 320BC.
Huge gratitude also to Gordon Sleight, who has repeatedly hired me to hang out with this brilliant team on their various digs, and to pick their brains while ostensibly writing blogs and media releases for them. Gordon has also read these books with a meticulous care and pointed out the many mistakes, anachronisms and pieces of wishful but implausible thinking that I wove into earlier drafts.
Professor Barry Cunliffe was also very helpful in his insights about Pytheas and in encouraging my ideas about what he might have been getting up to in this neck of the woods. Professor Donna Heddle was similarly key in helping me imagine the cultural world Pytheas found here. Martin Wildgoose showed me into High Pasture Cave and helped me to envision its ceremonial use. Staff of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and the museums in Kilmartin, Stromness, Kirkwall, Wick, Inverness, Pendeen, Penzance, Copenhagen, Oslo, Krakow and Longyearbyen, have helped me in my research over the years. Particular thanks to Neil Burridge for showing me his bronze-smithing magic, to the captains and crews of the Ortelius and the Noorderlicht, for amazing adventures in the pack ice and northern ocean, and to Ian Stephen for sailing wisdom and stories about the sea in times gone by. And thanks to everyone else who has talked to me about the Iron Age and helped me to time-travel back to when Pytheas made his amazing journey. All remaining historical inaccuracy is entirely my fault.
The book could not have been written without the chance to take some time out of the day job, and this was made possible by a generous bursary from Creative Scotland, for which I remain hugely grateful. It came about as a result of urging from staff at Moniack Mhor, who also gave me retreat space and moral support by simply believing in the project.
Margaret Elphinstone was my first reader, critical friend and mentor, and the long conversations and convivial times with her and Mike were priceless waypoints on the journey to the finished books. Jane Alexander and John Bolland were crucial readers of early drafts, so thank you both for the encouragement and helpful suggestions about story and characters. Thanks also to all my other writing buddies: Romany, Jorine, Anna, Maggie, Becks, Anita, Graham, Kate, Alastair, Phil and everyone else who has come to join in writing events in Assynt, not forgetting Ed Group, Helen Sedgwick, Peter Urpeth and Janet Paisley. I’m grateful to Lesley McDowell and Madeleine Pollard for editorial advice, and to all at Saraband, especially Sara Hunt, for bringing it to fruition.
My Mum sadly didn’t get to read this book, but her pride in me lives on and I’m grateful for it every day. Thankfully I have my Dad and my uniquely wonderful sister, Alison, offering endless support. Thanks to you both and to all
the rest of our far-flung tribe.
This book was largely written at sea, thanks to the crew of Each Mara, the most precious of whom is Bill, my patient mate and co-skipper, to whom I offer buckets of love and hugs, onshore and off.
Also by Mandy Haggith
Fiction
The Amber Seeker
The Walrus Mutterer
Bear Witness
The Last Bear
Poetry
Castings
letting light in
Into the forest
Why the Sky is Far Away
Non-fiction
Paper Trails: From Trees to Trash,
the True Cost of Paper
COPYRIGHT
Published by Saraband,
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Suite 202, 98 Woodlands Road,
Glasgow, G3 6HB
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Copyright © Mandy Haggith, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without first obtaining the written permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN: 9781912235582
ISBNe: 9781912235599
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf SpA.
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