Ghosts of the Vikings

by Marsali Taylor

  I was getting cold, even in my sailing thermals and warmest socks. My feet were beginning to go numb, and my fingers. I eased my gloves off, lifted my cupped hands to my mouth and yawned into them, then pulled my gloves back on before the warmth could dissipate. I couldn’t stamp my feet or ‘beat the scarf’ with my arms, or any of those seaman’s tricks. It was time the cavalry came.

  The moon had sailed clear of clouds till now. Suddenly the white radiance of the hill vanished as if a wet cloth had been swirled over a blackboard. It would make no difference to the treasure-seekers, with their goggles, but I was blinded. The only certainty was the rough grass under my hand, and the stone-snick of footsteps from within the broch.

  Then I heard, felt, a heavier tread coming up the hill. I waited, and listened, trying to work out where someone could have come from, for there’d been nobody there earlier. The person was moving confidently even in this dark, with a faint clinking sound, like chainmail. He was coming straight towards the broch. A cold shiver ran up my spine, and my breath caught in my throat ... the sites have better protection as wis, Magnie had said. The glimmer came back to the sea, and I saw a figure outlined against it, not ten metres from me, made taller by the horned helmet, broad shouldered, with a double-headed axe raised in one hand. Then the moon came again, and I felt my scalp tingle. There he was, not the grandfather who carved a doll for his bairn, but a Viking raider, with the moonlight glinting on his chainmail, on the studs of his black belt, the blade of the upraised axe. He gave a roaring shout in a language I’d never heard, although it had the sound of Norwegian or broad Shetland. I stumbled back against the broch, struggling for breath, but it wasn’t me he was after. He thrust on past me towards the intruders, axe raised threateningly, and swung it down on the height of the broch wall with a ring of metal on stone.

  They were already scattering. One flashed a torch roadwards, and I heard the car’s engine whirr into life. Gravel spurted under its wheels as it came towards us, lights blazing. The Viking flung back his head and laughed.

  The moon dipped behind the clouds once more. I heard the car stop, the doors slam. The Viking came away from the broch, and I felt, heard, sensed him pause as he passed me. Then he moved on.

  When the moonlight shone again, only a breath later, I was alone on the hill.

  I dinna eat, yet I grow fat;

  I dinna fant, yet I wear awa’,

  Look up ee day, I amna dere,

  Yet twa weeks mair, I’m a silver baa.

  ... the moon.

  Friday, 27th March

  Tide Times at Mid Yell, UTand at DoverUT

  High Water03.20, 2.0m; 03.50

  Low Water09.42, 1.0m; 10.55

  High Water16.04, 1.8m; 16.24

  Low Water22.15, 1.2m; 23.19

  Sunrise05.47

  Moonrise09.59

  Sunset18.31

  Moonset02.23

  First quarter moon

  Wirds ir spoken, freend tae freend,

  Wi’oot a soond being heard,

  Sheeksin, weddings, births and deaths,

  Winging dir way across da warld.

  Chapter Five

  ‘We had trouble at Belmont,’ Magnie explained the next morning, when he and Peter came to see what sort of night I’d had. He sat down on a rock, shaking his head. ‘Man, I don’t ken what’s come o’ folk nowadays. There was a whole set of bairns up at the site, racing all over. Een o them had a metal detector he’d been given for his Christmas, and he was showing off for the others, and he kent his laws back to front, and was well ready to quote them to us. Well, you ken the like. There was no point in phoning the parents, they’d just back him to the hilt.’

  ‘Wir bairn has the right to do as he likes and you can’t stop him,’ Peter agreed. ‘So we just held a watching brief, as you might say.’

  ‘Stuck wi’ them and put up wi’ their cheek.’ Magnie grinned. ‘They found twartree old nails and a tin can, and that got them fed up enough to mind that it was likely their bedtime, so we let them be then, so they could go without losing face.’

  ‘When are you expecting your folk?’ Peter asked. ‘Would you like me to run you over to greet them?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m fine on duty here for daytime. I’ll maybe head over come afternoon teatime, and say hello. The concert’s at half past seven, and then there’s a meal after that.’

  ‘I can still save you a walk,’ Peter insisted. ‘If I pick you up about four, then? We’ll be out on patrol most of the day, I can easily detour here to get you on me way home.’

  ‘That’d be kind.’ If Peter got me, I could take Cat, which would be better; he wasn’t keen on being marooned on an anchored boat, and he’d like a Georgian house with a real peat fire. Someone there would have a car to run me back again.

  ‘Well, boy,’ Magnie said, ‘we’d likely better get back to keeping an eye on these tourists.’ They clambered back into the car, and headed off up the road, past the ruined house, leaving Cat and me on the beach. I hadn’t been up to the church yet, so I secured the dinghy and headed up the bank towards it.

  The cemetery had been enlarged in recent times, with an expanse of grass enclosed by a drystane dyke. At the far side was the old kirkyard, surrounding the roofless chapel. The kirk itself was rectangular in shape, a piece bigger than a crofthouse, with grey-green lichen furring the walls. The front gable looked complete, a curved arch with the shape echoed by the door and an upper window, but the seaward gable’s top was level with the walls. The doorway was barred by a grilled gate festooned with yellow and black notices: “Danger: walls unstable – no entry”. Naturally I pushed it open and went inside. I didn’t see that just walking there would bring the walls down on me, and I had no intention of climbing them.

  The interior was almost completely filled with gravestones, proper old-fashioned ones, with a long inscription. Several were set inside a rusty iron railing, and past that was the leper’s window Magnie had mentioned. It was funny to think of lepers in Britain – in my head they belonged to the Bible – yet there had been several leper colonies in Shetland. The Lunna Kirk had a leper’s squint too. I tried to imagine being banned from all human contact, even the Mass, and having to listen without seeing through this window. They probably hadn’t even had leprosy, just a variety of skin diseases which we’d cure today with steroid cream. I stepped gently around the railings. It took me a moment to find the Pictish fish; it was underneath the top lintel, where you’d see it from outside and below. It took a bit of faith to know it was a fish, but perhaps the lepers knew it was so by tradition. I hoped the knowledge that they were in the place their ancestors had also held holy comforted them, a little. A Shetland wren flew out of the stones above my head, and was followed by another, and another, swirling round the old walls like brown velvet butterflies.

  I turned my attention to the gravestones. The railed enclosure belonged to the Mouat family, who’d built Belmont House: Thomas and his wife, Elizabeth. I was just bending to look at the other graves, from the 1850s, when Cat sat bolt upright, whiskers forward, then dived back behind Thomas and Elizabeth’s headstone. The doorway darkened, and before I knew it, a man was standing in the doorway glowering at me.

  I knew he was a Shetlander by the jacket, a navy affair built for weather, not appearance. He was in his sixties, with a close-cut seaman’s beard and a good head of hair that had been Viking-red, and was now grizzled. His eyes were shrewd under low-set brows, his mouth set tight under the neatly trimmed moustache. There were more frown marks than laughter ones on his forehead and around his eyes; he’d have auditioned for a grumpy old man no bother.

  He spoke roughly in English. ‘There’s a “Keep Out” sign, did you not see it?’

  ‘I’m no’ climming the waas,’ I replied, in my broadest Shetland, ‘so I didna think I’d be doing ony hairm, joost haeing a skoit inside. Me pal Magnie, you ken him, Magnie o’ Strom, fae Brae.’

  Everybody knew Magnie. His mouth lost some of its downturn,
though he stayed planted in the doorway as if he wanted to stop me escaping.

  ‘He telt me aboot this fish.’ I indicated it. ‘So I wanted to see it before I began patrolling.’ I took a step forward. ‘I’m Cass Lynch. That’s me boat, anchored in the bay.’

  He didn’t offer to shake hands. ‘Keith Sandison. You’re a pal o’ Magnie’s, then?’

  ‘He came up with me from Brae. He’s at Peter’s ee noo.’

  ‘I ken that.’ The suspicious scowl returned to his brows. ‘He didna say he’d brought a lass wi’ him.’

  I couldn’t let that one pass. ‘He sailed up wi’ me.’ I decided to switch topics. ‘So you’re his cousin that found the treasure?’

  The scowl deepened. ‘If I’d kent what it would lead to, I’d a left it ida grund, and never said anything more about it to anyeen.’

  ‘Fuss?’ I asked sympathetically.

  He moved out of the doorway, and motioned me to go before him, back out into the sunlight. I was glad of that; the dank chill of the church was sending shudders down my spine. The warmth outside fell like a blessing. It seemed to soften Keith’s mood too. ‘Lass, I’m had that much bother wi’ it. I’d never a thought o’ the like. The government’s claiming half o’ it, and now the laird’s saying he’s entitled to it an’ aa. I found it, fair and square, on me own land, that’s belonged to me family as far back as the records go. It had been buried by someen who’s no’ coming back to claim it, you’re agreed on that?’

  I nodded. There was no point in interrupting him in full flow.

  ‘So, wha does that treasure belong to? Wha actually owns it? Is it no’ the friends of the original owners?’ He used ‘friends’ in the Shetland sense of kinsfolk.

  ‘If they could be traced,’ I agreed, cautiously.

  ‘Well, then, who’s that most likely to be but the folk still biding on that croft now, that inherited it from their grandfather’s grandfather, and so on, back as far as you can go? We’re no’ like south, where houses change hands every few years or so.’ He waved an arm across the sunny hills spread before us. ‘You look out there. Nearly every house that still has folk in it, the name or the blood is the same as the first census, in 1841. You’re not telling me those folk have no right to what’s on their land.’ He paused for breath. ‘And as for the laird, well, there a piece o’ paper says he owns the land, given by a Scottish king five hundred years ago to one o’ his ancestors. The Scottish king didna care that there were folk already living on that land when he handed it over. And now he’s saying I shoulda asked his permission to metal-detect on me ain land, that I’m wrought on aa’ me life.’ He turned his head and spat on the ground. ‘It’s like we’re back in the bad old days, where he claimed a third o’ the whales folk killed, because they’d walked on his foreshore to get at them. Now, would you no say I have a point?’

  I had to concede he did, from one way of looking at it. ‘But the other way, I suppose, is that now it belongs to all of us, for finding out more about the Norse folk who lived here a thousand years ago, and the best way of doing that is through the museum, and the experts.’ I gestured up at Underhoull, and tried to remember what Magnie had told me. ‘They can find out so much from peerie things you wouldn’t think mattered, like kenning that the whetstones they brought with them came from a particular Norwegian quarry. Maybe the jewellery can tell us more about who they traded with, or what their important festivals were, or the status of the folk who lived here.’

  I’d hit another nerve. ‘I wouldna mind so muckle if it was going to wir ain museum. But now they’re talking about “nationally important” and that means Edinburgh takes it.’ He glared again. ‘You ken this, lass, I heard that when the St Ninian’s treasure came back, for the opening o’ the new museum, een o’ the folk there compared the originals to the replicas they so kindly geed us.’ His voice dripped sarcasm. ‘An’ they realised a lock o’ the fine detail o’ the originals had geen. Someen had been polishing them, to keep them bonny for the visitors. I dinna want my treasure to be ruined like that.’

  I thought that a Museum of Scotland curator polishing Pictish silver with Duraglit was unlikely, but there was no arguing with a man with an obsession.

  ‘An’ now we’re being overrun wi’ tourists. I saw you come in here and thought, there’s another o’ them, taking their detecting into the kirk. I didn’t realise you were fae the yacht. I sooda kent. You’re the lass that gets mixed up wi’ the murders.’

  ‘I didna go looking for them, I promise you.’ I tried a smile. ‘Murder is even more trouble than treasure.’

  He didn’t exactly smile back, but his face relaxed. ‘So, you’re on duty here for the day?’

  I nodded. ‘This is a fine lookout spot, especially wi’ the sun on the wall like this.’ I slid down to sit on a dry spot beside it.

  He looked round critically. ‘You’ll no’ see the Lower Underhoull site.’

  ‘I can see the road. If a car stops, I can be there as quick as they can.’

  He nodded, conceding that. ‘Well, hae a fine day, lass. I’ll mebbe see you later on, at the concert.’

  He didn’t look like an opera enthusiast. ‘You’re going to it?’

  ‘The most o’ Unst’ll be there. We canna have your mother singing to an empty hall.’

  ‘I hope the Lerwick folk will think the same.’ The auditorium in Mareel held six hundred.

  ‘Lerook!’ he said, with a countryman’s contempt for the town. He raised a hand and headed off. Cat slid out from behind his stone and came to sit beside me on the soft turf, cropped to moss-softness, and scattered with the silvery-yellow celandines. I tilted my face to the sun, and considered.

  Keith Sandison was right, of course, about how the lairds had got their land. That was how it was all over Scotland, Gavin had told me, that the king had awarded lands to his nobles without considering that folk already lived there. It was just that in Shetland it was more recent; the Scots hadn’t arrived in force until almost 1500. Before then, we’d been Norwegian territory. We’d been pawned to Scotland for two thousand gold pieces as part of a marriage settlement between a James and a daughter of the Norwegian king, and never redeemed – or, to be exact, the Danes – Norway was part of the Danish empire then – had tried to redeem us, and the Scots hadn’t played ball. In so far as you could own land, it seemed much fairer that it should belong to the folk who’d lived there all these years.

  It was quiet here, just the shooshing of the waves on the beach, and the ch-ch-ch tzee, tzee, tzee of the wrens in the stones. I’d hear every car that came down the road. I went back to the dinghy and fetched my flask, binoculars and copy of Treasure Island that I’d found in a charity shop. I wasn’t totally convinced by the argument that Stevenson’s map was Unst – it looked more like a half-forgotten Scotland to me – but it seemed an appropriate read while I was here.

  I was deep in Jim-lad’s first encounter with Blind Pew when there was an engine hum in the distance. I looked up, and glimpsed a small red car – a Bolt’s hired Fiesta, I’d take a bet on it – turning into the Lund road before it disappeared behind the hill and ruined house. It stopped less than a minute later – the driver inspecting the Bordastubble Stone, I reckoned. If he, she, didn’t move again soon I’d walk up the road and make myself visible.

  I waited, the wrens cheeping above me, and the wind soft on my face. Then there was the snick of a car door, and the distant engine hum again, gradually increasing in volume. The car came into sight, scarlet against the grey walls of the House of Lund, slowed, edged itself into a gateway to leave the road clear for other cars, and stopped again. The driver got out and stretched, as if the Fiesta was too short for him, then walked round to the boot and took something out.

  I raised my spyglasses. The house ruins sprang close.The driver was male, tall, dark, and dressed in khaki cargo trousers and a mid-green padded waistcoat over a brown jumper – not quite camouflage gear, but the next best thing without being too conspicuous. His face was too
far away to see.

  The spyglasses must have flashed as I tilted them, for he turned in my direction, bringing up one hand to shield his eyes against the sun. If he was a treasure-seeker, it was to the good if he knew I was watching him, though it would be most horribly rude if he was just a normal tourist. I stood up, showing my own scarlet jacket against the moss-furred stones of the church, and immediately he turned his back and walked over to the field above the road, where there was a herd of ponies. His elbow went up: photos. Yeah, maybe. I strolled sun-gaits around the church, like a tourist inspecting the sites. The Viking graves were easy to spot, thin slabs of grey rock, as moss-furred as the church, with the cross arms half buried in the soil. I paused by each, slanting an eye landwards each time. The man moved away hastily when the ponies came towards him, no doubt equating photographs with the occasional half sandwich or apple-core, and strolled rather too casually to the lower field, where the three unexcavated longhouses were.

  I’d give him plenty of rope. I wandered into the church again, to an indignant chrrring from the wrens, and, keeping well back, looked out of the window. He’d stopped in the middle of the field. There was some kind of stick in his hand; a surreptitious look with the glasses suggested it had a square metal end to it. Then, as if he was satisfied that I wasn’t interested, he began to walk the field, as methodically as the men had done the night before. There was something familiar about the way he moved: not a young man, but not elderly either. That didn’t narrow it down much, except to exclude my classmates and Brae sailing cronies. The green waistcoat was laird clothing, or tourists; everyday working Shetlanders wore ganseys or boiler suits, or an all-purpose jacket in serviceable navy, like Keith’s, or ex-work gear in high-vis neon yellow.

  Besides, no local would have a red hired Fiesta. I sighed. There was only one set of strangers that I might recognise in Unst right now, and whichever of them this was, he’d wasted no time in getting into the treasure hunt. Too old for Caleb, not thin enough for the musical director, too tall for Charles, and if I looked hard I thought I could distinguish the dark outline of his beard. Of course it was Adrien, who’d brought his metal detector in the bag of golf clubs.