by Ken Hagan
There are shallows below us at the mouth of the fiord, a ridge of rock underwater. Sailing on an ebb tide, with an off-shore wind at our backs, we will be safe to cross the sill, but out of caution, Einar is heading mid-channel to take us over the shallows.
‘Cross-tide ahead,’ I shout suddenly, ‘look, dark water, a cut in the waves.’
‘I see it too,’ calls Mel excitedly.
‘Too late to shorten sail,’ shouts Einar, ‘we will take the overfall.’
‘Hold on, Audeen’ says Da, ‘stick to the mast. Keep hold of those girls.’
‘Don’t worry; Da,’ laughs Alu, ‘we will hold Ma: we won’t lose her overboard.’
Surface choppy; breaking white; froth tossing off the waves, we are running into roughened sea, meeting of tides, the prow of the Vigtyr forced to steer-board. The ship begins to yaw from side to side like a drunken man. A sudden kick, sideways at our beams, we are ‘kicked’ off course by an unseen boot in the water. The hull takes another bump, and then another. Our mast shakes upright after each bump, with the beam yawing low, waves run over the gunnels and flood the hold.
Turning, I see Da on helm, Feilan’s terrified face and Kol sliding over deck.
‘Cormac,’ shouts skip, ‘loosen steer-board brace! We are letting the sheet out!’
It should have been Feilan’s task — going by his list — but it is Einar who slips the sheet-knot, his quick hands slackening sail.
‘Loosen starboard brace!’
‘Aye, aye, skip, I’m on to it,’ returns Cormac.
‘Kregin, off bowline!’
‘It’s off, Einar, I mean, skip.’ Maybe I should have waited till Einar gave the order.
‘Now, Jo, now,’ shouts Einar, ‘draw back now, larboard brace!’
Jo takes to hauling aft on the yard-arm for all she is worth, hard at it larboard, she hasn’t the breath to answer.
Sepp limps hot-foot across deck and lends a hand. We are turned about, it is wind versus tide, we don’t have long to wait. Something ‘kicks’, this time from aft, a slam from windward. We gather wind and our sail fills, fills across our beams, snaps full-blown and heaves the hull in one thrust over the tide-line.
The bowsprit plunges, dips water, the swell lifts us up, again the bowsprit plunges, lower this time, dips water, deep into the facing wave. Again the swell lifts us up, higher than before, bouncing the bow, bouncing Mel and me in the air, thumping us down again with a bump on the deck. Up goes our fore-deck and down; up goes our fore-deck and down. Da has legs apart for a steady foothold; Einar, and Feilan too, three pairs of hands on the tiller, shoving our rudder-board wide on the turn, turning us about.
Bedwyr stands in the hold, baling like mad. Little Tarkyr, his feet in a swill of dung, has hidden behind the heifer. He clings to her neck, clings, like a child clings to his mother.
Gaukyr, in with the sheep, gets a pail in hand, he is knee-deep in water, he sets to with a furious teeming and tipping, he helps Bedwyr ladle out from the bilge.
The ram lets out a grunting bellow, one of his snores. The hen-crows are caw-caw-cawing, pecking at the wicker grill of their cage. Mel has to hold the cage or she will lose it, with the other hand she grips the gaff-spar — Sepp had the foresight to wedge the gaff to the inside of the bows.
The luff edge of the sailcloth is flapping madly above me; I pull in the bowline, stiffen the sail, and look to see if it’s what Einar wanted, but he has turned away.
Cormac is watching from his perch, a steady arm around a scroud-rope, casual as always, sat during all this fuss, calm as you like, on the gunnel rail. He grins at me. A wink from him is worth more than I can tell.
My hands stinging; face stinging, salt spray and rain blowing on my face, dripping down my neck, we are west-bound in open sea, ship heeling to larboard.
Ma leeward of the mast, Alu and Vrekla with her: Ma has her beads in hand, saying prayers, my sisters too; Ma has shown them how to kiss the Virgin, make a sign of the cross, name the saints, ‘double-quick to name the saints, double-quick and save your soul’, they have been taught by rote to say the holy words, the same ones she was taught as a child.
Elgyr, our youngest slave, no more than a boy, creeps out from under the upturned skiff. He has been sick. Sepp tousles the scrawny head and shoves him into the hold with the others. ‘Get to baling lad,’ he says in a friendly way, ‘take your mind off it’.
Einar gives the order to ‘reef down’. We shorten sail, Ma, beads slung behind her neck, reefs down like one possessed, helps the girls ‘double-quick’ while skip luffs to windward, slackening canvas to slow us down. Einar calls from the helm, ‘We will keep short-sail; give the Skarsons a chance to catch us up.’
*
I think it was ballast that grazed my hands. Da had us lifting ballast from the hold yesterday to allow for the weight of our ram coming aboard. Sepp asked if we should tip the stones overboard. The answer was no, with no explanation. Cormac said it was dumb, and you can see why. We have taken ballast out of the hold and stored it in creels on deck, but we are left with the same weight on-board. It makes no sense.
‘Look,’ shouts Feilan, ‘see there: two red sails!’ We all turn to look.
A stretch of water has opened between us and land, a wide expanse of wet sky. The sky always seems bigger in a mist. Feilan is right. There they are, set against the headlands, two sails, still distant, Skarsons’ ships coming into view.
‘They took their time coming after us,’ says Ma, ‘what has been keeping them?’
Einar throws our ‘drag’ in the water, a bag of canvas attached by rope to the stern. The bag scuds over the wash; falls below the surface. Once it is under water, gathering weight, we feel it dragging on the ship. Our pace slows over the waves.
‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ says Einar, ‘that will give them a chance to overhaul us.’ Vrekla laughs. Ma gives a little sigh and returns to her beads.
*
‘They’re not closing in,’ says Da, ‘they are losing ground.’ He means the Skarsons’ ships. Da takes the helm. Einar runs amidships and Cormac hoists him onto his shoulders. Mast at his back to steady him, he looks at the horizon; standing at that height, a third way up the mast, he can see farther over the water.
The two headlands that mark the entrance to the fiord have disappeared, at least to my eyes; the rain has slackened, the haze lifted, sky cleared. Einar, hand on brow to shade against the glare of the heavens, shoulder-high on Cormac, scanning the horizon, saying nothing. Ma looks up at him from the deck. Alu squeezes Ma’s hand.
‘I’m certain of it too,’ says Sepp, ‘they are moving away.’
‘What do you make of it, skip?’ asks Jo, pulling the hair from her face.
‘They are not running downwind like us,’ replies Einar, ‘that’s for sure.’
‘Is it south they are heading?’ says Da from the helm. He is not looking aft.
‘If the off-shore wind has dropped,’ says Cormac, who knows his stuff, ‘they will have to tack in-shore, follow the coast for a bit before coming about.’
‘What does Cormac mean, Kregin?’ Mel whispers in my ear. ‘What does he mean?’ she repeats to the birds in the cage.
‘A third sail, look,’ says Feilan, pointing to steer-board of the wake, ‘another ship, do you see it, bearing this way?’
Da turns to look. The hound on lookout too, staring wide-eyed, to aft, one fore-paw on the stern board. We have a clear view eastward to the horizon.
‘Gaining on us,’ says Cormac.
Da knows what the third ship is, he knows who is on it, but he is not saying. Einar has guessed it too. He has taken the canvas drag out of the water.
‘All reefs off,’ his call bold and strong. He wants our sail open to the full.
‘Aye, aye, skip,’ shouts Alu readily; Ma and Vrekla are on to it too.
‘Larboard brace, three spans out,’ calls Einar.
‘Aye, aye, skip,’ Jo calls without turning her head.
We are running
downwind, bouncing at a fair dip into the waves. Everyone knows who is following. The look on their faces doesn’t fool me. Ma thumbing furiously at her beads. Vrekla humming a tune, the same tune over and over. Feilan mumbling his ship’s list. Everyone has worked out who’s on the third ship, everyone but our little Mel, she’s sitting with me at the prow, coo-cooing the crows, giggling each time our bow hits water, waiting for the next slap of spray to whoosh up from the wave.
Chapter 6
The Skarsons’ ships are two distant specks of grey. We watch them slip over the horizon. The outline of the other sail is way behind us, but still in sight. We are in a trough of calm, no longer downwind, our sail limp and oily, sagging wet. The tops of the waves are gently ruffled, rolling in towards our prow.
We had put distance between us and them. The Vigtyr has a good reach of sail, which gave us the advantage running downwind, but the easterly has dropped to nought. We are almost at standstill, drifting where the swell takes us. The waters under the hull have taken over; we are at the will of the current, veering south-east. They will hit the same flat calm as us, but when they do, or even before, they will take to the oars. Unlike us, they can row at will. They have a sculling crew, twenty strong, and a shallow draught built to slide over the sea. I can’t help thinking of Helga. She is out there somewhere, there far to the south, over the line. I dread what she must be thinking. How wrong I was to ignore her!
*
Mel plays another of her games. ‘I espy with my little eye, something with the sound of ‘V’. She shapes her infant lips and blows out with a loud Vuh. I play along with her; it’s harmless and takes my eyes off the shape of the vessel bearing down on us.
‘That’s an easy one, Mel.’ I put on a false grin. ‘It is Vuh for Vigtyr, isn’t it?
‘No,’ she laughs, ‘try again.’
‘Is it ‘V’ for vane, the weather-vane at the masthead?’
She looks up at the weather-vane. ‘No,’ she answers, a little disappointed. ‘I never thought of that.’
‘Let me think.’ I glance again at the vessel behind us. The last thing I want to say is ‘V’ for vessel. My eyes alight on the greasy tarp that covers our sacks of grain: ‘Is it Vuh for walrus-skin?’ I say jokingly.
‘No, no, no,’ she giggles, ‘not valrus. I will tell you, if you can’t guess.’
‘I give up, Mel; tell me what you see.’
‘Its ‘V’ for vutt,’ she says with a proud look.
‘What is a vutt, a vutt?’ I can’t help laughing.
‘A water-vutt of course,’ she replies in baby voice, ‘right in front of your nose, look, Kregin, you dumb-head, the vutt where we keep the water.’
*
‘What’s this, Audeen?’ Da makes his voice sound casual, while he sees to the rigging amidships. ‘No prayers on the go? Get those beads a-rattling! We need a miracle, Ma, a wind or mist. A bit of darkness to hide in, what do you say?’
Ma steadies her footing and grips the rim of the water-butt, grips as if the swell was about to topple her overboard. She had no need to stretch out her legs to balance. That passing wave was a gentle swell from the sea, no more than a ruffle.
Without answering, she fills a bowl of water and hands it to Da. She waits while he drinks; looks at him quizzically. Da meets her gaze. Ma turns away and stares out at sea and sky.
There is no prospect of early nightfall at this time of year; it will be ages before day dips into sea. Clouds high and white are passing over the face of the sun. The rain has gone south over the line, following the Skarsons’ ships to wherever they are headed. A mist to shelter us is what Da said; it would be a miracle if Ma’s prayers were answered — it takes a wind to chase mist over the water and there’s no smell of wind anywhere, not a taste.
‘Come, Vrekla,’ says Ma suddenly. ‘Share out the drinking water. It’s better for us if we have something to spittle on.’
‘Ma,’ asks Mel, ‘why is Dada asking you to pray? Who is it? Who’s on that ship?’
‘No need to worry, little one,’ Alu slips in an answer, before Ma can speak.
Mel runs to Da’s knees and hugs tight. ‘Are there bad men on that ship, Dada?’
‘Maybe, little one, maybe not.’
He lifts our youngest into his arms and kisses her. ‘We would rather not hang around to find out, that’s all.’
Einar has Cormac busy on the slackened ropes, coiling them tidy on deck. The yard is down, set cross-ships, the sail spread out, arranged neatly in folds, ready for a sudden hoist. Jo and Sepp, with help from Feilan, have stretched the canvas beam to beam. Da has Ma and the girls in stitches, laughing at one of his corny jokes — not one of them is looking east. The raven on the faded sail keeps following us. No one has eyes for it, no one but me and Mel. While we watch, the timbers creak gently under the thwarts.
We have done all we can, we are ready for wind, from whatever quarter it comes. We wait, hoping for wind, or better still, for darkness. Night won’t come for ages yet.
The Vigtyr has made another turn in the current. Our prow is facing theirs, as if we intended to steer towards them. There is nothing we can do; we are a leaf in a pail of water. Mel and I watch from the prow as the long-ship closes on us. No men to be seen, too far away, but we can make out a regular dipping of the oars on either side of the Raven’s bows, barely disturbing water. We hear someone beating on deck, keeping the oarsmen in time. But for the steady beat of iron striking oak, the long-ship is silent. They have dropped sail; a loose sheet would hamper the power of their oars.
Closing in, twenty maybe thirty ship-lengths away, I feel a churning in the belly. Da has not gone for his rusty old sword — it is wrapped in leather and stowed in the hold —nor has he taken a wood-axe in hand. I thought he might have told Einar and Cormac to have their new blades ready. We shouldn’t be standing here, doing nothing.
Our only sight of the long-ship’s crew is the bobbing heads of oarsmen as they bend to the beat, as their oars dip ever faster into the waves. Now I see a face at the prow, not Drak’s heavy black jowls, but the lean face of the man in the kirtle, the one with the blond beard who spoke to me on the beach. I remember his handsome face gloating, when Kol wouldn’t answer my call, and the hate boils in me.
Einar barks the order: ‘Hoist: hoist now.’
Da, Sepp, Cormac, all three have the yard up in a trice; Jo and Feilan play out rope on larboard brace; our sail gathers wind, a breath, but it gathers from the west. The Vigtyr turns southerly in a mild wind; we are cutting wave at last, though still facing them.
With Einar at the helm, we are beating into the gentle westerly, no air to speak of. If he holds to this course in light wind, he runs the risk of stalling. We are on a track across their bows, heading into their path, sail canted, heeling towards the Raven. We get so close that Ma and the girls start pelting ballast stones from the creels; high looping throws, not bad for aim, but effort wasted; their missiles fall short, dropping in the waves.
‘Save it,’ shouts Da. ‘Hold fire, Ma, wait till we are in range.’
Drak, his scowling face astern, his crew taken by surprise, oarsmen in a flurry, lifting from the water. One of their oars is lost overboard. Ugly curses shouted behind us, men clamouring for weapons: spears, axes raised in the air.
Spears raining on us, plunging into the sea, a long throw overreaching the bow, flying over me, over Mel, splashing ahead of us, now one clanking on stern deck; another amidships, a hit. A ewe has got it in the neck, pierced through, choking red from her snout, fleece soaked in spurting blood, blood fouling straw in the hold.
Bedwyr sticks up his head to see the ewe, drops it quickly down again. Another axe spins in the air, flying over the helm, flying over Feilan, over Da, over Einar, striking wood on the masthead, splintering off the edge; falling inside the crate on the ram’s nose. The ram goes wild, stamps on the axe, gnashing the cage with his horns. Kol barks, jaws upwards, as if the sky were to blame for a hail of spears.
I don�
�t know how, but we are pulling away, eight ship-lengths to spare; ten. Sepp has time to draw out the spear from the ewe’s neck.
There is blood under the ewe — a misshapen clump of blood. With a shake of his head, Sepp takes little Elgyr in his arms. The lad has taken a hit, a deadly hit from the same blow that killed the sheep; he had buried his head in the fleece, thinking it would shelter him from the spears.
‘He won’t have felt a thing,’ says Sepp. ‘Come, Bedwyr, come, help me set him in the water. I’m sorry, lad, it was his time to go.’
Bedwyr takes the legs, Sepp the shoulders; they steady themselves larboard, drop the body overboard. The little lump hits the water, disappears under the wake. They do the same with the ewe.
Cormac and Feilan gather spears from the deck, stow them at the stern, shaft to blade, set neatly end-to-end like oars. Vrekla checks the water-butts in case of leaks. A spearhead might have pierced the wood. Alu pacifies the ram, she tries her best to. He won’t stop grunting. Kol muzzles close to Da’s legs. Ma is on her knees, praying again.
Gaukyr and Tarkyr clear straw from the hold; throw it over the side, blood on their hands, on their faces, blood in the water. Our sheep are in a blood-panic from the smell of ewe’s blood and the spillage of Elgyr’s wounds on the boards. All of a sudden they make to scurry off the deck; to run blindly into the sea to escape. Sepp and Bedwyr grab them by the horns. The sheep’s hind legs kick like mad, but they are held down on the bilge boards. Our calves stand stock-still as ice, not placid; not without fear; their eyes wild, their tongues hang, slathering. The caw-cawing, knaw-knaw-knawing of caged crows; Mel clutches my shoulder, nestles her face on my neck, whimpering. I stretch my chin over Mel’s fluffy hair to look. Ma blinks from her prayer; catches my eye; sees Mel safe with me.
‘Jo,’ the shout from Einar. ‘Draw-in larboard brace; draw-in four spans.’ Da is at the helm, no one looking aft but me. The sea harriers in pursuit, forty or fifty lengths behind, they have hoisted sail. The canvas of the Raven is filled to full stretch. The wind may be light, but they are making chase under sail.
