by Ken Hagan
Bedwyr, among the sheep, baling seawater from the hold, two pails at a time, throws the second pail into my hand, eyes pleading. ‘Quickly, master, come and bale.’
‘Leave it,’ my head is suddenly clear, my words measured and calm. ‘We have to lift the sail; get them out from under. We must free the others first. Do you hear? After that, who knows?’ The sail-cloth is oily and wet, thick with fallen ash. It won’t budge. Haul as we might, Bedwyr and I, we can’t shift it. The water-butts jam it tight to the deck, no way to move them. They are filled to the lid with drinking water as I know full well.
‘Bedwyr!’ Ma’s voice.
‘Ma, I hear you! Bedwyr is with me, we are trying to get you out!’
‘Is that you, Kregin?’ Another voice calls from under the sail, gripping me, giving me heart — Sepp’s strong voice. I heave the sail, for his sake, but still it won’t move.
‘Sepp, can you hear under there? The sail is too heavy.’ I catch my breath, choking from dust. ‘It’s jammed tight. What shall I do?’
‘Where is Cormac?’ Ma’s voice. ‘Where are the girls?’
‘Alu is safe, Ma, she has Mel: here with me.’
‘Your hunting-knife,’ Einar’s voice shouting under the sail. ‘Use the knife. Cut a hole through and be done with it.’
Another roar from the mountain somewhere out in the darkness behind the fog. The sea quakes; waters steam like a cauldron; smoke and dust close in on the ship, a heavy roll of sea lifts our larboard bow. One slit of my knife slashes the sail. Sepp’s huge arm punches through, ripping the sail-cloth asunder.
The Vigtyr lurches under me. Something lifts the hull. We are up and out of the water, suddenly surging to larboard, scudding forward on our beam-end, no way for a ship to be, rope and sail swinging around in the water ploughing a furrow, the full length of the ship in our wake. Our steer-board beam runs square behind us as if it were the ship’s aft. Our keel is being driven broadside. And to hind-ward, heavy seas, waves breaking over the swell. If it weren’t for trailing wreckage trenching a wake through the chasing sea, we would be overrun. The ship leans back, tilting in the water, no longer astern as it should be, but listing lengthwise. Our deck heels and faces aft.
Einar tears his way through the sail and Ma after him. Sepp disappears under the canvas; he comes out, holding Vrekla; he staggers, leans his body against the ship’s tilt; a lame man standing upright on a heeling deck, he balances Vrekla in his arms. There’s blood on my sister’s head, blood on her body, her arms hanging limp.
‘Set her down, Sepp,’ rages Einar, ‘leave her be, Ma. We need all hands. You too, Alu, on your feet. Go, help Bedwyr, I want seawater out of the hold.’
‘How can I leave the little one?’ shouts Alu, her voice shrill, out of control.
‘Take Mel with you,’ replies Einar, ‘she can bale. Can’t she?’
‘She’s in no shape for that!’ My older sister on her feet, defiant, holding Mel against the stump of the mast. ‘Can’t you see? The child is shaking!’
Einar is not listening, he turns to Sepp. ‘You and I need to move the water-butts. We must save what is left of the sail, or we have no hope. Kregin, get me the coil of rigging, the spare rope stowed under the ram’s cage, we need to make our mast secure. Ma, please! Leave Vrekla! Leave her, I say! We need you in the hold, baling.’
Ma pulls herself away from Vrekla. Alu, with one arm enclosing Mel to keep her safe, unties a cess-pail at the prow. They join Bedwyr, up to his thighs in water.
I grab the chance to say to Einar, ‘Cormac went in after Jo. It was dark and hopeless. He can’t have reached her.’
No answer from Einar, only sharp words. ‘The rope, Kregin, jump to it! Fetch me the spare rigging now.’
The coil of rope, forty ells in length and coated in slippery fat, is awkward to handle. To keep it safe, I loop the rope to waist and shoulder. While I wrap it around, I smear the deerskin jerkin with fat. Cormac will give me hell. No matter! The rope is secure. I don’t want Einar saying I lost it overboard.
As I struggle under the weight of rope, bracing myself against the list, the ship’s heel worsens, steer-board beam almost under the waves, yard and rigging, torn sail, snarled ropes, still trailing hind-ward.
The heel has made it easier for Sepp and Einar to topple the water-butts. Ditched aft-ward the butts roll overboard into the chasing wave. Our drinking water, carried toilfully from the forse three days ago, ends up in a raging sea.
Einar drags the torn sail-cloth from the helm and then he stretches a hand under water to check that our withy-ropes connecting tiller and rudder are secure.
‘Right, man,’ he barks the order to me. ‘You take the helm.’
‘Einar,’ I shout back. ‘In this sea, with no rudder in the water, what’s the point?’
‘Don’t argue — do it! Keep rudder in line with hull, unless I sign otherwise, got it?’
‘Aye, aye skip.’ He nods sharply, makes to turn away. ‘You heard what I said?’ I shout as loud as I can, ‘Cormac swam out to Jo. He did his best to save her. It was the last I saw of them, before fog and smoke came down.’
‘I heard you, nipper, but what can we do?’
He sees my tears; swallows hard, grabs my jerkin at the shoulders, pulls jerkin and rope in his arms, hugs me so tight I feel my chest creak. ‘Now man,’ he says, letting go, ‘hand over that rigging.’
Einar and Sepp unwind rope over our tilting deck, leaving the uncoiled end hooked and cleated to the larboard gunnels to stop it sliding overboard. They won’t cut lengths from the forty ells. They will save the rope entire — that’s the shout I hear between them — they will tie makeshift rigs fore and aft, and set stays beam to beam for a shortened mast, all from one unbroken length.
Einar secures the first part of the rope, either side of the ship, to replace the three scrouds that should run beam to mast-head. He daren’t climb the canted mast. He and Sepp tie a loop in position, hooking it up on the blade of an oar.
They feed out the coil as fore-stay and back-stay. Einar double-hitches the rope to the jagged edge of the torn mast-head; Sepp hauls in tight, stem to stern, and knots the end of the coil on the aft cleat, here, behind me at the helm.
At our backs to steer-board, the sea has fallen, but the breaking wave still combs the crest of the swell and the current, under us in flood, runs as strong as ever.
*
With rigging to steady the mast, and bilge water baled from the hold, already there is a better feel from the hull. Suddenly the rudder shakes under my hand, cutting water. I can’t believe it. He has done it.
‘Einar, Einar,’ I yell till my throat hurts with excitement, ‘look, skip! The Vigtyr is back. We are on the water!’
The wreckage has swung back astern. We are no longer moving on beam-end. Einar is in no hurry to cut the trailing wreckage adrift. He has not said why, but he must think that it keeps our hull from keeling over.
He and Sepp have hauled a remnant of sail to the mast. The makeshift sheet is three-cornered, knotted top and bottom to the shortened mast, luffed on a running bowline to prow. Einar has been trying it this way, turning it that way, giving slack, pulling taut, while I work the rudder to his signs. Nothing more can be done. The sheet barely gathers wind.
He’s coming aft to take the helm. Maybe now is the time to cut free from the wreckage in our wake! Skip will ask me to take my axe to the stays, I’m sure of it. Before I go for my axe, I feel on my neck for the hornlet of Da’s nails. ‘Bring us luck, Da,’ I whisper, holding the calf’s hornlet hidden under my serk. I daren’t lift out the charm, or show it openly, for fear that Einar will see.
*
Ma is with Vrekla, trying to revive her. My sister has come to, her eyes like slits, barely taking notice. It doesn’t look good; she is dazed; blood everywhere.
Sepp stands by the ram’s cage, calms the old buffer, scratches between the horns. ‘Hey, old man,’ I hear him say to the ram, ‘just as well that you can paddle a bit.’
>
Bedwyr is in the hold with the woolbacks. Like Sepp he is muttering to the animals. There is nothing to feed them with: every last scrap of straw and fodder, sodden in seawater, was lost in the baling out.
I have my axe in hand, waiting for Einar’s call. Soon we will cut free from the trailing sail and yard-ends, but still no word. Skip is taking an age to give the order.
Alu is on lookout at the prow. Einar told her to sit there. She is holding Mel, singing softly, watching out into the empty ashen sky. She croaks the words, voice raw with dust. Skip is standing beside me, he is back on the helm. The sinews on his arms and hands, the veins on his neck are like twisted cords of wire, his face and beard glazed in grey sweat. The falling ash has turned his brow to stone.
*
The ash that burst from the fire-mountain is gritty and sour. The air smells of salt, of smoky cinders. The ash clings to mast and makeshift sail, clotting rope and stays with a grey dew, covering ship and all on-board, misshaping everything under its warm claggy dirt.
The day should have dawned. Maybe it has, but we are unable to see light, the sky dark, a fog of ash above us, nothing but dense fog, fore and aft, and at our beams. Falling dust settles thick on the warm sea. To my confused eyes, the seawaters seem to be hardening, stiffening like animal fat, as it cools to lard in a pan.
*
The cindery cloud has brightened to a wet sea fog and brings us hope. Choking ash gives way to a warm, grey drizzle. The drizzle lingers all day, grey and dull, before slowly darkening into night. No moon or stars to lighten our path over black ridges of sea. We are silent and wakeful in the darkness, not daring to cough, hearing every splash under the hull, every creak of stretching timber, every plop of rain off the ropes.
We are shadows on a broken ship, faring in unknown seas, nothing but an un-hoisted scrap of sail to gather wind, no landmarks in sight. We would hoist sail — a worthless sheet low and limp — and pitch to any coast, to any cliff or beach, to any rock, islet or skerry, if only one was to be seen.
The Vigtyr offers no resistance to the swell. We are slaves to tide and drift.
Einar won’t leave the sail-cloth hoisted: a sail, even an uncertain one, he says, will add to our speed over the water. He daren’t take the risk unless he can see where we are going. Our only hope lies in the morrow, if luck or light leads us to a glimpse of landfall; otherwise we are drifting into boundless, open seas.
It is impossible to judge the worse of two evils: to be lost fog-bound in endless, empty waters, or swept blindfold to the rocky dangers of some unseen shore?
*
‘Look, ice-serpents,’ cries Bedwyr. ‘They are feeding at the wreckage.’
Sepp casts a glance back in the darkness, but takes little notice. ‘No lad,’ he says, ‘not ice-serpents, might be seals or a young walrus maybe.’
Einar turns and looks, his face stiff as stone. ‘If there are seals in the water,’ he whispers, ‘it could mean land.’ He studies the wreckage that trails behind us; squints and opens his eyes wide. ‘It can’t be!’ he gasps. ‘It can’t be! How can it be?’ Now he is calling to us, in joy and hope, ‘They are back there! I don’t know how in hell they have done it, but they have! Help me, here, help!’
*
We haul them in, Cormac and Jo, on the end of the rigging. They had wrapped a loose end around their chests, binding their bodies as one, holding the yard-ends to stay afloat in the warm waves. We haul them in as one hulk of flesh, arm over arm, till they are within touching distance.
Sepp leaps into the ashy water lapping the stern; he has separated Jo’s body, he is heaving the naked womanly shape up to us, to Einar’s hands, to mine, Ma’s, Alu’s and Bedwyr’s. We grab Jo, lift her, warm, and still alive, onto the ship.
Sepp has a job to free Cormac’s trembling fist from the rope. Our brother’s hand is locked fast to the shreds of rigging that saved him and Jo.
Poor Jo. The rope has left welts in her flesh, heavy breasts bruised from hugging a broken yard-end, eyes raw from salt and ash, all night, all day in the steaming water. She holds Ma and me in a fearful clawing embrace. I tear myself away, take Cormac’s deerskin from my shoulders to throw it over her nakedness. Ma pulls a scrap of sail-cloth over her.
Einar is with Cormac, he is rubbing Cormac’s legs to massage the cramp. ‘Give me his jerkin,’ says Einar. ‘He is shivering now that he’s out of the water.’
‘Hell’s teeth, Ma,’ says Jo looking up, ‘what’s happened to Vrekla?’
‘Don’t fret,’ says Ma, ‘she took a bang on the head, took a tumble, nothing more. We will soon have her mended.’
‘But Jo,’ says Alu. She bends down to comfort Mel. The little one is hiding in her skirts. ‘We had no idea you could be there. Did you shout for us? We didn’t hear.’
‘Hell’s shit!’ says Jo, ‘where would we get breath to shout?’ she looks at Cormac, ‘we were choking on water, sinking below; coming up for air. All we could do was hang on! He kept grabbing me, holding my head up, and then he tied us to the rope.’
‘I can see that,’ says Ma, ‘it has burned welts into your skin.’
‘If only we had seen you,’ repeats Alu, this time to Cormac, ‘if only you had shouted.’
‘Why?’ Cormac’s curt reply. ‘What good would it have done?’ He rolls over, retching.
Sepp looks none too pleased at this talk; he lopes angrily over the deck; shakes water like a dog dripping wet, squeezes his beard to wring out the ashy flume. ‘We would have got to you somehow,’ he says simply, ‘we would have hauled you in.’
‘The ship was going down,’ says Cormac, ‘all of you with it. What could you do? You were lost. We had to see to ourselves.’
Bedwyr lets out a yell, more in anger than in fear. We turn, we look over the prow, to see a massive boulder of rock coming at us on larboard bow, out of the mist and darkness. The more we see of it, the closer it comes, the more it towers above us.
If our sail and rigging were to full height, they wouldn’t reach to the top of it. Einar runs to the helm. I had the tiller tied, rudder in line, like he showed me. He struggles to loosen the knot — it’s done — he pulls hard to steer-board, desperately trying to take us away from the rock.
‘Hell’s shit!’ cries Jo, ‘too late!’ Then, Mel’s scream tears through the darkness.
It is pointless to open sail, to do anything. Whatever Einar does with this scrap of sail, it won’t work. The current is towing us straight into the rock. The underbelly of the rock steams below the wave, giving off smoke above water. Now that we are close, we can see the rock is not fixed; the rock moves over the water, moving like us, higher than the Vigtyr, tall like a giant ship, a hull of stone, a burning island afloat, not rooted to seabed or shore, but drifting at sea.
Nothing can help us. Running past the prow, sheer above us, the merest touch and the Vigtyr will be ripped beam from beam.
‘Hold onto anything,’ shouts Ma, ‘here, girls. Lie down with me.’
Alu, in panic, gathers Mel in her arms, hurls the little one to Ma; throws her body over them, while Ma, with Mel under her arm, scrambles under Alu’s weight, trying as best she can to shield Vrekla, flinging an arm and shawl over Jo.
‘No, Ma,’ shouts Sepp. ‘Stay on your feet, here with me, make for the skiff!’
‘Steer-board,’ shouts Einar, ‘we will launch the skiff to steer-board. Abandon ship!’
Heart racing, I touch the hornlet under my serk: ‘Help us, Da!’
‘Kregin!’ shouts Einar, ‘Cut the lashing to the skiff; Bedwyr, quick, the oars!’
‘Vrekla, Vrekla!’ it is Ma calling. ‘Vrekla, she won’t move! Someone, help!’
‘Go with the others, Ma,’ thunders Sepp, ‘I’ll carry her.’
The skiff is in the water. Bedwyr and Einar stand astride the rowing-benches, each with oar upright in hand, holding our skiff to the upraised steer-board bow; Ma and Jo clamber in; Alu hands little Mel down to them; Alu hoists her skirts, lifts her long leg ov
er the bow; hops in with the others. Sepp lowers Vrekla to the skiff — can’t see her — can’t see if she is down safe or not.
‘Cormac,’ roars Einar, ‘in Thor’s name, what’s keeping you? We need you here!’ Cormac stumbles to his feet, his legs cramped: they buckle beneath him.
‘Leave me,’ snaps Cormac in a rage. ‘Leave me, Kregin, save yourself!’ Only Cormac and I are left on deck now. Everyone is off but us. I cannot leave him.
A thud of rock shudders the beam. The crushing mass of rock grinds the innards of the ship. The hull amidships sucks water; weighing us down. A broth of animal blood swirls in bilge and hold. The stout beams of oak above stern-deck snap off like twigs, leaving deck-boards to slide into hell’s teeth. Woolbacks, their bodies light as fleece, are flushed off the loosened deck by hungry waves. The ram’s tufted coat is laden with ash; he swells to twice his girth in the water, and is swallowed into the sea. The rock glows red and angry, hissing in a swill of seawater and blood.
The gunnels flash alight — a rim of fire around us. The sweet odour of oak rises like mist from the burning timber. Sparks of ash nip at our faces. Dust from the rock, falling hot and black, scorches our hands. Cormac’s hair is torched to the scalp, his beard singed to the skin. A wave breaks over the deck. I catch a toe-hold on a broken thwart, bracing my legs against the wicked heel of the ship. A rush of water breaks over my brother’s head. His body slumps motionless. The flood will carry him away. I lock my elbow to his and follow him into the sea. The waters are clouded with ash and salt. Cormac’s weight hangs on me like an anchor — all I can do is hold him — hold him as he falls. His lungs spew bubbles of breath in chains towards the surface. His chest collapses, shrinks through lack of air. We drift into darkness — soundlessly dropping into the depths.
Part Two
Chapter 13
She’s an odd one, the old kerling, odd and wild and wise. Hethrun is her name. People hereabouts are careful not to get on the wrong side of her, but from what I have seen in my four years at Suthyre there is nothing to fear in the old girl and much to praise. She scolds and fusses, grumbles the day long, but I am not the only one to take it in the neck. She does the same with Ikki her cat, and the old he-goat that stands by the gate. Hethrun says she keeps the goat for dung and company. She calls him Ogg. The truth is, he is here to warn off intruders. Hethrun doesn’t welcome people calling uninvited where she lives, a ramshackle fisherman’s lodge built years ago by the first ice-farers. The lodge stands on its own above the pebble strand on the south shore of the estuary.
