The Winter Isles

by Antonia Senior

  ‘I took yours, Somerled, did you see?’

  ‘Hey now,’ shouted Aed. ‘Shut your caterwauling, women. Are we not going to give Domnall his due?’

  Domnall looked down at his oar, confusion on his face.

  ‘Up oars!’ shouted Aed.

  They stopped, almost as one, the blades hanging out of the grey sea.

  ‘Your first man, Domnall,’ said Somerled. The boy grinned at him. Somerled pulled an arm ring from his arm and tossed it to him across the oars.

  Amid the cheering and laughter, he looked at Aed, who nodded, happy.

  ~~~

  Later, as dusk fell, the fog lifted and they coasted home. They could see the hall ahead across the sea – welcoming and lonely in the glen.

  The wind had risen enough to justify the sail, and the men were sitting and talking quietly.

  Somerled imagined Mebd and Oona and Sigrdrifa in that quiet lit hall, and how it would be if he and the others were raiders. He whispered a prayer.

  ‘Aed,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think it odd that we all hug this coast, legs open, waiting to be taken?’

  The big man was silent for a space. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘But who would be far from the sea roads? Trade and news and chat and novelty – they come down the roads too, and more often than bastards like us. Can you imagine sitting in the hills, with only yourself to talk to?’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Thorfinn from behind them. ‘If I only had you to talk to, big man, I’d rush on to the nearest pirate axe.’

  ‘Pox on your soul,’ said Aed mildly.

  Somerled nodded, watching the smudged outlines of his home become clearer as they neared. They would have to unship the oars soon, to turn into the bay.

  ‘And how would the young men test themselves,’ said Aed, ‘if we all sat in the inland glens, raising turnips?’

  ‘There is a reason, I suppose,’ said Somerled, ‘why the Culdees avoid the sea roads.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Thorfinn. ‘And there is also a reason why those holy bastards all go mad in the end.’

  ~~~

  The storm blew in without warning. The wind backed, pushing them away from the hall. They could see it, the blessed place, calling them in, bright against the steel-grey sky.

  The sea was malevolent, with a breathtaking suddenness. An angry dark swell. The rain came fast and heavy, pouring into the open boat like a waterfall. Somerled looked up at the blackening sky, blinded by the rush of rain and wind. He knew the lurch of fear that felt like seasickness.

  Sigurd, at the steering oar, looked grim. ‘Reef!’ he shouted against the roaring wind. Hard to know who heard him, but they all knew well enough the urgency. Aed led the party at the sail, handing down its vicious, billowing mass. No time to step the mast. No time to do much but pray that the man who built her knew his business.

  Somerled swallowed, his throat dry with the suddenness of it. To make for the hall was impossible; she would take the wind abeam and capsize. He looked over to the foaming black sea. Their only course was to run before the wind under a scrap of sail, parallel to the shore, and beat back up after the passing of the storm.

  He looked across to Sigurd, fighting with the steering oar. He rushed over to help, feeling the slip of his feet on the planking. The oar was wet and violent under his hand. They grappled with it together, jamming the blade deep into the water. The ship seemed to yearn for home. They fought her, as her prow sought the land.

  Why this yawing into danger? Why did she fight them so, when victory would mean death? Did ships have a soul? Were they yearning, always, to break up, to sink into the sea’s violent caress? Not now, man – concentrate. Somerled’s palms slid on the wet wood.

  Ahead of him, the bailing buckets were being passed with a frantic haste; even from back here, Somerled could see the water sloshing up to the rowers’ thwarts with the roll of the ship.

  Sigurd screamed something into his ear. Something that called for wide eyes and an edge of fear. Deaf from the rushing of the wind and the waves, Somerled looked up from his task. The hall was far behind already. The Point loomed ahead; oh Christ, the Point. On this tack they would strike on the rocks. They would have to push her over to clear the edge, but even if they got past, the cross-seas running up from behind the cliff would deal them a heavy blow. Somerled looked at the shore and the great white breakers curling on the shingle. Beaching meant death; striking meant death; weathering the Point meant probable death.

  He looked at Sigurd and nodded, pushing the oar across as far as he dared. Sigurd pulled, and the ship turned a little, the wind on her quarter now and the waves pounding with greater violence. He looked along the length of her to the figures of his men, crouching and shivering under the salted lash of the wind.

  Now their course was set, now the decision was made, he felt a curious detachment. An acute sense of the division between soul and skin. He thought of his struggling, miserable body with contempt. He soared above it. Let it die, if it must. He was the still, sublime being at the centre of the storm. The passionate heart. The ranging mind. Fuck the rest; let it bleed.

  He threw himself into the clarity of the thought, watching the lines between sea and sky dissolve into one roaring, vicious whole. He was smiling, he found, willing the gods to do their worst. He thought of Padeen, and his mother. Padeen’s God did not live out here, in the screaming storms. This was where the old gods staked their claims on men. This was the thundering of Thor above and the sucking claws of Ran below; and the men caught flopping in the middle like breathless, hooked fish.

  The rocks were nearly on them now, and he watched them come. Lord, how close. You could reach out and touch their jagged edges. He waited for the scrape of keel on stone, waited for the jolting splintering of planks. But they were through, and here was a wave. God help them – such a wave.

  It crashed down over the boat, curling into them. He felt his feet whip up from underneath him and he wrapped his arms around the steering oar, clinging, clinging. The wave sucked at him and pulled at him. Easier to go with it. Easier to succumb; then perhaps he could breathe again. Water rushed into his nose, his eyes. Which way was up? Which down?

  At last, a lifetime later, the water fell back. His feet found the deck, scrabbling for a firm hold. He drew a breath, rasping. Sigurd grabbed his arm. There was a man over the edge, one arm waving, his mouth wide in a scream. But the other arm clung to a rope, and the man was acting as a drag on the ship. He would pull her round, beam on to the wind, waves catching her two ways.

  Somerled lurched to the side, grabbing on to the planking. He tried to pull, but even as he did it, he knew there was no time. No time. Oh Lord, forgive me. Forgive me.

  He reached for his knife and with two quick strokes severed the rope. It was only as the water snatched the man away from the ship that he realized who it was.

  Iehmarc. A surge of something, which he would later call remorse. As the ship swung back to take the wind behind her, as the pressure from the waves lessened, he knew it for what it was. A vivid delight. His body for mine. His soul for mine. I am Somerled.

  1126

  SOMERLED

  The day was sultry, too still. Grey clouds, heavy with moisture, threatened but did not break. Clouds of midges, lured out of their hollows by the still air, drifted in packs. It was a day to make you scratchy, to make a fight out of the way a man cleared his throat, or hummed a tuneless hum. A day to take offence and give it.

  Somerled was talking to two new men, who had arrived that day in a pitiful oared curragh. They were lean and hungry, but there was a toughness there, and an eagerness. Tormod and Iomhar. Brothers from the islands, who had fought as mercenaries for Donnchad mac Murchada, the King of Leinster, but lost their way on his death.

  They were by the cliff, where the seabirds called and raced above the water. The band were at leisure. Cleaning their gear, playing at tafl or dice, combing each other’s long, matted hair. In the distance he could see the women at work in the field, with the
children and the couple of old fellows they had somehow acquired. Beyond them, the high mountains that seemed to box them in, their peaks lost to the clouds.

  Somerled hated this clammy heaviness. He longed for a fierce breeze, the type that would have made the Otter’s eyes shine and her cheeks flush. He fought to concentrate on the men, who were, he could tell, themselves fighting to keep their wariness at bay. A boy, they were thinking. A strapling.

  He would have to take them raiding soon. His reputation was puffed too far, like the thin skin on boiled milk. It rested on one fight and a skirmish. But there were new men now, who had not been there. His old companions were growing restless too. There were too few women here, and too many growling warriors. A raid, then. But where? Ireland? Man? South into the Saxon lands? He thought of Aedith and her much-coveted blondness. She was Sigurd’s woman now. But a few more like her might keep some restless souls calm.

  They needed to build, too. The hall was bursting, and the land around littered with makeshift lean-tos that would be miserable come the winter. But where to find the expertise? He would talk to the men, see if any knew the knack. Lord, it was hot. He shifted beneath his tunic, feeling the sweat prickling down his back.

  ‘So, Lord,’ said one. Tormod, was it? He clawed his way back to concentration.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, not entirely sure what had gone before. ‘You can fight and row. We will try you out. Go to Aed, the big one, and he will see to your gear. Oona, his wife, will get you fed, show you where to stow your kit. Later, when you are proven, we will look to the oaths.’

  ‘Oaths?’ A voice behind him.

  Gillebrigte.

  This is it, he thought. The crisis. He felt taller, fuller – the way he did before a fight. Gillebrigte stood swaying, hunched a little against an absent wind. His beard was tangled, and his eyes above were red and watering. He looked like a Culdee emerging from his rock hermitage, where solitude and the quest for God had sent him mad. The burned half of him was ugly, livid. A black and red crust instead of a skin.

  Somerled sensed Tormod and Iomhar watching. He imagined their gaze flitting between the two of them. The shining boy and his bitter, burned shadow.

  ‘You’re taking oaths now, boy? As if I were dead already?’

  ‘Forgive me, Father. I thought you were too soaked in whisky to care.’

  Now it was upon them, his clarity vanished. Such a tangled rush of feeling. He floundered, lost in the impenetrable thicket. Love, certainly. Hate. Pity? Impossible to tell. Instead, memories prickled at him, snagging him when he should be concentrating. The rasp of Gillebrigte’s cheek. His deep, low chuckle when Somerled the boy begged to be tickled. The shared pride of Somerled’s first stag. ‘Well done, boy,’ rumbled a voice through years and days and into Somerled’s hot mind.

  A kiss on Sigrdrifa’s red cheek. A warrior lifting his shield, so close to a god that the boy Somerled cried for the pride and the envy of it. The time they raced the curraghs across a cut-up sea, and how his father leaned out and shouted, his words whipped away by the wind, so that all Somerled remembered was a wide open mouth that might be laughing or might be calling.

  The crack of a belt across his arse, and the biting of his lip to contain the tears. The bristling. The way he talked of Somerled’s first man – the pride that seemed a surface thing; an expected thing. The smell of him, hot with sweat and salt and something else that Somerled couldn’t name or describe but could recognize on a moonless night with his eyes shut.

  The tangle he was in robbed him of speech. There was an irony at play that he could just grasp in his quivering confusion. This rage of love and hate that mired him also made him want to run across and clasp at the man opposite him, made him want to sink his head on that hated shoulder, and feel the rasping of the cheek and the salt-sweat smell of him, and have his father explain it all and make it simple, soothe away the rage that was pulsing, pounding and leaving him breathless.

  But he did no such thing. For what else was it to be a warrior than to make things look, to outward eyes, simple. To appear an unruffled man. To convince others of your certainty. Your clarity. Like the smooth lines and sharp edge of a well-made sword. Leave the serrated edges to the women.

  What was the old man thinking while he and Somerled stood looking at each other? Was he thinking of the boy he loved, of the sweet baby smell of him, and the tiny fists that clutched at his father’s sword belt?

  No, thought Somerled suddenly, violently. That is not what he is thinking.

  ‘I am still the jarl here, boy.’ Gillebrigte’s voice was low and bitter.

  Behind his father, Somerled saw his mother approaching. He would not think of her.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You are nothing.’

  He turned back to face Tormod and Iomhar, slowly and deliberately. His hand was on his sword hilt, though, automatically feeling for the indent in it, where its maker seemed to have slipped and cut too far. He stroked it with his thumb, listening for the rush and roar he expected behind him.

  Tormod’s eyes shifted and he looked past Somerled’s shoulder. The big warrior was embarrassed about something, unnerved, and he dropped his eyes to his feet, shuffling in the dirt. Somerled turned back and saw his father sitting on a rock, his face lifted towards the sea, openly, violently weeping.

  ~~~

  The strangers came up the hill towards the burn. Two of them, both red-haired and burly. Aed strode alongside, but didn’t look freakishly large. Somerled turned back towards the water, to where the salmon jostled beneath the foam. He had promised Sigrdrifa a big one. He teased the line back into the water.

  Behind him, he heard Aed shout. He turned, reluctantly.

  The newcomers were sleek, well fed. Their cloaks, pulled tight against the chill spring air, were new-woven, and the brooches pinning the folds were just ornate enough to signal prosperity without pomp. They were not looking to join the band, then. One was older than the other, streaks of grey in his auburn hair. Father and son. There was something searching, questioning about the older man’s gaze. Somerled braced himself against the questing look.

  He greeted them, guarded.

  ‘I am Fergus MacOengus,’ said the elder, as if beginning a tale. ‘And this is my son Callum. You are young. We were not expecting …’ He trailed off.

  Somerled grinned. ‘And you, Fergus MacOengus, are old. Shall I hold it against you? Shall we fall out because of it? You are welcome here.’

  The old man nodded. ‘We are cousins, of a sort. We came to pay our respects. Your grandfather, Gilleadoman, was my father’s cousin.’

  And where were you, cousin, when we hid in the caves? thought Somerled.

  But he smiled, and asked of his cousin’s health.

  ‘What news?’ he said. ‘What news? It has been an age since we last had visitors.’

  ‘Alexander, the king in Alba, is still without an heir, we heard.’

  ‘Him or her?’ asked Aed.

  ‘Her, it seems,’ said Callum. ‘He has at least one near-grown bastard, out to foster in Moray. That’s what you get for marrying an Englishwoman. Daughter of royalty or no.’

  Somerled looked to the hills that towered over them. He imagined, for a dizzy moment, soaring above them, eating up the heather, bog, scree, loch and rock that stood between him and Alba. Even an eagle would struggle. To sail round would be a feat. Down the Clyde from the lowlands and up the coast, that was the only real way.

  ‘He claims title to these lands – yours and ours. Tribute,’ said Fergus.

  Somerled jerked his head towards the mountains. ‘Let him,’ he said.

  They walked back down towards the hall, where he could tell by the smell that the arrivals had sent Sigrdrifa into a frenzy of cooking. She cooked competitively; her honour was in the crispness of the skin, the plumpness of the meat, the strength of the ale and the creaminess of the butter.

  Fergus sketched the state of the real powers that mattered out here, by the Western Sea. Olaf Crovan was tighte
ning his grip on Man and the isles. The dwarf, they called him. In part because of his size, but in part because any son of that wicked old giant Godred Crovan, who took power in the sea by force of sword and personality, was bound to feel small. ‘And now he’s had a daughter. Ragnhild, they’ve called her.’ Somerled nodded, not interested in this Norse girl baby.

  ‘Muirchertach Ua Briain still calls himself the high king over the water, but outside of Munster they slap their arses at him,’ said Fergus. Somerled smiled at the thought: all the small kings and chieftains, the Norse in the trading ports and the Gaels in Ulster and beyond; even the strange folk with their own garbled tongues, all turning their backsides on Muirchertach and his claims.

  As they approached the hall, Fergus looked around keenly. The younger man, Callum, was more self-contained, more guarded. He walked spear-straight, as if determined not to show anything so vulgar as curiosity. As they walked through his band, who sat in clumps of four or five, cleaning their weapons and talking, Somerled was absurdly, boyishly proud of them. They had spent the winter drinking too much and eating too much. But now, with spring here, they were shaking off their winter sloth like hunting dogs padding from a loch.

  There was an expectation in the air. They looked at him with amused respect. They were waiting for the next exploit, for the winter hibernation to end with something big, something bloody, something profitable. He hoped the visitors saw it too, hoped they could sense this atmosphere; a controlled tension that Somerled held in his hand, ready to release. He felt it in himself – a hemmed-in violence looking for an outlet. He felt bouncy on his feet as he walked down to the hall; strong.

  That evening, they feasted the newcomers. Alfric the Bard gave them a song of Cú Chullain, and although his weak tenor struggled to fill the hall, the message was not lost on the visitors. The harp sang, and Somerled watched Fergus watching. The old man took in Somerled’s bare arms, and the coiled silver armlets that reached to his elbows. He saw the heavy rings on his fingers, and the gold torque round Sigrdrifa’s mottled neck. He watched the flow of food and drink, even, God love them, wine. It was the one jug, rifled from a ship off Galloway, but Fergus was not to know it – the stores could be piled with amphorae from Miklagard for all he knew. And the old man watched Mebd pour his wine; a sleeker, plumper Mebd, who bent low, as if to show off the silver cross that nestled there and proclaimed Somerled’s ownership.