‘Don’t be a child. It is a question of policy. Dugald will put his heart where I tell him.’
‘He has a heart, does he? I didn’t know.’
Somerled finds himself laughing again, but the boy’s next question chokes it off, slides the smile into a frown. ‘Father? Was it policy that made you put my mother aside? For Ragnhild?’
Somerled pauses.
‘Did you ever ask your mother?’
‘No. She was so unhappy, so lost. I just wanted to make her smile. I am asking you. Policy or something else?’
He looks to the heavens as if for guidance. Tell the boy the truth? Let him, now that he is a man, carry some of the guilt? Or lie, and accept his hatred?
He looks at his son, at the tilt of his head that conjures his mother, at the hair that could be cut from her own. ‘Policy? Yes,’ he says, and watches the boy’s face twist with anger. ‘I loved her …’ he begins to say, but Gillecolm is standing and walking away, the flower crumpling in his folded fist.
Gillecolm stops and turns back, the low sun behind him. ‘Were you always like this?’ he says, his voice cracking. ‘Were you ever young?’
EIMHEAR
News reaches us even here, on this little crumb, this boil on the arse of Mull. We are the afterthought to Iona, the pause at the end of the song.
Olaf of Man is dead. The man who sat on his island throne, lifted a finger in command and ruined my life. What should I feel? The laments drift over the water from Iona. Those who understand the music sigh and wilt with the song. I just shrug and spread manure.
Sigrdrifa skips to me across the heather. She is too old for skipping. We left home when she was five, and she is twenty now. The chattering, adventurous child is a young woman. She is self-contained now, quiet. There is some essential relationship with the hollering ball of mischief she once was, but it is hard to discern.
‘Olaf dead, Mother,’ she says, flopping next to me on the heather. ‘Lord, think of it.’
She hands me an oatcake, and we munch companionably for a while, looking across to the strand of pure white sand on Iona’s shore.
‘Father Padeen sent me a book. All of my own. He was writing to his friend in Canterbury, who sent it to him. He has read it and sent it on to me. Gil told him I was desperate for new things to read.’
She shows it to me, and we marvel at it.
‘Read it to me,’ I say.
‘Lord, I will try. But it must be translated from the Latin, you know, and I am not as fluent as I should be. It is a tract by a fellow called Seneca.’
‘I know the name, child. Father Padeen talked of him. He told me that translations of the man were setting Chartres and Canterbury by the ears.’
‘He was exiled to an island too. Did you know that?’
‘I did not!’
She smiles at me, and we bend our heads again to look at the book. We are transfixed by the marvel of it. The words of a man, a thousand years ago, held in our hands like a jewel.
She hacks at it slowly, piecing out the Latin like a puzzle. It is about the briefness of life. Even the short time we have rushes by, says this philosopher, from the mouth of my daughter, whose grown-upness is a constant, breathtaking source of surprise. All but the very few, he says, find out how to live at the end, just when they are ready to die.
You squander time, he says, as if there is a full and abundant supply. You have all the fears of mortals and the desires of immortals.
Sigrdrifa stops translating. She looks at me to find that I am crying. I never cry.
‘Mother, what is it?’
‘I am sorry, child. It is a miracle, that is all. The miracle that this man sat in Rome a thousand years ago and wrote these words, and I sit on this rock and listen to them, and we are all connected and unconnected, and the thing is a puzzle and a glory.’
She nods, and takes hold of my hand to kiss it.
It is truth, or a version of truth, that I have told her.
I am thinking too of the time we are squandering, here on this island. The wasteful, wanton slide of minutes, hours. The slow attrition of body and spirit in this waste, waste of a life.
1155
SOMERLED
It started with so much promise. But three years in, the rebellion grinds to a halt. They have won some land, sacked some halls, made themselves a little older, a little richer. But the Maiden clings on. They have galvanized what little support he has, failed to gather sufficient momentum, win new men.
His nephews are like dogs throwing themselves on a locked door, until even they seem more bruised than angry. At last, in a small, half-arsed raid near England, Domhnall, the younger, is captured.
Somerled is, he finds, a little relieved. It gives him an excuse to break it off. He can see that they will not win the great prize. Alba will not fall. He needs more men, more support. A host.
Sanguine, he sends men to treat with the Maiden. Padeen and Brian lead the party. The boy agrees to spare Domhnall’s life, to leave him locked away with his father, who has been imprisoned for twenty years now. Twenty years. Somerled shudders to think of it. His sister has been allowed to move to share his captivity. Is she allowed to leave the castle walls? He hopes so.
The terms are reasonable. The borders are the same; the same stretches of hill and water mark the limit of his lordship and the Maiden’s. But he will not be paying tribute, paltry and face-granting though it was.
Men have died, but boys are older and new men have joined him. Broadly, he is content. There is no point throwing over the tafl board in a fury if luck runs against you. Beside, he has other plots to ferment.
An emissary comes from Man. Thorfinn Ottarson, one of the great Manx earls. Somerled tries not to remember the first time Thorfinn came here. He forces himself not to see the man’s presence as an omen.
Thorfinn slips around the subject, snakelike. Twists through the pleasantries. He eyes Dugald. Ragnhild’s eldest son is sixteen years old. He takes after his mother, with that fair northern colouring. The girls think him handsome; they drip after him, sighing and primping.
Somerled doesn’t ask about the boy’s love life. He suspects Dugald’s heart is safe enough. The boy thinks mainly of swords. He practises long into the night, knitting the muscle on to his shoulders. His brothers join him, their fraternal competition so bone-deep it is like a living thing. A fifth brother to stalk them.
He approves their swordplay. Best to make the attacks and parries as deep as their rivalry. The sense of the sword needs to become a memory in the muscle, so that the blade’s edge moves before your mind can catch up. Slice first, think second. Block first, pray after.
He has let Gillecolm marry Sigurd’s daughter; better that than another awkward conversation. The boy’s happiness shines so fiercely, he walks through the band like an omen. Somerled watches it sometimes, the way Gillecolm and his Deirdre’s bliss splits the onlookers. Some answer it with a smile, nostalgic or fond. Some grimace at it, tipped over into bitterness by their conspicuous joy.
And Somerled? He is irritated by the joy and the unthinking responses to it. Sometimes he feels as if he is the only one who thinks. The only one who rises above prick and stomach.
He watches them now. She is pregnant, provokingly rounded, ostentatiously happy. Gillecolm leans in to whisper in her ear, lips scratching the lobe. She laughs, half turned to him. Brian, now one of Somerled’s most feared warriors, is watching them too, something wistful on his face.
They are feasting Thorfinn Ottarson. The table is groaning. At the end of the hall, Maud, Somerled’s latest woman, is watching him, he knows, waiting to throw him a sultry toss of her head. While Ragnhild is looking away, he points her out to Thorfinn, and watches the man’s eyes bulge.
‘You’re a lucky man, Somerled,’ he says.
‘Am I? Do you remember when we first met?’
‘Yes.’ Thorfinn watches her. She knows they are looking, and leans forward into the gaze. Flicks her eyes up at them. Jesus, does sh
e have to be so unsubtle?
‘You can have her,’ he says, suddenly.
‘Seriously?’
‘Aye. If you’ll stop beating up to windward and tell me why you’re here.’
Thorfinn pulls his eyes from Maud’s cleavage to look at him.
‘Godred. He is a bastard. We’re all bastards, but he is something fucking special, Somerled. He had a boy beaten to death last week, for no reason.’
‘And? Boys must be beaten.’
‘It sounds small, does it not? And yet if you saw it … how he is. We all have power, men like us. Like you. What stops you killing a man whose face you do not like? Tupping the wives of your warriors? Taking their land? Beating boys to death for the pleasure of their screams?’
‘I wouldn’t.’
‘Yes, but why? You could.’
Somerled is silent for a heartbeat. He points upwards. ‘I’m being watched.’
‘Jesus, aye.’ Thorfinn nods.
Somerled doesn’t correct him. He thinks of his mother laughing on her cloud, and hides his smile.
‘Imagine you don’t give a fuck who is watching. What’s to stop you then?’
Somerled says nothing. He swirls his wine in his cup, takes a sip and wishes it were beer.
‘The worst of it is how we all behave in the face of it. We cringe before power wielded badly. Stupidly. Cruelly. We become craven. Corrupted. We tell tales on our blood brothers, part our wives’ legs for him.’
Somerled tries to keep his face unreadable.
‘So, Somerled,’ says Thorfinn. ‘This is why we have come. Dugald is Olaf’s grandson. He has a claim. You are Somerled. We need your help.’
~~~
He walks up to the crag above Ardtornish Bay, his breath labouring. A grey, blustery day. The cold wind along the Sound reaching up on to this exposed cliff. The waterfalls running down the face of the crag blow back up the rock. Down at the bottom, looking up, the columns of water seem alive. The grey ladies, she called them, and the name has stuck. Here, close up, the illusion is shattered into showering droplets of water.
It’s good to get away on his own. No one warned him, when he was young and burning up with ambition. No one warned him that he would never be on his own yet he would feel entirely alone, always. He has been alone since he lost her.
A voice behind him calls his name. Jesus. Christ in heaven. Will they not leave him be?
He turns, and there, striding up the hill behind him, is Aed. Lord, but when did the big man get so bald? Looking down on him, Somerled can see his great burned head. He almost smiles.
‘Lord Somerled,’ says Aed. ‘I am sorry to follow you. But I wanted to talk to you. It’s difficult, below.’
Somerled relents. He clasps Aed’s arm, wrist on wrist. Pulls him wordlessly to the landward lookout rock. The boy stationed there turns and sees them. He jumps upright with a clatter, his spear falling to the ground and rolling away towards the cliff edge.
Somerled feels the big man beside him tense, but he shakes his head.
‘We will relieve you, boy,’ he says.
The boy clambers down to retrieve his spear, his face crimson with the shame of dropping it. Jesus, but can he be Sigurd’s son? The same colouring. The same wiry frame. A salt spray of memories threatens to flood him: of Sigurd this boy’s age, conning the galley, looking back across the bank of oars with a damp grin.
‘No matter, no matter,’ he says gruffly, and the boy glances up at him with a grateful, nervous nod, before running down the hill towards safety and his mates.
They sit down on the rock, looking out across the Sound. The hills of Mull are wreathed in a grey cloud that hovers just above their heads. They can feel its damp shadow pressing down upon them. The Sound is rough, ridged with white-flecked waves. Down in Loch Aline, the fleet lies at rest in the storm anchorage. They can see the small boats plying a threading between the galleys, and the tiny men swarming across the planking. Making fast, checking rivets and stays, tying everything down.
Order. Preparation. He feels a surge of satisfaction. It’s good to have his fleet safe in the loch, under the lee of the crag. A massive bulwark of rock and scree and tree roots between his ships and the coming tempest. Assuming it comes. He looks over towards the blackest clouds, clinging to the mainland hills.
‘Lord Somerled,’ says Aed at last, breaking the heavy silence. ‘I am sorry to ask. But I would stay behind. I do not have another season in me. This is not my war.’
Astonished, Somerled turns to face him.
‘You are my champion.’
‘By courtesy. Come, lord. You know as well as I that a score of the younger ones could take me. Indeed, are bristling to take me. I can barely sit in a chair without groaning.’
‘But …’
But I need you. I can’t be without you. You are my only friend. You remember.
‘I could take care of things here,’ says Aed, after a pause.
‘I always thought you would die with a sword in your hand.’
‘So did I, lord. Yet here I am. And I am old.’
Somerled looks down at his own lined, ridged hands. Tries to imagine them smooth.
‘If we followed my mother’s gods, Aed, I could refuse you, for your own good. Give you a sword and whip you towards Valhalla.’
‘Aye, but we do not. And there is no shame for a Christian in dying old and warm in his bed. Oona has begged me, Somerled.’
They are to leave after the storm has blown itself out. Leave the Maiden, for a while. Turn their eyes to the islands, where they belong.
Aed takes his silence for agreement. So be it. Somerled nods, and Aed smiles. A little rueful, perhaps.
‘You are the only man here,’ says Somerled, ‘more afraid of your wife than of me.’
‘True,’ says Aed, grinning.
A pause, as they watch the bunching black clouds.
‘Should you not wait for the spring, Somerled?’
A spit of anger. ‘If you are not coming, Aed, don’t tell me how to fight.’
Aed shrugs, waiting.
‘Sorry,’ says Somerled at last. ‘You are right, it is a risk. But Godred has annoyed the Man lords now. He is isolated. If we wait, he may win them back.’
Aed nods. ‘Why do it, Somerled?’
‘Why do what?’
‘Why this war? How big will your fleet need to be before you are happy? How large your territories?’
‘Bigger. Larger.’ Somerled waves his arm in a great arcing gesture that takes in half the sky.
‘Why?’
‘Jesus, Aed. What a question.’
‘Well?’
A boy comes over the ridge. The new lookout. He walks slowly, diffidently towards the two greatest men in his world. The rain starts. No preamble, no light patter – an angry, drenching rain.
Somerled stands, suppressing the grunt that comes with the creaking of his limbs.
‘Race you down,’ he says. They begin to run, ignoring the boy’s astonished staring. They slide on the scree, brush aside the heather, tumbling downwards in a rush of rain and laughter and loose banter. Until they reach the bottom, still laughing, fighting for breath. He leans over, hands on knees, looking up at Aed’s lined face and gap-toothed grin. A youngster comes forward, all deference. A problem with one of the galleys dragging her storm anchor. Somerled straightens his back, squares off his shoulders. Loses the unfamiliar smile. Walks away.
~~~
It is strange to set sail without Aed by his side. More than strange. Aed stands at the end of the jetty, Oona beside him. His feet are spread unnecessarily wide, as if he thinks himself aboard a pitching deck. How does it feel, Somerled wonders, to watch this fleet catch the tide and the wind?
What a sight it is. What a day. The roaring of an adventure started. The clanking and creaking of eighty rigged sails drawing in to catch the wind. The ridged sea cresting up; the thick sky glowering down. They are suspended in a rush of wind, curving into the Sound, hair whipped and b
lood high.
More than one thousand oars rasp back on board as the wind pools in the sails. Eighty pilots call the words as the strain falls on the masts. Sails billow, loose ends fluttering. Their shouts mingle, hovering above the galleys like a prayer. The gulls call and skirl.
Somerled stands like a boy up by the otter’s head, sinking and rising with the waves. His arms curl round the slippery wood of the otter’s neck. The spray on his face is salted; the wind in his hair is wild and wet. His is the first galley, pushing into the forbidding sea; the otter seems alone in this sliver of sea road held between the water and the sky. Mull, off to larboard, sits squeezed between the stubborn low cloud and the flecking of the surf. He turns, for a last sight of Aed, who looks small already. A tiny buffeted figure left behind where the land meets the water.
He brings his focus closer, to where Gillecolm, the first pilot of the fleet, stands at the rudder. Knees loose, riding the kicking of the boat. He can feel her swell and shrink, surge and retreat. The boy looks up, to the top of the mast, out beyond the screaming otter, and at last behind to the following galleys. He turns back to the horizon, catches his father’s eye and grins, joyous. Somerled hopes the boy is up to it. It’s hard, sometimes, to trust your own kin. His mother told him that.
He looks out past Gillecolm to the boats behind, following him on. The shaggy brown sails stretch across the Sound, making the heathered hills beyond seem drab, lifeless. Jesus, but what a fleet. He remembers setting off from Ireland with his father, a handful of warriors in a few beaten-up galleys. If the boy I was then could see me now. If he could see me!
Somerled wants someone to see what he has done. To understand how far he has come. He wants his mother’s gruff voice to pour praise upon his head. But she is dead, and he must sing his own song, to his own heart.
O, the wind-taut sails! O, the luscious curve of the hulls! O, the brave shrug of the prow beasts, shaking off the water in a dazzled spray! O, the sharp curl of the bow wave! O, the sucking and the frothing of the sea!
Look at them, O, look at them. He sends a silent paean to the sky. Is it possible that man has made anything more beautiful? These bold, brawny galleys, riding the wave. He wants to howl his pride. Keep your domed palaces. Keep your vaulted churches. Keep your motted castles. Keep your arched cloisters. This is the only thing worth having – a bold fleet screaming its challenge to all before it.
The Winter Isles Page 24
