The Winter Isles

by Antonia Senior

  Their numbers, their size will not count if Somerled’s men can come in from bow and stern in unison.

  He’s too far to hear it, to smell it. But he has boarded himself often enough. Aed in front, Somerled at his shoulder. He knows this moment so well, he recalls it not as a memory, but as a living thing, so sharp that he stands alongside each of his lead men as they face down the dragons.

  Their big man standing alongside the dragon, your big man facing him. Screaming an inarticulate scream of rage and prayer and lust. A demanding roar, an insistent roar that says: ‘I will be the one to live. I cannot die. All that I am, all that I will be, all these bones, these hates and loves, these heavy muscles, these eyes. Impossible! Impossible that they should die.’ Such a deal to say, such words of life and love and fear, it comes easier as a scream of rage, of entitlement.

  They face each other, the first men. Screaming. Hefting their great double axes, tossing them from hand to hand like toys: look at my strength, look at my skill. Blue veins pop in white skin, running along the oar-built muscles. Their eyes mad with it.

  The crash and judder of the boats running on to each other, which fells the unwary before the fighting even begins. Some leap before the crash, some wait. Some, clear-headed even when they are maddened with anger and desire, let the other man come, knowing that he will be off balance, knowing that he will need a dancer’s grace to leap from one wave-tossed deck to another, jagged and buckled from the impact, while he keeps his hands free to hack.

  Seconds, it takes. That first strike. Rarely do both men hold their ground. One steps back, the other forward. The step forward creates movement, lets in the two men behind, and the two men behind that. The step back means two back, four, ten. Then suddenly the galley is thick with men, grunting and thrusting in a closed space, falling back over the rowing benches, the blood pooling with the salt water in the scuppers.

  Somerled knows this. Knows the smell of blood and salt. Knows the raging pleasure of that moment when you are on the front foot pushing forward, and they are dying, the bastards.

  Back here, he comes to himself, pulls himself away from the battle. He tries to clear his head. He smells only salt, hears only the rush of the waves and the crying of the gulls. He can see that the first longship has fallen, quickly. He watches men dive off its side and swim towards Jura. Over there, it looks as if the two birlinn have failed to coordinate their attack – the first has been overrun from the longship’s bow. They will scupper it, most likely. There are men left over to deal with the stern threat. Two birlinn down. Fools.

  There, a longship has run alongside a birlinn, its great bank of oars crushing the smaller boat, which has failed to arc around her. Fools. Three down.

  Jesus, but he forgets how hard it is to watch your men fuck up. Did he not give the orders, clear and simple? Did he not spell it out? Now he must float here at the back like some sort of fat, incapable old man, and watch them panic themselves to a defeat, the idiots.

  He realizes he has been striking the otter’s neck with an open palm, the sound of his fury ringing around the quiet galley. He clenches his fist and pulls it behind his back. He sets his face to be implacable and watches the great battle unfold.

  Time passes in unpredictable waves, speeding and slowing with triumph and disaster. One longship is driven on to the shore, where it breaks open and spews out its men to scuttle on the rocks like crabs. One birlinn sunk, another taken, another floating ambiguous and empty, its empty oar holes a mystery. One longship taken and turned on another, using the tide to bring her in beam on beam, the oars on both splintering and snapping like toothpicks.

  Honours are even. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.

  Dusk comes early. Somerled feels it coming on, feels the breath of darkness and with it the loom of defeat. Or at least, not victory. And there in the half-light, he sees his chance. A gap, as Godred’s free longships are taken or beached or engaged elsewhere. A gap through to the raft of five bound ships, where Godred squats, idle as himself. A gap like the parting of the Red fucking Sea, God-given for the Otter and her consorts to charge through.

  Somerled shouts for Gillecolm and points to it. Bless the boy, he seizes the situation at once. Somerled lets Dugald sound the battle horn, telling his reserve birlinn to engage, to follow him. The oars rasp out into the water, dark and foamy in the gathering dusk. The horn sounds and sounds. The oars bite and the dragons call them on.

  ~~~

  Brian does not scream. Brian stands. All the flyting, all the screaming is in his eyes. Somerled has seen how the man’s unhappiness concentrates in his cold, malevolent stare. The scream of the longship’s bow man falters, and that is when Somerled knows that they will take this ship. Before the otter meets the dragon, before the tearing of wood and leather.

  Brian hops across, like a boy playing at rock-jumping. He takes out the bow man almost casually, and before the man has crumpled to the deck, his head flapping absurdly on an unsevered sliver of gristle, Somerled and Dugald are across. Dugald is young to be second, but Somerled wants to give him face.

  Somerled pulls his axe down, and though the man dodges, it catches his shoulder. He spins, the great gash in his mail, in his skin, opening ever deeper. Shoulder down, Somerled pushes past the limp sword and barrels him out of the way. Parries a stroke from larboard with the wood of his axe, and brings his helmet to meet the man’s nose, which shatters and splays across his face.

  He’s level with Brian now, more men coming in beside and behind them. His axe needs too much room for this close work, and he pulls his stabbing sword. Sharp, deadly. There’s no place for fancy stuff. Feet slip and slide on the blood-wet floor. Quick, low strokes. Unflashy. A man’s just as fucked if you take his legs out.

  Dugald is still with them. He hears the boy’s roar. They are pedalling backwards; jumping sideways into the water. Somewhere behind him he hears the thud of the axe cutting the grappling ropes, and suddenly the longship is swinging free. They’ve not taken out the stern ropes, so she moves outward, still tied two thwarts up from the stern. A gap too far for reinforcements, although one tries the leap, and lands with a thud and a cry with his belly across the gunwale. He falls heavily back into the sea.

  It is perceptibly darker when the last of the defenders jump overboard. The deck is loud with the sobbing breath of exhausted men, and the whimpering of the wounded.

  ‘The next, the next,’ screams Somerled, and he shouts an order at the nearest loose birlinn to come up on the bow of the longship next along. Brian leaps to the place at the stern where the two longships are still attached. Its men should be pouring through, the fools, but they are sticking with their own ship.

  On then they rush. His feet find purchase on the longship’s sloping clinker-built sides. He jumps then, axe first, landing in a tangle of limbs and blade in the next ship. He is disorientated, so he jerks and stabs and thrashes until he can stand upright. Men come in behind him, pushing him forward so they’re on the enemy like a pack. He feels something that might be pain in his arm, but he’s too raging, too caught in it all to understand.

  Looking down, he sees a boy with his teeth sunk in his arm. Blood froths up around the boy’s mouth. Dugald grabs the boy’s hair and yanks his head back. His lips are a mess of blood and skin, and there is a chunk missing from Somerled’s arm. Enraged, he stabs the boy’s exposed throat, and kicks him as Dugald throws him to the ground.

  They have been overtaken by his men as this little oddity plays out. Somerled is at the back, and realizes with a sudden shock that something is not quite right. It is dark now. The men and boats alike are ill-defined shapes in the cold air.

  The next boat along, the middle of the raft and the one on which his enemy cowers, has cast off. He hears the familiar scrape of oars, hears the catch of blade on water and the timekeeper’s low call. The bastard is running. Godred is running.

  ~~~

  Somerled wakes quickly. Dawn is a glimmer; Jura and Islay, hemming them there
on the Sound, are grey, indistinct. The sea is calm and strangely lit with a silverish tint. Its gentle, whispering waves rock the boat.

  The bench is hard, unyielding. Somerled looks at the sky, where a crescent moon hangs on. He can feel the tightness of the muscles in his shoulders and his back. The weight and heft of his axe boring into his body. He will ache today. His mouth is painfully dry, scraping on itself as he tries to swallow.

  He pulls himself upright with an effort. Around him, men are sprawled in their armour. Lying on thwarts, on the deck. Ragnar is curled in the loop of a rope. The oars are lashed to keep them upright in the water, so the longship bobs quietly on the calm sea. Christ, it is cold, though. He shivers, pulls his cloak closer.

  By the rudder, there is a figure standing upright. Gillecolm. Somerled walks across to him, stepping over the sleeping bodies, his foot squelching in something that must be blood.

  ‘Why did you let me sleep?’ he asks, the words thick on his parched tongue.

  Gillecolm hands him a flask of fresh water. He drinks long and deep, ignoring the protest from his shoulder as he lifts his arm. The water is cold, delicious.

  ‘Because you were tired. Besides, there was no need for you to be awake. We can’t follow Godred in the dark, not in these waters.’

  Somerled thinks of the black rocks in the darkness, waiting to rip the belly out of a boat. Godred will be lucky to make it.

  He grunts, not quite wanting to tell the boy he is right. They fought themselves to a standstill, fought until the darkness settled like a blindfold. Dropped where they stood with screaming muscles and longing for sleep.

  ‘I ditched the bodies,’ says Gillecolm. ‘More theirs than ours.’

  Brian looms up beside them quietly. Gillecolm passes him the flask, and breaks some bread. It is hard, long past its best.

  ‘Well,’ says Somerled, into the heavy chewing. ‘We didn’t lose.’

  ‘We didn’t win.’ Brian’s voice is neutral, soft.

  The light is spreading now. They can see the boats sitting quietly on the water. They are lucky with this calm, at least. There are boats split open on the rocks; more beached on the shore. There will be a counting later, but it’s plain to see that there’s no one winner. It’s hard to tell who has the upper hand. On the other ships he can see figures moving: mailed, bearded men, stretching and yawning. They all look the same in the half-light.

  A small boat, the type of curragh that can be trailed behind a longship, is rowing slowly through the shattered fleets. They follow its jerky progress as they eat, watching it resolve itself into a more defined shape now that the dawn is brighter.

  ‘Lord Somerled? Lord Somerled?’ A voice calls low from the drifting boat.

  Somerled looks at Brian, and stands, leaning out over the water to shout: ‘Here. Who wants me?’

  The boat draws under them. Somerled can’t get used to the size of the longship. He’s dizzy all the way up here, gazing down on the figures in the boat. A man looks up at him, a grimy, blood-spattered man about his own age. He appears exhausted, beaten. His armour is rich, well worked. The men at the oars rest them in the water, drooping.

  Brian and Gillecolm are either side of Somerled, eyeing the man down the shafts of spears. He holds up his hands. ‘I want to talk to you, Lord Somerled. I am Conn of Islay.’

  They help him up the side of the boat, and he scrambles awkwardly in.

  ‘He ran away. Ran away!’ Conn says the words with a childlike wonder on his grizzled face. ‘How could he, Lord Somerled? How?’

  Somerled shakes his head.

  ‘We knew he was a vicious bastard,’ Conn says. ‘Vicious is tolerable. Cowardly? No.’

  Gillecolm breaks more bread and holds it out to the man, who looks at it shrewdly. He knows what is being offered. Slowly, stretching out a hand, he takes it and eats. Somerled feels himself relax, warm to the conversation.

  ‘Well, Conn, my friend. What can we do?’

  Conn looks at him, chewing valiantly on the bread. ‘I am a little lord. I can muster a ship. That one there is mine, and she’s still mine.’

  He points across the water at a longship, one of the smaller ones. The morning is taking shape now, and it is fair. Bright and frosty, and crisp. She’s a pretty enough boat – thick-ribbed but dolphin-sleek. Gorgeously, painstakingly painted.

  ‘She is the beauty of the seas,’ says Gillecolm.

  ‘Isn’t she, though,’ and Conn grins so wide that they find themselves grinning back.

  ‘I would like, Lord Somerled, to be my own man entirely. As you are. But I know where I stand. Little lords must bow to big lords, and there’s an end to it.’

  Somerled nods.

  ‘But I can choose where I bow, can I not? Not being a vassal, like those slaves in the south.’

  Somerled meets him halfway. ‘My son Dugald, whose claim to Man and the isles comes through his mother’s line, would be honoured to take the bow from a lord such as yourself.’ He reaches out his hand, and they clasp, hand on wrist.

  Afterwards, they sketch out the detail. Conn thinks he can bring most of the other island lords with him; the southern isles, anyway. It is settled that he will take Brian with him to treat with Godred on Man. To make it formal.

  ‘Godred will have to agree,’ says Conn. ‘He has lost such honour by fleeing. It will be all he can do to keep a hold of Man. You’ll be my guest, until it is settled? My hall is there.’ He points off to Islay, which lies, frost-covered and iced, beyond their stern.

  ‘And then, Lord Somerled, you will be King of Argyll and Lord of the Isles,’ he says, the smile reaching his red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Dugald will be,’ says Somerled quietly. Conn shrugs.

  How well it sounds. How lovely the words. Lord of the Isles.

  1157

  SOMERLED

  Godred Crovan crouches in Man like a crab in its hole, peering out. The seas around him are Somerled’s seas; the galleys he commands pay Somerled homage as they pass. The southern isles are his. Man is crumbling.

  In Dublin, Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn catches the way the wind is blowing and sends men across the sea to kiss Somerled’s mighty arse. Aed watches them with laughing eyes as they pledge their enduring friendship.

  They shower Somerled with praise, heaping the glories of the world upon his head. He is the warrior of the age, this Lord of the Isles. He is the carrion-giver, the son-maker, the silver-ringed, God-kissed king of the seas. And would he, by the by, care to help their master in his quest to be king of kings, the son of Tara, the Lord’s chosen one in His rolling land of peat and bog and rocky shore?

  Somerled sees Aed’s laughter and yet lets the praise seep in, toes up. What is the point of risking all, of stretching his boots to stamp hard in the peat of Argyll and harder in the heather of Mull? What is the point, if not to tip your chin to a shower of glory, to let it drench you?

  It wears off, he finds. He shrugs himself out of the shower, impatient. He can’t bring himself to laugh, as Aed can. He finds instead that he withdraws even more. He worries about the undone ends. He worries about the new threats and lets the recent triumphs fade to a background hum.

  Malcolm the Maiden has granted vast strips of land south of the Firth of Clyde to Walter FitzAlan, his grandfather’s steward and now his. Added to the grants by David, the land between Somerled and Galloway is now held by this adventurer, this lisping third son of a Breton who rode with Norman spurs to land and glory. FitzAlan holds the land in the new fashion: the king owns the land, the knight holds it in trust for him and the peasants are accounted slaves on their own patch of grass.

  Down in Galloway, Fergus’s son Uchtred has risen against him. Both have appealed to Somerled for help, and the decision is troubling him more than it deserves. He has never liked Fergus, but that does not matter. He has never met Uchtred, at least not since the boy was a small snot of an infant. But that does not matter either. It should be a simple decision – which winner would most suit him? Yet it is not
simple.

  He watches his boys closely, he finds. He watches Dugald simmer; Lord of the Isles yet not lord. Man yet not man. Dugald is seventeen and dangerous. Somerled finds the pity of it almost unbearable. He held the boy once, rocked him at night. He wiped away tears when he fell. He pulled him to standing when he learned to walk.

  He watches Dugald striding past, his youth blinding, with a painful fizz of pride and envy.

  ‘Let him have his head,’ says Aed. A husk of Aed, thin and permanently pained. No one knows what ails him. They watch him shrink and sour. They only know of the pain because he groans sometimes, when it is too great to hide, great keening groans that flush Oona’s cheeks.

  ‘Let him have his head?’ They sit in Aed’s hall, the fire shadowing the floor and the wind swirling beyond the thick walls like something demented. The long winter afternoon stretches. They are too old now to bother joining the young men outside in the wet and wild to chase game. They have proved themselves too many times over.

  ‘Remember your father?’

  Somerled nods. Who else here would? No one. His father is a name. An ancestor. Men die and they are forgotten, no matter what they tell themselves when the darkness approaches.

  ‘I think that for some fathers, and some sons, distance can be a saviour. Dugald is called Lord of the Isles, and yet you are lord and he knows it. How would you have taken that?’

  Somerled plays idly with his beads, clinking them along the strand that holds them together.

  Aed stiffens suddenly, as if a tremor has taken his body by surprise. He holds the table with an old man’s hands, gripping at it with white knuckles. He breathes out, slowly, carefully, as if too great an effort might bring on another wave. Somerled watches his hand clutching the table and imagines taking it between his own palms, holding on to it tightly. As you would a beloved one in childbirth. Instead he sits silently while his old friend fights the pain and finds his face again.

  ‘Take Man,’ says Aed, with a carefully even tone.

  Take Man and give it to Dugald. With Man will come Skye, the small isles north of Ardnamurchan and that tumble of land and loch they call the Outer Hebrides. Lord of all the isles, to be sure. Why not? Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn in Dublin loathes Godred – it would cement their alliance.