The Book of Bera

by Suzie Wilde

‘It’s not Crapsby!’ cried Bjorn. His voice warbled. ‘Why call it Crapsby?’

  ‘Because it’s crap,’ Scarface said flatly.

  Bera was frightened by his coolness. ‘There are more narwhales out there. Hunt them.’

  ‘Oh, we shall, little girl,’ Flat-Nose said. ‘But we’ll have that horn, too.’

  Scarface slapped his short, wide sword against his palm. ‘Move away,’ he said. His puckered smile was at odds with his menace.

  Bera fumbled under her cloak until she could hold on to the string of beads and then will her Valla ancestors to bring some scraps of courage. She took up the same posture she used to face Drorghers, her arms wide. But she was used to the walking dead; these men were the first living enemy she had ever challenged.

  She began haltingly. ‘The narwhale is a free sea beast. It belongs to no one until it is killed. I brought us here. I am Bera, a Valla. Do not blame these men. No blood will be spilled on this shore. My skern has just told me so.’ Two lies.

  There was a sudden squabble of gulls, then deeper silence. They were still, in a swelter of hot blood. Nothing moved. Slowly Bera began to believe her spirit and words were winning the day.

  The sun came out from behind a cloud and Bjorn charged, crouched low, his head aiming for Scarface’s stomach. He never reached it. With careless skill the man caught him with a swift punch that made him straighten, then swept upwards with the blade-tip, slicing him from groin to rib cage. Bjorn crumpled to the ground, clutching his belly.

  Bera saw the Seabost men through a red veil of fury. ‘You coward! You have killed a boy. Perhaps you will kill this blind old man next? Or how about me? Or would you gutless pigs baulk at killing a young girl?’ She liked how anger took fear away. ‘How about the rest of you? Too scared? I’d love you to try; then my Valla ancestors can punish you for all eternity.’

  The men opposite her looked dazed. Bera seized the advantage.

  ‘Take our boy back to the boat. You Seabost brutes can keep the narwhale tusk in return for our safe passage. Do not strike us as we go or follow us.’

  The men went to Bjorn’s sprawled body and lifted it. Bjorn gave a terrible cry. He was alive! They carried him off at speed to the boat. Bera slowly turned her back on the killers and her spine grew icy, dreading a cleaving blow.

  None came.

  Falki held the boat steady in the shallows. Bera waded out and he helped her step up into it, then pushed off into deeper water, swung himself aboard and took his oars. He did not meet her eyes.

  Bera looked back. Men were carrying the tusk to the Seabost boat. Alone on the beach, the swordsman watched them go. He raised his sword to the sky, then lowered it to point straight at her. And then he was hidden as the boat passed through the cleft to open water.

  Whether Bjorn lived or died, one day that monster would suffer. Ottar would claim the blood debt but she would cause pain. One day, when she was in her full power, like her mother.

  2

  Bera used her thick underskirt to bind Bjorn’s wound but it was red in an instant. She sat back against the gunnel and took her friend’s head in her lap. He held her eyes a long time then licked his dry lips before he could speak.

  ‘Pocket.’

  She felt inside the blood-soaked cloth and drew out a piece of linen, folded tightly many times and bound with waxed string.

  ‘Keep it safe.’ His chest rattled. ‘Am I dying?’

  ‘No,’ she lied, looking at his skern.

  It settled round Bjorn as closely as they had once been in the womb. Birth, death, the same progression. Except this was the last time Bera would see her childhood friend on this earth.

  ‘Remember how you used to love to play hide-and-seek? I always found you, Bjorn, didn’t I?’

  There was no reply in his empty eyes.

  Bera stayed fixed on the soft down on his face, too numb to cry. How would she ever be able to tell Sigrid that her only child was dead?

  The men’s faces were like stone. Was even Agnar against her? Bera was guilty and the pressure of their silence, to make her feel it, flared as anger.

  ‘Shout at me or do something!’

  Falki began counting the strokes out loud.

  ‘That man with the scar was battle-hardened. He could have killed us all, single-handed, but I stopped him.’

  ‘You gave the tusk away,’ growled Falki. ‘My sons’ll be the first to die back home and then how many more?’

  ‘I blame myself, for all it was fated.’

  Falki stood up, making Bera stagger as the boat tipped. ‘Fated? You never know what’s fated, do you? Your precious skern’s nothing but hogswill. You didn’t see the lad’s death, nor my wife’s. Did you?’

  ‘I saw the narwhales.’

  ‘But we’re going home with nothing but a dead boy.’

  His mate pulled him back down and he grabbed his oar. There was a crack of colliding wood, cursing, and then they took up the stroke. Bera went back to where Bjorn’s body lay beneath her mother’s sail. The one person who ever stood up for her was dead and she hoped the woven words would protect him till they got him safely home. And then at last she felt the welcome warmth of her skern around her and she let the tears fall, chilling her face and splashing onto the mound that was Bjorn’s head. How small it seemed. Why had she been so hard with him?

  Falki was right. She had no command over her skern and was too stupid to know if he was present or understand what he showed her.

  ‘Damn you, skern!’

  He was insulted and unclasped from her so sharply that her ribs ached. Bera refused to let him see her surprise and hurt and did not rub the place.

  ‘You closed the boy’s eyes?’ Agnar asked.

  Falki’s voice was dark. ‘Is he going in the sea?’

  ‘Bjorn’s not becoming a corpse whale! He’ll have proper rites, like his father.’

  The men rowed hard for home. Bera thought she might die of grief and shame before they got there and hoped she would.

  The jetty was golden in the setting sun. As soon as they tied up, folk gathered round to get a first glimpse of the tusk. There was a moan of dismay when they saw only Bjorn’s stiff body. Word of his death spread and a hubbub of excitement began. Life could be dull.

  Bera avoided everyone and headed for the boatyard to tell Ottar what had happened. She was numb with despair, sleepwalking. When she met her father it was like starting awake.

  ‘Look at you, covered in whale blood,’ Ottar said. ‘Go home, girl, and get yourself decent.’

  ‘It’s Bjorn’s blood. He’s dead.’

  ‘Tell me later.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? Bjorn’s dead.’ Her teeth were chattering.

  ‘Go and wash. I’m ashamed to own you for my daughter.’ He beckoned to someone behind the workboat. ‘This man’s come all the way from Seabost.’

  A man stepped out wearing a vile blue cloak. Bera wanted to tear his head off to pay the blood debt but all she managed to do was spit at him. She set off before Ottar could hit her.

  She ran through the boatyard, ignoring her father’s shouts. It was all out of control. And unless her skern started giving proper advice she would be punished. She started down the slipway. Ottar’s yard lad tried to trip her but she jinked, ran down to the water and plunged in. She thought she would feel nothing ever again but the water was freezing, like an ice shark’s clamping jaws. She hoped it killed her. She tried to stay under and drown but a panic reflex forced her upwards.

  Someone was speaking. She tilted her head, gathered her wet hair and wrung it. Years of hunching work had bent Ottar’s old boathand so his face was level with hers.

  ‘I was down at the jetty,’ he said. ‘I’m saying they’ve laid Bjorn out in the boat proper, like.’

  ‘Not to be burned!’ Boats were too precious to waste these days.

  ‘So he’ll look right for Sigrid.’ The man picked up his bag of nails and clenching hammer. ‘So someone ought to go and tell her.’


  ‘Someone will.’ But please not her. Bera dreaded Sigrid’s desperate hurt and dawning blame when she realised Bera’s total failure to keep her word.

  ‘Folk are saying it would have been your mother doing the telling.’

  ‘I have to take off these wet clothes.’

  ‘Him being Ottar’s foster-son and that.’

  ‘Then let my father do it!’

  The man went off to his work. They both knew she would do it. A Valla presided at birth and death – and Bera owed it to Bjorn.

  Sigrid was neither in the hall, the longhouse, nor the byre. Bera bundled her wet clothes in a corner, threw on an old shift and went up to the goats. Not there either. She gave her favourite a quick scratch behind the ears, longing for it to be the simple day it had been when she last did it, then headed back to the jetty. Perhaps Sigrid was already there; perhaps someone had told her by now. Would Sigrid ever speak to her again? She was doomed whatever happened.

  The wooden boards of the walkway bounced as someone hurried towards her. Rounding a corner at speed came one of the fishwives. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes lit up when she saw Bera.

  ‘Terrible news. Have you told poor Sigrid?’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Bera hated the woman’s pleasure in causing Sigrid pain.

  ‘No. I will do it alone, as a Valla.’

  ‘You’re not that good yet and we were girls together, your poor mother, Sigrid and me.’

  ‘Just tell me where she is.’ Bera was determined to prove this woman wrong.

  The drying racks, in plenty, made a ∧ rune of stiff grey stockfish, right down to the ground. Bera ignored the empty rows and went on to sparse racks of older stockfish to find Sigrid. Her back was to Bera; sturdy legs wide, braced against whatever life threw at her. Today she had lost her son, except she didn’t yet know it.

  Bera tried to call out but shame gripped her throat. She was close before Sigrid noticed her.

  ‘You gave me a turn! How did you get on? Wasn’t it there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The narwhale, of course.’

  ‘Oh, yes, but––’

  ‘Help me move this basket, will you? I’m aching all over.’

  They each took a handle and carried it to the edge of the racks. Bera wondered how to begin.

  Sigrid burrowed under her clothes and scratched. ‘I’m that itchy and my back’s playing up. I shouldn’t be carrying this lot.’

  Bera watched the night clouds turn golden. She always thought of her mother when the setting sun made a blaze of branching beams over the whole sky. Two sea eagles flew in, their bodies black runes. Probably her mother telling her to do her duty.

  ‘Look at that sunset.’ Sigrid smiled. ‘It was like that the night your mother died.’

  ‘I know. Listen, Sigrid—’

  ‘We’ll have a lucky year, Bera, I feel it. After the bad. We can trade those tusks.’

  ‘One tusk. But then—’

  ‘Only one, eh? Well, it’ll do. Stop the red-spot and folk might start trusting you. I would help you, Bera, only your mother’d start that scrying and I’d be off. Scared to death of it all, I was. And I don’t ever want to see a skern.’

  ‘I saw one today.’

  ‘Maybe the gift’s stronger, then. Mind, Alfdis was a full Valla and a mother herself when she wasn’t much older than you. Though it has a price.’

  ‘Listen...’

  ‘Shame about all her babies and the poor little boy. I was the other way, couldn’t fall with a child all the years I was with Bjarni. Well, I got one, one way or another. Hark at me blathering when we should be getting back before it’s full dark. Glad you’re here for once to help lug this lot.’

  The reminder that Bjorn was Sigrid’s one blessing made it impossible to speak. Bera hoped she might manage it on the way home, when she wouldn’t have to meet Sigrid’s eyes, but she had still not told her by the time they reached the longhouse. In the food store the fishwife was waiting, her eyes glittering in the taper’s guttering light.

  ‘Sigrid, my dear, I am sorry for your loss.’

  Sigrid lifted her chin, as though to meet a real punch.

  Bera’s duty. She took Sigrid by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. ‘It’s the worst. Bjorn.’

  His mother rocked, like a sturdy tree in a gale, but did not fall. ‘At sea?’

  ‘No, we brought him home. He didn’t drown.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He charged at a Seabost man who cut him. He stood no chance.’

  Sigrid clenched her jaw so hard Bera heard the crack.

  ‘Ottar will make him pay the blood debt,’ Bera said.

  The fishwife made a move towards Sigrid.

  ‘You – get out!’ Bera’s anger made the woman leave quickly.

  Sigrid’s mouth was a line of pain. ‘Take me to him.’

  ‘I’m so, so sorry, Sigrid, I was afraid to tell you.’

  ‘Where is my son?’

  The sun, beneath the sea rim, burnished the waters. The small group of villagers parted when they saw Sigrid approach. She paused at the boat and then stepped aboard, making it rock and bump against the jetty. A brown bear fur, his namesake, covered the boy’s body. The crewman on vigil drew it back from his face before leaving. Sigrid sat, pulled her son to her and rocked him like a baby.

  ‘His skern joined him,’ Bera reassured her.

  Sigrid was humming the song she used to sing to both of them when they were small and the sound was like a stick beating Bera for failing her friend. She vowed to make sure the burning was done properly, so he would not become a Drorgher. It was all she could do for him now.

  Bera stood guard. Sigrid fell silent, her face stony with grief. As time passed, Bera’s determination grew. Paying Ottar any amount as a blood debt would not be enough. It had to be death. She was the one who had let Bjorn be killed after Sigrid had told her to look after him. So Bera would make the scarred man pay for it with his life, however long it took her to reach him.

  Flame ribboned up to the hall. It was the line of torches that would keep Drorghers away.

  Then Ottar arrived with Falki and two of his boatmen, who lifted Bjorn onto a bier. Ottar bent to kiss the boy’s cheek. It shocked Bera. He had never shown tenderness like this to her. Her dart of jealousy disgusted her and she dug her nails into her palms. She wished she had died, not Bjorn. Then her father would be happy. He only ever wanted a son.

  ‘Let’s take him home,’ Ottar said.

  The two women stayed with Bjorn’s body. Sigrid tenderly pushed back inside what should not be outside and stitched the long wound with her best walrus tusk needle. Bera washed his boyish body from head to toe. He would never become a man. A flicker of relief startled her, which she quickly thrust away.

  They took turns to kiss his forehead, chin, cheeks, and then Sigrid began her vigil. Bera kept company for a while but the smell of death brought back the loss of her mother. The slip of beads sliding through her grasp. Guilt weighed heavily – as did other emotions. She dared not break down in front of her brave friend, or face the rest of the folk in the hall with their accusing eyes, so she took herself off to the byre, wanting its sweet scent to soothe her.

  She checked it for any lurking dangers, then sank down in an empty stall and ran her fingers through the scratch of straw, wanting the tears to come now they could. She ached for her skern to join her. There was only the cow, who stamped and nudged the wood, expecting Bera’s usual treat.

  No Bjorn. No true friend. Although Ottar had taken Sigrid and Bjorn into his care after Bjarni drowned, Sigrid had been her mother’s friend and wasn’t like kin. Bjorn was. Always so curious, he kept trying to get her to scry and tell him their future. Now he had none. She remembered the small packet he had made her take. She took a taper to the dark corner, found her smock and took it out of the pocket. She dithered and then kissed it.

  The hairs on her nape prickled an
d there was her skern. He began an expansive gesture but Bera picked up a large soapstone jug and hurled it at him. It shattered.

  That won’t change your feelings.

  Unfolded, it was a love poem. Bjorn should never have written it. It was dishonourable and brought into the open feelings Bera had not shared. It was childish, too, but that made her sadder, especially the last two lines.

  My love will last until I’m old

  And even dead it won’t grow cold.

  Hot tears melted the words into the linen cloth. Bera screwed up the poem and then smoothed it out again. Her nose ran and through snotty lips she vowed again to make Scarface pay.

  ‘I don’t know when but I will do it, Bjorn. I’ll be strong.’

  Bera was not strong now, and weaker without Bjorn. She had teased and snapped at him in life and taken him to his death. She was a useless Valla, not the daughter her mother would have wanted. She lashed herself with every failing she could think of, then every regret, and fell to the ground, sobbing.

  There was a heavy blow on the byre door. Bera waited for another, holding her breath. The dead knock only once.

  No other came.

  This was her duty, the only thing she could do well; other folk couldn’t even stand the howling out in the open. The Drorgher had come to take Bjorn and steal his skern. Only Bera stood in its way. She scrambled upright, still hoping for more knocks, but nothing living was outside that door. She touched the black bead to her lips, opened the door a crack, slipped through and shut herself off from safety.

  The one who had knocked was the boldest Drorgher, as he had been in life before the snow took him last winternights. His eyes, unblinking circles of impenetrable black, drew Bera like lodestones. She must not get close.

  The nearest torch was nearly out. Sigrid must have forgotten to build it up as Bera had asked. Beyond the low flames the other Drorghers waited for the glow of ash to dull; shadowy corpses in a moonless night. The last ember fell with a grey sigh. Their heads swivelled to the place and they softly shuffled forward, all the unburned dead, wanting to join their leader and then pour like snowmelt into the byre and on into the hall.