The Walrus Mutterer

by Mandy Haggith

  Outraged, Bael said, ‘No way.’

  Rian tried to shrink away into her dark corner, knowing that with her auburn hair, green eyes and pale skin she looked nothing like the dark-haired kin of Drost and Danuta. But Pytheas persisted, pointing to Buia. ‘Mama?’

  She crossed her hands in a dismissive gesture. ‘She’s not one of us.’

  He swept his arm around the room, seeking someone to own up to being related to her.

  Danuta said, ‘She’s a foster child.’

  But even after one of the slaves said something to him in some other tongue, he seemed to be mystified.

  Og said, ‘So she is neither family nor slave?’

  Danuta nodded. ‘That’s right. She came to us as a baby. It happens. I am the medicine woman. Drost’s wife was keen to take her, but she died giving birth to Bael, and I took care of them both.’

  Ussa’s voice rang out. ‘So who exactly was her mother? Who are her people? Where is she from?’

  Drost nodded. ‘Aye, you never have told us whose bastard I got fobbed off with.’

  ‘It’s not to be spoken of,’ Danuta said.

  There was another embarrassed silence. Rian wanted a hole to open up under her in the corner.

  Pytheas frowned and then, suddenly, the cloud seemed to clear from his face. He gave an elaborate twist of his hands towards her and then his gaze circled the room, seeking the agreement of everyone, and he lifted his cup in a toast. ‘Bóidheach!’ Beautiful.

  The slaves roared ‘Bóidheach!’ back in unison, with the laughter of a standing joke in their voices. They swigged from their mugs, emptying them, and the jug began to circulate again.

  Rian sat red-faced in her corner, far too many eyes on her, desperate for something to distract attention away. She saw Li empty the jug into Bael’s outstretched cup and seized her chance to flee. But reaching for the jug simply drew more attention to her. Li clutched it to himself in jest, then stood, indicating he would follow her out with it, to cat-calls from the others. Rian swithered, the laughter beating at her from all sides, until Pytheas tugged Li back to the bench and, murmuring something to him, extracted his fingers from the handle and passed the vessel to Rian. Any gratitude she might have felt blinked out as he winked at her.

  She turned tail to the byre, back to the bovine warmth and darkness.

  She left the jug on the barrel and shuffled over to lean her head on the shoulder of Beithe. The hairy cow made no gesture of interest, standing indifferent, chewing its cud. Rian stroked the top of its head, wishing people were more like cows.

  The faint light from the byre doorway was blotted out by a shape. Rian tried to melt into the cow, holding her breath, feeling her heart like a scuttling mouse. The person loomed into the byre, went directly to the beer barrel and seemed to locate the jug on top.

  ‘Rian?’ It was Danuta’s voice.

  Relief flooded her. ‘I’m here, Danu, talking to Beithe.’

  ‘Come away in. They’re thirsty.’

  ‘I hate it. I hate them.’

  ‘They’re only having fun.’

  Rian said nothing.

  Danuta filled the jug. ‘It is nice and quiet here,’ she conceded. ‘I’ll take this in. Don’t stay out here all night.’

  Alone again, Rian tried to return to the comfort of stroking the cow but the fear of a shadow in the doorway remained. Her imagination conjured figures, all less benign than her foster mother, and eventually the horror of being found out there on her own by any of the others drove her back to the broch. She stood just outside the door, listening. A quietness seemed to be settling. Someone had produced a drum and one of the men began a song in a sweet mellow voice, a jaunty rhyming sea shanty with a chorus that everyone joined in with: ‘A hoy-a, a hoy-o, the sea’s a merry boy-o.’

  Rian chose her moment and slipped into the room, threaded her way through the crowd of knee-patting, head-nodding people all singing along. She faded into her corner. Danuta’s hand reached in and gave her toes a welcoming squeeze. She was invisible again.

  The ceilidh continued. It was Og singing, and Gruach the smith was on the drum. After the shanty, Og sang again, another old favourite. Then Danuta asked for something slow and he began an elegy. The sweetness of his voice was made for such melodies and, as he led the tune along its mournful contour, people breathed, sat back, and allowed themselves to be carried to a place where emotion softens. The lover was lost, the lover was drowned, and the throng around the fireplace lamented. When Og reached the end of the song at last, they whistled and cheered, a few eyes were wiped, some surreptitiously, some openly.

  Danuta was one of those who didn’t try to hide her tears. ‘Og, you’ll break our hearts.’ She shook her head. ‘Who’ll cheer us up after that?’

  Og pulled a whistle out of his top pocket and began to pipe a tune for hauling rigging. Gruach joined in on the drum. With a whoop, Pytheas jumped to his feet, grabbed the youngest member of the crew, the captain’s boy, Callum, by the hand and though there wasn’t really enough room to dance they hopped and mimed the pulling of ropes, shinning up the mast and dragging up an anchor. The tune got faster and faster until they were scampering on the spot and waving their arms as if their feet were on fire. Everyone clapped along until with a shriek and a trill, it was done.

  Then the drum started up a slow, regular beat with a skip like a sharp intake of breath, or a twitch of a hip. Og’s whistle changed tone and out of his little pipe a reedy sensuous tune took shape. A slow, chromatic descent, a pause, and then all eyes were on Ussa, standing with one hand on her hip, the other raised like a snake about to strike, her bangles glinting. With eyes half-closed, eyebrows raised and a smile of abandon, she began to dance. The tune followed her arms and torso, or she followed it, and the drum seemed to be inside her hips. She became the music. All the light in the house seemed to glow from her skin as she writhed and shimmered and clicked her fingers with all the passion of moonshine. And then with a stamp she lifted her chin and sang.

  Her voice was like the baying of a wild animal. She sang of love, of love no matter what, a defiant love dark as the forest’s heart, deep as the ocean’s depth, a love that nothing could release her from, a love that thundered, a love that broke her body open. Then, with a toss of her head, the slow dance tune returned and she became human once more, voluptuous, all hands and skin and breasts and pulsing hips. She felled the dance with a final stamp, the whistle trilled, and a snap of her fingers extinguished the music to rapturous applause.

  She refused to dance another but instead, with every man in the building at her command, she called for drinks all round and a board and casket of ivory chips. The gambling began.

  Rian was soon bored by it. She had curled up on a mat in the corner and was close to sleep when the shouting of her name pulled her alert.

  ‘Bring her here,’ Drost was shouting. ‘She’s nothing but a burden to us anyway, one more mouth, always in the way, bothering the boy.’ Bael was sitting beside his father, wide-eyed.

  Ussa reached for Rian’s hand and pulled her to her feet as if demanding the next dance, spinning her into the lighted circle beside the hearth. All eyes, mostly blurry now, were on her. Drost was ablaze with drink, his eyes heavy in their sockets, cheeks red, voice loud. Something bullish raged in his body, aroused by Ussa. Rian had never seen him look so dangerous.

  Bael, beside him, noticed her fear. A smirk spread across his face. She looked around desperately for Danuta, but she must have gone off to her bed.

  ‘You’d better watch carefully girl, this next round could change your life forever,’ Ussa said.

  Rian tried to meet the eyes of Drost, who snarled.

  ‘If your foster father wins, he has the sword. If he loses, you belong to me.’ Ussa stroked Rian’s hair. ‘You’re a pretty little thing.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Rian’s voice came out as
a squeak. Was she hearing right? Was she dreaming?

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ said Ussa. ‘You’re the stake. Drost is betting you for the sword. I’m dragons and he is eagles. You’d better wish hard he wins. If you do, he’ll be very happy. He’ll have this lovely sword and he’ll still have you to fetch his grog and tend his fire. And if he loses, I’ll be very happy, because I’ll have you and I’ll still have my sword. So whoever you end up with will be delighted to have you.’ Ussa smiled like a cat and nodded to Faradh, who had a kind of spinning top on the board with an elaborate pattern of ivory and bronze chips.

  ‘Throw.’ Ussa clicked her fingers.

  The slave span the top and it wheeled among the pieces on the board, slowed, then settled, leaning on an ivory chip. He lifted the top and turned the piece. ‘Dragon,’ he said, pointing to the carving on the piece.

  ‘You’re mine, girl.’ Ussa clasped Rian on the shoulder, her fingernails biting into flesh.

  Rian pulled herself out of the grasp and ran out to the byre. They let her go. For the rest of her life she would regret not running further, not taking herself away while she still had the chance.

  Branded

  If Rian had been able to believe it was really happening she would have hidden herself in the woods, but when Danuta found her in the byre, where she had cried herself to sleep among the hay, the old woman said, ‘It will be sorted out somehow. Drost was drunk. He’ll see sense this morning.’

  But Drost did not see the sense Danuta saw and no amount of shouting from her made an impact on him. He had taken Ussa to his bed and in the morning he was drunk on more than beer, and still drinking. Rian had no idea how but he had acquired the coveted sword, which he wore with a swagger.

  The branding took place at midday.

  Ussa, Li and Faradh cornered Rian and dragged her outside, positioning her opposite the door of the broch. She could see the fire she had lit earlier glowing and flickering orange in the hearth, and those inside could see her without having to come out into the cold. Bael leered out at her. It had frozen hard again in the night and the snow surface had crystallised.

  Faradh and Li held her, one on either side. She tried struggling but received a blow to her head from Li, the bigger slave, that made her think twice about further resistance. She was so slight compared to the burly southerner.

  The iron was quite a small thing with a short handle tipped by a wooden knob. Ussa dangled it from her hand like a decoration. ‘Strip,’ she told Rian.

  Rian unfastened her belt, which Ussa took, eyed, admired and buckled around her own waist.

  ‘Get on with it, strip.’

  Rian shed her outer layers of hide and inner layers of wool. She stood naked, skin goose-pimpling.

  Ussa poked at her like someone inspecting an animal at market, raising her arms to inspect the hair in the pits, then making her open her legs, probing.

  Rian squeezed her eyes shut and tried to think of anything but what was happening to her. She listened for the robin, but it did not sing. There was no bird song at all.

  ‘Open your eyes.’ Ussa made her voice sound as if she was offering some kind of treat but it was more of the examination. ‘Look up.’

  Rian closed her eyes but the slap to her face made her do what she was told. After she had shifted her eyes in all directions, she had to open her mouth. Ussa poked about inside, looking at her teeth, holding her jaw tightly so she couldn’t bite down. Rian shut her eyes again but not before tears had escaped. The smack on her cheek was on some distant part of her. She had retreated deep inside.

  ‘Tears won’t help you now, girl.’

  Rian lifted her lids and stared. The big woman strode into the house and thrust the branding iron into the hottest part of the fire. She shut her eyes again.

  When the iron touched the skin on her right thigh, Rian came back to herself. The pain was a kick of pure hatred. The enemy held the tool. She breathed in the stench of her own burnt skin and cooked flesh. A boulder weight shifted within her and she became light. Only the hands of the two men held her down.

  The incline of her life, flat until that point, shot steeply upwards. She was a crag. Her childhood fell away. After that boulder, more rocks fell, a scree of memories tumbling from her, splitting and sharpening themselves as they slid.

  When the iron branded her a second time, on her left shoulder, she was far above it, on a distant ridge, out of harm’s reach.

  She looked at her oppressor. Ussa had veins of hardship in the yellowed whites of her eyes and wrinkles below them where greed lived. There was bruising on her mouth from whatever she had done with Drost in the night. Beneath the glamour, an ugly person inhabited this body.

  Ussa brought her eyes close to Rian’s, too close to focus. ‘I know you,’ she said. ‘And now you’re mine.’

  Rian tried not to breathe, but Ussa kept her face directly in front of hers. Her hot breath was fumy with drink from last night and with another smell, something green like cabbage. Rian didn’t want it but her lungs were bursting. Ussa puffed out over the skin of her nose and her cheeks. Rian kept her mouth closed but eventually her body refused and, with a gasp, she inhaled. It was as bad as the burning on her shoulders and thigh to see the look of triumph on Ussa’s face. The conqueror.

  Yet Rian knew, also, that she was not conquered at all, that there was a high place she could go to inside herself where she was still free.

  Ussa stepped aside and into the broch. The branding iron hissed as she dipped it into the water butt. She called out, ‘Og. Dress her brands. I don’t want them to fester.’

  Rian heard Danuta’s response. ‘I will do it.’ She hurried out to where Rian teetered, shivering. Danuta was white-faced, her bottom lip trembling as she unwrapped a leather packet. She glanced in towards Ussa. ‘Vixen.’ Turning to Rian, her face softened. ‘Come in here, little bird.’

  Rian didn’t move, just stood, quivering. A judder went through her and Danuta put an arm around her waist. She allowed herself to be led into the broch, her eyes vacant, watching people as if they were some other species, her mouth slightly open, as it had been to take that fatal breath and as it remained after she exhaled the lungful of her enemy. Now each mouthful of air belonged to someone else. She felt its corrosion as it came in, its dirtiness as it flowed out. She obeyed instructions to move this way or that as Danuta dressed her wounds with a salve of yarrow and seal fat, then found a loose-fitting shift to wear on top.

  Ussa lounged by the fire, ordering the slaves to give her the best remaining morsels of the food from the night before. Putting down her bowl and wiping her mouth she announced, ‘Today, I shall hunt.’ She stood like a man, hands on her knees to rise, legs apart, elbows wide. ‘And I shall take my new slave.’

  Drost was by her side, willing as a dog.

  Danuta frowned from her stool. ‘To think that my own son could be so cruel…’

  ‘Shut it,’ Drost said.

  Rian appeared not to hear them, then with a heavy slowness she turned, reached for the boots beside her bed. With her back to the eyes in the room she slid one foot into a boot, tugged a lace around her ankle and up her calf and tied a knot. The world was a sequence of actions without will. Another boot, another lace, a second knot. As the body of the girl made itself ready to go outside into the cold, Rian watched from her high place and let it happen.

  Bronze

  She trudged behind them, her legs leaden and eyes unfocused, sometimes tripping because she could not be bothered to watch her feet. Her right leg was soaking wet after a slip into a boggy patch. The brands stung. Her feet slid on snow smoothed by footprints of the people ahead of her. The bag hung heavy on her back, something sharp inside it bumping into her sternum as she stepped, though she had stopped the worst of its bouncing with a rope borrowed from Og. She had been making good use of Ussa’s spear as a walking stick until she had been told not to
, and now it stretched first one arm then the other as she swapped it from hand to hand. She wanted to snap the damn thing, or ram it into Ussa’s back.

  Ussa strolled, unimpeded, beside Drost at the front of the party. Pytheas strode just behind her, chatting, looking about as they walked. Where the path crossed a burn, Drost carried Ussa, shrieking with laughter, then helped Pytheas across. After a glance behind, Pytheas stopped and waited.

  He grinned and joked with the three slaves, Og, Li and Faradh, as they each splashed through the fast flowing water. As Rian approached, she tried not to look at him. She stepped onto the first stepping stone. It was slippy and she wobbled, bringing her second foot beside the first and bending down to grab hold of a boulder jutting out into the stream. The water gushed around her feet. The bag on her back slid awkwardly as she bent, pulling her sideways. The Greek man was speaking to her. She allowed herself to focus on him. He was gesturing to her to pass him the spear. Without thinking she let him take one end then used his balance to stand upright and rush across the other stepping stones. When she reached the far bank, Pytheas’ face lit up. He slung the spear across his shoulder, patted her on the back of the head, thrusting her in front of him on the path, then proceeded to talk to her in his incomprehensible tongue behind her as she walked on. His tone was light but he was an enemy too and now he was armed. The anticipation of the touch of the blade between her shoulders kept her moving but it didn’t come. Only his chanting voice and the sense of his eyes on her.

  The hunt was fruitless: they were too many, too noisy, too stupid. Every prey animal for miles around had fled. Ussa was twitchy with frustration and everyone tried to give her a wide berth. Rian lagged behind, limping, the muscle of her branded thigh trembling, her back bruised by the weapon bag, her shoulder brand burning.

  There was bustle when they arrived back at the village. Gruach was setting up his forge and a crowd had gathered to watch the performance. The fire was not yet lit but the paraphernalia of the forge was all laid out: a huge set of bellows and a long-handled pair of tongs, plus an armoury of stone, wood and metal tools. To one side crucibles and moulds were arranged as if they held offerings to gods. It was a cross between an altar and a stage and at the centre was the stack of wood that would feed the fire. Both Gruach and Fraoch were dressed in tough leather boots, trousers and sleeveless jerkins, their hair covered by tight hide caps, hands in sturdy but flexible cow skin gauntlets. Their upper arms, shoulders and backs were bare, and already beaded with sweat. Tattoos decorated Gruach’s exposed skin: a dragon coiled up his back, breathing fire over one shoulder, licking down his right arm. His left arm was abstract: concentric circles, bands and diamond marks rippled up his triceps. On the tip of his shoulder, an eye watched, long-lashed and suspicious.