The Walrus Mutterer

by Mandy Haggith

  Instead of entering the main voe, Ussa asked Toma to seek out a cove to drop anchor. He must have known the shore well for he found a place to conceal the boat without any difficulty. Li risked his life jumping onto a wave-washed rock and then helped Ussa ashore. They pushed off and Toma anchored the boat at a safe distance.

  Once Ussa was out of sight, Badger sidled up to Toma and a murmured negotiation took place, punctuated by long, grumpy pauses. Eventually Toma relented and Badger hauled the anchor while Toma and his boy rowed the boat back to the rocky shore, where Badger jumped ship.

  The rest of the crew prepared to wait. It could take Ussa and Li several hours to walk to the nearest settlement and gain the intelligence she needed. She may well not return until the next day, or the next. It was anyone’s guess what kind of reception she would get.

  Og got straight on with cooking as soon as they had anchored, and demanded that Rian helped him. ‘We have to use these times,’ he said. ‘Plenty days at sea when you’ll eat nothing but dry tack, and the mood of the crew depends on nothing more than food.’

  Pytheas had been keen to go with Ussa but she had refused him. He sat sulking on deck, back to the mast, until Rian brought him a cup of wine and some cheese on a hot pancake. Pytheas took his cup and gazed at Rian as he sipped. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured. And then again, in Greek, ‘Beautiful.’

  As she handed him the pancake, he bent and sniffed her hands.

  ‘Clean now.’ She held them to her nose to check.

  He sniffed again.

  ‘Soapwort, and yarrow butter for my sores.’

  He said something in Greek that ended with ‘Mama,’ and the puppy-dog look in his eye forced her to conclude that her herbal remedy was making him homesick.

  He tore the pancake in half and insisted she ate half of it, then made her sup from his wine cup. She didn’t know how to tell him this was a sacrilege: a man and a woman drinking from one cup without saying the blessings of the Mother. She said them in her head and then made an addition, ‘but he doesn’t know what he is doing, and it is not the nuptial cup.’ She didn’t like the long gazing stare of the man, the way his eyes lingered on her, the way he drew his tongue across his teeth behind his upper lip and then back along the lower as if in preparation for some kind of delicacy.

  Smiling his most beguiling smile, he began another lesson: the parts of the body. ‘I touch my head.’ ‘You touch my head.’ ‘I touch your arm.’ His hand stroked from her shoulder to her wrist, to show her. Then on down, ‘I touch your hand.’ He held out his palm. ‘You touch my hand.’

  Rian tapped his thumb, tentatively.

  He was all glee. Then he grinned with a gleam that she did not like at all. ‘I touch your leg.’ He showed her he meant the whole length. Then it was toe, foot, ankle, calf. She would never remember it all. Shin, knee, thigh.

  She would do anything to end the lesson.

  Hip. Belly. Perhaps she could run. He reached around her. Back. Could he not see her discomfort? And then, his gaze uncomfortably close, he lifted her hand and placed it on his chest. She could feel it, like a trapped animal.

  ‘Heart’. He said it again, quietly. ‘Heart’. And then a third time, quieter still. ‘Heart’.

  He was looking at her with an intensity she had not seen before. The necessity was to repeat what he was saying. That was what the lesson required.

  ‘Heart,’ she said. Cardia.

  It thumped beneath her fingers. Beating. Trying to get out.

  ‘You touch my heart,’ he said.

  ‘I touching heart.’ She knew she had it wrong.

  His hand imitated hers. His hand was on her chest. His big hand. Her shrinking breast. ‘I touch your heart.’

  She could not meet his eye. She wanted only that his hand lifted, that this weight on her was removed, that this moment ended. She looked about. Was anyone watching them? Was there any way of escape?

  Toma sat at the prow, chewing, looking out to sea. Og and Faradh were sleeping in this moment of calm. The hand pressed on, demanding words.

  She grabbed his hand and slapped it on her crown. ‘You touch my head.’

  She flinched at the flicker in his face as he registered what she had done and then she was falling back against the mast with the force of his slap. Her cheek blazed and sparked as if it was a log splattered by fat from a spitted animal.

  She looked around again. No-one had witnessed this change in him. He sat, looking away up to the headland then out to sea, then back to her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  She knew this phrase well. Syngnōmēn ékhe. He used it often.

  He touched her cheek. ‘I’m sorry. I touch your cheek, to say I’m sorry.’

  Rian assumed this was what he meant. She was catching onto this language of his. It was not so difficult. Perhaps. Not as difficult to understand as touch. No, she understood that too, she just didn’t like it, not from him. But the words, she loved them. She wanted to know them all.

  Healer

  They spent an uncomfortable night at anchor. For several hours the tide ran strongly north and the boat tugged as if trying to break free, pitching forwards and rocking back, a motion that seemed to be exaggerated when Rian lay down to try to sleep. She worried about having drunk from the same cup as Pytheas.

  The next morning Pytheas spent a long time trying to get Toma to explain to him why the current had been so strong, questioning him until the skipper was exasperated. Eventually his interrogation was cut short by a shout from the shore. They all manned the oars to bring the boat close into the rocks so that Ussa and Li could clamber on board.

  Ussa was in a vile temper. She had got wet trying to get into the boat and Manigan had evidently departed. She told Toma to head north through the islands and he argued with her about a safe route through the tidal channels.

  Rian’s hands had suffered even from that short time on the oars. She undid the bandages she had improvised and dabbed on a little more salve. The yarrow butter that Danuta had given her, even in sparing amounts, eased the smarting.

  Thus began Rian’s role as the ship’s healer. They all had rowing sores on their hands. The poultices she had prepared during their stop in the Seal Isles were good and she used linarich seaweed to keep the ointments in place and reduce chafing on the wounds when they were at the oars. The effects were dramatic. One after another, Og, Faradh and Li came to her for treatment.

  Shortly after they left the Cat Isles, chasing Manigan north, Og cut the ball of his thumb trying to slice dried meat on the rolling boat. He bled profusely from the wound, which he feared would leave his hand useless, and he gibbered oaths with the pain in a language only he knew. Rian cleaned the cut, stitched it with three knots of gut thread, bandaged it and checked daily that it was healing.

  From then on they came to her with all their aches and injuries. Her grasp was firm but her fingers were small and soft compared to the men’s and she could tell that even the act of touching them was soothing. They showed her old wounds and groaned appreciation as she salved them.

  When they first left the Cat Isles behind, the wind was steady and the sea motion slight, but gradually the wind eased and the periods when they were merely drifting became longer.

  They were far from land. Nothing except ocean had been visible for days. Who could tell where they were? The sea had been calm for how many days? Rian was no longer sure. Five, perhaps six.

  They seemed not to go anywhere much. The sail hung limp. Ussa ordered them to row in the morning, but by afternoon when the slaves’ anger at their sore hands and their sheer exhaustion made the atmosphere on board intolerable, Toma let them rest. They drifted.

  Each day they rowed for a shorter time. One morning they did not lift the oars at all. Who knew where the currents would take them? Og said Toma knew and he seemed unperturbed by their slow progress, sitting at
the helm in contemplation or teaching his boy Callum ever more complicated knots.

  There wasn’t enough food on board the boat and they were soon starting to wish for something other than dry tack and mutton. Their fishing hooks caught nothing so they put out lines for seagulls. Almost immediately a herring gull took the salted fish bait and Ussa hauled it in. It was her prerogative as the leader of the expedition. But the gull had not lived on the ocean for decades without having the ability to fight and it was not going to give up its cruising days without a battle.

  Once on board its full size became obvious. It flapped and struggled with wings strong enough to fly into a sea gale, beak and claws sufficiently sharp to tear the skin of a whale. It fought Ussa and won, battering her with its feathery limbs, tearing the arm she put up across her face to shield her eyes from its beak. She flailed and yelled for help.

  Li grabbed the bird by the neck and with a swift yank and twist it lay limp in his arms. Ussa’s swearing turned to a howl as she realised the damage to her arm. The skin was torn almost all the way from the elbow to the wrist.

  Og pushed Rian ahead of him. All eyes were now on her, full of expectation that she could do something to mend the bloody gash.

  ‘Bloody sea devil, bitch of a bird.’ Ussa let herself be pressed down to sit on a bench. Rian took her arm in one hand and eased back the tattered sleeve to examine the wound. It wasn’t as bad as it looked.

  ‘What is it like?’ Ussa’s hand trembled. Her eyes were wide and straining, her voice a rasp.

  ‘You’ll be fine.’ Rian held her arm. ‘It’s just on the surface. If it stays clean, it’ll mend in no time.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Those wide eyes, still staring.

  ‘I can go and get something to clean it with.’

  Ussa nodded. ‘Make it stop hurting.’

  Rian was about to say she couldn’t do that. Ussa sounded like a child. Then something came to Rian that Danuta used to do when Drost was moaning about his sore back. ‘I’ll fix you a draft. It’ll help to ease your pain.’ She filled her voice with an imitation of sympathy. ‘You’re strong, your body’s its own best healer.’ She got up, resting Ussa’s hand on her thigh. ‘Sit with Ussa while I get my medicines,’ she said to Li, amazing herself with her bravado. ‘In case she faints with the pain.’

  Ussa nodded her head with rapid jerks.

  ‘It’s a nasty wound,’ Rian said. ‘But she’s going to be fine.’

  ‘Of course.’ Li gave her a half-smile and played along, crouching beside Ussa, concern written all over his face.

  Rian fetched her herbs, took them to the galley, put a pinch of yarrow in a cup, added a dash of mead and soaked it up in a cloth to swab the cuts and staunch the bleeding. Brewing up a painkiller would be more difficult, but she crumbled a dried mint leaf in some mead then dunked a hemp rope in it to give it a more pungent flavour: it would taste odd, vaguely medicinal, and the alcohol would do the trick.

  Back on deck, she concentrated her attention on the lacerations, clucking and cooing as she swabbed them, urging the once invincible mistress to sip her drink and relax, let it take effect. Miraculously, it did.

  ‘This yarrow butter will staunch the bleeding.’ Rian smeared it thinly down the cut, then wet some of the linarach fronds and bandaged the arm from wrist to elbow. ‘And this will keep it clean.’

  No thanks were forthcoming, but Ussa was at least passive for a while. For Rian there was comfort in realising she was not completely powerless.

  *

  The seabird killing seemed to break the spell of calm. A band of cloud thickened in the eastern sky and soon the first drift had clouded the sun. As it sank towards the horizon it became a primrose blur. A dense, misty rain began to fall and the sails tautened. Water trickled against the hide as the boat achieved motion. Toma took the tiller in his hand, murmured instructions and ropes were loosened, adjusted, tightened.

  In the gloom of dusk, Rian sat on a chest under the shelter, her legs dangling. She was in the way of anyone who wanted to get into the galley and kept having to squeeze aside as Og went in and out, but she could see both Pytheas and Ussa from here.

  Ussa was on her bunk looking pale and sweaty. She had insisted on eating some of the bird’s giblets raw, saying something unintelligible as she had swallowed the heart of the animal. Rian felt queasy at the thought of it – a sea bird was not the same as a land mammal. She knew, she wasn’t sure how, but she did, as if from an ancient memory, that the bird’s innards should all have been offered to the sea. But Ussa had consumed them and now she looked as if the sea was taking its revenge. She was lying with her bandaged arm on top of the covers, being sorry for herself.

  Pytheas was writing, catching the very last light, then lighting a lamp which spluttered viciously as the boat leaned, its sail heavy with wind, tilting the oil so it threatened to spill. Toma shook his head and muttered threats, but Pytheas made stalling gestures and scribbled faster and faster. Why, after all those days of boredom, he had waited to get the urge to write until a wind was rising Rian failed to understand. But increasingly she was able to follow what he was doing and she had grasped that his scratchings were a record of their voyage. When at last he put his writing instruments away and blew out the lamp, Toma relaxed.

  Pytheas fastened his box and Rian took it from him, jumped down and stowed it under his bunk. He peered down at Ussa. ‘She’s sick?’ he asked.

  Rian nodded. ‘The heart of the bird is bird.’

  ‘The heart of the bird is bad,’ he corrected.

  ‘The heart of the bird is bad.’ The repetition of his corrections of her Greek had become automatic.

  He asked her something she didn’t understand. She shrugged. He didn’t repeat it.

  In her medicine bag she had dog lichen, a good purgative. It might be worth making Ussa sicker in the short term to prevent her dying of some slow poison. She mixed it with a little wine and told Ussa to drink it, then sat by to wait for the effects.

  Within a few minutes Ussa had thrown up. Rian waited for her to finish then lugged the wooden pail out on deck and washed it out overboard. Ussa wailed and Rian hurried back. Another spate of vomiting followed, Ussa groaning as her stomach emptied its contents. A final retch, then she lay back on her bunk. Rian gave her a sip of water. Ussa’s eyes were watery and her hair straggled over her clammy forehead. With the bucket washed out a second time, Rian sat on the bunk opposite Ussa. Her breathing calmed and her forehead relaxed. Rian thought she might be dropping asleep until her head turned. When she opened her eyes they were clear.

  ‘What are you looking at, little witch?’

  ‘Do you feel better?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do. No thanks to you and your poisons.’

  ‘Your stomach needed to void. And your arm? Is it feeling better too?’ She lifted it, and unwound the seaweed bandage. The cut was clean. ‘If you can keep it clean and dry and open to the air, with loose sleeves, it’ll scab up and mend in no time.’

  Ussa said nothing at all, rolled onto her side, shut her eyes again and seemed to go to sleep. Rian caught a glimpse of a cockroach scuttling in a corner. She wished more than anything that she could get off the boat.

  She sat and let the darkness deepen. The wind’s song in the sails, so welcome earlier, had become thunder.

  The sailors’ voices were drowned out by creaking wood, water on hide and wind in ropes. Before long she felt Pytheas beside her. He smelled distinctive, although she could never put a name to the scent. But now what came to her was that his cloying odour was from the ink bottle, whatever its contents were.

  His hand was on her head in the dark, stroking her like a cat. She felt the hairs on the base of her neck bristle, a tightening of her shoulders as if she would arch her back and scratch him. She resisted the urge, forcing herself to endure his touch. After a while his hand drifted to a halt, he ga
ve a stretch and yawned. She stood, released her clenched back and curled onto her bunk.

  The rocking boat was like a cradle but sleep did not come to her. The rolling seemed to become more intense as the night deepened. One lurch set the boat on edge and she tumbled right out of her bunk. She had resisted using the straps and felt stupid now. She heard shouts on deck and struggled to cling to an upright as the boat lunged back the other way. Spray battered the hide cover they were under, and every now and again there was a weightless feeling as a mountainous wave lifted them, then let them go. She was aware of Faradh and Li bailing and she wondered if she should go out and help, but the fear of falling overboard kept her in her bunk. A banshee wailed in the rigging and the timbers of the boat juddered and creaked. There was no question of sleep.

  Dawn brought relative calm, although the sea had built up a motion that made even the simplest deeds awkward on the lurching boat. Og had a bruise on his forehead and was in a foul mood, as the shelter had split where he slept, soaking his bed and the stores of food. The flour sack was ruined with sea water.

  Ussa was back to her normal self, a linen scarf wrapped loosely around her arm. She sat watching Rian serve Pytheas his breakfast, then came the daily language lesson. Today it was teeth, tongue, nose, hair, ears. Ussa sat on her bunk with her head turned away but her posture made it clear she was listening to every word.

  When Rian stood up to take Pytheas’ beaker back to the galley for a refill, Ussa turned her head. Rian got the drift of her remark. ‘I’m sure you can teach her all about the body.’

  Pytheas laughed. ‘You have a one-track mind, Ussa.’

  Rian brought his cup and he tried to catch her around her waist with his arm but she slipped aside, span around and returned to Og’s cooking space, as if she had forgotten something. From there she watched Ussa perform.

  Her eyebrows were raised and her eyes wide and fixed on the Greek like a dog waiting for a titbit to be thrown. Ussa licked her lips slowly, then lowered her eyes to linger on his body, before lifting her line of sight to his face. She murmured something so he had to lean towards her to hear, and as he did she placed her hand on his wrist. He shook it off but she placed it back there, her fingers long and straight. She stroked his shirt as if it were fur, then said something else, widening her eyes again and tilting her head with a raised shoulder.