Badger picked up the bundle of hide and Manigan fetched the three-faced stone in its bag from the boat. He slung the two sacks of meat and organs over his back, seemingly oblivious to their weight and to the dripping blood that smeared him.
Rian put the fire to sleep under stones and tidied up her drying seaweed, tied her bundles of herbs with rushes and set out after them, hanging back, reluctant to be part of it. But she couldn’t stop herself from picking flowers as she walked.
Manigan stopped and waited for her. ‘Flowers and fire and fury is a heavy load, I see.’
Her mouth was pursed. His acceptance of her anger was infuriating.
‘Hopefully once the ceremony’s done you’ll find forgiveness too. I didn’t like what we did today, but I am the Mutterer. I must obey its terms.’
He walked on, catching up Kino and Badger. The three men laboured along the coastal path with their heavy loads. She took a deep breath and followed.
Along the way she gathered a rainbow of autumn flowers: the round bonnets of the old blue man, purple knapweeds, yellow Bridie herbs and golden rods, white yarrows and bedstraws, eyebrights, heathers and clovers. She found meadowsweet still blossoming in a ditch and of course a clutch of her favourites, the bright yellow stars of asphodel from a bog.
Manigan halted them and waited for her again. They all put down their bundles and stood looking out at the cliffs spattered with bird guano, and the sea pounding their base. Smoke curled from a hut nearby, in a hollow just in from the edge of the craggy shore. Further along the coast, a narrow peninsula was dominated by a turf and stone mound.
Badger wiped his brow and stretched his back.
Kino took a swig from his flask. ‘So that’s the whale house.’
Manigan nodded. ‘Wrong was done today. By other men. Perhaps by us as well. Will you come and seek to make amends?’ He turned to Badger.
‘I’ll come.’
‘Kino?’
‘We did nothing wrong. It was them.’
‘Will you come?’
‘Of course.’
‘Rian?’
She paused. It was impossible to refuse. ‘Yes. I’ll come.’ She felt power riding in from the sea to meet them. This place was right on the edge of the world.
When they set off again they were in step. Badger beat a rhythm with the handle of his blade on the walrus skin. Rian tentatively joined in with her knife handle on the firebox at her waist.
Manigan began a simple chant of four notes. ‘Whale House hear us, Whale House see us, Whale House smell us, Whale House touch us, Whale House know us…’ Kino started a counterpoint of ‘Tooth-walker, tooth-walker,’ which Rian shifted onto with her makeshift drum. And so they arrived in a ceremonial procession at the wall before the peninsula temple where a tall white-haired woman with an elaborate bone neck piece stood, barring the gate.
With a final shout of ‘Whale House! Whale House! Whale House!’ Manigan drew them to a halt in front of her. He put his sacks down on the ground, opened the smaller and drew out the heart of the animal.
Kino and Badger put down their loads and drew back. Rian retreated with them.
Manigan went up to the woman, knelt down, lowered his head, stretched his two hands out in front of him and offered her the bloody heart. ‘Shadow, we bring this noble old gentleman to the Whale House to seek appeasement and to help him find his way back to the ocean cradle where he can be reborn. There has been wrong-doing. We seek to make amends. We bring our beating hearts and we return this one to the spirits. Will you let us in?’
The woman looked down at him with a stern face, staring hard at the three of them and saying nothing. Her eyes raked over them in turn, then returned to Rian.
Rian felt the woman’s gaze exploring her like hands, a scrutiny more intense than anything she had experienced even as a slave for sale. This woman was not only sizing her up physically, she was rifling through her soul.
Rian felt she was teetering over a cliff and might fall over the edge. And then she was tumbling, tumbling, but the woman was nodding at her as if this was a good thing, a smile forming on her round face, and Rian found herself on her knees, her armful of flowers all in a scatter on the ground around her.
The woman spoke in a matter of fact voice. ‘Come on in then.’ Like someone welcoming them into her home, she unfastened the wicker door and opened it wide, and ushered them in through the mouth of the temple.
Whale House
The smell was overwhelming: old bones, peat smoke and sweet flowers mixed into a suffocating fragrance. Rian reeled with it as she crossed the threshold and realised that she was the first, so magnetised by the woman she had simply stood up and stepped forward without thinking about it. They were in an antechamber. The woman held her hand out formally in welcome. They bowed to each other as if in a kind of dance.
‘I am Shadow. And you are?’
‘Rian.’
‘Welcome Rian. This is the Temple of the Sea Spirits. We call it the Whale House. We are honoured by your presence. Please do not speak. Put your flowers here.’ She gestured to a corner. ‘Remove your boots. Any metal on your person, please leave it here.’ She patted a chest beside her and watched while Rian removed her fire kit and knife from the pouch at her waist. Shadow touched the former lightly. ‘Bring your firebox. If you like, we can use it in the ceremony.’
Rian stood aside to unlace her boots while Manigan was greeted, followed by Kino and Badger who each dragged in their bundles and piled their weapons on the chest. Shadow brought a big wooden trencher onto which Manigan emptied the sack of meat, and a tray on which he arranged the organs from the other sack – heart, stomach, kidneys, liver and penis. The fresh meat stench mingled with the general whiff of the place. Rian felt queasy. Shadow put the meat aside and indicated Manigan should carry the tray.
Shadow told the three men to move ahead further into the Whale House through a passage which they had to bend to enter. They lugged their burdens in. The walrus head seemed to resist Kino’s efforts to heave it through the narrow space, so Manigan put down his platter and helped to shove the tusked creature inside, as if forcing it down the gullet into the belly of the whale.
Once they were in, Shadow closed the door. The darkness was almost total but Rian felt the priestess’s hand on her shoulder. ‘Do you know this ceremony?’
Rian shook her head, not knowing if she could be seen, but Shadow seemed to understand.
‘Then I shall lead. Bring the flowers.’
Rian was pleased to be treated with such respect, as though she might know how to lead a ceremony, but she felt dirty. Whenever she had been into sacred spaces or involved in any of Danuta’s rituals she had always been made to wash scrupulously beforehand. Yet Shadow didn’t seem bothered by the filthy state the four of them were in. She bent down through the passage and shuffled into the space beyond.
As Rian’s eyes adjusted she saw they were in a long, corbelled chamber. All down its length were stone stalls like the ribs of a great animal and between them were narrow booths, some curtained off, some open with shelves of vessels of wood, pottery, bark and bone. It was lit by a single tallow lamp beside a central fireplace. In the faint flicker the three men sat down next to each other on a low bench on the left of the hearth.
Almost without words, Shadow got the men to lay the walrus skin out, arranging its flippers and head so that it was like a deflated version of its former self lying on its side. Then she showed Rian a stool to sit on beside the hearth. She took the flowers and dressed the walrus head with them, then placed the internal organs roughly where they belonged inside the hide, lay the penis on the outside and lavished the creature with blossoms.
There were dry sticks beside the hearth and at Shadow’s request, Rian knelt down and began to make a fire. The men returned to their bench, Manigan closest to the walrus, then Kino, then Badger. Shadow lifted a d
rum down from a hook, placed it on the ground in front of her, took two beaters from around her waist and began to beat slow, deep thuds upon the skin, ‘Pum-PUM, pum-PUM’, like a heartbeat. Then in a high, haunting voice, she began a tune that flowed into all the crannies of the temple and set goose bumps on Rian’s flesh. When Manigan’s deep voice joined in, the harmony was exquisite, and the two lines of melody rolled and broke upon each other in mournful waves. Badger and Kino knew the chorus and Rian added her voice, timid at first, the vowels shaping themselves more clearly with each repetition.
The fire grew and flames danced with the song. Rian sat back on her stool and allowed tears to well up and flow. Such music could surely appease any wrong.
The space was open and huge. The song echoed around inside it. Rian noticed that her toes were taking her weight and her legs were crossed over them. She uncrossed them and pressed the whole flat of her foot into the earth, allowing her body to make contact with the ground and sitting upright as Danuta had taught her to do when using her voice. She breathed deeply, slowly, following the breaths of Shadow’s singing. The music evoked the sea’s motions, the sloshing of waves, the glide of a swimming creature, fluent in the dance of water. When it stopped, Rian leaned forwards, fed three more sticks to the fire and sat back.
Manigan got to his feet and went to stand beside the head of the walrus. ‘It’s time to bid farewell, old friend.’ He touched the top of the wrinkled skin on the skull. ‘Come and say goodbye.’
He gestured to Kino and Badger who got up and patted the giant creature, muttered under their breaths, then turned and strode, without instruction, out of the temple. They could be heard rattling belts and weapons in the ante-chamber, briefly, then the door banged. Their rapid exit made Rian see that they were happy to be out of there. Yet there was nothing she wanted less. Now the real ceremony would begin and neither Manigan nor Shadow seemed to be indicating she should leave, indeed Shadow looked relaxed on her bench in the centre of the space, directly facing the door, with Rian on her right, the walrus and Manigan on her left.
The firelight cast dancing shadows on the curved vault of the chamber and on the clutter of jars in the shelved booths: containers of the dead, no doubt, fragments, relics, memories. Other walruses? Perhaps. Forgotten people, almost certainly.
Manigan pulled the stone head out of its bag and set it on the bench beside him, with the Sage’s face towards the walrus.
‘Tell what happened.’ Shadow’s voice was so much deeper and more powerful than the singing sound she had made, Rian looked up at her. She was commanding, even though relaxed. ‘Say everything the sea spirits need to hear.’
Manigan had his head bowed. ‘I cannot.’
‘You must.’
‘I am the Mutterer. I cannot tell the muttering. It is secret.’
‘If you do not tell us, it will die with you.’
‘I can only tell the next Mutterer.’
‘The secret is safe here. You must trust us. Do you trust Rian?’
‘With my life.’ He half turned towards her and Rian almost fell off her stool with the power his eyes directed at her. She felt naked. How could anyone look so beautiful? He gleamed in the firelight. ‘But I cannot share the muttering with anyone except my successor.’
‘Perhaps she is it.’
‘No. It will be a boy of my blood. It is foretold.’
‘You can tell us. It is safe.’
He shook his head and rubbed his hand over his hair as if his head hurt. ‘I will tell all that I dare. May the sea spirits guide me.’
Then he put both hands on the head of the walrus and began.
‘Old man, here is the story of your ending. May it not be the end of your story. May I not lie or tell half-truths. May the great spirit of the North bless this telling. May Mother Earth forgive me for my killing. May the sea spirits make your soul-journey as noble as it deserves to be. May I say all I can to help you find the safe passage to another life and may I say nothing that should not be said. May the dead here listen and help us to understand what we have done and how to heal the damage that we have been part of making. May the living hear and speak and learn and know how next to act. We seek only to appease and to prevent any further wrong-doing.’ He paused.
‘I am the Mutterer. I am duty bound to answer a request for help by those who seek to hunt a walrus. We were sheltering on Fair Isle. Jan Bonxie came and asked me to guide a hunt on one of the northern Seal Isles. We set out this morning at first light and found the walruses on a spit of sand. There were ten of them, guarded by this old gentleman. I had explained to Bonxie and his men how we would proceed, so I did as I always do.’ This was not his normal story voice, not the rambling, striding locution Rian had learned to love to listen to. This was a formal report. He was choosing his words carefully, she could see, spelling out the events piece by piece in simple phrases, as if speaking to people who may not fully understand his first language, or speaking to a child. Or as if he was a boy.
‘I landed and prayed. The old Gentleman was on guard, the others resting. I approached slowly and once I was within earshot I began the muttering. I told him the story and as I told, I crept nearer.’
‘Tell us the story.’ Shadow raised her beater and lowered it.
The drum spoke, ‘Doom.’
Manigan shifted, his shoulders hunched. His voice shrank to a dark monotone.
‘The story goes: This is a story about a walrus.’
Shadow gave a single beat and Manigan nodded.
‘The story goes: Once upon a time there was a walrus.’
Again the deep voice of the drum responded as if pegging the story phrase into the earth.
‘The story goes: The greatest walrus that ever was.’
The drum spoke again. Doom.
‘The story goes: This is the tale of the walrus who saved the day.’
Doom.
‘The story goes: He was your ancestor.’
Manigan paused. ‘And then I said, “Are you listening to me? It’s about a walrus. Open your eye and blink once if you understand.”’
Shadow held the drumstick up. ‘Did the walrus blink?’
‘He blinked.’
‘Go on.’ She hit the drum. As the story went on, the drum gave an ‘mm’ of understanding to each phrase, as if absorbing it into the stones.
Manigan laid both his hands flat on the walrus’s head and took a deep breath.
‘The story goes: The walrus needed a name.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus needed to be remembered.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus was old and knew that when he died he might be forgotten, and all his wise guardianship would be washed away, and wasted.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus knew that being forgotten was like a bright ice-wind, white and cold. By now the Old Gentleman was staring at me and I knew I had him mesmerised.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus feared the emptiness, the infinite emptiness of being forgotten. I could see that fear in the Old Gentleman’s eyes too.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus did not want to be lost in time.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: Wandering.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: Lost in time.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes:…’ Manigan left a long pause. ‘Forgotten.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes:…’ Again a pause, and Manigan said. ‘This is where the wind and sea join in and tell their part of the story, for they know all about forgetting. They helped the Old Gentleman to understand it.’
He waited and they listened to the fire breathing like the wind and crackling like the sea on sand. Eventually Manigan nodded, and the drum spoke.
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus needed a name.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: A name gives immortality.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: A name is a bond with the namer that lives on beyond death.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: A name is written into the heart.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus knew that if he had a name, he would not be lost in the iced wind of time.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus will do anything to avoid that.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The void.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: Anything.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus needs to escape the void.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus asks to escape the void.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus seeks to be remembered.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus pleads to be released from being forgotten.’
Dmm.
‘The story goes: The walrus blinks.’
‘Did he blink?’
‘He blinked.’
Rian remembered what Badger had told her, the stories within stories within stories, of which this was the innermost tale, like a capercaillie stuffed with a seagull stuffed with a cuckoo stuffed with a sandpiper stuffed with a wren. And inside the wren, what is there? The name.
Manigan shifted one hand off the walrus’s head and gestured down the animal. ‘The Old Gentleman gave a sharp flap of his rear flippers and all the other walruses knew what that meant. Those that were awake headed for the water, which woke the others, and in the way they do, they stampeded to the safety of the sea. But the Old Gentleman stayed with me, because he wanted to be remembered.’
Dmm. The drum urged him on.
‘The story goes: The walrus is given his name.’
Dmm.
‘The story ends.’
Dmm. There was silence.
The Walrus Mutterer Page 24
