The Walrus Mutterer

by Mandy Haggith

  ‘You’re a good fire-keeper. Who taught you?’

  ‘Danuta. My foster mother.’

  ‘Will that be the Danuta I saw at the Brodgar gathering at summer solstice?’

  Rian nodded.

  ‘I knew her brother, Sorok. He was a fine smith. So you’re the one who was taken as a slave by Ussa?’

  Rian couldn’t look at her, or speak, but she managed to nod again.

  ‘And now you’ve run away.’

  So she knew. She might not be safe here after all. Ussa could appear at any moment. She could be beaching in the shallows right now. She felt her store of hatred for Ussa, like venom.

  ‘I’m surprised she didn’t come after you. It’s not like her to let any of her possessions get away without profit.’

  Rian didn’t know what to say, but the water was coming to a boil so she was saved the need to respond by Shadow’s preparation of a raspberry-leaf brew. As soon as she began to drink it she understood it was the right thing, exactly, for her. Sweetened with honey, it was an elixir. Her shoulders let go, the muscles in her forehead eased, tension she had not realised she was holding relaxed. She looked about her with eyes adjusted to the gloom and saw all the paraphernalia of a medicine woman’s home: the herbs in bundles, drying, hung from rafters, a shelf containing neat rows of pottery jars, lidded or stoppered with wood, many with woollen plaits tied around them to mark their contents. The range of cooking pots and implements for grinding, pounding and cutting was even greater than Danuta’s collection. A whole wall of bronze and copper hung glowing in the firelight.

  ‘I expect Ussa will pass by here again soon,’ Shadow said. ‘I don’t suppose yourself or Manigan will relish that.’

  Rian stared at the floor, then looked across at Shadow who merely passed her a bannock.

  ‘I can show you where to hide. She never stops for long. To be honest, I can’t stand the woman.’ She allowed a conspiratorial grin to sneak past her gruff demeanour. ‘All that trafficking and gambling on people’s lives, it’s not right. But who else can you get these things from?’ She gestured to the wall behind her and to the row of small jars that Rian knew must contain spices and herbs from other lands.

  She chewed her bannock slowly, allowing it to ease her hunger, supping her tea with each mouthful. The nausea subsided. This woman reminded her so much of Danuta. There was a pause as she considered what Shadow had said. Was she being made an offer to stay there?

  Thinking of Danuta, and home, but also the need to hide from Ussa or anyone else who might want to pass her back to her owner, she finally acknowledged the thing she had been refusing to think. Drost would not want her back nor could she trust him not to betray her if she was in hiding somewhere nearby. Not even Danuta would be able to protect her.

  ‘How was Danuta, when you saw her in the summer?’

  Shadow smiled. ‘You want to go back to her, don’t you?’

  Rian had held Danuta’s hearth inside her as her destination, the home she would return to, for so long now that she almost couldn’t bear to recognise that she couldn’t go back. It was a gravitational pull. All her life it had been her refuge, from bad weather, from any danger. But it was no longer safe. Drost had sold her and he would not want her back. If or when Ussa passed by again, he would have no hesitation about whose interests he would favour.

  Shadow was waiting patiently for her answer, sipping at her tea.

  ‘I can’t,’ Rian said, eventually.

  Shadow nodded. ‘Where will you go?’

  Here was the void. The only hiding places she knew were in Assynt and although none of them were now guaranteed safe, perhaps if she could sneak her way into the area she could make her way there undetected. But winter was coming and she would need help; not least food. And that would involve danger to anyone she could persuade to give her secret support. Other than this part-formed idea she did not know where else she could go.

  ‘I will go with Manigan.’ Her heart pounded as she formed the words for what she had not known until that moment.

  Shadow nodded again, more slowly. ‘Have you thought about what it will entail?’

  Rian didn’t care what it entailed, other than nights under the stars with him. ‘A lot of sailing.’ She laughed.

  ‘You’re pregnant, Rian,’ Shadow was sober. ‘You can’t have a baby out on the northern ocean or on a beach beside a herd of walruses. If you have nowhere else you can go, you will be safe here, and welcome. I can help you with the birth and I would enjoy your company through the winter. We can share our knowledge of plants. I can also let you have some warm clothes that fit you.’ She smiled.

  Rian swallowed, frowning.

  ‘But I can’t…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. The idea of staying here while Manigan sailed away was poison.

  ‘You need to think about the baby.’ Shadow offered another bannock.

  Rian declined.

  ‘Is it Manigan’s?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Oh.’ Shadow held her gaze and she did not need to say anything for Rian to know she was wondering what had happened. ‘You’ll need someone, a woman, to help you with the birth. It’ll be the lean time of the year. Think about who will take care of you.’

  There was an uneasy silence.

  Rian got up. ‘Can I go to see what they are doing with the walrus?’

  Shadow shrugged. ‘Take the bannocks.’ She proffered the basket.

  Rian took it and made her escape back down to the shore, nearly slipping in her haste to get away from the dilemma that now faced her. But seeing Manigan crouched beside the great head did nothing to ease it. She showed him the warm honey-bread and he put down the saw he was working with to take a piece. He kissed her, then stuffed the bannock in his mouth like a hungry boy.

  ‘Mmm.’ He munched happily and pointed at the tusk he had already sawed off. ‘That’s for you.’

  She looked between the ivory and him, not comprehending.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s for you. To buy your freedom.’

  ‘You said you don’t buy women.’

  He looked put out. ‘I’m not buying you.’ He took another piece of bannock. ‘It’s a gift. From the Old Gentleman. Consider it as payment for the ceremony, for helping. You’ll need it when Ussa finds you. I think the Old Gentleman would be happy if one of his tusks could buy your freedom.’ He kicked it towards her. ‘It isn’t worth as much alone as with the other one but I need that for the boat, for the men. But it’s a good tusk, it’s still valuable. More than a sword.’

  He picked up the saw again and resumed cutting the second tusk. Rian stood nearby, watching. After a burst of vigorous strokes of the blade, which squealed, he paused.

  ‘Fucking thing. Blunt as a butter paddle.’ Another burst, then another. Rian was amazed how hard it was to cut, much tougher than bone. ‘Is it the Chieftain who gave you the child or the Greek? Or someone else?’

  She blushed and looked at her feet.

  ‘Pretty as you, I guess you might not know. Must have been plenty of men wanting the favour.’

  Now it was her turn to look put out. ‘I know exactly. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t want…’ She couldn’t go on. The memory of the night when Pytheas did what he did was like a sudden submersion in cold water. She turned away and tears spilled over and trickled down her cheeks.

  Manigan wrapped his arms around her and turned her to him, lifting her face to look at him. ‘You were raped?’ He crushed her in a hug, his head bent so she could feel his breath in her hair. ‘I’m sorry, Rian. I’m a stupid bastard. I didn’t think what it must be like to be a slave, to be someone’s possession.’ He pulled away to look into her face again.

  She was crying hard now. Somehow his sympathy was even more painful than the memory. The word ‘rape’, the naming of it, was like a knife cutting her, ye
t it also released something in her that had lain pent up, stoppered, ever since that night at sea. She couldn’t speak for crying.

  ‘The Greek?’ He was holding her away from him, his eyes raging.

  She nodded, and he wrapped his arms around her and rocked her as she wept. ‘You poor, poor little one, my own little fish, little pretty thing.’ He murmured away to her, crooning like a child with a pet animal as she cried.

  She felt raw. Snotty and wet-faced, she pulled herself away and wiped her nose and cheeks on her sleeve. There was emptiness in her now, and relief to have let the poison out.

  He was kissing her eyes and her forehead and her cheeks, his big hands around her head. Between kisses he said, ‘I’ll kill him.’

  ‘No. It only happened once and he hated himself afterwards.’

  ‘How can you possibly forgive him?’

  ‘I don’t. But I don’t wish him dead.’ She looked up at him. ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘I’ll never let anyone hurt you ever again.’ He sought her hands with his and held her at arm’s length, making a declaration. ‘I’ll look after you.’

  Of course he could not keep her safe, not from the likes of Ussa, but Rian loved him for wanting to.

  She looked at him and smiled through her tears. She turned towards the sea and leaned against him, his arms still wrapped around her. He leaned his chin on her head. She wondered what he saw, and whether it was the same as she did.

  The sea was like a ruffled cloth woven from threads of many shades of blue and grey. The breeze rippled its surface and where the sun cast a beam across it, sparkles glittered in a ribbon so bright it was blinding to look at. Somehow, although the breeze seemed gentle and consistent, a band of clear, smooth water was spread across the surface. It writhed as if some creature under the surface was present there, turning slowly in its sleep, absorbing the ripples into its skin. She pointed it out to Manigan and said what she thought it was.

  ‘The sea tells our future if we know how to read it.’ The weight of his chin was comfortingly heavy on her head. ‘There is a serpent in the ocean bottom – bigger than this one, and when it shifts about it makes storms and heavy weather. They say when it dies, which eventually it must, all the seas will go calm and then the walruses and whales will go down to the ocean floor where they do not dare to go while the serpent lives, and they will bring to the surface all the boats that have sunk and wrecked since ever we people began sailing, and all the ships will be transformed into harps and all the sailors will sing like seals and they’ll sail happily into the sunset together, escorted by the walruses and dolphins and whales.

  ‘So if we kill all the walruses…’ She didn’t need to finish the statement.

  ‘My old granddad used to say there’s a sailor drowned for every walrus we take unless we plead well with the spirits. I’m not sure pleading would stop them, to be honest, though it might encourage them to take a different victim. What do you think?’ He squeezed her. ‘You talk to them with your fires. Do they listen to us, do you think?’

  ‘Of course. The fire spirits do, anyway. I don’t know about the sea spirits so much. But surely everywhere they’re keeping balance for the Great Mother.’

  ‘Tidying up for us when we make a mess.’

  She elbowed him in the ribs and he laughed and squeezed her again.

  ‘So has Shadow finished with you or what? Can we head off tomorrow?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘We, you mean. You’re coming too.’

  ‘I may not.’

  ‘She wants you to stay here?’

  ‘It’s the baby.’

  ‘So what? I don’t care whose it is. It’ll be part of you. I’ll love it just like I love you. Can you not feel this glow between us? From you into me, from me into you. It will infuse the child.’

  He was holding her tight, her back rubbing up against the length of his body, arms crossed over her chest, as if he would never let go.

  ‘The birth…’ She petered out. Now the tears had eased she was feeling a bit sick again.

  ‘It’s your choice.’ Now there was a note of huffiness in his voice.

  ‘Where will you go?’ What she wanted to say was, ‘Will you come back if I stay?’

  ‘To the Faroes. Perhaps further north if the ice will let us. We need one last hunt in the north before the season’s over.’

  She imagined the slow drifts of pack ice on the sea, and then thought of a storm and what the ice must be like then, bucking and rearing on waves.

  ‘Then south to trade ivory and work on the boat while the days are short, and back north again in spring. Same as every year.’

  The honey bannock did not seem to be suiting her stomach at all. A wave of nausea rose up and she tried to breathe deeply but it wouldn’t pass. She pulled away from Manigan and suddenly she was retching. She staggered a few steps away and kneeled down to empty her stomach among the stones.

  ‘You’re in a bad way.’ Manigan stroked her back. ‘Maybe Shadow’s right. I don’t know anything about these things.’

  Rian wiped her mouth. She needed a drink.

  Manigan, solicitous, pointed out a nearby stream. Ashamed, but relieved to put some space between them, she cleaned herself up and washed out her mouth.

  ‘Perhaps you should go back up to the house, take a rest.’ Manigan had returned to sawing the tusk. ‘Do you need a hand?’

  She shook her head. She needed to lie down.

  The crag seemed twice as steep returning as it had done earlier.

  Shadow seemed unsurprised to see her and was unfussy but motherly in suggesting she rest for a while. It felt good to lie down, to let the rhythm of her breath slow, and the kind hand of sleep draw a curtain over her mind and all of its questions.

  Just before she slept she remembered that Manigan had still never told her how he came to have the stone and what it was, nor had he finished the tale he had begun about his own life, when and why he became the Mutterer and what the problem was between him and Ussa. There was so much she needed to ask him. And then there was the story that the Sage was going to tell Red the smith. All these unfinished stories, like threads unspooling from spindles, rolling away from her. And the Sage’s face on the stone seemed to come to her mind, smiling. He was speaking. But his voice was so quiet she could not hear him, listen as hard as she might.

  Departure

  She woke to a confusion of men’s voices and sat up, rubbing her eyes. She was bleary, not fully conscious. Manigan was giving instructions to pack up their tools, to whom she was not sure. Then he was beside her.

  She sat up. It was dusk outside. She had slept the day away.

  He was giving her the walrus tusk. ‘Keep this safe. Don’t part with it until you are absolutely sure of your freedom.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘We’re going.’

  She started to get to her feet. ‘Shadow says you should stay here.’ He pressed her shoulder. ‘I told you about my mother, didn’t I? She died, Rian. I can’t let that happen to you.’

  ‘But I’m fine. I want to come with you. Why are you going?’

  ‘Ussa’s coming. Badger saw her when they were fishing. We have to go now.’

  He slung the bag with the stone head across his shoulder and leaned down to kiss her.

  ‘Come o-o-n,’ Badger yelled, sticking his head around the door.

  ‘I’ll be back in spring. Or sooner. I love you.’ And with that he was running out of the house.

  Rian tried to collect herself, found her boots and the clothes she had taken off to sleep, and struggled into them. Her frantic rush to follow Manigan was more of a hindrance than help. She grabbed her coat and strapped the firebox around her waist. She bumped into Shadow coming into the house.

  ‘Go if you must, child, but think of how sick you are. Your ba
by is trying to tell you to stay on land and take care of it.’

  Rian passed her and ran. She was halted by Shadow’s shout of her name, and looked back. She was holding the tusk.

  Rian ran back, took it, thanked Shadow and set off again after the men. They were stowing their kit on board as she came into view of Bradan. The tusk was heavy and she shifted it to her other arm, and ran on. But she was dizzy and by the time she reached the beach she was feeling sick again.

  The look on Manigan’s face when he saw her told her everything she needed. He lit up. ‘You’re coming!’

  But his glee melted away as she shook her head.

  ‘I can’t. Will you come back?’

  He walked up the beach to her, pulled her to him. She kissed as if she was giving him her life. He took it and repaid.

  Then Badger was shouting, ‘Fucksake Manigan. Are we going?’

  ‘Spring,’ he said, and she nodded.

  Then they were all lifting and heaving Bradan down the beach until the water held her. Kino, Badger, Manigan and Gessan were jumping aboard. They were instantly at oars, and the boat skimmed away, Manigan’s eyes on Rian’s until the boat was all the way around the headland and out of view.

  She cradled the tusk. Its crescent moon heaviness was all that she had of him. He could not keep her safe, but he had given her back her freedom.

  She walked back up the beach, bitter tears on her cheeks, her heart tearing as the choice she had made settled its claws in her chest. It was a long, slow plod up the hill where the strange woman’s house stood, a long, slow plod towards winter.

  Imbolc

  Out on the hill behind the broch, Rian wandered along with Shadow’s cow and calf. The moon had waned and waxed again since the midwinter solstice and there was little forage to find. The cow was resorting to chewing tough heather while the calf snuffled at grass, wispy and desiccated by cold. They might fill their bellies to keep hunger at bay but there was little goodness in this vegetation. Rian hoped Shadow would spare them some hay when it was time for milking. It was starting to feel cruel to take milk away from the suckling, although he was a sturdy enough little thing now. Rian had come to bring them home and whenever the cow lifted her head from the sward, Rian edged them on towards Shadow’s hut.