I could have been wed if I'd wished to, for all they say I've too sharp a tongue. It was that I hadn't found a man I could see myself live with. Perhaps... perhaps I wanted to see the stranger Lochlann again, before I decided. If he was a man at all and not... Whatever, he didn't come in all those years.
The reiving up and down the coast got worse. Each year, one or two villages were raided that we heard of. Many men took their folk and goods and went where there was a lord with a warband to protect them -- and charge them taxes besides. My father stayed put, and the rest of our men stayed put with him.
Ourselves, we were raided not once but twice. Once it was naught but a pack of nythings, driven from the forest by a hungry winter; and once again, a raid from the sea. But each time the village hid itself, and we sat and watched them run over our heads as we had before.
Late in the Autumn of that third year, Rognvald returned with a tidy packet of Frankish gold and some tall tales to tell. We'd brought the herd down from the high pasture, and culled those that wouldn't last the winter; the cows were in the byre and the bullocks in bye on the pasture I crossed to go up to Red Ness. I still went up there when I could, to watch for the boat that did not come. The snow was thick. He came up from the south in a horse sleigh, arriving just at the end of the day. He brought with him a lad of his own age, and a lass.
I remembered the lad when I looked at him properly. I'd seen him at the fair on Sondefjord, the previous spring. He was the son of the headman of another hamlet, down there. Rognvald introduced him as Thorsteig. He'd been on the ship with him, and they'd blooded their swords together.
I'm told, by one who's seen them, that the blue men of Afrik are not blue at all, but brown as dark as moleskin. This lass had skin almost that dark. But they say the blue men have no noses, and their hair is in knots all over their heads. Her nose was a bit too big for her. Her hair was the colour of a raven's wing, and straight, and that long she could sit on it. She was so small you would say she must be a child, but that she was shaped for a woman. Rognvald did not introduce her to the family. He'd bought her in Andeluz for a bed slave. She spoke not a word of any language we knew anyway. We later learned that her name was as near to Anna as made no difference.
We ate a good feast that night. Rognvald and Thorsteig sat at the end of the long table with my father. They told tales long into the night, as the fire burned lower, of the sights they had seen. They told of men slaughtered, of holy places looted, of villages burned, of families sold in the slave markets of Andeluz, where the folk are dark and worship Ullu. The tales they told of women turned my gut.
I thought of the village on Linnfjord that was raided three summers back. I thought of the raid on Vithavn that same spring. I thought of the woman who'd run here after the raid at Ling Holm a year back. I thought of how she woke in the night, screaming, all the days she was here, until some kin of hers had come to take her on. I slipped away to my bed place and wept for my brother.
I was not the only one who wept that night. In a hall like that, where there is only a hurdle of wattle and a leather curtain between one bedplace and the next, you hear. You hear who moans when they fuck, and who gasps; who snores when they sleep. That night, when the talking had stopped, and folk had shuffled to their beds, and the sounds of settling in the hall was stilled, there was a new voice weeping, keening. At last there was a crack of leather on skin, once, twice, thrice. The weeping grew sharper, briefly, and stopped.
Ach no! I suppose I had better go over that bit again and be honest. I said I'd seen Thorsteig at the fair the year before. Well, so I had. But I didn't say... I got myself more drunk, that night, than I meant to, and took a tumble in the bushes with young Thorsteig, and lost my maidenhead. I didn't say it because I was angry with myself, and shamed. I was angry because I was drunk. I was angry because he was coarse and ungentle, and hurt me. But I was angry most of all because, in a hero-worshipping way which was shameful in itself, I had been saving myself for the stranger, for Lochlann. But Lochlann had not come for me as I had dreamed he would. I was shamed and angry.
But young hero-my-lad, newly returned from raping and pillaging across half the lands of the south, naturally assumed that I would be just waiting to jump into such a young hero's bed. He was black afronted when I didn't, and my father was displeased with me too, for he thought it a good and suitable match.
The next bit is hard, so I want to stop before I tell it. So I'll tell you instead how our valley lay, and what the stead was like in those last days before it was destroyed. The coast thereabouts ran as near north-south as makes no odds, and, as I've said, it was cliff bound for miles either way. The full force of the Western ocean was broken by a run of islands that lay a morning's sail off the coast.
Our valley lay where two different rocks came together. All to the South of us the land runs in long smooth curves over a hard sparkling flecky grey stone; North and East of us the land is rougher, more craggy, and the stone is of a darker, more even grey. Into the weak place where these two rocks meet, the sea had forced a short, harpoon-shaped inlet. It was not much of a fjord, really, but that's what we called it. You could walk round it, from Red Ness in the south to High Ness in the north, in a morning. The stead lay at the end of the barb of the harpoon, sheltered from the winter gales by the final northmost tip of the flecky grey stone. I say grey -- just by the village and out on the ness it turned reddish, although just as glittery and flecky. That's why we called it Red Ness.
The white beck ran down into the barb, just behind the stead, through a swampy haugh of scrub willow bushes. The iron beck, a broader, deeper stream, ran into the point of the harpoon. A third, less important beck ran into the voe where the stranger hid his boat. In the beds of these streams there were lots of lumpy red stones which had black iron in them. That's why my grandfather -- who was a smith, too, like my father -- came there.
The whole fjord is set into the cliffs that line the end of a much bigger fjord -- so big it's really more of a sound than a fjord; the water is open and the waves can get big and rough. There are islands well out in the fjord, and beyond them are more islands that you can see on a clear day; and beyond them is the open sea, although I had never been so far.
To the east the land climbed away steeply to the fells. The slopes were covered with a dense forest of birch and larch and oak trees. As the valley ran up onto the fell between the becks, the forest opened out to meadowland, and just where the iron beck ran out of the meadow into the trees there was a tarn. The meadow lay in a saddle between the fells. East of it was more forest, and beyond that I'd never been.
The track that runs all along that coast -- the track used by the pedlars, and the herdsfolk, and any other traveller who hadn't a boat - ran close around the head of our fjord. My grandfather had built the stead just north of where the track fords the white beck, on a rise of turfed-over shingle between the haugh and the shore. It was a good site, well drained but with fresh water in the well, close to the sea but sheltered by the high rock and scrubby trees of the Red Ness. The hall lay along the north-west side of the yard.
It was a building much like this one, but the walls were built of stone rather than wood and turf as these are. It had doors in both walls, but the doors were not opposite each other. The yard door was pretty much in the middle of the wall, but the seaward door was nearer to the south end of the hall, where the cooking fire was. The floor of the hall was sunk two steps below the level of the ground outside, for warmth in winter.
The hall was eight bed-places long, but because one of the places by the cook-fire was used to keep firewood and cooking stores, there were only fifteen bedplaces that actually got used. Each of the men had a bedplace for himself and his sleeping women, of course; and my step-mother had one to herself, in that she was older than my father's bed slaves and he didn't bother her much. Then there was one for the older slave women that none of them cared to bed, and one for my old aunt that none of them would have dared to. Then there was one for the smaller children who slept all in a heap, one the lads used in the winter, and one for us girls. So there was only one that wasn't in use when Rognvald and Thorsteig were staying.
The table where we ate was at the north end of the hall; the cooking fire, as I've said, was at the south end. That's really all there was to it -- just an ordinary hall, much like any other.
The track ran immediately past the east wall of the hall, through our yard. Along the south side of the yard, and open onto it, was the forge. This was just an open fronted shed, where my father did his iron work. Facing it across the yard was the first hall my grandfather had built, a smaller building than the hall we lived in but of similar style. We used it as a byre and barn. To the east of that was a smaller bothy which got used for storing anything there wasn't room for elsewhere -- old fishing nets, moth eaten furs, and other junk. East of the forge where our hay stacks, although by the spring there was nothing left of them. Between the bothy and the haystacks a smaller track twisted steeply up the hill through the woods to the high pasture.
To the north of the steading, along the line of the track, we had some ploughland, although in truth it grew more rocks than turnips. We had some rather better ploughland on the north shore of the fjord, but it was vulnerable to storms and there were some years we didn't get the crop off it.
Early in the spring the boat rock returned to the voe. Each day I took time away from the stead to watch it, to watch for any sign of the stranger. My father was angry with me for the amount of time I was idling, but still I went. The stranger did not come.
It was a wild, wet day, in a run of wild, wet days. The first that we knew it was different from another was the buildings vanishing under their cloak of hillside. That was easier warning of a raid than keeping watch! We were no longer feared for raids. The cattle that were in bye were driven into the byre, and the chickens shut in their coop. It seemed that the stead was not hidden for the beasts, for they did not baulk at walking into the hillside. The fires were smothered that they would not smoke. Most of the women gathered in the hall, but I went to the forge with my father and the younger men. The forge was open on the yard side, and you had a better view.
It was a land raid. The raiders came in from the south, past us into the yard. The yard still looked a bit unnatural, even if you did not strain to see the buildings, for it was all trampled, and the tracks widened into it. The raiders stopped, and looked at the ground. Then they talked among themselves. Finally they fetched firewood, and -- with much struggle -- lit a fire there, where the paths crossed.
They weren't a big band -- only a dozen of them. They looked tired, wet, cross, rather than fierce. Their gear was splashed with mud, and their ponies stood, listless, heads hanging, between us and the fire.
There was something anti-climatic -- something almost pathetic -- about the whole thing. By the smouldering fire, the smallest of the band -- I recognised him, he'd come through as a pedlar the previous year, selling pins we hadn't wanted -- was almost weeping as he insisted to two bigger men that there was a village here, very close by, he was sure. I could hear Thorsteig and Rognvald sniggering to themselves behind me. The two taller raiders grabbed the pedlar and walked with them `up the hill' -- onto the roof of the hall.
Suddenly Rognvald stepped past me with a sling he must have had from one of the younger lads, and before anyone could stop him let fly at the nearest pony. The pony reared towards the fire, fleiring the others as it did so. Rognvald and Thorsteig leaped out after them, waving their swords and yelling wildly.
From that moment, everything happened very fast. The hall and the bothies flicked into clear view, as if they'd never been hidden. The ponies stampeded through the fire, knocking fully half the raiders off their feet. Four of the younger lads charged out after Rognvald, swinging axes and hammers they'd picked up from the forge. My father grabbed at two of them as they went past, lost his footing, and stumbled out into the yard. There was a crash above my head as something heavy landed on the forge roof, and, with an immense yell, one of the raiders from the hall roof leaped from above me. With the first swing of his sword my fathers head was gone; as it swung on, one of the lads was hamstrung from behind, and fell.
The steading was all mayhem and yelling, but it was easy seen the raiders were tougher than they looked. Thorsteig was down. The thatch on the hall was afire, though not fiercely, raising an evil smoor. Rognvald was backed up against the wall of the byre, fighting desperately against two of the raiders. Someone -- I didn't even see who it was in the tumult -- ran out of the hall door waving a sword and was cut down at once by a raider standing by it. As far as I could see, the only two raiders down were the two that Rognvald and Thorsteig had stabbed as they lay in the first rush. My uncle Trigvi stood just out from under the forge roof, holding an axe in his hands and looking bewildered. It was slaughter.
I ran. I ducked around the side of the smithy and ran across the in-pasture towards Red Ness. Almost at once I knew I'd been seen, was followed. The yelling from the steading was getting less already, the clash of metal on metal almost stopped. Only the screams went on: the screams, and the heavy footsteps pounding behind me. I crashed down through the wood and onto the beach; and on across the shingle. Yes, the boatrock was there. I dived onto the pebbles beside it, scraping my face that it bled. I screamed, silently:
"be the boat!
shut my eyes, and rolled in under it.
I opened my eyes. I lay, close beside the keel, under the boat. My heart was pounding and my breath coming in gasps. One of my shoulder brooches, which must have torn off my gown as I fell, winked on the shingle within arms reach -- but I knew I daren't reach for it. The feet crunched down the beach towards me. Voices muttered. A shout, and the feet came on. A hand swooped to the brooch. The feet stopped by me. I could hear panting breath over the breaking of the sea, and tried to still my own. Another pair of feet joined the first. There was more muttering. All four moved down the beach, out of sight. They crunched around a while longer, the sound swelling and fading behind the rush and rattle of the water, and then there was silence for a long time.
I could see very little. I lay face down under the boat. I could not see back up the beach for my own body. To the side I could see over perhaps a boat's length of shingle to the rock wall of the voe. Down the beach, I could see a strip of sea, and the waves breaking on the reef. I could hear nothing but the water. After I'd stopped shaking from fear, I shook from cold. At last I must have slept a bit.
I woke from a vague dream of smoke and battle, in which the stranger appeared and somehow seemed to make it all right. The crunch of brogues sounded on the shingle again. The Stranger! No. Four pairs. Nor friends neither... I was overcome with a desperate need to piss. The feet -- sometimes I could see as much as legs, but never a whole person -- moved slowly down the beach. It was obvious that the men were searching.
I crossed my legs and squeezed my thighs together, holding my breath. It was not enough. I desperately wanted to pull my dress up out of the way, but dare not for fear that some part of it -- or me -- might stick out through the side of the rock I could not see. And one of the pairs of legs was climbing down from it just by me. I could hold no longer, and my piss rushed out into my clothes. Surely he must hear it? It seemed not. Warm dampness crept down my garments towards the sea, under my belly, under my tits. I shifted to keep my face out of it, and a stone moved clack!
The pair of feet, which had been moving back down the beach, stopped. I waited. Again there was murmuring. The stench of my piss was sharp and urgent. Surely they must smell it? The feet moved on. The sounds faded, and once again I could hear nothing but the sea and the rocks, see nothing but the rocks and the sea.
Now I was not merely cold. Now I was clammy, and stinking. I lay, shaking, pressed against the cold, smooth wood of the boat and the cold, smooth, pebbles of the beach. Night came. I wept. Snow began to drift down in heavy, wet flakes.
Copyright © Simon Brooke
1992-1996
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