Forged in Blood Read online

  ‘How was it nonsense? I said I’d help. Surely you can’t argue with that.’

  ‘Help, yes,’ answers Paperkali. ‘But not to give false hope.’

  ‘M’lym’s father and brother are her only family. All she thinks of is them! Without them the girl has nothing to live for — no mother, no home to return to.’

  ‘And you have let her believe that you can put things right for her?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort,’ I reply, ‘I promised that I will take her to Brythuniog — no more than that!’

  ‘You have no way of knowing if M’lym’s father and brother were taken there. They could have been shipped half-way across the world — they may even be dead.’

  ‘If we can’t trace them at Brythuniog,’ I pause, not knowing what to say next. ‘If we can’t find them there, at least she will know that she has tried.’

  ‘You fool yourself, Ostman,’ says Paperkali. ‘You will never make the voyage, nor will she.’

  ‘The girl trusts me. Why would I let her down?’

  The monk shakes his head sadly. ‘After you sail from here — let’s face it, Thralson — I doubt if she will ever see you again.’

  ‘No one knows how things will turn out. What if it is beyond my power to help her?’

  ‘So it is as I thought,’ says the young bee-keeper. ‘She will have to look elsewhere for a miracle!’

  A wave splashes high, sending seawater over our heads. We scurry from the rocks.

  Chapter 15

  On the morning of our departure from Kildobhan, we fill our bellies with spelt-breads sent down from the monastery and drink from a bag of yesterday’s soured milk. The crew has settled on the cobbled beach. It is low tide and we are in for a wait. The water must be up the beach before we haul the Meuris stern-first into the waves. In readiness, we have set launching-rollers under stern keel. The barnacles plopped and cracked, as we put the rollers in place.

  Fjak and Halpin are restless to be off. This will be our last leg of the voyage, and their heads are full of what they will get up to on the first night, when they reach haven at Vadrar-fiord. They don’t take kindly to my asking Skip if I can return to the monks’ compound to have a last word with M’lym. They turn away in disgust. Baldr offers to come with me.

  *

  The yard is a bustle after matins. The monks are given their duties at the close of daybreak prayers. Out of respect, Baldr and I stand aside and watch as the younger oblates, dressed for a day of labour, thread through the side-gate in an orderly line. Today they have scythes perched over their shoulders. A field of late-ripened spelt is where they are headed. They will make a start to the harvest while dew is on the ground. Once they are gone, Baldr and I go straight to the dormitory, hoping to say our farewells to M’lym. Not finding her there, we try the bee meadows, but no trace of the girl on the open heath; and no sign of her or Paperkali at the hives.

  Back at the refectory, we come across Brother Oengus. We ask if he has seen M’lym or Paperkali. With a gesture to his lips the monk reminds us that he is still under a vow of silence. He hesitates as he thinks how to answer. I can’t make any sense of his signs. It is clear from his shifty eyes that he knows of M’lym’s whereabouts, but is not prepared to tell us. The compound has fallen quiet, strangely vacant. No one in the stone chapel. A candle flickers on the altar. Baldr fingers his pigtail nervously, and kneels on one knee before the holy cross. I leave him to his prayers and memories of his dead brother.

  Outside the chapel, Gufa and Lorcan pass me on the run. Their foreheads are touched with ashes. They barely acknowledge my presence. They argue in whispers and disappear in opposite directions. Baldr is privy to the monks’ gossip and he knows why they have to carry the stigma on their brows. The Brothers have brought shame on their heads and suffered a telling-off from Father Abban. Their grievous sin, according to Baldr, was to have supplied faulty inks to the writing-chamber — a cellar under the refectory where the scribes do their sacred work. No one yet knows how the error occurred.

  The stairway to the writing-chamber has a curious stench. The air reeks of burning tallow and dyes distilled from animal blood, of writing skins and cured leather bindings. It is kept locked. Only monks may enter. The cellar is the holiest of places, holier even than a chapel. Paperkali speaks of it in a hallowed tone as “the scriptorium”. Scribes are so busy that often they have to work through the night. They copy runes from sacred scripts into leather-bound books under a glare of candlelight. It is a mystery what becomes of the finished books, once filled with holy words from first-to-last. Whether they are kept at Kildobhan or sent elsewhere, even Paperkali has not been told.

  As Baldr and I make our way to the shore to re-join Hakon and the crew, the notion occurs to me that Abban may have hidden M’lym in the scribes’ writing-chamber against her will, to keep her from seeing me. I stand stock-still. My first thought is to turn back, beat on the scriptorium door till someone opens, and demand to see her.

  Ship and tide are calling. Even if Baldr and I return to the cellar, they won’t allow us inside the scribes’ sanctum. No monk will go against Abban’s orders.

  ‘Come on, Thralson,’ says Baldr. ‘There’s nowhere else to look. We must hurry back to the beach. Man alive, will we get it in the neck from Hakon!’

  *

  Wisps of cloud brighten the southern horizon. Every man of the crew is in the water to roll the Meuris off the pebbles at Slaidh beach. We wade though breaking waves, wade out till we are chest-deep. Father Abban is on the beach to see us off. No one else has turned up — the absence of the other monks, including Paperkali, is doubtless as the Holy Father directed.

  *

  With Hakon at the helm, the Meuris is set on a course bearing south-south-west, beating into a south-easterly wind. We have tacked and turned twice, though we have come barely a league off-shore. Hakon knows to give a wide berth to the treacherous outlier rocks that rise from the waters off Kildobhan point. The swirl of rocks has a sharp turn at farthest edge that leaves a trail of froth from the waves. It reminds me of a fishing hook — a hook with its fluffy lure at the tip — like the ones used by the monks on their feast day to catch mackerel off the rocks.

  We gaze across to the headland where the monks’ beacons lit up the darkness. We were out here, drifting into the rocks. We were lost, blind to danger until the light shone. Had Fjak not seen the flames, had our unloved shipmate not raised the alarm, we would have sailed to certain death. In daylight we can see how close we came to shipwreck. No one says a word — bad luck at sea to speak of disaster. Baldr mouths silently and makes a sign of the cross. Kru puts on a solemn face, copies Baldr and mimics the shape of a prayer on his voiceless lips.

  ‘Stand by, all hands,’ shouts Skip. ‘Veering due south; our swell from aft has backed to northerly.’

  I secure a line from steer-board brace and double-hitch it to the cleat. While I am doing it, I steal a glance over the water before the ship turns blindside of Slaidh point. I catch sight of Father Abban — it can be no other than he — standing on the slipway, alone at the head of the beach, his solitary figure small and distant, seemingly motionless, overlooking great commotion.

  On the beach below Father Abban a scurry of monks take to the water like crabs, their flimsy fishing-curachs held aloft, upturned like crab-shells over their heads. Five or six crews splash through the breakers, as we did earlier, to launch their skin-covered curachs, but delay has lost them the ebb tide. I suspect the monks were told to stay away from the beach till the Meuris had sailed past Slaidh point. Running late at mid-tide, they must row hard up the coast — heaving paddle-oars against the swell — to retrieve the morning’s catch from the lobster creels.

  When I look again, the fishing-curachs are out of sight.

  *

  ‘It has gone past noon.’ Hakon, as he speaks, peers skywards at mid-estuary, holding a hand to his brow against the glare of the haze overhead. ‘Upriver will dry out pretty quickly — seawater will slip
under our hull — drain away in front of our eyes. We will make it beyond Criadain point. That will be our limit. We will rest on a sandbank. Once the sea turns, the flood-tide will carry the ship upstream.’

  ‘Vadrar-fiord on next tide,’ shouts Halpin in a sing-song of delight. ‘Can’t wait to wet my whistle. Can’t wait to spend my divvy on those dark-haired darlings at the brew-house. They will be waiting for us.’

  A cheery grunt of approval from Dantzk. ‘Waiting for our silver, more like,’ says he.

  ‘No need for a beaching hereabouts, eh, Skip?’ Fjak calls from amidships.

  ‘Can’t argue with that,’ returns Hakon dryly. ‘No slog on the rollers. No hauling ashore. But listen up, lads! Jump to it! Before the tide drains away, we must see to it that our prow is pointing north.’

  ‘Plumb-line at the ready, Skip,’ shouts Baldr.

  ‘Take depths as we settle,’ returns Hakon. ‘Take depths, both sides, off each corner of the prow.’

  ‘Aye-aye, Skip.’

  ‘Canvas in line with the ship?’ Dantzk calls from amidships.

  ‘Not yet, man,’ returns Hakon ‘Wait for the call! Steady northward — sail square-on — downwind. We have enough water for a while yet under the keel.’

  ‘Aye-aye, Skip.’

  ‘Thralson!’

  ‘Aye-aye, Skip’

  ‘Thralson, take a moment with Kru, will you? Let the lad know what the crew is up to. Tell him we are going to let the Meuris settle aground. Touch your elbow, eh, like this, when you are done.’

  ‘Aye-aye, Skip,’ I reply.

  *

  Noon sun is overhead — on the cusp, at summer’s end, at the turn of the season. Ebbing sea has all but emptied the estuary. Brown river-waters meeting from three great rivers have formed a channel wide enough to sail in, and with comfortable depth for a ship’s draught, but only if a skipper were headed out to sea. The channel runs out midstream in rapid course between the two shores. All around us is sand and mud.

  The mast of the Meuris leans askew. Our hull sits high and dry on a sandbank off Criadain strand on the western shore of the estuary. The sail is aloft, spread to its full length from the yard, but hauled tight as a drum, fore to aft, in line with the ship. Hakon has our canvas pegged stiff, downline of the breeze, so that a freak gust of wind, veering, say east or west, cannot over-fill the sail. If that were to happen with our mast askew, force of wind and weight of sail might topple the ship.

  The southerly is not to be cheated of its power. As the breeze passes by, it tightens and loosens the luff-line on the prow and sends a gentle rocking shudder along the length of the ship. Seagulls circle over the mast. Wading birds squabble for worms on their feeding grounds and dibble holes in the muddy sands. We wait for the tide to turn. We wait for it to creep under the keel. Water from the sea will come in gently at first, and then race upriver, re-flooding the estuary from shore to shore. Once the tide lifts us off the sandbank, we will haul the sail full-square and run downwind. We will head north, making swift passage on a swelling tide, and sail upriver into Vadrar-fiord haven.

  We have time to idle. Fjak and Kru are first to fall asleep in the warmth of the day. They rest in a shadow of the sail, lying flat out over the thwarts. Baldr nods off, face down, pigtail askew; forearm hanging loose over the prow. Halp and Dantzk sit in the hold atop sacks of spelt bought from the monks at the Kildobhan. The two old sea-dogs chatter quietly amongst themselves. They relive past jaunts with girls in the brew-house as a foretaste of their revelry ashore.

  *

  ‘Hola, you on-board, can I be having a word?’ A pause and then again another loud-hailed cry: ‘Top of the day! Will you — be the — skipper-man of — this grand ship?’

  The voice crackles: the throaty voice of a youth not yet come to manhood. The words are broken by a stiffening breeze that has begun to rush over the sands of the estuary. The youthful shout comes from behind us, not far off, high-pitched, halting and unsure, obviously from someone unused to our outlander’s tongue. I turn around and look over the stern. A shabby youth and a girl, both slight of build, are walking briskly to the ship. They have nothing to hand — no cockle nets or tackle for egg-gathering on the dunes. The youth has a skin drum strapped to his back.

  I choose to answer the lad’s call in the Erse tongue. ‘No, lad, I am no skipper, but the man of the ship is beside me — if you want a word.

  ‘What are you rascals after?’ Hakon shakes a leg and gets slowly to his feet. He has been dozing.

  The young Erse-man breaks into a run, hurrying towards the ship, the girl at his heels. Perhaps he caught the wry tone of amusement — and heard nothing unwelcoming — in the skipper’s voice.

  ‘Waiting for the tide?’ the youth asks brightly. The skin drum on his back slipped loose while he was running. He lets it fall to the sand.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Hakon replies.

  ‘Yeah, lad?’ Halpin chips in, shouting from amidships. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘We watched you from the dunes over there,’ says the girl. ‘We saw you pass Criadain point.’

  ‘Why ground your ship here, Skipper?’ asks the youth. ‘You had wind at your back and there was a clear passage for you by midstream if you had wanted it. The river channel never dries out.’

  Hakon smiles at his cheek. ‘The shipping channels are known to me both here and farther up, but today we are in no hurry. The flood tide will take us into Vadrar-fiord by and by.’

  The youth’s face drops in disappointment. ‘We had surmised that you were river traders; we had thought that you might be sailing farther north.’

  Hakon points to the sacks of spelt in the hold. ‘We are traders, as you can see — we trade by river and estuary, and often overseas — but on this voyage Vadrar-fiord will be our last port of call.’

  ‘Ah,’ says the youth. ‘We’d hoped you might be going all the way up-stream — on one of the long rivers: on an-Bharu as far as Saint Mullins monastery— or maybe on an-Uir to the tide-head at Inis-tioc?’

  ‘Fine rivers to trade on,’ says Hakon. ‘But our season has finished.’

  ‘You are after a free passage with us,’ shouts Baldr, who is now awake at the prow. ‘Am I right?’ Baldr makes signs for Kru’s benefit, explaining what is going on.

  ‘Not free,’ says the girl. ‘We would have worked our passage — caught and cooked fish, fetched water. And sung for you too, if you’d liked. He can beat a fine roll on his drum.’

  ‘I dare say he can,’ says Halp sharply. ‘And would you have danced for us, eh?’

  Dantzk clambers over grain sacks to join Hakon and me at the stern. He eyes the girl up and down. ‘A sweet lass like you, and not a stitch to your name! Are you running from home?’

  ‘I am no lass,’ says the girl proudly. ‘And no runaway either.’ She clutches the youth by the arm. ‘He is Fergal of Bunmahon. I am his sister, Reenoch by name.’

  ‘Sister or not,’ says Hakon, ‘the tide-head is a long way from here. The river is tidal to Inis-tioc. It is as far as salt-water reaches on an-Uir.’

  ‘Our paths will take us not just to Inis-tioc,’ says Fergal, ‘but far beyond that.’

  ‘You are runaways, then,’ insists Fjak.

  ‘We are not so,’ says Reenoch angrily. ‘Tell him, Fergal, we have nothing to be ashamed of!’

  ‘None of your business, Fjak,’ shouts Baldr from the prow. ‘We have no right to pry.’

  ‘Skipper has a right to pry,’ returns Fjak. ‘He has a right to know who asks to come on board.’

  ‘Don’t tell me my rights,’ says Hakon. ‘Sister, brother, singer, drummer — no skin off my nose! We are not for sailing upriver on an-Uir. We are not bound for the tide-head at Inis –tioc. There’s an end to it.’

  ‘They could come with us as far as Vadrar-fiord,’ suggests Baldr. ‘It is only a short hop, Skipper, if you will let them. They might find a wherry loaded with salt-fish or grubbers for hawking upstream. The lad and his sister could hitch a pas
sage with the wherryman.’

  Hakon scratches his beard. ‘If they come aboard, they will have to pay their way.’

  ‘I have told you we will,’ says Reenoch. ‘We ain’t afraid of hard work. Anything you ask.’

  Sniggering laughter from Fjak.

  Dantzk hoots and rubs his fat belly.

  Fergal darts a suspicious glance up into the ship, and sees Halpin leering at the girl. The youth puts a protective arm around his sister. ‘Not so quick, Reenoch.’ He turns and looks up at Hakon. ‘Before I agree, Skipper, I must know what it is you ask from us.’

  ‘Crewing and rope-work as far as Vadrar-fiord,’ replies Hakon plainly. ‘And from your sister, tomorrow — once we have off-loaded spelt at haven and have dry-docked at Ekvith — a full day of scrubbing deck and bilge. After that, it is up to you — if you want to earn your corn at the shipyard, I can keep you on for a day or two.’

  Chapter 16

  We pass a grassy isle mid-channel on the river only ten or twelve ship-lengths from Vadrar-fiord haven. Kaupships and toll-wherries fit only for river-work are doubled-up at moorings along the jetties. Above the haven a haze of evening cooking-smoke gathers over palings on high ground. Lodin’s fort sits within the palings on a knuckle of rock at a bend of the river.

  ‘All Lodin’s flocks,’ says Hakon, as we pass the isle. ‘Only his stock grazes on Inis-cáera.’

  The in-flowing tide has come up from the estuary. It floods into an-Shuir, a brown river that flows into it from the western hills. The isle of Inis-cáera has weakened the tide at our stern. The tide washes to about half-way below the waterline on the river-banks — well below high water. Brackish waves from the estuary bubble and swell, moving swiftly upstream. The river gurgles, sending back a strong under-flow against the tide, churning the surface into eddies and whirls.

  Without full sail, the Meuris drops off a gently whirling wave and drifts, beam-first on larboard side, steadily in towards jetties. Our shortened canvas flaps gull-winged aloft. The sail-wings catch a light breath of downstream river-wind. Hakon puts in alongside the pier — in slapdash fashion — not his usual tidy handling. Ropes thrown hurriedly. Our larboard beam buffers and settles against the outermost of three river-wherries, which lie, empty and unattended, beam to beam along the jetty.