Forged in Blood Read online

  As for Hakon, he never discusses brew-house gossip. Nor has he told us what our ‘river-work’ for Lodin will entail. Come the day-after-next, we sail upriver to the tide-head as far as Inis-tioc.

  Chapter 29

  Kru has been pestering for days. He wants me to barter for him in the market, using his newly acquired riches — like me, he has withdrawn part of his divvy from the treasury. The poor man will be preyed upon and diddled out of his coin without a friend at his side to speak on his behalf. The craft-men at Vadrar-fiord ignore Kru’s attempts to bargain in signs, or worse, they play along, pretend to help, and end up fleecing him of his coin, giving little or nothing in return.

  This morning at the brew-house, the hand-signs from my mute friend are more and more urgent. ‘Be done today — must today — please,’ he mimes anxiously, ‘tomorrow we sail upriver.’

  ‘Later, maybe.’ My signed reply meets Kru’s disappointed eyes. My index finger circles my left palm for a second time: ‘Not ready to leave! Not yet!’ I lazily put my feet up on the bench and send him to the brew-master’s wife to fetch me another pot of porter.

  Our spell on ship — Kru’s and mine — to keep watch on the Meuris begins at noon. He and I take over from Halp and Dantzk, whose daily watch over the ship is from dawn to mid-day. Fjak and Baldr have the long stint overnight. They will be on board again tonight, keeping lookout from dusk to dawn. The two night-birds are allowed to take turns to sleep. Ship-watch at haven is shared across the entire crew. Everyone agrees to the new rota — even Fjak hasn’t challenged it.

  I peer out from under the brew-house canopy and scan the rainy sky. It is mid-morning. If I don’t take Kru with me into the market lanes before noon, he will have lost the chance to buy his wares until after we return from the tide-head. In one draught I empty the pot of ale. I’ve been in the brew-house since daybreak and am now light-headed from too much ale. I struggle to my feet. Without Kru to hold me up, I might have toppled into the slop-ginnel under the stall.

  *

  Kru has a thread-bare ship’s rope that he uses as a belt. He has had it tied around his waist since last year when we left Linn-dubh. Fjak has poked so much fun at the shredded old rope that now the poor man is ashamed to wear it. Like me, Kru has drawn half his divvy in silver coin from Lodin’s treasury. He covets a leather belt, one like mine with pin and buckle. No sooner had he set eyes on the belt I bought in the market, than he wanted one to match it, and a hunting-knife with bone handle, and a belt-sheath to fit the knife — both of which I wear at my waist — and a leather purse for hack and coin, secured, like mine, with a neck-thong to hang under his serk.

  ‘Sheath, only best, like yours,’ “says” Kru pleadingly in sharp signs, looking deep into my eyes. ‘Stitch-work same must have! See! See! Want same brass studs as yours.’

  The iron-smith, from whom I bought the knife, and a tanner, where I chose my belt and sheath, have sheds and stalls inside the fort. Their workshops are at the latrine wall, over which waste from the fort is thrown at night. Kru and I walk through the unguarded gates of the fort and climb through narrow lanes into the market. The lanes are sodden underfoot, pitted with holes and filled with puddles. A swill of blood-slops, rainwater and fish-guts runs down from the upper stalls.

  We pass cauldrons full of shad-fish, barley and tripe, five huge pots all in a line, simmering on peat fires. Cooking-women, all shrivelled and grey-haired, stand at their pots and serve. With wooden paddles they scoop and stir, their flabby elbows arched high in the air over the huge pots. One woman’s ancient paddle looks like a camán — a hurly-stick that has seen better days. Half-way up the paddle, the pale ash-wood has softened and stained to a soapy hue — the same colour as the broth. Heat from pot and fire is intense. The women have cast aside their shawls and loosened their blousons, revealing the ample flesh of their wrinkly breasts. They step back at intervals to mop sweat from their blotched necks with the tails of their aprons. One old hag shouts down another — a hoarse jest warning folk to avoid her neighbour’s stale broth — or rattles out a garbled list of wholesome herbs to vaunt her own steaming victuals.

  Queuing in the rain for the hearty day-meal of gruel are ragged youngsters sent out by their mothers from hovels in the fort, red-faced herders up from the shearing-pens and seafaring men from the haven. They carry iron pots, wooden pails, earthen crocks, ale-tubs and yesterday’s scooped-out stale barley bannocks, even an oily sheepskin bag —any useful vessel in which to carry the broth.

  No coin or hack changes hands. Ladlefuls of victuals are served there and then without payment. The old hags know customers from sight. A chalk-mark tally is kept scrawled on the peat-blackened cauldrons. If customers haven’t settled before sundown — by barter, by service or by hack as the call goes — there will be no broth served to them on the morrow.

  *

  We jostle among Erse-men at the stall outside the tanner’s shed. Scores of belts hang from a pulley above the stall. Kru cannot make up his mind which to choose. There are no belts exactly like mine, none pierced with studs, and with a strap that narrows at the midriff and widens at the back.

  The tanner — a big, fat Ostman with greasy beard and soiled work-apron down to his boots — is irritated by the sign language between Kru and me. He is rapidly losing patience. While he is distracted by us, he suspects an Erse-man of filching a leather arm-band from a basket under the stall.

  ‘Put that back, you bastard,’ shouts the tanner. The Erse-man runs off.

  ‘Here!’ I sign to Kru, un-loosing my belt, knife and sheath. ‘You have mine. See! I will buy another. For me, another is fine!’

  Without hesitation, Kru takes the belt. While he fits the buckle to his girth and pulls the cow-hide tight, his face breaks into a toothless grin. Once sheath and knife are in place, and slung to his liking, he tucks hands in belt, throws his head back. Kru’s cocky stance in front of the tanner’s stall reminds me of my brother Cormac. It strikes at once — even in my drunken haze — that it is from me that Kru has borrowed his braggart warrior pose.

  ‘Move away, you drunken lubbers,’ shouts the tanner. ‘Don’t block the stall! Can’t you see? I have people who want to buy — not just stand and mime and pose like dumb, fecking idiots!’

  I grab from the pulley the first belt that comes to hand and rummage for a leather knife-sheath in the basket under the stall. I show belt and sheath to the tanner and stuff them under my serk. One silver coin from my purse is more than enough. With no word of barter I throw the coin in the man’s face.

  ‘Take it,’ I yell brazenly. I pull my knife from Kru’s belt. In a blur of drunkenness I slip the blade through the tanner’s sticky beard, point it under his throat. Beads of sweat roll from the man’s brow. For a moment I relish the fear on his face. ‘You’re lucky, big man!’ I yell into his teeth. ‘My friend and I are needed on ship-watch. If we hadn’t to be at the jetties, I’d make you pay for your cheek.’

  *

  Almost dusk on the Meuris. I have been in a drunken sleep through afternoon watch. Kru has sat by me while I slept. He would have wakened me, had Skip turned up to check on us. Fjak and Baldr will be here shortly. When they come, I am off back to the brew-house. From the stern I stare into the river. The flow of tide inland from the estuary has taken hold. Midges and river-moths dance over the water. Mating dragonflies that swooped and chased in pairs have flown off into the dusk. Shad-fish are running upriver, close to surface where the water is brackish. This is their season to leave their feeding grounds at sea. Mother-fish, laden with eggs, will swim to the higher reaches and spawn in gravel streams that feed the rivers.

  *

  M’lym’s words in the dark monastery chapel still ring in my ears. They stunned me; they hurt me to the quick. Nothing could be more final than their cold rejection. M’lym has no need of me, no wish to call on my care and protection. With a turn of the head I am dismissed from her life.

  I felt my heart as heavy as iron, as heavy as a ship’s anc
hor dropped overboard without a cable, in freefall through the water, sinking lost to the bottom of the sea. In my more sober thoughts, I don’t deny M’lym the right to the life she has chosen, or belittle the choice she has made. If she wishes to stay with the holy brothers and share their routines of devotion, that’s up to her. At least, in their care she will learn to write and pray, and be useful in other ways; to tend Paperkali’s bees. She will be free from yearning and loss, freed from ties of blood and family, freed from the misfortunes that have cost her so much pain. In finding a life with the monks, she has had a homecoming of sorts. I envy her.

  *

  I had no notion of how I would have fulfilled my promise to M’lym. On my horizons it had never gone farther than a promise. I had no plan for the task, not even the first step of looking out a ship skippered by one of Hakon’s cronies that might take us to Brythuniog. Nor had I considered the challenge, once over the water, of discovering where her brother and father had been taken as slaves. As to the means of their release, the cost of purchasing two men’s freedom in a distant land — that thought had never once entered my head, so far was it removed from any prospect of its ever being achieved.

  *

  In moments of drunken self-deceit I have convinced myself that it is already too late to go in search of M’lym’s family. Mac Airt — I have only just remembered her father’s name —and his son Ardmath are proud men. They won’t suffer beatings and humiliation from slave-masters. They will have run from their captors or they will have died in the attempt. Chances are by now they are dead.

  But if, against all likelihood, father and son have escaped; if, by some miracle, they have made it back to Erinland, they will have had a bitter homecoming. They will learn that their wife and mother — Ethne — is lost to them, that the unborn baby she carried was ripped dead from her broken body on Inis-dubh; and that young M’lym — their daughter and sister — was carried away on a ship by strangers.

  If I admit the truth, the promise to M’lym was no more than a hollow gesture. It meant nothing beyond a kind word of the moment. It cost me nothing, Making the promise — and acknowledging M’lym’s acceptance of help — was as far as I intended it to go. The promise was a way of binding her life to mine. It was as if I had found in M’lym the little sister whom I had believed dead, but now alive again, newly discovered and in need of brotherly help; a child to be cared for and cherished, a sister trusting and innocent, willing to swallow my empty words.

  *

  My dearest Helga can see into my heart like no other — there is no hiding from her clear-sighted, loving gaze! My wife would reproach me for raising the child’s hopes without the forethought or wherewithal to pursue my promised task to the end.

  Ma, on the other hand, would expect me to help a fatherless girl. She would have stepped in without question, as she did after Feilan died, to adopt Bedwyr as her son. But Ma knows my shortcomings too, especially my habit of starting things that I don’t finish. With M’lym safe in the care of the monks at Kildobhan, she would probably say that the holy brothers would do a better job of overseeing an orphan than I.

  From Vrekla it would be sharp words, words that sting and hit the mark. My sister would cut me to the quick. And yet her scoffing would soon be forgotten, my faults instantly forgiven. ‘What a mess, Kregin! See what you are like! At it again! Too big for your boots!’

  As for Bera, she would slay me with a cold silence. My foster sister was once so dear to me, but her dismissal of me, when we last met, was so complete that she has all but vanished from my heart.

  From Haldis I need fear no recrimination. My worthy foster sister has always expected the best from me and believed me capable of great things. She had the same expectations of Sigi, misguided though she was about him, blinded by sisterly love.

  Haldis would praise me for giving M’lym hope, for offering the hand of protection to a helpless orphan, for leaping to the girl’s defence without a second thought, for being willing to take on the burden of a fatherless, motherless child, for agreeing, if it could be done, to find her family.

  ‘I did mean it, Haldis, Believe me! Truly, I did mean to help the girl!’

  ‘I believe you, brother. Don’t give up on her — or yourself — she may still need your help.’

  ‘If only I could — but Haldis, dearest sister, I fear it is too late.’

  ‘Hey, Thralson!’ Fjak’s words break into my reverie. ‘Have you gone crazy, man? What the hell’s got into you?’ Fjak hops on deck and gives a hand over the gunnels to Baldr. ‘Would you believe it, Pigtail? With only Kru to yarn with, our friend Thralson has started to mumble to himself!’

  Chapter 30

  Hrut has joined the crew of the Meuris. He will make a start, when we head upriver to the tide-head at Inis-tioc. The shipwright’s son will be with us for a season, and the promise of more summers after that, if he shapes up. Hakon is happy to take on an extra pair of hands. He has told us that having young Hrut on board won’t reduce the crew’s divvy. The lad will be paid out of the skipper’s share, providing he learns the ropes. If rope-work is the measure of a crewman, Hrut will be lucky to earn an ounce of silver. I have not seen anyone so slow on the uptake! Every ship’s order, no matter how simple, has to be explained twice.

  We have heard a whisper (it is always Fjak who spreads rumours) that half of whatever the lad earns will be coughed up by his father. Thrandt is keen to have his son gain experience working on a cargo-carrier — ‘casting-off into life’ as he puts it, with a weathered crew under the trusted eye of his old friend Hakon. ‘Lean on him as hard as you like,’ said he from the jetty before we set off — though the shipwright’s worried expression seemed to urge the opposite. ‘About time my boy was out from under his mother’s apron.’

  ‘If he shapes up on the Meuris,’ replied Skip, ‘I won’t see him go short at end of the season. But, mind, the lad has to earn it.’

  ‘That’s how it should be,’ returned the shipwright doubtfully. ‘My son has to pull his weight.’

  ‘A chip off the old block, I will warrant,’ said Hakon. ‘He will soon learn the ropes.’

  Fjak heard Skip’s reassurance from amidships, and muttered under his breath. ‘Never in a hundred years. Mark my words! He will be finished before the season’s out — or I have sheep’s wool between my ears.’

  ‘More like sheep-shit in that head of yours,’ retorted Halp. ‘Here, listen!’ He smacked Fjak playfully on the pate. The midshipman’s huge fleshy palm was dripping wet from rainwater in the bilge. It made a hollow sound on Fjak’s bald head — much to the raucous merriment of Dantzk.

  *

  Late afternoon on the river and sun has fallen to three quarters. We are at the mouth of an-Shuir, where it joins an-Bharu. Here both rivers merge into one channel and run through a narrow neck into the estuary and out to sea. Not much longer before the waters turn for us. We missed the early tide, and lost half a day, waiting for Ingvar to turn up. In the end, with no sight of Lodin’s son, and no word of his joining ship, we had to cast off without him.

  Hakon has the Meuris ‘sitting between the bluffs’, waiting for the tide to strengthen after slack-water. To hold the ship steady at mid-channel, he adjusts the tiller-arm, first out, then in again, then to half-way, keeping an eye on the two eastern knolls as bearings for his position on the water. He has the prow of the Meuris facing up into the river that runs down from the north. The long stretch on an-Bharu will be our first leg inland to Inis-tioc.

  Above our heads two corners of the sail are flapping, and we hear cackling from sea-birds, as they circle the mast. On Hakon’s call — as soon as we came to mid-channel — the bottom of the sail was hauled aloft and shaped into gull-wings from the yard. It is rucked up tight by gording-ropes at the centre, leaving a loop of canvas to billow free at both ends.

  A south-westerly blows up from the estuary, but the Meuris makes no headway. The outflow from the two great rivers sees to that. With sail reduced to two ‘wings
’, and trimmed high over deck, Hakon can hold the ship in position — or thereabouts — without being mastered by the wind or nudged off-course by the downstream force of the rivers. I watch Hakon’s skills at the helm and admire his touch. Our ship drifts a little to larboard, veering northwest, but holds almost at standstill on the water. Skip pitches our prow against the undertow of the rivers, while the current glides under the hull. He has enough wind in two corners of canvas to hold the ship from being carried down-estuary.

  With our sail wing-like, spanning aloft, it over-shadows the deck, blocks out the sun, as if a giant bird were hovering above the masthead, preparing to pounce. Halp and Dantzk stand in its shadow amidships. They have hands on gordings and clew-lines — ready, when the order is given, to unfurl the full length of sail.

  *

  ‘Skipper Hakon!’ Clithna hails him from the prow. She sits facing aft with her husband Deasún, and surveys every movement of the crew, as if it were she and not Hakon, who is master of the ship. ‘Is it not too late to set out? It is a long voyage to the tide-head. Surely we cannot make it to Inis-tioc before nightfall.’

  Deasún interjects. ‘It is Ingvar’s fault we were delayed. We could have left at daybreak as planned, caught the early tide — if only your brother had turned up.’

  ‘He ought to be with us,’ says she. ‘Better to have him at your side when you deliver father’s message to Tioc Cahaun.’

  ‘We will have to manage without his skills of diplomacy,’ her husband returns with a smile full of irony. ‘No one knows where he is. Were we supposed to hang around for another day waiting for him?’

  ‘Not at all,’ says Clithna. ‘Nonetheless, it is a shame that Ingvar won’t be with us.’