Forged in Blood Read online

  ‘We keep both horses to a steady walk,’ returns Beyveen, ‘hers and mine. We don’t take risks, Ma. That’s why I chose the dun for Clithna. The gelding takes a bidding. He is sweet as a rose — solid and safe with any rider.’

  Shaynat frowns. She is unconvinced, but she will say no more. She picks up the dead hare by the ears and walks off with the hawk on her arm.

  ‘I hope that you can keep your mouth shut, Thralson,’ says Clithna sharply. ‘You better not tell a soul!’

  Beyveen has set off down the slope. She holds her riding-smock to the knees and strides with long, graceful steps to the horses in the lower paddock. Clithna waits till I promise not to spill the beans, which I do readily. She hurries after Tioc’s daughter, holding her midriff, as she goes.

  Chapter 33

  In the clachan belonging to Tioc’s family, where morning-meal is served for us daily, the air is fusty. It smells of stale wax. Candle-ends from last night have been re-lit. The morning routine is for the basins to be filled with fresh tallow and laid with new wicks. Whoever did light the candle-ends earlier, was in a hurry. It can’t have been for lack of tallow — the isle has a plentiful supply rendered from its slaughter of sheep.

  Only Deasún and Clithna, Beyveen and myself are present in the clachan. For everyone else — Hakon, Shaynat, Tioc himself and daughter Leasha— the morning-meal is long finished. They have gone. Deasún and I and the two young women sit on stools by a serving-trestle. The main board and trestles are folded away. They had not been assembled for this morning.

  Tioc’s older daughter Leasha thrusts aside the drape at the entrance to the clachan and bustles in. She has come to clear away the trenchers. She stacks them noisily in front of our noses, scrapes bone and gristle into a pail for dog slops. She leans over her sister, stretches across me, brushes past Deasún’s shoulder. A pouring-jug spills in the process. If Leasha thought that the upheaval she has caused would drive us away, she was mistaken. Deasún ignores her. He yawns, pulls a crust from the barley breck and hands the bread to me. Clithna and Beyveen chatter about their ride planned later today on the heath

  Deasún and I played at ‘Kroners’ on the chequerboard long into the night. The Erse-man took coin off me in early evening, but gone midnight, after we had finished a tub of black ale between us, I had a run of luck, and clawed back most of what I had lost. He and I ended up about even. Deasún and I turned in as dawn light fell upon the isle. We came late to morning-meal, only to find Clithna and Beyveen had overslept too.

  Clithna can’t have mentioned anything about her condition. Had she spoken to her husband yesterday, Deasún wouldn’t have been able to contain his excitement last night during our game of Kroners. And had she spoken to him this morning, the talk now would be all about their future child. They would be sharing their joyful news. Deasún must know nothing yet, otherwise he would be brimming with pride and the anticipation of being a father.

  The four of us sit lazily over a scrap of barley breck and sip some warm ale from the earthen pot. Leasha stands over us and casts Beyveen a look of impatience — a look that seems to say:

  ‘Help me clear away, sister! If we don’t move the trestle, these folk from Vadrar-fiord will sit here all day.’

  Deasún ignores the bustling from Leasha. He rubs sleep from his eyes and addresses his wife. ‘I know we have been told to wait for Dunchad, and I understand why we must — but this endless waiting wears me down.’

  ‘He might come today,’ replies his wife.

  ‘You said that yesterday, and the day before, but another day is gone, and still no word from him.’

  ‘He will come, husband. Try to be patient.’

  Deasún persists. ‘The worst thing is not knowing whether the Tuathal will come at all. I can’t return to Vadrar-fiord with the matter unresolved. Your father trusts me. He expects me to return with the alliance sorted. But what do you think? Should I send word to Vadrar-fiord?’

  Leasha interjects before Clithna can answer. ‘Deasún Mac-Bric,’ she snaps. ‘I am sorry to interrupt, but I must speak my mind. If my Gil-Phatric says that his father will be here, then he most certainly will. A King of Osri has many pressing duties — Dunchad can’t change his plans at a moment’s notice because visitors arrive unannounced.’ She throws down the wooden trenchers in a heap and storms out, making the smoky tallows flicker as she drops the drape across the entrance-way.

  Beyveen looks amused. ‘In case the news has escaped you — which is unlikely since my sister talks of nothing else —Leasha’s promised in marriage to Gil-Phatric. When Dunchad chokes it,’ she makes a sign across her throat, ‘his son will be the next Tuathal of Osri. Leasha— as Gil-Phatric’s wife — will be queen of the mountains, mistress of all she surveys.’

  ‘Gil-Phatric is Dunchad’s second son,’ says Clithna. ‘What of the other brother?’

  ‘Lug?’ Beyveen replies. ‘Hadn’t you heard? Lug Mac-Dunchad is dead. He would have been Tuathal after his father, but he died from his battle wounds the week after Christ’s day.’

  ‘What battle was he wounded in?’ Deasún is suddenly alert. ‘I have heard of no recent battle hereabouts.’

  ‘Hold your horses, man,’ returns Tioc’s younger daughter. ‘Lug died from old battle wounds — he took a spear in the shoulder two summers back, and the rupture never healed.’

  Deasún strokes his chin, shaved smooth this morning to please his wife. ‘Ah, two summers back? That was the first big march from Amlav into the plains.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Beyveen. ‘During the retreat, Lug’s cattle got stuck crossing a ford in the upper reaches of An-Ruirthech. He wasn’t for letting the cattle fall into enemy hands, and so he made a stand on the river-bank. Typical of Lug Mac-Dunchad but pointless really — the cattle drowned, he was wounded and lost half his men.’

  ‘So,’ says Clithna, ‘Your sister Leasha will be married to the future King of Osri?’

  ‘She will never let me forget it!’ Beyveen grimaces and adds scornfully. ‘But rather her than me. I’d sooner rot in hell, or die a virgin, than to be married to that monk Gil-Phatric!’

  Clithna smiles at Beyveen: they have a bond. She and Beyveen like to speak in a brusque, no-nonsense way, which is all well and good until you are on the receiving end of their sharp tongues.

  Lodin’s daughter turns to her husband.

  ‘Why not ride out with us, Deasún? A fine day for horse-riding. What do you think? Better on the moors over Slieve Bhraan than cooped up here, waiting for Dunchad, cooling your heels, drinking black ale with Thralson.’ And then a questioning glance to Tioc’s daughter. ‘A change of plan, Beyveen, you don’t mind if my husband comes along?’

  ‘Of course not,’ says Beyveen. ‘I will have a mount saddled for him and brought to the paddock.’

  Tioc’s younger daughter draws aside the drape across the clachan door. She pauses at the entrance, with the drape caught over her shoulder, the sunlight behind her figure. With her lean, white fingertips, she picks out a thread from the frayed hem of her gown, and then hitches her gown above the knees, ready to step across the mud outside. She catches my eye. I hold her glance.

  Beyveen pokes her thumb in my direction. ‘While I am at it, Clithna, shall I have a horse saddled for Thralson? Looks like he could do with the moorland air as much as your husband.’

  Chapter 34

  We cross an-Uir on horseback by reed-ford. The ford passes from the river-isle to Tioc’s water-meadows on the eastern banks of the river. By rights, the passing is too deep to be called a ford and the current runs strong. According to Beyveen, the river here never dries to stone and gravel, and falls only to waist-height even in summer or at the ebb-tide. Punts are moored at the water’s edge, so that the river can be crossed, when the tide is in.

  The water reaches the girth-straps of our stocky horses. We cross slowly, allowing the horses to feel for each step of their hooves under water. At mid-river, Deasún insists on dismounting. He has decided to walk his horse,
and lead Clithna’s placid dun across to the far bank.

  His wife protests that she can manage perfectly well without his help — and without the need for him to get wet — but he overrules her with an angry response. ‘I am in the water now,’ says he. ‘Look, woman, it is up to my waist. You may as well let me lead you across. Safer for you, safer for the horses. The flow downstream is stronger than you think.’

  Clithna reluctantly passes the reins to her husband. ‘Beyveen doesn’t need help. Why should I? You ought to have left me alone, Deasún. You know I don’t like being fussed over.’

  Beyveen and I exchange glances.

  I turn my horse’s nose to point upstream, and move ahead of the other three riders. Deasún wades through the churning water, leading his horse and, at his shoulder, the two women mounted behind. My horse — a plucky chestnut mare — responds to my hand. She pushes forward and breasts the current. Her girth staunches the flow of the river and makes a water-trail for the others. Deasún follows in the mare’s wake. The waters of An-Uir twinkle past us in sunshine. At the far bank, overhanging willows block the horses’ path. We track downstream in muddy shallows through beds of rushes and reeds, and climb from the water’s edge onto the rich grass of the water-meadows.

  *

  Deasún and Clithna separate from us. They head north. They have chosen a less arduous trail to the top of Slieve Bhraan, which winds to the summit. It will take longer, but is kinder to the horses. They pass through a scattering of sheep out on the summer fell.

  Beyveen and I cross a wide leet-ditch, the main water channel that is dried out in summer and which carries flood-water from the river into the water-meadows. The leet-ditch is lined above its banks with hawthorns in bud. We dip our heads under the hawthorn branches and ride up-fell towards steep heathland to make our approach the tops from the south and east.

  *

  Beyveen and I halt at half-way up on the heath and turn our horses to rest, facing into the vale. We can see across to the dark mountains, west and north, where the wilderlings have sway. Below us an-Uir flows south, winding its path through the vale. The river sparkles in the sun. It divides in two at Inis-tioc and, downstream of the isle, returns to a single wider course, where it swells with deeper, tidal waters and flows south to its junction with an-Bharu.

  The Meuris is beached on the southern tip of the river-isle. Our ship sits cross-wise on the muddy sand, as Hakon had ordered. When I look at it from up here, I am not as impressed with my beaching position as I was on the night when I beached it there. I could have done better: I should have squared up and pushed the hull a third more to larboard.

  On the isle, inside the circled palings, the round thatched roofs of the Rath stand out like giant haystacks, and a haze of smoke rises from cooking-fires in the clachans. From the smoke-house, where the last batches of shad-fish are being preserved, a simmering of peat-smoke is turned south by the breeze. The smoke is thin and fades over the river.

  Tioc’s plush, green water-meadows are ripe for hay-making. They will be off limits to cattle until the hay is lifted. From up here, things under my nose, missed when I rode through the meadows, can be seen clearly from a greater height. Ancient water-channels — field-drains filled with stones, but now covered in grass — had been dug under the meadows. The hidden channels show up in the distance like veins on the underside of a man’s wrist — life-blood of the fields — running underground in all directions. All lead down to the river-bank and drain into the river.

  ‘Look,’ says Beyveen. ‘The lines of dark green are leats that flow under the water-meadows.’

  ‘I didn’t know they were there,’ I reply. ‘As we rode through, I could see the man-made streams, open ditches, forming channels between fields, but I hadn’t realised that those small, connecting drains were hidden beneath our feet.’

  *

  Looking north on the near side of the river, scanning down over sunlit heathland, thorn, heather and scrub, I can make out a distant figure on a horse. Beyveen screws up her eyes into the sunshine. She says nothing, but merely points to show that she too has seen the rider. Moving into view from brown patches of thicket and bilberry, a second rider joins the first. Can’t make out the shape from here — a brown figure on a brown horse against the brown hue of the heath; it must be Clithna on the dun gelding. But now, when I look again, there is no mistaking the first rider. It is Deasún. I can tell by his tall posture in the saddle, sitting straight-backed and erect. The big Erse-man dwarfs the horse under him. Both riders, small and distant to the eye, leave the lower fell of Slieve Bhraan, and disappear through the hawthorns. They have turned back from the ascent. They have ridden down off the heath, and are back on the water-meadows.

  ‘They’ve turned back. They are going down,’ says Beyveen, ‘We won’t meet them at the summit.’ And then she adds. ‘Poor Clithna! She couldn’t bring herself to tell Deasún her news.’

  ‘I don’t know why. What better news could a wife tell her husband — especially their first child?’

  ‘Only she knows the answer to that,’ returns Beyveen. ‘But part of me understands how she feels. Maybe Clithna fears that being a mother will weaken her position as Lord Lodin’s daughter; that it will make her less powerful than the woman she wants to be.’

  ‘How can being a mother diminish her?’

  ‘It will soften her — put under Deasún’s thumb.’

  ‘Little chance of that! Clithna is Lodin’s daughter. She is as tough as her father. She won’t let anyone forget it — not even her husband.’

  Beyveen laughs. ‘Is that such a bad thing?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I reply. ‘Take your mother Shaynat as example. From what I have seen of her — and by what I have heard from others — she has never let motherhood weaken her. I would hazard a guess that your mother exerts great influence over your father.’

  ‘She has had to be like that, otherwise nothing at the Rath would ever get done. But that’s where it ends. Ma would never openly disagree with my father — not in front of others. She is content that he listens to her, when they are alone, and shapes his plans to suit her.’

  ‘Exactly! Why can’t Clithna do the same?’

  ‘But I’d say that she is different,’ replies Beyveen.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Clithna needs to look strong in front of others, in front of her husband — an outward appearance of strength — and she must feel strong within herself.’

  ‘Like you?’

  Beyveen smiles pertly. ‘Do you dislike that trait in a woman?’

  ‘Far from it: I like a man to speak his mind — and I expect it from a woman too!’

  We turn up-fell.

  *

  Twaindale on the ice-lands. Early morning at Idgar’s hall. Helga and I were supposed to rise early and rake in flax from the retting ponds. Helga shakes me awake; smothers me with kisses, tells me, breathless with joy, that she is to be a mother. Her flushed, happy open face close to mine; the touch of her warm, tearful cheeks cupped within my hands. The tightness of her arm over my chest. Hush of our steady breathing. Flax and retting-pond long forgotten.

  *

  Beyveen questions me softly — not in her usual sharp voice. ‘Something tells me, Ostman, that you have a wife, and you must have children too.’

  I pull abruptly at the reins, startling the poor mare, and the chestnut horse snorts in protest, shudders, grinds her teeth. I avoid Beyveen’s eyes. ‘I was wondering if Clithna has told Deasún that she is with child.’ I sooth the horse with a stroke on the neck. ‘What do you think, Beyveen? Maybe she has told him, and that’s why she has had to come down from the heath.’

  Chapter 35

  Beyveen and I ride on separately and in silence.

  No clear tracks under hoof, but what we choose for ourselves; she takes her path, leaving me to mine. On her way to the tops, Beyveen dismounts and walks her dapple-grey over crumbly shale that litters the west face of the fell. She risks a stumbl
e on the shale — a fall for her, or the horse going lame. I stay mounted and ride over peat-sward by the south approach to the summit, safe under hoof.

  Beyveen knows mountain and heath better than I. My progress is slow, while hers is steady and sure. She puts ground between us. I begin to wonder if I shouldn’t have followed her lead and walked my horse over the shale. But if I dismount now, it would be an admission of my mistaken judgement. For some reason unaccountably stirring within me I don’t want Tioc’s daughter to think ill of me.

  We track to and fro on the ascent, each pursuing a separate way. Beyveen leads her horse over the shale, while I ride on stubbornly over the sward. The ground rises steeper and more rugged. The summit of Slieve Bhraan seems to loom no closer. Without pausing for rest, we keep upward on our chosen paths. When we started the ascent, crows were cackling insistently overhead, perhaps to distract us from their carrion on the heath, the carcase of a dead sheep. When they saw that we took no heed of their scavenging, they flew to ground and carried on with their feast. At this height, no crows, and no carrion. The heathland is quiet, summer-warm, and buzzing with marsh-flies. We hear the soughing of our horses’ lungs, as they tackle the rise.

  As if to remind us how far we have come, the distant call of an ouzel or a clochrán-thrush echoes from a wooded ravine far down to our right, where hazel, birch and beech hug the sides of the ravine, with only their tree-tops on show above the hidden chasm. When we passed by the ravine, we could hear a loud rush of running water from within the trees. Wooded ravine and waterfall are now far below us, the sound of water gone.

  It hasn’t rained for days in the river-vale at Inis-tioc, but as we ascend the fell-head, heathland turns to marsh. Bog-water, fed by overnight mists, drains down from the tops. Water, brown and oily, courses through stone-filled cracks in the peat-sward. It runs between tufts of reeds and passes under stunted clumps of un-ripened bilberries. The run-off flows into streams and becks, leaving puddles of mud-slick in potholes, some shallow and some deep. My mare’s hooves begin to sink in boggy ground. I dismount to take the weight off her back and lead her up towards the crest. Beyveen waits for me, as I clod-hop across the sodden marsh to join her on a spill of dry shale. My horse follows gamely on the peat-sward, sinking almost to her fetlocks in the wet peatland.