Winter Serpent (3 page)

The freewoman silently held out the box to Doireann. This was the chief’s boasted bride gift to his foster sister. She was to choose what she wanted from among her mother’s possessions. Doireann lifted the lid. This box had never before been opened to her; she did not know the things inside… brooches, pins, armlets, the jewels of a woman of rank—a dead woman who had been called Ithi of the Picts, wife of Muireach macDumhnull. Those possessions meant nothing to Doireann, yet, to spite Calum, she felt she must take as much as she could.

Doireann put copper and silver bracelets on her arms, snapped the clasps. She took an enameled necklet, watching Calum out of the corner of her eye. She let fall an amber brooch.

“For the rest of the jewels,” she said suddenly, “I would rather have Fergus’, my brother’s, harp.” Another possession of the dead.

“Agreed.” Calum waved his hand carelessly to a clansman who got up on the table to take the harp from its place on the wall. It left its outline against the smoke-blackened logs.

“Now, foster sister, kinswoman!” Calum said loudly. The women started. He jumped clumsily from the bench and ran around the table to Doireann. “Do not leave without a parting gift from me!”

Before she could draw back he pressed into her hand a leather sheath. Half-drawn from it was a sgian, a small knife, the handle made of copper and engraved with foxes, the symbol of the clans of Lorne.

“A special gift for the bride,” Calum shouted, thrusting his face into hers. He gave her a large crafty wink.

From that last moment in the hall of the Coire, though the long night journey on the loch, Doireann nighean Muireach had had time to think of this final sight of Calum’s face and the triumph shining there. With great bitterness she knew there was no vengeance left to take on him; even now the boats were coming to the last curve of the loch; beyond would be the Viking camp. It was ended, and she now sat with Calum macDumhnull’s bride gift clasped in her hand.

The ocean’s roar came to them, the sound it made as it ran over the bar of Cumhainn, and the air brightened with a fresh wind. The paddlers in the dugout rested. Then before them the water widened suddenly, the cliffs veered away. This was the end of Loch Cumhainn a small landlocked bay of water, half salt, half fresh, the sea ever restless outside the silted, rock-guarded entrance. Beyond this, at the Eileen nan Ron, the small island of the seals, lay anchored the Viking ship. It was a strange-looking craft, unlike any ship of the Scots or the Britons. It seemed to ride on top of the ocean waves, its prow raised high and carved to resemble some demon.

Sweyn Barrelchest, the Norse chief, woke from his napping and began to gesture to the boatmen to pull for the cove just inside the bar. At this spot the loch’s draining had backed up a meadow of silt. On the slightly higher ground Doireann saw that the Northmen had already erected a house, a simple affair of unpeeled logs and a makeshift thatch roof. A smudge of smoke came from a campfire in front of the house, and in back of it were some rough pens for livestock.

Northmen began to come out of the log house, running, making their way through the slope of the meadow, to greet the boats. Doireann was startled to see how barbaric these foreigners looked, set down in the familiar setting of Cumhainn. They were dressed as the other Northmen in the boats with their
odd helmets, ring mail, worn furs, and northern-style swords, and they called out to each other in the singsong speech which grated so on Celtic ears. In spite of their heavy arms they waded promptly into the deep water to haul the boats up onto the shore.

Sweyn Barrelchest was roaring from his seat in the stern of the smallboat; he seemed to be giving orders for the unloading of the supplies. The Scots from the Coire kept their seats, only moving aside a little as the skins of beer and sacks of grain were handed over them. They were deaf to Doireann’s pleas to put her wooden chest ashore with the other things. When one of the Northmen waded to the side of the dugout they pointed it out to him, and he shouldered it and carried it off. Doireann saw him throw the chest down on the beach so that it rolled over and over. She winced.

She looked down into the cold water. There was no need for her to be carried ashore too, slipping and struggling in the arms of some Viking. She swung her feet over the side of the boat and jumped down.

It was deeper than she had thought, and she gasped at the coldness of the water, stumbling on the rocky bottom. The Scots watched her curiously, offering no aid. When she was barely clear of the paddles they pushed off from the shore. They spoke no farewell; they seemed anxious to leave her to her fate.

Doireann set her mouth and stalked to the beach. They need not have been so fearful. Let them remember how she left them now, proudly and silently as became her noble blood, and carry this to Calum macDumhnull. They could not know that her legs shook with terror under the wet skirt of the gown.

On the beach she was jostled by the busy Northmen and moved to one side so as to be out of the way of the sorting and carrying off of the stores. She stood, dripping and fearful, waiting for them to claim her. They were all about her, long-legged and toothy, possessed of great strength. The heavy beerskins seemed to fly about like hailstones. She cringed, fearing to be hit by something, of being knocked down in all this hooting and wrestling. But when all had been attended to, they disappeared.

She stood for a long time, holding herself rigid, eyes almost closed, afraid to look up for fear she should see one of them coming to lay hands on her. But at last she understood they had left her quite alone. The wind was icy and she was wet, the patch of beach where she stood plainly deserted.

She was bewildered. All through the journey she had not allowed herself to think on what was to happen to her in the Northmen’s camp. She had wanted only to put on a good face before Calum macDumhnull’s boatmen, to deny her own hopeless terror. It would have been useless to think on the vivid tales of women captured by the Viking. But she had not been deceived by
Calum’s bargaining and his pretense of bride gifts. The same fate awaited her, she knew, and she was baffled only that it was so long in coming. The men who unloaded the boats could not have forgotten her. She had been standing in the midst of them, in plain sight. It must be that they left her alone because she was the property of the old one, this Sweyn Barrelchest. And he had gone away with the rest.

There was no sign of the Northmen now in the meadow, nor in front of their house. She had been so fearful, so certain of being seized, that she had not noticed where they had gone.

She began to walk uncertainly in the direction of the log house, expecting at any moment to see one of them come running back for her. They must be very sure of themselves, very sure that they could easily find her if she tried to escape. She looked up at the granite cliffs over the meadow. There were paths on the cliffs; her kinsmen the Picts used them going to and from the high pastures. And yet it was plain that anyone using these paths could be seen from the beach. The Northmen had probably thought of all this when they chose their camp—the meadow safely surrounded on three sides by the loch, the sea road just outside the bar where the ship was anchored, the cliff at their backs.

She came to the door of the hall and looked cautiously inside. The building seemed empty. Now she could hear voices from the rear, outside. The Northmen were penning up the sheep brought from the Coire. That was why they had seemed to disappear. She hesitated, then decided to enter the house. It was too cold, standing in the wind, wet as she was.

At first she could not see distinctly. The place was dark after the bright morning sun outside, the building lit only by the smoke hole cut in the roof. But as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom she could see a long, empty room, a pile of something like rubbish at the far end. The place seemed to have been put together hastily, but it still showed the craft of men used to working with timber. It appeared weather-tight, or almost so; the Northmen seemed to be still working on stuffing sea grass into the gaps between the logs. A fire pit had been dug in the center of the floor and green wood laid for the evening fire. She forced herself to go forward, filled with dread, and yet curious. She went to the fire pit and looked down into it.

The wood was green. It seemed a poor choice for a fire. Scraps from the logs they had used for building, most likely. It would burn badly, giving off thick clouds of smoke. She wondered why they had not thought to bring driftwood from the seaward beach. That was what the Picts always used when they camped in the meadow. Again she thought of the curious, unfinished, hasty look of the house. She looked up at the rough pine bark of the log walls, the neatly joined corners, and the shaped beams of the roof timbers. It was
well-fashioned. The Northmen did not lack skill. But the whole room seemed incomplete. It had an air of waiting. She sensed it as clearly and sharply as the smell of rosin, the sight of the dust settling in the light from the smoke hole.

She shivered, touched by the Celtic gift of premonition. This house waited for someone other than the men who had made it. Someone or something. It could not be a place for ceremony, a house in which to worship the Northmen’s heathen gods. It had too much the look of a place to be lived in.

At the end of the room she could make out what at first seemed to be a rubbish pile. It was a mound of gear thrown down in disorder. She saw shields, hand axes, coiled leather lines, buckets, and household bowls. She passed the fire pit and went to it. She touched the things lightly with her foot, turning over one or two. They were commonplace enough but with the distinguishing mark of the northlanders. She could see at once that no Scot had made them, especially the carved and painted designs. The decorations were weird and foreign-looking, odd shapes of men and beasts twined together in a knotty pattern.

There was something large in the tangle. She bent and pulled it up and found it to be a chair with a high wooden back. She unhooked a length of fishing line from it and set it on its feet. It was heavily carved with more figures of demons and animal.

Doireann looked about warily. The place was quite empty. There was no one about to challenge what she might or might not do. She sat down on the chair and pulled her feet under it. The ugly carving was uncomfortable, but sitting was better than standing, or squatting on the floor like a servant.

She realized how still the house had become. The noises from the pens in the rear had died away. And in the room, as in all empty places, there lingered a feeling of unseen eyes watching. When she turned, there was nothing, only the sunlight falling from the hole above the fire pit, the far corners of the room standing shadowy and silent. She turned the chair to face the beam of light, looking across the hearth to the door. For a while she kept her eyes on the entrance, waiting. She had pulled the door shut after her; it, too, was dark, and there was no sound to tell that anyone moved without the house.

She leaned back, her head tilted at the top of the chair. She tried to close her eyes for a moment, but they fluttered, the eyelids unwilling, alert. She could not unclench her fists. She was very tired now, and she longed to unbend from her terror, but she could not will her body to relent. She was still tense, rigid, listening fearfully in the silence. She sighed. Perhaps it was for the best. If she softened now she might give way to her panic. It was growing hard enough to keep up the appearance of courage in the still house. The waiting
was gnawing at her determination. If Calum macDumhnull were watching her it would be different. Her hatred for him had always made her strong.

And this hatred was the thing which had destroyed her, she thought bitterly. If she had once been able to give herself over to him, she would not now be sitting so forlornly in the house of the Northmen, waiting for some terrible thing to come to her.

All that remained was her stiff pride and her stubbornness, the only things which Muireach macDumhnull had given his daughter, the only things that had endured. Calum macDumhnull had taken everything else: the honor of the chieftaincy, the lands which should have been hers in the clan portion, the cattle and the flocks in the Coire which were the chief’s lot, even her dead mother’s possessions. Stolen by a redheaded renegade, a cousin, mistakenly adopted by the generous Muireach and called his foster son. Doireann had never forgiven Calum macDumhnull from the time he had put his foot on the standing stone to claim the chieftaincy, a spindly-legged thief with lies in his mouth, a cheat and a coward. She had spat on him and cursed him in the beginning, but this was before she had learned to fear him and his patience which waited long to destroy her.

She stirred. It seemed she had sat a long time. Her back was stiff and cramped from the chair. The silence of the house was all-enveloping. It weighted her down like a cloak. For the first time she was hungry. It seemed an eternity since she had had anything to eat.

The door at the opposite end of the house opened.

Without thinking, she jerked forward from the chair to her feet and stood in wordless, instant panic.

A Northman came into the house carrying a pile of skins in his arms. Even through her terror she could see that he did not look at her. He ignored her as he passed the chair and went to the mound of gear. He stood there for a moment, looking down at it, searching for something. He threw the load of hides down at his feet and shrugged.

She turned her head stiffly as he moved past her, watching him in an agony. He took the topmost skin and went to the pile of gear and began to clear the things away. The shields and weapons he placed carefully against the wall. At the bottom of the mound the outlines of a bed were revealed. It was narrow, but quite long, and had the same carving on the headboard as that which decorated the chair. The Northman took time to tighten the rope framing, putting his foot onto it and kicking it to make sure it was secure. Then he spread the hide over it, whistling as he did so through his teeth. He patted and jerked the hide about, trying it first in one place and then in another, stepping back to look at it critically. When he was satisfied he fetched another hide and spread it on top of the first. As he passed the chair the second time she felt the flick of sharp blue eyes.