Winter Serpent (43 page)

Doireann sought shelter from the sun under the willow trees and broke a switch from their limbs with which to fan away the swarms of gnats which hung over the place. The willow switch with its tag of leaves moved slowly in the air in her hands, and she looked out upon the sun-filled water, the island sailing motionless in its rippling sea and was aware that even here the illusion was of movement, of being carried unresisting on a tide, to an ending which was as yet unseen. Without willing it, she was moving forward, and all her stubbornness would not change it, nor her questioning lend it meaning.

When the child woke she unwound the tartan cloak and held him close to her, brushing the hair from his face with gentle fingers. He was sharper and thinner, wasted by fever, and he moved his body tiredly. When she offered him the breast he took it eagerly, digging his fingers into her flesh, his mouth rough and hurting.

They were both grimed as plowmen from the dirt of the night; Ian’s mouth and nostrils were outlined in black smudges. Examining him, rubbing his face with her thumb to get rid of the dirt, she was shocked at the marks of the sickness. The red blotches were so thick on his face they seemed to melt into one livid mass. Only his fair, damp hair remained to tell of his former beauty. But his skin was cool, wonderfully cool, and she remembered now that she had once heard that the red marks were a sign that this disease waned. He would live.

She rocked him back and forth in her arms as he fed, feeling the rise and fall of his chest against her body as he breathed. Yes, they both lived. They had survived the hot sun of the day. This was true; all else was like a discarded dream.

The people of the Coire… the feasters, the connivers, both great and common… were now but ghosts. Their blood had been spilled and their corpses burned in the fire or left to rot in the very heat which now warmed her in the island sun. In the Coire the faces of those she had once known were pale and already swollen, their spirits cut loose from their bodies and gone to some dim, gray place. They had ceased to exist. Even Calum macDumhnull, on whom she had wasted so much bitterness and so I many thoughts of revenge, was dead. And the luckless Irish curadhs, those young men who had looked forward to their lives. All the chiefs of the district of Lorne who had struggled much to win their fame and position. The women, cut away from their children. The brehons. The Picts. The priests from Iona. A great horde of ghosts. She felt only emptiness when she remembered their quarrels, their triumphs, and their failings which had also been her own.

And Comac Neish.

She thought of the pool in the forest of the Spean and how Comac had seemed to her then with his glittering pale eyes in a sunburned face, the burnished gold collar he always wore about his neck, the crimson cloak. He had been like the hero from an ancient song to her, and she had dreamed too much, desired too much, and now she was sick of it. He was a pale ghost like the rest.

The child thrust his head up to look at her. In spite of their pitiful condition, she smiled at him and he managed a heart-rending grin in return. She pulled him close and squeezed him, and he struggled, protesting her love.

After he had fed she put him down on the inner wrapping of sheepskin and played with him quietly, but he was still weak, and tired easily. When he
grew fretful she turned him over on his stomach and patted him. Instead of his usual squirming he lay still, sucking his fist, smiling at her. He grew drowsy, and after a while he slept.

She rose and went down to the water’s edge. There she knelt in the ferns of the bank and washed her face and hands and scooped up some of the muddy water to drink, drying her hands on the hem of the gown when she had finished. She kept an uneasy eye on the sleeping figure of the child. When she returned to him she noticed a flock of birds flying in from the north, dipping in and out of the ledges of the cliffs.

She lay down beside the child and watched the birds and shivered, even in the sun’s heat. Birds were carriers of omens. It seemed to her that there was something swift and chilling in their flight, the loneness of them in the empty loch, although she knew the birds would be traveling southward early, sped by the drought.

They are only birds, she told herself; they come out of the north each year, and this island is one of their resting places; you fear their coming because it is strange now, and the place is so still.

The flock of birds was close, circling the island. They were larks of some sort and thick as the gnats which hung over the water. They made a great racket, disturbed by the sight of Doireann and the child and the streamer of cloth hung in the trees. She was right; the island was a resting place. They persisted, going up and down in spirals, making a black beating cloud over her head.

The child stirred, and Doireann feared that the noise would awaken him. But suddenly the cloud of birds rose, going up among the beams of sunlight piercing the cliffs. They lengthened like a plume of smoke and drifted away up the loch, their cries wakening the echoes. She sensed that something had driven them away. Something other than the sight of the child and herself.

She sat up.

The water was calm and leaf-choked, and there was nothing to be seen on the tops of the far black peaks. But in the passageway to the sea she saw boats coming. The flash of oars showed her they were not coracles. She shaded her eyes from the glare of the water and could pick out the yellow heads of the Northmen, their winged helmets. They were seeing the streamer even now; one of the figures raised his arm and pointed to the island. The boats veered.

She watched the foreign craft coming through the chasm and in the quiet moment that held them it seemed they were made of the same fabric as the warm air, the pale, sere sunlight. The backs of the Northmen moved at the oars and a stray spark caught their helmets, the dull sheen of metal arms, the gray and brown of fur and leather. No sound, no crying out marred the peace of Cumhainn, and she could not pull her eyes from their steady approach. She
remained seated where she was and put her hand protectively over the child. In that instant she wondered what she should do, imprisoned on the patch of green island, and what she should say to them if speech were allowed her. Only once did she think of death, and the thought was as light as the warmth of the air under the trees.

It did not take long for them to draw near. The boats passed close to the banks of the island, the Northmen vigilant, searching for those who might be hiding there in ambush, observing Doireann nighean Muireach and the sleeping child beside her. Then the boats turned and let the upstream current carry them back, to run ashore in the overhanging trees of the banks.

The Jarl was the first to leap out. She recognized him by his height at once, and saw him use a spear to get a footing on the muddy incline. He half-turned and motioned for two of the Vikings to follow him, making a circling gesture to show them to cover the island. They began to go cautiously, searching the underbrush, while the Jarl approached where she sat. The rest of the Northmen waited in the boats.

As he came toward her, Doireann was overcome with a dread to look at him, but she did not turn away. Instead, a stiff consciousness held her neck, her eyes, and she stared at him and saw that he was outwardly as the rest of the Northmen, naked to the waist in the heat, his shield strapped to his back, carrying the spear, with no sign of the bear beast upon him. If the dead of the Coire were but ghosts, then the Jarl had also put aside the lumbering specter of the battle with them, and there was nothing now but the familiar sight of his impassive face, his hair cleaned and freshly combed, the skin of his chest and shoulders shining with oil, the ear medallions hanging before the braided loops of yellow hair, the low helmet set back from the raised scar on his forehead. Even the buckled leather belt with the hunting knife stuck in it, the linen kilt, the crossgartered hose, and skin boots were as she remembered them. Nothing of the thing which had walked like a beast and wept in its rage.

He stood over her, leaning on his spear. When he raised his hand suddenly, she flinched.

He paused, and his lips tightened.

“So you are thinking then that I had returned to kill you,” he said, and his voice sounded flat and unreal to her ears. “This would not be unreasonable, seeing what has occurred. But you need not be afraid.”

“I am not afraid,” she whispered.

He studied her thoughtfully, and then his eyes fell, and he looked down at the ground and at the butt of the spear resting in the turf by the side of his boot. “Yes, that is true,” he said slowly. “You are not afraid of me. This is a strange thing even now, as I stand before you, that you are not afraid of me, and yet
you have faced the dread berserkr, the beast in his madness.” He paused again. “The Vikings are much impressed with your bravery.”

She looked past him to the boats, the Northmen watching silently.

“Yes, they observe us,” he said, “and doubtless they are wondering what I will say to you, since I have made this strange journey back into the fjord of the Scots. Yet it is fitting that I come for you, finding you in this little island alone and abandoned, to speak with you, and fitting also that I come in the company of the Vikings of the longships. For they know what has happened in the night. They have told me themselves how I came to you in the bear’s spirit, terrible and unknowing, and how you put out your hand to me and cried out with a great magic, and how I then turned from you and did not harm you. The Vikings saw all this, and Sweyn Barrelchest also, but to him it was not a thing of courage but an omen. And now he is dead.”

His words had seemed to drift all about her like dead leaves, without meaning, but she started at the mention of Sweyn’s name.

“Yes,” he told her, “my friend is dead. It is a hard price to pay for my vengeance on you. He was my father’s friend and after that my true friend. When he died on the beach beyond this place, I was dreaming the bjorn dream and did not heed his going. But he made a great wish, a death wish. And this is what shall be remembered of him. He gave my son his name. It is a binding oath, this death wish, and it was his blood which sealed it. Sweyn Thorstensson, this was the name my friend cried, and he gave my child to Odin. I see now he did this to break my fate.”

“My child’s name is Ian!” she cried. He ignored her.

“Sweyn’s ghost is on my son now,” he continued, “and Odin will protect him, not the bjorn.” He lifted his eyes and looked into her face, and seemed to find something there. “The Vikings are right,” he said suddenly. “You are changed since last I saw you. You are very thin and carry dark shadows under your eyes such as misery brings. Still, you are very beautiful to me even so, and I would claim you. It is because of you that the spell of the berserkr was broken. And this remains, that there is no fear in you, only that which resists me and is proud.”

She stared at him and saw on his face the sternness which told her nothing, the deliberateness in his speech as he stood over her, his shadow falling across the sleeping figure of the child. Although she knew he waited for her to speak, she was silent.

The silence extended itself, and finally he gave a slight shrug.

“Yes,” he said at last, “it is true, I did not expect you to greet me joyfully.” And she could not believe that she saw uncertainty in him for the first time as he stood, the sunshine beating on his fair hair, his face wooden, half-shaded. He stirred then, and moved the spear that he grasped tightly.

“Yet I would speak to you,” he said suddenly. “It is difficult to do so. Although I have been thinking on what I would say to you if I found you. I have had little luck in composing the words. But I would speak to you now above all else that is to be done, for there will be little time aboard the longships for such matters.”

He looked directly at her then, and his face was determined and his voice raised.

“Since I have little skill with words,” he said, “I begin with the beginning of things, such as my name, which you have heard, it being not the berserkr, nor even the Jarl of the longships, but Thorsten, son of Eiric, son of Knut, of that part of the land of the Norse which is called Sognefjord. This is my name.

She was astonished at this odd speech, and involuntarily she moved away from him, closer to the sleeping child. But he was absorbed in his effort and seemed not to notice.

“But my name of all names before this day was not Thorsten Eiricsson but the first mentioned, the berserkr, the dread bjorn brother who is beast before he is man. In this way, now, has my fate been changed, that I take once again the name which was given me and cast aside the other. It may be that this is hard for you, a foreigner, to understand. You see me now as I stand before you, and appear as Thorsten Eiricsson, the Jarl of the longships, but you know me also from the night past in the hall of the Scots, as the bear, the one who destroys. You have seen, from your time spent in our camp, how the Norse regard the berserkr, the one who is esteemed yet apart from the rest. How he is invincible and feared and unknown. Yet I would also have you know this, that despite the fame which the berserkr has, he is dread, unknown to himself. Respected, yes, feared, yes, the man and the beast linked together with great strength. Nevertheless the beast will kill, and the man cannot escape his crimes. This is the truth of it.”

He was looking at her to see if she followed his words, and saw only that she stared at him, her face blank.

“Well, so it has been with me,” he said heavily. “For once when I was in the berserkr rage I killed my brother in a quarrel over nothing. Even now I remember no part of it, not even that Sweyn Barrelchest came to me and struck me, and my neck snapped back, it is said, with enough force to break it. While I lay as if dead, dreaming the bjorn dream, the men carried away my brother’s body so that I should not see it, for, being weaponless, I had torn his body with my hands and teeth. Like an animal, like the bear whose spirit was in me. I remembered nothing, only that I had been angry, and I had called the bjorn to aid me, not considering that death would be his weapon.