Winter Serpent Read online

  The big Northman knew how to bargain. He had the Viking gift for trade and sensed the proper worth of things despite Calum’s protests. The rest of the Vikings sat silent, drinking their beer thirstily, their faces carefully expressionless.

  As darkness came on, the women deserted the service at the long table to gather uneasily by the hearth. The few Picts that were left in the Coire were outside, gathering together the stores for the Vikings. When it had grown late, the Northmen nodding with drink, some having lain their heads down among the cups on the table, the women took the opportunity to slip away to the sleeping cubicles. Calum and the Viking chief took no note of this; they were deep in their talk.

  In the early morning hours, when Doireann had been long asleep, Calum came to her. He was very drunk; he had to hold onto the curtains of the partition to keep from falling. Doireann sprang up from her bed instantly, for she was well aware of what he was like when he had been drinking.

  “Doireann nighean Muireach,” he called thickly. “Are you awake?”

  “No, I am still asleep,” she answered him, “but bellow loudly enough and you will waken me.”

  He snickered, moving toward the sound of her voice. “Do not be afraid. I have come to you with good news.”

  “I am not afraid of you,” she said quietly, “but if you do not leave this place I will scream and bring your house in an uproar, and the Northmen will laugh at this fine Scots chieftain who creeps about in the women’s booths. More, that is, than they already laugh at you.”

  “Now, my little sister,” he said. He belched. “My dearly beloved foster sister. How must you misunderstand me? For many months the dear burden of you has lain heavy on my heart. For you are without a husband even now, and did you not come to me once of your own accord and ask me to find a husband for you?”

  She frowned. This had been one of her plans to escape him which come to nothing.

  “Now, my heart is happy and yours must be also, for I have found just the man.”

  “Now? In the middle of the night? Her voice was scornful.

  “Yes, yes, this is what has made me so happy, Doireann, daughter of

  Muireach who was once brave and noble chieftain of this clan.”

  He found her wrist and seized it. His breath was sour in the narrow space. “I felt once that I might have been the man you searched for. Perhaps if once you had let me touch you.…” He jerked at her arm. “But, even so, how happy your father would have been to see you married to me before he died, the two bloods made one.”

  She wrenched her arm away from him and it hit the oak boards of the wall. “But, Doireann,” he said craftily, “I could never have given you happiness.” She snorted at this.

  “So, I have found you a better man, a much better man, and you will doubtless agree, since you have this low opinion of your foster brother and chieftain. This Sweyn of the Norse pirates has come with gold and, now that he has seen you, he wishes to pay a good bride price and take you with him at once. He says that he wishes to take you back to the foreign camp, tonight, and since you gave this matter into my hands long ago, I have agreed.”

  He was watching her closely, trying to see her face in the dark. He had done his worst and wished now to savor her defeat, but she would not give him his triumph. She had long hated and resisted him, and she would not satisfy him now.

  “As you say,” she whispered, “a better man.” He sighed.

  “Now, as you know, it is not my way as a generous man to let you go from this hall without proper bride gifts. I have had one of the house women fetch some things of your mother’s. Not too much, for it would not be right to tempt the Northmen. And there is also food waiting on the hearth for you. But you must hurry, for this big Norseman is impatient.”

  He left her, and she allowed herself to slide down upon the bed, numbed by his treachery. He had bidden her to hurry, and for once she must obey him, for if she lingered to think over his words the full meaning of them would destroy her. This is what Calum macDumhnull wished to see. She would not give way to her terror. She had always known his hatred of her, and knew how futile it would be to seek mercy from him now. This was his final cruelty to her; she guessed he had been thinking on it ever since she had asked him for a husband.

  She would never know if the Northmen had come to ask for women or if Calum had put the idea to them himself. Whatever way it had been, it was certain her dishonor was complete. No other woman, no bound girl or byre-woman among the Picts would suffer as much as she, a woman of rank, in being given over to this wandering band of raiders. From this night her father’s kinsmen would talk of her as though she were among the dead, and it would not be long before she, too, would wish this had been the true ending of it.

  She gathered her few possessions. There was not much that could be called her own here in the chief’s house, in the hall where her father had once lived proudly, where her mother had claimed the rank of Princess of the Picts. There was only the small wooden chest under the bed, which held her two gowns, the arasaids, a linen headcloth, a comb, and some string to bind up her hair.

  As she prepared her leave-taking the well-known sounds of the night came to her: the breathing of the sleepers in their cubicles, the fretting of a child, the distant crackle of the fire on the hearth. These small things were so familiar and suddenly so painful to her that she was forced to stop, resisting them, making a great effort to keep hold of her defiance and her pride. There was nothing else so important to her now as to show Calum and the others that she was undefeated.

  When she came out, the Northmen were grouped at the table, waiting. Their arrangements had been made and they had secured a large supply of stores: sheep, hogs, skins of beer, and water and ground meal. Calum macDumhnull was promising them an extra boat from the Coire to transport the things. The Northmen nodded. It was agreed they would send the Scots dugout back on the tide. To one side of them stood a freewoman from the household, sleepy-eyed and frightened, holding an ivory box in her arms. Calum sprawled drunkenly on the far side of the table, a cup of beer in his hand.

  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 brid
e 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. T
here 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.