Winter Serpent Read online

  In the beginning of time, the tales of the Picts said, those who held the land north of the wall of the old Romans were all Picts. It was the misfortune of the old race that the Gaels who called themselves Scots had come to take the land from them, coming in ships from over the sea in Eire. This part that the Gaels had claimed they now called Dalriada, and they had set up their king in Dunadd. But the east of Alba was still ruled by the king of the Cruithne in Inverness. Split in two the land now was, on the west held by the Gaelic-speakers and on the east by the speakers of the old tongue, the dark people, who remembered what they had once held and how their chiefs had once dug their earth houses in the spot which was now called Coire Cheathaich.

  This had all happened a long time ago. The earth houses had long been trampled by the cattle of the Scots chieftains in Cumhainn, and the Cruithne who remained in the loch kept the herds for the Gaels and did their hunting, although they kept their own tongue and their blood ties and kinship. And, as things will happen, there was some mingling of the two peoples. Muireach macDumhnull was one of those who had married a Pict. The old chief had taken Ithi, a princess of the dark people, as his wife, and his children had been of both houses. The old chieftain had been a wise man who ruled the Gaels and the Cruithne firmly and put down the bloody feuds which plagued both races.

  How could it be, the Picts had since asked one another, that a just God could take away the fair and honored old chief, Muireach, and allow the Red Foxes, Calum macDumhnull and his brother, to set themselves up in his place. Yet this is what had come to pass when the old chief’s son Fergus had been killed in the wars in Lothian. The old man had been struck with the news of his only son’s death and had taken to his bed, grieving and feverish. There had been sick children in the hall, but no one had thought the old man was more than grief-stricken. They had never thought he would take a child’s illness.

  Yet as the day passed they saw him become black-faced and choking, and they knew that his death was upon him.

  As he lay in bed the old chief’s rasping breaths could be heard through the house and into the yard, and the men of the Coire gathered to listen and shake their heads. Muireach macDumhnull, who had been a famed warrior, knew also that he was doomed, and he cursed, the evil way death was coming upon him. He begged the women to prop him up in his bed and put his shoes on his feet and his sword in his hand, but they would not. Instead, they called the priests from Iona who came with bells and crosses to pray loudly and long over the sound of the old man’s cursing and choking. Whatever then Muireach could have said about his will in the matter of a new chief was drowned in the racket. In a fit of temper and strangling he lay back on the bed and died.

  The clans of Lorne, the chieftains both high and low of the kingdom of the Dalriad Scots, gathered to do him honor in his death. Kinsmen and kinswomen from the capital at Dunadd, from far Ulaidh in Eire, traveled to his burying feast with their slaves and horses until there was a great throng in Cumhainn. Macoul, who was chief over all the petty chieftains of Lorne District, came with fifty chiefs and they were chosen to build the funeral fires and sing the warriors’ laments, it being well-known that only chiefs may bury a chief.

  In the last day of the feasting the nobles came to Muireach’s bier and thrust their torches and spears into the ground and began the wailing that was old as the Gaels in the west. The kinsmen in their checkered woolens struck their copper shields together many times so that the air was shattered with the noise and the glens echoed to the grief for the departed.

  Since Muireach macDumhnull claimed the blood of kings they did not bury him in Cumhainn but bore him down to the sea, over the bar of the loch, to Iona, the lonely barren isle, the place of ancient pagan barrows and the Christian graves. There they buried him in the ground, and because the days of the druids were not quite forgotten, they stuffed oak leaves into his hands and bread into his mouth for the last journey into the darkness of death.

  On the trip back through the rough inland passages Ithi, the old man’s wife, threw herself from the boat into the sea and sank like a stone. The priests were greatly displeased and prophesied much woe would come from such evil custom.

  The priests were right. Calum macDumhnull proclaimed himself tanist, or chief apparent, at once, and called upon his hulking brother Donn as captain of the dun to support him. The clans were confused and angry, and an appeal was sent at once to Macoul, the high chieftain, and to the Ard-Ri in Dunadd. A distant cousin who had good claim to the kinship hurried to the Coire to meet with the dissatisfied clans in Cumhainn, but on the journey he met with a mysterious accident and his warriors turned back. Calum macDumhnull had met with the Macoul and persuaded the high chief to let him continue as tanist for a while, until a proper chieftain could be chosen. Calum was clever, and he was quick to begin the changes, backed by his brother’s might, which drove out the decent men from the Coire, and left only stragglers and crofters and broken men without clan ties eager to make uncertain gain for themselves.

  Calum was lucky. He had invincible luck. And his twin brother Donn was stupid but very strong, with a wild boar’s courage. The High King in Dunadd, the Ard-Ri, was busy with his wars with the Angles in Lothian and could not interfere with what seemed like a lawful succession well-bolstered by kinship. In vain the clans protested that there was no law now in the Coire, quarrels and the spilling of blood being common even under the chief’s roof. Vengeance suits and claims of injustice were ignored by Calum macDumhnull and he made no pretense of sitting in judgment in matters contrary to his own interests. The priests were driven away, crying scandal to heaven, and the bishop at Iona was provoked into putting Cumhainn under a ban. The monks would not come there to baptize the children nor legalize the marriages. Wise men avoided the place and gave it the name of a nest of thieves, and worse.

  Calum was satisfied. He was chief in an age which set no store by his peculiar talents, and he had come far for his skinny, devious person. Unfortunately, he could find no woman of equal rank to live with him. He had been forced to take to himself Sine, a herder’s daughter, as large and dull and slow-moving as he was quick and clever. It had once been thought that Calum would marry the child of Muireach, Doireann, when she was of an age to wed, but Doireann had hated her cousin and foster brother from the moment that he had put her dead father’s cloak about his shoulders and stepped upon the standing stone to take his chief’s oaths.

  Calum began to wonder why he had not killed Muireach’s child when it would have been easy, for she had soon grown beautiful and womanly. When she bent over him to serve him at meals her body brushed his; he could smell the odor of her hair and know the maddening fact of her closeness. If she had been ugly he could have killed her, but now he lay awake at night fancying he could hear the movements of her body as she slept, and grew to desire her more than he thought he could desire anything. His life became a constant plot to meet her in dark places, to surprise and maul her, helpless in his own excitement. He thought often of taking her by force and spent much time devising schemes to overpower her, all of which he eventually abandoned. He was terrified of his failure to conquer her, afraid that once he had cornered her he would be unable to take her. It set the seal of his humiliation. He would be destroyed by her mockery. He decided to get rid of her.

  In desperation he seized upon an idea. He would put her away from him, but not out of life. He would have his triumph and be able to savor her agony. The idea of her beauty in the hands of the lustful Northmen exhilarated him.

  The gift of the knife, he thought, had been rather clever.

  3

  Doireann nighean Muireach was sitting in the Northmen’s log hall, holding the gilded Irish harp. She had sung one of the songs of the remsecela which introduce the Tain Bo Chulaigne, the account of the cattle raid of Cooley, and then, as an afterthought, one of the

  lovely laments of Deirdre. She was half-crooning to herself. The day was dreary and there was nothing to be done outside in the chill rain. The Nor
thmen had crowded into the small wooden hall and were now lying about idly, a few sleeping with their cloaks drawn over their heads to shut out the noise. The others argued restlessly among themselves or worked a little at the braiding of new lines and the mending of fishing gear. Time hung exceedingly heavy on all of them, and Doireann, searching for something to do, had unwrapped the harp she had brought from Coire and strummed it, humming softly to herself.

  The dampness of the weather had put the harp out of tune. She tinkered with the screws of the frame, thinking to adjust it, and as she struggled with the thing a silence fell. The Northmen had noticed the sounds above their own clamor and turned to her, willing to be entertained. She looked up suddenly to find all their eyes on her.

  She tried to slip the harp to the floor but a young warrior called Raki jumped up from his seat and came to her and took the harp from her hands. He held his head close to the frame of the instrument and plucked at the strings confidently, turning the screws until the tone was somewhat sweeter than it had been before. Then he thrust it on her, gesturing to show that she should play and sing for them.

  Doireann shook her head, no, and put the harp into her lap and covered it with her arms. But Sweyn, who was seated by the chieftain’s bed, lifted a big hand and pointed at her.

  “Yes,” he shouted. “Take the little harp and sing a song for us now, for it is dull enough.”

  She set her mouth stubbornly while the men looked at her. If she dared she would like to take the harp and break it here in front of them to show how she despised them. Because it had been her brother Fergus’ harp, it was especially dear and comforting to her, and she balked at using it for their pleasure. But Sweyn still pointed commandingly and her courage fell away.

  “That is a nice song,” Sweyn urged. “The little song you were singing before.” She opened her mouth to sing the lament again and found to her disgust

  that her voice shook.

  That which was all the beauty of the sky

  And which was most dear to me

  Thou hast destroyed. Oh, great my anguish!

  I shall not be healed of it till my death!

  There was a silence, and then the Norse chieftain spoke to Sweyn, asking him something. Sweyn turned to her.

  “My lord Jarl wishes an explanation.” She looked back at him sullenly.

  “I do not understand you.”

  The finger pointed at her again.

  “Now, this is no answer,” he told her. “The Jarl wishes to have the meaning of what you have sung.”

  She took her time, thinking of the proper words. It was not easy. The story of Deirdre would elude them, she was sure, for it was highly colored and fanciful, and was the story of a great love. She began to speak slowly and carefully to Sweyn, and he relayed the Norse version to the Jarl. The others listened, frowning.

  Deirdre had run away from the house of Conchobar, High King of Ireland, Doireann related. She had gone with Naoise of the strong arms, her lover, and his two brothers and had fled to Scotland. But Conchobar, lusting for Deirdre, the most beautiful of women, had tricked them through promises of safe return, and then he had killed Naoise. The poor captive Deirdre had sung her lament in the house of Conchobar as he gloated over her. “Oh, great my anguish! I shall not be healed of it till my death!”

  The Northmen exchanged skeptical looks. A song was not a song unless it told of battles and great courage, so what kind of song, then, was this?

  But the sick man seemed to take a great interest in it. Sweyn spent some time explaining the finer points to him.

  The Norse Jarl propped himself up on his elbow and addressed himself to Doireann carefully in the Armorican tongue.

  “Now, this is a singular thing,” he said haltingly. “For it seems this woman, this Deirdre, had a wyrd which was foreordained and which she could not escape.”

  She stared at him. He had used a Norse word which meant nothing to her. Sweyn explained swiftly in Gaelic.

  “There is no such thing,” she declared. This seemed to annoy the giant.

  “Wyrd, wyrd,” he insisted. He looked at Sweyn, who supplied the Gaelic word again. “Fate, fate.”

  “I do not know this fate or wyrd, as you would call it,” she maintained stubbornly. She tried to speak slowly so that he would understand her. “Deirdre was born with great beauty, and in this she had a power over men. But she was foolish and followed her heart for love of Naoise and so she destroyed them both. If men desired her they should have paid the price of her desires. A clever woman would have well used Conchobar the king for the power that he had to protect her.”

  Sweyn shifted uneasily and frowned, but his chief was already busy composing an answer in the Celtic speech.

  “That is foolishness,” the Jarl said finally. “No woman can use her beauty to change her destiny. All destinies are foreordained. Was there not a prophecy when she was born that such a thing would happen? And did it not come to be? The Norns had cast the thread of her life and it could not be undone.”

  “The Norns are the women who spin the thread of life,” Sweyn volunteered. “Why do you not take up your harp and play more?”

  The girl glowered at them. The man on the bed lay twisting some newly braided lines about his fist, his followers spread about on the floor watching, their heads turning first to him as he spoke, and then to her as she answered. In their faces she could see the curious intentness they had for him. The Northmen were usually restless and quarrelsome, yet before their chief always watchful, with respect in their manner. That he was weak and unable to lead them at the moment seemed unimportant. She looked again at the giant of a man with his flowing yellow hair. He was big enough and powerful enough to have a natural leadership over them. But it was something more, perhaps the eyes, that caught and held one; flat, dead-looking, they were, as if the soul wandered somewhere else, out of the living body, in the company of demons and ghosts.

  Her scalp prickled and she felt chilled in the middle of the sultry room. It does not help me to lament the unfortunate Deirdre, she thought suddenly, for it is the daughter of Muireach macDumhnull who needs my anguish. When this Jarl puts his hands on me I shall come to great sorrow, for he will rip my body without caring and not even hear my screams.

  The faces before her seemed suddenly to rush up like a wave, and then recede. She swallowed, her palms wet with sweat.

  “The Jarl wishes an answer to his question,” Sweyn’s voice said, as if far away. “What?” she cried. They looked at her impatiently.

  “He says is it not so that this Deirdre was cursed, that her fate was decided when she was born?”

  “Whatever I said, this is so,” she stammered. “I never fashioned the song. It was an old song before I was born, a song from before the times of the coming of the priests.” She put her hand to her head. “If it said that Deirdre was fated, then so she was. I only said that she should have put Naoise aside for Conchobar who was powerful and could protect her. In this way she could have thwarted her fate; she would submit to Conchobar and live with him, nursing her hatred but not showing it.”

  Sweyn snorted.

  “One cannot change one’s fate,” the Jarl said. “This woman could never have lived with a man that she hated. A woman could never conceal her hatred so cleverly.”

  “Let us sing some good songs, heh?” Sweyn said loudly. “Songs of the dragon-slayers and the good fight.”

  “What is this song but words?” Doireann offered with confusion. “What is a love like Deirdre’s that we should die for it, or even fate, that we should not fight it? The priests of my country say there is no such thing as fate, only God. But it is the same thing, for then they say that a man should submit to the will of God. There is no difference. My father, who was a great man, used to say that life does not concern these arguments. He said it was only a struggle to keep the belly full and keep one’s children from the winter hunger and sickness, and to keep clear of the quarrels of others. I believe what he taught me, that li
fe is not a matter of fate, nor of love such as Deirdre’s, nor even of God. Life is a duty and a wish to endure.”

  The Jarl was leaning forward to catch her words.

  “Endure!” he said quickly. “Man needs to know this: that he cannot escape his fate. That is what must be endured.”

  “Now it seems to me,” Sweyn broke in, “that you are both speaking of the same thing.”

  “It may be that we are,” the Jarl said.

  The Northman in the horsetail headgear spoke up.

  “They are an insane race, these Irish,” he said, “for I have heard them boast of the Christian priest they call Columcille setting forth on the stormy sea from Eire in a little wicker craft which is no bigger than the basket the housewife uses for her grain. So small it is that a man can scarce sit in it. With this, now, and twelve others also in their baskets, paddling, they would take to the sea!”

  “Is this a true thing, Hallfreor?” Sweyn asked, surprised.

  “Yes, it is a true thing,” the girl cried. “They took to the sea, traveling to

  Alba, and converted the savage Picts to Christian ways. This was long ago.” The Northmen were immediately impressed with the folly of crossing the sea in baskets, as they called the coracles.

  “This is not like the Norse who have great ships in which to travel the sea road,” Hallfreor boasted. “There is none better than the clinker-built craft made of sturdy oak wood, which bends with the wave. The ship of the Norse is the mighty sea-rider. In such ships may warriors venture forth to challenge the might of old Njord, the sea god. I speak not only of the famed warships such as we have brought to this place, but even of the smaller vessels, the fishing boats and the like. All are perfectly made with the Northmen’s great skill. A man is proud to put his trust in such ships.”