He stayed quietly looking at me for a long pause. Then he stood up and pulled me up after him. He pulled me close against him, my head into his shoulder. I could feel that his body was shaking with sobs, although he was quiet and his one eye was dry. After a while my anger broke and I cried too. Cried my grief for my father, and my uncles, my uncles' women, my brother and sisters and cousins, all the folk who were rotting down at the stead. Cried for my terror and my flight and my cold night on the beach. Cried for my weariness and my uncertainty about what to do.
After a while the stench of my body overwhelmed me and I broke away from him. As I turned away to the bothy he moved to follow, and I said: "Wait there."
It sounds stupid now. It was the first thing either of us said. In the bothy I found Anna and Kep crouched shivering in separate corners. I said nothing to either of them. I took a sark, a tunic and some breeches from a pile of Rognvald's clothes that I'd dumped the day before.
I ducked round the back of the bothy and ran down through the woods to the nearest waterfall. There I threw off my fouled clothes, climbed into the beck, and scrubbed myself all over. I bitterly regretted not searching out the soap. Drying myself as best I could I climbed into my brother's clothes and started back up to the bothy.
I should say here that I learned in those days why women don't wear breeks. Later, Anna showed my how to wind a breach cloth of fine linen, but without it coarse homespun is not comfortable. Back in the bothy I found that Lochlann had made a fire, and water was heating in the old pot I'd taken from the forge. He was skinning a red deer fawn, and Kep was sitting by him begging for scraps. Anna was cowering in the furthest corner.
"Hello Kirsten", he said.
"Hello" -- to my shame I started to weep again. "Ah, Lochlann, why have you waited so long?"
"I came as soon soon as I heard you calling."
"Lochlann, I have been calling you for years. Why did you come so late? Why did you not come to find me when you left your boat in the voe?"
He stood up, hooked the carcass on a peg on a rafter, and came to hold me. I held him off.
"Why did you not come?"
"I'm sorry, Kirsten. I did not realise that it was important."
I shook my head, unable to find anything to say. I went out to collect more firewood, but more to be alone a while. The short spring day was ending, and dusk was falling fast. It was full dark before I went back.
He had a stew of venison and spring herbs simmering in the pot on the edge of the fire. he had oatcakes sitting to keep warm on the griddle on which he'd made them. The smell was wonderful. He sat, cross-legged, on the floor at the side of the hearth, the fire catching lights in his green silk sark. Kep, obviously completely contented, had his head on Lochlann's knee. I came in and added my sticks to the heap. I sat across the hearth from him.
"Will you share the food?"
"Please", I said -- "thank you."
He said something, in a gutteral language I didn't understand, to Anna and she got up out of the corner where she'd been cowering. We ate together. I could see Anna relax; I could feel the tension leaving me. The food was good, savoury, warming, plentiful. After we'd eaten, Anna went back to the furthest bedplace, rolled herself in furs and was silent. Lochlann and I sat across the fire, and we were silent too. After a while, the silence felt all right. The fire gradually died down.
At last I realised that I was cold, and tired.
"Do you remember that first night, on the beach?"
He nodded.
"Do you remember that we lay together, but not as a man lies with a woman?"
He nodded.
"Tonight I will lie with you, whatever you do, because I am alone and afraid. But I do not want to be treated as a woman. Do you understand?"
He nodded.
I took my mantle to the bedplace nearest the fire. I pummelled the heather in it around until it was reasonably even. I laid my mantle over it carefully, smoothing it neatly. I took his mantle, and laid it out over mine, and laid some furs over it. I went outside to make myself ready for the night. When I came back, I said "would you go outside for a while, while I get into bed? "
for there were no curtains to the bedplaces in the bothy. He got up, and ducked out through the door into the night. I sat on the log at the edge of the bedplace, gathering courage. Then quickly, I removed all my clothing. I folded my clothes carefully beside the bed, and slipped in under his mantle. I had never gone to bed without at least a shift on before, not even when I'd slept alone, which in all truth was not often. I have never known why I did then.
After a short while, he ducked back in through the doorway, his sark over his shoulder. The glow from the fire glinted off the wetness on his face and arms. He knelt by the fire, and dried himself on his sark. He came over and sat, as I had, on the edge of the bed, and started to unlace those long brogues of his. I saw his gaze fall on my clothes, and his face grew still. He looked at me, but I said nothing. I was afraid, then, and I think he knew it. He laid a hand, gently, on my cheek for a moment, and turned back to his brogues. He pulled them off, and his stockings too. He unbuckled his great belt. Then he lifted the side of the mantle, and slipped in beside me.
"Lochlann --"
"yes, Kirsten?"
"I know I'm not an important person in your life, but you are the only person I've ever cared about who is still alive."
Slowly and with great attention, he lifted my head onto his shoulder with one hand, laying the other arm under my neck. It crept around until his hand rested on my shoulder. The hand that had held my head moved gently away, and a moment later I felt it come to my waist, as cautious as a doe come to a clearing. Gently we pulled one another close. My fear fell away from me, and sleep came to me on the warm, salty smell of him.
In the morning, he was up and out of bed before I awoke. I felt a sudden panicky fear at his absence, but then saw him at a newly lit fire preparing oat cakes. I'm not proud of how I felt: but he was not only my childhood hero, he was all I had left. I didn't know him, and I didn't fool myself -- I knew that I didn't know him, and that my picture of him was mostly childish imagining. But I had nothing else. He was talking quietly with Anna in that language I could not understand, and I felt abandoned and lost and excluded and jealous. But he heard me as I moved, and came over at once.
"Good morning, Kirsten."
I reached for his hand, and when he put it in mine, pulled it close against my cheek. He watched me closely, as if unsure what to do.
"Have you slept well?"
I nodded. He leaned down, and kissed me gently on my brow. Then he disengaged his hand, and went back to his cooking. I turned back the covers, and sat up. He glanced around, and, seeing me naked, carefully kept his back to me until I had dressed and been out to wash.
We sat in the grass at the edge of the birches, watching the morning sun glitter off the tarn. Lochlann said to me: "have you thought what you will do, Kirsten?"
A young mallard duck sailed over our heads, to land with a long splash just beyond the green spears that would soon bear flag irises.
"I have no plans, Lochlann. There is nowhere I can go."
"There's nowhere? have you no relatives you could go to, or neighbours who would take you in?"
A mallard drake, all flashing greens and purples, swung over us to crash into the still waters beyond the duck. She turned to swim away.
"My father and my brother and my sisters and one of my aunts are in the meat yard down there", I said -- "my uncle Olaf went a viking, bold man. And he got what vikings deserve. My Aunt Ragna married a man who went to settle in Eire -- but I hear the Northmen are all thrown out of Eire now, and I don't know where she may be. As for my mother -- as for my mother...."
The big drake swam swiftly after the little duck.
"Look you, watch out there..."
I pointed to the ducks on the tarn, and the drake did what I expected him to do, in the way that mallards will, so that she was half drowned and I was well more than half sickened.
"That's how anyone will welcome friendless slaves' daughter of my age."
He nodded, grimly. He knew that it was so.
"and" -- I went on, looking hard into his one eye -- "I've a mind to choose whom I lie with."
We sat in silence again. The tarn did not seem so restful now, but steely, and threatening.
"I have no home to give you, nor time to find you safety, Kirsten. I am awaited beyond the mountains, and in truth I don't know but that it's my death that's waiting for me. I cannot take you with me... Look, is there anywhere you could go before the winter?"
"Lochlann, there is nowhere I can go, not before the winter and not after it -- and it will be hard push for two folk alone to live through a winter here. But what would you have me do, Lochlann? Would you have me a bed slave like my mother?"
Lochlann looked east to the mountains, quickly, strained.
"I must go, Kirsten, and I must go soon. I have to be at the thing at Altborg by midsummer. But look, will you stay here until the wild geese fly south?"
"There is nowhere I can go. I shall be here, or dead."
His head snapped back to me -- "Kirsten, you will not kill yourself!"
"I will wait here, if you ask me. I will not kill myself before the first frosts of winter. What then, Lochlann? What will I do then?"
"There is a place..." he said, slowly. "There is a place I could take you, where you would be safe, I think. I will take you there when the geese fly, if I am able..."
"Is it your home, Lochlann? I want you to take me to your home."
"It is as near to home as anywhere is to me now. It is where I spend the winters, if I can. I will see to it you are welcome there."
That night, when we had eaten, and Anna had retired, I told him of all that had passed since the first raid. I told him of the long months I waited for his return. I told him of the raids that had failed to find us. I told him of the raid that had not. I told him how laughable and harmless the raiders had looked. I told him how Rognvald had fleered the ponies, and drawn steel. I wept. He gathered me to him, and I wept into his shoulder for a long time. I told him of the slaughter in the yard. I told him of my flight to the voe. I told him of my filth and my shame, crouched under the boat. He held me to him in silence, as the embers died. Last of all I told him of my lost maidenhead, muttering in shame into his shirt.
After a while he shook his head, as a dog shakes water after swimming among ice.
"Time to sleep now, Kirsten. Let it rest."
I hugged him briefly, and scrambled up. Lochlann moved to the doorway. Before he got to it, he turned.
"Kirsten" -- "yes" -- "it would be easier if you kept your sark on."
We looked at each other through the gloom. In the silence our breathing was loud. I could hear the tension in his chest, and in mine.
"Lochlann, I know... I know. But..."
I took it off then, facing him, feeling my dugs cold against the night. Without taking my eyes from the blur of his face, I knelt and took off my brogues. I let my belt fall to the floor and stepped out of my breeks. Naked, I stood, facing him. I went to him. I put my arms around him. I couldn't find the words I needed to say to him. In the end all I said was: "It's cold, Lochlann. Come to bed quickly."
Again, he kept his breeches on when he joined me, and again I was grateful for it. But tonight I was conscious, as I had not been before, of the hot hard thrust of his cock within the rough fabric, and I was grateful for that too. Again, he gathered me to him as one gathers cobweb, and I was comforted by it. But when I put my arms round him and snuggled close, he pulled me to him as if he would never let go; and I was still more comforted.
Neither of us slept quickly that night, although we lay still and quiet; and so light was stealing in through the doorway when I awoke. I rolled, and propped myself on an elbow, looking down into his face. In his sleep, he looked young. I wanted to lay my cheek against his. I wanted to tangle my fingers in his hair. I wanted to shake him fiercely by the shoulders. I didn't want to wake him.
At last, when Anna started breaking sticks for the fire, he roused. But when he reached sleepily to pull me to him, my fear came to me again, and I pulled sharply away. And stopped. We froze, still, silent, each afraid of the next move. Suddenly I scrambled out of bed:
"No. Stay there..."
I pulled on my breeches, and hauled my sark over my head. Then I came back to him. I slipped in between the mantles, gently, cautiously, as he had done two nights before. I reached for him, softly, tenderly, fearing to frighten as he had feared to frighten me. Now I pulled him to me, pulled his head into my shoulder, pulled his body against mine. And to my astonished delight, he buried his face in my breast and wept, quietly, bitterly. And when at last he was still, still we lay there.
We ate our porrage, that morning, slowly, breaking off to look at one another, to reach over and touch gently. And after we had eaten, I sat in the doorway, watching the warmth of the morning drinking up the mist from the meadow, watching Lochlann sort and restow the contents of his pack. Two spare sarks, in glowing colours, gold and blue, each as worn and patched as the green one that he wore. A comb of walrus-ivory, beautifully carved in beast-shapes. Smoked herrings, dried, and wrapped in an old rag. A small book, with plain black covers. A bag of oatmeal. A sharp-stone, a stone which knows where north is, and a stone through which you can find the sun, each wrapped in a separate cloth. Some small jars containing ointments, and a roll of cloth with many pockets, holding herbs.
"Love" -- I'd said it before I knew it, and when I had, I was glad of it -- "Love, you must go."
"I know.
He paused, crouching by the sark he had been folding. Then quickly, with decision, he rolled it up, and sorted the rest of his gear into the satchel. He folded his mantle into a tight, long roll, and bound it to the shoulder strap. He took up his staff, and swung the pack onto his shoulder.
"Kirsten..."
"Yes, love?"
"Come with me a little?"
We walked east through the long morning over the easy slopes of the high pasture, over the deer-bitten turf. At the height of the day we ate some oatcakes as we walked, and washed them down with water from a spring as we passed it. Overhead, the soft sky rang with the shrill and chatter of larks hanging in the gentle wind of springtime, which ruffled over the growing grass, and we walked on, not holding hands, not talking much, but together.
At last we came to where the forest closed in the Eastern end of the pasture, but still we did not part. We walked though the outlying blackthorn, stark of white flower on bare branch. We walked on through the slender birches in the woodshaw, springing into a green as delicate as the sky. We came to a glade by a still pool, and in the glade to a rock. The hillside here faced south, and the rock was warm in the strong spring sun. He laid down his staff and pack, and leaned against it.
"Here the forest starts in earnest, Kirsten. Here we must part. I must go on, and you must go back."
I held myself against him, and there, in the glade, in the bright of noonday, we kissed for the first time, our hands moving over each others bodies like restless treecreepers. Now I could lay my cheek against his. Now I could tangle my fingers in his hair. Now I could shake his shoulders fiercely.
I knew that I must make some symbol, some magic, some promise for his returning, and then all at once I knew what it was. It was his cock that told me, pressing hard against my belly. I slipped a hand down, and cupped his balls in it. He broke the kiss, pushing my head away gently so that he could see me with his one eye, his eyebrow flying a question. I nodded, a small nod but confident. He nodded, tight, sharp.
The bank was yellow with primroses. I took off my clothes, carefully, seriously, folding them neatly and laying them among the flowers. He was still, and watched intently. I knelt at his feet, softly kissing the bulge in his clothes. He laid his hands on my head. I unlaced his boots, removed his belt. I stood and helped him out of his clothes. I led him to the bed of fresh blossom, and pulled him down beside me. Our hands and lips started on a slow, tentative, inexorable exploration of skin. At last his hand came to rest with its middle finger just parting the warm entry to my secret place. Again his brow flew in question over his one eye, and again I nodded, calmly, certainly.
I'd seen the fucking of many beasts before. Stallion with mare, bull with cow, buck with hind, fox with vixen, drake with duck; all are fierce, hard, and soon over. I had fucked once, myself, as I've said, and that was no different. I had not realised that fucking could be slow, could be gentle, could be tender as thin rain drifting over summer grass. When at last his seed burst deep in me, something of me burst too, sweet and warm and calm.
We drowsed then, in that warm birth of summer, soft and entangled in the grass. When drowsing was done, I made him a crown of primroses. I helped him dress, and knotted cowslips into the buckle of his mantle. I pulled his lips to mine again, kissed him lightly, turned, took my folded garments under my arm, and walked away from him. As the birch trees closed in around me, I looked back. He was still standing where I had left him, looking as young as when fresh-woken from sleep. When I waved, he smiled to dim the sun, took up his staff and pack, and walked away.
And I? I walked naked back across the long rolling pastures of the high meadow, through the long waning of that day, the chill of evening on my skin defeated by the warmth in my belly.
There's little enough to tell, really, about how we spent that summer. We lived on what the woods could offer us, and the sea. We made a good job of fixing up the bothy, repairing the thatch, and caulking the walls with moss. After I had made some nightlines, we built a little smokehouse and started to smoke fish against the winter; and later, after I had made a bow, we shot a few deer, and dried some of the meat. We did not do this as seriously as we should have, I know. I didn't believe we could live through a winter on our own anyway, so there seemed little point in preparing to.
I cut my hair short to my shoulders, so that I looked more like a lad, and at first wore Rognavald's clothes all the time. But we saw no-one. Small surprise, no path goes across that meadow. So, to be honest, a lot of that summer, when the weather was warm neither Anna nor I really wore much at all. Only, when we went down to the bay to lay the nightlines or gather shellfish, we would wear lads clothes -- if we were seen by anyone, it would be as well not to be taken for lasses.
So the summer passed. It was warm a lot of the time, and enough food for the two of us was easy enough to come by. I spen a lot of the time just lying in the sun, listening to the bees in the summer grasses, letting time and the gentle winds heal my grief, and waiting for Lochlann to return.
So the long summer waned into autumn. Around the meadow, the birches turned golden, and the larches flamed fox red. The wild geese chained overhead, calling, calling, calling; and Lochlann did not come. I still had no plans. Although Anna and I could now speak to one another, we couldn't understand well enough to really discuss. Winter felt a real threat now. I no longer felt that I would be content just to die. I cut and stacked firewood; I hunted deer, and on the few occasions I was lucky, smoked most of the meat against the winter, for the weather was too wet now to dry it. Some oats had ripened where they had sown themselves about the ploughland, and we got in as much as we could. The meal we had taken from the wreck of the steading was gone now. I snared lemmings in the grass and took my sling out against the ducks. We tended the nightlines with more care now, crossing the track at first light every morning to bait and relay them. We smoked most of the fish, as well. But I knew that it would be hard for two folk to survive a winter up here on the fells. And Lochlann had not come.
It was late in the evening on one of those fierce nights at the back end of autumn -- the ones that smell of the coming snow, but howl with icy stinging rain instead -- that he did come. I had given up hope of him by then. I was sitting huddled by the fire. Kep heard something outside, and whined at me, cowering at my side. He was not good as a guard dog, that one! I got up, pulled the sword down off the pegs on the wall where I kept it, and went out.
He was an awful sight. He was drenched, of course, in that wild, driving rain. He was covered in mud, and I could see that he had fallen many times. He leaned heavily on his staff, and dragged his right leg. I dropped the sword in the grass and ran to catch him. Neither of us said anything. I just took his right arm across my shoulders and half carried him into the bothy. I sat him down by the fire. There was some broth in the cook pot, and I set that back in the hearth, and put more wood to burn. I took his mantle off, and his jerkin, and his sark; and I wrapped him in an old blanket. I kissed him. His arms went round me, but he just shivered. He was very cold.
I saw that his breeks had been split down the right thigh. His leg was bound up with a cloth that looked as if it had once been one of his beautiful silk shirts. I undid the binding. The cloth of the breeks was crusty with filth and old blood. Inside, another cloth was bound round the leg. I couldn't get at it, because he was sitting hunched and shivering. Anna was stirring the broth. I took another pot and ran out to the beck to fill it. When I got back, I found Anna was feeding him. He pushed the spoon aside a moment, and looked at me.
"I'm sorry, Kirsten."
I put the pot down in the hearth, squatted beside him, and took him in my arms.
"Welcome back."
When he had finished eating, I helped him into my bed, and took off his boots and the ruined breeks. I removed the binding. The wound was high in his right thigh, entering at the back and leaving on the inside, close to the big arteries. It was inflamed and pussy.
"Arrow?"
He nodded. "Ambush. I didn't see... but I hid. They didn't find me, after. Wouldn't come out the way it went in. Had to push it through. Made me slower... coming across the fells. I'm sorry."
Anna brought me the pot of water, which was simmering. She'd put some witch hazel in it. With it she brought a fine clean sark of her own. We were both short of cloth, by that time.
"It's all right, Anna, I'll use my old one..."
"No: keep it clean. That is the cleanest we have. Dirt in wounds is killing."
I thanked her, and started to wash the puss and filth away. When the wound was clean, I folded Anna's sark into a pad, and bound it on with a strips torn from my own old one.
It was wonderful to hold him again, that night. He slept poorly, and I woke several times to find him caught by the nightmare. Towards morning, I had to bathe his forehead with cold water, to cool him. Then he slept better, and I slept, too, until Anna woke us with the daymeal already prepared.
The last tag end of autumn faded into winter in the weeks before he was fit to stand again. I will say little of that time now; it was a dark time, for with the return of hope there came fear -- fear that we would none of us live through the winter to the spring beyond. The bothy was not built for winter use, and the roof was rotten. We had at best barely enough food to last; and we had by no means enough furs and warm clothing.
Together, Anna and I struggled through the short afternoon, heaving and pushing and tugging at ropes and levers, to get the boat down to the water. Lochlann tried to help us, but in truth he had little strength. I made him rest as much as possible. At last the boat floated. In the last of the daylight we made a fire, and had a good hot meal of venison stew, with dumplings and hot barley bannock.
Then I stowed the gear aboard: all our furs and clothes, all our tools and weapons and hunting tackle, and such food as would keep, that we'd brought down from the bothy in the morning. I said before that the boat was decked, unlike most boats. The way of it was this. The deck covered the forward part of the boat, and came just aft of midships. The deckboards were not loose, like on a ship, but firm and tight as the planking of the hull. At the aft end of this deck a leather curtain hung. If you ducked in under the curtain you found a low space - so low you could not sit upright -- with a bed place at each side. Forward of the beds was where we put the gear.
The boat made surprisingly little water while we were eating, and Anna bailed it dry while I helped Lochlann aboard. He went at once to step the mast, but could not, so I helped him. He said nothing, and his breath was coming in short gasps. He showed me how to rig the sails, so that they were ready to hoist, but himself could do little. He sat, hunched at the tiller, shivering already though he was warmly dressed; and the chill of the open sea was not yet on us.
I rowed out of the voe, and when we had enough clearance from the land, stowed the oars and hoisted the sails. The last glow of the short winter's day was fading behind the islands as we slipped westward across a gentle south westerly, and a long, easy swell. The boat slipped easily through the water, and lay closer to the wind than any other I've known.
As the chill of the night grew around us, I persuaded Lochlann to get himself down under the deck, where Anna already crouched -- Anna was no boatwoman -- and so it was alone that I watched the fells of my childhood fade into mist and moonlight.
Copyright © Simon Brooke
1992-1996
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