A Stranger Came Ashore (7 page)

All the rest of that day Robbie tried to think of a way to get round the promise Nicol had forced out of him, but by the time evening came he was no nearer an answer to this problem. Then he and Elspeth were sent off together to bring the cows in from the hill; and, for all he knew he would have to be very cautious about it, he could not help putting a question or two to her.

“There’s something I want to ask you,” he began these questions. “I want to know if you’ve made up your mind yet which one you will marry – Nicol, or Finn Learson.”

“I’m not going to tell
you
that,” said Elspeth, looking annoyed. “It’s none of your business!”

“Yes, it is,” Robbie insisted. “I know a lot of things that make it my business.”

“Do you indeed?” Elspeth teased. “Well, I know things, too – things Finn Learson himself has told me.”

This was something that made Robbie stop dead in his tracks. “What sort of things?” he asked fearfully. And smiling at the tone of his voice, Elspeth answered, “Well, to start with, he is not just the common sailor man he seems to be. He travels just for the adventure of it, and he is a great man in his own country.”

“And when did he tell you that?” asked Robbie. “Was it on the day of Old Da’s funeral?”

Elspeth shook her head, refusing to answer this, but Robbie persisted, “And I suppose that was when he started asking you to marry him?”

“Yes, it was,” Elspeth admitted then. “But how did you guess
that?”

“Because it makes sense of what he said to you that day,” Robbie told her. “If
he
is rich, and you married him, then you would be rich too.”

“Yes, I would,” said Elspeth defiantly. “And why shouldn’t I marry a rich man if I want to?”

Robbie thought of the Elspeth he had glimpsed, lying all white and silver like a girl dressed for her bridal, and yet looking like Elspeth already dead.

“But have you said yet that you will marry him?” he pressed. “Have you, Elspeth?”

Elspeth began to smile. “I told him I would think about it,” said she, “and I am still thinking.”

“And what about Nicol?” Robbie demanded. “What chance has he with you?”

Elspeth stopped smiling then. She looked instead as if she would cry at any moment, and at last she said miserably, “I don’t know. I used to think I loved Nicol, and now I just don’t know what I feel about him.”

“Do you love Finn Learson?” asked Robbie, trembling for fear of what he might hear next, but Elspeth shied away from this question.

“He’s very handsome,” said she. “He has manners like a prince. He has great charm too, and he says that he loves me.”

“That’s no answer,” Robbie told her. “Do you love him?”

The tears started in good earnest to Elspeth’s eyes. “I don’t know that either,” she confessed. “It was all just a good game at first, pretending not to know which one I preferred. But every time Finn Learson looks at me now, I feel weak. I can’t look away from him, and then I
want
to marry him. But I still don’t know whether that’s because I love him.”

“It’s because he has managed to get some sort of a hold over you,” Robbie retorted. “Just like he managed to get a hold over
Tam, the first night he was here.”

“What nonsense are you talking now?” Elspeth demanded. “Tam has nothing to do with all this! And anyway, I have to think of the future, haven’t I?” With temper beginning to spark through her tears, she started to drive the cows again. “If I marry Nicol,” she said, “I’ll drive cows every night of my life.” Then, with the stick in her hand pointing down the hill to their own house, she added, “And that will be the kind of house I’ll have – a but and ben with a thatched roof! But if I marry Finn Learson, I’ll be a lady with servants, and live in a great house like a palace, with walls of crystal and a golden roof –”

“You great fool!” interrupted Robbie, bawling at her, for this was more than he could stand now. “That’s the Great Selkie’s palace you’re talking about.
And
it has a golden roof, all right – as you’ll prove to your cost!”

Too late then, he remembered the promise he had given Nicol; and while Elspeth stared in astonishment at this outburst, he took to his heels and left her to bring the cows home by herself. Not a word would he say to her afterwards, either, when she questioned him on what it had all meant, and he spent the next few days hoping she would not ask Nicol about it.

Fortunately for him, however, Elspeth was too proud to ask Nicol anything about Finn Learson; and as for Nicol himself, the way he was behaving now certainly did not invite anyone to talk to him. He glowered and gloomed about the place to such an extent, in fact, that everyone began to remark on the change in him, and after a few days of this, he came straight out with what was in his mind.

“I’m not going to be kept dangling like this all winter,” he told Elspeth in front of the whole family. “If you won’t marry me, I’m going off to ship aboard an ocean-going vessel; and once that’s done you’ll never see me again. And so, what do you say? Is it to be me, or is it to be Finn Learson?

Every eye turned to Elspeth. Robbie waited on tenterhooks for her answer. Nicol stared at her, looking grim and unusually pale. Finn Learson sat without any expression at all on his face. Peter and Janet were simply embarrassed, for they were very fond of Nicol and knew he would make a good son-in-law. On the other hand, Finn Learson had won so much of their favour that they could not help feeling it would be a happy arrangement to have
him
for a son-in-law. Besides which, of course, they still felt very much in his debt over one thing and another.

For a long minute, nobody spoke, and then Janet said quietly, “Nicol’s right, Elspeth. It’s not right to keep him dangling while you make up your mind.”

“At least tell them
when
you’ll decide,” Peter urged. “Put some sort of date to it, so that we’ll all know where we are.”

Elspeth had flushed when Nicol spoke, then she had gone pale; but when Peter said this, her colour came back to normal.

“Very well,” said she, “that’s what I’ll do. I’ll set a date to my decision, and I’ll marry the man I choose on that date.”

“Make it soon,” Nicol said grimly; and looking much more sure of herself now, Elspeth named the date she had in mind. Finn Learson was puzzled by this, however, for the date she had chosen is called
Up Helly Aa
in Shetland, which was a name he could not be expected to understand.

“What’s the meaning of that?” he asked suspiciously, and Peter explained, “It’s the last of the twenty-four days holiday we keep at Christmas – or Yule, as it’s called with us – and
Up Helly Aa
is the festival that ends these holidays.”

“It’s a good day to choose, too,” added Janet, looking anxious to keep the peace, “for we’ll all be celebrating then, anyway, and everyone will be in the mood to drink a health to the lucky man.”

“Well?” Elspeth asked, looking at Nicol. “Do you agree to that?”

“I haven’t much choice,” said he ungraciously, at which Elspeth
frowned, and turned to ask Finn Learson the same question.

“I agree,” he answered her, and Robbie’s heart sank to see how he smiled as he spoke, and held Elspeth’s gaze with his own.

Instead of making Robbie give up hope, however, this situation made him even more determined to find some way of defeating Finn Learson. There had to be something he could try, he kept telling himself. There had to be someone who would believe what
he
believed; and gradually, out of all this, an idea came to him.

Every morning after that as he walked to school, Robbie carried this idea with him, for the person he had in mind to help him with it was the schoolmaster of Black Ness. Every day, however, he still came home with nothing done about his idea – although no one could really blame him for this – for, to say the least of it, this schoolmaster was an unusual sort of person.

To begin with, he had the nickname of Yarl Corbie, for that is the nickname the raven has in Shetland, and he looked like nothing so much as a huge raven.

His nose was big and beaky. His skin was swarthy. His eyes glittered in a sharp and knowing way. He was tall, but very thin and stooped, and he dressed always in black. Besides which, he always wore a tattered, black, schoolmaster’s gown that flapped from his shoulders like a raven’s wings. And like the raven, he was solitary in his habits.

There was yet another reason, however, for his nickname of Yarl Corbie. Long ago, it was said, in the days when this schoolmaster was still only an unchristened child, he had been fed on broth made from the bodies of two ravens. This, it was also said, had gifted him with all the powers of a wizard; and it was this, of course, which had given Robbie his idea.

Yet here was the snag to it all. Robbie was deadly afraid of Yarl Corbie; for Robbie, it had to be remembered, was twelve years old at that time, which was certainly not old enough for him to have
lost his fear of wizards. It has to be remembered too, that Robbie was Shetland born and bred; which meant that deep, deep down in his blood and in his bones there lived the Shetlander’s ancient fear of the raven and its croaking cry of death. Also, it was still dark during the time of his walk to school on these winter mornings, and trows have power in the dark; with the result that his imagination had plenty to work on before he even set foot in the schoolroom.

Day after day, therefore, the same thing happened to him. He set out for school carrying the peat every scholar was supposed to bring each day for the schoolroom fire. In his pocket was the stub of a candle he needed to light his lessons, and in his mind floated the splendid idea of calling on Yarl Corbie’s wizard powers to help him. Yet still, by the time he reached school each day, all the splendour of his idea had fled; for, by this time also, his fear of the trow-haunted dark had convinced him he would never be able to conquer his equal fear of Yarl Corbie.

As soon as he entered the classroom, he was even more sure of this; for there, as usual, sat Yarl Corbie hunched at his desk with his gown drooping like black wings from his bony shoulders. There was his dark and beaky face, seeming all bones and hollows in the
candlelight
. There was the glittering eye with its knowing stare. And there as usual in his own heart, was the choking dread that he knew would keep him dumb until the day was over and it was too late to ask what he had meant to ask of Yarl Corbie.

So the days before Christmas raced past for Robbie; and each day, it seemed to him, was a wasted one. Then, a week before Christmas came the start of the twenty-four days holiday time. Yarl Corbie announced the break-up of school, and Robbie knew he would
have
to speak that day, or lose his last chance of saving Elspeth.

The determined streak in him suddenly got the upper hand of his fear, and while all the other boys raced outside yelling for joy of the holidays, he moved slowly towards the schoolmaster’s desk.

The sharp and knowing eye of Yarl Corbie came to rest on Robbie, and nervously he said, “It’s about Finn Learson, the stranger that came ashore the night the
Bergen
was wrecked. I know something about him – something that makes him a danger to my folks.”

“Indeed?” Yarl Corbie remarked. “And why mention this to me?”

“Because nobody else will believe me,” said Robbie, holding hard to his courage. “But you might – and then you might help me.”

Yarl Corbie stared so hard at this that Robbie flushed scarlet. “What kind of help would you want from me?” he enquired.

“The kind that – that folks say you can give,” Robbie stammered, then wished the words unspoken again because Yarl Corbie had smiled to hear them, and his smile was not a pleasant one.

Be careful,
it warned, and there was warning too in Yarl Corbie’s voice as he said,

“We will talk of that once you have said what you have to say.”

Robbie took a deep breath. The worst Yarl Corbie could do would be to laugh at his story, he reminded himself. Then quickly, before he could change his mind on this, he blurted out, “Finn Learson is the Great Selkie.”

Not a flicker of surprise crossed Yarl Corbie’s face. “I know that,” he said so calmly that Robbie could hardly grasp that he had heard aright.

“So you believe me?” he asked stupidly, and Yarl Corbie gave a patient sigh.

“Of course,” he answered. “It happens that I know a lot more
about the Great Selkie than you do. But I should still like to hear how you guessed about him.”

Robbie felt his heart give a great bound of excitement. “I noticed things about him,” he began, and raced straight on with the rest of his story.

Yarl Corbie listened in dead silence, his beaky face intent, his sharp eyes never leaving Robbie’s face. He sat quite still too, and even after Robbie had finished speaking, it was only his eyes that shifted position. The sight of him like this began to make Robbie feel even more nervous than he had been at first and finally he could stand it no longer.

“How did
you
know that Finn Learson is the Great Selkie?” he dared to ask.

The sharp and knowing gaze flashed back to himself. “Because he told me,” Yarl Corbie answered. “He told everyone when he gave his name as Finn Learson – although I was the only one with the wit to see that!”

“I still don’t see it,” Robbie confessed; and grimly, Yarl Corbie told him, “You will in a moment. Say his name aloud – say it slowly.”

Robbie hesitated, feeling even more puzzled by this command. Then obediently he recited the name, Finn Learson, dragging out the sound as if each part of it was a separate word.

“Exactly!” Yarl Corbie exclaimed. “
Finn, Lear’s son
– that is the proper sound of the name, for the Great Selkie is the son of the
sea-god
, Lear. As for ‘Finn,’ that is simply an old word for ‘magician.’ And so there you have the full measure of the bold way that name told everyone exactly who he is – the Magician, who is also Lear’s son, the Great Selkie.”

Robbie felt a chill in the very marrow of his bones. “
The Magician
…” he thought, and once again in his mind’s eye, he saw Finn Learson melting like a shadow from the Press Gang’s hands, skimming the ground like a creature flying. Then further back still
his mind went, to the “dream” of Finn Learson staring Tam into frightened silence.

Tam had sensed the truth from the very beginning, he told himself then, and
that
was why Finn Learson had needed to get the creature into his power. If only, if only they had all paid more attention to Tam’s warning growls that night!

But maybe it was not yet too late … With hope beginning to warm him a little, Robbie waited impatiently for Yarl Corbie to speak again, but the schoolmaster was also thinking his own thoughts and his mind seemed to have drifted far from the present moment.

He had picked up a knife from his desk, Robbie noticed; a long knife with a thin, sharp blade that glittered in the candlelight. With his fingers stroking this blade, he sat for a while longer staring at nothing in particular, but at last he did look at Robbie again.

“It has happened before,” he said then, and this was so exactly an echo of Old Da’s dying words, that Robbie felt himself gasping.

“There was another time when a stranger came ashore to this island, and the story was that he persuaded a girl to marry him. But he was not a man at all, of course. And he was not young, as he seemed to be. He was the old one, the cunning one, the Magician who is also the Great Selkie. And so, of course, he had a different name that time. ‘Aeigirson,’ he called himself then, ‘Aeigir’ being another name for the god of the sea; and the girl who married this stranger, Aeigirson, was never seen alive again.”

Yarl Corbie’s gaze went back to the knife. His fingers returned to stroking the shining blade. Almost as if talking to himself, he said, “The girl was young – a bonny girl with golden hair. Her name was Anne.”

There was a silence. The blade glittered. Yarl Corbie’s fingers moved steadily back and forth along its length.

“Is that the end of the story?” Robbie ventured at last. Yarl Corbie looked up. “Not quite,” he answered. “There was a young man of
the islands this girl would have married, and after she was stolen away, he shipped aboard a whaler – to earn money, he said, but his real purpose was to search for the Great Selkie and to kill him. The whaler sailed north; and there, on the coast of Greenland, the man found the Great Selkie in his natural form of a great bull seal. The man drew a knife, and struck out with a blow that was meant to kill; and although he did not succeed in this, he managed at least to give the Great Selkie a sorely-wounded shoulder.”

“Once on the shores of Greenland, I was hunted by a man who came at me with a knife to till me – see, I carry the mark of his knife to this very day, in this long, white scar of the healed wound in my shoulder …
”

The echo of Finn Learson’s voice sounded in Robbie’s mind, and once again he saw Finn Learson turning a smooth brown shoulder to show the mark of a long knife-wound.

“How do you know about all this?” he asked curiously, and was astonished to see Yarl Corbie rise to his feet, his face suddenly all twisted with rage. The hand holding the knife went up as if to strike, and Robbie shrank back in alarm, but the blow was not intended for him.

“Because this is the knife that made the wound,” Yarl Corbie said harshly. The upraised arm brought the knife hard down towards the desk, and as the point stabbed into the wood, he added, “And I am the man who struck the blow!”

Robbie stared at the blade quivering in the wood. It was hard to imagine Yarl Corbie as a young man, be thought, and even harder to imagine him as a jealous young man in love with a golden-haired girl. But there was one thing at least he could grasp in all this, and surely that was the very thing that mattered now! Triumphantly, Robbie spoke his thoughts aloud.

“You hated the Great Selkie! You
still
hate him!”

Yarl Corbie leaned forward, glaring. “I know what’s in your mind,” he snapped. “You think that’s reason enough for me to help you now. But you’re wrong.
I
know the things they say of me, here
in Black Ness, and I am not going to give them cause to say more.”

“But no one would know,” Robbie pleaded. “Not from me, at least. And what’s to become of Elspeth if you don’t help? She’ll be like that other girl – Anne. And that will be your fault.”

Yarl Corbie frowned at this, until his eyebrows almost met above his beaky nose. Then he clasped his hands behind his back and began striding up and down, his tattered black gown flapping with every step. He looked more like a big, ungainly raven than ever, thought Robbie, and felt the same old dread seizing him again. There was no way of going back on what he had done, however, and he was impatient now, as well as afraid. Biting his lip, he watched the tall, striding figure, and at last Yarl Corbie said, “I was young and foolishe cannot return to his kingdom under the seah when I went after the Great Selkie with a knife, but I am old enough and wise enough now to know that he cannot be killed with any mortal weapon. He cannot be defeated either – not when he has his natural form of a selkie, at least. But there
is
one way of making sure he can do no harm while he has a man’s shape; one way only.”

Yarl Corbie halted in his stride, and shot one of his knowing looks at Robbie. “I cannot see any hope of your carrying that out,” he went on. “But nevertheless, you might as well know something about it – which means that you must first of all discover where he hid his selkie skin when he shed it to come ashore. If you do that, you will have a hold over him that could bend him to your will; for, without that skin,
he cannot return to his kingdom under the sea
.”

Robbie stood staring at Yarl Corbie, his heart racing suddenly so fast that he could hardly speak. “But,” he managed, “but I –”

Yarl Corbie held up a hand. “I know,” he said. “The search for it would be a hopeless one. There are so many places around the coast of the voe where it could be; so many caves –”

“But I
know
where it is!” interrupted Robbie, shouting. “I know!” And still breathing hard, he rushed on to tell Yarl Corbie about the cave in the geo where he had gone to count the selkie pups.

“So you see,” he finished triumphantly, “it
must
be hidden there, or Finn Learson would not have bothered to keep me in sight from the clifftop that day. He only did that because he was afraid I would go into the cave and find the skin. And
that
was what he meant when he said he had a feeling I might get into trouble in the geo!”

A wicked gleam came into Yarl Corbie’s eyes, making them sharper and brighter than ever. With one long hand stroking his chin, he murmured, “You could be right, boy. A cave like that – so handy for reaching Black Ness and yet so well hidden from the houses there – would be a perfect lurking-place for him. He could shed his skin and take human form quite safely there when the time came for him to do so. And from there also, he would find it easy enough to swim ashore as if he had just come from a wreck!”

“Of course,” Robbie agreed eagerly. “And the chance came when the
Bergen
was wrecked with all hands drowned, so that there was nobody left to say he was
not
a survivor. Moreover, he knew he would need money of some kind on the island, and the cave would give him somewhere to store his gold, all ready to take ashore with him.”

“Yes, yes, that could be the way of it,” Yarl Corbie nodded. “Gold from the treasure ships sunk around this island was something he could dive for at any time, but he still needed somewhere to keep it in readiness. And as for the trousers and money-belt he wore that night they would have been only too easy to acquire, what with so many poor drowned sailor men floating in the voe then.”

Robbie felt a cold shiver at the picture this brought into his mind, but he still pressed on with the rest of what he had to say.

“There’s one last thing,” he told Yarl Corbie. “When Finn Learson pulled me out of the water that day, he told me,
‘It’s high time you learned to leave the deep waters to those who can swim in them.’
And he warned me to keep out of the geo in future.”

“Did he indeed!” Yarl Corbie exclaimed. “Well, that proves it, boy. The skin
must
be in that cave. And we had better lay hands on it soon – this very night, in fact – or we may lose the chance it gives for getting a hold over Finn Learson.”

“
We
?” Robbie asked uncertainly, and Yarl Corbie looked suddenly taken aback.

“Well …” he began, then he walked away from Robbie and stood looking at the knife in the desk. One hand went out to pull it free, and he turned to Robbie again, with the wicked gleam once more lighting his eye.

“Yes, we,” he said softly, “because I never thought I would live to be revenged on the Great Selkie, and revenge is very sweet. But mark this, Robbie Henderson. It will take magic to defeat the Great Selkie’s magic – and you know what our minister is like! You heard the way he raged against superstition on the day of your Old Da’s funeral. And so what do you think he would do if he heard I was indeed practising the unholy arts that people say I do practise? One word, one hint of that, and he would seize on it to have me banished from the island, or jailed – or maybe something even worse!”

“He’ll learn nothing from me,” Robbie said earnestly. “Nobody will!”

“That had better be a promise,” Yarl Corbie assured him, “or I will be revenged on you also! Now get off home, but be down at the voe at midnight, and we will go together to find that skin.”