A Stranger Came Ashore (9 page)

Robbie went over to stand beside Yarl Corbie’s chair, but he moved unwillingly, for he had never been inside the schoolmaster’s house before, and he could see things there which made him uneasy.

There was a human skull standing on the window-sill, for instance, and this skull seemed to be grinning at him. From the rafters above his head dangled bunches of dried herbs that gave off a peculiar, musty odour. A book lay open on the table, a big book with pages so yellow in colour that he guessed it must be very old.

Moreover, these yellowish pages were covered with writing that was all back-to-front – mirror-writing, in fact, and he remembered Old Da had told him this was the kind of writing wizards used for their spells!

“Closer, boy, closer!” Yarl Corbie said impatiently. “Walls have ears, they say, and this is only for the two of us to hear.”

Obediently Robbie came closer, then gasped, as Yarl Corbie shot out a large hand to grip his arm. In growing fear he looked down at the dark and beaky face upturned to him, and Yarl Corbie grinned at the expression he wore.

“You’re still frightened of me,” he said softly. “And that’s good. It means you’ll continue to keep your mouth shut about me, doesn’t it?”

For the life of him, Robbie could not say a word then. He simply nodded, and Yarl Corbie went on, “Now listen. The important thing for you to do on Up Helly Aa, is to
keep Elspeth in sight.
Where she goes, Finn Learson will go – depend on that; and so you must never take your eyes off her.”

“But she’ll be visiting back and forward to all the neighbours, the way everyone does then,” Robbie protested. “I could easily lose sight of her in the darkness when that happens.”

“If you do,” said Yarl Corbie grimly, “you’ll lose her altogether, for you won’t be there when Finn Learson tempts her away with him.”

Robbie thought of how very dark it would be in the dark hours of Up Helly Aa, and in spite of himself, he began to shake.

“The trows will be out on Up Helly Aa,” he whispered, “and you know it’s on that night they have their greatest power. Supposing I meet with some of
them
when I’m trying to keep Elspeth in sight?”

“You’ll do as your Old Da taught you,” Yarl Corbie told him. “You’ll cross yourself and say the words they hate to hear.”

Robbie stared in dismay at this, for
nobody
dared go out alone on Up Helly Aa however much they were blessed against the power of the trows. Moreover, he remembered, it was always young folk like himself that were in special danger of being stolen away to the strange, secret mounds where they had their homes. Yarl Corbie was still talking, however, and so he had to force himself to listen.

“The next thing for you to remember,” Yarl Corbie was saying, “is this.
Only the Skuddler can save Elspeth
; and so, the moment that Finn Learson acts, you must act too. You must find the Skuddler. Also, if anything happens to make Nicol fall short of the part
we
hope he will play, remember that you still have the knowledge which will give you the whiphand over Finn Learson; for only you can tell him that his selkie skin is in a different hiding-place, and only you can lead him to it.”

“But if I go alone with him to that place,” said Robbie in even deeper dismay now, “there won’t be anyone to stop him getting the skin back and then doing what he likes with me!”

“Yes, there will,” Yarl Corbie told him. “
I
will be there.”

“And you won’t let him harm me?” Robbie asked fearfully.

Yarl Corbie loosed his grip on Robbie’s arm, and rose to his full,
lean height. His eyes went to the table and the book of
mirror-writing
lying there, and softly he said, “I’ve already told you I want my revenge on Finn Learson, and now I have found the very spell to let me do that. And so now also, you can be sure of one thing. When Finn Learson comes out of that place where the skin is hidden, he will not be able to harm anyone, ever again.”

Robbie backed a step. “Why?” he asked fearfully. “What – what kind of a spell is it?”

“One that I mean to be as big a surprise to you as it will be to him,” Yarl Corbie answered, lifting his eyes from the book to let them rest on Robbie. “And now, until Up Helly Aa that is
all
I have to say to you.”

There was something so cruel in Yarl Corbie’s look then, that Robbie was much relieved to hear this. Nervously he backed even further; and once again, as soon as he was out of the door, he made for home with all the speed he could muster.

His mother was baking when he got there, and the house was full of the smell of freshly made Yule bannocks. Elspeth was at the byre door, hanging up a charm to protect the cattle from the power of the trows at Yule, and he went obediently to help her with this when his mother told him to do so.

Robbie’s heart was not in this matter, however. Nor could he take an interest in any of the things that had always before made the Yule holidays so exciting for him. All he could think of now, in fact, was the end of the holidays and Up Helly Aa, so that all the days before then began to take on the feeling of days passing in a long and seemingly endless dream.

There was one thing, however, which stood out from the dream in which Robbie now moved, and this was the change that each of these passing days seemed to work on Nicol and Elspeth.

Nicol, of course, had been growing steadily more sullen before that time; but gradually now, he became so grim and scowling that people could hardly believe he had once been a cheerful, easy-going
man. Elspeth, too, no longer laughed or sang as she went around the house; and the quieter she became, the more often her eyes took on a certain trance-like look that made her seem like a sleepwalker wandering about in broad daylight.

It seemed to Robbie too, that the times this trance came over her were always those when her eyes met Finn Learson’s gaze. And then, he noticed, Finn Learson would smile his secret little smile. For a moment, also, the young and handsome appearance of his face would slip aside like a mask, and another face would look at Elspeth – a watchful, old, and cunning face that held her fascinated, the way Tam had been held fascinated on Finn Learson’s first night in the house.

A great dread of these moments began to creep over Robbie, and very often he wondered why everyone else was so blind to everything that seemed so clear to himself. The truth of the matter, however, was still so far from every mind except his own, that no one saw anything at all remarkable in the situation.

Nicol’s grimness and sulking, they argued, was simply due to jealousy. A young girl like Elspeth, with such a decision ahead of her, was bound to be absent-minded. As for Finn Learson, everyone continued to find him so pleasant and polite that they could hardly be expected to guess at the uncanny presence lurking behind the charm of this manner. It was quite the opposite case, in fact, for none of them could fail to mark that he quite put Nicol to shame with the way he refused to be upset by Elspeth’s decision about waiting for the end of Up Helly Aa to make her choice between them.

At the Christmas and New Year celebrations he danced with her as light-heartedly as he had ever done. Nicol, on the other hand, sat scowling in a corner without even trying to persuade her to partner him; and this led Janet to speak up quite sharply, for she still had a soft spot in her heart for Nicol. Besides which, as she had now begun to realise, the debt that she and Peter owed Finn
Learson did not mean she was really happy to see their daughter wedded to a foreign man who would very likely take her back with him to his own country. And so, by the time it came to the New Year, she was ready to tell Nicol, “That’s no way to get Elspeth to decide in your favour – sitting there with a long face on you while the other fellow does all the courting!”

“Aye, you’ll have to stir yourself if you really want to win her,” Peter added to this remark; but Nicol remained stubborn.

“I courted Elspeth before Finn Learson came,” he argued, “and I’ve courted her since then – well enough to let her know I would be good to her and she would be happy with me. Now she must decide for herself without me running after her and staring into her eyes the way
he
does.”

On the early evening of Up Helly Aa, however, Nicol showed a different spirit, for he came to the house then, with a present of scarlet ribbons for Elspeth to tie in her hair. Janet, by this time, had set out food and drink for all the neighbours who would visit. Peter had tuned his fiddle. Elspeth had brushed her golden hair until the rippling shine of it was a dazzle to the eye; and staring greedily at this, Finn Learson told her, “You look like a princess.”

Elspeth blushed to hear him speak so; and just at the moment that Nicol entered the house, Finn Learson added boldly, “And when you marry me, you will be princess of my whole kingdom.”

Peter and Janet smiled at this, taking it to be no more than a piece of romantic nonsense, but Robbie knew differently.

The kingdom under the sea
, he thought in horror; and in his mind’s eye he saw Elspeth’s face among the faces of all the other golden-haired girls who had once reigned as the Great Selkie’s princess – the girls who had tried to escape, the drowned girls …

“I’ve brought you a present, Elspeth,” Nicol’s voice broke into these thoughts, and Robbie watched him holding the scarlet ribbons out to her. She took them, smiling and exclaiming over
their colour, and immediately began twisting them through the shining strands of her hair. For one wild moment then, Robbie thought all his troubles might be ended, for the way Elspeth looked at Nicol when she had done this seemed to show that
he
was the one she really wanted to choose. Nicol gave her look for look, and quietly he said, “I cannot make fine speeches the way he does, Elspeth. I have never learned such manners. But this I will say with all my heart. I will hold you tonight if he tries to take you from me,
and I will never let you go from that hold
.”

“Nicol!” said Elspeth, with all her soul in her voice. “Oh, Nicol!” And then Finn Learson laughed, spoiling the moment for all of them.

“You speak brave words,” he told Nicol contemptuously. “But you have still to prove them, and the night is not out yet.”

“No more it is!” exclaimed Peter, taking up his fiddle to cover the awkwardness he felt, for it looked then and there as if it would come to a fight between the other two; but Nicol turned on his heel, and it was Finn Learson who danced with Elspeth then.

Robbie watched Nicol stride from the house, knowing that Elspeth’s last chance to declare for him had gone and that everything now depended on himself – and on Yarl Corbie’s plan. Grimly then, he settled down to await the appearance of the Skuddler and the other guisers, crouching in a corner with his hands twined in Tam’s fur and his eyes constantly marking the time on the grandfather clock.

The guisers would be visiting every house in Black Ness that night, he knew, and so it would be well after midnight before he could expect to see them. Yet still he rushed to open the door every time he heard footsteps and voices outside the house; and each time, he was disappointed to find it was only more neighbours arriving.

Tam became restless, whining and shivering uneasily, and he wondered if the creature could sense what would happen that
night. The hands of the clock seemed to move so slowly that sometimes he thought they had stopped altogether. He stayed alert, all the same, and at one o’clock in the morning when the guisers came at last, he was at the door before anyone else could reach it.

Flinging it wide open, he saw the whole mob of them standing outside. The next moment, they were all around him; and from somewhere in the mob, a voice – Nicol’s voice – breathed in his ear, “
All right, Robbie! I’ve fixed it
!”

And so there was hope yet for Elspeth, Robbie thought triumphantly. Then, with his heart beating hard in the excitement of this moment, he was carried back into the room by the rushing entrance of the Skuddler and the Skuddler’s men.

There were twenty-six of the guisers, all told. Their long straw petticoats and high, pointed hats made them all seem taller than ordinary men. The bunches of coloured ribbons tied on petticoats, hats, and shirts, were like curiously-shaped fruit and flowers sprouting everywhere from them. The eyes above their handkerchief masks looked out like the eyes of mysterious strangers. Like strangers, too, they entered in deadly silence; for – as Robbie had just proved – even a few words spoken could give away the secret behind the mask.

A shout of greeting went up at the sight of them, and everyone rose so that there would be room for them to dance. Chairs were pushed back against the walls. Peter raised his fiddle; and still without a word spoken, the Skuddler’s men formed a circle with the Skuddler himself at its centre.

Peter struck an opening chord. The Skuddler raised the long white wand he carried in his right hand. Peter swung into a fast-stepping reel, and with a swish of his wand, the Skuddler commanded the dance to begin.

Instantly then, the but end seemed to explode into a whirling mass of straw. Tall hats shot up and down like tongues of flame flickering through the mass. Coloured ribbons tossed about in it, like fruit falling, like flowers being torn off in a gale.

The watchers in the but end clapped in time to the dancers’ antics. They cheered, they laughed. They shouted out guesses about which face lay behind which mask. For all the wildness of this dance, however, it was still carried on in deadly silence. It was
still under the Skuddler’s command, too, for it was his wand that continued to direct all its movements.

Up and down the dancers leapt. In and out they wove. Round and about they whirled and twisted, all in obedience to the wand. The signals from it divided them into pairs, into larger groups, and then brought them back into one mass. Another signal stilled all the others while each man danced alone; and as he danced, each and every man kept his eyes on the wand. Each and every man danced for the Skuddler, but the Skuddler himself never shifted position.

It was only the hand with the wand in it that moved. And his eyes! The eyes of the Skuddler were everywhere, darting from dancer to dancer; and away at the back of his mind as he watched this, Robbie heard once more the voice of Old Da explaining to him the dance of the Skuddler’s men.

“They are supposed to be earth spirits – the spirits of corn, and fruit, and flowers – and the Skuddler himself is the god of the earth commanding them to dance in honour of all the good things he has created …”

“What’s the meaning of it all?” a voice breathed in Robbie’s ear, and turning towards the sound, he met the gaze of big, dark eyes – Finn Learson’s eyes drawing him into the same circle of mysterious power that held Tam and Elspeth; Finn Learson guessing at the knowledge Old Da had passed on and probing his mind for the secret of it.

“I don’t know,” Robbie lied, trying hard to break away from the gaze; but the voice of Old Da was still running through his mind, and he was desperately afraid that Finn Learson could somehow also hear it saying,

“It was the way they made magic in old heathen times, Robbie. The dressing-up was a sort of spell. The dancing was another part of the spell, and the whole thing made a magic that turned them into the creatures they were supposed to be – the earth-god and his spirits …”

“Who’s playing the Skuddler?” Finn Learson demanded. “Do you know
that
?”

Robbie backed off from the eyes boring into his own, then found that he had backed into his mother, and sighed with relief to hear her answering for him.

“Nobody knows,” she told Finn Learson. “The young men always decide that among themselves, and it won’t be until they all unmask at the end of Up Helly Aa that we learn which of them it is.”

A burst of cheering and clapping from all around announced the sudden end of the dance. Robbie found himself once more surrounded by the guisers as they crowded to take their share of the food and drink laid out. Shouts of laughter came from people jostling to watch each one swallow as much as he could without lifting more than a corner of his mask. Then Peter’s fiddle shrilled out again.

The Skuddler’s men swept back on to the dancing space, each with a partner from among the guests. Another fiddler joined Peter’s efforts, and yet another. The but end became a wild, weaving whirl of figures stamping in time to the music. The laughing faces of girls bobbed about among the white masked faces of the guisers. Peter and the other two fiddlers stood perched above the dancers, their faces red and shining with sweat, their bows racing back and forth at mad speed across the fiddle strings.

Somebody seized Robbie’s hand and pulled him into the whirl of dancers. He caught the gleam of white teeth and dark eyes as Finn Learson spun by, laughing, with Janet on his arm. A tall figure loomed over him, a masked face looked down, and the grim eyes of the Skuddler met his own. Briefly he glimpsed Elspeth’s hair in a tangle of gold, and scarlet ribbons, and then he was too dizzy to be aware of anything else except the floor heaving under his feet and the roof rafters seeming to turn like the spokes of a huge wheel above his head.

A gust of cold night air and a last ringing chord from the fiddles brought him to himself. Somebody had opened the door, he realised. The dance was at an end, and the guisers were departing to visit the next house on their rounds. Silent to the last, they were beginning to vanish through the doorway, waving farewells as they went, and all the younger folk among the guests were jostling to follow them.

Robbie was still dizzy. He held on to a chair to steady himself, and to his dismay, saw that Finn Learson and Elspeth were among those following in the wake of the Skuddler and his men. Quickly, in case his father or mother saw him leave, he ducked low and slid neatly in among the jostling throng.

The next moment he was outside and catching his breath in wonder at what he saw there, for there was a strange, tingling feeling in the air, and instead of the velvety darkness he had expected, the whole sky was aflame with green, leaping light.

Somebody shouted, “
It’s the Merry Dancers!
” – which is the name they have in these parts for the peculiar lights that sometimes leap and flicker over northern skies in winter – and this cry was taken up on all sides, for nobody could think when they had last seen so fine a display of these northern lights.

Every face stared upwards, and everyone began turning round and around as they stared, for the light seemed sometimes to roll in great green waves over the sky, and sometimes it was like long searchlights of green shooting brilliantly out from a huge and starless black dome. Sometimes too, all the green would vanish for a few seconds, and everybody was blinded by darkness until the lights appeared again, in little tongues of leaping, dancing green flame.

Robbie stared upwards with the rest, all thoughts of Elspeth suddenly forgotten in his wonder at this sky. Then, too late, he realised that the Skuddler and his men had moved on, and the others were following in little groups that straggled all over the
hillside.

Shouting, he ran to catch up with the nearest of these groups, then stopped in sudden terror that they might be trows, for part of the power trows have at Up Helly Aa is that they can take on any shape they wish. Yet still, he reminded himself, he had to keep track of Finn Learson and Elspeth. He simply had to! In a shaking voice he mumbled, “God be about me and all that I see.” Then, hastily he crossed himself, and stumbled on, but it still did not prove easy to find Finn Learson and Elspeth among all those straggling groups, and with every hour after that, Robbie found it growing even harder to keep on their trail.

At the next house, the Skuddler and his band departed without any train of followers; but still there were people visiting back and forth between all the houses scattered over the hill, for in every house that night there was light, and music, and celebration of some kind. Moreover, Elspeth was as footloose as any of the others roaming the hill; and in each house she and Finn Learson visited, Robbie seemed to find himself being caught up in the celebrations at the very moment these two were ready to leave for some other place.

In one house, it was a guessing game that held him trapped among boys of his own age, all clustering around him to shout the riddle,

The more he tried to free himself too, the louder they called, “What am I? Guess, Robbie Henderson, guess!”

But still Robbie could not guess – until Elspeth herself gave him the clue. Turning at the doorway with Finn Learson, she smiled goodbye at everyone there; and in a flash, Robbie remembered her footprint in the
lik
straw, and the tangle of smoke uncoiling
slowly out towards the summer sky.

“
Smoke
!” Triumphantly he shouted the answer, and darted outside to follow the two figures dancing and running on their way under the green lights of the Merry Dancers.

In another house it was a dance that held him marooned in a corner while Elspeth disappeared. In yet another house he was helping to hand around the food when she decided to move on, and he had no choice but to drop a plate of scones to the floor while he dashed after her. Yet still, in spite of all such problems, he had to make sure Finn Learson did not notice how closely he was keeping on Elspeth’s trail, and a dozen times that night he blessed Nicol for the scarlet hair ribbons that picked her out from all the other people milling around.

The further the night went on, however, the more difficult he found it to keep her always under his eye; for the further the night went on, of course, the more tired he grew. His legs began to ache with running over the tough, springy grass of the hill. His eyes smarted from lack of sleep, and it was the smarting eyes which at last betrayed him.

One moment he had the will-o’-the-wisp figure of Elspeth full in view as she danced ahead of him across the hill. The next moment, his weary eyelids drooped, and before he could blink them open again, the green of the northern lights had vanished behind one of the sky’s spells of total darkness.