The Extremely Epic Viking Tale of Yondersaay (21 page)

Even if you did have an idea or if someone traced the outline for you of the windows set back into the hill—antiglare glass preventing accidental detection—and the various stories and levels, you would still be overwhelmed by the magnitude, the sheer vastness of Violaceous Hall, the expansive chambers and high ceilings, as soon as you set foot inside it.

You do not expect a castle which has been carved into rock in such a way that makes it almost impossible to see with the naked eye to be as flooded with light as a greenhouse in summer. You might also reasonably assume that a vast castle hewn into the side of a mountain with walls and floors of rock would be cold. But even when fires don’t blaze in the huge fireplaces, Violaceous Hall is comfortably warm. As the hallways and rooms retreat deeper into the rock face, light and heat penetrate the tightest corners, the smallest back room, and the most spiral of stairwells. Lavishly furnished and decorated, there is an atmosphere of elegance and grandeur.

Every part of the castle is like this. Except for the dungeon. Where the Great Hall is filled with light and is warm even on the frostiest day, the dungeon feels like the coldest winter all year round and like nighttime at all hours of the day. Light sometimes trickles down the stairwell into the tiny passage that leads to that deadly chamber. That light is stopped abruptly by the heavy metal doors that seal off the rooms of torture from the rest of the world.

There is no escape from the Violaceous Hall dungeon except through those metal doors. They are locked and guarded night and day. The walls of the dungeon are impenetrable rock.

Heavy, and slow to open and close, the metal gates are in need of an oiling. No matter where in the castle grounds the jarl is, he can hear the creak of the door. It’s a subtle sound if you’re far away. But distinctive. If anything went into or out of the dungeon at Violaceous Hall, the jarl knew about it.

Hamish brought Ruairi straight to the dungeon at Violaceous Hall. The jarl was hunting in the meadow on the farthest edge of the castle grounds. At the precise moment Hamish creaked open the dungeon doors, Jarl Silas Scathe’s head shot up, and he bade his hunting partners be still. Then he announced confidently without a hint of doubt, “The Red King of Denmark has arrived.”

Granny and Dani were now fully dry. They got comfortable on Rarelief’s roots as he continued.

“Scathe arrived on the island easily enough, to tell you the truth,” Rarelief said. “He had been invited, after all. And he had taken a small following of men with him.

“He found the place handily; he had directions. Mr. Scathe had conducted in-depth research into the island and its history, had read all the literature available, and listened to all the theories. He had even consulted Brother Brian the Devout and Handy with Numbers, and Brother Brian, believing Mr. Scathe to be a friend and close colleague of the king’s, was very forthcoming. Brother Brian gave him detailed maps and told him all he knew. In fact, he told him more than he knew; he embellished wildly and greatly played up his closeness with King Dudo.

“It was only when Mr. Scathe set foot on Yondersaay and wandered about that he realized his odious error. The conniving upstart Mr. Scathe had himself been outsmarted by King Dudo, with the very kind help of the king of Groenland. Not to forget Queen Ursula Swan White, who had conducted another hissy fit before Mr. Scathe left, right under your man’s nose. She was a born actress, that one. She threw vases, stamped on garments, tore down tapestries, ripped important-looking documents, and screamed and shouted until Mr. Scathe had left the castle in Denmark. He did not notice the glint in Ursula’s eyes nor the growing delight in Dudo’s.

“But here on the island, walking along the main promenade, wondering how to announce himself as the new jarl of Yondersaay, he started to realize something was amiss. The villagers mostly ignored him. He finally stopped an old man, who looked very like the king of Groenland, now that Mr. Scathe thought about it, and asked him where the Valhalla treasure was buried. The old man, who had a small bird perched on his shoulder, a raven, asked him to repeat the question, a bit louder this time. When Mr. Scathe did so, the old man laughed and walked away.

“Mr. Scathe ran up the promenade after him and turned him by the shoulder to face him once more. ‘Old man, I have asked you where the Valhalla Treasure is, and I demand an answer.’

“‘You will never find it,’ the old man said with a thrust of his chin, ‘and no one here will tell you where it is or how to find it.’”

“I bet it was Odin,” Dani said.

“You’d be right to think that, small girl, for indeed the old man was none other than Odin himself,” Rarelief said.

“Mr. Scathe was about to declare himself, was about to announce his ownership of the island and everything on it, when the old man straightened and looked Mr. Scathe in the eye. The old man seemed in that instant of straightening to lose about twenty years. His wrinkles flattened out, his eyes took on a deeper hue of blue, he looked bigger and stronger and younger now than he had two seconds previously. Mr. Scathe was beginning to feel uneasy.

“‘You made a deal with King Dudo, is that correct?’

“‘Yes, that is exactly right; I am now the jarl, and I’m literally the lord and master of Yondersaay!’ Mr. Scathe said and pulled himself up to his full height and tried to look as lordly and masterly as possible.

“‘You are no such thing!’ said the old man. ‘You asked to be invited onto Yondersaay and to be allowed to make a claim on it.’

“‘Yes, therefore I am literally lord and mas—’

“‘Again, Mr. Scathe. You are no such thing,’ the old man said.

“‘How do you know my name?’

“‘I know all there is to know. And I can tell you that you are lord and master only of yourself. You are nothing to Yondersaay. You are here, and that is all. There are only two ways to become lord and master of Yondersaay.” And here Odin told Scathe what I had told Dudo many years before: kill everyone in Ursula’s line, or marry into the family.

“Mr. Scathe was devastated. He swore and cursed and lost himself in such a rage that it would have put Ursula’s make-believe tantrum firmly in second place in a tantrum-throwing competition. Mr. Scathe took a stride in the direction of his boat in the harbor when the old man turned to him.

His appearance returned at a stroke to what it previously was—his eyes lost some of their luster, his back gnarled itself into a hump once more, and wrinkles deepened around his eyes. He spoke softly. “‘You may not return to Denmark or to any of the king’s lands for the entirety of your life, Mr. Scathe. King Dudo fulfilled his part of the bargain. You are here on Yondersaay as a direct result of his invitation, and you have the right to attempt to claim the island as yours. That the conditions are not favorable to such an outcome is by the bye. You must uphold your part of the agreement.’

“The old man was right and correct. If Mr. Scathe left the island now, he would never make it back again; Mr. Scathe was betting the invitation was good for one visit only. And it was true; he had nowhere else to go. Silas Scathe halted in his tracks. Best not to be too hasty. He veered off his course and turned from the harbor. He walked a little way and sat down to have a think.

“In hindsight, of course, Odin should have kept his mouth shut. He was gloating a bit, you see, rubbing it in. The unfortunate outcome of this, however, was that he gave your man reason to pause and to think, and delayed Mr. Scathe’s departure from the island. Odin realized his mistake, but he realized it too late. Still, he would not panic yet; Mr. Scathe would probably get up from his seat on the rock, gather his men, and take to the seas. Any minute now. There was nothing here for him in Yondersaay. Odin tried not to think that there was nothing for him anywhere else either.

“But the sad truth was Mr. Scathe had nothing to lose by staying here, and potentially everything to gain.

“Mr. Scathe sat on the rock thinking until late into the night, long after the sun’s hovering descent and the nighttime owls began their hunt. When he finally got out of his think, Mr. Silas Scathe had a new plan. A long-term plan.”

“During the first few hours of Silas Scathe’s second day on Yondersaay, the islanders, who had only pretended to ignore him, noticed a subtle shift in his behaviour. Gone were the swaggering self-confidence, the sharpness of his tone, the arrogance. Instead, there was a serenity, which seemed to suggest Silas Scathe had reconciled himself to the fact that he was not Lord of Yondersaay and wouldn’t ever be. Another thought piled itself on the others and that was that Mr. Scathe could not go home. He was stuck here, good and proper.

“Over the days and weeks that followed, he and his men went about the island in a quiet way. They were polite and friendly with everyone they came across. They built a little group of dwelling places on the outskirts of the settlement, close enough to the action to know what was going on, far enough away so as not to be seen to be sticking their noses in. Mr. Scathe’s was the largest, naturally.

“Mr. Scathe attempted charm. He made himself useful where possible and was generally pleasant and unobtrusive. He made sure his men were nice to everyone too.

“He stayed just like that, on the surface, for a long time. Weeks went by, then months. Without much ado, a couple of years passed and, would you believe it, Mr. Scathe was still on the island. He was known to everyone, and although he had been regarded with a lot of suspicion at first, people had started to forget that this was the secretary who had tried to swindle the island from King Dudo. He was not exactly popular, now, don’t get me wrong, but he was put up with. He was insinuating himself into island life slowly, calmly, politely. It had to be said, he did it successfully.

“Up to a point.

“Scathe was an outsider, an incomer, and he always would be. He could exist alongside the locals, but he would never be able to charm and manipulate anyone here the way he had done in Denmark. He would never find out the secrets of the island from the islanders. Mr. Scathe knew this. The islanders knew this. The people on the island didn’t feel the need to run Mr. Scathe out of town; their secrets were safe from him. General feelings on the matter about town were that, ignored and defeated, he would eventually give up and move away.

“It was known to the villagers that he spent his nights wandering the island searching for the treasure. He dug hundreds of holes all around the island by moonlight and filled them back in again before morning. He thought no one knew what he was up to. But everyone knew.

“It took Mr. Scathe awhile to notice that the puffins and the trees and the sands and the rocks could talk. The islanders were so confident that Mr. Scathe was no threat to them and to the island that it didn’t occur to anyone to warn the animals and the trees and the sands and the rocks and the waters.”

“Four more years went by. Mr. Scathe spent the nights wandering the island, exploring caves and coves, digging holes and filling them in again. Becoming friendly with all the nonhuman life on the island.