Winter Serpent (2 page)

In the empty yard a lone chicken had scratched in the dung pile. A furtive dog trotted toward the milking house, wagging its tail. The bodachs, the old men too infirm to travel, sat by the steps of the chief’s hall and whispered their tales of foreboding. Beyond, at the gates, they could see the lone spearman standing his watch, looking down on the waterway of Cumhainn in the direction from which the invader must come.

In the chief’s hall those who were left in the Coire gathered about Calum macDumhnull. They were not an impressive group, only some Scots servants of the house, some Picts and their women, their faces fearful under their blue tattoos, two boys anxious to prove themselves in battle, and a dozen of Calum’s renegade warriors. And Doireann nighean Muireach.

The figure of the old chief’s daughter looked strange and out of place in the Coire. The other young women, full of the tales of how the Vikings raped and tortured their captives, had fled. But Doireann nighean Muireach, with the undaunted pride which had marked her father, had remained, enjoying Calum macDumhnull’s predicament. She had taken fierce pleasure in her foster brother’s dismay and his useless words. She was the last of the old
chief’s line and had suffered much under Calum’s hand. Now she stood with her plaid cloak thrown over her head, her arms folded in it, not moving. She had said that she would not abandon her father’s hall to any enemy, whether it be kinsman or foreigner. And, watching her, those remaining in the Coire acknowledged the strange fact that a young girl should show so much courage and Calum macDumhnull, the chief, so little. Calum, fidgeting, glowered his hatred.

The day passed slowly, the group which was huddled together in the house spending its time retelling the tales which the bards had brought from Ireland and the accounts of the terrible deeds of the Northmen.

It was said, they repeated, that the Norse pirates cut off the eyelids and tongues of their victims, leaving them staked out on the turf to die slowly; that these Northmen had impaled Irish warriors with their own spears, leaving them stuck to the doors of the village huts, dying but still able to watch the rape of their women and the slaughter of their children and old ones. It was both terrible and strange that the Vikings had such an interest in death. They had been heard to say that they believed it was the true test of a man, that all men feared death, and they admired only those who could greet it boldly. But how could one meet death boldly in the hands of the Northmen, who had made such a hideous art of it? Yes, these northlanders were inhuman, and they burned with a fierce hatred of all things Christian and had no mercy for the Celts or Britons. It had been terrible, also, to hear of the destruction, and the Northmen’s talent for leaving nothing undone: the bodies of the slain, even, laid out like cordwood and stripped, the clothing sorted and carried off.

They were chilled in the Coire by their own whispering, but Calum gave no order to stop it. He could not; his eyes were on their lips as fearfully as any other’s. Yet he could not leave his house and go into the mountains. He had connived to gain the chieftaincy at Muireach’s death; some even said he had done murder for it. He could not let it go now.

It was almost sundown when they heard the gate watch crying that two boatloads of Northmen approached the Coire. They were coming not in rushing attack, but slowly, as if to show they were peaceable.

Calum and his warriors snatched up their spears and rushed out to the gates. There was only a small group of the Northmen, it was true, and this heartened the Scots. Calum and his men went down to the shore. The women and the old men came cautiously after. The Viking smallboats came straight on into the little cove which formed the Coire and ran aground in the reeds. Calum and his men held a wavering line before them, copper shields up, spears pointed at the invader.

The Northmen seemed in no hurry. They sat in their boats for a long moment, surveying the small knot of clansmen on the shore, the wooden houses of the Coire, the women and aged men close by the gates. Then carefully, quietly, they slid over the sides of the boats and waded ashore, almost to the spot where the Scots chief and his men were standing.

The Northmen were half a head taller than the macDumhnulls, and their battle gear was massive. They carried swords and battle-axes but, curiously, no spears. Their shields were small but well-made, of wood and leather overlaid with iron. They looked at Calum macDumhnull with the squinted eyes of men who follow the sea, and their beards were plaited, woven with ribbons, and made golden with lime bleach. In all, their appearance was terrifying. Their size, the foreign set of their faces, the bleached hair and mangy furs they wore, the ragged tunics under beautifully fashioned ring mail marked the feared and unknown. The man in the forefront, their leader, was big even for a Northman, big in belly as well as in chest. His helmet carried the largest branching horns and his graying beard hid most of his face. The pirates held themselves arrogantly; beside them Calum’s warriors seemed rustic and clumsy.

The Viking leader ground the tip of his sword into the sand and it stuck there. He rubbed his hands briskly.

“Chieftain, I am called Sweyn Barrelchest. I speak your tongue,” he rumbled. He stared down at Calum, and then his small eyes passed on to the Scots warriors the men and women in the background. “So now, I will tell you this: this seems a fair place. And we have come to deal fairly, in a peaceful manner. We have come to trade for those things which we need.”

No one could speak. The clansmen stared back at the Northmen, turning the words over in their minds. If this was true, then they were saved. But they could not believe it. Calum macDumhnull took off his cap and crushed it in his hands, making a show of considering the matter.

The Northman waited patiently for an answer, his eyes on Calum’s face, and when it was slow in coming he looked annoyed. He repeated his speech.

Calum swallowed hurriedly at this. He had started to speak, stopped, and then started again. What he said was not clear, only that he, the chief of the macDumhnulls in Cumhainn, would be glad to talk of any trading. And he stuttered that they should come into his hall. The old Viking accepted, and his band followed him, bunched together warily, suspicious of dark corners and of sudden movements.

When the leader who called himself Sweyn Barrelchest had been seated at the high table with a cup of ale in his hand, he allowed himself a little curious craning, looking about the long hall of the Scots chieftain, at the meat smoking in the rafters, the curtained partition for sleeping quarters down one
side of the house, and the disorder which gave evidence of the inhabitants’ terror. Then his gaze fell on Doireann nighean Muireach bringing a bowl of honey to the table, and it stopped. The long piece of her tartan was pulled forward over her face, but the short-sleeved, short-skirted arasaid showed her legs and the roundness of her arms as she leaned over to put the bowl before him. Her rank in the house demanded that she observe the law of hospitality and serve him personally, but her half-hidden face showed her unwillingness. The Viking put his finger into the dark honey and looped it deftly; he washed it down with beer, and his eyes over the rim of the cup followed her back to the hearth. Abruptly, he bent his head toward Calum macDumhnull and began to bargain for meat and beer and fresh water, which the Northmen claimed they needed.

The big Northman knew how to bargain. He had the Viking gift for trade and sensed the proper worth of things despite Calum’s protests. The rest of the Vikings sat silent, drinking their beer thirstily, their faces carefully expressionless.

As darkness came on, the women deserted the service at the long table to gather uneasily by the hearth. The few Picts that were left in the Coire were outside, gathering together the stores for the Vikings. When it had grown late, the Northmen nodding with drink, some having lain their heads down among the cups on the table, the women took the opportunity to slip away to the sleeping cubicles. Calum and the Viking chief took no note of this; they were deep in their talk.

In the early morning hours, when Doireann had been long asleep, Calum came to her. He was very drunk; he had to hold onto the curtains of the partition to keep from falling. Doireann sprang up from her bed instantly, for she was well aware of what he was like when he had been drinking.

“Doireann nighean Muireach,” he called thickly. “Are you awake?”

“No, I am still asleep,” she answered him, “but bellow loudly enough and you will waken me.”

He snickered, moving toward the sound of her voice. “Do not be afraid. I have come to you with good news.”

“I am not afraid of you,” she said quietly, “but if you do not leave this place I will scream and bring your house in an uproar, and the Northmen will laugh at this fine Scots chieftain who creeps about in the women’s booths. More, that is, than they already laugh at you.”

“Now, my little sister,” he said. He belched. “My dearly beloved foster sister. How must you misunderstand me? For many months the dear burden of you has lain heavy on my heart. For you are without a husband even now, and did you not come to me once of your own accord and ask me to find a husband for you?”

She frowned. This had been one of her plans to escape him which come to nothing.

“Now, my heart is happy and yours must be also, for I have found just the man.”

“Now? In the middle of the night? Her voice was scornful.

“Yes, yes, this is what has made me so happy, Doireann, daughter of

Muireach who was once brave and noble chieftain of this clan.”

He found her wrist and seized it. His breath was sour in the narrow space. “I felt once that I might have been the man you searched for. Perhaps if once you had let me touch you.…” He jerked at her arm. “But, even so, how happy your father would have been to see you married to me before he died,
the two bloods made one.”

She wrenched her arm away from him and it hit the oak boards of the wall. “But, Doireann,” he said craftily, “I could never have given you happiness.” She snorted at this.

“So, I have found you a better man, a much better man, and you will doubtless agree, since you have this low opinion of your foster brother and chieftain. This Sweyn of the Norse pirates has come with gold and, now that he has seen you, he wishes to pay a good bride price and take you with him at once. He says that he wishes to take you back to the foreign camp, tonight, and since you gave this matter into my hands long ago, I have agreed.”

He was watching her closely, trying to see her face in the dark. He had done his worst and wished now to savor her defeat, but she would not give him his triumph. She had long hated and resisted him, and she would not satisfy him now.

“As you say,” she whispered, “a better man.” He sighed.

“Now, as you know, it is not my way as a generous man to let you go from this hall without proper bride gifts. I have had one of the house women fetch some things of your mother’s. Not too much, for it would not be right to tempt the Northmen. And there is also food waiting on the hearth for you. But you must hurry, for this big Norseman is impatient.”

He left her, and she allowed herself to slide down upon the bed, numbed by his treachery. He had bidden her to hurry, and for once she must obey him, for if she lingered to think over his words the full meaning of them would destroy her. This is what Calum macDumhnull wished to see. She would not give way to her terror. She had always known his hatred of her, and knew how futile it would be to seek mercy from him now. This was his final cruelty to her; she guessed he had been thinking on it ever since she had asked him for a husband.

She would never know if the Northmen had come to ask for women or if Calum had put the idea to them himself. Whatever way it had been, it was certain her dishonor was complete. No other woman, no bound girl or byre-woman among the Picts would suffer as much as she, a woman of rank, in being given over to this wandering band of raiders. From this night her father’s kinsmen would talk of her as though she were among the dead, and it would not be long before she, too, would wish this had been the true ending of it.

She gathered her few possessions. There was not much that could be called her own here in the chief’s house, in the hall where her father had once lived proudly, where her mother had claimed the rank of Princess of the Picts. There was only the small wooden chest under the bed, which held her two gowns, the arasaids, a linen headcloth, a comb, and some string to bind up her hair.

As she prepared her leave-taking the well-known sounds of the night came to her: the breathing of the sleepers in their cubicles, the fretting of a child, the distant crackle of the fire on the hearth. These small things were so familiar and suddenly so painful to her that she was forced to stop, resisting them, making a great effort to keep hold of her defiance and her pride. There was nothing else so important to her now as to show Calum and the others that she was undefeated.

When she came out, the Northmen were grouped at the table, waiting. Their arrangements had been made and they had secured a large supply of stores: sheep, hogs, skins of beer, and water and ground meal. Calum macDumhnull was promising them an extra boat from the Coire to transport the things. The Northmen nodded. It was agreed they would send the Scots dugout back on the tide. To one side of them stood a freewoman from the household, sleepy-eyed and frightened, holding an ivory box in her arms. Calum sprawled drunkenly on the far side of the table, a cup of beer in his hand.