Wolfskin (23 page)

The men from the snow lands marched up to join the islanders, led by the solemn Ulf and his brother, Somerled. There were the advisers, the
men-at-arms, the wolfskin-clad guards. They took their places in the circle, and Ulf and Engus advanced to stand by the tall stone, a veritable giant pierced by a single, round hole: the mark of a god's angry fist, one of the visitors had suggested, but Engus had explained calmly that it was an eye. Swear on this, and the ancestors would be watching you every moment to ensure you kept faith. It was also a passage, a portal between worlds. Thus, to make a promise this way meant you understood what these islands were, how they contained not just the human life that tilled their fields and fished their seas, but a deeper, more secret life, the life of earth, the spirit of the ancestors. Ulf had nodded gravely at Tadhg's translation, saying nothing.

As to the ritual itself, it was quite simple, and all could see clearly how it satisfied the requirements of both Engus's folk and Ulf's. Both ring and stone were here present in one; the treaty would indeed be doubly sworn. Through the hole in the looming monolith, Ulf clasped the king's hand, and each bowed his head. There was a silence, and then Engus's voice rang out:

“Let not sword be raised, nor bow be drawn, nor fist be loosed in anger between my folk and yours!”

And Ulf repeated the vow, pleasing Engus's men mightily by using the tongue of the Folk. He did not yet understand this language, but was learning as quickly as he could, seeing the advantage of it. A flock of small birds flew overhead at the moment he spoke, circling once before they headed westward, and this was generally considered a good omen. A cheer went up from the men, and Engus came around to clasp Ulf by the shoulder, a smile transforming his bearded face. The agreement was made.

The barley was ripening toward harvest time, a fine crop this year. Ulf's people were busy constructing their new dwelling houses, building stone walls, fashioning thatched roofs, coming to terms with the fact that they were staying. Those who were bound home for Rogaland were tending to the ships, getting them ready for another voyage. They had moved the vessels to a bay in the south, finding that place more suited to the mending and rebuilding work required. The local fisherfolk had been generous in the provision of accommodation and supplies. Brother Tadhg took his small satchel and his book of stories and returned to Holy Island, and he took Ulf with him to see the settlement the brothers had made in that unlikely place. Seals formed an escort as his frail craft bobbed away through the tide race.

With scythe and sickle, rake and pitchfork, the Folk began the harvest under fair skies. They had gathered perhaps half of the ripe grain before
the sickness came. It crept up on them as subtly as a midsummer dusk, starting as a tickling cough, a dripping nose, a slight fever. First one man had it and recovered, then his brother took sick and worsened. Before seven days were gone he was laid in his grave, stone dead. It began to pass between them like a sudden fire, taking man, woman, and child without discrimination. It was like no plague the Folk had ever seen before, swift and deadly. Many remedies were tried; none worked. The harvest was abandoned, for within one cycle of the moon there were only two occupations for a man or woman not already dead or dying: tending the sick, and digging graves.

Amongst the newcomers, few succumbed and none died. Ulf's wife, Lady Margaret, set her people to helping as best she could. But there was little that could be done in the face of such a scourge, and they had their own folk to tend to. Engus himself remained healthy; his son, Kinart, was briefly ill, but rallied soon. Others of the king's household were not so lucky. Engus sent his men forth among the people to offer what aid they could; his men sickened and died. The farmhouses were shuttered. Within, lonely survivors wept in shadowed rooms. In the fields, sons buried their fathers; by cold hearths, mothers keened for lost children. Ulf's men rescued the barley left standing in the fields and stored it away before rain came. That was a small mercy. He used his hunting dogs to seek out wandering stock, but they could not be everywhere. Sheep fell into gullies and starved; eagles stole autumn lambs.

Nessa knew little of this at the time, for she lay shivering and burning, trapped in feverish visions. She dreamed she was bound up in tight ropes and held near flames; she dreamed she was being chased by slavering monsters, and running through quicksand. She dreamed of skulls with empty eyes, dead husks whose features she recognized. She thought her mother was there, and then gone. The serving girl looked after her a while, and then she, too, was gone, and the only one around was Brother Tadhg, which was odd, because he had gone home. He was sponging her face with a cloth and making her drink water, but she didn't want to, she was tired, she was so tired…

She was sick for a long time, and when at last her head came back to itself, the autumn was almost gone. She tried to get out of bed, but her legs gave way under her and she fell in a heap on the floor. There was nobody else in the girls' quarters, nobody at all. And it was quiet: so quiet that for a moment of sheer terror she wondered if she were the only one left, of all of them. Then Tadhg came back and sat her on the bed, blanket-swathed, and
made her drink soup. He would not talk to her until she had finished it all. Then, because Nessa refused to let him go without telling her what had happened, he gave her the truth. The sickness had taken almost half the Folk on the home island, and more than half the household on the Whaleback. They did not know about the other islands yet. The old woman, Rona, had survived, and had been venturing out with potions for the sick. Engus was well, and so was Kinart now. Indeed, Kinart had been quite a hero, helping maintain supplies of food to all the farms, and making a trip across to fetch Tadhg and Ulf. The Christians themselves had not escaped unscathed, for the two local lads who had joined them on Holy Island were both dead now, burned up by the sickness.

The account was as yet incomplete.

“My mother?” whispered Nessa.

A shadow passed over Tadhg's calm features. “She has been gravely ill, my dear,” he told her gently. “Near death. She is past the worst now, but much weakened. When you are stronger, I will take you to see her.”

There was another silence. Nessa found that this time she did not have the will to ask. She closed her eyes, feeling slow tears begin to well as Tadhg's quiet voice continued its litany of loss.

“Your sisters…your two sisters are both gone, Nessa. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I must bring you this terrible news. Sometimes God wills it thus; he gathers the innocent and the good to be with him, to pass straight to that heavenly realm where all is light and grace. Now you feel only pain; you cannot see beyond the darkness of your own grief. In time, you will understand that they are in a better place, a place where there is no sadness.”

But Nessa pulled the blanket over her face and turned away from him, and would not be comforted. Anger burned like a small flame within her: anger at herself for being so weak and helpless she could not even get out of bed; her sisters had died right here and she had not even known, she hadn't done a single thing to help them. Anger at Tadhg for his words that meant nothing, for his faith that was lies, all lies. Anger at her uncle, too. He had changed the way things were. He had welcomed strangers to the Light Isles, and made a new pattern. Then the sickness had come, and now the Folk were weakened and the cycle unbalanced. If Engus had left things as they were, maybe this would not have happened. No wonder she had felt uneasy, seeing those men with their big axes made welcome at her uncle's table.

There was a little time, brief enough, when she let despair overwhelm her and sat weeping in the dark. But she forced herself to recover, for there was no longer any time to waste. She made herself eat, though all food
tasted like sand. She made herself walk, though every part of her body felt limp as a hank of spun wool. She went to see her mother, who sat listless on a bench, hair uncombed, hands idle in her lap, staring out toward the sea. It became immediately apparent that Nessa herself must take some sort of charge here, young as she was. There were few serving folk left. Those who had not perished were away tending their own families in scattered farmhouse or cottage. Engus had gone to assess how many islanders remained, what stock had been let wander, what damage autumn storms had done to ill-guarded homes. Ulf had come with his big guards and made a formal offer of help, though all knew he was already doing as much as he could for them. Kinart was organizing a small group of fishermen to maintain supplies and bring boats up to safety before winter. That left Nessa to keep the pitiful remnant of Engus's household in order, and she did. There was no time for the mysteries, no time for the women's place.

By autumn's end, the sickness had run its course, and the survivors were putting things to rights as best they could. There were one or two, like Nessa's mother, who might never quite get over it. But life had to go on. There had been hard times before: harsh winters, cattle plagues, war with the tribes of the Caitt. The wisdom of the ancestors had enabled the Folk to endure such reversals. They would continue to survive. It was whispered that perhaps it was just as well Ulf and his snow giants had come when they did, since the Folk had lost so many good people this season. At least there would be strong men for plowing, in the spring.

As for Nessa, she was glad to be busy. It stopped her from thinking too much. When she thought, she grew very angry, so angry she had to go away from the settlement and stand alone at the western end of the Whaleback, on the clifftop, letting the wind and the sea spray sting her skin and whip her long hair into a flag of defiance. Sometimes she would find herself screaming like a wild creature into the gale. Sometimes she wept. She never returned to the settlement until the signs of her anguish were quite erased from her features. There was a rain pool up there in which you could see an image of yourself. She knew that person in the water was someone different from the Nessa of last spring, who had walked the cliff paths and bright shores of the island and never dreamed her people's lives could hold such pain. The creature who looked up at her now had the same gray eyes; her hair was still long and brown and wind-tangled. But she was paler and thinner, and her expression was quite changed. There was a sort of shadow in it, as if she had lost something, or perhaps had found something she didn't want, but must keep forever.

Once she came across Tadhg standing quietly by the place where her folk were laid in the earth, so many, her sisters among them. There was a cairn over them, stones layered neatly. In time, a green turf blanket would soften it. Tadhg's lips were moving. His hands held the plain wooden cross that he wore around his neck, and all of a sudden Nessa could not control her feelings.

“Stop it! Stop it!” she screamed, running at him and grabbing his hands so that the cross fell back against his robe, swinging on its rough cord. “They don't want your prayers, they can't hear your words of wisdom! These are lies anyway, all lies! Your faith is a web of falsehoods! If your god is so gentle and forgiving, if he loves the innocent and pure of heart, why did he let my sisters die?”

Tadhg did not reply at once. He stood quietly as she hit him with her two fists; he watched as she stepped away, clutching her arms around herself in an attempt to contain her fury. At last he said, “God is love, Nessa. He gathers your sisters to his heart, and heals all their suffering. They look down on you smiling. God loves all his children.”

“It's not true! Everyone died, little babies, old men, hard-working folk, all kinds of people. How can you say everything's all right when it's so wrong? My sisters died before they could grow up and be married and have children, before they could do anything. There's no reason at all for that. Why were my people taken, and the strangers spared? We have not deserved this, it is cruel and unjust. I spit on your god and his false words of love. I despise him.”

“Now, Nessa,” said Tadhg, “you do not believe me, I know, but this will become easier to bear in time.”

“How can it?” Nessa snapped, furious with his patience.

“It will,” he said. “You will never forget them, but you will put them away in your memory, and move on. We all do.”

There was a silence.

“Tell me,” said Tadhg, “do you think if I were not here, and you had never heard of Jesus Christ and his teachings, this plague would not have come?”

“No,” she conceded.

“Who would you have blamed then?” asked Tadhg softly. “This is not his doing, and it is not the fault of Ulf's people. They have shown their strength and their kindness during this dark time; my opinion of them is changing. Now come, shall we walk back together? I find prayers helpful. Why not seek answers in your own faith? We must heal our wounds in
whatever way we can.”

After that, Nessa made time to walk on the shore and look at the patterns on the stones. She went south down the coast to the high cliffs and sat in a hollow looking out to the west, hearing the seabirds squabbling on the ledges below, not so many at this time of year but still enough to set the air alive around her. She stood on the rocks where she had seen the silent warrior, and watched the sea. These journeys were indeed a kind of prayer, her own kind. The hurt did not seem to lessen, not when little things kept reminding her: a bone comb carved with seals, which had been her sister's, left behind in a corner of a shelf; a pair of green felt slippers, which had been her other sister's, and that she had always wanted for herself. Now the slippers sat by her bed, and she could not bear to put them on.

And all the time, Engus's eyes were on her, assessing, appraising. For everything had changed. Her uncle had been proud to see her become Rona's student, proud of what she would be for the Folk. But that was before. Since the sickness, the family was no longer rich in girls. Kinart could not take his father's place. The royal line was the women's line; it had always been thus, for such a manner of succession ensured strong blood and meant disputes between kin were few. In the space of a season's turning, Nessa had become the last princess of the Folk, and it was no longer possible that she devote her life to the mysteries. If the crown were not to pass to the Caitt, Nessa must wed and bear a son: a son who would one day be king of the Light Isles.