The Book of Bera Read online

  Bera took up her stance. ‘You shall not have Bjorn.’

  That told them. Her skern made his knees knock.

  ‘Stop it!’ she hissed. ‘I’m doing my best.’

  There was a snort of derision from her skern. No wonder her confidence was low.

  But then he presented the sky like it was his special gift. It shivered. A curtain of lights, greens and blues, moved in waves above the mountains. The North Lights always kept them at bay. It was late for the display and this was especially strong; the sky crackled with energy and burned with colour. The Drorghers shrank back from the flickering blaze. Swirls of pink and yellow forked down at them and voices whispered in some ancient tongue:

  ‘Twisting together sighing we hear our mother’s blood, our blood, calling to us...’

  ‘Are they warning me?’

  It’s a lament.

  ‘... and we are in space and time, scorched by the flash of dying stars until at last we gasp and breathe.’

  ‘Are they my Valla ancestors? What are they saying?’

  Shh. It’s about us.

  ‘We two, an entire world, pushing against unbroken velvet walls. Until we are ripped apart.’

  The Drorghers shambled off, keening, with vivid green flames licking their heels. A shooting star streaked across the brightening sky: it was nearly dawn.

  Now I’d get back inside, dear, and hear the news.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me it?’

  There was a carefree humming.

  Bera dashed inside, spitefully hoping to shut him out. But after she slid the bar across the door he tapped her on the shoulder.

  Want to know why Drorghers knock?

  ‘No.’

  They want to trap you at a threshold, a liminal place. So that, my dear, is where you might get to speak to your poor dead mother.

  ‘Why tell me this now?’

  It’s by way of being a peace offering.

  ‘I meant, why haven’t you told me before?’

  Even a true Valla can’t always hear her skern.

  ‘This is the worst day of my life and you always —’

  She spoke to empty air. Bera flexed her fingers and stamped her feet to get the blood flowing. Her fur boots were thinning round the heels. She was hardly old enough to marry but she felt like an old woman after everything that had happened. If only she could just be a girl on a boat. She took some comfort from the dim shapes around her in the grey light, recognising every box, tool, halter and harness.

  Apart from a new sharp-edged squareness in one of the stalls.

  It was a chest. Bera ran her hand over the wood. A rune was carved on the top and she traced its shape with a finger: B, her rune. And Bjorn’s. Ottar must have made it at the yard, for her coming of age. It wasn’t for a while but perhaps the poem was going to be Bjorn’s gift. She flushed at the trouble it would have caused. But when she touched the chest again, the love for her father was a meltwater torrent. It was crafted like the small boat he made her just before her mother died; the last time he made her anything. But now she was his little Bera again!

  Don’t get your hopes up.

  Bera jumped. ‘Stop sneaking up on me! First you won’t come and now you’re never gone!’

  Moan, moan. We shared a womb, as you’ve just been reminded. We were that close. Her skern crossed his first two fingers to demonstrate.

  ‘The ancestors made no sense. Anyway, I thought you didn’t deal in history.’

  I only look forward but our past is who we are. Why don’t you like boys?

  ‘I do! Don’t I?’

  You blame them. Learn to love the male of the species, dear one.

  It was a parting riddle because her father burst in, carrying a rushlight.

  ‘Where in Hel’s name have you got to? You should be inside offering hospitality.’ He caught hold of her arm. ‘And you look a shambles. Get your things ready to pack. What will he think?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I’ll bring the chest.’ His rough hands cudgelled her through the low doorway into the hall.

  The fire was low but even in the gloom she knew the stranger was there, with his foreign smell. Bera was filled with icy dread.

  The brute came and prodded her ribs. ‘She’s like a shrimp,’ he grunted, returning to the fire.

  Ottar followed him. ‘Don’t you try and back out...’

  ‘We’re leaving now.’

  At last Bera found her voice. ‘I’m not going to Seabost or anywhere with you!’

  ‘I’ve come to take you home.’

  This was her home.

  Bera was given no time to think or prepare. The Seabost animal told her the box was her wedding chest. Ottar couldn’t get rid of her fast enough. He gave her no time to say farewell to Sigrid before he marched her down to the boatyard and lifted her onto the boat. And although there never was a parting kiss, this time it was an agony.

  ‘Is it because I let Bjorn die?’ she asked.

  His eyes were stones. ‘The blood debt is paid. So do your duty, as I’ve done mine.’ He cast off the lines and left.

  Her skern enfolded her as the boat left the empty jetty. The world was grey. Bera clung onto her necklace like a drowning sailor to a piece of flotsam. A sea mist hid the sun, confusing time and thought.

  Watch. Her skern tenderly placed his finger on her forehead and she saw...

  ... a torchman knocking on the hall’s double doors, three slow blows. The funeral pyre was ready. Ottar reopened the gap in the wall he had made for Bera’s mother. Although ashes could not become a Drorgher, it was still the custom to use a corpse door. No one took chances. Bjorn’s fishing mates carried the body out feet first, so that it would not be able to see the path they took to the pyre and return that way to take its living kin. Ottar nailed it shut behind them. Every precaution.

  It was a beautiful day, at home. Everything had a crisp edge against a clear sky. The small procession wound up the path towards the pyre, built on a hill to get the tallest flames. Bjorn’s body, guarded by fishermen, was rested at the foot.

  ‘Is Falki’s wife to be burned, too?’

  The torchmen are waiting with her, on top.

  Bera was glad Bjorn would not be alone. The fishermen passed up Bjorn’s net and knife to the torchmen, who set them on the high plinth. Then Sigrid gave food and Ottar coins. The corpse was slowly lifted three times before being laid amongst his few possessions. The men climbed down then set their torches to the kindling at the base of the pyre. They were skilled at their craft and the flames quickly took hold.

  ‘He’ll be with his father soon.’

  The air was hazy and shimmered with heat. Motes of ash flew and Bera screwed up her eyes...

  ... and then her skern took his finger away and Bera was back, on her way to Hel. She would have burned Bjorn’s blotched verse with him, so she dropped it over the side, where a darting fish swiftly took it.

  ‘Look at me.’ The Seabost brute pulled her head round.

  Bera jerked free. The thought of him getting close made her retch.

  ‘You’re a spirited bint,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you that. I reckon you’ll be more trouble than the deal’s worth, though. And you’re a scrutty waif, more like a boy.’

  She spat, aiming for his eyes, but splattered her own shoulder. She had even forgotten her wind-sense. He went off, laughing, and she hated him more. He had ripped her away from everything safe and loved and stopped her parting properly from Bjorn.

  When Bera looked back, all she called home was hidden behind the jutting headland on the Seabost side of the fjord. What was before her was marriage – and she had no real idea what that meant. They all joked about the nightly grunts and moans, but what was happening? How could she suddenly be a woman? She was a sailor, with all the freedom of the sea paths, not some shrivelled old hag with children tugging at her skirts. She had no father to protect her and no mother to explain. No Sigrid, no kinsfolk, none of the animals she loved.

  Be
ra pulled her sea cloak round her and sobbed.

  3

  Bera felt like the walking dead, trudging numbly after the man she was to marry, who carried her wedding chest.

  There were more jetties, walkways and twittens than at home but no one was about. The huts were grey and deserted, or studded with black spars, and the air was sharp, like wet smoke.

  Out of the corner of her eye Bera became aware of dead things everywhere: whale ribs crossed to form doorways; shark jaws as window frames; stomachs for fishing floats; and skins stretched tight on walls. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea where the giant beasts sink. It was like the end.

  Though no one was visible, Bera felt observed by hostile eyes. She kept her head high. It took all her strength.

  They stopped before a longhouse, its high timbers blanched by salt-laden storm-force winds. A colossal whale jaw at its entrance marked the importance of the family who lived there. She shivered as she was led underneath the arch of bones. It could have been Norgrind, the corpse gate to Hel.

  ‘Smile. You’re home.’

  Could this pig really live here, with his caffled hair and clothes that were stained and smelly? There were snarling dragonheads at each end of the towering lintel. The doors beneath stood wide and she passed through a narrow stone passage towards a closed inner door. She was trapped at a threshold; pressed on by the family’s ancestral spirits that whispered secret scourges.

  Then a small person smelling of tallow pushed past, opened the door and stood back to let her step inside.

  It was bigger even than the mead hall at home, with a high roof. Her steps echoed as she went further in over clean spruce boughs. She let her eyes accustom to the haze-blue light. There was a sweet note in the smoke that was pleasant but made her feel foreign. She sensed watchers in the shadows and the sleeping platforms were too far away to be seen. There was a large central hearth and, at the far end, a bright cooking fire with shelves of pots and pans on the walls around it and hams being smoked high up in the rafters above. A woman was stirring a stewpot and, in a moment of giddy joy, Bera thought it was Sigrid. A man was standing near the long trestle table but she did not want to turn her head to look at him. She was overwhelmed and scared.

  ‘Come inside.’ The man’s voice was friendly.

  She dared to look. He was smiling and held out his hand.

  ‘My name is Hefnir. Come further in. There’s nothing to fear. You’re going to be my wife.’

  Relief made her sway. At least she was not to marry the brute, who went off with her wedding chest to wherever she would sleep with this other man. Fear returned in a flush of shyness and she did not resist when the small person who had opened the door took her cloak. His head was shaven and knobbly. Slant-eyed women who did not raise their gaze led her to the table. They filled her beaker with mild ale. Men with cropped hair did all the mealtime chores. One of them gestured to her to sit – in a chair – and then, before she broke bread, he brought her a bowl of water and a towel to dry her hands. It was completely strange.

  ‘Who are those folk?’

  ‘Thralls.’

  ‘Is that where they come from?’

  He laughed. ‘Slaves, you’d call them.’

  She choked on a piece of bread. What did you do with slaves? Their snooty silence made her feel as if she should be serving them. So she sat, twisting the beads of her necklace; not belonging, not wanting to; wanting to go home.

  ‘Is the bread not to your taste?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bread.’

  ‘It’s different. Thank you, er...’

  ‘Hefnir.’ He smiled and pushed the thin horn beaker towards her. ‘Drink. It will help you swallow.’

  The brute returned, said something about red-haired twins and left, smirking. Other men came with storm-worn faces. They had reports of tool sharpening and jewellery making; of hunting trades and numbers of skins.

  Bera’s anxiety made her alert to every name and piece of business. One day it might help her. They all spoke respectfully about someone called Thorvald.

  ‘This business bores you,’ Hefnir said. ‘Why not visit the bath hut? One of the women will help you.’

  In other words, she stank.

  At home they washed in the river. When it froze, a cauldron of water was heated and they scrubbed themselves with rags. Ottar always went first. Bera liked this more. She sat in a wooden tub and someone – a thrall – poured blood-hot water over her head and shoulders. The warmth soaked into her bones and there was even soap. Bera wanted to stay there, safe from wifely duties (whatever they were) but an unsmiling woman got her out, rubbed her with coarse cloths and then dressed her. The garments were soft linen and fine wool, not like her own scratchy clothes. There were two silver brooches, both of twining serpents.

  ‘Whose things are these?’

  The woman’s eyes slid away. She held out a thick, blue cloak.

  It would make Bera belong to the old enemy that had killed Bjorn. Anger scorched through her. She threw the cloak to the floor and trampled it, furious with everything, even her ancestors, who had conspired with Fate to get her here.

  The woman was sneering at her. Bera looked round for her own cloak but it had been spirited away, leaving her dressed like an imposter. She picked up the blue cloak and shrugged it round her, as though she didn’t care. She knew how to live amongst others – but not slaves. Did it matter that they saw her true feelings?

  Some men watched her on her walk back to the longhouse. None looked welcoming. Bera was glad it was a short twitten and she ran into the passageway to escape. The ancestors shrieked the scourge words as she rushed through.

  ‘Perfidy! Violation!’

  Whatever it meant, it was nasty. She searched for the latch, scrabbled to open it and then burst into the hall.

  ‘I’m glad to find you so eager,’ said Hefnir.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Don’t be scared. Come.’

  He took her arm, led her to his billet and gestured at something lying on top of the wedding chest.

  ‘A gift of courtship,’ he said. ‘You fix it to your brooch.’

  He picked up a thin silver chain, with an ear-spoon and nail cleaner attached.

  ‘I – um – I haven’t fixed my brooches on.’ Bera held them out and blushed when Hefnir raised his eyebrows at her red hands. She hid them behind her back while he fixed it all in place.

  ‘It’s no crime to have the calloused palms and broken nails of a worker but it is a shame. That life is past. No sailing.’

  So this was the first wound inflicted by marriage. Some part of her had known it but hearing it filled her with despair.

  Hefnir went on. ‘You have a new role to fulfil.’

  The second wound. Fear clenched her guts at what that might entail: things no woman had told her. And from the way he was looking at her, it would be soonest. She had seen it in the mead hall, when drunken women lifted their skirts. Then what? If she disappointed him, would she become a thrall, not a wife? How could she bear being less than she was at this moment?

  Bera wanted to escape but fear kept her rooted. All the spit in her mouth dried and she stared at him, like a rabbit gazing at an eagle.

  There were voices from the hall and then a man appeared, smelling of the sea, and saved her.

  ‘Dragonboats. Off the Skerries.’

  ‘Coming here?’

  ‘Heading west, but—’

  ‘The watchers are in place?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Get Thorvald back. I need him by me.’

  Hefnir went through with the man. Bera wanted to put as much distance from his bed as possible, so she followed. They were already at the door.

  ‘And ask the other if this is a new threat,’ Hefnir muttered.

  The man gave him a look Bera couldn’t read, and left.

  ‘Who is Thorvald?’ she asked.

  ‘My second.’

  Hefnir came an
d gazed at the fire. He was not wearing a sword-belt. Surely he was supposed to protect his household, which now included her.

  ‘Will you not go yourself, to fight with him?’ she asked.

  Hefnir looked surprised. ‘I doubt they’ll come. Besides, I make plans, hunt and trade. I pay my second to fight.’

  ‘Why is he not here, then?’

  ‘Thorvald? I sent him off at first light... on business.’ He looked thoughtful again. ‘Though perhaps I feared the wrong thing.’

  Bera wondered what she had come to. Being close to the sea roads brought wealth but also danger.

  ‘Are they raiders?’

  ‘Could be sea-riders. We’ve had trouble here but their dragonboats attack at sea, too.’

  Old enmity made her glad Seabost had suffered – but she hoped they would not return. She hoped her face wasn’t showing all her thoughts, though Bjorn said it usually did. Or perhaps only he knew her so well. Homesickness squeezed her heart.

  Hefnir made a decision. ‘I shall go and make sure the danger is past. You can start your duties as my wife. Your keys are on the long trestle table in the hall. The thralls can understand if you speak clearly.’ He turned at the door. ‘Tonight is our wedding feast.’

  Saliva flooded her mouth. ‘Do you mean a feast? With proper food? Meat?’

  He laughed. ‘That’s the first time you’ve looked alive. Yes, proper food. There’s a place where they can grow food all year round. And they are anxious to... please us. Even after the pirate raid, we have enough.’

  Then he was gone and Bera was left alone to run a household with expectant thralls and a bunch of unknown keys.

  It was worse at the mead hall later. Strange folk came and pinched and prodded her as if she were a traded sow. Boys with wild, sea-tangled hair and no shoes rushed about.

  ‘Those bairns will have someone over,’ said an old woman.

  A new word, bairns. She gestured at the boys and Bera understood.

  Hefnir came to her side and the jabbing stopped. Bera was grudgingly grateful to this polite man with his neatly trimmed beard. Seabost men had different styles. At home, beards grew until they got in the way and then they were cut. These men had braids and plaits; spade-shaped or cut to the chin.