Dublin (32 page)

  Carefully, now, he put the contents of his worktable away in the iron-banded box, which he then locked and gave to his wife for safekeeping inside the house.

  It was nearing the end of the working day. He made his way past the premises and workshops of comb makers and carpenters, harness makers and sellers of precious stones. Everywhere the busy prosperity of the Viking town was evident. He passed a blacksmith's glowing forge and smiled-the occupation of his ancestors. But it had to be admitted, the Norse invaders were better craftsmen with iron and ringing steel than even the warlike men of the island had been.

  Turning down the street known as Fish Shambles, where the fish market was already closed, he saw a merchant who gave him a respectful nod. The merchant dealt in the most precious commodity of all-golden amber that came all the way from Russia in a ship of the Baltic trade. Only a few of the craftsmen in Dyflin could afford to buy amber, and Morann was one of them.

  Morann Mac Goibnenn. In Irish it sounded "Mocgovnan"-son of the smith-for both his father and grandfather had borne the name of Goibniu. It was only in the last generation or two that this form of individual family name had begun to be used. A man might be called Fergus, son of Fergus, and might belong to a great royal tribe, like the O'neill; but the tribe was not, as yet, a family name. Morann and his children, however, were now the Mac Goibnenn family.

  And it was used, by both Irish and Viking townsmen alike, with respect. Young though he still was, the maker of jewellery had shown himself to be a master of his craft. He was also known to be cautious and canny, and already he was a man who was listened to in the Viking port. His father had died two years after he had first come to Dyflin and it had been a great grief; but it gave Morann pleasure to think of how proud his father would be if he could see him now.

  Almost unconsciously, as though to keep alive the memory of his father, he had begun since the old man's death to imitate his trick of fixing people with one eye when he was negotiating or studying them for some reason. When his wife had complained of it, he had only laughed, but had not stopped doing it.

  At the bottom of Fish Shambles, he came out onto the big wooden quay. There were still plenty of people about. A party of slaves, chained together with iron rings round their necks, was being led along it from one of the boats. He glanced at them quickly, but with a critical eye. They looked strong and healthy.

  Dyflin was the main slave market for the island and there were regular shipments from the great British slave port of Bristol. The English, in his opinion, being somewhat slow and docile, made good slaves.

  Swiftly, he made his way along the quay to the end where he knew his friend would be. And there, sure enough, he was. He waved. Harold saw him, and smiled.

  Good. He suspected nothing.

  It took a little while to get Harold away from the quay; but he seemed quite happy to be coming, which was all that mattered. His real concern, however, seemed to be that Morann should admire the great project upon which he was working, and of which he was obviously very proud. Nor had Morann any difficulty in doing so.

  "It's magnificent," he agreed. In fact, it was awesome.

  It was a Viking ship. All over the Viking world, nowadays, the port of Dyflin was famous for building ships. There were many shipyards around the coasts of Scandinavia and Britain; but if you wanted the best, you went to Dyflin.

  Like everyone else in the town, Morann knew that the latest boat was special; but today they had been taking down some of the scaffolding which had surrounded it, and the ship's sleek outlines were now visible. It was massive.

  "A yard longer than anything built in London or York," Harold said proudly. "Come, see inside it." And he led the way to a ladder, while Morann followed.

  It always amazed Morann that, despite his limp, Harold could move as fast, indeed faster than other men. Watching him run up the ladder and then, with a laugh, leaping lightly over the ship's side, the craftsman could only marvel at his agility. Having known him only since the young Norwegian came to work in the port, however, he had no idea of the years of painful training and hard work that had achieved this result.

  Ever since the meeting with Sigurd, it had been the same. Early in the morning, he would be up to help his father on the farm. But by midday he was always free, and then his regimen would begin. First came the physical training. He would drive himself ruthlessly. Ignoring the pain and humiliation of his stumbles and falls, the little boy at the farmstead would force himself to walk as fast as he could, dragging his crippled leg along, pushing it into use. In due course, with an erratic, hopping kind of action, he could run. He could even jump, leaping with his good leg and tucking the damaged one under him as he cleared an obstacle. In the afternoons his father would usually join him.

  And then the fun would begin.

  His father had made him little wooden weapons first: an axe, a sword, a dagger and shield. For two years it was like a game he would play, teaching Harold to strike, parry, thrust, and dodge.

  Move away. Hold your ground. Strike now!" he would call. And, weaving, ducking, or whirling his toy axe, the boy would go through every exercise his father could devise. By the age of twelve, his skill was remarkable and his father would laugh: "I can't catch him!" At thirteen, Harold was given his first real weapons. They were light, but a year later his father gave him heavier ones. At the age of fifteen, his father confessed he could teach him no more, and sent him to a friend up the coast, whom he knew was highly skilled. It was there that Harold learned not only greater agility but even to make use of his physical peculiarities to strike unconventional blows that would take any opponent by surprise.

  By the age of sixteen, he was a killing machine.

  "Strangely enough," his well-meaning father once remarked to him, "by threatening your life, that Dane may have done you a favour. Think what you were then, and look at you now."

  And Harold kissed his father affectionately and said nothing, because what he knew was that he had developed extraordinary skills, but that he was still a cripple.

  "The lines are fine," Harold called to Morann, as the craftsman clambered over the ladder. And indeed they were. The long clinker- built lines of the ship swept forward to the huge prow so smoothly and with such power that when you imagined it in the water its swift passage didn't just seem natural, it seemed inevitable-as inevitable as fate, in the hands of the pagan Nordic gods themselves. "The space for the cargo," Harold was gesturing towards the empty centre of the huge vessel, "is nearly a third larger than anything else on the water." He pointed down to the bottom of the ship, where the mighty spine of the keel ran like a blade. "Yet the draught is still shallow enough for all the main rivers on the island." The Liffey, the massive Shannon waterway in the west, every major river in Ireland had seen the Viking oarsmen come skimming up their shallow waters into the interior. "But do you know the real secret of a ship like this, Morann? The secret of its handling under sail, on the sea?"

  They were strong. They never capsized. The craftsman was aware of these. But with a grin, the Norwegian went on: "They bend, Morann."

  He made a wiggling motion with his arm. "As you feel the power of the wind on the sail, running down the mast, and you feel the power of the water against the sides, you can feel something else. The keel itself bends, it follows the water's curve. The whole ship, braced against the wind, becomes at one with the water.

  It's not a ship, Morann, it's a snake." He laughed with delight. "A great sea snake!"

  How handsome he looked, the craftsman thought, with his long red hair, like his father's, and his bright blue eyes, so happy on his ship.

  Once Freya had asked Morann, "Did you never wonder why Harold left the farmstead and came to work in Dyflin?"

  "He loves building ships," he'd answered.

  "It's in his blood," he had added. It was obvious to any man.

  And indeed, if there was more to the matter than Morann Mac Goibnenn supposed, he had never heard of it from his young friend. be Harold had been almost seventeen the summer when they presented him with the girl. She came from over the sea, from one of the northern islands-a girl of good ancestry, they told him, whose parents had died leaving her in the care of her uncle. "He's a fine man," andbrvbar; his father told him, "and he has sent her to me. She'll be our guest for a month and you're to look after her. Her name is Helga." She was a fair, slim girl, blue-eyed, a year older than he was. Her father had been Norwegian; her mother, Swedish. Yellow hair framed her cheeks, pressing them close, like a pair of hands taking her face between them before the lips were kissed. She did not smile be much, and her eyes had a slightly distant look, as if half her mind Was somewhere else. Yet there was a hint of sensuality in her mouth that Harold found a little mysterious, and exciting.

  Around the house, she seemed placid and content.

  Two of

  Harold's sisters were married and away by then, but his remaining sisters got on with her well enough. No one had any complaints.

  His own duties, apart from joining in whatever entertainments the girls devised for themselves in the evenings, were to take her riding time to time. Once he had shown her round Dyflin.

  More often they would ride out or walk along the sandy shore. On these occasions, she would talk to him in her strangely detached yet easy way about the farmstead, the cheese they were making, the shawl that she and his mother were weaving for his aunt. She would ask him his likes and dislikes, nodding calmly and saying, "Ja, ja," as she elicited each piece of information so that, he began to think, if he had told her his favourite pastime was cutting people's heads off, she would probably have nodded and said, "Ja, ja," just the same. But the process was still very pleasant.

  When he questioned Helga about her own life, she told him about her uncle's farmstead and also her early life in the north. What did she miss, he asked. "The snow and the ice," she told him, with a hint of real enthusiasm greater than any he had seen before. "The snow and ice is very good. I like to fish through the ice." She nodded. "And I like very much to go in boats on the sea."

  Once, in order to take her in a boat, he had rowed her out on a sunny day from the beach to the little island with its high, cleft rock, opposite the headland. She had been pleased. They had sat on the beach together. And then, to his great surprise, she had calmly remarked, "I like to swim now. You also?" And stripping off all her clothes as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she had walked into the sea. He hadn't followed her. Perhaps he was shy, or ashamed of his body. But he had looked at her slim body, and her small, high breasts, and thought to himself that it would be a pleasant business indeed to possess them.

  It was a few days afterwards that his father and mother had called him into the house when the girls were all busy outside, and his father with a smile had asked him, "How would you feel, Harold, if Helga were to be your bride?" And before Harold could formulate an answer he continued: "Your mother and I think she would do very well."

  He stared at them hardly knowing what to say. The idea was certainly exciting. He thought of her body as he had watched her coming back out of the sea, and of the water running down her breasts in the sun.

  "But," he stammered at last, "would she want me?"

  His father and mother gave each other a warm, conspirational be smile, and it was his mother who answered, "She does indeed. She has spoken to me."

  "I just supposed…" He thought of his leg. His father cut in. "She likes you, Harold. This all comes from her. When her uncle asked me to have her here, I dare say he may have desired a match with our family; but you're young and I hadn't considered it was time to think of such things for you yet. But we like this girl. We like her very much. And so when she came to talk to your mother …" He smiled again. "It's up to you, Harold. You're my only son. This farmstead will be yours one day. You can have the pick of the girls, and you certainly shouldn't marry one you don't like.

  But this one, I have to say, isn't bad."

  Harold looked at his happy parents and felt a great warmth run through him. Could it really be that this girl had chosen him?

  He be knew that he was physically strong, but with this wonderful knowl edge, he experienced a new, thrilling sense of strength and excite ment unlike anything he had ever known before.

  "She has asked for me?" They nodded. His infirmity was not of consequence, then? It seemed not.

  "You think I should?" What would it mean to be married? He wasn't sure. "I think," he began,

  "I think I should like it."

  "Splendid," Olaf cried, and was about to get up and put his arm round his shoulders; but it was his wife, now, who gently laid her hand on his arm, as if to remind him.

  He should wait a few days," she said quietly.

  "We discussed this."

  "Oh." His father looked a little disappointed, but then smiled at her.

  "You are right, of course." And then to Harold: "you have only ju still heard of this, my son. It's all very new to you.

  Consider the w hole thing for a few days. There's no hurry. You should do that in fairness to yourself."