Saga, page 11
As I trudged back up the hill from the stony beach and made my way to the crest that looked east to the Sands of Evie, an owl flew by and barked. I knew the language of most birds and I knew that the owl had sung ‘Be careful’.
I detoured and was heading down to the beach when Olav came running up behind me, surprising me.
‘Asa,’ he yelled and I turned to see him galloping down the incline towards me. ‘Wait up.’
He held me and I let him kiss me. I shut my eyes and fell into the kiss, feeling it seep into every pore of my skin. We had to be careful. I did not want word getting out that the new skáldmær was becoming entangled with the new king.
‘You’ve been avoiding me for weeks,’ he pouted. ‘I thought perhaps you were regretting our togetherness.’
‘Oh no,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Not at all. I was just … worried. I am dedicated to the Goddess so nothing serious can come of us. But for now …’
We kissed again and held each other tight.
‘Let’s just enjoy now then,’ Olav said, putting his forehead to mine. My feelings for him were like a storm. Uncontrollable and wild. I was certain that Arnórr had begun to notice the way we looked at each other.
‘I was about to collect some shells to decorate my combs,’ I told Olav as he took my hand and we made our way down to the beach. ‘Oh, look.’ I pointed at a family of seals who had made themselves a resting spot at the end of the beach near the rocky outcrop, warming themselves in the smallest sliver of sun. They’d come across from the skerry off the tiny, almost invisible holy island where the bones of the ancestors were buried and where I had spent my year of silence all alone with the spirits. The islet sat out in the water like the back of a giant green whale.
‘They say you lived out there on that barren island for a full cycle of seasons.’ Olav nodded towards the heart-shaped island. ‘All alone.’
‘I did.’ I thought back to that long and wonderful time of solitude and learning.
‘Weren’t you lonely?’ he asked, wrapping a strong arm about my waist, pulling me closer.
‘I had those seals for friends, as well as puffins and owls and fieldmice and three goats and some waterfowl. Every day was rich with friendship.’
I pulled away from Olav’s arm and ran over to the pebbles on the beach, going close to the waterline of froth where I walked, head down, looking for the prettiest and most undamaged shells. I lifted my tunic so that it would not be wet by the water. Shell-collecting was a distraction from the heavy work of learning to write and read a strange language that sometimes made my eyes roll and my head hurt. I picked my way over purple and red sea urchins, white lumps of pitted coral and shells shed by crustaceans. Stepping over the massed tangles of slithery seaweed, my boots crunched over hundreds of star-shaped limpet shells.
Overhead the sky was clear and blue. I looked out at the restless waves and remembered that a week earlier we had been gifted the vision of two dark grey, white-bellied whales the size of Viking ships, chasing a school of herring through the sound and then feeding themselves for most of the day in the shore shallows. I’d even imagined they waved at me when they raised their white-banded flippers out of the water.
‘I’d love to row out and look at the strange island one day, but I know it is forbidden,’ Olav mused, now walking beside me. ‘They say it is certain death for a man to set foot on the island. It is a woman’s place.’
‘Yes. It is forbidden,’ I told him sharply. ‘Only those dedicated to the Goddess may walk on the holy soil. Never a man.’
‘Is it really so special and magical?’ he teased. ‘You know the old legends say that the island was the mysterious Hildaland, the hidden island that was the summer home to the Finfolk? Is that what you are hiding out there? People who are part human and part seal. The merfolk?’
The Finfolk stories had long been told in Orkneyjar. Mother Thorberg taught us that most folk stories had a kernel of truth and had been embellished by generation after generation. Some days the island was invisible due to banks of fog and that led the ancient blue-painted people to think that the island magically appeared and disappeared.
‘Well, I can tell you truly, Ollie,’ I grinned, looking out to my beautiful isle, ‘in a full cycle of seasons I never once caught sight of a Finfolk and I certainly wasn’t stolen away by one of them.’
‘But perhaps,’ he stroked his beard, ‘you are one of them. You are pretty enough to be a mermaid, legendary for her beauty and her ability to win the heart of a mortal man. You have certainly stolen my heart.’
‘Stop it,’ I snapped. I turned to face him and touched my finger to the blue moon etched into my forehead. ‘There is no future for us, Olav. I am marked for the Goddess.’
‘But I am here right now and I care so much for you.’ Olav frowned. ‘Does that count for nothing? I am right here.’
‘I am sorry, Olav.’
‘But you love me,’ he groaned. ‘I feel it in your kisses. Do you love the Goddess more than me?’
‘That is too hard to answer.’ I shook my head, feeling frustration welling in my chest. ‘It is a different kind of love. Loving the Goddess is like loving life and everything in it. Loving you is smaller. Beautiful and thrilling but only a corner of myself.’
He looked hurt and disappointed. I was lying. My love for Olav felt overwhelmingly large and all encompassing. I could not let him know that he meant so much because it would be cruel when the inevitable parting happened.
‘Well, I will love you while I can.’ He sighed. ‘And hope that you learn to see that there is room for both me and your goddess in your heart. Things will be different in Norway. You will see that there is a whole world that you know nothing about. If I must be king then it will be easier if you are beside me.’
‘Just as you must be king, Ollie,’ I sighed, ‘I must be a priestess. The times we have together are stolen days. Wonderful, beautiful days but this will be different in Norway.’
‘I will make sure we can still be together,’ he replied. ‘I am sure there is a way. If I am king I make the rules.’
‘Shhh.’ I put my fingers to his lips and he kissed them. I turned and left him, walking further along the beach and finding a flapping fish, almost dead from lack of water rushing through its gills. I picked up the slippery thing and flung it towards the family of seals. The largest bull lumbered over and swallowed the fish whole and I saw him give me a blink of thanks. Olav roared with laughter, came to me and picked me up and spun me around. I could feel the thunder in my belly and sparks of lightning on my skin. I barely knew Olav the man but his presence was so intoxicating and his touch so thrilling that I could not fight against the deep attraction.
‘The Goddess sent you to me for a reason,’ he said playfully.
‘And what reason is that, do you think?’ I gave a shy smile.
‘Come and I’ll show you,’ he said.
A weathered fisherman’s cottage sat at the furthest reach of the bay. We went into the cottage and sat out of the sun and wind, holding each other tight, losing ourselves in kisses. I knew I was risking falling more deeply in love.
In Olav’s arms I felt like a goddess. My love for him was primal and powerful, winter-dark and summer-hot. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. Here in the wild, wind-scorched, salt-burned hills and bays of Orkneyjar, Olav was just a man with warm arms and a heady devotion to me. There was a powerful current drawing us together, our fates hurtling towards each other. This would have to change in Norway because he would be king, a leader of his men and of his realm. There would be no place for me or the Goddess or the song of the sea and the wink of a seal.
Life sometimes drops you into a mystery as if you are a character that has left the pages of one book, a tragedy, to dwell between the covers of another, a romance. The famous writer Ann Radcliffe took me in to live with her at Windsor.
Mrs Radcliffe lived in a very fancy four-storey terrace house on a lovely street just near the beautiful grounds on the eastern edge of the Royal Gate leading to Windsor Great Park. Just near the castle where the royal family lived. Ann often went on long walks in Windsor Park and had told me that she would stop and talk to the princesses as they walked their dogs. Being such a notable figure, Ann had access to even the private areas of the royal gardens.
‘The king is mad,’ one of the servants whispered one day in the kitchen. ‘I hear everyone saying so.’
‘His mind is unwell,’ I told her, repeating what I’d heard from Mrs Radcliffe on the carriage trip north of the city. ‘That is a sad thing, not bad. For I have heard he was a good man when he could think straight. There’s a difference between being mad and being sick.’
‘Well, Mrs Radcliffe would know.’ The younger maid laughed. ‘She has some strange ideas.’
‘Strange ideas?’
‘Oh yes.’ She nodded. ‘She and her bohemian literary friends believe in some kind of social equality. They don’t even go to church. They think that a pauper has as much right to move up in society as a toff. Foolish. And that women should be out at work and involved in the workings of society as much as men. Quite strange. I know me place and I’m happy where I am!’
Mrs Radcliffe was a strikingly handsome woman. She appeared to be about fifty years of age. A very well-kept fifty. She was shorter than me, as I had grown tall in my year at the undertaker’s. Although she was short she was well-proportioned with a small waist and pleasantly strong and straight shoulders. Her hair was dark and always neatly restrained. Her eyes were green, penetrating and intelligent. The natural arch of her eyebrows had her always looking like she was about to utter the words, ‘Is that so?’ The writer always wore black as if she was in perpetual mourning. And as soon as we were settled in at Windsor, Mrs Radcliffe had seamstresses sew up a wardrobe full of white dresses for me. It was quite odd but I was happy to be rid of the filthy, tattered funeral garb that I was still wearing.
‘That, dear girl, can go into the furnace,’ she said, pointing a stern finger when I appeared washed and dressed in white, holding the bundle of rank clothes from my previous life. ‘It is time to reform you. Teach you some manners. Banish the wild and usher in some dignity.’
‘I am worried,’ I told my new guardian as we sat in the front room to discuss the terms of my residency with her. ‘You are a professional writer and I have only learned reading and writing at a beginning level at the poorhouse. To be honest, I did not read Shakespeare myself, but had it recited to me by one of the poorhouse keepers, the same one who taught me my letters.’
I told her about my time with the Lesters and how I wrote the obituaries for the Glasgow Gazette.
‘Oh Mercy,’ she said and smiled such a kind smile. ‘See, you are a published author too. With such a heart. One truly cannot judge a person by their appearance. There I was thinking, like so many would, that you were a rough pocket-thief with few if any redeemable characteristics when I saw you on the street but there is so much more beneath the surface. Raw potential.’
I looked down at my shoes, a pair of satin slippers, the first things on my feet in my life that had truly fitted in comfort.
‘Potential for what, begging your pardon?’ I asked timidly.
‘If you have a basic command of the language, and I know you do because you speak it well, then I can polish up your grammar and spelling. You will be my neophyte. You have the potential to elevate yourself, dear girl, and that is the greatest thing a person can aspire to.’
I did not know the words she was using, neophyte and potential, but from the pleasant countenance on her face, I took them to be good things.
‘I am here to reflect and rest for a year in Windsor,’ she told me. ‘My husband is a very busy man and I feel he could benefit from some space from me and I from him.’
I saw the two maids at the doorway shuffle and give each other knowing looks. I wondered if perhaps Mrs Radcliffe and her husband were living apart due to some other reason.
‘You, my dear girl, are my tabula rasa and I intend to prove that even an orphan girl picked up from the street, penniless and starving, can be transformed into a person of education and standing in this world.’
The woman spoke in riddles.
‘I am your devoted servant, Mrs Radcliffe,’ I said humbly. ‘I will work hard and learn and give you no reason to ever regret your generosity towards me.’
‘Do you know who will inherit the future, Mercy?’ she asked, her eyes ablaze and a pink blush in her cheeks.
‘No.’
‘Educated women! An army of girls like you, put in schools and taught to challenge and hold to account those who seek to control us on the social, economic, political and religious levels. Every damn level!’
I gasped at her bold talk.
She stood up and strode around the room. I was intimidated by her simmering anger.
‘We need a revolution and it can start in my parlour right here! You will be my proof that the noble savage so prevalent in literature is more than a device but a reality.’
I nodded along with her although I had not a clue what she was talking about.
‘My husband William is a non-believer although, bless his soul, he allows me to entertain my own thoughts on the matter.’
She took a deep breath, exhaled it with an enormous sigh and sat in the red brocade wing-back chair, looked me up and down, and nodded.
‘Yes. You will do well. Walk for me,’ she said.
I walked to the window, looked out upon the wintry street, and then returned.
‘You walk without confidence,’ she announced. ‘You restrain yourself stiffly and walk as if someone is about to beat you. You walk defensively.’
‘I do?’
‘I understand, Mercy, that living in a poorhouse must have stunted you and you must have lived in a state of constant terror.’
‘I don’t know about terror, Mrs Radcliffe.’ I gave an awkward laugh. ‘But I was mighty hungry most of the time.’
‘Well, dear, you will never want for food under my roof.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You will learn to walk as if the world owes you respect, not the other way around. Do not cower. Walk tall. Lift that chin off your chest. It is so common to see women, particularly those of limited resources, moping about apologetically, staring at the ground as if they hoped to soon be beneath it. Look ahead, dear girl. Decide where you are going and keep your eyes on the destination.’
She seemed fired up from her little speech. It had certainly sounded quite stirring, but I mostly looked at my feet so I would not trip. If I meant to look to my future, I did not know in what direction to look. I had no history, no name and I still did not really have any idea of where I had come from let alone where I might be going.
‘You have a strong Scottish accent,’ she said. ‘Glasgow, you said. I wonder. Do you know where you were born or who your parents were or where they came from?’
‘No, Ma’am.’ I shook my head. ‘My mother arrived injured at the poorhouse when I was an infant. She did not survive. I do not even know what name she had for me. The cook named me Mercy.’
‘A motherless girl.’ She sighed.
‘Yes,’ I whispered, trying not to cry and show my weakness.
‘And me a childless woman.’
I detected the sadness in her voice.
‘You never had children?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said curtly, turning away.
Mrs Radcliffe spent every morning until midday reading in the library. It was my favourite room in the grand house. The walls were lined with bookshelves running from floor to ceiling. A ladder with wheels was used to access the highest books.
‘Here is your required reading,’ she told me and placed a pile into my open arms. ‘These are most important foundational books for you to read. Once you have read them all you will be ready to be my scribe. You will take down letters for me, and some poetry and memoirs that I have in mind.’
There were Ann’s novels and one by Mary Wollstonecraft titled A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
I put them on the bureau nearest my favourite green velvet armchair and spent the last weeks of winter by the fire reading and asking Ann the meaning of unfamiliar words. As I read line after line, chapter and verse, book after book, I felt my grasp of the written word improving.
I finished Ann’s most famous book, The Mysteries of Udolpho, and we discussed it at some length. It seemed surreal and strange to me that I was sitting in a library discussing the characters and plot of a book with the person who had summoned every word and deed of the novel from her own imagination. She seemed to enjoy the idea herself when I spoke of it. Soon I had read all of her novels. And after lunch we would discuss what I had read.
‘You write such evocative scenes,’ I said, sitting on the sofa beside her, my feet casually tucked up under my knees. ‘Like the one where the man chains his wife to the back of a rocky cave and only visits to feed her and complain about how she has broken his heart,’ I marvelled. ‘Was that because you feel chained up sometimes? I really don’t know how you thought up such things. Is it all just your imagination, Ann?’
‘Ah, yes, Mercy. Everything starts in the imagination. There is nothing in this world that does not start from an idea, good or bad. That is why you must develop it, strengthen and nurture it because it is the seed that will grow your life, oak tree or withering sapling. Imagination can make the unreal real and real unreal. It’s a form of invisible magic. You can, by using your imagination, create your own life.’
‘But I never imagined being an orphan or working for an undertaker.’ I frowned. ‘Those things were thrust upon me. I did not choose those things.’
