Saga

  Nikki McWatters was shortlisted in the 2010 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award Emerging Writer category. Her books include the memoirs One Way or Another and Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood; and young adult novels Sandy Feet, Hexenhaus, Liberty and Saga. Liberty was a 2019 CBCA Notable Book of the Year for Older Readers. Nikki won the 2016 Irish Moth Award and has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Huffington Post UK and The Big Issue. She is currently the spokesperson for the annual Vinnies CEO Sleepout. Nikki also has a law degree in her bottom drawer somewhere.

  nikkimcwatters.wordpress.com

  Also by Nikki McWatters:

  Liberty (2018)

  Hexenhaus (2016)

  Sandy Feet (2014)

  In memory of

  Carol-Anne Humphreys,

  my beloved sister-in-law,

  and

  Kay Turner,

  my beautiful great-aunt.

  Two strong, inspirational women from my own Sisterhood.

  I returned to the Goddess Temple on the Brough of Birsay just as the winter storms began brewing out to sea and the sky started darkening, throwing itself over the many islands of Orkneyjar like a heavy blanket. I had been cast upon the small holy island of Eyin Helga, which sat like a whale’s back in the middle of the tidal storms, with only myself for company for a full turn of seasons for my Trial of Silence. Yet in my solitude I had never been lonely as I had puffins and seals, the song of the Goddess on the wind, and the moody ocean for company; we had all looked after one another well enough. The holy island was the burial place of the Sisters.

  In the purple glooming light of noon, The Holy Mother Thorberg summoned me to her chamber in the highest room of the temple, with a view out over Birsay’s causeway to the larger island of the mainland.

  ‘My goodness, Astrid.’ She gave me a tired smile. ‘Your silence has grown you. You left me as a girl and have come back a woman.’

  I looked at the old woman sitting by the fire. Mother Thorberg was ancient. Her wispy white hair framed her face and the lines of her bones were visible under her robes, making her look as angular as a baby fawn.

  ‘Come close and speak to me of what the stillness has taught you.’ She beckoned.

  As I got closer I saw that her right eye was milky with blindness. I kneeled before her and kissed her gnarled hands.

  ‘Oh, Holy Mother,’ I began. My voice was still unfamiliar to me. Silence becomes so much a part of a novice during her full year of silence that after only a short time it seems natural to forego words and sounds.

  ‘Speech seems ungainly as it slips from my lips. I measure every word carefully for I have learned that people speak too much and listen too little.’ My unfamiliar voice scratched the inside of my throat.

  ‘Wise little bird.’ Mother Thorberg yawned, showing a mouth half full of teeth. ‘Your cheeks are pink and you look well and strong. And your hair has grown so long, your shoulders broad. I see your spirit still burns bright behind those dark eyes.’

  It was forbidden for one given to the Goddess to cut her hair. My ebony locks reached my waist, restrained by leather binding. But still wild tendrils refused to be kept in check.

  ‘I feel older too. Wiser. Calmer.’

  ‘That is a good thing.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘You have always been a live spark, Astrid. A bit flighty and mischievous, yes?’

  ‘I think the weight of silence stills the blood. That, and solitude.’

  ‘You were well due for some silence and solitude, Astrid.’ She gave me a smile that made her look young. ‘It was certainly quiet in the temple without you.’

  I reached out, taking an iron poker and pressing it into the fire to break up the peat as pungent smoke was filling the room. All of my senses were heightened. I noticed everything. Even the sound of the wings of a moth.

  ‘Today the king returns from over the sea,’ the old woman whispered.

  I was startled. I had heard no news of this from the other sisters in the temple house.

  ‘I saw it in the vision-waters yesterday.’ Her gaze drifted to the large iron pot that sat in the middle of the room on a low bench. ‘Last night I dreamed of the approaching longships.’

  ‘We must go and offer our blessing and welcome them back. The womenfolk will need to stoke the fires in the jarl’s house on the mainland and then prepare some meat for feasting. Are they for shore-fall during light or in the darker hours?’

  The thought of revelry with music, dancing, food and laughter almost overwhelmed me with excitement. Since I had become a novitiate eight years ago I missed the company of people outside the temple. I remembered my carefree childhood playing with all the other fosterlings on the mainland – sneaking about between the grown-ups’ legs in the longhouses of the lords and ladies as well as the boisterous celebrations in smaller thatched cottages. All of the noble, orphaned and peasant youngsters tumbled about together. Only later, as our legs grew taller, were we separated for our destined paths. I loved my sisters and the serenity of the temple, but part of me longed for the lightness and silliness and fun that came with mixing with boys and farmers’ children and all those on the mainland whose lives did not include service and dedication to the Goddess. They seemed so carefree and mischievous compared to most of the sisters, who spent so much time in quiet meditation.

  ‘They approach and are within view of the Brough. The king’s dragon longboat looms out of the mist and will soon drop anchor. With the storms approaching the men will beach their vessels but will not mound them until the morrow. First, this evening, there will be a ceremony of the dead, a passing ritual and a funerary meal.’

  ‘The dead?’ I gasped. ‘For whom?’

  I knew the ceremony was reserved only for those of the highest ranking. It was given that we would lose many men in battle with the British but that was an honour to be celebrated.

  ‘The king. Hardrada.’

  ‘But I thought …’ I was confused. ‘You told me that the king approaches.’

  ‘No, the king does approach,’ Mother Thorberg said sadly. ‘The boy-king Olav approaches. He brings his father’s body with him. Slain in battle. They were bitterly defeated.’

  My heart thudded and my face felt clammy. Harald Hardrada was dead? A man of such inhuman strength and valour that he was almost considered a god. The sort of warrior that only appeared once in many generations, whose sagas and songs would be chanted and sung for eternity. He had seemed immortal, more Thor than man.

  ‘Have you told Queen Elisiv?’ I was trying not to cry. ‘Princess Gerdie?’

  ‘No.’ She looked down to her knotted hands. ‘I will leave young Olav to tell them the news. But you must go to the beach to greet the boats.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  Mother Thorberg levelled me with her stern gaze and I looked down at my leather-banded boots. One of the first lessons a novice learns when fostered to the Goddess is to not question the Holy Mother.

  ‘I beg your forgiveness, Holy Mother.’

  ‘Be more careful,’ she reprimanded. ‘That tongue of yours is still a runaway mare. Hold tight to the silence you embraced on the holy island. Speak less and listen more. You will greet the returning men, who are far fewer than left us, sadly. And for the next full circle of seasons you will learn to be the skáldmær to the new king. This is how you will spend your final trial. You will be schooled in the art of poetry. You will master memory and become a vessel of wisdom as you return to Norway with the royal party in summer to create verses that tell of the passing of the old king and the brand-new glorious reign of Olav and his brother Magnus. To be made wise to all the True Things you must also understand the ways of the gods and the new Christ-king. To know the past and the present you must be able to detect the currents of the future. Like a Viking seafarer reading the stars and the tides. This is your final ordeal, Astrid. You must take this very seriously.’

  I felt my face flush and hoped she thought it was from the sparks of the fire in the hearth and not because I was awash with disappointment and anger. I had been born to an unknown family in Orkneyjar and left at the temple as a babe, dedicated to the Goddess. I had grown and played and learned with a peasant family on the wide hills and stony beaches of the mainland and her surrounding skerries and smaller isles. When I was eight I was returned to the temple to begin my novitiate to the Goddess Nerthus. Upon my first moon-blood I had been inked, then progressed through the lessons towards full understanding of the True Things. The Mother set different trials for everyone, designing them carefully so that each girl worked on her weaknesses. My term of silence on the holy island had been set to calm my runaway tongue and teach me patience and serenity.

  I reflected on all I had learned on the islands and the waterways winding between them over the past eight years. Lessons that tethered me to the ground, to Mother Earth, my awareness expanding like the roots of a grand tree. Lessons of dirt and rain and seawater and friendship and loyalty and love. The Sisterhood was my family. The thought of travelling so very far away was daunting, but I had only one more trial. After this I would become a full priestess of the Sisterhood.

  Courts and kings and the bustle of Norway were a world away from the islands. Life was gentle and slow, with the sky so wide and the ocean so open, on the Brough of Birsay, a tidal island attached by the causeway to the mainland. I felt a flutter of fear at the thought of busy city streets and castles.

  ‘I have no understanding of the sagas, Holy
Mother,’ I whispered. ‘I have only been schooled in the wisdom of the Things of the Earth. I know not the rhythm and cadence of men’s poetry. I know the songs of the birds, the gossip of the trees, the whisper of water but nothing of battles and swordplay and … men.’

  I thought back to my gentle wrestling with my sisters, and my hit and miss aim with a bow and arrow. It had been a far cry from the clashing of Viking swords.

  ‘You will be trained by Arnórr jarlaskáld and apprenticed to him here in Orkneyjar and then, when warmer, in Norway at court. Words have great power, Astrid. To bear the gift of stories is to bear priceless treasure.’

  Winter was almost upon us and I was to travel to Norway in summer. At least the entire time would not be spent in Norway. I knew Arnórr jarlaskáld. He was a mysterious, smooth-faced older man who swanned about in long robes and a cape of feathers. He came and went from the islands on the merchant ships and was highly regarded by Jarl Paul Thorfinnson, the lord of the whole archipelago who was only one rung down from the king. I had heard the old skáld recite many times in his loud voice and theatrical manner, which sometimes made the younger children laugh. Yet I dreaded the thought of standing up to recite to an audience.

  ‘Astrid,’ Mother Thorberg explained patiently, ‘Mother Nerthus remembers everything. She is our Earth and recalls all that has been done to her. It is from the stories of old that we make sense of the new. As a storyteller you become the guardian of her memories.’

  ‘As you wish, Holy Mother.’ I bowed my head and took her hands in mine, kissing them again. My earlier warmth towards the old woman had cooled.

  Mother Thorberg, the ancient woman who embodied the spirit of Nerthus, picked up a knob of burnt dung that had leapt from the hearth onto the stone floor and crushed it between her fingers. She stood slowly, though still stooped and bent sideways, and touched her blackened finger to my face, tracing lines over my cheeks and down my chin, placing a cross on my forehead, right above the blue-inked crescent moon.

  ‘You will take my place one day, Astrid,’ she said, her voice wavering with age or emotion, I could not tell. ‘You will be the holy mother after I fly away, for you have the gift of the Word. You will become, like me, the keeper of the True Things. The Truth will be woven into your very being to carry into eternity. We are more alike than you know. We are the same here.’ She rested a hand over her heart.

  I felt a shiver of cold run over my skin as a child howled outside, but I breathed deeply, telling myself it was only the wind. The ring of the infant’s wailing churned my belly and I was sickened by it. The fire crackled and flared, dark shadows moving within the flames.

  ‘Go now, girl,’ she said, breaking the moment. ‘And greet the new king. Remember everything you observe with all your sharpened senses and craft them into words that sound like birdsong, be it the haunting shriek of the short-eared owl or the screech of a sea bird. Record it all. For these are the last days that the Truth will see sunlight for a very, very long time. Go with the men to the jarl’s house on the hill in my stead and give orders to the servants to begin tonight’s mourning meal. You will farewell Hardrada to Valhalla. And you will live among kings and warriors learning their ways. You will weave the story of the world that slips away, the story of your ancestors, the hidden people.’

  I bent low and touched my forehead to hers.

  ‘Nerthus be with you, my child,’ she whispered.

  ‘And also with you, Holy Mother.’

  I left the old woman, confused by the things she had told me. After I had spent so long in silence, words now jarred in my skull like rattling coins. I was afraid that I had forgotten so many of them. It was a world where words had power and the trick was to wield them as skilfully as swords. The life of an apprentice skáld filled me with dread. I feared that Mother Thorberg was wrong to put her faith in me. I was too flighty and impulsive to wear the mantle of Mother.

  Outside, the day was angry and dark. On the horizon a streak of violet spread a dull light over the bare hill that was the Brough of Birsay. It was low tide but would not be for long so I hurried across the muddy causeway. As my boots squelched over the boggy sands and seaweed, over the slabs of stone that had been laid to make the crossing easier, I looked through the gloom and saw the shape of a sea monster growing bigger as it neared the beach of the mainland. The dragon boat, the king’s leading battle vessel. Shadowy boats dappled the mist behind it. Mother Thorberg had been right, not that I had doubted her vision for a moment. I took each step carefully as the sludge was slippery. The smells of the sea filled my lungs and blood. My senses were like glass, magnifying everything. In puddles I saw the flash of fish scales and eel skin.

  I walked up the grassy incline that reached gently from the broad, flat, rocky beach. When I reached the top, I waited, like a standing stone, my hair plait blowing in the wind, my cloak pulled tight around me. Salt stung my cheeks as I watched the smaller boats take the ropes and slap their way to shore. The hull of the first boat looked like a breaching whale, the head of a dragon staring towards the inner reaches of the mainland. I waited, with the sound of crashing waves and whining wind and the broken rasps from buffeted birds, as men disembarked and began to haul the ships’ carcasses up onto the sand towards the green banks, beaching them. The next day the men would dig grooves into the beach and strong arms would heave and haul the fleet of ships onto the grassy slopes and wedge each into a safe earthen bed to see out the bleak, dark winter.

  The king’s body was wrapped in the finest cloth and carried on a flat board by his attendants, winding their way up the rise heading towards the crest that led to the grand longhouses that made up the jarl’s compound. Behind them, with head down and his hair like dancing gull’s feathers, was Olav. The new boy-king. He trod up the stony beach towards me and I watched, moisture clinging to my brow, my heart beating hard.

  I’d known Olav since he was a boy. He had been fostered for a time on the mainland when we were small children. We had been playmates, equals, with only our destinies separating us, though we knew nothing of that at the time. Such happy days.

  I was foolishly startled to see how he had grown. We were young adults of the same age. He was broad of shoulder, his chest thick, but his face was fine-boned and his nose aquiline. He moved with grace, walking gently rather than marching as some of those around him appeared to be doing. The small, scrawny boy with gapped teeth had gone. The soon-to-be-crowned co-ruler of Norway was a fair and handsome man.

  As the men climbed the rise and passed by me, Olav came close enough so that I could see the soft beard about his cheeks and chin. His head was bowed sombrely, but when he glanced up he gave me a smile that no one else saw.

  ‘Astrid,’ he said, with what might have been a wink or simply a fleck of sea froth on his eyelashes. ‘I barely recognised you.’

  ‘Nor you, my Lord,’ I whispered, my words tripping over each other.

  I felt my pulse beat fast in my throat and was startled to find that I was embarrassed and shy before him. There were surprising and alarming feelings skittering along my skin, in my legs and in my chest. Olav continued past me and I turned to watch him follow his father’s body up to the road, feeling vaguely feverish. He turned, giving me another look and a small smile.

  ‘Astrid,’ another voice boomed. Startled, I looked behind me.

  Standing before me, two heads taller, with eyes like a hawk and brows as dark as soot, was the poet Arnórr jarlaskáld.

  ‘By the markings on your face I see you are my new apprentice.’ He gave a sigh of what seemed like disappointment, reaching out to touch the ash cross on my forehead. ‘I wonder at Mother Thorberg sometimes. You will learn hard. This is not a calling for a woman, so prepare to fail. Words belong to men.’

  Every drop of blood in my body believed I would fail, but the man’s words stoked a fire in me, fanning my pride.

  ‘I think not, Sir,’ I said, bowing my head slightly, then looking up and meeting his glare of annoyance. ‘I am quick to learn and will be your humble and dedicated student.’

  He rubbed his bare chin. ‘Tell me, girl, how would you describe a storm in two words? Ken it for me.’