Weapons of the Wolfhound

CHAPTER 1 The hermitWaking to sunlight in early April so far north is a luxury. Neil stretched and yawned, feeling a kind of relief through all his limbs as the sunlight pressed down on him through the small square of the window. ‘Spring!’ he said to himself. ‘Spring at last!’ And, afraid to miss a minute of it, he leapt up and leaned out into the clean, morning air. It was too early for the tall grasses, too early for the flowers, but the blessed pale sun touched everything with a kind of benediction, and everything seemed right with the world. In the marshlands in the centre of the island many of the lakes and pools were still frozen. The marsh birds that had stayed through the long winter went about their business. The first strings of migrants began restlessly to wing northward towards Iceland, the warming sun touching their feathers. The speckled, long-legged redshanks, the pink-footed goose, the greylag goose, the heron, the cheeky meadow pipit, all on the wing, all as excited as Neil. Summer would not be long in coming. At the farm, the rough Lewis stone rubble walling of the farm buildings looked honey colour in the light except where the lichen turned them orange. The heather thatching was so overgrown with moss and lichen that it was almost as though the long building was there purely to support a garden. Against the winter wind the thatch had been lashed down and weighted with stones which in themselves were covered with lichen and added colour to the whole. The cold still kept the horses stamping in the paddock and breathing puff-balls of steam. The dogs were out, sniffing about; the hens and c***s pecking amongst the dirt of the yard. One great golden cockerel shook out his gleaming feathers and crowed as though he personally was responsible for the spring. The winter in the Isle of Lewis is like one very long and very bitter night. Dawn is Spring. Spring is release from the dark stuffy pressure of the house, from the stinging smoke in the eyes, from the damp, dank stone that surrounds you when you sleep. Bed rugs could be aired, clothes could be changed, journeys could be contemplated. Neil bound up the thongs of his shoes, pulled on his clothes and was away, clattering down the stairs, shouting to the dogs in the yard, desperate to get out before the suns’ mood changed and the damp hand of the winter choked the life out of him again. ‘Where are you going?’ shouted his mother. But Neil either did not, or would not, hear and kept on running. He would have breakfast with Brother Durston. Brother Durston would have some dried meat left from his winter store, he might even have oat cakes and porridge. He was a good cook in spite of his appearance. And he would have things to tell him, maybe some more carvings to show him. ‘You are not going to that filthy hermit? Neil! Neil!’ His mother’s voice bleated across the yard. The dogs were all barking to greet him. A horse or two came to the fence to have its nose stroked. The chickens scattered, noisily. He never knew how Brother Durston managed to survive the winter. It was bad enough in the great house and they had roaring fires and plenty of fur and wool to keep them warm, company and torches and good food, strong walls to keep out the scavenging winds and needle-sharp rain. The hermit on the other hand lived in what appeared to be a heap of rubble covered with turf. It was in fact a sturdily built little cell, each stone carefully placed to fit the next, the cracks totally covered by the turf roofing, and it leant against the slope of the hill so that the main blast of the winter wind would blow straight over the top. It was built steeply so that most of the snow would slide off its roof. The thick door of black oak had a curved wall just outside it to break the force of the weather when it was opened, and most of the smoke went up and out through a primitive chimney above the hearth. Most of the smoke. But not all. The walls inside the cell were blackened with smoke and Brother Durston himself had rings of black around his bloodshot eyes and grease clinging to his rancid clothes by the time the spring came. The smell inside his cell during winter was foul, but as the spring and summer advanced the whole place was aired and it became a pleasant place to be if you were a boy with a restless spirit and anxious to hear tales of the distant world with which Durston had been so familiar before he became a hermit and settled near Uig. Neil had first seen him when he was eight years old. He had been sent to watch some sheep which were grazing rather too near the cliffs. The sun was high, the pale butterwort flowering, the heather marvellously purple. He had eaten his fill of bilberries and had had the satisfaction of watching a pigmy shrew scuttering about her business. Everything seemed set for an exceptionally good day. At midday he stood and gazed at the sea. It lay in gleaming sheets of silver below him as far as he could see. Where the rocks of the Island cut into it, white foaming cascades of water broke and scattered. He longed to be on it, longed to have a ship like a Viking ship, to sail away and never come back, following the sun, following the call of the nine sea maidens... One day... one day he would... no one would stop him! After a time he grew hungry and, as the sheep were grazing now safely away from the cliff, he started walking down the slope towards the farm, thinking of the good steaming stew his mother would have ready and the cool milk he would drink afterwards. Suddenly he was startled to hear a scuffling noise and from what appeared to be a pile of turf and rocks there rose a monster, getting taller all the time as he watched. It looked like a man and yet was too big and too ugly for a man. It seemed to have claws and a great beak and eyes as penetrating and as deadly as the eyes of the great golden eagle. He ran screaming from the place. ‘It was something like a ghoul,’ he babbled to his mother, ‘and something like a beast. Like a great eagle, yet it had legs and arms. It lifted its claws and tried to clutch at me! Its eyes can see me!’ He howled, ‘its eyes can see me even here!’ ‘Nonsense,’ said his mother. ‘It was horrible... it rose up out of the ground, out of a kind of mound...’ ‘I am sure it was nothing but your imagination.’ ‘No. No! I saw it! It had rags instead of feathers or fur. Almost like a man.’ ‘You know,’ his mother said thoughtfully, ‘I think you might have seen the hermit of Uig.’ ‘Hermit? What is a hermit?’ wept Neil, still thinking it was a creature from the underworld. Had he not seen the thing rising out of the earth? ‘A Holy man, a man of God. One who has chosen to live by himself to pray for mankind and meditate on God. A good man. He would not hurt you.’ ‘A good man?’ Neil could not believe that a good man could look so ugly and smell so vile, and be so tall and keep growing taller. But as he grew older and had spent some time observing the hermit from a safe distance, he grew bolder and one day drew near enough to speak to him. ‘Sir,’ he said, clearing his throat. The hermit looked up from the carving he was doing, sitting on a slab of stone outside his cell. ‘Sir,’ repeated Neil, with more confidence this time. ‘Are you a hermit?’ ‘That is true boy,’ the hermit said in a voice reassuringly rich and friendly. ‘May I talk with you?’ Neil asked curiously, coming nearer. ‘You may,’ the hermit said. Neil stood in front of him for some time at a loss what to say next. At last he said: ‘I thought hermits were not allowed to talk to people.’ ‘Hermits on the whole avoid talking to people. It interrupts their contemplation.’ ‘What is contemplation?’ Neil asked. It was the hermit’s turn to look momentarily at a loss. He did not reply at once, then slowly, after a long pause, he pointed to a patch of moss. ‘Look at that... now... properly.’ Neil looked puzzled but did as he was told. At first he saw just what he had always called moss, green stuff, rather like velvet. But under the hermit’s guidance he began to notice each leaf, each exquisitely formed leaf arranged in intricate patterns with other leaves. He noticed there were different types of moss, variations in patterning, star shapes and spear shapes, and some like minute fronds of fern. Leaves laid on leaves to make a pad of considerable depth. Shades of green, unimaginably subtle in variation. Within that small area, no bigger than his hand, such splendours of design that would take a man days just to count and more than a lifetime to figure out for himself. ‘That is the beginning of contemplation,’ Brother Durston said quietly, ‘but it is not the end.’ Neil thought hard about what the hermit had shown him. He came back time and again to see the man and gradually they became friends. The hermit knew a great deal and taught Neil many things. He taught him to read and write much of the Latin of the Holy Book. Neil loved to hear the blood and thunder stories of the Old Testament and frequently asked for tales of battles between the ancient peoples of the earth when Brother Durston would rather have told him of Christ’s teaching that all men are brothers and should learn to understand and forgive one another. He questioned him about the Vikings and even learnt a little of their language. He hoped one day to have need of it. He learnt from the hermit how to reckon, to play chess, to know the names and positions of the stars and constellations, and a great deal about the tides and currents of the sea. Neil was never bored with Brother Durston as he was with his father’s house and the endless care of the animals. At home he enjoyed riding the horses, but he was not always allowed to do that. He was more often than not sent to clean out the cowsheds, swill out the pens or chase the sheep. And whenever anyone went on a journey, he was always left behind. One year a Norse sea captain, called Baldur, had come to the district seeking provisions. Brother Durston, knowing something of his language, befriended him and the two men found pleasure in each other’s company playing chess for many hours together in the summer. Neil never visited Brother Durston when his Norse friend was with him, but occasionally spied on them from behind a crowberry bush, awed and amazed by the Norseman’s great hulk, his mighty laugh and the deadly gleam and glint of the sword resting at his side. Baldur was as tall as Durston, but built like a fortress. His blond hair was long and flowing, his beard fearsomely red. Together his beard and his moustache so covered the lower area of his face that it was only rarely one caught a glimpse of his large white teeth. One of Neil’s own distant ancestors had been Norse, and it was a source of secret pride for him. At every opportunity he questioned Brother Durston about Baldur. He was determined to go to Norway one day. He would sail in a Viking ship. He would leave the quiet fields and comfortable buildings of his home and sail away to adventure and excitement. He would wield a sword. He would throw a spear. Men would tremble at his name as they did at the name of Baldur and Baldur’s father, Karl, the Wolf-Hound. One of Neil’s favourite stories was how Baldur’s father had won his name. One day when he was fifteen Karl had been sent into the forests to gather wood. He was a huge boy, nearly six foot tall and very broad. Strong as an ox. When he was on his way home bearing what was almost a whole tree on his back, he heard a noise and found a wolf, a male wolf, the leader of a pack, standing over him on a high rock. Karl put down the tree, very quietly, so as not to alarm the wolf. And then he waited. The wolf waited too. But the wolf grew tired of waiting and suddenly sprang at the boy. The boy sprang at the wolf. Together they rolled and fought. The wolf had his talons and his teeth, Karl his hands and one small knife, a boys’ knife. They fought for an hour. Neither would give in. Both had pride. Several times they drew apart for breath. Several times sprang together again. At last Karl gained the upper hand and with every strength in his body felled the wolf. But when he saw the proud wolf brought so low tears came to his eyes. He felt the wolf was his brother and its blood was now mingled with his. When he returned home he insisted on a man’s’ knife and a man’s’ name. ‘Karl, the Wolf-Hound, he was called, and to this day that is his name.’ What a man! No wonder Baldur was as he was with such a father. All Neil’s own father did was look after cattle and sheep, keep tallies and go to market once a month. The first thing Neil asked his friend Durston on that early spring morning nearly nine hundred years ago, was when Baldur would be coming again. Durston did not know. Baldur was not bound by any laws of time or tide that man could impose. If he wished to come, he would come. If he did not, there would be no sign of his ship pointing round the rocky promontory where the grey seals lived. ‘He must come this summer,’ Neil said passionately. ‘You promised me that when he came again I could meet him. I have been practising all my Norse words and I can almost talk the language. I must see him!’ ‘He will do you no good. Nearly all his talk is of death and of killing.’ ‘You like him!’ ‘I see in him something beyond what he sees in himself. Besides...’ he added, ‘I enjoy playing chess with him.’ ‘If he comes this summer he will take me with him when he goes. I am sick of the farm and the Island. There is nothing here but wind and sheep and cows.’ ‘Have you not seen the lichen and moss more beautiful than the finest tapestries, heather crisper and richer than the thickest carpet, butterwort and flowering cotton grass, the gentle bog asphodel, the cunning sundew? Have you not seen the marshland and the green coastal hills teeming with birds: the winchat, the whitethroat, the neat sandpiper, the agile dipper turning pebbles over at the bottom of clear running streams? The rocky crags, castles of the golden eagle, the merlin and the buzzard? What sickness of the eyes has blinded you to the beautiful golden plover, the dark raven, the red grouse and the courageous storm petrel? The thickets are teeming with animals, the sleek otter, the swift hare, the proud red deer, the rivers with brown trout and salmon...’ ‘Stop! Stop!’ Neil held up his hands to shield himself from the barrage of words. ‘It is enough! But I want more than these things. I want adventures in faraway places... I want to be anywhere... everywhere... away from here with Baldur.’ ‘If he comes...’ ‘He will come. I feel it in my bones. Finish the chess set he has asked you to make for his father and then he will come!’ ‘I have finished it,’ Durston said with a small quiet smile of satisfaction and he held up a little pawn shaped like a runic stone. ‘This is the last one.’ ‘It is beautiful,’ said Neil with pleasure, taking the small piece of carved walrus ivory from him and turning it round wonderingly in his fingers. ‘You make beautiful things. How can you bear to give them away?’ ‘The only way to keep something is to give it away.’ ‘That does not make sense.’ ‘You will understand one day.’ ‘I want to understand now.’ ‘Try possessing something that you cannot bear to think of losing. When it is taken away the pain is terrible, the loss wounding. But try giving it away. The pleasure of giving is great and there is no feeling of loss. You are conscious only of having gained something inside yourself.’ ‘I think I understand,’ said Neil hesitantly, ‘but I still could not do it myself.’ Durston was silent. Neil stood turning the little pawn around and around in his hand. He had seen the other pieces Durston had carved, each piece had character and presence. There was the bearded knight sitting squarely on a squat little Shetland horse, his eyes staring fiercely out from under his stiff pointed helmet, a spear and long Norman shield gripped in either hand, knees tight against the embroidered saddle cloth, a solid dependable fellow without much imagination, and there was the warder, or foot soldier,[1] looking as though he had too much imagination. His eyes appeared to be starting out of his head, he was biting the top of his long shield and his teeth were clearly visible. Durston had explained that he was a ‘Berserk’[2] one of those famous warriors of the Norsemen – violent, half-crazed men who possessed fearsome strength while they were under the influence of battle fever, thought to be divinely inspired, common folk laying offerings before their doors but passing fearfully away before the doors were opened. The king sat upon his richly carved throne, his face anxiously human beneath the pomp of crown and formally ringletted hair, his hands gripping the sword across his knees too tightly, knuckles showing. His Queen leant her cheek upon her hand and gazed out in despair at the world she was supposed to rule. Only the bishop seemed unmoved and immovable, clasping crook and book, sure of his place in the heavenly hierarchy. The raw hunks of walrus ivory Baldur had brought to Durston had become something more than a chess set as a present for a much respected father. To Neil they had character and peopled his world of bare hills with the bustle and interplay of Court and Church and Battlefield. When Neil had gazed enough at the finished pawn Durston took it gently from him and put it with the other pieces in a box carved of sandalwood, there to wait for the return of Baldur. Neil shook himself in the sunlight like a dog shaking water from its back. Winter was over and he was back with his friend and all the possibilities of summer were before him. ‘I am hungry!’ he cried, suddenly remembering how he had run from the house in the early sunlight with no breakfast inside him. Durston smiled. Winter with its savage darkness was over. Neil and the sun had returned. He fetched out oat cakes and they sat happily on a rug of seal fur and consumed them. Above them and around them the gulls, the kittiwake and guillemot, wheeled and called, dived for food in the sea, circled and coasted on the air currents, then settled down on the rocky ledges for a rest before they dived and spun again.