The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
The Walrus Mutterer: Episode 24
He must have known the shore well for he found a place to conceal the boat without any difficulty. Li risked his life jumping on to a wave-washed rock and then helped Ussa ashore
What are you two slackers gossiping about?” Ussa was awake. “And what would Manigan be doing?’ “I was telling her about the walrus muttering.” Badger did not seem remotely in awe of Ussa, although his left hand moved up his thigh and as it reached his hip it clenched around the handle of the long knife he wore slung on his belt.
“And where will he be now, do you think? Which way will he head?”
Badger blinked slowly. “Cat Isles.”
Ussa tapped Rian on the side of her head, just above her right ear, with the tip of her staff. “Help Og.”
Rian scuttled forward to help Og under the awning, making food. Then clearing up. Then making Pytheas’ bed. There was always something to stop her returning to Badger for more of his stories.
THE CAT ISLES
By next morning the weather was poor, the sea choppy, visibility bad and the motion uncomfortable.
The boat slewed across big waves, which sprayed over the bow. The sailors were busy keeping watch. Pytheas grumped in his bunk.
Rian was put to bailing the bilges again. It stank and was dispiriting work. There was no way for her to get clean or dry.
As the day wore on, the sea became even wilder but Toma’s mood was ebullient. He seemed to love it when the sea rose and snapped and writhed. The boat alternately bucked on and sliced through waves as if it could not decide if it was riding or riving the sea.
Ussa sat under the shelter looking back, getting up from time to time to peer ahead northwards. There was nothing visible.
Rian asked Og what Ussa searched for. “Manigan’s boat, not that we could catch it. Or land. Ostensibly land.”
And eventually land came, looming out from under the cloud. They made their way along parallel to the shore.
Ussa dressed to take off but it wasn’t necessary: a boat heading out of the harbour told them all they needed to know – no Manigan.
So on they went away from what the sailor in the other boat told them was “the Fairest Isle” – to the Cat Isles. It was no time to stop for mere beauty.
The wind dropped away, which was a relief to Rian, but not to Ussa or Toma or Badger. They spent another night on the water making little progress. Ussa wanted to arrive without notice.
She began to talk about how they could conceal their vessel and allow her to get ashore in secret to surprise the people.
Next morning, they entered a patch of sea that roiled and broke, and Toma turned the boat away the way they had come. “The Roust”, he called it: dangerous water caused by the tide.
Pytheas questioned him intently as he sailed away for an hour and then back again, by which time the sea had calmed and they could continue.
Watching
Closer into shore the sky filled with seabirds. Cliffs towered above the boat and thousands of gannets somehow found footholds and even nest sites on cracks in the sheer rock. A constant stream of the white birds launched themselves from their perches, their huge black-tipped wings outstretched, beating out and up then soaring. Rian had watched gannets many times from her home on the western coast but had never imagined so many could congregate in one place. What could they see with those egg-yolk eyes?
They must have been able to spy fish in the water below because they would suddenly tip down and fall like knives. The water all around the boat punctured as they dived.
As they sailed away from the gannet cliffs, a group of dolphins leapt ahead and led the boat northwards until eventually peeling away. They passed two boats with a net swung between them. Close in, seals lolled on skerries and as they turned into a wide inlet a grey seal surfaced with a snort just beside the bow and watched them placidly, huffing, used to being greeted with a fish.
Instead of entering the main voe, Ussa asked Toma to seek out a cove to drop anchor. He must have known the shore well for he found a place to conceal the boat without any difficulty. Li risked his life jumping on to a wave-washed rock and then helped Ussa ashore. They pushed off and Toma anchored the boat at a safe distance.
Once Ussa was out of sight, Badger sidled up to Toma and a murmured negotiation took place, punctuated by long, grumpy pauses. Eventually Toma relented and Badger hauled the anchor while Toma and his boy rowed the boat back to the rocky shore, where Badger jumped ship.
The rest of the crew prepared to wait. It could take Ussa and Li several hours to walk to the nearest settlement and gain the intelligence she needed. She may well not return until the next day, or the next. It was anyone’s guess what kind of reception she would get.
Og got straight on with cooking as soon as they had anchored, and demanded that Rian helped him.
“We have to use these times,” he said. “Plenty days at sea when you’ll eat nothing but dry tack, and the mood of the crew depends on nothing more than food.”
Pytheas had been keen to go with Ussa but she had refused him. He sat sulking on deck, back to the mast, until Rian brought him a cup of wine and some cheese on a hot pancake. Pytheas took his cup and gazed at Rian as he sipped.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. And then again, in Greek, “Beautiful.”
As she handed him the pancake, he bent and sniffed her hands.
“Clean now.” She held them to her nose to check. He sniffed again.
“Soapwort, and yarrow butter for my sores.”
He said something in Greek that ended with “Mama,” and the puppy-dog look in his eye forced her to conclude that her herbal remedy was making him homesick.
He tore the pancake in half and insisted she ate half of it, then made her sup from his wine cup. She didn’t know how to tell him this was a sacrilege: a man and a woman drinking from one cup without saying the blessings of the Mother.
She said them in her head and then made an addition, “but he doesn’t know what he is doing, and it is not the nuptial cup.”
She didn’t like the long gazing stare of the man, the way his eyes lingered on her, the way he drew his tongue across his teeth behind his upper lip and then back along the lower as if in preparation for some kind of delicacy.
More on Monday.