“Fergus! Fetch!” Glenna called to the hound, and walking out toward deeper water, she threw a rope of knobby kelp. He barked and dove at it, his head popping up out of the water, kelp rope between his grinning teeth. She laughed at him before a wave knocked her under and she came up spitting saltwater and searching for her footing.
A piece of bleached wood drifted past on swell. She tossed it high in the air for him. The two of them played with the stick for a long time, stopping to paddle together in the calmer sea between waves, until they both were cool and breathing hard. She trudged through the water with the strong tide pulling at her clothes, before stopping in the sand to pull up her tunic and tighten the rope drawstring on her sodden peasant trouse.
On the northern edge of the cove, the huge granite rocks were warm from the bright sunshine, and she climbed atop a flat one without a seal stretched out on it, and lay back, hand over her eyes. A nearby seal barked, but didn’t deign to move when Fergus jumped up next to her, circling twice before he hunkered down for a nap, shaggy wet chin resting on his enormous paws. Soon she drifted off.
What woke her she could not say, but Fergus’ head shot up with her and he growled lowly. A horse and rider came around the far southern end the cove, where there was a small, less rocky trail from the far cliffs down to the sea.
“Come, Fergus! Quickly! Down!” Glenna rolled over and went down behind the rock, climbing back and around so she was hidden between the seals.
Who was this man?
She and her brothers lived on the midwestern edges of theisland, far, far from the only village to the east. Even the Norse on the northernmost tip of the island stayed clear, so beaten and gaunt was the terrain here. There was no value to the land or what little grew on it; they lived in complete isolation, which her brothers claimed was what their battle-weary father had wanted, to be hidden at the end of land where no one would call him to war or had a reason to come within even a half day’s ride.
She had no weapon. Her belt with its knife lay next to her bed in the cottage. A fool’s mistake. Slowly she eased up between a group of seals to keep her eye on the stranger, then quickly shoved Fergus’ head down when he decided to follow her lead.
“Stay down,” she whispered to him, and he whimpered and put his snout on his paws, clearly unhappy with her.
As the man rode closer along the edge of the water, she could easily see his rank as a noble warrior dressed for protection in a padded jack gambeson of leather and mail covered his legs. He rode with no troop of men, and she glanced up at the cliffs to see if there were others above, but there was no one. She looked back at him. A shield emblazoned with a rampant golden lion on an azure field hung down from his pommel and soon the sun caught the glint of his sword and she spotted several large stones the size of crabapples inlaid along the scabbard strapped to his hips. His wealth was evident; his horse was one of the finest animals she had ever seen, head high, perfect arch of the neck, black mane and tail flowing. And she watched, somewhat lost in the beauty of the two of them; the horse and man cut an exquisitely handsome figure through the wet sand, sea spraying up behind them and turning into rainbows in the glare of bright sunshine.
He dismounted, tossing the reins over his saddle and stood at the edge of the water, looking out to the sea, his hands resting on his narrow hips, and she wondered what he was thinking and why he was in this singular and lonely place. Within moments he had unbuckled his sword and tossed it in the sand, pulled off his boots, jack, mail and linen, until he stood there beautifully andquite wondrously naked, a golden image walking into the water, almost like some Norse idol come to life; the man was pure gold from the thick head of hair ending at his wide shoulders to every inch of skin she could see. For just the barest of moments, the sun caught and glinted off a gold cross he wore on a chain around his neck and she smiled—perhaps he was her gift from God.
He dove under a wave that would have taken her down, his head coming up behind the swell like one of the seals and he swam across the water, riding in on the waves and swimming back out again, his arms making powerful strokes that seemed to cut easily through the pull of the sea.
Glenna eyed the horse, then the man, who was swimming even farther out to the larger swells beyond. She leaned against the rock with one hand as she slipped on her wooden shoes one at a time. “Bare-assed fool,” she muttered. “To go frolicking in the sea while that fine, fine animal stands there…sorely abandoned.” She sighed, as did someone who had little choice in what they were about to do, and made her way over to the lovely horse, Fergus trailing behind her as she began to speak to the black in a low and melodic voice.
The animal’s ears went up and twitched, but she easily took the reins, stroking his head. “There…there, my sweet and lovely thing.” She began to hum softly and saw trust soften his eyes.
She slowly led the horse in a half-circle so the beast stood in front of the man’s clothes, hiding her from his view, before she pulled the lion shield from the saddle; it dropped heavily into the sand, then she lifted the solid sword and its scabbard from the sand with both hands and a grunt, and hooked it over the pommel, quickly flinging his lighter clothing, leather gambeson, and lastly his weighty mail onto the horse.
“God’s blood! You, there! Stand back from that horse! “ Sir Golden Himself was swimming back toward shore.
‘Twas a shame, really, about the golden cross. She was certain it would fetch a good penny.
“Get away, I say! That horse will trample you before he willlet you touch him! Back away, you!” A wave washed over him and he came up from behind it, standing in the water, his wet skin gleaming jewel-like in the bright sunshine, his hair slicked back and his face red and angry as he strode waist-deep through the strong pull of the tide.
Poor fool, she thought. He was not moving quite swiftly enough. She gripped the horse, her foot in the stirrup, and mounted, leaning over to stroke the black’s arched neck. “You won’t hurt me, sweet lad. Will you?” Reins in her hands, she looked back at the man, so huge and trying to power his way to shore through seawater, ebb tide, and the next waves.
“What are you doing?” He bellowed so loudly his voice echoed in the cliff caverns and birds flew into the sky.
Glenna wheeled the horse around. “Me, good sir? Why, I’m stealing your lovely sword-- nice jewels—“ she patted the scabbard meaningfully, “also your clothes,” she added, as the black sidestepped in the sea foam that curled on the sand and around his hooves. “Fret not, for I will leave you your most precious jewels,” she said pointedly. “And your shield to protect them.”
“Get off that horse!”
“This horse? I think not. But I thank you for him!” She gave the poor man a final wave and took off down the beach on that powerful black beast with his hooves pounding in the hard wet sand, riding like the wind away from the golden fool, Fergus loping along behind, and her sweet, wicked laughter echoing back in the warm air.
Some half a day’sdistance away from the cove, solidly built into the downside of a grassy slope, was a stone cottage with a sod roof that blended in with the terrain, and inside the main room stood a long wooden trestle table with a scarred top. The open shutters on the window alcoves let in air and plenty of light from a lingering sun still shining past evening.
Glenna pushed the sword across the trestle table toward her eldest brother, Alastair, who was closely studying the scabbard jewels, while her younger brother, Elgin, rummaged through the man’s belongings.
“These are emeralds and rubies,” Alastair said to her, testing the hilt and holding up the great sword. “And the largest stone in the center is a sapphire, which would be considered rare at half its size.” He stood and moved across the small room, swinging the sword at imaginary opponents. For a time, their father had begun to train Al in the arts of war, but for Sir Hume Gordon, whose wife had died just after he came home from war, death came suddenly and had robbed her eldest brother of any dreams of fostering toward knighthood.
“Look here.” Elgin said. “Manna from Heaven.” He set five plump bags of sterling on the table, a silver meat knife with a gold filigree handle circled with rubies and a matching rare, two-pronged fork. There was a small handwritten parchment book with tooled leather covers tied together with silk braid in azure blue and gold, a wine chalice with an ebony inlay and a stem shaped into a rampant golden lion, a signet ring again with the lion, and a rolled sheaf of papers marked with an important looking wax seal.
Only Alastair could read and write, and he often shook his head many times as he tried to decipher some document or letter, so Glenna thought he could not actually comprehend all the words he tried to read. But he had been only ten and two when their father died, and Elgin was barely nine, and she but four. Alone they had buried their father, and for as long as she could remember life had been just the three of them.
Alastair picked up the papers and screwed up his face as he concentrated. It was a long time before he looked up. “These papers are assurance for safe passage.”
“His passage was not safe with Glenna.” Elgin laughed.
