Seal-Skin
David Stephen Powell
“Come in, missy, and give your coin to Lord Cunorix.”
A large black dog distilled itself out of the shadows and sat in front of Gytha with its mouth open.
“Just pop it in,” the hag encouraged her.
Gytha placed her coin in the dog’s mouth and he dissolved back into the darkness.
“Approach,” the hag commanded.
The bright blue eye weighed her in its gaze. Where the other eye should have been, was an empty socket. Gytha came forward and sat in front of the old woman, who was wedged tightly into the corner behind a low table, hiding from the natural light that spilled into the hut.
“It is in the shadows that the clearest sight may come,” the woman said, as if she had sensed the thought forming in Gytha’s mind. “What would you ask of me?” A dry chuckle came from her mouth that sounded like the rattle of stones on shingle. “As if I didn’t already know.”
“I am widowed four years now,” Gytha began. “I am still young, and yet I feel the house of my soul crumbling though loneliness. And sometimes my loins throb with such heat and lust that I should want to jump into the sea and drown.”
The dry chuckle came again. “Fashion a comforter of bread to satiate thyself. ’Tis cheap and reliable.”
“I cannot love a horn of bread, nor can it plant its seed inside me.”
“Then stay as you are, for all love is doomed to end in disappointment and death.”
Gytha rose to go. She had lost her coin, and would take good care in future not to waste her money on so-called wise women.
“Sit down,” the hag said. “I have not yet finished with you. What would I be not to offer any remedy, even if it bode ill for you?”
The old woman bent down and took a small wooden box from underneath the table. A particular smell rose from the black wood, like spice and rotten fish. She put the box between them, lifted the lid, and took out a dried thing like an old piece of leather.
“Here is a charm that will bring you what you wish for, and perhaps some things you do not. Cast this into the sea when the tide is at its highest, and when seven days have passed, you will find what you desire.”
Gytha took the thing in her hand. It might have once been an animal, but now it was dried out and the colour of old seaweed.
“Keep its seal-skin clothes hidden, and it will stay loyal to you, and you only: but if it finds them, it will return to its briny family taking your heart with it, and you shall never find another. Mark well my words.”
Gytha thanked the woman and left the hovel at the edge of the forest. She saw the black dog, Lord Cunorix, watching her from the trees as she went. He barked once and disappeared.
She ran to the sea and fetched water in her cupped hands, spilling most of it before she was able to throw it over the man’s upturned face. His eyes sprang open and he gasped for breath as though waking from a nightmare.
“I will look after you now,” she said. “You are mine.”
She led him to her hovel and stripped off his seal-skins. The man said nothing as she dressed him in the clothes of her dead husband, rough tunic and trews.
“What shall I call you?” she asked him when she was done.
“I am Mortan,” were the first words he uttered. His voice was a beautiful as his countenance.
“I am Gytha, and you are now my sea-husband.”
“You are my land-wife,” he said, and lent forward and kissed her. He then went outside and began to work on the strip of land behind the hovel. Gytha took the seal-skin clothes and hid them under the hearthstone.
That night, after their evening meal, Mortan lay with Gytha, and in the morning, when he had gone to work in the fields, she realised that the seed he had planted had already begun to grow.
That evening, she said to him, “I want to take you to the village, but I am afraid of what the others will say to me. They will think me fickle and wanton.”
“You need not worry,” he said. “They will accept me as your husband, and will not remember who came before me.”
When the Lord’s Day came around, Gytha and Mortan went to the small stone church, and Mortan was accepted as Gytha’s husband, and no one was surprised, or made an uncouth or hurtful remark to them. On the contrary, Mortan was invited by the reeve to become the constable for the hundred. He was sought out for his advice on the best time of day to sew barley, and on the husbandry of lambs.
Gytha took pleasure in watching as they fawned and ingratiated themselves around her new husband; those that had never cared whether she lived or died now looked at her with renewed respect and, for some, a touch of envy at her good fortune.
The child in Gytha’s belly grew along with the crops in their fields. Gytha had never seen the animals so fat, or the crops so tall and healthy. In the summer, the reeve died, and the Aetheling asked that Mortan take over the position, such were the tales of his skill as a landsman. The people looked to Mortan for advice, and he proved a fair-minded reeve who had the respect of the people, and of the Aethelings.
Gytha bore a strong healthy boy they called Eardwulf, and became pregnant again soon after. Mortan loved her well, and would bring gifts fashioned by his own hand for both her and the baby. He seemed as a young man in the first throes of love.
Gytha rarely thought of her old husband and could now barely remember his face, or even his name. Gytha often thought of what was hidden under the hearthstone, but she pushed such dark thoughts from out of her mind.
The Danes had come.
Perhaps they had heard from a trader that the crops this year were particularly abundant, when many others were starving.
Mortan stood on the shore and looked out at the ships. “I count only five,” he said. “They come to raid, not to settle. We will move inland, and carry as much with us as we are able.”
“But our house?” Gytha said. “Our church?”
“Houses and churches can be rebuilt. People cannot.”
Mortan sent a messenger to the Aetheling, and as the people trusted Mortan they willingly did as he said. They harvested as much as they could and took their families and animals inland where the Danes would not follow. By the evening, smoke rose over the village. Gytha and the others began to weep at the loss of their houses and their possessions. Mortan gathered them together and told them not to fret. There would be enough to go around, he said. He would bring a bounty from the sea to them.
Within two days, the Aetheling’s men arrived and drove out the raiders, killing many and forcing the others back to their ships. When the villagers returned, few houses were left undamaged, but they set to work rebuilding. Mortan said he would rebuild their own house in a better place, higher up and farther from the shore.
Gytha, hearing his intent, was beset with worry about what lay under the hearthstone. When Mortan was engaged in another task, she went to the ruin of their house to find the seal-skin clothes – but the hearthstone was smashed, and the clothes were missing.
“What am I to do?” she wailed. Baby Eardwulf goggled at her and began to cry in answer to her distress. She spent many hours searching the countryside and the shore for them, but without finding anything.
“I will go to the hag and ask her,” she said at last, and did so.
At the edge of the wood, she was met by Lord Cunorix. She placed her coin in his mouth and entered the dark and loathsome hovel once more.
The bright blue eye fixed Gytha from the shadows. “Speak, Missy, I’m busy,” the hag commanded, and Gytha told all that had happened: her fortune and family, the coming of the Danes, the loss of the seal-skin.
“Then who can say how this will end?” the old woman said. “You should have taken more care. Now there is nothing to be done. Go, live your life for as long as you have it. The gods will decide.”
Gytha left the hovel on the edge of the forest with a heavy heart.
When the spring came, a daughter was born whom they named Beatriz. Gytha was almost able to forget about her worries for a while: but always, in the dark corners of her mind, was the thought that the clothes might be found one day. It was the type of cruel trick the old gods (and the new one too) seemed to delight in playing on their hapless worshippers.
Mortan asked Gytha why she was silent and thoughtful. “I worry for the future,” she said.
“Why? Have I not cared for you, and for the others?”
“Yes, you have cared for us as much as any man could.”
“Then why are you sad?”
“I am frightened you may leave us.”
“Then you are frightened of life. One of us will leave the other and the children one day. That is the weregild we pay for love, which we can neither forestall or forfend. But we make the best we can of each day that is given to us by providence.”
“But I went to the hag in the forest, and I paid her to bring you to me,” Gytha said, in a sudden onrush of guilt and piety. “I paid her a gold aureus, and she said that if I cast something into the sea, you would come to me in seal-skin clothes, and if I hid those clothes from you, then you would stay with me forever, and I hid them under the hearthstone, but now the Danes have found them, and I worry that one day they will come back and then you will find them and leave me forever.”
“You speak of the Silkie,” Mortan said. “They are known amongst my people too, but I have never seen one, or heard of one coming onto the land. I think they are a yarn spun by old women whose husbands are long-dead, and who are full of the bile of loneliness and jealousy of the young.”
“But she told me you would appear, and you did appear. She told me that you would be dressed in seal-skin clothes, and you were dressed in that fashion. All that she has foretold has come true.”
Mortan drew Gytha closer to him, and found her gaze with his own. “Our fishing boat sank, and I was the only one the fates deemed to save. That was when you found me. As for the clothes, I burned them a year ago, before the Danes came. I was puzzled why you were keeping my old sailing clothes. I was ready to throw them away.”
“Then why did you not tell me?” Gytha asked.
“When the gods place a treasure within your grasp, you do not ask why. You accept their gift, and are grateful.”
Eadwulf came into the house from playing outside. “Why is mother crying?”
“Because she is happy,” Mortan said.
Eadwulf looked from one to the other with confusion, and went outside again.
Gytha and Mortan lived long and happy lives. And when they died, just one month apart, Eadwulf, Beatriz, and their brothers and sisters buried them on the hillside overlooking the shore where Gytha had first found Mortan all those years ago.
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