“Marry him,” called the odious Conall, a cry whispered by the rest, as Conall added, “The Gaels took the well-born princesses. There is no one else left.”
Bindweed snorted at that bitter truth and glowered at Olaf. “Your answer, Viking?”
Olaf climbed to his feet and stood, looking down at her. In this I will be her equal, or nothing. His reaching fingers collided with her frozen ones. For an instant, their hands fought and then entwined. “Yes. If you will have me.”
Chapter 4
The old man shook with indignation. “We must commit them!”
“Build shelter first, or there will be more to bury.” To Bindweed’s amusement, the Viking yawned.
Conall’s wrinkled cheeks quivered in outrage. “Sir, I protest! The old laird deserves our respect, your respect!”
Deciding that matters had gone far enough, Bindweed hit the Viking’s staff against the tallest, thickest wall of the broch and spoke into the sudden silence. “Conall, you take a party of three and dig a trench near the sheep pens. The ground is softer there and the dead can lie in safety until we have time for more ceremony. Betrothed—” she had forgotten the Viking’s name—“can you show the rest of us how to make a tent of sail-cloth?”
“But the sheep pens?”
Conall’s inevitable protest was stopped by the Viking’s laconic, “No sheep.”
The Gaels had taken all they could—animals, doors, timbers, food, forage, clothes, tools, metal, even boots. Strange they left the sheep pens, unless that was meant as an insult, or sacrifice. Only hiding her coracle at Maiden Isle had allowed Bindweed and the Viking to paddle to the loch shore and the black broch rather than swim.
The filthy Gaels had stormed through her main cave, taken her lovely bed-hangings, although they had not found everything. The Viking—Olaf, that is his name!—and I need to return to the island and bring back what we can. Or one of us does.
“I have tools on the island,” she told Olaf. Time to start trusting him more. If another snow comes the old ones and youngsters will perish without cover. “You could take my wee boat across.”
Olaf glanced at her, grey eyes sparkling. “Maiden Isle? Where no man may set foot?”
She shrugged. “Be on your way, man, but do not sink my boat with overloading.”
He laughed and strode off.
♦◊♦
By nightfall, the dead were buried. Olaf built a shelter from split pinewood, using the wood-axe he recovered from the small island and the sail-cloth the survivors had used to protect them from the snows. Bindweed sorted through the goods he brought from Maiden Isle, handed clothes, the mattress from the small cave and a blanket the Gaels had missed to the womenfolk and put the broken stuff on the central fire in the new tent.
With the little group huddled round the fire, chewing on her precious, small-cave-hidden stores of winter cheese, dried meat and berries, she considered what to do next.
“We need to hunt and forage,” she warned Olaf, who had settled beside her, as he had all that day.
“Defences first,” Olaf replied. “Some of the Gaels rode off.”
On my ponies, driving my sheep and cows with them. The possessive thought surprised her. For years, she had held herself apart from the people of the black broch, as Irish Maeve had done before her, living on Maiden Isle and paying heed only to the women who visited her for cures.
“The pirates are gone,” Conall protested, hugging his sea-serpent tattoo while he crouched by the fire.
“They can return as easily,” Olaf said, and he met her eyes in a moment of perfect understanding.
“What now?” he went on, keeping his voice low to avoid panicking the others. “What kingdoms are to the east? Would they raid the black broch or help us?”
Conall’s scowl was its own answer. Olaf nodded. “We have your spades,” he said to Bindweed. “I will start tonight and dig out a ditch round this place.”
Bindweed’s pretty eyebrows rose. “In the dark?”
“There is moonlight and snow glare enough,” Olaf replied. He could keep look-out, too, since he did not trust any of these old men to watch. He had gone sleepless before, at sea and in Constantinople.
“Here.” He handed Bindweed his cloak. The urgent work would keep him warm. His arms already ached with chopping pine. Adding a new soreness to his back and legs through digging would be a balance, of sorts.
We need those defences.
♦◊♦
Four days later, Black Broch was surrounded by a deep ditch and high palisade of more hewn pine. The tent its shattered people lived in was pitched snug within those walls.
Five days later, the well within the broch that the Gaels had tried to fill with rubbish and stones was clear. The old iron-studded door to the broch had been burned but Olaf fashioned a new door, rough and only of pine, but strong enough for the present.
Six days later, Olaf returned from a hunt with a fine young red deer and a plump capercaillie, both taken with arrows from Bindweed’s useful bow. That night, the people of the broch feasted on game bird stew. It tasted of pine and the dark meat was stringy, but it remained a welcome change from the roach Bindweed and the youngsters had so far caught and roasted.
On the seventh day, Bindweed Silverhair, healer and last princess of the Black Broch, married the Viking Olaf No-Kin, protector and builder. Conall protested at the lack of a priest, at Bindweed’s illegitimacy, but his scowls and complaints were ignored.
The diminished folk of Black Broch had a new lord and lady.
♦◊♦
Bindweed had thought her wedding night would be a claiming, a hasty, brutal slap of flesh together and the Viking smug as a Capercaillie cock the next day. A kind of “get on and row” from her new husband.
To counter the inevitable pain, she quickly drank a tincture she usually gave women in child-birth and lay on the scratchy bed of heather with an aching head and swimming vision.
The Viking—I must remember to call him Olaf!—peeled off his clothes and crawled in beside her, seemingly oblivious to the crude jests in the dark from the others. He smelled of fresh snow and well-scrubbed skin. Good he is clean.
That was her last coherent thought.
With their embrace, a need, a sweetness, seized her in a gentle yet iron grip and swept Bindweed away. Later, as she basked in a glorious release she had never before experienced, she heard Olaf whisper beside her ear, “Not what you expected?”
She could have mentioned the tincture, or his own roars of pleasure, but did not. I am a maiden no more. Will it show, somehow tomorrow? Will my sleeping log of a husband care? In the end, Bindweed decided, it did not matter.
She would do this again, and gladly.
♦◊♦
“We need a new guard-stone, my lady.”
Bindweed glanced up from her curing of the deer-skin and almost broke her flint in sheer frustration. Conall, again, his red beard jutting out along with his skinny chin.
Was he always this troublesome?
“Aye, Conall?” She leaned back from her kneeling onto her heels and stretched, partly for pleasure, partly so her husband would see and hopefully admire her form. “What do you mean?”
“We have no priest to bless this place. Without a priest, we need a guardian!”
Noting Conall’s lack of “My Lady”, Bindweed dropped her flint and rose from her crouch. The fire warmed the backs of her legs as she faced the old man. Is that real panic in his withered face? Others, off in the shadows, tending bedding or covering holes in the roof of their tent, had frozen like the icicles outside, listening for her reply.
“A guardian in the old ways?” she asked, wanting to be clear. “As I recall, two summers ago, Giric and his legitimate sons cast the carved stone of Black Broch into the loch. The prayers and incense of the priest carried all the way to Maiden Isle that day.”
A spring green day, a Beltane day that I honoured in my own way.
“Aye, aye.” Conall nodded agreeme
nt, “and ever after, our luck has been less! We need a new stone, new carvings! You and the new laird should swear upon such a stone, as Pictish kings have always done!”
“Please,” whispered one of the older women, a plea echoed by the rest of the small huddled circle.
“Enough.” Olaf stepped into the brightest part of the firelight, ensuring all eyes and attention was on him. “I have worked runes in stone. I will carve your sacred signs and pictures. Your lady will help me. You will watch the skies for more snow or trouble.”
At once, the womenfolk and children applauded. Conall shuffled off, his surly face now as bright as a child’s at berry-picking time.
Bindweed saw Olaf pluck an axe from the small, precious bundle of tools he had gathered from Maiden Isle settlement and felt a prickle of desire tingle her skin as he smiled at her.
“Shall we go?” She spoke before he did, and stepped past him into a fall of fresh snow.
So swiftly he has become their leader, and mine.
But could she trust him?
Chapter 5
“There is stone to be had on Maiden Isle, blocks of sandstone and granite close to the sacred pool. ‘Tis afternoon now. We should go soon, before dark falls.”
She spoke as she moved, smooth and quick. Listening with half an ear, Olaf hung back a little, for the pleasure of watching his wife walk. Sometimes in the night he kissed her while she slept. I had not known a woman could fill my heart so full, before her.
“Olaf? Do you agree?”
He tossed the wood-axe from one hand to the other, to distract her knowing eyes. She had halted by a charred pine stump and he caught up with her, wondering afresh at her name, or rather her nick-name. Bindweed cannot have been her given name.
“What did your mother call you?” The question was asked before he saw the folly of it, watched her bright light eyes narrow and her shoulders tighten. Disliking that huddled look on her, he sought to give comfort. “The warriors of the north have two names, one for battle, drawn from Odin, one for family.”
Clumsy and useless! Olaf’s thoughts roared in his ear, while his woman skidded away, kicking up great arcs of snow. His pounding heart settled as she looked back again. “Drawn from Odin?”
I knew I was right! She has forgotten her true name and does not want to admit it. Olaf did not feel the glow of victory at this, her face was too still, her loss too great.
To forget the name her mother called her...
“A warrior seeks his battle name through the god, by way of trance. It unlocks a warrior’s luck and spirit, old memories, different magics for strength and power.”
She gave a sharp nod. “From your account, ‘tis similar to a healing trance, one that can help in remembering cures.”
Olaf drew in breath to say more, perhaps even admit his own secret warrior name. Her colour heightened. “You feel a trance may aid my memory, Olaf?”
“It may be.” He saw her springing hope in her trembling fingers and wanted badly not to crush it. “I think if you try it, you will gain something of your mother.”
A living picture, a scent, an image that would bring comfort. Strange ideas for using Odin’s trance, but why not? Did the God not find the runes of magic and writing through trance when he hung from the sacred tree of Yggdrasill?
“Will you try?” he asked, part of him wondering why he should be so invested in this. Perhaps because she said my name, in the way she whispers it in our bed.
“I will.” She gave another bob of her flaxen head. “And will you trance while you carve the stone?”
“Beforehand,” he replied firmly, silently amused with how forthright his Pictish princess could be. He held out his hand to her and she took it and they kicked on through the snow, towards the loch and her waiting coracle.
♦◊♦
She was accustomed to entering a healing trance through chanting, by repeating snatches of healing charms and prayers over and over. A warrior trance she guessed would be similar, but different.
“How do you go into trance?” she asked.
Olaf leaned a moment on the spade he was using to dig out the short slim pillar of sandstone from its cradle of snow, earth and ivy. They had spotted the stone together, half buried beside the edge of Maiden Island’s sacred pool, and Olaf had started to free it at once.
“It is different for each warrior,” he answered. “A rite of passage, an ordeal. Mine was by miss-luck. It happened far away from here, in Constantinople. Karl, my brother-in-arms, had entered a half-ruined villa, seeking treasures.”
He snorted and shook his head. “Karl was like a dragon for gold, but that day his lust for plunder had him plunging into a homestead with more broken walls than whole. A keystone from an arch fell on him. It pinned his shield-arm.
“I had to free him. His screams... They were terrible. I fought that keystone and strained against it, and kicked and dragged at it. I could not budge the thing by a finger-width and Karl was whimpering by then, paler than bone. Desperate, I yanked hard, with all my might—and the pain fell away, and the weariness, and that stone was suddenly as light as a feather. I tossed it away and plucked Karl into my arms and carried him back to our barrack.
“Afterwards, the Greek healer told me I had almost ripped the sinews out of my flesh in my struggles. It hurt as if I had been struck with Thor’s hammer by then, but Karl mended and so did I, after a fashion.”
He shrugged and resumed digging. “In rain, my arms and sides ache, but I still remember that clarity, as if I had the sight of an eagle. That was my first warrior trance. I think on that time to re-enter it.”
“When you protected a friend.” Bindweed’s voice was very low and quiet.
“I will also keep you safe,” he promised. “If you wish to go ahead with your own battle-trance.”
She smiled at him, then, a determined grin, showing many teeth. “I will get into it,” she replied. “Battling with this sandstone pillar, we both shall.”
♦◊♦
It was not to be. By sunset, more of the long, reddish stone was exposed but it remained stubbornly fixed in the ground, a patch that by this time was churned mud through hers and Olaf’s struggles.
“We should stop.” Her husband mopped his dirty face and sank onto his haunches. “Moon-rise soon, and the folk will be anxious.”
They never troubled about me before, Bindweed almost snarled, but marking how drained he seemed, she said nothing.
Olaf had been using a pick made from stag antler, a tool born of necessity since they had no metal ones. Now, as he unwound his clearly cramping fingers from the pick and allowed the curved antler to drop into the snow and mud mush, Bindweed felt a rush of anger.
This wretched boulder will not defeat us!
Smoothly, she plucked the pick from the earth, dropped into the hollow beside the sandstone, and rammed one sharp prong into its base. A shudder ran through the pillar and surged up her arms, and in that instant a blinding flare of light struck her eyes.
Dimly, as if from a great distance, she heard Olaf shouting, and a strange, sucking noise. She tried to wiggle the pick again, to free it, and felt a blast of dank air along her flank.
“Fool Pict! You might have been crushed!”
Olaf tightened his grip on her, flung her over his shoulder and carried them both out of the ditch. Furious, Bindweed tried to smack him with the antler pick and yelped as he tanned her bottom in turn. “Enough, woman! You could have been killed!”
“My name is—” she shrieked, and an old memory stirred from the very bottom of her mind, a picture of her pretty, red-haired mother working at a loom, saying to her Steady, Eithne, there is no need to rush. The lambs are going nowhere yet.
“I was Eithne.” The name sounded strange in her mouth. “Eithne.”
She felt herself being deposited, none too gently, onto a patch of clear earth, and the pick half-buried in the soil and snow beside her. Olaf pressed his hands over her, saying, “Hurt, anywhere? That leaning stone
did not catch you?”
Bindweed—Eithne—said, “It missed.” She waited until her own and her husband’s breathing was steadier.
“My mother called me Eithne,” she said. “I remember.”
“Thank Odin and Thor and Christ you are safe,” spat Olaf, as if he was not listening, which being a man and a Viking, she thought very likely. She watched as he slashed his knife across his palm and smeared his bleeding hand down the length of the pillar, muttering something in Norse and adding in a tongue she understood, “We have given enough blood and sweat to you now, guard-stone. Tomorrow, you will come with us and be the guardian of the black broch. Agree? To come with Eithne and me?”
A shaft of moonlight lit the top of the drunken-looking stone, a sign, and she stared at Olaf. He is Viking, not Pict, yet he honours the old ways.
“Yes, I heard you,” he said, misunderstanding her look of wonder. “Will you be Eithne after tonight, to honour your mother?”
“I will,” Eithne-Bindweed said.
Several days later saw the new guard-stone carved and erected beside the black broch. Eithne—I am finally becoming accustomed to that being my name—admired the pale, slender pillar with its swirling symbols, cut by herself and Olaf using flints and her own single chisel from her precious tools on Maiden Isle, an iron chisel that need to be frequently re-sharpened.
Now, finally, she stood back and admired it in its completeness. The sea-serpents and running stags were her husband’s. Drawing on old stories, she had tapped, chiselled and scratched out the scrying mirrors, suns and braids of hair.
Olaf stood beside her, a brief moment shared before he was claimed by Conall, or herself by one of the women. He touched her fresh carving. “The mirrors for far-sight and wisdom?”
“Aye.” Eithne was frowning at the new sores on his fingers, forgetting in that instant that her hands were also rubbed by the flints. “The braids to honour warriors, the suns to celebrate the fruitfulness of women.”
“And my sea dragons and stags?”
She raised her head and chuckled. “What else but to grant protection and safety in all waters and good hunting on land?”
The Viking and the Pictish Princess: The Rose and the Sword Page 3