“Bad luck! I found it on top of our own guard-stone, balanced like a crow...”
Curse Conall for that announcement and blast the fool for bringing the skull inside, where Eithne and the other womenfolk would see it.
“...’tis a desecration!” the old fool was still shouting, spit falling from his gap-toothed jaws. He clung to the sheep’s head as if it was a treasure, and Olaf’s irritation increased. More so when the youngsters grinding barley beside the central fire echoed Conall’s words, like a Greek chorus in a play.
Though I am a long way from Constantinople now.
“A sign, I tell you!” Conall bawled, the last rays of the sun surrounding him in a bloody halo from the open door, and Olaf punched the old fool to stop his mouth.
Should have done so sooner.
“You yowl more than a wild-cat,” he snapped, stiffening as Eithne dropped the deer pelt she had been curing and approached, weaving through the seated onlookers as nimbly as a seal though the loch waters. As always, his wife’s silvery moon-beauty staggered Olaf, though her face lacked its usual animation.
“A message!” Conall gargled, rubbing his lower lip with his free hand and still determined to be as miserable as sin. “On the guard-stone!”
“A waste,” Eithne said quietly, her voice carrying in the newly built croft—Olaf could not call this circular hut of turf and scavenged timber a great hall, but it was warm and safe and that was all that mattered—“Sheep’s head makes a good broth.”
She held out her arms. “Bring it here, Conall, and look to our ale before it burns.”
Conall almost tossed the skull at her in his haste to be rid of the token and hobbled swiftly over to the cauldron where the oldest crone in their settlement tended the brewing ale when she remembered to stir.
Eithne patted the bony head and draped the ivy more tightly around its horns. Lifting her arms, she deftly slotted the skull into a gap between the croft’s turf wall and roof, stepping back a pace as if to admire. The lengthening shadows gave the thing a jaunty look.
“Yule-time protector?” Olaf asked, making a play of studying the head with its bursting streamers of greenery, the shiny mistletoe berries close to gleaming teeth. Eithne bestowed on him a big bright smile that made his heartbeat quicken.
“For the whole winter,” she said, and gave the skull a final pat, turning as if in a dance. “Who is for snow catching, before we seal the door for the night?” she asked, seemingly without a care in the world.
At once, Olaf lifted a bucket from a peg jammed into the roof thatch, though no one else stirred from their furs and mattress by the hearth, not even the little ones. It was winter, cold and gathering dark, and who would wish to leave their place by the fire for such chill?
“Until we return, White-Hair is on watch,” Olaf reminded the gangling stripling close to the door. The lad nodded, stuffed more dried apple into his mouth and stalked to the door.
Always eating, that one.
The thought held no sting. Olaf had been the same, at the same age.
He unfurled the door-hanging that White-Hair had slouched beneath and blocked Eithne with his other arm. “I go first.”
“This is not a battle-ground, husband,” she replied, a glitter of laughter in her voice and eyes.
“Not yet,” Olaf conceded, lowering his head to duck out into the weather.
But soon it may become one, I think, unless I can stop it.
Outside they could walk and talk more freely. Eithne began it even before she crouched to scoop fresh snow to melt for cooking water into her pail, her fingers pinked by the fading sun.
“Very pretty and neat sheep’s skull,” she observed. “Mistletoe with no missing berries. Dry, too, and somehow without snowflakes.”
“Conall happening to find it,” Olaf added.
“He decorated and fixed it to our guard stone, more like. Then he could not abide waiting for any of the others to find it, even if that meant greater impact, or ill-luck.” She puffed out her cheeks in a huff. “Conall always is impatient.”
“That, too,” Olaf agreed, filling his bucket with a single long drag through a pristine snow drift. “And we knew he was troublesome. The Gaels, stirring early, you think?”
Eithne absently rubbed her stomach, her aquamarine eyes staring over the loch. “This mischief is closer, and already drawn Conall in,” she said at last. “A token of intent, possibly the first of many, to erode our peace.” She leaned against his shoulder. “Who matches that kind of malice?”
Olaf thought of a young woman, black hair and dark blue eyes, a dark mirror to his wife’s beauty. He frowned, disliking his conclusion. “Your sister, Mongfind.”
“Half-sister, legitimate, princess sister, blessed by the kirk sister.”
Olaf knew he should tread carefully here. “That Gael, the one I called Leather-Cap, he did not seem so keen to stir on Mongfind’s say.” Leather-Cap had ridden over to Black Broch ten days ago, seeking easy conquest, and found a Viking already in place. A battle-hardened warrior, married and accepted by a bastard Pictish princess and her rag-tag hoard of people. Yes, Conall is trimming now, twisting towards the high-born older sister, but Eithne and I have done well together, and the youngsters favour us.
Another huff from Eithne. “Mongfind may have found another protector, one she can sway more easily.”
“Is that were so, it would have been a human skull,” Olaf almost said, but stopped himself in time. Instead, he took Eithne’s filled pail and wrapped his arm about her shoulders. She looked as still and straight as the Black Broch’s guard-stone, but he felt her faint trembling. “How has she contacted Conall?” he asked.
“The Irish trader who visited two days back.”
The Viking nodded, aware that Irish peddlers roamed all over Alba, but still— “Not a quick way to send a message.”
Eithne leaned a little closer. “My half-sister loves to torment and will gladly wait months to do so.”
“Why does she dislike you so?”
He felt her tiny shrug. “I bit her once, when she was six and I four. She had been kicking my mother, calling her red-haired witch, and I wanted her to stop.”
“As I did Conall’s blithering.” They exchanged a look and again Olaf felt his whole body swell with pride. Slight and small as she was, his wife was a fierce protector.
“Our loving father, Giric, beat me, but my teeth left a scar on her.”
“Tiny blemish over her left cheek?” He had thought it a red freckle.
“The very same.” Eithne sagged a little. “Mongfind never forgave me.”
He knew that, and now he knew more. “Any more traders due?”
“In case of more of my loving sister’s messages? None.” She gave him a fond glance. “We are not Vikings, accustomed to chest-high snows.”
Olaf thanked the gods and Christ for that. Bastard princess or not, Eithne commanded Black Broch, but he would roam more easily in the wisdom that she had no more vipers in their nest than the one they knew, nor any trouble coming. “Tomorrow, I shall go hunting.”
His wife was quick in her wits, as always. “Men or beasts?”
“Both,” Olaf vowed. He kissed Eithne’s forehead and looked forward to the night, when he could bed her again. A mating and warm embraces after, much better than having to set out to track at once.
As if she read his wish from his eyes, Eithne tossed him a fleeting grin, then grew solemn. “We shall need to counter Conall’s claims, else the others will be afraid, cast down in the dark of the year.”
“A bonfire and a feast,” Olaf suggested. “Right on the Winter Solstice.”
“Aye.” She smiled fully, and he revelled in it.
“Other rites?” she ventured, reaching up to place a sweet kiss on his mouth.
“Indeed,” he agreed, relishing her lavender scent and fresh taste. “As many as we know, for as much luck as we can show.” He had learned, especially from serving as a warrior in Constantinople, that rulers nee
ded to display their power and status. Folk expected both and grew uneasy without—even in this tiny kingdom of ours.
Returning to the croft, Olaf swore to do more.
♦◊♦
Five days before the Winter Solstice, while Olaf was off hunting, the Irish trader returned to Black Broch. Standing in the melting snow outside the stone tower he handed Eithne a bundle from his loaded pack. “The price of a debt.”
Eithne hefted the weight of the cloth parcel and asked, before Conall did, “What debt is this?”
“Your laird saved my pet.” The bulky, stone-faced trader patted a mass of red fluff settled on his shoulder, a sleeping squirrel, Eithne realised. Even a sturdy trader has softness for something. The man’s black-stubbled broad jaw cracked a happy grin. “Your man said no debt, but I said there is. For Hazel here, this payment is my pleasure.”
Aware of the others watching and listening, Eithne bowed her head. “Our thanks. Will you be coming in to stay for supper and the night?”
“I will, aye.” The trader stroked the mass of red fluff, chuckled at his squirrel’s yawn and entered the croft ahead of her.
Later, when Conall slept and the youngsters drew serpents and stars in the dry earth of the croft floor, Eithne untied the bundle, pulling out two fine blankets and two iron knives.
One blanket she gave to the crone who sometimes watched the ale. The other, Eithne handed to Fina, a sad-eyed mother with two toddlers, twin boys. The rough cloth of the bundle she used to cook dried peas in a cauldron for everyone, glad to eke out the little settlement’s precious store of dried fish.
The knives, she kept.
White-Hair carried in the next bundle, three days before the Winter Solstice. “Like our sheep skull, it was balanced on top of the guard-stone,” he explained, adding when Conall drew in breath to clamour, “I think it means no harm. There are a man’s tracks from the palisade and back, close to the holly tree, and signs of a horse tethered on t’other side of the palisade, but naught else.”
“He used the beast as a step stone over the palisade,” Eithne guessed, smiling at White-Hair’s “Aye” and his longing glance to the seething crock of pottage.
“Get yourself some breakfast,” she told him. “You have done well.”
Well enough, as Olaf would say. The lad fell asleep on watch last night, but who has not done so in these cold, harsh times? We are still alive. She swallowed a wave of sickness and added, for now.
“But the tracks, the bundle, the rider!” stammered Conall, “We have been attacked!”
“Aye, by one man, a fellow who leaves us cheeses,” Eithne answered, slipping the small flat pebble she had found in the untied bundle into her waistband while displaying the four oval, hard cheeses.
The youngsters instantly swarmed on her, Domnall the Small asking in his piping voice, “Can we find a roasting fork and toast one?”
Since “Can we find a roasting fork and toast...” was wee Domnall’s favourite saying, Eithne hesitated. The big, pleading eyes of the little ones found her agreeing. Perhaps the smallest cheese—
“Share about!” she commanded, handing Domnall the cheese, and a ragged cheer went up. Stepping aside from Conall, whose face now matched his red beard, she hurried to the entrance and outside without troubling to look for her cloak. The pebble at her waist felt to burn, like Olaf’s touch in the night...
Scratched on its surface were two runes, Raidho, the sign Olaf had told her was for riding, and another she thought was the sign for debt. Clasping the pebble, she closed her eyes and thought of her husband, tall, strong, dressed in leather trews, Black Norse and a builder.
“He helped another traveller in the snows, a rider. The traveller acknowledged the aid and debt, and the cheeses are payment in kind.”
Spoken aloud, the thought made sense to her.
Is there time for my clever husband to send more bundles, before the dark of the year?
She smiled and returned indoors to her curing of the deer skin.
♦◊♦
The final gift-as-payment-of-a-debt appeared on the day before the Winter Solstice and was brought by Olaf himself. He strode into the settlement at midday, leading a small brown cow and shouldering a mass of hay in another rough cloth on his back.
“Cow!” cried one of the infants, pointing a chubby finger.
“Called Sunset and likely new in calf, according to the healer I saved from drowning,” said Olaf, handing the leading rope to White-Hair and dropping off the hay and sliding a feast of woodland game—a woodcock, a red grouse and two black grouse—out from his hood, cloak and tunic. Leaving the hay for Sunset and the game for others to snatch up, he strolled across to Eithne and kissed her on both cheeks.
For an instant, looking at each other, the world seemed wholly theirs. Eithne saw her new husband, long-legged, lean and dangerous, black hair speckled with snow, and deftly unwound the rags from his arms, exposing the glinting gold bracelets. She saw herself reflected in his grey eyes, wiry, small, with a flood of silver-blonde hair. He stared as if she was harvest and feast in one—no doubt, she was as wide-eyed and wondering.
“Welcome back,” she said softly, and threaded her arm through his to lead him to the fire.
The Laird of Black Broch had returned. Tomorrow, after the rites, they would celebrate.
♦◊♦
When she rose, in the dark before moonrise, Olaf was with her. Together, they sped silently from the croft and waited for the new moon to show over the tops of the trees. As soon as a thread of silver light caressed the guard-stone, Eithne began to sing, a low chant of old speech, full of words she no longer understood. Olaf joined her in the chorus, prowling around the guard-stone and rushing in to protect it with his sword and knife whenever she stamped her feet. His blades hissed in the silence as he whirled, proving to the spirits and old gods that he, too, would fight for this place.
They both shed blood over the guard-stone; Eithne first, and then her mate, the carvings on the stone shimmering with their offerings. As Eithne at last felt silent, her throat parched and feet aching, the moon dipped behind the palisade. She waited for Olaf to step beside her, to stand by her side.
I know he will, because he does. The thought revived her, and she could speak again.
“Tonight, the people will do this, with water from the Loch,” she said.
Olaf nodded—of course, he would understand. As a warrior, he knew sacrifice, knew there was a price to be paid for power. She was glad he did so willingly, that he was her mate in this, also.
“Then the feast?” she asked. He had supplied the richest part of it, so in justice, he should determine when.
In the dim light, she watched his grey eyes soften. “That will be fitting,” he said, “Though I will not drink tonight.”
“You wish to take the watch?”
He chuckled, but shook his head. “I need a clear head to plan. There is much to discuss. Later,” he warned, when she would have asked more.
“Perhaps on Maiden Isle?” she ventured, when he remained silent. We can speak there freely, uninterrupted. She watched a teasing gleam spark within his eyes.
“I thought no men-folk were allowed there?” he asked, reminding Eithne of what she had once told him. Smiling, entering the game, she answered, “As keeper of the isle, I invite you. Will you join me?”
“Aye,” he agreed at once, his jaw relaxing and his whole body loosening.
But what news has he learned off the tracks near to our home that makes him so guarded? What dangers must we face?
Eithne started when he took her hand in his. “Later,” he said again, and with that, she had to be content.
Chapter 9
In their newly re-made bed on the islet, unseen and unheard by Conall and the rest, Olaf shared his news. “Mongfind has taken up with Constantine the Bold, a Pict who likes the Irish Kirk and its clerics.”
He waited to hear Eithne’s thoughts, his eyes wandering about the cave that had been his wife
’s home for many years. She had hangings here and a deeper mattress, before the raiding Gaels came. I must strive to win their replacements. He touched a scorch-mark left by the raiders’ fire and wished he had a thousand warriors to follow him to the western isles, to ruin the Gaels in turn.
Eithne’s careful response brought him back from any plans of vengeance.
“The Christian faith is new to this Constantine?” she asked.
“Shiny and new as a freshly-struck English penny.”
“His reach is long?”
Speaking, Eithne brushed her thigh against his and desire surged in him anew. Listening to the drum of blood in his ears and chest, Olaf could not resist sucking a kiss onto her neck. Greatly tempted to do more, he rolled onto his back and made himself answer.
“He has followers to the north of here. His stronghold is a day’s ride off, with allies to the west and less certain friends to the east. There are Roman churchmen there,” Olaf added, anticipating her question. The Celtic and Roman churches sometimes clashed in Alba.
“As yet, though, I think we are secure here at Black Broch. I found no trails of men at arms.”
“Good,” she said at once. He felt her drum her fingers lightly on his breastbone as she considered further. “We need horses. If we are to raid, in and out, and from the east to make more trouble and to confuse our foes, we must have the speed.”
“We?”
In the dark he sensed her rise up over him. “I know the markers of Pictish lands, signs even you would miss, my husband. And I still do not trust Conall.”
He did not, either. Amidst his pleasure at Eithne’s “my husband”, another thought struck. “Can you ride?”
“Lads and men do it. Should be simple if they can.” She pressed a lingering kiss on his belly, a deliberate distraction.
The Viking and the Pictish Princess: The Rose and the Sword Page 5