Howls loud enough to raise the roof ascended to the thatch. Fion beamed wider than the bay. As Vass slapped his shoulder in congratulation, the axe-man tossed the plait of red hair back from his face.
‘I will lead like a hero,’ he announced, ‘then I will father one!’
‘Marriage wasn't necessary,’ Ruan murmured at Skaaha's side.
‘He risked his life for me so the reward is high.’ She leaned against him. ‘But if any husband of mine is ever jealous,’ she said softly, ‘I will divorce him.’
‘Where will we go?’ a voice asked. It was one of the Bracadale warriors, the same question on all their faces. ‘We're the queen's chapter. Where do you go?’
It was Suli's opaque eyes Skaaha met across the table. The old priest had not spoken. Yet she waited for this answer. Skaaha took time with it. If she stayed here, she'd walk in her mother's shadow, always Kerrigen's daughter, never herself. Three times Mara had taken her life away – from Bracadale, from Kylerhea, and from Glenelg. It was time to make life her own. The islands were the centre of the world, guarding the heart of the earth. Bride had surely saved her for this.
‘We go to protect the faith,’ she said. ‘I will make my home at Tokavaig, on a landing gifted by the goddess.’
From all the islands, and from the north of Alba, the stone builders came. From every island house, able-bodied workers went to help raise up the fort of Skaaha on that vast stack of rock above the sea. While they worked, the druids chanted blessings, drumming the rhythmic beat of time. Children fell asleep, ears filled by stories of a winged warrior goddess who leapt out to sea and was saved by Bride to become the champion who would save them all. In fields, on boats, in homes, people told how they knew, when she emerged at Beltane, the spirit of Danu returned to watch over them. It was said the high priest sang Skaaha's castle into being. For three whole nights, the old woman sang unceasing through dark and through light as the stones grew. On the third dawn Doon Skaa towered over the waves.
At midsummer, when young men danced up the sun, the last stone was laid. Dramatic on its rock, the great fort could be reached only by Ruan's snake bridge, carved and strung to his instruction. Strong but delicate in appearance, the reed rope carried oak slats that shifted underfoot. Below, spume boiled over rocks. Opposite, on the clifftop, a guardhouse protected access. Daily, fine furniture and furnishings arrived as gifts. On the promontory, the settlement progressed.
Skaaha poached Hiko from Glenelg to run her stable, and auditioned women warriors from Alba who flocked to fill the empty spaces in her guard. Misha moved to train at Jiya's school. Instead of going home, Terra stayed to boost Skaaha's warriors, waiting for the raiders to return. They would be back, Skaaha was certain, before Sowen or come spring. While Doon Skaa grew, she prepared, travelling the islands, setting watches. Her chapter learned new tactics. The islands waited for sight of sails. It came with spring, at Imbolc, the festival of Bride. The ship sailed right to the rock.
‘Ho, the castle!’ a voice hailed them. ‘A hag at Kylerhea stoned my boat. Said I was so behind times, she'd knock us forward to next moon if we set foot ashore!’ The speaker, a small, round man, wore a long, brightly patterned coat and waved a cane. It was Beric, the tin trader, fallen foul of Lethra.
Skaaha directed him to harbour, sent Hiko to collect him in her chariot, and dispatched a rider to bring Kaitlyn to trade. It was a joy to see the colourful little man again, though his cheerful halloo soon changed. Seated round the hearth in the castle hall, generously fed and watered, he was deeply distressed by the loss of old friends.
‘Erith and Kenna both? In my whole run, they were my favourite hagglers. Skinned my profit to the bone, but so sweetly I loved them for it. And Ard, was ever a smith so talented? As far as Egypt, you don't find jewellery like his.’
‘Of course you never told them that.’ Skaaha topped up his drink.
‘Well, no, a man's got to eat.’ He swallowed hard. ‘But treasure lost, real treasure, and I'm right sorry to hear of it.’
The watch called out from above. Skaaha stood. ‘That will be Kaitlyn.’ She went to meet her friend at the bridge. Too much stirred: Ard beside her on Beric's boat, assessing Roman swords; her, not yet of age, anticipating Beltane; Erith with finely wrought jewelled bronze brought to Bride's cavern. A well of sorrow rose inside her for what was lost. So long as she lived it would not run dry.
But this was dangerous. Be in the moment. Beric gossiped wherever he went. Before he left, a different story must fill his head, of a fierce, stalwart people. He could see the fort, hear of the schools. Her friend would help. They would talk of trade, progress at the new forge, the virtue and training of their warriors.
The rider arriving at the guardhouse wasn't Kaitlyn. He leapt from a horse that had been ridden hard, ran across the bridge. It was a relay rider, bringing news.
‘The raiders are back,’ he said. ‘Their sail was seen in the north yesterday.’
Running up the steps to the castle walkway, Skaaha scoured the western isles. There were no bale fires last night, no smoke now. The ship must have turned south, down the coast of the Island of Wings. Her heart hardened. That new story had begun. She knew exactly where the enemy was headed. Two riders later, it was confirmed.
As soon as the full moon rose, the boat slipped round the peninsula into Loch Slapin. The men of Harak had sailed this route before, into a trap that cost them dear. It was well-defended, evidence of protected treasure, wealth enough to repeat a risk. This time, they came prepared, and well-informed. The bright night that would reveal them to defenders also illuminated the foreign ground.
‘You were right, Orek,’ the captain murmured to the man at his side. ‘They sleep.’ On shore, the brochs showed no lights.
The king's son nodded grimly. He'd learned much during his captivity. The queen of this land was weak, blinded by jealous rage. She had him slaughter her own people, burn and pillage their forge. The wealth of that plunder had brought them back. If so rich a store could be sacrificed, this guarded shrine must hold much more.
Careless of creaking oars, they rowed in fast, past the beach where they'd been ambushed, to a cove just beyond that enticing flickering flame. The craft scraped on to pebbles. The men of Harak leapt, fully armed, shields raised, out of the boat, running up the slope towards the thatched roofs of homes ahead. There was no sound in the silence but their own feet. There was no sign of anyone awake, or of the warriors who met them the previous time. They would be in their cups, celebrating their festival.
A woman rose from the scrub, outdoors to relieve her bladder. She stood, naked in the moonlight, a dark spiral tattooed on her bluish breast. In her hand she held a short length of cord. Her mouth curved in a wide smile, though her eyes were cold. When she did not run, their feet slowed, hesitant that she showed no fear. From the shore behind, they heard the scrape of wood.
Several ghostly women with white flaming hair, shoulders to the prow of their boat, pushed it off into the water. Before they could move to save it, a screech erupted from the solitary banshee at their backs.
‘Hyaaa-aaaaa!’
Shapes rose around them, more ghastly naked spectres whose empty hands flung forward. Thumps, cracks and clatters came like monstrous hail. Men fell, bleeding from broken heads. Those who didn't go down cowered below raised shields. A storm of stones rained from all around.
*
Skaaha walked to the hut in bright spring sunshine. She wore a fine white woollen dress, glittering silver earrings and a blue cloak pinned with a brooch that shone like the moon. Beric's presence had proved fortuitous after all. The trader would carry her message to the land of the raiders, and to every other land he visited. Greeting Terra, who guarded the hut, she put her hand on the catch and opened it.
The man inside gripped his hands together to stop them shaking. Twenty of them had left Harak on this raid. Half had died on that beach. His only company in the hut were their heads, hanged from the roof to dry. The young qu
een who entered was finely dressed and beautiful. Glossy black hair, braided round her head, tumbled in coils down her back. But she was the same woman as that naked she-witch who'd smiled so coldly in the half-light of that brutal night. His chains shook. Ten of them had lived, prodded here by swords and spears pulled from the ground. Turn by turn, she'd come for each one. Orek, the king's son, was taken out first, then the captain. Each time, those left behind heard screams, the terrified, tormented shrieks of men. Now, there was only him.
‘You're well, I hope,’ she asked, as his shackles were released. When he didn't answer, she smiled. ‘You can speak,’ she asserted. ‘The reason you live is because you know my tongue.’
‘I'm not badly hurt,’ he muttered. His left eye was half closed, his lip split, body bruised. The red-haired woman warrior who came in with her yanked him to his feet. Stumbling, he was propelled out of the hut into daylight. The queen strolled alongside. A priest fell in behind. His presence brought no comfort. They headed towards the sea, skirting a high outcrop of rock. He could hear the wind howl high in the sky though the air was still, without a breeze.
‘We have a custom in our country,’ the queen said. ‘Every spring, we dip rags in water and tie them, as our wishes, to a tree.’ She paused. ‘Do you do this?’
‘No.’ He shook his head, hands still trembling. They passed the rock, the ground opening out to the sea. Ahead, a trader's boat waited beside a jetty. The trader, in a long, patterned coat, stood in the prow. Pale-faced, he stared towards them.
‘You might like to tell your country of this custom,’ she suggested, nodding for him to look back. The wind moaned louder here, almost human.
He turned. Behind the rocks they had passed was a wide grassy circle. In its centre, a massive oak tree spread leafless branches. High among those branches hung the naked bodies of men, hung by their hair. His nine companions swayed, hands tied behind them. Nooses lay slack around their necks, roped to branches to take the weight if the scalp tore from their heads. Every man, bruised and battered from that monstrous rain, bled from a wound where his manhood had been. Blood dripped to the gory ground below. Every one of them was still alive.
‘Wishes work best,’ the queen was saying, ‘while they dry.’
Stumbling and retching, with that inhuman sobbing in his ears, he was hauled down to the waiting boat. On the jetty, the flame-haired warrior gripped his arms, as if to push him off on to the deck.
‘Your boat was sacrificed in the sea,’ the queen said. ‘Beric will take you home.’ Her hand grasped his hair, forcing him to look at her. ‘You came to war against the Island of Wings. I let you live so your tongue will speak what it has seen.’ Her eyes were dark as night. ‘Tell your people the Land of Bride has a new warrior queen. Tell them she is the shadow of death. Tell them’ – her voice rang hard as iron – ‘I am Skaaha!’
Author's Note
‘True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.’
Socrates c. 470–399BC
Some names are spelt phonetically in Warrior Daughter. The usual spellings are given below.
Skaaha (Sgathach, Scathach) lived in the Iron Age on what became the Isle of Skye, just off the west coast of what is now Scotland. Island and country are both said to be named after her. There are no written records from her culture. She and her sister, Eefay (Aoife), are prehistory, their story preserved in oral myths and poetry until Christian monks wrote down the Ulster Cycle sagas between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Skaaha emerged for the first time in text, a vibrant, awesome leader, still respected a thousand years after she lived.
The Cycle tells of a fierce warrior, unbeatable by anyone in single combat, who taught the martial arts, and the art of love, to young men who proved themselves worthy. Her fort, Doonskaa (Dunscaith), later adapted as a castle, still stands, a ruin on its rock near Tokavaig. Skaaha lived between 200BC–AD200, so I chose spring of AD1 as her birth-date. Warrior Daughter tells her story, from the age of eleven until eighteen, and how she became that queen.
To write it realistically meant avoiding post-Roman and Christian influence, additions or opinions, though I often used what came next to deduce what went before. Archaeology and classical histories provided evidence and information. Anthropology filled the gaps. Britain was tribal, its land called Alba (Scotland) or Albion (England). Since Skaaha lived on the margin between native Picts and Irish Gaels, I gave her lineage from both. Myths and archaeology indicate a settled society of artisans, food producers, warriors and priests, trading with Europe and beyond. Skaaha's culture is often described as Celtic, its people known for beauty, strength and ferocity. She was a warrior queen who preceded Cartimandua, queen of the Brigantes, and the Icenian, Boudicca.
Records of her warrior lifestyle come from Greek and Roman historians, enemy cultures. Of early Celts, Plutarch says, ‘the fight had been no less fierce with the women than with the men themselves,’ and ‘the women charged with swords and axes and fell upon their opponents uttering a hideous outcry’. About two centuries later, Roman general Paullinus noted more women than men in Boudicca's army and, of the force defending Ynys Mon (Anglesey), Tacitus says Roman legions ‘felt the disgrace of yielding to a troop of women’.
Archaeology confirms this. In 2001, burial mounds on the Russia–Kazakhstan border revealed remains of women horse-riders buried with weapons and warrior amulets. Dating from 600–200BC, other female graves were those of priests and warrior priests. A third type was of wealthy, powerful or highly regarded women. Among the remains of men, several had children buried beside them, though no woman had. Older by over a thousand years, the richest urns from Britain's Stanton Moor are women's, the only urns with weapons. From Scythians to Saxons, women warrior graves are found.
Tacitus wrote that Celts made no distinction between male and female leaders. Chieftain words are often genderless, often misinterpreted as male. Viking King Thorbergr was female. Before Skaaha, and among broch dwellers, there is no indication of hierarchy or central authority but of loose, independent communities who gather for celebration – signs of matriarchy. Eight hundred years after Skaaha, Celtic law was written down. The earlier status of women is clear. Violence against them was forbidden. They owned homes and property, and divorced husbands for snoring, drunkenness, obesity or impotence.
Women in Skaaha's culture were in charge. Those rights support matriarchies where only women inherit. Jeannine Davis-Kimball believes the Russian-border graves reveal women who protected property, managed spiritual welfare and led the tribe: ‘They held strong positions in society. They controlled wealth, going back a long time. We're talking 2,500 years ago.’ This wasn't rare. John Esten Cooke records the Iroquois as content to be ruled by women, their lives valued at twice that of men. Minoans had only female deities and priests. In The Awakening of America, V. F. Calverton notes that clan mothers were senior chiefs who selected, and de-selected, the lesser male chiefs.
Society arises from cooperation. To understand Skaaha's, I looked at modern women-led tribes. Peruvian Machiguenga men are docile. If aggressive or violent, they'd be avoided, driven away or killed. India's Khasi and Garo pass property and tribal office from mother to youngest daughter. Girls take the sexual initiative, boys are demure. In the Nagovisi matriclans of South Bougainville men share decisions but not wealth. There is no group authority or chiefs. In Taiwan, commune heads of the Amei are elected from elderly women. China's matriarchal Mosuo women, whose men also can't own property, practise ‘walking marriage’ and can choose multiple partners. They have no words for ‘father’ or ‘husband’, but also none for ‘rape’, ‘murder’ or ‘war’.
In Skaaha's tribal Scotland, leadership passed through Pictish women until AD1230, when Alexander II, bent on ruling all Scots, ordered the murder of the baby girl who was heir to Alba's ancient female bloodline. It was the Romans who brought patriarchy to Britain. From AD43, they occupied England for 400 years. Two walls kept Scottish tribes at bay, ensuring little cross-
culture interaction. As late as the fifteenth century, visitors such as Aeneas Sylvius and Don Pedro de Ayala decried Scotswomen's sexual boldness but describe them as absolute mistresses of their homes and husbands.
Skaaha's uninhibited sexuality is also documented. Druids share the same spiritual-erotic Indo-European roots as the ceremonial Vama Marga of early Hindu Tantra, and the pleasure principles of Sanskrit Kama. When the submissive Roman empress, Julia Augusta, commented on the free intercourse of women with men in Britain, the Pictish wife of Argentocoxus retorted that they fulfilled the demands of nature better, adding, ‘We consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourself be debauched in secret by the vilest.’ Homosexuality was also common. In the first century BC, Siculus wrote that Celtic men openly enjoyed sex with each other, and were offended if refused.
Queen Medb, Skaaha's Irish contemporary, married many times but met her match just once, in Fergus mac Róich, the only lover able to replace her daily quota of thirty men. Mythic exaggeration maybe, but when choosing a husband, Medb said he must be as brave in battle as she was, generous like her, and not jealous, because she never denied herself any man she wanted and never would, married or not. In Skaaha's time, marriage wasn't lasting or limited. Brehon law lists at least ten forms: short, longer and multiple.
Julius Caesar, in The Gallic Wars, writes that British women often had ten or twelve husbands. Polyandry occurs, or has, in the Arctic, Africa, America, Bhutan, Canaries, China, India, Mongolia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sumeria, Tibet and the Polynesian islands. Although under pressure now from surrounding monogamist cultures, it limits offspring, increases family wealth and secures land ownership. Anthropologist Stephen Beckerman notes at least twenty current tribal societies who believe a child could, and should, have more than one father. Celts fostered their children to kin, a habit that continued in Highland clans into the eighteenth century. I made Skaaha an exception to throw up some reasons why they did.
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