The Viking and the Pictish Princess: The Rose and the Sword

by Lindsay Townsend

  Already, Olaf knew he would fight for this blood-smeared and red-faced scrap. Reluctantly, he raised his head to seek Eithne, shielding the babe’s head when the hurdles came crashing down. His wife growled in victory and he guessed she had kicked them.

  Exposed, naked, squatting over a bucket, Eithne held out her arms. “Give me my baby.”

  Her fierce grimace shifted into a careful watchfulness when she saw who had him. Instead, she pressed a thumb deep into her navel and made a circling motion. Olaf heard something shudder into the bucket and knew from animal births that she had shed the afterbirth.

  But what are the women doing? Why are they not helping?

  Olaf looked at Fina, who met his gaze, defiant. “Get out, all of you,” he ordered, taking a step forward to shift her by force. “Leave. Now.”

  Fina sidled off, and the others scuttled after, Olaf calling out, “Tell the folk here that the Laird and Lady have a son!”

  No thanks to them, he added in thought, as he reached Eithne, now tottering upright, away from bed and bucket. She reached out a second time, and at once, he lowered the baby into her arms. The little one’s kittenish mewls stopped abruptly as Eithne put him to her breast.

  “It pulls,” she murmured, kissing the baby’s head. “While he feeds, it pulls me deep inside. My milk is not in yet, but something is there, and he wants it.” She pressed an arm into her belly, and blinked at the child, asking, without looking Olaf’s way, “Husband, how do you do?”

  “How do you, more like,” Olaf answered, sinking onto the nearest clean mattress and drawing her with him. She smelled of sweat and blood, like a berserker after battle, but her smile to him was sweet. Her silver-blond hair plastered to her forehead and her bright light blue eyes ringed by dark shadows, he thought she had never looked more alive and victorious. They sat silent for an instant, Eithne on his lap, and their son on hers, and all felt right in earth and heaven.

  “What is his name?” Eithne asked softly. She licked her dry lips.

  “Here.” Olaf gave her his flagon of ale, watching her and his son both drinking. He knew the name, of course. He and Eithne had whispered names to each other, making a game of it, in nights before today.

  “His name is Arne, as we agreed.”

  “A strong, lucky name.” Eithne yawned and snuffled against Arne’s damp skull, stroking her fingers over his small, round limbs and tiny toes. “You told me it means eagle?”

  “That, it does.” He watched her, pale and drawn and so content, and batted a horsefly away from them. These wretched clegs in summer! “Sleep,” he coaxed.

  “You will bury that?” She pointed a sharp little chin at the contents of the bucket. “Needs to be deep. Near the guard-stone for good luck. Would do it myself, but—” Her face cracked in another huge yawn.

  “I will,” he vowed. By her warm stillness, he knew she slept.

  Later, he would do as she asked. For now, he held her and Arne while they both slumbered, his own mind too jubilant and suspicious to do the same, although relief had made him boneless.

  Amidst the pride and gladness, Olaf was not easy. Why had Fina taken Arne from his mother so soon? How had a Pict known the Viking custom of father-acceptance, where a new-born was offered to a man to either hold or reject? Someone must have told Fina, which meant she had been in touch again with folk outside Black Broch. No treasure for guessing who, though I had thought our young widow more grateful and settled, after the events of last Yule, when Eithne had shown her mercy.

  Gratitude was obviously short-lived in Fina, a realism that saddened him. There had been no traders of late, but the widow had spent many summer days picking fruit in the forest and a runner could have met her in the woods, passing messages and information to and fro.

  I never thought to watch the woman. I should have.

  Olaf shrugged his broad shoulders. So, I was a fool. Wisdom was always easier once all the threads of fate could be seen. In truth, he and Eithne had been busy, and of late his thoughts had been almost wholly preoccupied with his wife’s pregnancy and her safe delivery.

  Since that Yule, we have had a good spring and summer here at Black Broch. No one has died, no sickness and no war. Our bits of crops are flourishing, our cow is indeed in calf and due any day, and yet...

  His warrior’s instinct stirred. He remembered the old crone, whispering against eating the loch fish that had kept them from starving earlier that year, her querulous grumbling that, to the Picts, the creatures of the sea were sacred. A complaint he had dismissed at the time by announcing, “We fish for roach only, no salmon or trout, sea-water or fresh. Eithne told me such creatures are revered for their wisdom.”

  “They can shape-shift, too!” the crone had interrupted, her forehead and ears glowing in her indignation.

  “Agreed,” Olaf answered mildly, “and I agree with my wife’s good sense in protecting such fish.”

  So, the mutterings had blown away. Now he recognised the old woman’s whispers as a foreshadowing of trouble. And Fina today, stirring up discord, snatching Arne from his mother before they had bonded.

  As soon as he could, he would take his little family to Maiden Isle. Let Fina and the rest sweep out the house, he wanted the walls of Eithne’s secret cave around him and his wife and boy.

  Let others clean the croft. I built it, Eithne stocked it, we have both done magic to keep all safe. The folk here can at least tidy it.

  Laying his exhausted wife and new son on the mattress, he picked up the leather-work and resumed punching.

  ♦◊♦

  Five days later, while Sunset fretted and turned in her pen, lately as wide as she was long and clearly close to having her calf, Olaf managed to tempt Eithne out. Her milk had come in three days ago and she was easily stirred to tears and anxious—a state Olaf found charming, though he had more sense than to say anything. As it was, she had wept that morning when White-Hair yelled at Domnall the Small for throwing a toasting fork at him. The crone had giggled and rubbed her knees, cackling something about new mothers being tearful. Fina had watched with hooded eyes, touching the heads of her own twin bairns. Olaf noted all that and how easily Eithne walked in spite of giving birth. Glad and relieved afresh, he steadily guided her down to the loch’s edge.

  “No coracle?” Eithne stopped touching her son’s back and head and prodded the muddy shoreline with a foot. A bare foot.

  Silently, by way of an answer, Olaf drew the round boat he had hidden out of the reeds. “Where are your shoes?” he asked, stepping into the loch to brace the coracle.

  “Fina has them, I suppose.”

  Olaf waited until she was settled in the vessel, she and Arne, handed her his cloak to wrap around her feet and gently pushed off. He would not risk tipping the coracle with his family in it and so swam behind, pushing the slowly spinning boat.

  He did not speak until well clear of the shore and out of ear-shot of any but his wife.

  “Five days back, when you gave birth. Did Fina wait until you were busy over that bucket before she snatched up Arne?” he asked, as he swam.

  Eithne nodded, her eyes flicking between Maiden Isle and her son.

  Olaf kicked harder in the water, uncaring that he had soaked all his clothes and now his hair as well. The faster they could speak in private, in some relative safety on Maiden Isle, the better.

  There were voices calling behind him, which he ignored. The noon-day sun beat on the back of his wet neck and his shoulders ached like the toothache but he kept paddling and pushing. The tiny islet, Eithne’s old home, came closer and he planted his feet into the soft mud and silt. Dragging the coracle onto the little beach, he lifted the dripping vessel onto his back the instant Eithne set foot onto shore. Step by step, they made for her cave, Olaf ostentatiously avoiding the man-trap he had fallen into the first time he had come here.

  His wife was moving more smoothly, as if cut free of an invisible tether. She went first and he followed, stowing the coracle under an elder tree, wh
ere none at Black Broch could see it.

  At the entrance to the cave she turned to him. “Fire and food first, aye?” Eithne’s blue eyes had brightened, too, and he nodded sharply. “Then we talk?” she went on.

  “Then we plan,” he replied, hating the dimming of her eyes but knowing that they must.

  ♦◊♦

  “Is Fina’s malice prompted by your sister making trouble again?” Olaf dropped and stirred more freshly gathered fat-hen into the bubbling small stew pot hung over their fire and savoured the picture that Eithne and his son made—exactly like a silver-haired Madonna and Child in an icon from Constantinople, he thought.

  Sitting beside him, Eithne was a few more moments changing the soft moss in Arne’s loin-cloth for clean moss, deftly tossing the old onto the fire. She sighed as their son latched onto her left nipple. “Mongfind plotting trouble, I am sure,” she said, “though she was pregnant at the same seasons I was and so should be busy.” She stroked Arne’s head and smiled.

  Olaf, seeing that his son’s skull seemed to have become a more usual shape, also smiled. He had considered mothers to be over-anxious of their infants, but had already discovered, to his mingled amusement and dismay, that fathers could be as fretful.

  “We should keep watch, though,” Eithne added, and with that, Olaf could fully agree. He swiftly explained his thoughts as to father-acceptance in Viking lands and how Fina must have been told by someone of the custom.

  Of course, his wife was quick, so she understood the rest as well. “You think Constantine may have hired some Viking allies in truth?”

  “A Viking war-band seeking gold and renown might be tempted to serve a Pictish king as mercenaries for a time.” Olaf stirred the stew in a fruitless attempt to quench the fizzing itch in his body to be doing, to fight.

  “And our Viking allies are all pretend ones.” Eithne’s frown deepened. “We cannot let Fina share that with anyone outside Black Broch.”

  “What then, stick her in a cage? Use her bairns as hostage to her silence?”

  By her sickened expression, Eithne felt as revolted as he did with that notion.

  “So what do we do?” she whispered.

  To that, Olaf had no answer, only a mumbled, “Maybe a night’s rest will help.”

  Food and sleep, he told himself, as he and Eithne silently ate their supper and settled on the old hay mattress at the back of the cave, Arne snug between them. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would have answers…then, he fell into a fitful sleep.

  ♦◊♦

  Dawn brought no inspiration, only the bellowing of their cow in calf. From Sunset’s noise both Olaf and Eithne knew the beast was in trouble.

  “Go,” said Eithne at once, standing on tip-toes to kiss him. “We shall be safe here, Arne and I. Just bring me back my shoes.” She had searched this cave for an older pair, but found none.

  “I will,” Olaf promised. “And I shall leave you my cloak and the coracle and swim back myself.” Olaf did not want to leave but he saw the wisdom of it. The cow and her calf were valuable, and both deserved the best care he could give. Eithne, still recovering and clearly wishing to spend time with their son, happily waved him off. He was less sure, but he left his wife the bow and arrows, his flagon and a good knife, and told himself she and their boy would be safe.

  Olaf was the whole day at Black Broch, and the night besides, helping Sunset, and then later on the following morning, listening to complaints between the crone and White-Hair and attempting to judge fairly between them. It was late when he finally returned to Maiden Isle, two full days after he had set out, and swimming on his back to ease his sore spine and shoulders. Sunset now had a calf, Blackie, whom the youngsters had instantly clamoured to fuss and feed, whenever the cow let them near. Both were doing well.

  Thank King Christ, Loki, and Thor for that. Distracted, feeling he could float with happiness, Olaf bumped his head on an overhanging branch of rowan growing on the islet, and instantly sank. Gasping, he clawed his way out of the loch and staggered to his feet, water streaming from his leather tunic and trews.

  Even before he took another step he knew. From the way the grass was flattened all the way under the elder tree down to the loch. From the sharp marks in the mud, gouged by Eithne with a stick, two vertical lines, indicating herself and Arne.

  Maiden Isle had not been safe. His wife had taken their son and fled.

  But where?

  Chapter 15

  Know your own land, Olaf had told her, while he trailed tiny kisses down her neck and breasts. A hiding spot can be good, as long as it does not become a trap that others can exploit, he had warned, pinning her arms and tonguing her most intimate place until she could no longer breathe, much less think.

  These bed lessons, lovingly given, returned to Eithne with a vengeance as she slipped the coracle through the loch waters, keeping low, as if she was an otter. Earlier that day, spying the shifting glints in the woodland on Maiden Isle, she recognised them as weapons and realised that a pack of warriors must have climbed up the sheer cliff of the island, the side that remained blind to watchers from the broch, and all the better to attack her old home.

  There was no time for any warnings to Olaf or Black Broch. The new bonfire on the little headland of Maiden Isle would take too long to light, since she had doused her own cave-fire in panic.

  Tears had threatened and she had violently chewed the inside of her lip to stop them. Think! No more mistakes! No more scattered head! No more distracted new mother!

  Shushing Arne, who had sensed her horror and begun to whimper, Eithne thought of her most secret cave, the one she had to swim to, within the pool in the middle of the island. She discarded that hiding place as quickly as she considered it. I cannot risk Arne, swimming with him, in and under that pond. He is so small still, he will not have the breath to last underwater.

  Olaf’s warning, not to be trapped, drummed in her head. She had gathered up what she could, especially bedding and the softest mosses for Arne, and tied it all in a bundle on her back, along with Olaf’s cloak, flagon, bow, knife and arrows. Her son, meanwhile, she strapped tightly to her front so he could suckle at will and take comfort from her.

  Shifting the coracle and one of the paddles had taken more effort than expected, since Olaf had made it look so easy, and her arms were shaking when she finally got the vessel into the water.

  Before she shoved off as hard as she could, Eithne thought of the runes Olaf used, for messages and magic, and devised a sign of her own. Two deep gashes with a stick in the mud were hardly a symbol for wealth, riders or anything much, but she hoped her husband would understand. Taking up the paddle she set to, stroking the water.

  Raiders would not have taken the trouble and danger to climb the steep cliff of Maiden Isle, not when the Black Broch itself was a greater prize. But they had known that the cliff would disguise any assault on the isle itself.

  All my careful island traps work if men come from the mainland, from close to the broch, but these enemies do not care. They do not care if I lit the warning bonfire on the island because Black Broch is not their target. I am their target.

  Or rather, perhaps, my son...

  Fina must have got word to Mongfind about Arne. The more Eithne reasoned it, the more that terrible idea made sense. As a wise-woman and healer, she had learned that the womenfolk in some families had pregnancies that ran for longer than nine months. Mongfind’s mother Bertha, the Frankish Princess, had carried all her children for ten months.

  Perhaps Mongfind is the same and has not yet had her baby. Yet apart from malice, why should my half-sister be after mine?

  As a changeling, Eithne’s own mother Kentigerna whispered in her mind. If Mongfind’s child turns out to be a daughter, or sickly, then she might seek to pass your own healthy son off as hers.

  Eithne let the currents of the loch float the coracle slowly along the bank, that being quieter and easier than using the paddle. As she and Arne drifted, she thought of o
ne more chilling conclusion. If Mongfind was indeed seeking to kidnap Arne, her half-sister would need a wet-nurse for him.

  I remember Irish Maeve saying that Bertha the Frank had little milk to give. If her daughter is the same, then even if she has safely given birth, she might need a wet-nurse. And it would give Mongfind great satisfaction to hold me, to force me to feed Arne, aware that at any moment he might be taken from me and raised as hers. The ultimate act of theft.

  Eithne shuddered. She would be dead in a ditch before she allowed that to happen.

  Off on Maiden Isle she heard no shouts, though glancing back, she spotted branches moving when there was no wind. Whoever had climbed the cliff on Maiden Isle was a small force, then, hoping to rely on stealth. So far, their ruse had worked, for even Olaf, warrior as he was, had not noticed their approach or presence, preoccupied as he was with the cow Sunset.

  Still, those climbers knew I was back on Maiden Isle. Fina must have sent another message, or met a regular rider in the woods above Black Broch to tell them that. And had Olaf been with me, he might have chosen to stand and fight.

  And perhaps be killed. The thought had her weeping afresh as she held her sleeping baby, flesh of their flesh and more precious than gold. She let the tears fall, hot and cooling quickly on her cheeks and chin and tried to plan where to go next.

  Know your own land.

  ♦◊♦

  Earlier in the year, four days before Midsummer and the summer celebrations for the Mother and the Stag God—with a nod to Thor and Loki and also to King Christ—Eithne had coaxed Olaf into stealing away from hunting, building, and hoeing to show him her favourite place outside Maiden Isle. Setting a rough sail up in the coracle she now hunkered down in, Olaf had sped them both smoothly along the loch, past the rowan tree grove and the bank of hazels that gave the best nuts to a stand of tall pines.

  “I came here first with Irish Maeve,” she explained then to her husband. “A giant—at least, that was what he seemed to me—lived here year-round, in a tent of skins. He was huge, with red hair and beard, a broad nose, blue eyes, and dark skin. I never knew his name, though he was kind to me.”