The Secret of the Purple Lake

by Yaba Badoe

  Jael walked away from her father’s door, disheartened, and resumed her wanderings across the moorland at the cliff at Scabra Head wearing a red velvet dress. She watched lights falling over the island of Eynhallow, and gasped when a clear sky revealed a night dazzling in star-brightness.

  As Jael’s hair grew, suitors came for her sisters. Jezebel, the King’s eldest daughter, was the first to be put on show. She discovered, shut inside her room at Trumland Castle, that she had a flair for decorating herself. She daubed paint on her lips and eyes – one day spotted like a leopard, another striped angry like a tiger. Every day she met her suitors in the likeness of a new animal – red like a fox, purple in raven’s feathers, or silvery-grey with eyes innocent as a seal. Her suitors were stunned by her gaudy beauty, her red fingers flashing through her hair, her lips hard and dark as rubies.

  Princes from as far as the Orient came to court Jezebel. They brought her jewels and sweetmeats, rare exotic animals and servants to do with as she pleased. But Jezebel was interested in none of them. She pouted, stamping her foot angrily whenever they tried to make her smile.

  ‘Do you think I’m a child?’ she scowled. ‘If you’re the man for me, I’m not my father’s daughter!’

  One day a Cherokee Indian arrived on Rousay with a troupe of dancing bears and girls juggling golden balls. The man was tall with bright feathers pinned in his hair, and a face painted silver like an arctic fox.

  As soon as she saw him, Jezebel knew she had found her man. She smiled at the tales he told of his people across the Atlantic: about how they hunted buffalo, grew maize and ate succulent fruits. She smiled as he told her about the Great Spirit he worshipped who had brought him safely to her castle and would return them home again. Taking him by the arm, Jezebel stepped into the prince’s magic canoe and waved goodbye to Orkney forever.

  By the time Jael’s hair was curling beneath her chin, suitors were beginning to arrive for Delilah. Delilah locked herself in her bedroom, refusing to come out until she had arranged her hair. She patted The Secret of the Purple Lake and sprayed her auburn curls for hours, deigning to see her suitors only when she was bored and wanted someone to admire her.

  One day she came to the Great Hall with her hair falling plainly down her back. The next day she plaited it elaborately with pearls laced between the braids. Every day she walked past rows and rows of men, turning them away despite the honeyed phrases they courted her with and the luxury they promised her.

  ‘I’m not a fool,’ she snarled, shaking her hair wildly. ‘If you’re the man for me, I’m not my father’s daughter.’

  On the longest day of the year, a Sikh Prince from India arrived on Rousay. His head was wrapped in a fat orange turban and, to keep out the Orcadian wind, he was swathed in a thick cashmere rug. When Delilah saw him, she suspected that he might be her man.

  ‘What do you have under your turban?’ she asked, tugging at her hair.

  The Prince slowly unravelled his turban, revealing a long strand of thick black hair that touched his feet. Delilah stroked it lovingly, holding it to her cheek to feel its softness. Then, the Prince fondled Delilah’s braids, and unravelled them to pass an ivory comb through her curls.

  The Princess sighed with pleasure. Taking the Sikh Prince by the hand, she stepped on to his magic rug and waved goodbye to Orkney forever.

  Now it was Jael’s turn to marry. Her black hair had reached her shoulders and everyone wanted her to choose a husband. Magnus, Jewel’s fiancé, was growing impatient – kind and worthy though he was.

  ‘Haven’t you seen anybody you like yet?’ he asked Jael at the end of every week, after hordes of disappointed men had been sent off the island. ‘There must be one of them, at least, that pleased you,’ he scolded. ‘Surely one of them would have done?’

  ‘Quite right,’ agreed the King.

  ‘Do you want me to leave you, Father?’ Jael asked.

  ‘No, dear,’ he replied, avoiding his daughter’s eyes. ‘It’s just that a girl must marry.’

  Jael blushed. She found choosing a man an awkward business. She much preferred her nightly walks around Rousay staring at the stars, and her daily visits to Nancy of Hullion for advice on how to grow herbs. ‘Nancy of Hullion isn’t married,’ she mumbled.

  ‘What’s that you said?’ shouted the King. In his old age he was becoming deaf.

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ said Jael. And shaking her hair loose, she took her hunting dogs for a walk on Scaqouy Head.

  The next day, Jael decided to get the whole unpleasant business of marriage over by accepting the first suitor she saw. It happened that the first man to approach her that day was Leopold, a prince of the Norselands. He had been living at the castle for over a year, trying to win Jael’s heart. Leo, as he was known to his friends, was a steady man with a heart as big as a bear.

  ‘Very well, I’ll marry you,’ Jael said petulantly, ‘if you make me a wedding dress from the feathers of puffins.’

  ‘I’ll do anything you want,’ Leo replied, staring at Jael with soulful blue eyes.

  Leo leapt into a boat to journey to the island of Wyre. In those days there was a large colony of puffins there, from which Leo hoped to pluck white feathers for Jael’s wedding dress. Had Leo had more patience, he would have waited for the ferry. That morning storm clouds were gathering and, as a stranger on Orkney, he was unused to the twists and turns of the currents in Wyre Sound.

  Nancy of Hullion saw the storm beginning as she was boiling a kettle for tea. Taking the kettle off the hob, she ran to Hullion pier to greet the storm. The next day she told Jael what she had seen.

  ‘I was welcoming the thunder and lightning,’ she said, ‘when I saw a boat drifting in Wyre Sound. In it was Leo of the Norselands begging the storm to abate, so he could find Wyre and the puffins on it to make a wedding dress for his bride. The more he begged, the more the storm whirled about him – till it smashed his boat on Egilsay rock.’

  Jael gasped in horror. ‘Do not fear lass,’ Nancy continued. ‘When the boat broke up, I saw Leo change into a walrus and swim to Egilsay for safety. His body will never be found, I’m telling you.’

  And sure enough, though fragments of Leo’s wrecked boat drifted back to Rousay, his body has not been seen to this day.

  Leo’s disappearance didn’t deter suitors from coming to Trumland Castle to court Jael. Word had it that she was a wicked Princess in league with the devil. But as soon as the suitors saw her, they were bewitched. They saw that she was a wilful, passionate woman and not a wicked person at all.

  Her suitors fancied that her hair, curling thickly down her back, had the fragrance of summer jasmine, and that her lips, if they could kiss them, would taste of summer pudding. Others said that clematis grew from her feet wherever she wandered on the island.

  Magnus was the only man in Orkney not enchanted by Jael. ‘Can’t you hurry up and get married?’ he begged her, his passion for Jewel close to capsizing. ‘I really can’t wait much longer!’

  ‘Leave her be!’ Jewel exclaimed. ‘I’m sure Jael will pick a man soon, won’t you my darling?’

  Jael scowled, wishing in her heart that her sister and Magnus would shut up and leave her alone.

  A week or so later, a fair y Prince arrived at Trumland Castle from the land of the Gauls. His name was Alvere. He came riding a white stallion, his golden hair blowing in the breeze. He brought with him gifts of figs and peaches, champagne and truffles. Jael rather liked him. She liked the way Alvere sang to her at night, and wrote poems calling her eyes, ‘bright stars sparkling in the Orcadian night.’

  Jael’s heart trembled whenever he was near and when he reached out at last to touch her, she shook with smiles. Although she liked the idea of life eating peaches and drinking champagne all day long in the land of the Gauls, Jael didn’t care for the slight sneer in Alvere’s eyes or the downward turn of his thin lips when he smiled.

  ‘I will marry you,’ Jael said eventually, ‘if you can jump the peaks of Boland
and Brendale.’

  Alvere laughed. He was renowned for his physical prowess and believed it would be simple to jump the peaks, even though belching between them was a perilous bog of quicksand and peat.

  Alvere put on his silken sports clothes. He glowed in shimmering pink – a healthy, self-assured, sophisticated, fairy Prince. ‘Be waiting in the wedding dress I brought for you when I return,’ Alvere ordered Jael, before he started the journey to Boland and Brendale peaks.

  The whole of Rousay turned out to see Alvere make his jump.

  Nancy of Hullion and her black cat were there, Lord Blackhamar and his son Magnus, the King and Princess Jewel, and all the island’s crofters and fishermen.

  Now, the distance between the two peaks was fifteen feet, an easy enough distance for a fit man to jump. But Alvere was so confident of himself that he didn’t bother to run into his jump fast enough. He sauntered along, pirouetting daintily. To make matters worse, he tripped just before his jump and plunged head first into the perilous bog of Boland and Brendale.

  He would have been sucked straight into the underworld if Nancy of Hullion hadn’t hastily muttered a charm that turned him into a pink flamingo. The bird rose squawking from the bog and, flapping its shining wings, flew away, far from Orkney.

  Everybody had just about given up hope of Jael ever marrying, when a gypsy Prince arrived on Rousay. He said he was a Prince from Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsular and that his name was Kasim. On his arm was seated a magnificent golden eagle whose eyes glittered with an intensity resembling Jael’s. Kasim’s face was the colour of berries, his lips the purple of amethysts and his eyes the green of new emeralds. His mouth, when he smiled, shone with the brilliance of a Seville sky in spring.

  Jael’s heart leapt when she saw him. She was about to ask him to perform one of her famous tasks, when he silenced her with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Princess,’ he said. ‘I have travelled far to find someone to marry. I’ve journeyed from Al-Andalus to the Orient, and from the Norselands to Orkney. The woman I shall marry must be able to hold this eagle painlessly on her wrist. None of the Princesses that I’ve come across so far have been able to do this. Will you try, Orcadian Princess?’

  Jael held out her hand. The golden eagle swooped down from the Prince’s arm, landing on her wrist. It settled effortlessly, as if returning home at last. The bird’s sharp claws didn’t leave a single blemish on Jael’s skin.

  Looking rather shy, Kasim asked, ‘Will you marry me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jael replied. ‘But on one condition. You must never ask me to be other than what I am. I am a woman who walks by night and listens to the music of the stars. I will marry you, but you must remember that my heart beats to its own rhythm and sings its own songs. Do you understand?’

  The Prince said that he did and, taking Jael gently by the hand, they began the journey back to Al-Andalus.

  Of course, everybody in Orkney was jubilant. Elaborate preparations were quickly made for Magnus’s marriage to Jewel on Rousay. Musicians came over from Wyre for the wedding, and a priest from Eynhallow. The crofters and fishermen and Nancy and her black cat danced till late the next morning, when more whisky and tea were served, and Magnus carried Jewel off to bed. At last Orkney had a son and heir.

  And they say that, on that afternoon, a golden eagle flew three times around the north-west tower of Trumland Castle before turning southwards and flying back to Al-Andalus.

  3

  The Walrus Prince

  This is the story of Prince Leo, who left his home to find a wife and was never seen or heard of again. Leo, the eldest son of Gustav, a King of the Norselands, was a kind, generous Prince with hair the colour of ripe wheat and eyes the brilliant blue of cornflowers. Leo’s friendly manner made him popular with everyone who met him; however, the King, his father, was disappointed in his son.

  ‘Not every man can be born a Viking,’ said Queen Astrid to Gustav. ‘Not every man likes to fight and pillage and make merry all night long. Some men are drawn to the finer things of life. Leo happens to be one of them.’ Queen Astrid, who was manicuring her nails, flung back her strawberry-blonde hair as she dipped her fingers in a lotion of beeswax and lavender to soften her hands.

  The King grunted, reluctant to argue with his wife.

  The King’s problem was that, although Leo was the eldest of his three sons, the young man didn’t behave appropriately. That is, he didn’t stride about – like the other men in the King’s court – with long, strutting steps, and he didn’t thump his chest and bellow when he laughed. What’s more, Leo didn’t enjoy jousting on horseback. To the King’s dismay, his son had no talent, whatsoever, for duelling with swords or for wielding a dagger in close combat. It was bad enough that Leo didn’t behave as a true Viking should – fierce as an eagle but with the cunning of a snake – but what hurt the King the most was that Leo simply didn’t care.

  In fact, the only sharp instruments he enjoyed holding were the kitchen knives he used for creating recipes with the Queens’s chef and a pair of old secateurs for pruning roses in the Queen’s garden. Most humiliating of all, unless it was as calm and still as a village pond, Leo was petrified of the sea.

  The king shuddered at his son’s peculiar behaviour, cringing at the thought that he, Gustav, a King of the Norselands, could have produced such a lily-livered man.

  ‘Recipes and flowers indeed! And he’s fearful of the sea. There isn’t a Viking alive who doesn’t love the sea!’ Gustav mumbled into his beard as Astrid rubbed sprigs of rosemary into her hair to clean and perfume it. ‘This is Astrid’s doing. If she didn’t dote on Leo so, if she didn’t make such a fuss of the boy, he wouldn’t be such a disgrace.’

  ***

  At last, when Leo had given up sword play and wrestling altogether and refused to set foot on a boat, Red Norman, a messenger from the King of Orkney, arrived at Gustav’s court with a message. Gustav listened carefully to the messenger from the Orcadian King and, as he did so, an idea seeded in his mind. If he could behave with the ruthlessness of a true Viking, if he could only hold his nerve, he knew that before long his problem with his eldest son would be solved. Without further ado, Gustav ordered that the very next evening a banquet would be held in the Great Hall in honour of Red Norman of Rousay. And at the banquet, Gustav, a King of the Norselands would make an important announcement.

  There was nothing more pleasing to Leo than preparing for a royal banquet at short notice. He quickly sharpened his cooking knives and then, in collaboration with the Queen’s chef, prepared a menu for the sumptuous feast which they cooked the next day. Ten maid-servants helped them in the kitchen and on the evening of the banquet, serving girls streamed out of the royal kitchens carrying cauldrons of creamy lobster soup. They brought out trays of crab-meat on rye bread, followed by platters of cured salmon seasoned with dill and spice. For pudding there was cloudberry pie served with thimbles of cloudberry liqueur, that reminded those sipping it of the first hint of autumn after long days of midsummer sun. Everyone present relished the meal. When they had eaten their fill and were salting their tongues on coils of liquorice, Leo brought out his harp and sang.

  The voice that came out of the King’s eldest son was strong and melodious. What’s more it was reassuring, even though the song Leo sang brought to mind a blue moon on a star-tossed night. Leo sang about lost love and sad farewells. He sang with all his heart, so that it seemed to Queen Astrid that his voice glittered – darting and flashing like the Northern Lights. Astrid blushed, delighted, while the down growing in the crease of the King’s back stiffened.

  Gustav pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I have an announcement to make,’ he said, bringing Leo’s singing to a halt. ‘An announcement!’

  Before Gustav could say any more, the guests in the Great Hall burst into rapturous applause – not for the King but for Leo.

  ‘A toast!’ someone shouted. ‘A toast for Prince Leo!’

  There was loud thumping of chests,
the raising of glasses and drunken roars of ‘Encore! Bravo! Another song, Leo!’

  ‘I have an announcement to make,’ the King thundered.

  Gradually, everyone fell silent. Everyone, that is, except for the Queen, who was asking one of her ladies-in-waiting to fetch a glass of fruit cordial to soothe Leo’s throat.

  ‘As you know already,’ said Gustav, ‘this banquet is in honour of Red Norman, who is here on behalf of the King of Orkney. What none of you are aware of is the important message Norman has brought with him.’ The King paused to gulp down some liqueur, thrilled that everyone wanted to hear more.

  Gustav growled and coughed. He took another swig of cloudberry, and smiled bashfully at his son. ‘Orkney wants it to be known,’ he said at last, ‘that he’s looking for husbands for three of his daughters. I’ve decided to send Leo to woo them. It would be to our advantage if the ties between the Norselands and Orkney were cemented in marriage.’

  Leo’s brothers patted him on the back as if he’d already returned home with an Orcadian bride. They didn’t seem to notice that their brother looked on bewildered.

  ‘I want you to go, Leo,’ the King said, ‘because I’m convinced that marriage will be the making of you. Only a true Viking can win the heart of an Orkney Princess, so you must become a true Viking indeed!’

  At these words the Queen grew pale. Her fingers fumbled with a silver pendant around her neck and as she stared at the King, the glaze of tears in her eyes brought a chill to his heart.

  Clutching the pendant, the Queen rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘May Leo return safely with a wife who will love him always,’ she declared. ‘A wife who can see him for what he is: a strong, gentle man, the sweetest and most loving of men!’ Then, raising her glass, the Queen drank a toast to her son.