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

  The Viking and the

  Pictish Princess

  Lindsay Townsend

  The Viking and the Pictish Princess

  Copyright© 2020 Lindsay Townsend

  Cover Design Livia Reasoner

  Prairie Rose Publications

  www.prairierosepublications.com

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Book One

  Trouble In The Wind

  Chapter 1

  The lone figure rose silently from the loch. Emerging from the grey shimmer of a winter morning with water sheeting off his body, he glided over the submerged boulders onto the shore of her island. Bindweed scrambled into a holly tree and dropped to the parched ground. She gritted her teeth against the shout surging up her dry throat, old fears from the past made real.

  Viking!

  He was big, this invader, big as a king stag of the forest, tanned, barrel chested and with arms thicker than her legs. His black hair, dark as December pinecones, matted itself to his skull in long streamers of shadow and eyes, the colour of storm clouds, were quick and piercing.

  “Black Norse,” Bindweed muttered, not daring to stir as that fierce grey gaze swept over her hiding place. His thick gold collar and armlets flashed when he strode by, arrogant as a lord. He moved with the swift, quiet grace of a warrior, the low winter sun illuminating his leather tunic and trews, the long dagger strapped to one thigh, his sword on the other.

  Spy or assassin, Bindweed wondered, watching his retreating back. He made for her cave-house as if he had walked the path a hundred times, though she doubted he sought her skill in herb-lore. Still, she did not stir.

  The first snare on the trail he avoided with a snort of humour, the second, set below a seeming bed of innocent pine needles, swallowed him whole. Bindweed was out of the holly and sprinting before the Viking had stopped his bellow of surprise. A quick jerk of the rope hidden by ivy had the nets and timber unravelling and the trap closed. She quickly pinned it down, panting hard as she rolled the lock-stone in place.

  Thirteen feet below, in the round pit it had taken her three summers to dig and harden with fire, the black Norse prowled, thumping the sheer walls and slamming the mud-churned floor. He would not look at her. Bindweed did not care.

  “No one comes here,” she lied—why tell truth to the enemy? “Yell away,” she added, when the stranger’s mighty chest swelled like organ bellows. “None shall hear.”

  The Viking lunged up. She stamped his clenching fingers off the timbers and nets and he cursed and spat. “Food later,” she told him, spotting how his eyes narrowed briefly in calculation. He understands me, then.

  It did not matter. Tomorrow night she would lace his portion and his ale with enough sleeping draught to fell an ox and then drag him out, to question at her leisure. Thank the stag god and the great mother that I heeded my instincts four summers ago to fashion these traps. Sometimes, my senses are not only tuned to women’s healing, but to more brutal matters of survival.

  She had no time to celebrate, however. Now she was exhausted, harp-string taut tension replaced by a yawning tiredness. Without troubling to undress, she stumbled into her bed and slept.

  She dreamed of her past, an old horrific recollection, that began, as too often, with screaming.

  ♦◊♦

  She was seven summers old when her father, Giric, killed her mother. Nothing as quick or kind as a knife, but his selling of Kentigerna bright-hair into slavery, to a Viking, was still murder. Years later, she had never forgiven the old man, nor forgotten her mother’s screams.

  She had tried to follow the Viking’s longship, running hard for the track by the loch. Mongfind, her half-sister, older and bigger than her by two summers, had grabbed her. After hearing Mongfind’s shouts, Giric himself had seized and flung the little one, flailing and punching, into the ancient black broch that gave the people their name.

  She had hammered on the locked door until her knuckles were bloodied, then sprinted up the winding staircase to the roof of the broch. Seeing a flash of her Ma’s bright red hair in the longship’s bowels, she had clambered right over the thick circular walls of the broch and leapt down.

  “Me, too!” she yelled in her later dreams, though she could not remember if she spoke the words. She only knew that if the ship sailed, she would never see her mother again.

  Seven years old, I knew this! But then, bastards have to grow up fast.

  She landed in a mess of heather, winded and broken. She scrambled to rise and a searing pain in her left foot seized her whole leg. Too shattered to scream, too shocked to move, she watched the Viking longship and her mother sail away.

  Irish Maeve, old and wrinkled as a dried-out leather flask, prodded her with her walking stick.

  “You will do, now get up. There’s work!” Maeve ordered, laughing as she burst into tears. “Get to it, Bindweed.

  “She clings,” Maeve told the whispering onlookers, who smirked or shook their heads and turned away.

  From that day, the little girl was Maeve’s servant. The name her mother gave her was forgotten, and all knew her as Bindweed.

  Later, Bindweed learned, a travelling tinker who had a taste for young things had wanted to buy her, but Irish Maeve had refused his offer. But only because I was quick and clever. She never forgot how the old woman had laughed at her hurt and grief, how the others in her father’s fort had turned away.

  She never saw her mother again.

  Six years later, Irish Maeve died in her sleep. Bindweed buried her mentor on their island home and mourned for three nights, as custom demanded. On the dawn of the fourth day, she poured the ashes of a barley loaf over the new grave and squeezed a final tear from her smarting eyes.

  Enough of that, as Maeve would say. I respected her as a healer, but no deeper feeling than that. She took me in for her own convenience and laughed at my grief. Though she did keep the secret of the smaller cave, so there was that.

  Bindweed patted the cold earth once, in valediction, and turned back to the small cave where she and the Irish wise-woman had made a dwelling and a home of sorts She was Bindweed Silverhair, wise-woman of the loch, keeper of the island pool, the one maidens and womenfolk turned to so she might heal their hurts. Poultice their beasts. Charm the chickens into laying more eggs. No one now remembered she was the bastard get of Giric the Harsh, a warrior and giver of gold, who had sold his own mistress, her mother Kentigerna, into slavery.

  Lightning strike him down for that! Why does Giric thrive? Why do his well-fed, well-dressed legitimate sons and daughters parade through this land like the blessed children of fairy? Not that I wish them ill, but still—

  Revenge did not interest her, for that would merely prove she cared about Giric’s ill-nature. She had a home and skills, a name she had made respected. She ate well, even in winter and before harvest-time. No man would want to wed her, with only this scrap of a wooded islet as her land dowry, but she might take a handsome highlander as a lover, someone quick and wick and small as herself.

  No boy with light blue eyes, though, no youth with a beard like Giric’s. Send me a sunny lad, nimble with his fingers—

  A long, low snore from nearby brought Bindweed stark awake. It was time for her to move.

  Time
to spar with the Viking again. Even if the brute sleeps.

  ♦◊♦

  Olaf came to with a pounding mead-style headache and a sick stomach. Twitching sore limbs, he found himself bound, hand and foot, and blindfolded.

  “Drink!”

  A pot clashed against his teeth and he guzzled the weak ale, soothing both headache and sore jaws. “Why did you not slit my throat?” he demanded, after the cup was withdrawn.

  “I heal, not kill.”

  A young female. Another wise woman? Olaf risked a confession. “I was told the witch Irish Maeve was dead, her place empty. I planned to move in for the coming winter.”

  “Who told you that? In truth, you cannot. I am her heir.”

  “No one mentioned you.”

  “No one ever does.”

  When the wench said nothing more, he did not deign to respond to her question but asked, “What did you drug me with?”

  “Drenched-salted the food, spiked the ale.”

  He sensed her smirk and his bound fists clenched. She had admitted nothing new. “My men will find me.” And kill you. The threat went unspoken but hung like a gibbet between them.

  A rustle like dry leaves made Olaf turn sharply to his left but the woman was already drawing back, leaving a whiff of lavender and a touch of the soft wool of her skirts.

  “You will mend.”

  True, since his headache was almost gone, though he tensed in irritation at her ignoring his warning. “And my men will still find me.”

  “You have lain in my pit for two days, been sleeping hard for a day and a night, and none have come looking for you. Now there is fog. No ships in or out of the loch, y’ken?”

  He breathed in deeply against her mockery, savouring her perfume afresh. “Aye.”

  “No men are allowed here on Maiden’s Isle. For despoiling this sacred space, I could spell you with ill luck for the rest of your life.” She paused, allowing the silence to grow, then delivered her final threat. “The curse would stick.”

  Dread iced up his spine. Has my bad luck tracked me from Byzantium? Fore God, it has been evil since Karl’s death. Grief sleeted through Olaf afresh at the memory of his brother-in-arms, dead these six months and entombed in the white marble of Constantinople.

  “What do you want from me?” he demanded. Anything to stop thinking of Karl, cut down in ambush in an arid city street, hundreds of miles away.

  “Your name. Why you are on the run. The truth.”

  “I am Olaf No-Kin.” He did not ask how the wise woman knew he had neither ship nor men, though he inwardly cursed the loss of that flimsy advantage. How can I do anything if she does not respect me? “I quit my lord Ragnar’s service and took the first passage I could to Alba to offer my sword to a laird of the Picts.”

  “A mercenary. Why, if you left his war-band, does this Ragnar pursue you?”

  Olaf considered what to say. After his time in the guards in Byzantium, he had returned west with Ragnar and the man’s troop. He had defended Ragnar’s family and taken wounds for his new lord, but in the end, all had been in vain. The old Viking had demanded the impossible. He had wanted Olaf to go raiding. Olaf had refused. He had promised his mother Gudrun Sweet-Voice on her death-bed that he would not be a pirate, and he had kept that vow. To fight warriors is one thing. To strike down women, little ones, old men, quite another.

  “Before we parted last month, we had words,” he admitted.

  Ragnar had called him coward, a skulking Christian, a Christian coward. Since Olaf had fought his way out of the lord’s hall, battling half the warriors at once, Olaf did not greatly care.

  “No quarrel alone would force you on from Dublin,” the unseen woman countered, guessing his former base with laughable ease. “What else?”

  “I am a royal bastard that the Norse kirk cast out. Of late, thanks to certain monks, the Irish clergy have also railed against me and my birth.” Olaf took care that he spoke steadily, with no trace of bitterness in his voice. All in the past and I forge my own future. “I make my own way now, though others have tried to use me. They have all failed.”

  “For no-kin you have many enemies.”

  Olaf rolled his heavy shoulders and said nothing, not adding he had swum from the Irish boat three mornings ago because he had heard the crew whisper against him, plotting to attack now they had taken his gold for passage to Alba. The air about him shifted again and he leaned forward slightly, hoping for a breath of lavender, a brush of softness. So long since I have felt a woman’s touch—

  Instead, he heard a snap as the tight twine round his hands was released by a sharp blade slicing through the cords. A moment later, two warm fingers pressed against his stubbly chin and mouth. He ached for a kiss and again stiffened, part of him astonished at his own need.

  “Free yourself of the rest. Quietly,” the wise-woman warned. “We have company closing in.”

  Another beguiling scent of perfume and she withdrew, leaving Olaf scrambling with the blindfold and leg ties.

  “What is your name, my lady?” he asked, as he worked and he heard her stamping out their small fire.

  “Bindweed,” came the answer. “Your gear is at the back of the cave. Get it and meet me by the entrance.”

  He saw her for the first time now, small and grey-hooded, cloaked and wary, turning away from him towards the greater light. “Wait!” he hissed. “Why trust me?”

  “I do not,” Bindweed replied instantly. “But those rowing on the loch, I trust less. Be coming your way when you are done.”

  Chapter 2

  Bindweed considered her cave without regret. It had been her main home these ten years, hers alone for the past five, but she would lose it for this winter. Her stores, her beautiful carefully-traded and anticipated bed hangings, her cures and tinctures, all would be pilfered and destroyed by the hard-faced rowers dipping through the mist.

  I will get my place back. The raiders will be driven off. The stores I have hidden elsewhere on my island will see me through, though it will be a cold swim.

  She tamped her inner anger down, listening over the roar of her heart’s blood to Olaf No-Kin blundering, still drug-dazed, over the beaten earth floor of her home. She did not trust this tall, chisel-faced boulder of a man, but she no longer feared him.

  He is a royal bastard, like me.

  Waiting for him by the entrance, her eyes picked out the tiny ribbon of a path that led away from the cave and to safety—pray the stag god and the great mother that they reached the track undetected. She had not had time to re-set her man-trap and besides, it was no use against a determined boat-load. Now, she stabbed a finger at the rowers, their spears and armour flashing out of the patchy fog. “Your Irish men?”

  Olaf glanced up from buckling on his sword, peered into the murk and shook his head. “Different weapons.”

  One mercy, at least, Bindweed decided. She had guessed that the Irish would not linger in Pict lands for more than a few hours, that they would soon be long gone, but it was good to have it confirmed.

  Her relief was short lived, as Olaf took a closer look.

  “By their banners, that troop are Western Isle men.”

  “Raiding Gaels.” Hoping her trembling would not be visible to the warrior shifting behind her, Bindweed snatched up her travelling satchel. With shaking fingers, she checked the pre-packed stores in it, plucked her shot bow and quiver from a peg and ducked out of the cave. Olaf caught up with her in a few long strides, his walk no longer staggering.

  He recovers quickly. The conclusion did not cheer her, though it did mean she would not have to lug him away.

  “Friends of yours, Mistress Bindweed?”

  “No, nor yours,” she answered swiftly, to stop any ideas he might have of betraying her to them. She notched an arrow, set it blazing with her fire-flints and shot the flaming mass into the haze.

  Let my memory be right on this!

  It was. The burning arrow plunged into the unlit bonfire she had made on the island
headland, and in moments, the dry fireweed and tinder were ablaze. The raiding Gaels shouted and rowed faster, if the splashing she could make out was right, but her alarm to the greater settlement by the ancient broch had been raised.

  “What?” she demanded Olaf, whom she sensed was about to question. “I know what pirates like you Vikings can do. The folk on the shore deserve a warning.”

  An honest warning, but no more. I have done enough. I owe those proud and princely folk nothing. She forced down memories of being ignored, of being mocked by princesses of the full-royal blood. Creatures like Lady Alpia and Mongfind were always spiteful. Now we bastards save our own skins.

  “I am no Viking,” came a steely denial, which she ignored. I ken all Black Norse are liars, so his words mean nothing. They had more pressing business.

  “This way!” Bindweed ran out of the cave, aware of the stumbling warrior falling into step a pace or so behind her.

  ♦◊♦

  The biting cold and freezing fog slapped him fully awake, a circumstance Olaf blessed a few moments later, after following Bindweed. Strange name or not, the girl was fast. She sprinted, darting like a dragonfly between the trees, arms tucked in, head down and with a berserker’s disregard for safety. Already, only a few tumbling paces from their former shelter, the mists clung round them like ghosts, tall pines suddenly looming into view from a treacherous grey soup of air. He could hear the bellowing of the Gaels in the small inlet close to the cave, but could see them no longer.

  “Hurry!” A small hand seized his and dragged him on, down an uneven track that seemed more rocks and furze than path. A low branch his companion passed beneath lunged out of the murk and smacked him in the face. Spitting out pine needles, Olaf careered into Bindweed as she dropped to her knees, pressing her free hand to her side.

  “Foo—fools!” she gasped between heaving breaths, while Olaf lost his grip on her fingers and went sprawling over her, to land heavily on his belly. Behind them gold and yellow lights flared and then exploded in the woods. The stink of burning filled his aching lungs.