Chapter 2
Ainsel carried her wee son in a linen sling that slanted front and back frae shoulder to waist. The bairn’s head nestled against her breast as he slept, most likely soothed by the scent of her milk. Nae one else in the settlement slept; they were far too busy gathering up the dead trees that bordered the forest, piling them up along with sand-frosted driftwood frae the beach.
Soon the solstice would be upon them. For some this would be the highlight of the Norse year. To Ainsel’s way of thinking, it was the end of a year that didnae bear repeating, yet frae the teasing laughter that reached her frae where half the settlement laboured, few would suspect that a dark cloud hung o’er this year’s celebrations. Some might say it was inevitable after the harm her husband Nils had caused.
She had married Nils with such hope and with her grandfather Jarl Olafsen’s approval. It hadnae taken her o’er long to discover her husband was a man with two faces: smiles that he showed to the world, and snarls he saved for people like her, too shocked to fight back … then he spoke best with his fists.
Shock had curbed her tongue the first time he laid into her. Later she had been too ashamed make her plight known and then fearful for her grandfather, but that was afore she saw him in a thunderous black temper and regretted her silence.
She had added humiliation to her list of emotions in early spring when rumours reached Caithness that the Irish were plotting a revenge attack. Worse, they had persuaded Norsemen frae Orkney to join them. A wee skerrick of hope still lingered that Nils hadnae been responsible for turning the men that her grandfather had once thought of as kin against them. Hope not for herself but for her son’s sake, his future. She pulled Axel close and breathed in the bairn’s sweet scent. There was some had thought she should name him after his dead father. It had taken every skerrick of her subtlety to turn away suggestions that her son in nae way reminded folk of his father. For his own sake, she thanked the gods he didnae resemble Nils; and she shunned any notion except one—that some of Nils’ ancestors had been as dark as her husband had been fair, almost fair as herself. Nae matter, Ainsel would do whatever it took to make certain her son wasnae tainted in any way by his father’s evil deeds.
Years had passed, practically the whole of her lifetime, since the last ferocious battles betwixt Caithness and the Irish, and then the battles had been in Ireland. Ainsel was nae body’s fool, she was well aware her father’s father had enemies, the Irish amongst the worst. Her grandfather always said the best alliance he ever made was with the Comlyn clan—blood relatives, though the blood in the connection had to have grown thin by now. She would trust the Scots long afore she would the Irish. She suspected Nils’s family had a streak of Irish in their lineage. Hadnae they come across the sea and abducted her grandmother all yon years ago? Her grandfather had made them pay, but he was getting auld, while her brother was younger than she was. Aye, Olaf was still alive while her father had gone to Walhalla in a flaming dragon boat with all the ceremony due a Jarl’s son.
Now her brother would be Jarl when her grandfather died. It wasnae a prospect she would wish on her son and, on the tail of that thought, she dipped her head and planted a kiss on her bairn’s dark curls as she reached the entrance to her grandfather’s longhouse. He had wanted her and the bairn she was carrying to move in beside him. She had been big with child when he asked her a day after news of Nils’s death reached them. She was a widow, a pregnant widow about to give birth. Shock they had said: At least her tears of joy were easily mistaken for tears of lamentation.
If she regretted anything it was being unable to see Nils’s body float out into the Ness on a flaming bier. Ainsel’s chest tightened. She huffed a sigh down her nose to release the pangs that Nils’s memory always wrought, though why should she feel guilty that she was still pretending to mourn him? The question made her mouth tighten and her lips quiver. As if the strength of her emotions touched and disturbed Axel, he opened his eyes and stared up at her. His eyes were of such a deep blue she almost wished she had been able to compare them to his father’s. The sight of Axel’s thumb sneaking into his mouth was a signal that he would soon want to drink from her breast again. The lad was never more happy than when she fed him, which she was quick to explain was why he was so big for his age—more like six months than three.
Her grandfather was the first person she saw as she came into the gloomy hall, and he waved her o’er to him, a smile on his face that she knew was more for Axel than for her, since she knew he had almost given up on her producing a grandchild—a male one at that. It wasnae that Axel would ever be Jarl—he wasnae an Olafsen—though her brother was nae acting he was of a mind to settle down, take a wife and produce bairns of his own.
Nae, Finn would rather fight than take on responsibility for a wife and family, rather take a life than get a wife with child. She had seen her brother’s eyes light up when her grandfather gave them the news that the Irish had their sights on Caithness, and when Olaf said their Norse brothers on Orkney had always been jealous of them, as if it were their fault the others had chosen hilly islands with steep glens shaped as if a giant had scooped them out with a spoon.
“Bring the lad here to me,” her grandfather called out across the hall. Sprawled in a chair he looked at ease, yet Ainsel had noticed that his years now showed more than they ever had. He had shifted more and more of his responsibilities and daily tasks onto her brother’s shoulders—duties her father would have loved to take on, had he lived, duties Nils had envied more than he should have which, knowing him as she had, made his death a boon.
She lifted Axel out of the sling, his swaddling cloth slipping down as she grasped him under the arms. “Ye might not be so keen to have him on yer knee when ye discover how wet he is,” she chuckled but passed him into Olaf’s outstretched hands, gnarled with age but still as strong as she remembered frae when he used to lift her o’er his head and throw her into the air.
“Ach, what’s a little piss betwixt me and the lad here.” He gave her a big grin frae under his white moustaches and she shook her head. Olaf Olafsen had been much feared in the north, but ne’er by his family, and that would have changed if she had told him the truth about her marriage to Nils.
Rubbing her hand down the arm that had taken Axel’s weight, she felt amazed that nae one had noticed it was free of the bruises she had always found some excuse for—an effort that was nae longer necessary.
Olaf was twisting one of Axel’s curls round his little finger, with a small smile on his lips as he hummed under his breath, as if his mind were somewhere else. “I always thought Nils must have had a touch of Irish in him. The Celts are a wild lot.” Her grandfather raised his head, caught and held her gaze, his eyes wide, the same light blue as her own.
He was a wise man, her grandfather. That didnae mean she should always confirm that her own thoughts flowed in the same direction as his. Ainsel was saved by Axel from giving voice to the message she read in his eyes when her son did as she had warned, wetting down her grandfather’s leather trous. Lifting the lad frae Olaf’s knee she turned her face, hiding her smile.
“Didnae I tell ye?” he growled, then grinned taking the sting out of it. “Aye, he’ll bear watching this one to make sure he doesnae make the same mistakes as his father.”
Her smile disappeared, segued into a rueful grimace. Truth be told she wasnae actually bothered by what Olaf thought of her late husband. Come what may, she knew her grandfather would never harm her. Others, however, might not be so kind.
With Axel cleaned, fed and happed up in his sling again, Ainsel walked across the settlement to her small broch at the far side. What had been a tight squeeze for her and Nils was plenty big enough for her and Axel. The broch was sheltered by an ancient hawthorn, and she had been glad of the privacy when Nils began to take his temper out on her.
The weight of the bairn in the sling bumped against her hip as she walked, rocking Axel to sleep. She was smiling down on his contented face, his full lips forming a milky pout, when her friend and cousin on her mother’s side interrupted her contemplation.
Gilda wrapped an arm round Ainsel’s shoulder and peeked over its curve into the sling. “Will ye look at that? Not a care in the world. And why should he have any when he’s carried everywhere?” She giggled, poking a fingertip at Axel’s mouth then letting out a wee shriek as his tongue appeared and licked her finger. “Would ye look at that? Easy seen he’s a lad the way he uses his tongue.”
“Don’t be like that. Aye he’s a lad, but bairns are always looking to be fed.”
Gilda squeezed her shoulder and chuckled. Ainsel could confirm that a smile was ne’er far frae her cousin’s lips. “Yer saying that it’s instinctive, are ye? Why am I not surprised?”
Unlike Ainsel, Gilda had ne’er considered settling for one man; she was having o’er much amusement, and after her own marriage, Ainsel couldnae say she blamed her. Would that she had been as reluctant to give any man, power o’er her life.
Digging her free elbow against Gilda’s ribs, she shrugged her off. “Axel is getting heavy enough to carry without your weight as well,” she groaned twisting to one side.
“Hah. At least I’ve been working, helping to drag all yon trees down to the bonfire. Now that’s tiring,” she pouted, her shoulders drooping as if she truly had been doing heavy work.
Ainsel flicked a glance in the direction of the beach. She saw a big man—Gilda’s current favourite, she suspected—naebody she knew, but then Nils had made sure she stayed close to home. He was looking after a pair of oxen, using the beasts to drag the dead trees onto the beach as fuel for the bonfire. The pile towered higher than was normal, spread in a larger circle, as if this was the settlement’s way of thumbing its nose at the rumours that an attack threatened, or simply refused to believe it would happen during the solstice. Her grandfather, however, would ne’er be so na?ve. She knew he would have watchmen high on the cliffs above the inlet where the sea and Ness met—the only way ships could reach the settlement.
She knew for a fact that her cousin wasnae nearly as guileless as she made out. For the last year, she had been like a butterfly, unable to settle. With a shake of her head she inquired, “I’m happy to see yer enjoying yer work. What’s his name?”
The lift of Gilda’s brows was all the answer she was going to get. She loved her cousin almost as much as she did Axel—certainly more than any man she had met. Gilda was like a sister, the way their mothers had been. Her cousin fidgeted on the spot, her eyes flashing. “Can ye believe it’s a year since last solstice, the best one ever? I cannae wait.”
“There’s a solstice bonfire every year. What was so different about the last one?” Ainsel questioned, since this was the first time Gilda had hinted that something special had happened, though mayhap she shouldnae be surprised, for hadnae she kept her own secret locked in her breast—deep inside where it couldnae hurt her or her bairn?
“Ye wouldnae remember, Ainsel, since ye werenae at the bonfire last year—” Gilda broke off, leaving Ainsel knowing she had begun to remember how oft Nils would go away on his own, most of the time leaving Ainsel at home nursing her bruises. Out of all the folk in Caithness, her cousin had been the only person she hadnae been able to disguise Nils’ rough usage frae, nor hide the darker side of her marriage. Aye, Gilda was the only one she had been able to trust her secret with—her cousin being well aware that any betrayal would likely make Nils hurt Ainsel more than he already had.
“Tell me about him? Whau was he?”
“His name was Calder, one of the Scots who came to visit with yer grandfather. He was wonderful, but he left the next day. All year I’ve been hoping he’ll come back to this year’s solstice. Foolish ye might say, aye, but I cannae help myself.” Gilda wrapped her arms about her middle as if lost in memory. “I ne’er felt that way afore,” she finished on a laugh, a trifle embarrassed, dipping her chin as if to hide the depth of her emotion. “Ye might wonder about all the others, but ye cannae blame me trying to find that feeling with somebody else. I never did. Not like Calder, none of them like Calder.”
Her outburst silenced Ainsel. For once she had nae notion what to say—what words would comfort Gilda, but her cousin simply touched the back of her hand to Ainsel’s arm. “I have to go. Let us meet tomorrow. We can take Axel for a walk up the hill to watch for Irish raiders,” she jested, and walked off, leaving Ainsel relieved the Scot’s name hadnae been Rory.
She continued to walk toward the little broch she called home, her steps slow, reluctant, wishing she was as easily distracted as her cousin.
Watching her bairn sleep, she wished it were as easy to forget about the rumours, to push the threat of the Irish to the back of her mind, that she could put as much effort into pushing yon fears frae her thoughts as she had into forgetting Rory. But back then her life had depended upon pretending they had ne’er met. Around her, life in the settlement might go on as if the notion of danger was naught but a whisper thought up by some auld biddy seeking attention. She knew better.
Ainsel sighed, almost regretting she wasnae that na?ve, but she better than most had known the awful deeds Nils was capable of enacting. If aught happened to her grandfather because of Nils’s wickedness, would the blame spill o’er onto her and the bairn that the gods had kindly made sure Nils never lived to see?