Ligach did not seem so troubled. She never was about anything. She slept in my husband’s place with Angus squashed between us. The noises that came from them were as though I had spent the night in a sty with the pigs.
I lay and watched the fire until the wood had turned to ashes. Sending orange flecks fluttering towards the ceiling. I needed my husband to return.
My thoughts swarmed like a murmuration. I needed not only to get my husband on side, but to beg for Donada’s forgiveness. Forgiveness that I never thought I would need. The day that I boarded my husband’s ship, I believed it for the best. That she be kept safe, away from the Danes and that she would be allowed to marry a Scot, grow old and have all the children she had ever wanted. I had been nothing more than foolish. I had left her vulnerable and at the mercy of a father who was nothing but wicked and a mother who was so lost in her grief she no longer cared.
Would it be so bad for Donada to make the isles her home? I had a strong husband, great warriors and a baby in my belly. Any woman would be honoured with such a prize. She would be glad of this life. She had wanted this life before I had taken it from her. I could not forget why I was doing this. Why I was prepared to go to war with my own father. I would prove that he had no power over us. My child would never be his heir. I would not forget.
My father’s men had gone to their ships. Silently they’d haunted the shore like kelpies, threatening to make land and take us all. He would not rest until he saw me punished for my insolence, but I was a child no longer.
Thorkell had kept guard on the door all night, taking turns to rest with the other women, and for that, I was truly grateful.
I sighed. A heavy sigh. My father wanted proof that I was with child, but how could I give it? I walked over to look out across the horizon. The day was warm and as clouded over as it had been the day I arrived. As the wind blew, I could smell the salt on the ocean. Atholl called to me.
Lost in my thoughts, Ligach stirred, stretching like a farmstead cat. ‘Have they gone?’
I shook my head and turned, gazing back out to a sea that raged against the rocks. I could feel the summer begin to turn. The wind brought change. I knew when I chose this life for myself, it would not be an easy one. I had done it for all the right reasons but in perhaps the wrong way. We laugh about it now. At least Donada does, when she tells our grandchildren of what we were like as girls. She tells of a wicked sister who stole the handsome Jarl and they sit cross-legged before her, mouths agape, hanging on her every word. She tells how the sisters, though sworn enemies, become best friends again, united in grief.
‘I ken that you want to punish him, as do more ‘an half the village,’ she said, coming to stand near me. ‘But you know it would be madness to strike while his ships guard our shores and the Jarl’s ships are still days away.’
She always knew what I was thinking, even then.
‘Our lives.’ I touched my belly. ‘And yours depend on me keeping my head. If we are to get back to Scotland safely, I cannot make a mistake now.’
‘Can you truly trust him? Do you think he will allow us home?’
Home. It would never be our home again.
I studied the horizon and his monstrous ships. I could not answer something that I could not be sure of. I could not trust a word that came out of my father’s mouth. We would have to take our chances.
‘Ligach, do you know of a way that I can prove to my father that I’m with child?’
‘What of the Piss Prophets? Do they no have them here?’
‘Piss Prophets?’ I must have sounded confused, because I was. Living with a mother that was never truly there, she had never spoken to us of such things. ‘What are they?’
‘Ack, how have you got sisters and you dinna know about the Piss Prophets?’ She lowered her voice as though it were a secret not for men’s ears. ‘It is said if a woman such as yourself pisses on wheat.’ She looked down at my stomach. ‘And it sprouts, then you are carrying a girl. If you piss on barley and it sprouts, then it’s a boy in your belly.’
‘Can you get me some?’ My father will be back as soon as he breaks fast.’
‘Aye, I’ve seen it in the wee grain store up behind the house of the Seeress,’ she said pulling on her boots. ‘I’ll fetch it now. Make sure you drink plenty.’
‘Go quickly.’
?
Ligach burst through the door like she’d been thrown by a gale.
‘Here,’ she said, forcing her hand beneath her tunic and removing a handful of barley. ‘It’s all I could manage before Estrid looked at me as though she was going to take my other hand.’
She set about clearing a pewter platter, that looked as though it had been hammered into shape. She placed it on the floor before the fire and scattered the barley across it.
My mother had never used anything like it, not that I could remember much from when she carried my brother.
‘What do I do?’ I whispered.
‘You lift up your skirts and you aim for that barley.’ She mimicked squatting in her breeches and tunic. ‘A good stream of pish should do the trick.’
I put my feet on either side of the platter, pulling and twisting at my skirts to flatten them enough that I might be able to see my feet and readied myself for the task at hand.
