The Starlight And The Storm Of Fire

Chapter the First

The girl sat in the corner of the rough, turf cottage, watching the dust swirl around her. The cold from the window soothed her. The physical pain in her body matched the ache in her heart. Her mind turned again to her mother and her brothers and her father. Only last winter she'd been with her mama. Her brothers. How little they understood her! The thought drifted their her like a snowflake. She felt the lump in her throat, but her tears would not come. They came seldom anymore.

She wondered again what life was really like in other kingdoms. Children would attend the village school. Did they have to marry young? Some girls here shortly after their first bleed at sixteen were to have their first children in a few months. They had married the village headman's fine sons. They had a choice. Wealth. Prestige. Honour.

Her Mama had married at eighteen. the same age she was now. Her Mama had moved to the next valley with her bridegroom. She had heard from the gossiping farmgirls about a cousin who didn't have to marry a farm boy. She married into a wealthy family. An honourable, handsome, strapping man who gave his bride a traditional wedding that lasted four days. Not a feast of chewy, roasted meat, tankards of grog, jesting and teasing, crude comments, or worse. Beatings. Of course, her family lived only in a small village. But the girls whispered the stories when they went to milk their father's sheep and goats, the milk pails sloshing with rich, creamy milk.

"It was a braw banquet lasting three days with every scran under Dost."

"The groom gie his bride siller of gold that was worth a talent!"

"Floer cost five million golden Sterling! Rosettes in shades of lemon yellow, glowing apricot to a white heart."

"Her dowry alone was six laden donkeys of linens, silk, gold, and bronze."

Her thoughts were interrupted by footsteps as she heard someone approaching. A fist of fear struck her. Would they beat me again?

Would they beat her because she wasn't working?

Panic nearly choked her.

"Ailsa!" a rough woman's voice called. "Come back here, lass! The ashets are not washed and dried! What about the sacken sark and your broders' brògan?"

It wasn't them! she huddled closer to the wall and held her breath. "Ailsa!" Silence. A young girl muttered something and turned away, her buxom figure bumping against the heavy basket of mixed berries slung against her hip. She had been out for over half the day gathering. And from the looks of it, she had collected a bounty of elderberries, redcurrants, cherries, whitecurrants, and gooseberries. When the summer ripened over the highlands, one would find wild, sweet strawberries throughout the hills. She waited until the girl's steps faded before scrambling to her feet and closing the front door. She needed to do something quickly. Before they came back.

There was baking to be done.

The stores were dwindling, but enough until the merchants came. She dipped a scoop into the sacks of barley, oats, beans and pease. She would soak them overnight with water to cook broses in the morning for breakfast. Oat bread would also have to be made.

Her mama had already ground out a measure with the stones days before. She poured it into a bowl and stirred in leaven and salt with her fingers. Inside a terracotta pot was the buttermilk along with some small rounds of cheese and jugs of milk. The pot had been soaked in freezing water and placed on a slab of slate to keep their produce at a low temperature for about a week. She added enough buttermilk to the dry ingredients until a sticky dough was formed. She tipped it onto a surface floured with barley flour and kneaded it briefly. "The secret," her mama said, "Is to just knead it enough to bring it together. Overdo it, and it becomes as tough as wood."