Ides of the May (Children of the May 2 - updates weekly)

Chapter Eighteen: Orkney

The next morning’s ride was very hard, but Bellina didn’t complain once. We abandoned our tents, and streaked through the forest to the far end of the valley. Mordred led us around a long loch and into a small village of stone, built where the loch rushed into a wide river. There was long jetty with space for ten or eleven boats, but at that time of the day only one rather battered fishing vessel was moored. We crossed a stone bridge into the village proper, and rode past a number of small of children playing in the huddle of the settlement. They stopped their games and watched us with open, curious eyes.

We dismounted at the riverside. Mordred cupped his hand around his mouth and shouted words in a language I didn’t know to someone I couldn’t see. ‘Dia dhuit!’

A greeting that sounded like ‘Madinn mhath!’ was returned from somewhere downriver, and after a few moments I realised that there was someone along the bank, thigh-deep in the water. She had been tending to fishing nets, but was now wading towards us. Mordred and the fisherwoman spoke to each other in what seemed to be different languages, though the two of them understood each other well enough.

‘What are you speaking?’ I whispered to him.

‘Gaelic. We have a version of it on Erin. Different words sometimes, but we can understand each other mostly.’

Mordred and the weathered but healthy-looking woman negotiated for a good long while. From the sceptical look on her face it seemed she drove a hard bargain. Eventually they reached an agreement and shook hands.

‘She’ll take you over the water,’ Mordred told us. ‘But you’re going to have to leave your horses with her.’

Petal pouted; she was fond of her palfrey. I tried not to show it, but I was also upset to be giving Tommy away in exchange for a boat ride.

‘Just as a loan until you come back,’ Mordred assured us. ‘She wants to teach their children to ride. King Lot keeps the riding horses for the islands.’

 

* * *

I told Mordred that I did not like his plan to guide Sir lamorak to Orkney before he left us on the dockside, but he ignored me. The others wished him the best of luck. The fisherwoman, whose name we never learned, rowed us onto the river in silence, and we took our lead from her. We sat together in the stern, our eyes fixed on the woman’s strong arms as she powered the boat along. The wide river opened out to the sea, and the misty bulk of the Orkney islands appeared on the horizon. The tide was with us, and we crossed the open water to the largest of the islands in two hours.

Our boatwoman took us around a headland, beautiful cliffs made of layer upon layer of flat grey stone, and into a great bay around which was a large town, which rose to a fortified homestead made of wood. Many men, women and children roamed the dockside, and a sea-blasted old man with wild white hair helped us ashore. The fisherwoman from the mainland pointed at the wooden house at the top of the rise, said something in Gaelic, and promptly turned her boat around. She rowed back out to sea without taking a moment of rest.

The three of us walked through the busy streets of the town, the name of which we didn’t know and couldn’t ask, as every inhabitant of the place spoke in the language none of us knew. This wasn’t to say that the Orcadians were unfriendly; indeed, Bellina and Petal each received more than one smile from the boys of the town, but the folk were busy with their work, and didn’t pay us strangers more than an occasional glance. The town itself was complex, full of dead-ends and roads that appeared to lead upwards but disappointed us by bending back down towards the bay. Eventually, however, we reached the sharp wooden wall around the round palace. Two frowning guards barred the gates to us.