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A cairn cannot protect a child from a Pict.
Eivor knew that, but this little girl did not.
“Come with me, child.”
Eivor had been uneasy when he’d found the little child on her own in the night, trying to build cairns in the shadow of her small home. He had thought simply that her parents were asleep.
This was not entirely inaccurate; the technical difference lay in that they were sleeping in such a way that would never allow them to awaken.
The little girl, who could be no more than four or five, shuffled in place. She looked small and sad, any happiness she’d gained from the building of the cairn evaporated. She gazed anxiously back towards her home, and Eivor was stricken with a terrible feeling when she said, “But what about mama and papa?”
I don’t think she has buried her dead, he realized, casting an uneasy glance towards the small house.
But then, how could she? The girl was so tiny she thought that stones could be ordered to stand still. How could she possibly have the strength to pull her parents’ bodies from their home and put them in the ground- never mind deep enough to keep the wolves and crows away?
“Your father and mother would not want you here alone, with no one to look after you.”
“I am not alone,” the girl lisped. “I have my stone men.”
“The stone men,” Eivor said quietly, “Will not be able to protect you from the Picts, little one. I have fought them myself, and they are formidable foes.”
He could not say for certain what the Picts might do if they came across this little child all on her own, and that was sufficient to commit himself to convincing her to come with him. He was due to meet Vili on the border where Snotinghamscire met Ledecestrescire soon; Vili would wait, but Eivor did not want to keep him for long.
“Are your parents inside?” He asked.
The girl nodded, not meeting his eye.
Eivor stood slowly and paced over to the house. He looked inside and saw the bed in the corner of the room with two large lumps under a blanket. He thought to ask how they had died, but then thought better of it: The child was distressed enough, and it was easy enough to deduce that her parents had likely died of illness. There was no blood on the floor or blanket, and so Eivor doubted that the child could have lifted their bodies into the bed if they’d been murdered.
He looked back to the girl, who was scuffing her feet in the dirt and still not looking at him. It was hard to tell in the dim torchlight, but Eivor considered now that the girl looked a bit pallid herself; was she sick? Had she been sick, the only survivor of the household?
Eivor cast his gaze back into the house. It hadn’t registered the first time, so focused had he been on the corpses, but the decoration of the home was at once familiar and foreign to him. There were certainly elements of Nordic décor, including a shield with familiar design leaning against the wall, but the rest…
“Child,” He asked. “Are you Norse? Dane?”
The girl still did not look at him even as she called back, “Mama was Norse,” she said. “Papa was Pict.”
Eivor’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth to ask, but then how is it that you fear the Picts?
Then he thought better of it. Instead he asked a question he suspected he already knew the answer to: “Do you have any other family, child? Aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins?”
The girl shook her head silently.
Eivor suspected that there was a story behind that- something perhaps to do with a Norse woman having a child with a Pict man- but now did not feel like the time to be picking at that wound. The girl might not even fully know the answer herself.
“What is your name?”
“Ailsa.” Eivor could not be entirely certain, but in his time in England he had begun to pick up on the rhythm of English words and names- and to his ear, Ailsa sounded more Pictish than Saxon.
Would that help her, though, if the Picts came marching in and found her in a Norse-style dress and a house mixed with Pictish and Norse decoration?
Eivor doubted it.
He walked back to Ailsa, knelt down in front of her and put his hands on her small shoulders. “Ailsa,” he said quietly. The girl reluctantly met his eyes. “Your mother and father would not want you here alone. Not with the Picts at your door, and most certainly not with you being so young. How will you get food? How will you defend yourself if a hungry bear comes along?”
Ailsa was silent.
“Please,” Eivor pressed. “Come with me. I am meeting a friend at the border, and we will be traveling to my settlement in Mercia. We will look after you there. And maybe when you are older, when you can protect and provide for yourself, you can come back to Snotinghamscire if you desire.”
Children, Eivor found, were much easier to read than adults most of the time. And right now Ailsa seemed to be wavering, reaching up to twirl a strand of pale blonde hair between her fingers.
So he pressed forward, one more time: “Aren’t you awfully lonely here, all on your own?”
Ailsa sniffed. “A bit,” she said wistfully.
“Then come with me. There are other children in the settlement, and plenty of flesh and blood warriors to protect you from the Picts. You needn’t be alone.”
[---]
Vili was waiting at the border, as expected.
“Another traveler!” He remarked with a laugh when he saw Ailsa on the back of Eivor’s horse. “Wonderful.”
Ailsa was quiet and reserved until they reached Ravensthorpe, where she therein achieved a level of shyness that Eivor had never seen in a child before. She made a point of hiding behind Vili as they moved through the settlement, very nearly pulling the long end of his cloak over her so that she couldn’t be seen.
Vili chuckled. “A master of disguise, you are,” he teased.
Ailsa would hardly be the first person Eivor had brought to Ravensthorpe, but she would be the first that could not live independently in her own home or barracks. Someone would have to house her, and if no one else was able or willing, Eivor supposed that he would have to do it.
“I can check with Hunwald and Swanburrow,” Randvi suggested with a slight shrug. “If nothing else, we can make a bed for her here in the longhouse.”
There was certainly space, although with Ailsa being so young it would be better for her to be under the closer supervision of adults that were not concerned with running the settlement. Still, Eivor was the one that had brought her here and that made her his responsibility, he would simply have to-
“Ah, is that Vili Hemmingson I see darkening our fair longhouse?” Gunnar and Brigid had come in through the far entrance; the former held up a finger, jabbing it towards Vili. “What have you done, Eivor, bringing this delinquent to Ravensthorpe?”
Vili grinned wickedly. “Gunnar, it was over a decade ago.”
“A blacksmith never forgets when a scoundrel tinkers with his tools!”
“So I can assume that you give Eivor such fire every time you see his ugly face, do you not?”
Here, Eivor discreetly stepped back so that he was slightly more concealed behind Vili’s massive form.
Gunnar shook his head. “Eivor was not the one who hung my hammer from the-” Here, his eyes lit upon Ailsa’s shield. “Ah,” he said. “Such craftsmanship! It is a good shield, if not a bit worn. Is it yours, little one?”
Ailsa, hidden slightly on Vili’s other side, shuffled in place and nodded her tiny head. “Yes, sir.”
Brigid spoke next, and the words she said were as incomprehensible to Eivor as everything else she said-
-but whatever words she spoke, Ailsa nodded her head again and whispered, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Gunnar,” Eivor said, because he would be mad not to recognize the opportunity that had just all but eagerly jumped onto his lap. “Brigid. We are seeking lodgings for Ailsa, hopefully on a permanent basis, and I-”
But Brigid cut him off, turning to look at Gunnar with wide eyes and speaking every bit as incomprehensibly as before.
“You would have it so, my love?” Gunnar asked, tone light and promising. Brigid nodded eagerly. “Ah, well then: Would you stay with us, child? I can show you how to touch up this shield, take out the dents and shine up the metal.”
Ailsa looked to him, then Brigid, and then to Eivor, who smiled encouragingly. She looked back to the couple and said, “Thank you sir, thank you ma’am, I would like that very much.” She still looked somber, but perhaps a little less heavy in spirit than she was before.
Eivor was certainly less heavy, overwhelmed with relief as he watched Ailsa follow Gunnar and Brigid from the longhouse. “And the problem is solved,” he sighed.
“A good fit, I think,” Randvi remarked. “Perhaps Gunnar can teach her the tricks of his trade.”
“Or, perhaps, we can teach her the tricks of ours,” Vili suggested mischievously, flashing that wicked grin at Eivor now. “He’s too old to catch us now, isn’t he?”
“I wouldn’t put good money on that,” Eivor warned.
“Nor would I,” Randvi agreed. “But if you insist, at least wait until tomorrow to provoke Gunnar into running you through.”
“If you wish, Randvi.” Vili could do as he liked, but for now Eivor was simply satisfied with a problem well-solved.
If only everything could work out so well as this.
-End