This is a story of long ago: when dragons lived in caves and frogs turned into Princes; when eagles hatched Princesses and mermaids swam beyond the coast of Scotland. All those years ago, there lived on the island of Rousay a King whose people wanted an heir. The King had three children already, three daughters named Jezebel, Delilah and Jael. But the King and his chieftains wanted a son to continue the ancient traditions of Orkney, the hunting of wild boar through Quandale forest in spring, and the supervision of trips abroad to pillage and plunder once the harvest was in.
After his third daughter, dark-haired Jael, was born, the King went to seek advice on how to get a son from Nancy of Hullion – a wise woman who lived alone with a cat in a tumble-down croft.
‘What can I do for you, my Lord?’ Nancy asked when she saw the King. Handing him a tot of whisky, she saw anxiety pucker his brow. ‘It’ll be a son you’re after my Lord, eh?’
The King nodded sadly. ‘What can I do to have a fine healthy boy?’
‘Are you sweet and tender to your lady wife?’
The King fell silent. It was well known on the island that, with the birth of each of his daughters, he had grown irritable and vexatious with his wife. He believed that their lack of a son was her fault and not his as well.
‘If you can’t be kind to her,’ said Nancy, ‘the next best thing to do is to follow an eastern practice. In those countries, my Lord, whenever girls are born and a boy is wanted, the last girl is reared as a lad. And in nine cases out of ten, the next child will be male.’
‘So Jael must be like a son to me,’ said the King.
‘That’s right,’ Nancy replied. ‘But it would help if you were kind to the Queen as well.’
From that day onward, little Jael’s life changed. Her pink baby gowns were removed and she was given the blue silk ones the Queen had made for her long-awaited son. When Jael was a toddler, old enough for skirts, she was made to wear boy’s britches. As soon as her thick curly hair began growing, it was cropped short – so that unless you knew her story, you would think on meeting her that she was a beautiful black-haired boy.
***
After the Queen’s disappearance, the King tried to reform. He was aware that his treatment of the Queen and his subjects had been selfish, and he knew that he was to blame for the unhappiness on Orkney. He mourned the days of his youth, when the Queen’s laughter rang through Trumland Castle and her smile had been like the first breath of spring after a dark Orcadian winter.
‘It will never happen again,’ he swore. ‘I shall never abdicate my responsibilities. To make sure, I’ll never marry again. Orkney must look for an heir elsewhere.’
The King’s plan was to arrange for one of his daughters’ husbands to become the next King of Orkney. That is, if and when they married. I say that because, though the Princesses were beautiful, their unusual upbringing both before and after their mother’s disappearance had made them unconventional.
Even though Jael was still treated like a favourite son, wearing boy’s clothes and her hair cropped, she was extraordinarily good friends with her sisters Jezebel and Delilah. All three of them spent as much time as possible out of doors. They rode to the forest for picnics of cheese and barley wine, and Jael taught her sisters the songs she had picked up on her outings with the King’s men. She showed her sisters how to ride astride, instead of side-saddle as the ladies did in those days, so that they too could pursue foxes, deer and wild boar at royal hunts.
At the height of midsummer, during the simmer dim, when the sun never set and arctic seals splashed close to the shore, the three sisters walked along the jagged cliffs of Scabra Head and sang songs to the mermaids there. And during autumn, when the sun slipped away to the other side of the world and left Orkney dark and gloomy over winter, they picked blackberries at Westray – smearing their bodies with black juice till they looked like zebras dancing in moonlight.
‘You’ll never find husbands if you go on at this rate,’ their old nursemaid, Betsy, scolded when they returned to the castle after one of their midnight jaunts. ‘Staring at the stars indeed! You’ll be calling yourself the three witches of Orkney next. You should be in bed, fast asleep, like your sister Jewel.’
The King’s youngest daughter was quite different from her sisters. Jewel had her mother’s golden hair and, like the Queen, was as patient as an old snail determined to reach its destination at the end of a long walled garden where seedlings are ripe for eating. But the journey Jewel was making was towards marriage and a hearth of her own.
Unlike her sisters, who frightened men with their bold glittering eyes, Jewel was gifted at reading men’s hearts and making them fond of her. She spent hours chatting sweetly to the young men of the court, while she sat embroidering a tapestry beside the fire in the Great Hall. And when winter evenings seemed tiresome, she fetched her mother’s lute and sang songs of lands where the sun shines continuously.
‘You’re the jewel of my weary old heart,’ the King said, smiling fondly at his daughter. But everybody knew that the real jewel of his heart was dark-haired Jael, who rode with her older sisters and laughed like the leader of a pack of howling wolves.
It happened that there was a man in the King’s court who was particularly fond of Jewel. His name was Magnus. He was the son of the wisest and rowdiest of the King’s chieftains – Lord Blackhamar of Blackhamar Lodge to the north-east of Rousay. Magnus had a strong but gentle face, a character at once manly and sensitive, and legs so shapely that even nursing mothers swooned at the sight of them.
Jewel received Magnus’s attentions coyly, giggling at the fuchsias he picked her and the presents he gave her of shells and stones that he found along the shore. Jewel saw that Magnus was a kind man and, knowing that he was a well-placed son of Orkney from a family with a large estate, she fell in love with him.
As was the custom in those days, Lord Blackhamar went to the King to ask if Magnus could marry Jewel.
‘Nothing would please me more,’ the King replied, delighted at the thought of such a worthy son-in-law. ‘But according to royal protocol, Jewel’s elder sisters must marry before she can. Please tell Magnus to be patient. I’ll try and get those strong-headed daughters of mine married off as soon as I can.’
***
A general call was sent through out the Norselands, and territories to the north and south, that the King of Orkney was looking for suitors for his three eldest daughters. Word had it that they were as sweet as Orcadian mead, as strong as Scottish whisky and as graceful as the seals splashing around Rousay.
‘Just wait till they see your tempers,’ laughed Betsy, scrubbing the long white backs of the three Princesses.
They cursed her roundly. ‘We don’t want to marry,’ they yelled. ‘Let sweet-tempered Jewel do our marrying for us. We won’t make Princes out of frogs, will we sisters?’
But though they stormed and raged around Trumland Castle, and prowled in front of the fire like angry panthers, in their hearts they were secretly pleased at all the attention they were getting. That is, Delilah and Jezebel were pleased, but not Jael.
For the first time in her life she was told not to wear men’s clothes. She was no longer allowed to go drinking with the young men at court, and was prevented from cutting her hair. At first she tore her dresses off and pounded at the King’s door when Betsy told her that it was on his instructions that her clothes had been burnt.
‘Father,’ she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Am I no longer your girl-son, your favourite darkhaired Jael?’
The King hardened his heart, believing that what he was doing was in his daughter’s best interest. ‘You’ll always be my Jael,’ he replied, safe behind a locked door. ‘But you’ve got to marry. You’ve got to marry so that Orkney can have a son and heir.’
Jael walked away from her father’s door, disheartened, and resumed her wanderings across the moorland at the cliff at Scabra Head wearing a red velvet dress. She watched lights falling over the island of Eynhallow, and gasped when a clear sky revealed a night dazzling in star-brightness.
As Jael’s hair grew, suitors came for her sisters. Jezebel, the King’s eldest daughter, was the first to be put on show. She discovered, shut inside her room at Trumland Castle, that she had a flair for decorating herself. She daubed paint on her lips and eyes – one day spotted like a leopard, another striped angry like a tiger. Every day she met her suitors in the likeness of a new animal – red like a fox, purple in raven’s feathers, or silvery-grey with eyes innocent as a seal. Her suitors were stunned by her gaudy beauty, her red fingers flashing through her hair, her lips hard and dark as rubies.
Princes from as far as the Orient came to court Jezebel. They brought her jewels and sweetmeats, rare exotic animals and servants to do with as she pleased. But Jezebel was interested in none of them. She pouted, stamping her foot angrily whenever they tried to make her smile.
‘Do you think I’m a child?’ she scowled. ‘If you’re the man for me, I’m not my father’s daughter!’
One day a Cherokee Indian arrived on Rousay with a troupe of dancing bears and girls juggling golden balls. The man was tall with bright feathers pinned in his hair, and a face painted silver like an arctic fox.
As soon as she saw him, Jezebel knew she had found her man. She smiled at the tales he told of his people across the Atlantic: about how they hunted buffalo, grew maize and ate succulent fruits. She smiled as he told her about the Great Spirit he worshipped who had brought him safely to her castle and would return them home again. Taking him by the arm, Jezebel stepped into the prince’s magic canoe and waved goodbye to Orkney forever.
By the time Jael’s hair was curling beneath her chin, suitors were beginning to arrive for Delilah. Delilah locked herself in her bedroom, refusing to come out until she had arranged her hair. She patted The Secret of the Purple Lake and sprayed her auburn curls for hours, deigning to see her suitors only when she was bored and wanted someone to admire her.
One day she came to the Great Hall with her hair falling plainly down her back. The next day she plaited it elaborately with pearls laced between the braids. Every day she walked past rows and rows of men, turning them away despite the honeyed phrases they courted her with and the luxury they promised her.
‘I’m not a fool,’ she snarled, shaking her hair wildly. ‘If you’re the man for me, I’m not my father’s daughter.’
On the longest day of the year, a Sikh Prince from India arrived on Rousay. His head was wrapped in a fat orange turban and, to keep out the Orcadian wind, he was swathed in a thick cashmere rug. When Delilah saw him, she suspected that he might be her man.
‘What do you have under your turban?’ she asked, tugging at her hair.
The Prince slowly unravelled his turban, revealing a long strand of thick black hair that touched his feet. Delilah stroked it lovingly, holding it to her cheek to feel its softness. Then, the Prince fondled Delilah’s braids, and unravelled them to pass an ivory comb through her curls.
The Princess sighed with pleasure. Taking the Sikh Prince by the hand, she stepped on to his magic rug and waved goodbye to Orkney forever.
Now it was Jael’s turn to marry. Her black hair had reached her shoulders and everyone wanted her to choose a husband. Magnus, Jewel’s fiancé, was growing impatient – kind and worthy though he was.
‘Haven’t you seen anybody you like yet?’ he asked Jael at the end of every week, after hordes of disappointed men had been sent off the island. ‘There must be one of them, at least, that pleased you,’ he scolded. ‘Surely one of them would have done?’
‘Quite right,’ agreed the King.
‘Do you want me to leave you, Father?’ Jael asked.
‘No, dear,’ he replied, avoiding his daughter’s eyes. ‘It’s just that a girl must marry.’
Jael blushed. She found choosing a man an awkward business. She much preferred her nightly walks around Rousay staring at the stars, and her daily visits to Nancy of Hullion for advice on how to grow herbs. ‘Nancy of Hullion isn’t married,’ she mumbled.
‘What’s that you said?’ shouted the King. In his old age he was becoming deaf.
‘Oh, never mind,’ said Jael. And shaking her hair loose, she took her hunting dogs for a walk on Scaqouy Head.
The next day, Jael decided to get the whole unpleasant business of marriage over by accepting the first suitor she saw. It happened that the first man to approach her that day was Leopold, a prince of the Norselands. He had been living at the castle for over a year, trying to win Jael’s heart. Leo, as he was known to his friends, was a steady man with a heart as big as a bear.
‘Very well, I’ll marry you,’ Jael said petulantly, ‘if you make me a wedding dress from the feathers of puffins.’
‘I’ll do anything you want,’ Leo replied, staring at Jael with soulful blue eyes.
Leo leapt into a boat to journey to the island of Wyre. In those days there was a large colony of puffins there, from which Leo hoped to pluck white feathers for Jael’s wedding dress. Had Leo had more patience, he would have waited for the ferry. That morning storm clouds were gathering and, as a stranger on Orkney, he was unused to the twists and turns of the currents in Wyre Sound.
Nancy of Hullion saw the storm beginning as she was boiling a kettle for tea. Taking the kettle off the hob, she ran to Hullion pier to greet the storm. The next day she told Jael what she had seen.
‘I was welcoming the thunder and lightning,’ she said, ‘when I saw a boat drifting in Wyre Sound. In it was Leo of the Norselands begging the storm to abate, so he could find Wyre and the puffins on it to make a wedding dress for his bride. The more he begged, the more the storm whirled about him – till it smashed his boat on Egilsay rock.’
Jael gasped in horror. ‘Do not fear lass,’ Nancy continued. ‘When the boat broke up, I saw Leo change into a walrus and swim to Egilsay for safety. His body will never be found, I’m telling you.’
And sure enough, though fragments of Leo’s wrecked boat drifted back to Rousay, his body has not been seen to this day.
Leo’s disappearance didn’t deter suitors from coming to Trumland Castle to court Jael. Word had it that she was a wicked Princess in league with the devil. But as soon as the suitors saw her, they were bewitched. They saw that she was a wilful, passionate woman and not a wicked person at all.
Her suitors fancied that her hair, curling thickly down her back, had the fragrance of summer jasmine, and that her lips, if they could kiss them, would taste of summer pudding. Others said that clematis grew from her feet wherever she wandered on the island.
Magnus was the only man in Orkney not enchanted by Jael. ‘Can’t you hurry up and get married?’ he begged her, his passion for Jewel close to capsizing. ‘I really can’t wait much longer!’
‘Leave her be!’ Jewel exclaimed. ‘I’m sure Jael will pick a man soon, won’t you my darling?’
Jael scowled, wishing in her heart that her sister and Magnus would shut up and leave her alone.
A week or so later, a fair y Prince arrived at Trumland Castle from the land of the Gauls. His name was Alvere. He came riding a white stallion, his golden hair blowing in the breeze. He brought with him gifts of figs and peaches, champagne and truffles. Jael rather liked him. She liked the way Alvere sang to her at night, and wrote poems calling her eyes, ‘bright stars sparkling in the Orcadian night.’
Jael’s heart trembled whenever he was near and when he reached out at last to touch her, she shook with smiles. Although she liked the idea of life eating peaches and drinking champagne all day long in the land of the Gauls, Jael didn’t care for the slight sneer in Alvere’s eyes or the downward turn of his thin lips when he smiled.
‘I will marry you,’ Jael said eventually, ‘if you can jump the peaks of Boland and Brendale.’
Alvere laughed. He was renowned for his physical prowess and believed it would be simple to jump the peaks, even though belching between them was a perilous bog of quicksand and peat.
Alvere put on his silken sports clothes. He glowed in shimmering pink – a healthy, self-assured, sophisticated, fairy Prince. ‘Be waiting in the wedding dress I brought for you when I return,’ Alvere ordered Jael, before he started the journey to Boland and Brendale peaks.
The whole of Rousay turned out to see Alvere make his jump.
Nancy of Hullion and her black cat were there, Lord Blackhamar and his son Magnus, the King and Princess Jewel, and all the island’s crofters and fishermen.
Now, the distance between the two peaks was fifteen feet, an easy enough distance for a fit man to jump. But Alvere was so confident of himself that he didn’t bother to run into his jump fast enough. He sauntered along, pirouetting daintily. To make matters worse, he tripped just before his jump and plunged head first into the perilous bog of Boland and Brendale.
He would have been sucked straight into the underworld if Nancy of Hullion hadn’t hastily muttered a charm that turned him into a pink flamingo. The bird rose squawking from the bog and, flapping its shining wings, flew away, far from Orkney.
Everybody had just about given up hope of Jael ever marrying, when a gypsy Prince arrived on Rousay. He said he was a Prince from Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsular and that his name was Kasim. On his arm was seated a magnificent golden eagle whose eyes glittered with an intensity resembling Jael’s. Kasim’s face was the colour of berries, his lips the purple of amethysts and his eyes the green of new emeralds. His mouth, when he smiled, shone with the brilliance of a Seville sky in spring.
Jael’s heart leapt when she saw him. She was about to ask him to perform one of her famous tasks, when he silenced her with a wave of his hand.
‘Princess,’ he said. ‘I have travelled far to find someone to marry. I’ve journeyed from Al-Andalus to the Orient, and from the Norselands to Orkney. The woman I shall marry must be able to hold this eagle painlessly on her wrist. None of the Princesses that I’ve come across so far have been able to do this. Will you try, Orcadian Princess?’
Jael held out her hand. The golden eagle swooped down from the Prince’s arm, landing on her wrist. It settled effortlessly, as if returning home at last. The bird’s sharp claws didn’t leave a single blemish on Jael’s skin.
Looking rather shy, Kasim asked, ‘Will you marry me?’
‘Yes,’ Jael replied. ‘But on one condition. You must never ask me to be other than what I am. I am a woman who walks by night and listens to the music of the stars. I will marry you, but you must remember that my heart beats to its own rhythm and sings its own songs. Do you understand?’
The Prince said that he did and, taking Jael gently by the hand, they began the journey back to Al-Andalus.
Of course, everybody in Orkney was jubilant. Elaborate preparations were quickly made for Magnus’s marriage to Jewel on Rousay. Musicians came over from Wyre for the wedding, and a priest from Eynhallow. The crofters and fishermen and Nancy and her black cat danced till late the next morning, when more whisky and tea were served, and Magnus carried Jewel off to bed. At last Orkney had a son and heir.
And they say that, on that afternoon, a golden eagle flew three times around the north-west tower of Trumland Castle before turning southwards and flying back to Al-Andalus.
