First of all, don’t believe everything you read in monastic chronicles- especially not Irish ones. They know damn all about what really happens up here and invent nasty events in the Orcades when they’ve an unused annal to fill. They also have funny ideas about how things work in the lands of the Picts. If you believe everything they write, we speak some kind of funny language like nobody else on earth and we’re dominated by our women so that all inheritance works through the female line.

What a load of rubbish. We speak a language that’s a lot closer to theirs than Anglian or Latin are and, much as I love my darling wife Gwennie and my two lovely daughters, I don’t think any of them would agree I was henpecked. Women up here may have better inheritance rights than they do in Ireland but they don’t run the place- and my son will derive his inheritance over my land, my boat and my position in the village here because he’s my son, not because Gwennie, who comes from the far side of Twin Lakes (Note Lochs of Harray and Stenness) and in the land of the ancient stone circles anyway, is his mother.

On the subject of misleading annals, I gather some Irish chronicler decided that our High King Bridei “devastated the Orcades” a year or two before we did over the Anglians. Nonsense. There was a bit of an upheaval, certainly, but King Bridei merely sent a few ships across the Stormy Straits (Note- Pentland Firth) into the Flow to back up our own efforts in getting rid of that useless drunk of a ruler Drystan; if we hadn’t got rid of him soon he’d have given the whole archipelago to the monks. One thing I realised long ago is that, while the Irish and Anglian monks may observe Easter at different times and do different things to their hair to show that they are monks and generally bad-mouth each other, when it comes to getting land grants off rulers and farmers they stick together like the grease we use to caulk our boats. Drystan was about to give away the estate across the water on the Mainland opposite our village where my sister’s husband Gartnait is the steward and to which we pay our food rents to another shower of Anglian monks as a penance for drinking too much. Or something like that; you never quite know how monks will twist things round to their own advantage. No doubt they’d have told us how we had to do it because God had chosen Drystan as our ruler and he’d given them the land- monks are good at that kind of self-interested talk. The last thing I and my village wanted was another set of monks grabbing more land and food renders for themselves- they’re always a lot fussier over getting every last egg and fish than a normal lord would be. They’d try to grab a share of the spoots in the sand (*translator’s note- spoots= razorfish, still a slightly idiosyncratic Oracadian delicacy) if they thought they could get away with it.

Anyway, enough was enough. The fact that it was Anglian monks he was planning to favour this time round made it easy to get the High King interested- he was already preparing for war with the Anglians. So Gartnait and I and the majority of the village heads in the islands decided that it was time for a change or ruler. Succession rights are always complex in Pictland (as they are everywhere for rulers, it seems) and Drystan’s father had elbowed his way past his brother Drost whom he should by rights have shared rule with. The brother was dead (succession disputes usually end that way) but his son was alive down among the Cats in the north of the big Mainland (we’re the Boars on the Oracades, though there aren’t many of the animals up here these days; just a few in the royal woods of the High Island (Note- Hoy) along with the deer which the great ones hunt and whose care is part of Gartnait’s charge). At the time we’d gone along with Drost winning- I was too young to do more than wave a spear and shout loudly when the issue was settled in a sea fight on the Flow but my father was in the thick of it. But he was a different kettle of fish from his son.

Of course telling young Custatin that we really wanted him to come back and lead us took a bit of organising. I ended up with the job because I go South from time to time and trade a bit with the Cats- smoked fish for timber, usually. I was given a letter, written in Latin letters, no less, drawn up by Urgist of Horse Island ( Note-Rousay) who was once intended for a monastery and learned to write like a monk before his father’s eldest son drowned and he was needed to inherit the land. You never know when the skills you pick up by the way can come in useful…. Not that Custatin would be able to read it himself but it looked impressive and someone at the court of the Cats’ king would be able to do the job. We also knew that the High King was likely to be there; he goes round his realm on a regular route and calls in on the Cats in early spring. He doesn’t come over the seas to see us often, which is probably a good thing; his followers would eat us all out of house and home. It has advantages being on an islands - we say in these parts that even the High King’s orders sometimes get seasick on the way over the Stormy Straits and don’t always have the sea legs to reach the Orcades.

So I sailed off very early in the year, supposedly to fish out to the west and then go south to sell the fish. I took a very carefully picked crew from the village, lads who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut afterwards. It was a dangerous time to sail, really, but fortune or the saints or whatever power runs these matters favoured us. The wind was favourable, the sun shone all the way over and the seals sang to us when we were in the lee of the High Island and going though the tidal race there. It was the kind of voyage which makes being at sea worth the dangers.

On the far side of the Straits I had some explaining to do to the local village chief- a man I’ve traded with in the past. Fortunately he took me seriously and sent a messenger off to his king’s settlement. I had expected a summons further south; I was surprised to be wakened three days later by my host and told the High King himself was there and wanted to see me.

I’d never met a High King before. He was a hard, determined looking man a bit older than me with lots of gold jewellery and an amber necklace. A gang of men with spears stood round him as he sat on his improvised throne in my host’s house- the crowd filled the room. A shaven figure in monastic robes was on one side of him; a young man whom I took to be Custatin on the other. I produced my letter, which the monk began to read in our language. As we’d expected the mention of Anglian monks made Bridei prick up his ears and twist his beard. He began asking questions, lots of them; how much land did the monks have already, what Anglian shipping came to our waters, how many people really wanted rid of Drystan and would they actually be prepared to fight to get rid of him, why we wanted to bring Custatin in when we’d been happy enough to get rid of his father (fair enough, I suppose). I must have given the right answers because he began to move on to practicalities- was there a good time to make a move against Drystan (that was easy- we’d already worked out that we’d act when he went to the High Island for the Solstice stag hunt and came back over to Gartnait’s holding, which was the point at which he planned to hand the estate over to the monks), how many men would we need from outside to ensure that everything went smoothly, would there be any resistance from Drystan’s loyalists and if so where might that be expected, were there any concentrations of Anglians we needed to worry about, what assurances he had that this wasn’t some sort of trap. The last was a bit of a problem; we didn’t have any obvious hostages we could leave without attracting Drystan’s attention to the fact that something was afoot. I had to be at my persuasive best here- Gwennie has always said persuasion is one of my strong points (presumably because I had to do a bit of work persuading her father to let me marry her) and in the end it seemed to work. A large book with a very splendid cover was produced and I swore loyalty to the High King and to Custatin on it, young Custatin swore to be a good and loyal king of the islands and we all drank a round of very superior ale to seal the bargain. The clerks were sent off to write up a suitable reply to Urgist’s letter, the High King sent most of his retinue away and I was left with him, Custatin and a few others- senior military men of Bridei’s following- to set about the necessary planning.

We sailed back the following day. It’s always harder work going north (“rowing uphill” we call it) and we were all rather nervous about what we were now committed to; it’s one thing muttering about the shortcomings of your rulers over a mug of ale with friends and quite another actually conspiring to get rid of them. If things went wrong I’d probably end up as fish food and my family… well, we had to succeed.

It was good to get home and be back at my own hearth with Gwennie to cook and care for me and the children to take my mind off things at times, though I have to admit I had a lot of poor nights sleep. Of course it was even worse for Gartnait who was having to deal with Drystan’s household on a regular basis. While we knew there were quite a few of them who’d abandon him when the time came, we could not be sure exactly who to trust. There were lots of comings and goings through the village all through the spring and early summer- it was hard work to keep the flow of visitors look normal. I did more than the usual amount of fishing (luckily the fish were running well that year) and met more merchants than usual. We even had a visit from a wandering Irish hermit looking for a suitably remote stack to perch on- I imagine the member of the High King’s household who had volunteered for the mission to check out anchorages on the far side of the High Island must have taken years to live down his strange appearance as the hair grew back in over the tonsure.
It was a nervous, jumpy, time and I remember almost nothing about the crops and the weather, though I suppose it must have been fine.

The days slowly lengthened until we reached the time when there isn’t a proper night any more, just a short period of gloom lit by stars. We began to hear stories about Irish pirate raids on the west coast of the Cats territory. We put the usual coast watch system into operation- even though I knew that there were no pirates. They were the pretext I had dreamed up which would allow the High King to send a fleet into northern waters without too many questions. There was a terrible moment when Drystan looked as if he might pass up the Solstice deer hunt (his monks were muttering about paganism and he didn’t feel too good after another hard night on the ludicrously expensive wine he’d imported from somewhere for off in the deep south- Spain or Rome or Africa or some such legendary place) but Gartnait pointed out that he really had to be at the estate if he wanted his donation to be properly recognised in our local law ( true, but we don’t normally bother about those formalities).

I didn’t go on the hunt, not that year. Officially I had pulled a back muscle unloading fish. Actually I was furiously busy working out where to conceal all the boats and horses which had brought the elite of the island- those that weren’t at the hunt anyway- to our village to lie up in preparation for our strike. I don’t think the hunt went all that well anyway. There aren’t a huge number of deer- it’s very hard work keeping up a deer wood in our climate- and they tend to be semi-tame which can rather spoil the effect. On this occasion, though, they chose to be difficult and made themselves scarce; it took a lot of hard work to make a ritually proper kill. At least the chasing about on the hills meant that Drystan’s retinue were too busy to notice a small boat heading for our village. Custatin was on board and we arranged a rapid swearing of allegiance in the village. He confirmed that three warships were in the run between the main island and the High Island (“looking for pirates” if anyone asked) with more standing to on the Cats’ shore.

It was a perfect day; the light faded very very slowly as we watched the little flotilla of boats coming over from the High Island with Drystan and his people on board, the reflection of their torches sparking on the water. It was for once very calm indeed. Some of our people had already gone across to the hall- they were after all expected to be there for the feast. I waited with my men for the tide to turn, which it would do at the darkest point of what passed for night. The boats were beached and there was a great and colourful swirl of people on the shore. Later we heard the singing and uproar of a feast from across the narrow strait and saw the coming and going of torches in the summer dim. As the light slowly faded we saw revellers walking and staggering out of the hall, some still shouting. The noise died away. We waited on and on. The tide began to ebb, painfully slowly. A seal sang in the distance. Then the torch signal came and we set off through the now shallow waters- Custatin just in front as befitted his status but me right behind him.

It was all unbelievably easy in the end. As we raced across the shallows we saw shadowy figures mustering on the far side. There was a brief moment of tension- was this our friends or Drystan’s retinue? Then I recognised Gartnait at their head, waving a torch. We joined them and headed for the hall, sending a small group off to secure the boats and give the second torch signal to the warships out in the strait. Another group secured the hall, where most of Drystan’s retinue were snoring away. Gatrnait, Custatin and I headed for the king’s chamber. We rapidly overcame a couple of sleepy sentries and headed into the chamber as his body servants staggered into wakefulness. We actually had to rouse Drystan to tell him he was deposed; I don’t think he realised what had happened until the second or third explanation. Then there was more shouting outside; we had another bad moment (had his retinue somehow rallied?) until it became clear that this was the arrival of the High King’s warships to complete the job. After a short time (while Drystan cowered in his bed whimpering a bit- I imagine he thought we were going to kill him or at least seriously mutilate him) a group of warriors came in accompanied, as planned, by a monk from the High King’s court carrying a book. One of the warriors had a large pair of shears in his hand. Drystan fouled himself at this point, so it was a smelly business holding him down so that I could shear a tonsure into his hair while the monk intoned the relevant words consecrating him to the service of the alter. We had decided that if he liked monks so much he ought to become one. We bundled the foul-smelling bundle that was our former ruler into the care of the High King’s men, who carried him off to the ships.

And that was really just about that. Of course the High King’s fleet came over from the Cats’ shore just to make sure there wasn’t any trouble. We had to throw a few Anglian monks out of the properties they were squatting in and there was a half-hearted resistance in the east end of the main island but we overcame that in a day and a half with only four or five dead. Obviously Custatin had to be properly inaugurated- I was on one side as he placed his feet into the slots in the King’s stone in St Ninian’s chapel on Rinans Isle (note South Ronaldsay), which was a great honour. I was given a splendid torque bracelet and a new sword by Custatin, which was also a great honour and marked me out as man of importance (Gwennie said she always knew I was one of those- it had just taken some time for the rest of the Orcades to find out). We all shouted his name and acclaimed him as king, had a great feast (making sure we set proper sentries)- and then I went back home to my wife and family hoping for a nice quiet life again working the land and sailing the seas.