Chapter 9: The High King of Scots

The king was as good as his word and I found three men waiting outside my small house the next morning. I asked them to find us horses as we were making the trip back to Crinan and they managed this without difficulty. For my purposes I needed at least one person who knew something of pottery or working with clay and when I questioned them none seemed to have that skill. They volunteered the name of another that could use clay and went to find him for me. So, it was with four men that I set out to ride back down the causeway to Crinan.

My plan was to fashion a large clay pan to use in extracting salt from seawater through evaporation. Choosing a spot on the sand, I marked out a large square, roughly six-foot by six foot, and we dug the sand out to create a mould. All of us then worked with our potter to gather and shape appropriate clay into this sand mould. This took us most of the day and the potter informed us that we would need to leave the 'briquetage' for several days to dry out and set.

Riding back to Dunadd we found the settlement in something of a stir. It seemed that Duncan and his men, some forty of them, had been riding south through his territory of Knapdale when they had saw smoke rising from the area of the settlement of Kilberry. Riding hard they had fallen upon a group of Norsemen who were sacking the place and a fight had ensued. Although the Danes had been driven off Duncan himself had been fatally wounded and his body now lay in the hall at Dunadd.

The King was in a black mood it was said and I thought it best to keep out of his way. With my salt production project underway I turned my attention to soap making, my shower gel now long since gone. This was something I thought I could get Kirsty involved in. I knew we needed to prepare some potash to act as lye and roughly how to do that. Caution would be required as this stuff could get pretty caustic. I had Kirsty weave a basket from rushes - approximately a foot high - and I filled this with cold wood ash, making sure that the burnt wood was hardwood.

Standing the basket inside an iron pot outside the house, I poured water into the basket and let it leech the necessary chemicals from the ash. Boiling some animal fat to extract the oil, we then combined different quantities of the oil and potash liquids together. I knew it was important to make sure that all of the lye was used up in the saponification process or the resulting mixture could burn the skin. It took a number of attempts before we got it right and then I showed Kirsty how she could add fragrant herbs like lavender to the mix just as the potash and oil were beginning to solidify to scent the soap. We poured the scented soap into clay moulds to harden and there we were, a supply of soap!

I had explained the importance of cleanliness in terms of avoiding illness, germs and the like so Kirsty knew succeeding in making the soap was a big thing. She mixed up some scented for our personal use and unscented for more domestic use.

The following day I still thought it would be a good idea to keep out of the King's way so I gathered my helpers and returned to Crinan to check on my briquetage. It was clear the Scottish May sunshine was not strong enough to set the clay anytime soon so we covered the clay with sand and proceeded to build a fire over it, in effect creating a sand oven. After several hours we dispersed the burning wood and uncovered the clay square, now hardened and ready for use. I employed my friends and raised the square on piles of stone at each corner, leaving the hole we had dug for the mould underneath. Using the pieces of wood that were still burning, we built a fire under the clay 'pan' and used skins to fill the pan with sea water.

"Two of you need to remain with the pan and take turns at tending the fire and filling the pan with fresh sea water when the level drops low." I said to them. "The water must be kept boiling and I expect you to add at least forty skins of water before I return tomorrow. If it rains you must put up a shelter and stop any rain from getting into the tank."

They discussed things amongst themselves and agreed three of them would stay and do as I asked. The other man and I started back towards Dunadd but when we paralleled the forest I decided to use some of the remaining hours of daylight to search for Yew trees as part of another idea that had come to me. Another snippet of history I remembered was that the English had gained a significant advantage in battle through the use of the longbow. Far bigger than a standard bow of the day, the additional size gave it significantly greater range and hitting power when the 'clothyard' arrows were used. We rode around for several hours but without luck and I decided it was time to return to Dunadd.

I spent a cosy evening with Kirsty and the next morning returned alone to Crinan to check on the progress of my evaporation experiment. My three friends had performed well, banking the fires under the pan and replenishing the seawater as I had asked. When I looked into the pan it was to find a satisfying thick crust of salt crystals. Breaking off a bit of crystal, I put it in my mouth and immediately spat it back out due to the concentrated salt taste.

"No more sea water." I told the men.

All four of us were grinning at each other at our success when we noticed a mounted party coming towards us. I recognised King Fergus mac Erc himself at their head and prepared myself for a bad tempered monarch. Instead he appeared to be in quite a good mood as he rode up.

"Greetings Scott mac Fergus, I've come to summon you to the burial of Duncan mac Innish. We sail for Iona within the hour, be ready man."

"As you command my Lord," I replied.

"What are you about here anyway?"

"You commanded me to test my idea on the production of salt my Lord, I have done so."

"How so man, you appear to but play on the sand here, lighting fires!"

"Here my Lord, in this pan, my friends and I have boiled sea water and extracted the salt from it, see for yourself."

The King leapt from his horse's back, suddenly very excited. He approached the pan and looked into it. He picked up one of the crystals as I had and touched it to his tongue.

"Here is a wonder, creating salt from the sea! I see now why you suggested that there would be an unlimited supply. There is already enough in this pan for the whole Kingdom of Dalriada for a year once it is ground down. Incredible! Riches beyond belief. You shall be rewarded as I promised mac Fergus. Norse-slayer and now salt maker, you are a resourceful man and one I would cherish."

I bowed to him and fell in beside him to walk down to the jetty where his longship floated. We waited for others to bring the hide wrapped body of Duncan mac Innish and set sail for Iona. During our voyage he told me something of the vacuum that Duncan's death created. Duncan had no son or brother to take on his lordship of Knapdale and Jura. His duty to the King was to support him by providing manned boats for every twenty households in his territory for sea warfare and five hundred men for battle on land. Lacking a lord to marshal such forces the King would be greatly weakened.

We sailed into the same landing place as the King had used on his previous trip, the islanders having cleared any Viking bodies in the bay but apparently having left the logs, stakes and half-submerged longships as a deterrent to future raids. The internment of mac Innish was a quick, solemn affair and within the hour we had embarked and set sail back to Crinan. All during the burial and now on the journey back to the mainland, I noticed the King eyeing me, a thoughtful look on his face. Eventually he approached me.

"Scott, this trip and the churchmen remind me of how well you planned and led these islanders against the Norse. You earned yourself the title of Norse-slayer."

His use of 'Scott' rather than his usual 'mac Fergus' suggested something was afoot and I cautioned myself to be on my guard.

"How well do you think you could lead five hundred men rather than forty?"

"In all honesty my Lord I'm not sure. I've never been in such a position before. Why?"

"Duncan sired no son nor did he have a brother but he did sire a daughter. It is common for succession to pass through the female bloodline in Alba and it occurs to me that I could address two of my problems at once through this current situation."

"I'm sorry my Lord, how so? What problems do you mean?"

"I have promised to reward you for your wondrous feat in making salt and I also need someone to lead the lordship of Knapdale and Jura. If you were to wed Duncan's daughter you would become Lord of Knapdale and Jura and I would have someone to lead those forces. Such a lordship I say would also be a fair reward in anyone's eyes."

"But my Lord King, I already have a woman and have no desire for another."

"I have made up my mind on this Scott. You say you have a woman, not a wife, so there is no bar to you marrying this Fiona nic Duncan. If you must, you can keep the woman you have already too, what you do in your own hall-house is your own business. I will send messengers ahead of you to Knapdale and Jura to inform all of my decision. The wedding will need to wait until after we go campaigning with Constantine but you must go and visit the lordship and return with its fullest force to Dunadd within seven days."

With that he turned and walked off to talk to some of his other men leaving me open mouthed and completely shocked.

When we made landfall at Crinan I was still in shock and the horse ride back to Dunadd passed in a blur. I shook myself wondering how I could get myself out of this fix. Going against the direct command of the King would be dangerous and it looked like Kirsty and I would have to go on the run again. I didn't look forward to breaking this news to Kirsty, she had already demonstrated that she had a temper on her.

I entered the house and found Kirsty busy weaving more baskets and humming happily to herself. That made it even more difficult, I didn't want to spoil her mood but there was no way to avoid this.

"Kirsty, we need to talk."

Her reaction was exactly what I might have expected in my own time on hearing those words. 'Oh shit!' Her humming stopped and she looked at me with concern in her eyes.