Both women had dull eyes and a total lack of interest in everything around them

When Rian woke to greyness, she got up, took her blanket and crept downstairs, hoping to go all the way out to see the dawn and maybe get away. But on the ground floor she was stopped by the grey steward who gave her a succession of tasks.

She was set to work sweeping up, clearing and washing dishes and feeding the scraps to the Chieftain’s scary dogs.

Eventually, when she confessed to needing the toilet, he shackled her ankles and attached a chain.

He made her pick up a bucket of slops and showed her out and round the back of the building to a filthy latrine next to the midden.

When she came out and tried to wipe her feet, he grabbed the bucket, filled it from a horse trough and sloshed it in the direction of her legs.

The water soaked her skirt and the bottom half of the blanket she had wrapped around herself against the morning cold.

He laughed, tugged the chain and led her back inside. She was hungry and thirsty but did not dare ask for any sustenance.

When Maadu came downstairs there was a frenzy of activity culminating in a rowdy departure.

The boys were staying with their father to go whaling, while Maadu would manage the farmwork at Mousa.

Pack animal

The biggest son and two other young men headed off down to the harbour and Maadu supervised the packing of baskets and bundles.

Rian became a pack animal, chained to two other women and marched with heavy loads repeatedly down to the shore and back.

Eventually, after what seemed like a long time, Maadu appeared to be ready to go.

She and her daughter, who everyone called Cuckoo, as well as the three slaves, clambered aboard a sturdy, hide-hulled open fishing boat.

It was not quite as big as Ròn, but in it Maadu’s son and his two friends set sail.

Once they were under way, Maadu handed water and oatcakes out to the slaves.

Rian was so thirsty and hungry she could easily have consumed the whole ration for the three of them. Her portion was the smallest.

As she chewed she watched the other two women, one grey-haired and wrinkled as a dried apple, the other dark and haggard and perhaps in her midtwenties.

Both had dull eyes and a total lack of interest in everything around them.

They did not speak unless directly asked a question that a grunt or a gesture could not answer.

On arrival at Mousa, Rian began to understand why. Their work regime was brutal.

The broch was perched on the shore at the south side of a bay, looking out across the sea to the mainland far beyond.

Behind it, the farm stretched across the island, with fields sheltered by a hill where cattle grazed.

It was a beautiful place but there was little chance to appreciate it.

The three women were put immediately to work, carrying the baggage from the boat, which set off back to the mainland as soon as it was unloaded.

The older woman, Gurda, was given cleaning tasks inside the broch, while the dark woman, Fi, was sent to catch and milk a cow.

Maadu led Rian round the back of the broch, pointed out the latrine, the midden and the tool store and told her to dig out the pit and make it clean and ready for use.

For the second time that day, Rian was barefoot in filth and there she remained until the work was done, last summer’s rotten effluent dug out and deposited in the midden.

Temper

By the time the sun was low in the sky she was caked in mud.

She stank, and although she managed to rinse her arms and legs in the sea, it was too cold to wash her clothes.

They would have to stay dirty until another day. At least there was plentiful water here; a stream chuckled down into the sea nearby.

However, the only food the slaves were given was a meagre, watery porridge.

The cows were half wild and protective of their calves and Fi had failed to catch one, so there was no milk to use.

Maadu was in a filthy temper, even though she and Cuckoo had fish to eat with a heap of bread and something else to follow that smelled of honey. The porridge didn’t satisfy Rian’s hunger. When she was told she would sleep up on the top floor she was so weary she did not hesitate. The floor was even more makeshift than the one in the Chieftain’s broch.

It was made mostly of willow, not like the sturdy hazel hurdles they used at home, but she was too tired to care and sank rapidly away into sleep.

She dreamed of Pytheas cutting off her toes, frying and eating them. She woke in a sweat.

It was dark. She had no idea where she was. She slept again.

This time Pytheas was not only chewing on her toe, he was trying to make her eat one too, forcing her mouth open and shoving it between her teeth.

She tried and failed to resist. Then, worse still, he was separating her legs and probing her with her own big toe.

She woke wailing and struggling. The old woman, Gurda, was bent over her, ugly as a gargoyle, whiskery and wrinkled.

“Be quiet.” There was no sympathy in her face. “Go back to sleep.”

Too soon, far too soon, she was woken again by Gurda and told to empty chamber pots then carry in buckets of water.

Burden

After more watery porridge, Maadu sent the three of them to weed the fields of bere and oats that had been sown earlier in the year.

Gurda made it plain that, as the newest slave, it was Rian’s job to cart the baskets of weeds to the heap.

That meant that at the shout of “basket” or “full”, she must stop her own work and go to them.

She had to strap the burden across her forehead and lug it up to the corner of the field, then back again, empty.

The second time she returned Gurda’s basket, she said, “Can you call me before it’s so full, so it’s not so heavy?”

Gurda did not even raise her head in acknowledgement of the request. It was drizzling and as noon came and passed, it got wetter.

The baskets of weeds dribbled mud all down her back as she carried them and they didn’t get any less full despite her pleading.

Her legs were smeared with the peaty soil and her hands soon stung with its acid. The wounds on her back smarted. The day was long.

More tomorrow.