Alwilda

The Swedish castle was buzzing with gossip, and for a good reason Princess Alwilda had run away. It wasn’t completely unexpected for anyone, though it was something to talk about. From the first moment that she had met her future husband, Prince Alf from Denmark, Alwilda had taken a passionate and irrational dislike to him, and they had only met that once and for a short time. Alwilda wasn’t the sort of person who would sit still and be married off to just anyone. She had declared that she wouldn’t be married and no one had thought that she wouldn’t do something like this.

The court’s true shock was twofold, first that the young ladies of the court for the most part had gone with Alwilda, and second the mode that they had left by, boat. When people thought of well bred young ladies they didn’t think of boat as the transportation of choice. They lacked privacy, elegance, and required a lot of hard work and experience to sail. The boat they were using was stolen from Alwilda’s younger brother and had already been provisioned for a trip that her brother was supposed to take. It was the word among the nobles that it had been heard that Alwilda’s brother had sworn to track down his sister, both for the honor of the family, and to retrieve his boat.

Meanwhile the girl who was raising such a fuss was already well out to sea and enjoying herself greatly. Surrounded by her friends and likeminded girls, with no prospect of marrying Prince Alf, and total freedom, it was her idea of heaven. She was probably only sixteen or seventeen and few of her crew was older then that. They weren’t totally ignorant of ship sailing having lived with it their whole lives. Alwilda knew even more then most, possessing an inquisitive turn of mind which had led her to find out as much as she could about the workings of ships.

“Where are we going to go now?” a girl standing beside Alwilda asked. They were both wearing simple dresses but you could tell by the way that they spoke and the way they carried themselves that they were used to wealth and power.

“I was thinking we might head towards Denmark,” Alwilda said casually.

“I would think that that would be the last area you would want to go towards. Do you want to go to Prince Alf after all?” Runa demanded. It would be a lot like Alwilda to cause all of this trouble and then go and do what everyone wanted her to.

“Not at all, we must have some way to support ourselves and I propose piracy. Preying on my father’s ships would grant me no pleasure and might cause unfortunate encounters with people we know. What better ships to prey on then those ships belonging to the country I detest most, the country I was supposed to be wedded to.”

“You weren’t supposed to be wedded to the country; you were supposed to be married to a man,” said Fastvi, coming to join the conversation.

“It’s the same thing when that man is the crown prince,” Alwilda complained.

“You could have been very happy; do you know how much most fathers would give to make their daughters a queen? I know that I wouldn’t complain to have the opportunity that you have just thrown away.”

“I don’t need your lecture Fastvi, you sound a lot like my father some of the time. Why did you even come if you don’t understand why we left?”

“Because I’m your friend of course, I cannot allow you to simply go sailing off into trouble without me,” Fastvi smiled. Alwilda couldn’t stay angry long in the face of such words and that smile.

To be continued...