Veil of Time (21 page)

Sula sleeps the sleep of the dead and does not wake until the sun is beginning to set and the dismal light in
the hut has become even more dismal. While Marcus lights the torches on the wall, Sula reaches for the bundle of fancy clothes and hands it to me.

She says, “Put these on now.”

I don’t know where we’re going, but all of a sudden the excitement in the hut is palpable. Marcus leaves, not to provide me with any privacy, I suspect, but on some other errand. He comes back with a saffron belt tied around his tunic, his hair smoothed back off his face with oil.

When I pull on my new robe, I realize that it, too, has a belt. I tie it tight, like a trouser belt, but Sula loosens it to sit low on my pelvis. The hat stands up a little at its point, and all I need now is a chiffon scarf hanging from the peak. I don’t know when mirrors were invented, but I’d like one now. I’d like to see how Maggie Livingstone transforms into her Dark Age counterpart.

As Marcus ties the brooch to the shawl that hangs heavily over one shoulder, I begin to wonder why this period came to be known as the Dark Ages. It doesn’t seem to be dark to anyone living in it. As Jim says, the lack of heat can be a problem, but it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. The village children run barefoot, no matter that it is almost winter. Mrs. Gillies’s flat in Glasgow was always cold. She said no one had central heating on St. Kilda, and no one ever took ill with a cold. I suppose our age may someday be designated the Soft Age.

Marcus grabs a torch on our way out of the hut and
shines it on my path so that I don’t trip on the long robe over my feet. I have to lift it in little puckers, in a way I haven’t done since I was playing princess as a child. As we make our descent off the top of the fort, there is a clattering of metal on stone. Every so often a ping is added to the percussion.

“What is it?” I ask Marcus.

He points to his foot and then to the ground. Foot on the ground. This is Dunadd. Yes, I know exactly what is being carved into the rock. Not the Boar yet, but the foot imprint. But I don’t know why this is happening now unless there is a new king to be crowned.

We are being taken back to the house of the queen, and now I understand my colorful clothing. I like the custom of announcing one’s presence by calling from the outside. The unplaned wood of these doors certainly wouldn’t do your knuckles any favors. Sula calls her name and mine, but doesn’t mention the servant. In fact, when we go inside, Marcus remains outside.

It’s much brighter inside this house, and the once beautiful queen sits on a wooden chair by the fire. A thin golden band encircles her grey hair, but my attention is quickly drawn to Fergus, who stands by her chair, and to Illa, who’s sitting on a stone at the hearth. So far, no wife. I try not to meet Fergus’s gaze, but he looks even more appealing in a purple jacket tailored to the waist and leg wraps that appear to be made of tweed. My impulse is to curtsy before a queen, but Sula merely approaches
her. Fergus moves another wooden chair from the wall towards the fire for the druidess; I am left standing, until he taps Illa’s shoulder and gestures for her to give up her seat. I notice she is wearing shoes tonight and a scarf in her hair. She lifts her long pale green dress at the front as she jumps up from her stool, a sandstone block with curious handles at either end that seems oddly familiar to me.

A wiry man with red hair comes in and sits by the door, stroking his small lap harp, humming something of a harmony to its melody. Another musician comes in and joins him with a reedy-looking instrument that sounds like the chanter from a set of bagpipes. My fingers automatically play with the ring handles on my stool.

A servant who is not Marcus, and, I suspect, neither Roman nor eunuch, comes into the room holding a jug from which he dispenses an amber-colored liquid into glasses on the carved table. I take a sip, glad that it is not a spirit, tasting something close to mulled wine. When Illa is offered a small glass, I almost object. She is only a girl, after all.

The queen takes a sip and eyes her glass accusingly. Fergus says something about
Romanus
, so maybe the recipe is left over from the empire. Fergus seems disinterested in the drink, more occupied with looking at me in the clothes he brought. He keeps finding excuses for moving closer to me, and I can’t say I mind. I suppress
the urge to brush my shoulder against his thigh or lean in and rest my head against him.

The queen doesn’t seem pleased with me. It suddenly occurs to me that these clothes I’m in might come from Fergus’s wife, and perhaps she is a particular favorite of the queen.

“Why is her hair so short?” she asks without looking at me. “Did her husband die?”

I feel Fergus waiting for the answer. Illa comes over and gently gathers the ends of my hair in her hands as though they must hurt. My hair must seem short compared to the other women at Dunadd in 735. More like the length of her dad’s.

“Where is your husband?” the queen asks.

If it weren’t for the fact that Fergus’s face is quite well represented in hers, I don’t think I would like this woman.

She says, “Are you married?”

Fergus is looking at the floor and doesn’t see me shake my head.

“No,” I say, loud enough for him to hear. But I don’t know if divorce has any status in this time, so I follow it with, “My husband died.”

The queen pats me on the shoulder. The haughtiness goes out of her eyes. “How old are you?”

Fergus looks at the ground again. I tell them I’m thirty-five, which isn’t exactly honest, but it’s close.

The queen speaks more gently now. “Where is your country?”

My country?
I’ve tried Caledonia, but it doesn’t seem to work.

I say, “Alba.”

They just look at me.

So I say, “Dunadd,” in the way people in 2014 say Dunadd. They correct the pronunciation. “Doonadd.”

They nod their heads and seem well pleased.

I say, “Before that, Glasgow.”

Again a moment’s pause and then the proper pronunciation. “Glaschu?”

Only Fergus seems to know this one. “Glaschu,” he says, and then he tells them of a small dwelling by a stream to the south. I have to smile that Glasgow was ever this insignificant. He says it’s popular with monks.

“Is she a Christian?” the queen asks.

“No,” I am quick to say.

Now the queen knows a little more, she seems better disposed towards me. I am pleased because Illa seems less wary, too. From the corner of my eye, I can see the disbelief on Sula’s face. The queen gives me her hand and offers me her seat. It’s not until I turn and glance back at the stone I have been sitting on that I see what has been nagging at me ever since I first sat down.

For there on the floor, being sat upon like any other seat in the world, and much less worn around the edges,
but undeniably, in the heat and flicker of the fire, is Scotland’s famous Stone of Destiny.

Sula seems to understand my shock. She comes over and holds my arm because I am almost shaking. Nothing has brought this strange reality I am living home to me like seeing this icon of Scotland being used as a seat by the fire. I want to tell them what’s going to become of this stone, never to let it out of their sight, because England’s King Edward has his eye on it. But Edward, the Hammer of the Scots, is still five hundred years from the start of his hammering.

The musicians have stopped playing. The queen is speaking to her son in low tones that I can’t make out. Illa seems quite amused by the spectacle that I am, and have always been. It’s only by looking at her that I manage to calm down.

I really want to sit back down on that stone, but Illa has perched herself on it again. When I smile at her, she smiles back, though I can tell she doesn’t know why she is smiling. The queen is studying me. Fergus orders the musicians to continue.

Fergus brings out a nicely crafted board game with blue glass pieces and one white one, which seems to be a favorite of his daughter’s and has her up and jumping around. This girl is less interior than Ellie, more excitable. Fergus gestures for me to watch them play, but it seems a good deal more complicated than I can pick
up without a proper explanation. As far as I can gather, the goal of each player seems to be to capture the white bead, and the rules seem somewhat similar to backgammon. I suspect Fergus will want me to play next, but there’s no hope. So I study him instead: the quick smile of regret that comes when his daughter gets the better of him and laughs; the hair that falls forward over his cheeks as he studies his next move; the square hands that run through his hair when he is frustrated; the golden ring over the tattoo on his middle finger.

I am glad for the arrival of the food brought in by Marcus and the other slave. Marcus has a broad smile on his face, not something I have grown to expect from him. They lay the food out on the table in wooden dishes, except for what have to be bannocks in a pile by themselves, small bready rounds that will survive to become another symbol of Scotland. I note the fruit salad with relish, though the only two fruits in it seem to be apple and pear. I suppose grapes without air travel would be a bit much to ask.

Illa leaves her game and pulls out pieces of fruit from the bowl with her fingers in a way I would never have let Ellie do; I follow suit. Fergus reaches for a strip of meat from a different dish. I take one, too, but can’t quite place the taste through the saltiness, something like pork, only gamier. The queen does not appear to be eating. She exchanges her glass of mulled wine for something else poured for her by Marcus from a stone bottle.

I signal for Ellie to watch me as I kneel down, take up seven of the blue beads, and then cast them down in front of me. I used to be good at jacks as a girl and used to play with my children when they were little. I throw the white bead up and scramble for a blue bead before the first bead drops. She comes close and kneels by me, drops the weight of herself against me. I throw my white bead up again and this time catch two blue beads before it drops.

Illa likes this game. Her smile is like Fergus’s, and I would like to kiss that face. Both of them. She puts her hand out for the beads, and that hand is not what you would call clean, but I would still put my lips on it. Fergus says something that makes her withdraw the grubby paw, and everyone, I realize, is waiting for my next move. The game of jacks gets considerably harder after two and especially with glass beads instead of spiky modern jacks. I try, but drop one of the blue beads before I catch the white one.

Fergus swivels down onto the floor by his daughter, catching my eye and taking the beads from my hand with fingers that leave a sting at every point they touch my skin. He starts with one and makes it up to four before he hands the beads over to Illa. The girl doesn’t have much luck after one, so I try to show her how to throw the white bead straight up so that it’s easy to catch again. My eye follows Fergus as he moves away. Illa keeps going. I can hear Fergus and Sula in low conversation
with the queen, and the word
Boar
keeps coming up. The queen holds a book up to him that has
Vita Colum Cille
and
Adomnan
on the front. Fergus refuses to take it. I am sure I have seen that title somewhere before.

Marcus refills our glasses, including Illa’s, and soon she has to abandon my game because she is too giddy. After a while, after the talk has died down, she falls asleep on the hard floor. I want to take my cloak off and lay it under her, but I suspect this is part of the toughness training. I wonder if Fergus sleeps on a hard floor, too. I wonder how it would feel to have the weight of him against me.

When Sula gets up to leave, I stand, too. But Fergus wraps his hand around my arm and bids me sit back down. He himself goes out with the others, leaving me in an uncomfortable silence with the sleeping girl and the silent grandmother. Now that her father is gone, I take off my hat and slip it under Illa’s head. I am just wondering if I am supposed to sleep here tonight when Fergus comes back in with a small bundle. These people like their bundles.

He unravels the cloth and brings out a fine bone comb in the shape of a hand attached to a wrist handle. He holds it so carefully that I know it has meaning for him, and I am scared to touch it.

When he places it in my hand, I think I catch the glint of a red hair caught in a crack of the bone. Maybe
the hair of a different wife than Colla. I hand the comb back, managing a smile. But then with his mother looking on, he starts running it through my hair. I try to remember the last time I washed my hair. He combs it gently, stopping when it catches. Every stroke of the comb, he follows with a stroke of his hand.

I don’t even want to know what the queen is thinking, so I keep my eyes straight into the fire, just above the Stone of Destiny, and wonder how it became my destiny to mingle here. All I came to Dunadd for was to get away, and here I am under the hand of a medieval lord, whose touch, I might say, is very kind to me.

When the queen falls asleep in her chair, he wraps me about with his own shawl and leads me out into the cold night. We stand by the house with a question between us.

He says,
“Tiugainn comhla rium.”
The question is in his face as his hand gestures up the hill.
Come with me.

I look at his outstretched hand, but I cannot take it. I know where this question is leading. I can read it in his eyes. But moral high ground or no, I can’t make love to another woman’s husband. I shake my head. He drops my hand.

I can feel him watching, but he doesn’t follow as I make my way back through the dark to Sula’s hut, holding up my dress to navigate the ascent but feeling nothing like a princess this time. I sit by the embers of Sula’s fire, my knees under the fancy robe pressed against my
chest, wishing I could leave this era with its complications of history and love.

I try to sleep, to induce my return to the blue couch and my view of the river and the open fields, but I am having no luck ordering things the way I want them tonight. Later, when Sula and Marcus get back, they quickly take up their spots by the fire, and everything descends again into stillness.