Veil of Time (26 page)

I hear her close the door behind me, as I walk out onto the crest of the hill under the stars. Everything seems so peaceful now, belying what must take place
here on this fort in the coming years, the bloodshed, the crosses that will be brought in, the ruins that everything will fall into until people of my age are stumbling among them trying to find some inkling of what they were for.

I see him, but he doesn’t see me, his face turned towards the faint line of light on the horizon. I drop beside him and take hold of his cold hand. He doesn’t so much as turn his head.

I squeeze his hand. “Sula has told me that she sees you must leave.”

He doesn’t want to hold my hand now and wrestles it free. Like anyone who must face what they cannot, he pretends it isn’t there.

“Fergus, you know I don’t come from the dead, but I do come from a place very far from here, a place where the druids have become sick and women must see in their dreams what once only the druids saw. I need to tell you that I have seen the shaking of the fort, and that carving of the boar in the rock that Sula sees.”

Fergus is silent. He wipes his face with both hands and breathes hard to gather himself, but he still won’t look at me.

I get up to go. “If you won’t leave, then at least let me take Illa.”

He turns to look at me but says nothing. Somehow, without thinking it through, I have come to this decision. All I know is, this is the choice I didn’t get to make with Ellie.

I climb back onto the hill and make the descent to the house where Illa lies. I guard my heart with feelings of anger at Fergus, with plans to find Talorcan in the morning.

When I open the door into the house, I find Illa where I left her, but Marcus is stretched out on the blankets where I was lying. It makes no difference; I don’t anticipate sleeping.

When the door opens finally, my heart jumps; my breath is suddenly in a race. But the man in the doorway seems hesitant. It is Fergus, a heavy Fergus, one who would rather crouch by the fire instead of by me.

He turns to look at me. I notice him fingering my wedding ring tied to his belt. For the first time in too long, he smiles.

I move to him and touch his shoulder.

He says, “Is the sea going to go away soon?”

I nod. “I have seen it.”

He stands and takes hold of my shoulders. “Gather what is here. Talorcan is below the fort waiting for us.”

20

F
ergus led Ma-khee and Illa over the gap in the fort wall. He had to leave without being seen by the guards at the gate in case his mother had warned them that he might flee. It was rough going in the semi-dark where there was no path through the bracken, especially carrying bundles. But Talorcan was there at the bottom as they had arranged, waiting with his cart and horses, in a short, fringed cape whose hood covered the tattoo on his forehead.

Fergus had spent half the night with Sula, trying to persuade her to leave with them, but she would not change her course. She was a Pict, after all, and too old for travel, she said. As Fergus threw their bundles onto the cart, he still felt a pang for stealing away like
a coward, the very thing his father had schooled him not to be. Ainbcellaig had taught Fergus to fight, to use his fists and eventually his dirk. Murdoch had inherited their father’s jeweled knife, taken from the Sassenachs long ago, but the dirk that Ainbcellaig had carried with him through the days Fergus carried now under his arm at the level of the heart. Still, their father knew better than Murdoch to listen to the druids. Fergus had turned it over a hundred times, but nothing could be done if Brighde had chosen to follow the monks.

Marcus came running down the hill after them. Fergus had bargained the slave’s freedom for his help in getting to Glashan. The Picts over there had lived in loch dwellings since even before the arrival of Fergus’s people from Erin. Talorcan had agreed to take him, because his wife came from these people, and he would be glad to get her out of Dunadd ahead of any fighting.

Talorcan helped his wife into the cart along with Iona, the strange daughter. Young as she was, this daughter was already thought of as a
ban-druidhe
. Fergus had thought to bring her along even if Talorcan had not—without Sula, they were going to need someone to speak on their behalf to the spirits.

Once Ma-khee and Illa were in, Fergus and Talorcan closed up the back and latched it. The sun was spreading a thin light over the eastern sky, the direction their road would take them. Fergus looked back up at this
place of his childhood, the fort that still held his mother and the druidess. He stretched out his arms and leaned in against the rock. He had eaten nothing since the evening before, but he felt as though his stomach might try to empty itself.

Talorcan called to him. “Come. We must be out of sight before we lose the cover of dark.”

But Fergus couldn’t move. Talorcan came to him and placed his hand on his shoulder. “Hold on to what Sula says. Murdoch can alter the direction of the river for a while, but eventually the river runs to the sea. Not all the armies of the world can change that.”

Fergus knew what Talorcan said was true. He glanced at Ma-khee and Illa huddled together in the cart and found again the resolve to leave. Still, this woman could never know what it cost him to ride away from Dunadd in the early morning, looking back at the outline of the hill against the lightening sky, not knowing if he would ever return.

The ride over to Glashan was going to take the better part of the day. Fergus had visited the loch before, but not since his marriage. He had told Illa about the wooden crannogs sitting out on the water and the people who still lived in them. Much of the leather that was used at Dunadd came from Glashan, for Glashan’s tanners were well known. These days they even had a forge, and Oeric had traveled there a few times to teach the smith his craft.

Fergus caught his last sight of Dunadd as Talorcan fought to keep the horses on the trail through low hanging hazels. A moment later, in the shadow of the trees, the great rock was lost to him. He caught Ma-khee’s eye, but not even she could understand the dagger in his chest. He sat heavily against the side of the cart, watching shadows play games over the other faces, expressionless faces, resolved, but unwilling, swaying like dolls with the movement of the cart.

Iona, the flaxen-haired daughter of Talorcan, stared at him with her pale eyes, unblinking. He heard Ma-khee ask Illa who she was.

Marcus answered in Latin.
“Aegyptius.”

“Ceard,”
said Illa. “Her name is Iona.”

Iona didn’t register the discussion going on about her but kept her eyes on Fergus. He knew the ways of druids often seemed strange to a common man, but it made him uncomfortable enough to leave his seat opposite her and sit with his daughter and Ma-khee.

“Is she Talorcan’s daughter?” Ma-khee asked quietly.

Fergus shrugged. “So he tells me, but the woman Rhada is not her mother. She comes from the traveling people, the
Ceard
.”

The sun was beginning to penetrate through the forest and warm the travelers. Talorcan pulled his hood down. Marcus handed out bannocks from a cloth.

Ma-khee said, “How long can we hide at Glashan?”

“We will be safe for a while,” Fergus said. “It will take Murdoch upwards of a month to assemble anything of an army, and then with the march north, another few weeks unless they meet Oengus’s army already on their route south. The time of the darkest day will already have passed before there is any news.”

At midday, Talorcan stopped the horses by a waterfall that splashed down beneath the path over stones and through the roots of oaks before emptying into a pool where beavers had built their home and the air was thick with garlic. It was a relief to their backsides to stop and walk under the spreading trees, and Marcus was ready with a dish of curd and more bannocks. Iona didn’t stop to eat but climbed down to the pool, ignoring the beaver slapping his tail. She knelt on a slab by the waterfall and scooped water over her head.

After a while, Fergus and Ma-khee sat down against a mossy trunk, watching Illa pull garlic bulbs out of the wet ground into the apron of her dress. Fergus was hungry now and chewed on his bread round.

Ma-khee put her hand on his knee. “If Murdoch’s army is defeated, will we have to keep moving?”

Fergus nodded. “But we won’t have anyone to lead us. Talorcan will go no farther, and Marcus will be free and able to choose his own way, which, if he is wise, will not be with us, I fear.”

He tossed his bannock and stood up. “Perhaps I
should leave you with Illa at Glashan. You are neither Scot nor Pict, and Illa looks enough like you she could pose as your daughter. It is I who needs to keep moving.”

His words brought tears to the woman Ma-khee; he knelt beside her, stroking her hand.

She said, “Why do I always have to choose?”

Fergus didn’t understand. He watched Ma-khee take Illa’s hand and wander down to the pond. When they pulled their shoes off and dipped their feet in the water, he could see how pale Ma-khee’s skin was, as though she had been locked in a cell all the years of her life. He asked himself if her other life would eventually come between them.

The women of Dunadd had never been protected in this way and in the past had ridden out to battle with the men. His own wife had done the same, until the monks came in trying to change their ways. Even far back in Erin, this had been the way. Wasn’t it Scotta, mother of all Scotti, whose sons became the high kings of Erin, who fought and died in the Battle of Slieve Mish?

The children of Dunadd were taught early to be strong against the wind and cold. Their mothers bathed their feet in cold water even when snow lay on the ground. Many had been the night when Fergus had slept in the open with his brother or with the army before a battle, with nothing but the cloak and the hard ground. His father had taught him how to dip the
blanket into the river, for the dampness brought its own strange warmth.

Fergus watched Ma-khee’s foot recoil from the touch of the water. Quickly she slid her soft foot back into her boot. His heart grew heavy with the thought that she would never fit into a life that was not always easy, where the sun did not bring as much warmth as to other lands, where it was necessary to hold close to the earth and know her secrets.

Back on the road, the sun had climbed high, although Ma-khee kept tight within her blankets. Every so often, a deer bolted out of their path; birds scattered into the treetops. After the early start, Illa fell asleep against the woman’s leg. It took until the sun was on its descent for the forest to thin and Loch Glashan to appear as a glint of silver in the distance. Over each new rise, the glint expanded until they could see the near end of the loch with its strange structures of straw and stick built out on the water, the long wooden walkway out across the water and the massive roof with stone weights hanging on ropes from the peak to hold the thatch down.

Illa jumped to her knees. “The crannogs!”

Ma-khee stood up in the cart to get a better look, and made the others laugh when she tumbled back into Fergus’s lap.

Although this was not a large body of water, the far end of Loch Glashan disappeared out of view. Other crannogs populated this and the other side of the loch,
but the one to which they were headed seemed to be the largest. Even before Talorcan brought the cart to a stop, Rhada’s parents came running to greet them. From the shore, fishermen left their boats; from the small fields that ringed the loch, women and children came running. By the time they stepped down from the cart, there was a throng encircling the visitors. Ma-khee kept Illa within reach and tried to keep them close to Fergus, but he was still the prince from Dunadd, and the crowd carried him forward, separating him from them until he was led by the aged parents out of sight across the water to the round squat building sitting out on the loch.

Ma-khee made her way with Illa back to Talorcan, who was unhitching the horses.

Talorcan tied the horses, then took Illa’s hand.

“Will you not come?” he asked Ma-khee. “There will be food in the crannog.”

“I will,” she said, but waited so that Talorcan knew that for now she must be alone. It wasn’t late in the day, but the clouds were low and the hills beyond the water on the other side of the loch seemed to belong to the sky instead of the earth. The air was still except for the orange-beaked birds that flitted over the water with their shrill cry. Ma-khee walked by the shore among the abandoned curraghs. She picked up a stone and skipped it across the water.

Fergus found her there as it was getting dark. He was lighter now that he was here, now that he had enjoyed
the food and the company. He stood close to her to see if she would move away. He didn’t know why she had stayed by herself on the shore, whether or not she still wanted him. Standing by the edge of the loch, this strange place that echoed like the dead on the night of Samhain, he felt lonely. When she brushed her arm against his, he caught her hand and brought it to his mouth.

“Come and meet the parents of Rhada,” he said. “They have been asking about you.”