In the Shadow of the Wall (22 page)

The fires were lit and everyone daubed their faces with the ash, blackening their features in symbolic attempts to conceal their identities. Some, especially the children, played pranks on each other and on unsuspecting adults. The adults themselves grew more and more uninhibited as the drink flowed and Brude knew that the village would have a few more babies in the springtime. There were more men than young women in the village, though, and he suspected the drink might cause some arguments or fights among the young warriors, so he slipped away, returning to Seoras’ house as the sun was setting.

Most people rose late the following morning but Brude and Fothair were back at the new house early, gouging a circular perimeter line using a wooden peg hammered into the ground where the centre of the house would be. A long piece of twine was tied to the peg and attached to a sharp piece of antler, which they used to mark a line in the ground where the walls of the house would be built. Then they began hacking at the turf with more antlers, digging a narrow circular trench. It was hard work. Brude was tempted to ask Caroc the smith to make some metal picks and shovels but he knew they would take time to make and, by the time they were ready, they could have the trench dug using the traditional tools.

Seoras came over to watch them working. “I’ve organised some help,” he told them. “It will take you a year to build at this rate. Lulach the thatcher and his son will gather reeds and dry them out. Seoc’s sisters will start making the twine and rope. Seoc will help, when he can, and I’ve asked Gruoch to help with the wood. He’s supposed to be building ships for Colm but that work won’t be starting until after the harvest is all in, so he says he’ll help out with making the beams.”

Brude felt a mixture of relief and concern. “Why would they do that for me?” he asked.

“Because,” Seoras replied, “you’re one of us, even if you do seem a bit odd to some folk. Mind you, you’ll be expected to return the favours in kind.” He laughed at Brude’s puzzled expression. “Lulach could do with some meat and some clothes. Gruoch needs wood and Seoc needs a husband for his sister.”

Fothair laughed aloud as Brude held up a hand in shock. “Hold on! I don’t mind cutting more wood or doing some hunting but I’m not looking for a wife. Whose idea was that?”

Seoras gave him a gap-toothed grin. “Your mother’s keen on it. Barabal will be sixteen by next year.” Barabal was the elder of Seoc’s sisters, Brude knew. She was a pretty girl who seemed shy and hardworking, but he barely knew her and he had not even considered taking a wife. Apparently his mother had other ideas. “A man your age needs a wife,” Seoras told him. “It would mean fewer problems with Colm,” he added pointedly.

Brude ignored the advice.

Seoc turned up the next day, helping them to knock oak pillars into the trench they had dug, each pole as long as Fothair was tall. They hammered them in to the trench so that about two thirds of their length remained above ground, the distance between the stakes carefully measured by Gruoch, the carpenter, who had also come to help. Brude, Fothair and Seoc started weaving hazel rods, some horizontally between the oak stakes and others vertically to form an interlocking wall, the wattle as it was known. While they were doing this, Gruoch and Seoras began to work on the longer stakes they would need for the roof. Gruoch had a fine selection of metal tools which he used to cut and shape the ends of some of the shorter stakes Seoras had told them to chop.

As they worked the flexible hazel between the stakes, Brude said to Seoc, “I hear my mother has been trying her hand at match-making.”

Seoc looked embarrassed. “I thought you knew. Do you mind?”

“I prefer to sort out my own life,” said Brude. “Don’t get me wrong, your sister is a pretty girl, but I’m almost twice her age and I don’t even know her.”

Seoc nodded. “She’s a bit afraid of you,” he said. “But she’ll need a husband next year and I’d rather she didn’t end up with one of the lads from the broch.”

“Plenty men to choose from up there,” Brude commented dryly.

“Oh, I suppose some of them are all right but most of them look up to Colm and are too impre h themselves for my liking.”

“So why do you serve him?”

“It was either that or be a fisherman and I don’t like being on the water,” Seoc said with a grin. “I’m no good as a farmer either.”

“Are you any good as a warrior?” Brude asked him, smiling to let him see the question was intended to be light-hearted.

“Not really,” Seoc admitted cheerfully. “I can just about hold my own with most of them. Mind you, the way things are going, we might all find out soon just how good we are.”

Brude’s ears pricked up. “Why? What’s happened?”

“Haven’t you heard? Colm has refused Gartnait’s latest offer to buy back his son. That’s three times now.”

Brude glanced at Fothair. He saw that the tall man was listening intently as he worked on the hazel wall. “I expect Colm won’t ever release him unless Gartnait offers him everything he owns,” he observed.

Seoc nodded. “It’s worse than that,” he said. “Caroc sent for some high grade iron ore from the Damnonii but Gartnait has stopped the wagons and seized the ore. His messenger arrived this morning with the news that no ore will come through unless his son is released.”

Brude stopped work on the wattles and stood up straight, stretching his back muscles. “How did Colm take that?” he asked.

“Not well. I think he’s planning a raid to get his iron.”

“Well if he does, you take my advice and volunteer to stay behind to guard the village,” Brude told him. “It would be daft to get yourself killed over such a stupid argument.”

“I don’t expect that will be a problem,” Seoc replied. “There are plenty of them up there who are dying to have a go at fighting someone. I never wanted to be a hero, not after my dad left and never came back.”

“He never wanted to be a hero either,” said Brude. “But he was one, in his own way. He was a good friend to me for the short time I knew him.”

Seoc nodded grimly. “I never forgave lorfor leaving us like that.” He sniffed and wiped his eye. “Damn wind. Making my eyes water.”

“Mine too,” said Brude.

Later that day, as they sat in Seoras’ house and Brude’s mother dished up their evening meal of fish stew with wild mushrooms and pulses, Fothair said to Brude, “I think I might have to run soon.”

Seoras shot him a startled look but Brude knew what was troubling the tall man. “You want to warn Gartnait?”

“Peart is my home,” said Fothair. “What do you expect me to do? Wait for Colm to attack and slaughter my people?”

“Gartnait is no fool,” Brude told him. “He’ll be expecting Colm to do something rash. Anyway, unless you grow wings you’ll not get there before Colm’s horsemen, even if you start now.”

“I can’t sit here and do nothing!” Fothair protested in helpless rage.

“You can’t stop the wind blowing off the sea either,” Brude pointed out. “And if there’s nothing you can do about things, you might as well forget them.”

They argued long into the night but none of them could come up with any plan for getting word to Gartnait. Fothair fretted and cursed but, when Brude awoke the next morning, he was still there, a look of thunder on his face, but clearly having decided not to run. He looked at Brude and said, “I know you would do something if you could. I just don’t like feeling so helpless. But I’ll stay and hope that nothing too bad happens.”

They went back to work on the house, resuming the weaving of the wattle while Gruoch carved and smoothed more wood in preparation for building the roof. Seoc’s two sisters, Barabal and her younger sister, Seasaidh, arrived bringing great lengths of hemp rope they had twisted. Brude thanked them. Barabal, the older girl, dark-haired and with shy, dark eyes, blushed in embarrassment but her younger sister, who was nearly fourteen years old, precociously piped up, “Seoc says you’re going to marry Barabal. Is that true?”

Brude looked at the older girl who was now blushing a bright red and nudging her sister in an effort to shut her up. He looked at Seasaidh and replied, “I honestly didn’t know anything about that until yesterday. I think some people have been trying to make a match without asking the people involved.”

Seasaidh looked at him with eyes that were older then her years. He had seen that look before on young girls, and it disconcerted him much now as it had before. Seasaidh, he thought, would be a handful for whoever married her. She ran her gaze over his chest and arms. He was stripped to the waist because the day was warm but now he was starting to regret it. “You’ve got a lot of muscles,” Seasaidh said boldly, “and a lot of scars. If you don’t want to marry her, I’ll marry you instead. I think you would give me strong sons.”

Brude didn’t know what to say. Fothair burst out laughing while Barabal tried in vain to hush her sister. Brude was annoyed with himself for feeling so disconcerted by a thirteen-year-old girl but he felt that anything he said would only land him in deeper water, so he just smiled, thanked them for the rope and told them he had to get back to work. The girls stayed a short while then went off, Seasaidh promising they would be back with more rope the next day. “I’ll look forward to that,” laughed Fothair.

Gruoch chuckled as the girls walked away. “She’s a vixen, that Seasaidh. Needs a damn good thrashing but she’s never had one because her father died before she was born.”

“It looks like you’ve got them waiting in line for you,” Fothair told Brude.

Brude threw a clod of earth at him, hitting him unerringly on the chest. “Get back to work, Slave,” he ordered.

Fothair grinned, bobbing his head. “Yes, Master.”

In the afternoon a young warrior, wearing a sullen expression on his beardless face, arrived with a summons for Brude. “Lord Colm wants to see you.”

“What for?” asked Brude.

The young man shrugged. “How would I know? He just said to fetch you. Now.”

Brude picked up his shirt and pulled it on over his head. With a word to Fothair to keep working, he followed the warrior to the track and up the hill. Neither of them spoke. They went through the south gate, past the buildings and straight to the broch. The two guards stood aside, allowing the warrior to duck inside. Brude followed.

It was the first time he had been inside the broch since his return home more than four months previously. This place had once been his home where his father had held court and his mother had lived. He felt he knew it intimately. The doorway was small and the entrance tunnel, stone on all sides, dark and low. They reached a passageway running left and right, a circle formed by the massively thick inner and outer walls of the great broch. Each wall was three paces thick, filled with rubble and faced with smoother stones. By the standards of the Boresti it was an impressive building but again Brude, when he considered it against the wonders of
Rome
, had a feeling of disappointment at its crude construction. He wondered whether he was perhaps more Roman than he cared to admit.

Stone steps climbed the passageway to the left. He followed the warrior up them, round the circle of the building to the right until they reached another low doorway. They went inside to stand on the wooden floor of the upper level. Here were Colm’s private quarters, partitioned off by hanging curtains. A bearskin rug lay on the wooden floor, blazing torches flickered from brackets round the walls and Colm sat in a great wooden chair like a king on a throne. High above, a circular hole in the upper walkway admitted a little daylight to ease the gloom. At one side of the chamber, to Brude’s left, Mairead sat on a smaller, plain chair, beside a wooden table where plates held the remains of a meal. She looked anxiously at Brude and he saw the fear in her eyes. He could not tell what she was afraid of but he stayed on his guard. Behind Colm, standing like a great bear, was Cruithne, dressed in his usual leather armour with his chain mail overcoat and a long sword hanging at his waist. He was studying Brude carefully, his eyes alert. Brude ignored him. There was another warrior beside Cruithne, a bearded man with many painted designs swirling across his cheeks and forehead. He was leaning casually against the stone wall of the broch, looking bored with everything around him. Brude had seen him around the village from time to time but all that he knew was that the man was called Lutrin and that he was supposed to be one of Colm’s closest advisors. He was often away from the village, doing Colm’s bidding.