In the Shadow of the Wall (32 page)

Castatin grabbed for the fly next as it buzzed past him but it was too quick for him. He laughed as he missed it by a long way, only to gasp in amazement as Brude caught it effortlessly, snapping his hand around it. There was a sudden silence. Brude opened his fist, releasing the insect which flew off with a buzz of consternation. He realised that he had done something they considered almost magical so he laughed and said, “It’s not a very useful trick. You can’t live on them.” There was more drunken laughter and the awkward moment passed.

It was well after dark when his guests began to leave, a few of them needing help from their friends and families to get them on their feet and out into the night. Mairead was one of the last to go. He offered to walk up the hill with her, to make sure she found her way in the dark. It was a poor excuse for someone who had lived there all her life but she did not object, so he took a burning torch to light their way as they walked up the hill together. Castatin, yawning and slow, tagged along behind them.

It wa the first real chance they had had to talk in relative privacy since he had returned nearly six months before. “Why did you really come back?” Mairead asked him as they began the steep walk, treading carefully in the dark. Even though the track had white stones placed every few paces along its edge to mark the way, the well-worn path could be treacherous underfoot. “You make
Rome
sound like such a wonderful place. Something must have happened to make you give up that life and come back to this.”

He wondered what to say.
Aquila
had thought he was a man who made the right choices but Brude knew that was not always true. He didn’t want to make another mistake now. “Lots of reasons,” he said eventually. “There is clean air here and my family and friends are here. In
Rome
I was free but not free. I just wanted to come home.” He hesitated. “I wanted to see you again. I used to think about you all the time. It was what kept me alive.”

She was silent, making him wonder whether he had said the wrong thing after all, wonder whether she would be upset. With remorse dripping from every word, she said, “It is too late for you and me now, Brude. I used to wish it was you who had come home a rich man, instead of Colm, but you didn’t. I wish you had. But we all thought you were dead because Colm said he had seen you fall. What was I supposed to do?”

“You did what you had to,” he told her. As he spoke he reached for her hand, clasping and holding it tightly as they walked. “I just didn’t want to spend my whole life wondering what had happened to you.”

“You’re a fool, Brude,” she said, but she was happy and almost in tears at the same time as she spoke. “You should have stayed in
Rome
with your hot baths and your houses of stone. I expect you had a lot of women after you as well, didn’t you?”

She had hit near the mark, but still he could not tell her everything. “None of them like you, though, Mairead.”

She laughed, wiping a trace of a tear from her cheek. “Liar!”

As they reached the stockade, she slipped her hand free, thanking him loudly so that the sentries would hear how formal and polite she was being. Lowering her voice, she said, “Do not do anything stupid to upset Colm. He is not a bad man, really. He just dreams of greatness. I am his wife and I have my son to consider as well.”

“He is a good boy,” Brude agreed as he tousled Castatin’s hair. The boy was exhausted, barely awake.

“He is a constant reminder to me of happier times,” Mairead said enigmatically. “Promise me you will do nothing to upset Colm.”

“I promise. Not intentionally anyway. I suspect I annoy him enough just being here.”

He saw her eyes, tinged with tears, reflecting the flickering torchlight. Then she nodded, took Castatin’s hand and turned towards the gate, leaving Brude standing alone on the track in the darkness.

He picked his way carefully down the path to his new home where Fothair was lying sprawled on the floor, a blanket over him. His mother was tidying away the scraps of food while Seoras was banking the fire. They were both more than a little tipsy and his mother was in a talkative mood, which was the last thing Brude wanted after the long evening. “You would have made a good couple, you and Mairead,” she said to him. “She always loved you, you know.”

“That was a long time ago, Mother. It is too late now to turn back time. She’s married and she has a son.”

“And a good boy he is, too, as you would expect.”

Brude agreed. “I like him.”

“Well of course you do. It would be sad if you didn’t, considering.”

“Considering what?” Brude knew that the drink had loosened his mother’s tongue. He could tell that she was skirting round something.

Seoras hissed, “Mor! I think it’s time we went home.” He reached to take her arm but Brude was intrigued now. He felt that there had been an undercurrent ever since he had got back to the village, as if everyone knew a secret that he didn’t. A growing suspicion filled his mind. “What is going on?” he asked.

His mother looked him straight in the eyes. She reached out to take his hands in hers, holding them firmly. “The girl’s a damn fool not to have told you when nearly everyone else knows it, or thinks it whether they know or not.” Seoras tried to tell her to be quiet but she glared at him and said, “I will not be hushed, Seoras. He has a right to know.” She looked back at Brude. “Castatin is not Colm’s son. He is yours.”

“What will you do?” Fothair asked him when Brude told him the following day.

“Nothing. She made me promise.”

“Clever woman. It does explain why the boy looks like you, though.”

“No he doesn’t,” Brude retorted.

Fothair grunted. “If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

“Fine. So what will you do?”

“I told you. Nothing.”

“You’re a bloody fool,” Fothair said with feeling. “Master.”

But fool or not, Brude kept his promise to Mairead. He puzzled over why she had not told him and he quizzed his mother mercilessly until she grudgingly revealed the whole story. Colm had returned from the raid with only a handful of other men, but wealthy, having brought home a great deal of cattle, gold and silver. Somehow the other men looked to him even though he was still barely more than a boy. He had told them that Brude, his father and all the others were dead. Then he had asked Mairead to marry him and she had agreed immediately, so Colm became head man through marriage to a daughter of the line of Beathag. The child had been born in the springtime, less than eight months after the wedding and Mor had known, as the other village women had known, that a child born that early must be small and weak. Yet the boy was strong, well developed and healthy so Mor had gone to speak to Mairead and asked her outright. “She cried and cried and she wouldn’t say, but I knew the child was yours,” Brude’s mother told him.

“Does Colm know?”

“He’s a man. What would he know of children?”

“I know,” old Seoras pointed out.

“Only because I told you,” Mor replied, waspishly. “I doubt many of the young folk suspect it, but all of the older women know.” She glanced meaningfully at Seoras. “And a few of the old men.”

“What will you do?” Seoras asked Brude.

Brude gave him the same answer he had given Fothair. “Nothing. I made her a promise.”

Seoras agreed with Fothair. “You’re a damn fool, boy.”

The Samhain festival came as the days grew shorter and the longer, dark nights began. Food was still plentiful following the harvest but everyone knew that Samhain was the night when evil spirits roamed the earth. They all made sure to blacken their faces with ash and cinders from the fires to disguise themselves so that the spirits would pass them by, not knowing who they were.

Brude sat quietly at the feast, drinking little as usual and trying to enjoy the atmosphere. On this occasion, though, he spent a lot of his time looking at young Castatin and at Mairead. He chatted to the boy, who was always pleased to see him, sitting beside him and asking question upon question about life beyond the confines of the village. Brude answered as truthfully as he could, telling Castatin about the Selgovae and the Damnonii who lived to the south and west, and of the Brigantes who lived restlessly under Roman rule beyond the Wall. But all the time he just wanted to throw his arms around the boy and hold him close, to tell him that he was his father. Yet he could not do that because he knew that it would only bring trouble. He wanted to speak to Mairead but there were always other people around and the chance never came.

He did speak to Cruithne. The big warrior was friendly, although not talkative. Brude was glad that he had decided to trust him. They were not what he would call close friends but they shared a mutual respect which was good enough for Brude.

The nights grew longer and the weather turned colder. Broch Tava, lying on the eastern coast of the lands of the Pritani, was relatively lucky in winter time. Snow rarely fell on the village, even when it covered the hills to the north, but this winter was a hard one with severe frosts and twice the snow did fall, to the delight of the children and the annoyance of the adults. Winter time was a time for staying indoors, for keeping warm, for using up the food stored from the previous year while the storms lashed at the village and made life outdoors miserable.

Some things did continue. The fishermen still went out to cast their nets so that Broch Tava was never as short of food as many inland villages were, but fishing in the winter was dangerous so the tiny boats never went far out to sea for fear of a sudden storm.

Colm occasionally came down to the lower village to talk to Gruoch about the ships he wanted built but work was slow because Gruoch had few skilled men to assist him and Colm would not let many of his warriors help. When the weather was mild, Colm and the warriors would often go hunting. They brought back meat for the whole village, although the best cuts usually stayed in the broch. It seemed as if Colm had decided to deal with Brude by ignoring him, which suited Brude perfectly.

Sometimes Brude and Fothair would go off hunting on their own, but never far and their results were modest at best.

The villagers also replenished their supply of salt by evaporating sea water in great, flat, iron pans heated gently over small fires. In the forests beyond the upper village, the slaves – Gartnait’s son, Oengus, among them – watched the charcoal pits, which was a long and tedious job in the bitter cold of winter, but provided essential fuel for Caroc’s smithy. Caroc’s work never stopped, winter or summer. The smithy swallowed charcoal and iron ore at an alarming rate as he turned out the tools, implements and weapons that the villagers needed. He was skilled but was so busy that he rarely had the time to produce items of great artistry, concentrating instead on functional tools. He made a spearhead for Brude who fixed it to a long pole of ash, which he shaped and smoothed himself. Brude also persuaded him to make a pick and shovel of iron to help with digging. The work took a couple of weeks and Caroc was sceptical of the result but Brude used the tools to dig a well at the back of his house. The metal tools hacked into the hard earth far more easily than the antler and wooden implements usually used for such tasks. Soon Caroc was busy making more picks and shovels for other villagers.

Brude also dug a hole inside his house. Taking care that nobody saw, he took his Roman gladius, his wooden rudis and his manumission papers, carefully wrapped them in leather, then inside sealskin and finally placed them inside a large clay jar. He also put in most of the gold and silver coins he had left, all carefully wrapped in a leather bag inside sealskin. It was a tidy sum, several thousand sesterces in all. Not enough to make him rich, the way the wealthiest Romans were, but enough to live on for a year or two if he ever did return to
Rome
. With the jar almost full, he sealed it with a sealskin cover then placed it into the hole in the floor. He filled in the hole, patted down the earth and placed his sleeping mat over it. He hoped he would never need to dig the jar up again but it was always good to know he had some valuables hidden away in case of need.