Bard I (4 page)

‘Felimid—ah, Felimid!’ she moaned. ‘God forgive me!’

Regan!

Let it be written in Felimid’s favor that it never entered his head to slip through the doorway and leave her. He passed an arm around her waist, clapped a hand over her mouth. She jerked spastically at his touch. A fright for a fright. Swiftly, he dragged her outside.

‘It’s all right,’ he said low. ‘It’s not myself the wolves are eating. Now don’t shriek or have fits! This isn’t the time! Do you understand me?’

She nodded. He freed her mouth.

‘You are a magician,’ she whispered. ‘How else can you be alive and free? Look there! I’ve brought your harp and sword.’

Golden Singer and Kincaid had been set down next to the wall, with a leather sack of a size to be tucked under one arm placed beside them. A heavy cloak lay folded atop them all.

Cairbre and Ogma! And he’d cautioned her not to give way to fits! Fits, indeed! She’d done a magnificent night’s work. How she’d managed to get her hands on the harp and the sword baffled him. Surely Oisc would not have left them just lying around.

“It’s wonderful you are!’ the bard told her. ‘Listen, my wren, I’m for the Forest of Andred. Do you come with me?’

Joy flashed from the blue, blue eyes. ‘Yes, and bless you! Will I? Short of cutting my throat, you couldn’t make me stay here!’

Felimid kissed her briefly. He hadn’t been sure. Many there were who said they would chance any danger for what they desired most, but balked when it came to turning their words into action. Felimid didn’t despise them; he’d felt the ache of indecision himself, often. But it couldn’t form any part of their baggage on this journey.

Neither the walls nor the gate of Oisc’s burg were guarded. The men whose duty it should have been were drinking as though they believed in the dry Christian hell, or flat on their backs in straw, sleeping. This was Yule. In no time the fugitive pair were out, and gone.

The bard was awakened by the barking of dogs. He tried to leap up and draw steel. He was not successful. Regan lay asleep on top of him, four sheep were clustered suffocatingly tight about them. and they were buried in a snowdrift.

They had fled the Isle of Thanet in a stolen boat. When they’d reached the mainland of Kent, they’d turned the boat adrift. and begun their long journey afoot with an angry nor’-easter at their backs. An hour or two after midnight, snow had come with it. falling thick and fast. Before long, Regan came to the end of her strength and Felimid had to carry her. This soon brought him to the end of his. Regan made a solid armful, despite her small size. and the sack of food she had filched to sustain them was not weightless.

Then they had stumbled upon four lost sheep huddled against a pile of boulders, and taken shelter with them. The snow had buried the entire group, but the warmth and pressure of their bodies hollowed a small, hard-packed space around them, and their breath had formed a little shaft for air. They had kept each other from dying of cold. Although not comfortable, they were alive.

Now, Felimid heard the dogs. They were directly above him. Oisc? Na, na. That was not the deep fierce baying of the king’s hounds. This was a light shrill yelping, excited and glad.

Regan was awake now. Together they dug up through the snow with their hands. while the dogs burrowed down. In a moment, their whitened heads found the open air. Two feet of snow had fallen in the night, and the wind had piled it high against the rocks, burying them a fathom deep.

Felimid sneezed. He clambered out of the snowdrift in the grey false dawn, stinking of sheep, while the dogs doubled their barking. Lean, lop-eared, rough-coated, bright-eyed mongrels they were, not big but clever. When he kicked them away, they darted around him still and would not stint their noise. He lifted Regan out of the drift, ignoring them. She pulled a face.

‘Hoo!’ she went. ‘The cramps I have! And oh, it’s cold.’

Felimid’s teeth chattered. He felt his face turning blue. Buried, they had been out of the wind that ululated over the downs, and there had been a fleece of living wool to snuggle in. Save a few small patches, the snow had not melted and soaked them, but now-by every god and goddess, now–

‘Here, take back your cloak!’ Regan said, offering it.

Felimid had wrapped her in it above her own cloak, hours before. His own garments, with the boots and heavy fur body-belt he’d taken as spoils, had been ample. He didn’t accept the cloak or even notice the offer.

He carefully examined the harp Golden Singer to be sure she had come by no damage. Nor had she. Her leather bag was strong, and resisted wet like an egg.

Regan suddenly grabbed Felimid’s arm and pointed down the slope. A man was approaching, a bent gnarled ma n in a sheepskin coat and broad-brimmed hat, a long ash crook in one hand, a wooden shovel in the other. Dogs and sheep must be his.

‘Heh!’ he said in surprise, beholding them. ‘What’s this?’

‘Why, this is a woman,’ Regan told him, with an attempt at pertness her chattering teeth robbed of effect.

‘If you d-d-don’t know that, it must be long since you last saw one! My name is Regan, and this is Felimid mac Fal, a bard of power.’

‘Bard!’ The shepherd’s rheumy eyes lit with eagerness.

‘Lost, are ye?’

‘I’d not just say that,’ the bard contended. ‘I know where we are, and where I’m going, and which way it lies; but if the King catches us, then we will be lost. We’re fugitives, if I must be honest.’

‘Fugitives! Heh! Do that mean runners? Well, I never reckoned ye were hiding in the snow wi’ four o’ me sheep for fun. I been looking for the stupid things ever since the snow stopped, feart the wolves ‘ud find ‘em first. The King, ye say?’

‘Himself.’

‘That’s bad,’ declared the shepherd solemnly. ‘He’ s a hard man, the King is. Only good thing he’s ever done for me is hunt wolves on the downs. Well. Now, look, sir, I can’t help ye. Don’t dare! Not o’ me own will. But then ye’re much younger’n me, and carry a sword, so I couldn’t refuse aught ye might wish to demand o’ me, could I? Heh!’ He grinned at his own cleverness, showing a few brown fangs.

The bard pointed his sword dramatically at the shepherd’s straggly beard. ‘Take us to your hut and feed us.’ he said with exaggerated menace, ‘or I’ll open your wind-pipe for you.’ For good measure he winked. The shepherd was delighted.

‘O’ course! O’ course!’

‘Where is your hut?’ Felimid asked, shoving Kincaid back in his sheath.

‘Two mile south. sir. Heh! But I’ve got to dig out these plaguey animals o’ mine.’

He did so, working briskly. Regan retrieved her sack of food while the shepherd dragged his beasts from their white bed. The dogs got them moving with shrill barks and small nips of their hind legs. They sprang and floundered, but they kept going. They reached the shepherd’s hut as the sun was rising, washing the Kentish downs with rose and lavender.

His hut was a cloghan, a stone beehive at the corner of a garth with low dry-stone walls. ‘Enter, enter,’ he said. He put his four strays with the rest of his flock.

Within the hut, there was little to see: The recess in the thick wall where he slept on sheepskins and heather months old; his tiny circular hearth; a few small belongings like pots and bowls, and hanging on a bone peg the treasure of his house, a pair of iron shears: he had this, and nothing else.

‘Your name?’ Felimid asked him.

‘Murd,’ the shepherd answered. ‘Aye, Murd. The dogs’re Giff and Gaff. Good company—heh!—but they can’t talk. It’s good to have folk here who can. The more so as ye’re British.’

‘I am,’ Regan said. ‘Felimid is from Erin.’

‘Erin?’ Murd looked at his guest with awe. That was the other side of the world to him. further. The kingdoms of western Britain were the other side of his world, known to him only by rumour and hearsay. Ireland lay beyond it altogether. ‘Why, that’s where the spirits o’ the blessed dead go! The snow never falls there, and there’s no adder nor any other poisonous thing, and the man who breathes that air is made young again. My father told me.’

‘Truth,’ Felimid assured him. ‘And gold is thick in the river sand, so that you can wash it out in wicker baskets.

I’ve seen a client-farmer’s daughter wed with a golden ring on her hand, like the daughter of a great lord.’

‘Eh, to think of it!’

Murd lifted a crock of porridge from the hearth, where it had been cooking slowly all night. He shared that with Felimid and Regan, and they shared some bread, cheese and mead with him. The liquor especially put a glow in his old eyes.

‘It’s the king’s own Yule brew,’ Regan said. ‘You will never drink better.’

‘Don’t reckon I will. Here, I’ll give ye some mutton chops to be taking with ye.’

‘Doesn’t the king’s law say they are not your sheep, but his?’ Regan asked. ‘And that you mayn’t kill them for yourself?’

‘Now, don’t go making mischief,’ Felimid advised, tuning the harp. ‘We’re none of us Jutes. We needn’t care what their law allows or disallows. So long as we’re not caught, I mean!’

‘Oh, ye’re quite right,’ agreed Murd. ‘But the King’s law says too that if a sheep happens to die, well, I can have it. See?’

‘Mmm. How did this one happen to die, then?’

Murd belched comfortably. ‘I bashed its head in.’ Felimid made music. However great or lowly, the house where he enjoyed hospitality was a house where he sang. This time it was a simple song. He made it up as he went.

‘See you the gaunt grey shadows

Which move among the snows?

They are the wolves a-hunting,

As well the shepherd knows.

‘See where yon golden figure

Goes gliding down the sky?

That is the eagle waiting.

When lambing time is nigh.

‘See you the lone shape lurking

Beside the dry-stone wall?

Now that is a man come thieving,

And he is the worst if all.”

‘Heh!’ Murd ejaculated. ‘That’s wonderful! ‘Ud ye sing it again, sir’? I want to fix it in this old noggin. A real good song fer a shepherd, that is.’

Felimid sang it again. He added another quatrain for luck.

‘Fire to frighten the wolf-pack,

And dogs to thwart the bird,

A strong ash crook to the prowler –

And that’s how I keep my herd!’

The old man chortled with joy. In royal halls, with time to display all the jewels of his art, Felimid had had less appreciative hearers. But just now time was running swiftly behind him.

‘What’s the distance to Thanet?’ he asked.

Murd scratched in his beard dubiously with a gnarled finger. ‘Never been there, sir. But I do hear it’s twelve mile.’

Then they had come about ten before the snow buried them. It would have buried their tracks as well, naturally . . . and maybe the hunt for them had not even begun yet. Oisc and his warriors would surely sleep very late this morning, and awaken groggy. It was all time. The more Felimid and Regan could extend their lead, the better.

Regan had her straw-stuffed wooden shoes off and her feet at the fire. The warmth made her sigh with pleasure. She looked very pretty, Felimid thought. with her tangled crow-black hair and the ruddy fire-glow on her. The practical side of him noticed that she wore heavy trousers under her skirt. She was practical herself. and no mistake. She’d contrived a number of necessary things in a very short time after hearing that the King had condemned him. Belike she’d even have found a way to get him down-safely!—from his odd position above the wolf pit, if he hadn’t got out of that predicament himself. For the sake of his vanity, Felimid felt pleased that he had.

Old Murd packed the meat he had promised them, while Felimid laid his harp away and Regan crammed on her shoes. Murd wished them luck as they took their leave of him.

They had it. The weather was clear and still all that day. They came off the downs into the Vale of Kent, where they had to step warily, for many a Jutish thorp and steading was there, each with its dogs.

The Jutes were mistrustful of strangers. Their law had it that a man approaching any dwelling of theirs must blow a horn or shout aloud three times. Unless he did, it was taken for granted that his intentions were evil and he was treated as an enemy. The fugitive pair judiciously broke that law.

They crossed the Vale of Kent undiscovered, and still with no sign of pursuit from the King. Felimid began to be puzzled; he had not expected it to be this long delayed. Although the Jutes were not a race of horsemen, there were ponies in King Oisc’s burg. Had he decided to follow afoot, on snow-shoes?

Whatever the reason, no pursuit appeared. They reached the Forest of Andred that eve. having come twenty miles since dawn. Regan was exhausted. She could barely eat, and though they found nothing but a tree to sleep in, she slept like one dead.

A forest in winter has beauty all its own. Snow lay crisp and white as the flesh of an apple in drifts and piles between the black boles of ancient trees. Above them the interlaced twigs of the forest roof were sheathed in ice, like shapes of brittle glass. The dawn turned them a glowing pink that looked deceptively warm.

Regan was asleep yet. Felimid. less thoroughly tired because his longer legs had served him better in crossing the downs, was awake and active. A robin eyed him from among the prickly leaves of a lone, dark green holly. Its breast was red as the berries. Felimid whistled softly to the bird in its own language.

It cocked its head, watching him as he worked. He gathered dry fuel, despite the season; anyone could do so if he knew how to look. Scraping away the snow, Felimid built a small fire between the roots of Regan’s tree. He’d found a pair of hedgehogs as well, while he searched for dry kindling; the round spiky balls of delicate meat grown fat for their winter doze made good eating. The bard killed them and packed them in clay; when there was a deep enough bed of hot coals, he’d bury them to cook slowly. When they were done, spines and skin would come off with the clay. The bard slavered at the thought. Searching further afield, he found and looted a squirrel’s hoard. Roast chestnuts would go well with the hedgehogs.