Spirit of the Mist (21 page)

He wanted to speak to all of the farmers and herders and their families living in the raths, those small isolated ring-forts just large enough for a family and their livestock. They must all be told of the death of Galvin and that Brendan’s kingmaking would be done at Lughnasa. They should all see for themselves that now they had a new king.
 

“Go to them, Brendan,” Muriel said. “I can see to the repairs and the work that must be done here. You already know about the thatching and the shortage of buckets; and I have noticed that some of the stones have fallen from the outermost ring and need to be replaced. I will see that it is done.”
 

He grinned, looking as happy as she had seen him since the night of his father’s wake. “Together we will make this a kingdom like no other,” he said. “Though…should a queen have to concern herself with buckets and stones?”
 

She smiled back at him. “I’m sure that being a queen is not all about gold cups and finely woven gowns. Go, Brendan. See to our farmers, and I will see to things here.”
 

He kissed her once more. “Keep my love while I am gone. I will return to you as soon as I can.” She watched as he rode away with four of his men and tried not to wonder when she might see him again.
 

As Muriel left her husband at the gates and walked back inside the dun’s stone perimeter, she followed the curving inner wall past the cattle pens. She was in a hurry to get back to the King’s Hall, and her mind whirled with ideas and plans for the many tasks she hoped to complete before Brendan’s return—but when she passed the low wooden shed at one end of the cattle pens, something made her stop.
 

A single black cow lay in the shed, chewing her cud; and in the corners, on worn piles of rushes and straw, a group of people—a group of slaves, she realized— shared chunks of old bread and passed a wooden cup of water among themselves.
 

Muriel paused, then walked to the wooden fence rails, placing her hands on the top and leaning in to peer beneath the shed’s roof. She looked from face to pale and dirty face, and recognized the fourteen slaves that she and Brendan had found hiding in the woods on their wedding journey to Dun Bochna.
 

The seven men, four women, and three children had been here for the past several days, for as long as Muriel had been here; but with all of her time taken up first with preparing for her wedding and then with the death of Galvin, Muriel had not seen them at all. And since their arrival here, she was ashamed to say, she had not thought of them either.
 

But now here they were. “’Why are you out here in the cow shed?” she asked. “Were you given no other place?”
 

They all looked up at her and froze. Eventually two of the men got to their feet but stayed where they were. The women gathered their children close. “The craftsmen said they would return and give us work for today,” said the tallest man, the one with a hood half covering his face.
 

“They told us to wait here and eat first,” added the second.
 

“Of course,” Muriel said, folding her hands across the rail. “Do not hurry yourselves. I meant only to ask why you have been forced to stay in such a place. Do the servants here not sleep in the King’s Hall, or in one of the houses?”
 

“My lady,” said the hooded man from where he stood in the shadows, “the roughest shed is a finer home than any we have known before. The smallest crust is a better meal than any to be had at Odhran’s fortress. We will stay here. Servants may sleep in the King’s Hall, but not slaves.”
 

Muriel could only stare at them, seeing in their gaunt faces and thin and weakened bodies a lifetime of suffering. Her fists tightened. She had told Brendan she would take care of things within the dun, and there would be no better place to start than here.
 

“Tell me your name,” she said to the hooded man.
 

He hesitated. “Gill,” he said at last. “My name is Gill.” Muriel looked at him again.
 

This was the same man who had spoken to her and Brendan on that night when they had discovered these slaves hiding in the forest. As before, he kept a hood up over his head, leaving only a few wisps of white hair showing around his face. He still had the old piece of narrow leather tied over his brow so that it covered his left eye. He was taller than any of the others, and looked strong and broad-shouldered in spite of his age.
 

For a moment he seemed to remind her of someone she knew, or had once known, but she could not imagine who that might be. She was not well acquainted with anyone who had ever been a slave.
 

“Gill.” She smiled at him, and at all of them. “Starting tonight you will all make your beds in the clean rushes of the King’s Hall where it is dry and there is a fire to keep out the evening chill. In fact…” She glanced at the children finishing the last of their stale bread. “I would like you all to go there now. The rest of the servants have got fresh bread with butter, and dried apples boiled in milk. There is enough for you, too.”
 

The men and women all looked at each other, sitting as they were in the cowpens. “My lady—we are slaves. We wear the iron collars and wristbands of slaves. We are not—”
 

“Gill,” she broke in. “There is one thing you must learn about Dun Bochna. We may have servants here, but no slaves. Go now; go to the hall and get your share of the food. Find my servant Alvy and tell her I sent you. When you have eaten, go to the armorer’s house. I will tell him to remove your iron bands.”
 

After briefly looking at each other, the women took their children and hurried away from the cowshed toward the riches that awaited them in the hall. The men followed, Gill last of all, and he glanced at Muriel with his single brown eye as he walked past.
 

“No slaves,” she whispered. “Never slaves.”
 

Chapter Thirteen
 

For another fortnight, Muriel spent every waking moment making each part of Dun Bochna as new and perfect as she possibly could. The work not only allowed her to show Brendan what she could do for him as his queen, and of how much this place meant to her as her new home, it also kept her from thinking about him, and worrying for him, with every moment that passed without his return.
 

“He is a king now, Lady Muriel,” Alvy would say. “From now on he will often be called away to see to the safety of his people. And they do not all live within the confines of these walls.”
 

Muriel would smile and try to keep her voice light, saying, “If even you believe he is a king, then it must be so.”
 

“The kingmaking is in another twenty-eight nights. What could happen in only twenty-eight nights?” And for that, Muriel had no answer.
 

She would simply go on inspecting the houses for any holes in the thatch or for hinges that had rusted through. She would count the number of wooden buckets, discard those beyond repair and order new ones to be made. And she would walk through the
souterrains
, the cool, dark, underground hallways where most of the food was stored, looking at the rows of apples, the heaps of dried seaweed, the baskets of hard cheeses, and the hanging sides of beef.
 

Muriel was especially pleased to see that the people they had brought back from the woods near Odhran’s fortress were now decently dressed in newly made clothes of dark, undyed wool, with belts and boots of sturdy leather and long rectangular cloaks of the same dark brown cloth. The cloaks would serve to keep the rain off and keep them warm while sleeping in the clean rushes of the hall each night, and she even found simple bronze circular brooches to pin the cloaks over each person’s shoulder.
 

And as the days went by, it seemed to her that their faces looked less pale and gaunt, especially those of the children, for she saw to it that they got their share of the plain but nourishing food that was always there in abundance for the other servants.
 

Soon the ex-slaves blended in so well with the other servants that Muriel could hardly tell them apart—all except Gill, the white-haired man who always wore a strip of leather over his left eye and a dark woolen hood over his head.
 

All of her work made the time pass quickly. It made Muriel feel needed; it made her feel that she truly had a place here at Dun Bochna. But at the end of each day, she still went to her bed alone…and at the end of each progressive night she had slept less and less.
 

Finally, as Muriel lay down on the ledge in the darkness of their home and pulled the furs over herself yet again, she reached out to touch the empty space where Brendan should have been and felt her eyes begin to burn with tears. Tomorrow night, the moon would be full. If Brendan had not returned by moonrise then, she would use the water mirror and seek him out herself.
 

The next morning Muriel stood beside one of the houses, anxiously looking up at Gill as he climbed up an old wooden ladder with a tightly bound bundle of straw over his shoulder. “Do be careful,” she called as he stretched out facedown on the slick straw roof. “That ladder is old and worn. I should have someone bring another.”
 

“Please don’t worry, my lady,” said Gill “This will be done in no time. You need not worry over me.”
 

She shook her head. “I cannot help it. I do not like the look of this ladder. I’ve been inspecting many things these last days and have seen much that needs replacement. This is one of them. Wait, I will go and have someone bring you another.”
 

Muriel turned to go, looking around for another servant who could bring out another ladder, but then she saw Brendan riding in through the gates, followed by his four men.
 

“Brendan!” She hurried from behind the house, moving to stand where he could see her, and felt as though a great weight had been lifted.
 

Instantly he turned his horse and cantered toward her, swinging down to the ground even before the animal could stop. He caught her in his arms and held her close. Then, just as he leaned down to kiss her, Muriel heard a commotion from behind them at the house.
 

There was the crack of wood and the sound of tearing straw. Someone shouted and there was a thud as something heavy fell to earth.
 

Brendan gripped her by the shoulders as he drew back, and then let go and dashed off toward the sound, around to the other side of the dwelling.
 

Muriel’s instincts about the ladder had been right. Gill lay sprawled facedown on the earth, the broken contraption lying half across him. Brendan rushed over to the old man and placed his hands on his shoulders. “Lie still, lie still,” he said as Gill tried to sit up. “We’ll send for a physician. Lie still!”
 

But Gill pushed himself up to his hands and knees and began running his fingers through the grass, clearly searching for something. “Do not move!” Brendan said again, more urgently this time. “Whatever it is, we’ll find it. Alvy! Go and bring a physician. Hurry!”
 

Muriel watched Gill closely, wondering what the man could be searching for. His cloak was still fastened—it was not his bronze brooch that had fallen—and then she realized what it must be.
 

His ever-present hood had fallen back to reveal thick white hair, cut above his shoulders in the manner of a slave, but the leather strip that was always tied over his left eye was gone.
 

Brendan moved to Gill’s head. “Let me see you,” he said, crouching down to look closely at the man’s face. “Ah, you must have slid against the straw—you are scraped and cut—is there anything in your eyes? Here, let me see…”
 

There was a long pause. Brendan stared at Gill’s face, then slowly stood up, and, to Muriel’s surprise, he backed away and stood a few paces from the ex-slave. Standing and staring, Brendan was clenching and unclenching his fists.
 

Why would he do such a thing? Gill obviously had a missing or disfigured eye, for he was never without the leather strip to cover it. Surely Brendan had seen horrible things as both a warrior and a prince. Why would he recoil in horror from the sight of a crippled servant?
 

Near the wall of the house lay Gill’s strip of leather. Muriel walked over and picked it up, then took it to Brendan. “This is what he is searching for,” she said, holding out the leather piece. She looked at Gill and tried to smile at him, but his head was down and turned away.
 

Brendan was pale and still, almost as pale as he had been on the night she had found him on the sea. “What is it?” Muriel asked more insistently. “It should come as no surprise if he is scarred—think of what his life has been up to now. What is wrong?”
 

“Gill,” Brendan said. “Look up at your queen. Look up at my wife.”
 

Slowly Gill raised his head and peered up at Muriel with one brown eye. She crouched down to look closely at him, prepared for whatever Brendan might have seen.
 

His face was scraped and cut from where he had slid across the straw when the ladder snapped. He would have a few bruises, too, but he was able to move, with nothing broken.