Veil of Time (14 page)

I sigh. “Come and sit down.”

He comes back, but shuffles his chair back a little before he looks at me. For every part of me that could want him, a much larger part steps away. It’s not that he is unattractive, not that he couldn’t be a nice refuge, but I’ve just had enough of slotting into someone else’s idea of me.

So I change the subject and watch his face drop. “When were you in the merchant navy?”

He goes for a laugh. “I’m sixty-two, if that’s what you want to know.” He takes a breath, as people do when they are heading into muddy water. “I had a wife, you know, before this one, before Janet. I was already in the merchant navy when we met, and it paid well, so I kept going. We had two daughters. But I was away much of the time naturally. When I came home on my last leave, she’d shacked up with someone in Liverpool, hadn’t even bothered to tell me, just vanished with the wee ones. I had to find everything out from her sister.” He laughs, not happily. “Here I was turning up at the door of my flat in Glasgow, expecting a welcome, and my key didn’t fit in the lock. I’m about to break the door down when this fellow comes to the door, says he’s the new tenant and I’d better scarper or he’s going to call the police on me.”

I watch him ramble on, as my mind drifts away to Fergus. “What did you do?”

“Punched him in the face.”

“Did he call the police?”

Jim shrugged. “I didn’t stay to find out.”

I sigh. “How long until you met Janet?”

He lets out a breath, seemingly relieved to be on a happier note. “A couple of years. But it was out of the merchant navy for me. I wasn’t going to risk that again.
We came up here, lived in a council house for a good many years, until I built this one here at Dunadd.”

I want to ask what happened to Janet, but I still hardly know the man.

He says, “How about you?”

I say, “Oh, you know. The marriage didn’t survive after Ellie died. It was just too much. Some things are.”

He’s not the first person I’ve told, but I feel my voice run off a little shaky, perhaps because I just saw Ellie again not more than half an hour ago. Men of Galvin’s ilk weren’t schooled in what to do with shaky women, so we both wait a second until the emotion passes.

He shifts in his seat. “What about Graeme?”

I like this note better; it takes me out of my freeze. “Graeme’s after a place at St. Andrew’s University. More tea?”

He hands me his cup. The little activity lasts long enough to change the tone.

“It wasn’t a headache,” I say.

He looks interested.

“Why I slept all those hours wasn’t because of a headache.”

I have to force out the next words, which never come easy, not even to Dr. Shipshap. “I have epilepsy. Complex partial seizure disorder, to be precise.”

He looks at me as though I had just told him the bull in the field has only one testicle. “Is that a fact?”

I shrug. “As close as we’ll get.”

He looks at me sideways, as though not completely sure he should be asking. “You shouldn’t be driving, then, should you?”

“Luckily, I have very distinct auras before each seizure, so I always have a warning.”

“Which is why you kicked me out earlier before I’d finished my cornflakes.”

“Correct.”

I gather the plates and go to the sink with them. “Anyway,” I say, “after a seizure I normally sleep deeply for a few hours, which is how you found me when you came uninvited into my house.”

He brings me the glasses. “I was worried about you, and now I see I had good reason.”

“Not good reason.” I turn the tap on, hoping to drown out the conversation. “It’s just a sleep like any other. Only deeper.”

He picks up a tea towel and waits for the first wet plate. “Is that why you’re always on about your dreams?”

The man is fast to catch on. I nod.

“I’ve been wondering, right enough, how you could have known about the sea coming up to Dunadd. As far as I know, no one but the nutter who lived on the estate a hundred years ago ever proposed such a thing.”

I’m not saying anything, just handing him dripping
knives and forks and letting him draw his own conclusions. Maybe he could make sense of it for me.

He looks perplexed. “Anything else from these dreams of yours?”

“Well—” I stop and wonder if I should. “There’s a Fergus.”

“MacErc? The annals say he was the first to come over from Ireland.”

I shake my head. “MacBrighde. He’s the brother of the king.”

“The list of Dunadd kings doesn’t mention brothers. I suppose Fergus was a common enough name.”

“And a witch named Sula.”

He shakes his head. “You’ve got me there.”

“She lives at the summit in what is now just that part of the round wall. It’s a cell with a heather thatch and herbs hanging from wooden rafters. They think maybe I’m a Saxon or a Roman.”

He’s scratching his stubble. “Do they now?”

“In my dream.”

“Aye.”

I don’t know whether Jim thinks I’m entirely insane; he isn’t giving much away.

I stand up. “Anyway. All nonsense.”

“Och,” he says, “would there be anything left if we took away all the nonsense?”

I empty the washing-up bowl and drape the dishcloth over it. Winnie paces behind the taps, purring.

“And this Fergus bloke,” Jim says, sitting back down at the table, “is he a handsome brute?”

I try to look calm and completely with it. “It’s my dream. How could he not be?”

He laughs. “Could you find a good-looking grannie for me in that dream?”

To make him feel better, I place my hand on his shoulder, and before I know it his hand is on top of mine. I take mine back and go to the kitchen. It’s not long before he gets up to leave.

But there’s one more question. “I don’t suppose there’s a rock around here with rings on it?”

He shrugs. “Out at Achnabreck, aye. The cup-and-ring marks, you mean?”

I take a deep breath. If this is a dream, it’s turning out to be awfully accurate.

He laughs. “Now, even I have no theories about what they are all about.”

I have to bite my tongue, hold back Sula’s explanation of the stars and the way the earth turns. I watch Jim as he walks home, skirting the puddles in his sensible brogues, berating myself for telling him anything. He’ll no doubt be telling the postman, who comes in his own time three days a week,
Yon woman from Glasgow’s as loony as you please.
You couldn’t blame him for thinking it.

I keep insisting to myself that it’s all just a dream, but I’m finding it harder to believe that. I certainly wish it
were more. I like Dunadd in the Dark Ages. I like that Sula lives above everyone, and ministers to them with her herbs and her stones. I like that the king’s brother listens to her. I like the king’s brother, period. I like his lovely hand on the place the priests have so much trouble with, his fingers in the palm of my hand, his mouth resting softly against my lips. I like the way his hair curls where it meets his shoulders, and the way his nose is just slightly off-kilter. I smile when I think of the look of amusement on his face when he told me Marcus was a eunuch, and I am very glad Fergus MacBrighde is not one. I don’t know that for a fact, but something in my pulse registers it. Something in the way my fingers fidget with the latch on the window tells me this is so.

11

F
ergus came back up to the fort through the gates this time and climbed up to the house of Brighde, his mother, to the house where he had been a young boy with his brother and father. He found her by her fire with Murdoch, her firstborn, her ally in a way Fergus had never been. Murdoch had a wife and five children but often slept in his childhood house. Fergus was more like his father, Ainbcellaig, who had not himself been king, just the consort of his royal wife. The gold band would never sit on Fergus’s head either; Murdoch was much better suited for king anyway, for the ceremonies and the honor. Murdoch had always known his station and lorded it over his brother.

For a moment, they didn’t register him, but kept
talking and drinking wine from the glasses their mother loved so well, the ones the Franks had traded.

Murdoch noticed him first. “Here he is, the night rider.”

Brighde beckoned him to the fire. “Come and warm yourself. Where have you been?”

Fergus accepted a glass of the blood-red liquor from his mother’s hand. “I did not know your spies were out, Murdoch. Since when could a man not go where he pleases?”

Murdoch dashed the remains of his drink into the fire and stood up. “Since when did a brother of mine sneak around in the darkness like a criminal?”

Fergus pressed the heel of his hand against his temple. He always tried not to go along with Murdoch’s games, but it was hard not to feel the anger in his stomach. “I only went to the ring stones. Perhaps it would do you good to go there, too, and remember what Sula taught us.”

“We don’t live in that age anymore,” said Murdoch, “when rain patterns in stones could hold any sway.”

Fergus said, “No, we live in the new age of suspicion and division.”

Brighde laid her hand on Fergus’s shoulder, anxious to steer the conversation clear of argument, but Murdoch had to get in one more comment.

“We know who you took there.”

Fergus stood up and handed his glass back to Brighde.

She caught his hand. “Stay a little. There are things to discuss.”

Fergus sat back down but turned his shoulder away from his brother.

Brighde said, “I have decided to keep you at home for a while, send some others out for the next collection.”

“Or have them come here,” said Murdoch. “It shouldn’t be our job out risking our necks for a collection. I have heard it told in other kingdoms, how the lords come and bring with them a bag of soil from their land. They empty their bags out in the presence of the king, set their foot upon their own soil, and then swear their allegiance. We could have the stone mason carve a foot into the rock itself to mark the spot. Fergus should be at my side, not running his horse all over Dál Riada collecting fealty.”

Fergus shrugged. He had no argument with this. And he was glad for the change of topic.

But Murdoch couldn’t let it rest. “If you won’t take a woman from outside Dunadd, I know of one for you here from the clan of Scotti.”

Fergus stood and walked towards the door. “I have heard enough of your plans for me, Murdoch. Don’t you understand these things can’t be found in the schemes of others? Especially yours.”

Murdoch caught his tongue between his teeth, a sign that Fergus knew of old was the rumbling before the storm.

Brighde laid her hand on her elder son’s knee. “Murdoch.”

She turned to Fergus. “The marriage is no matter.”

“And besides,” said Murdoch, “I already bedded the strange new woman myself and soundly until she rejoiced with joy unspeakable.”

Fergus made a lunge at his brother.

Brighde pulled them apart. “Stand back from each other. Have you lost all dignity, the king and his brother fighting like boys? Murdoch, you were bedded here last night. Say so.”

Murdoch would not say so.

“Besides,” said Brighde, “the chief reason your brother wants you to remain at Dunadd is in case of trouble with the Picts.”

Fergus let his brother go. “From the north and east?”

Murdoch rearranged his plaidie and pulled the brooch back up to his shoulder. “From the Picts of the Boar among us.”

Fergus spat his words. “Is there any sign of trouble?”

Murdoch stood astride the hearth as though he were about to issue an edict. “The Christians say this new King Oengus is gathering a large band to the north, and some of our own men are leaving to join them.”

“Which men?”

“Cousins of Talorcan and your former wife.”

Fergus sighed. “The way you treat Talorcan, it is a surprise that he himself has not already gone.”

“Talorcan has to learn his place,” Brighde said. “There has been no Pictish rule at Dunadd for over two hundred years. We would like to keep it that way.”

Fergus shook his head. “There will be no trouble, as long as we stay civil with the Picts. They want peace as much as we do. They have no intention of rising up and taking Murdoch’s crown.”

Murdoch said, “Talorcan has been seen by the lookouts stalking around the castle walls. Such behavior suggests only one intention.”

Fergus laughed. “To see Illa, you fool. He comes to see the girl.”

Brighde said, “It is not forbidden for him to see his niece.”

“No,” said Fergus, “but neither is he welcome.”

“You should not bring him up here,” said Murdoch.

“Why not?”

“Because you can see the mischief in his eyes.”

“You see only what you seek, Murdoch,” said Fergus. “If you want to find trouble, look to your Christian friends with their infernal bells, spreading trouble, passing laws over our heads about what we can and shouldn’t do.”

“A bell is not a sword,” Murdoch said. “We need not fear their words.”

Fergus held his brother with his gaze. “We have reason to fear. These Christians are filling up the lands with their ways. Only four years ago they fought a battle fifty thousand strong against the Moors in the land of the Franks. Now I hear that they chased the druids out of the land of the Sassenachs to an island and murdered them to a man. To a woman. They allow no women. See what they have done to Iona, the Isle of the Druids. There is your enemy, my brother, if an enemy is what you’re after.”