Veil of Time (18 page)

Sula asks me what’s wrong when we walk into the musky air of her hut. Her eyes are wandering all over
me, but it is my heart that is in pain, and I’m not sure she has anything for that in her pots. She kneels by my twisted ankle and bids me sit. She holds her hands skyward, then rubs them together so quickly I expect to see sparks. But they feel warm and afford some relief when she wraps them around my ankle, pressing in at certain points on my foot. It feels good to be back in the care of Sula, like it used to feel sitting on the lap of Mrs. Gillies when I was a child.

I begin to wonder if Colla was any more persuasive with Fergus once I left. I wonder if he is now touching the tips of her fingers to his lips. Still, I am quite hungry, having declined that stew earlier. Sula seems to know and sends Marcus off for food. When he is gone, she starts telling me about the monks. She does a very good impersonation, walking tight with hands folded, ringing her imaginary bell with a sour look. She throws her arms up in a dismissive gesture. But Marcus is back with food, finer than I have seen yet; perhaps the monks are being treated to dinner. What seems to be a kind of custard fills one bowl, and it tastes very good, a sort of sweet scrambled eggs, with a flat cake sweetened with honey. He brings whisky in a small earthen jug, which I don’t normally like, but I sip it and it sears my insides enough for me not to notice the cold so much, not to pay as much attention to the thought of Fergus.

Once the meal is over, Sula wraps herself in her
cloak and lies down by the fire. Now I am glad for the extra material in mine. It doesn’t make the floor any softer, but it provides a couple of layers of heat. The room is hazy from the smoke and dim, lit only by a stone lamp. I bunch up one end of my cloak for a pillow and let my eyes close. Sleep comes, but dreams do not.

Some time later, I am awakened by the plague of many a tenant in Glasgow on a Saturday night—drunken singing outside the door. They’re not singing they belong to Glasgow, for I’m not even sure if Glasgow properly exists yet, but whatever it is they are singing about, it seems to be funny to them. The racket doesn’t appear to awaken Sula or Marcus. But I creep to the door and, still wrapped like a mummy, peek out. The stars are bright against the waning moon, and I can just make out two figures lolling upon each other, one of which I realize quickly is Fergus. I close the door again.

But Fergus has seen me. In a moment, he is banging on the door.
“Ma-khee, mo chridhe.”

Mo chridhe
. Mrs. Gillies used to call me that when she was in a good mood. It means “my heart.” And my heart has picked up on it, because it is beating faster than it should.

He bangs on the door again. “Ma-khee.”

But Maggie takes her shawl and lies back down by the fire. Prince Fergus should go back to his wife. He
isn’t in any state to know what he is saying. And he should stay away from me with his lack of eunuch-ness and his
mo chridhe
. I don’t want to think about this now. I want only sleep. And will get things straightened out in the morning, if the morning in this Dunadd ever dawns.

14

F
ergus woke up shivering by the midden on the far side of the fort. He emptied his stomach onto the grass, and then stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He hadn’t often had whisky, but the monks from Iona had brought bottles from their distillery, and he had decided to drink himself to the point that he could no longer hear their speeches and the tinkle of their bells.

Brighde had served them custard and cake as though they were royalty, not eunuchs from an island where sacred women once lived. The thought of women brought back the image of himself banging at Sula’s door. He bent over double, fearing there might be more to lose,
but only retched, and then groaned for having played the fool in front of the woman Ma-khee.

Fergus heard a voice off to his left and found the king, his brother, low down among the bracken, rubbing his face.

Fergus offered his hand. “The monks will be the death of us,” he said.

Murdoch stood up, shivering. “At least we will die happy.”

Fergus laughed, nudged his brother. Murdoch laughed, too, making himself stagger and almost fall. They were boys again, hiding from their mother, free for just a few more moments.

“Colla is a good woman,” said Murdoch. “What did I tell you?”

Fergus shook his head. “Not for me, my friend.”

Murdoch wagged his finger at his brother. “That is not what I saw last night.”

Fergus rubbed his eyes. Things might be worse than he feared. “What did you see?”

In truth, Fergus couldn’t remember much of the evening of drinking. He had a vague recollection of holding the woman on his knee, but he also recalled it was more of a taunting for the monks than for the woman.

“I saw a good match,” said Murdoch. “I saw my little brother with a wife of his own kind. I saw a woman
who would give him counsel and love him well, whose daughter would be a friend to Illa.”

Fergus began to walk away, past the druid’s hut and down towards their childhood house.

“I hope you will not reject Colla,” Murdoch called. “I have already told her of your interest.”

Fergus turned back. “Then you told her wrong.”

They found their mother and the two monks just as they had left them, their heads inclined over a book. The language of Erin had never been written in books. The druids counseled that the life in the language would dwindle if it were reduced to scrawls on a page. Everything there was to tell could be passed on by voices. It took many years for the druids to learn the history by rote. Sula knew much of the tradition, too: she was the one who knew the exact number of summers from this to that, from when MacErc and his brothers left Erin, the summers measured back to Finn M’Coul and all the heroes from the other country. But Sula’s main use to the people of Dunadd was in her predictions, her charms, and her healing ways. There were other druids living within the fort who kept the history better, who knew the patterns of the stars and their meaning; a few boys who were learning the trade.

Brighde looked up. “I am glad you came back. There is more to what the Christians have to say than comes out of a bottle.”

Fergus laughed. “The spirits of the bottle speak the most clearly.”

Murdoch sat down on a stone by the fire. “What is in the book?”

Brighde said, “It is a story of a savior, not here but far to the east where winter never comes.”

“To be saved from winter,” said Murdoch, glancing at his brother, “would please the people well.”

The monk with white hair spoke. “From a winter of the soul, brother.”

Brighde said, “This savior performed wonders of divination and brought men back from the dead.”

Fergus drew closer. Could this savior from the east bring his own father back? Could Saraid come back even now? He asked, “Where is this savior?”

The young monk barely had a beard yet. “The Romans killed him.”

Murdoch shook his head. “The Roman armies killed many with their chariots and armor.”

“But if he is on the other side himself,” said Fergus, “how can he bring back the dead?”

“He sits at the right hand of God,” said the older monk.

“Which god?” asked Murdoch. “The horned god?”

“No,” said the monk, laughing, “the horned god is no god. There is only one God. It says so in this scripture.”

Fergus was confused. The mightiest power was Cailleach, the triune goddess, who kept them through the
dark days, who nourished the earth with sun and rain in the spring, and who put seeds in the belly of woman.

“He is the god of Moses and Abraham. His name is Yahweh,” said the young monk.

“A man?” Fergus laughed. “How could the only god be a man? How could a man give birth to the world by himself?”

“A father,” said Brighde. “A spirit father.”

Fergus was in need of a father. Still, he didn’t like the monks and their strange ways.

He took a step towards them. “Why is woman now banished from Iona?”

The younger of the two monks looked embarrassed.

The older one spoke. “Columcille, who brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to this land, decreed it.”

Murdoch said, “Columcille? Didn’t he come from the land of my ancestors across the channel in Erin? He took no such habits from Erin. He must have taken this from Rome.”

“Woman,” said the older monk, bowing slightly to the royal woman in his company, “it says in the book it was woman’s fault that suffering came into the world. She listened to a snake and defied God; she tried to have more knowledge than she should have.”

“How can a woman have too much knowledge?” Fergus asked. “What good would a woman be without knowledge?”

The old man spoke. “Woman tempts man from his
spiritual path. This is why we have neither women nor any female beast on Iona.”

Fergus began to pace. “This is madness.” He stopped and raised his arms to his mother. “How can you listen to this—you, the chief woman of this band of Scotti?”

Brighde coughed to interrupt and directed herself towards the monks. “It is true that the island of Iona bears the bones of the royal line from Fergus MacErc on. My mother and her mother are buried there. If you will admit no women, then how should I be buried with my line? I would want nothing less.”

The monk seemed to feel he was losing ground. “As a royal woman, of course, you would be admitted to the island and permitted to lie with your ancestors.”

“As a royal dead woman.” Fergus turned to the young monk. “What kind of a man shuns the female kind? You are yet young; do you not wake in the morning with the need for a woman?”

The young monk tried to form words, but no voice came with them. The older monk stepped in. “There is no carnal lust where there is love of Christ our Savior.”

Brighde coughed quietly. “The Christians have brought other news. The Picts in the north have been moving south. They say their new king Oengus is a ruthless man.”

Murdoch furrowed his brow. “So I tell my brother, who would sooner marry a Pict than fight one.”

Fergus felt his arm move to strike.

Brighde stepped in. “The Christians say we must reject the gods and the ways of the Picts, allow them no purchase, or we will be overrun once the forces from the north join with their brothers here under the sign of the boar.”

Fergus’s breath was coming fast. “If we make enemies of our Pictish brothers and sisters now, we will drive them to ally with their cousins in the north. There has never been conflict between us. Their gods and customs have served us well enough. We understand each other.”

Brighde glanced at Murdoch. “Take the Christians,” she said. “I will talk to Fergus alone for a while.”

“Come,” said Murdoch, helping them from their seats. “Our Saxon metalworker makes all manner of gold ornaments. Perhaps there might be something for your cape.”

The monks followed Murdoch out, leaving their book in the hands of Brighde.

“Pay no heed to that,” said Fergus. “So many words on a page telling us how we must live. They care only for selling their wares, nothing more.”

“Still,” said his mother, “there is much in here to be admired. Peace instead of war, love instead of hate.”

“If they love so much,” said Fergus, “then why do they hate women? Do you think your kind brought suffering into the world?”

Brighde shook her head and laid down the book.
“Still, we would do well to learn this writing from the Christians.”

“No,” said Fergus, “you know my father believed the druids on this matter. The Romans wrote everything on this paper, and look, where are the Romans now? The words of the heart beat louder than this.”

“But Fergus, if we could have it written down that we, the Scotti, own Dunadd, then perhaps there would be no need for battle.”

Fergus shook his head. “Even if we believe what the written word says, the Picts would trample such words into the dirt.”

He sat down on the rectangular stone by the fire. “I have heard of these Christians and their written word among the Britons. They take the power from the
ban-druidhe
. They do not allow the lines anymore to come down through the women, but only through the men. They spit on the spirits that have sustained our race through winters and wars. It can come to no good end, these eunuchs with their hatreds. It is no wonder they make whisky to dull their pain.”

Brighde rolled her eyes. “Last night, my son, you were happy to dull your own pain with the Christians’ drink.”

She walked to him and laid one arm around his shoulders. “I know it is difficult for you to see the Picts with anything but the kindness you showed your wife. But you have failed to come back to life. Saraid is dead,
my son. The ways of the past are changing. The Picts of the north have become hostile, and unless we see the threat, we are in danger ourselves.”

“But what of Illa?” asked Fergus. “Look at my daughter. She is a Pict.”

“Which is why I have tried to keep her from Talorcan.”

“You cannot turn back what is already so, Mother. Talorcan is my brother. He would not turn against me. Talorcan’s mother was also of a royal line. The people listen to him.”