Veil of Time (30 page)

In the morning when I awake, Fergus is still sleeping. I slip out from under his arm, wrap my shawl tightly about me, and go out to find Winnie along the shore. The hills across the water are quietly snowed under on this Christmas morning, and I feel fresh, too, like the loch with the first touch of dawn. The snow is beginning to clear, but I see no cat, just groups of men tending a fire in a crater they must have dug before I awakened. Illa and some other children are running along the path gathering kindling. None of them are wearing shoes on their poor red feet.

Back at the fire in the crannog, the old lady is saying her morning prayers, stirring the embers to life. Most everyone else is awake, pointing and laughing at the slumbering brother of a king. They glance at me, and I am proud to be the source of his exhaustion. I smile to let them see I know what they’re on about, making them laugh more.

This Christmas Day is abuzz, everything is, just like it would be around a Christmas tree with children and stockings and a turkey in the oven. Radha is letting the hog down from its hook. The beast weighs so much she must set her whole weight against it to stop it from slipping. I offer to help, but she waves me away, then lets it drop to the floor. What she wants me to do is carry the thing out to the fire. I suppose it needs a hoist of some
kind onto my shoulders, but unlike modern pigs, this beast is massively prickly. I don’t think I have much time to decide how to go about this before the others will start to wonder what’s wrong with me.

Dragging gets me nowhere fast; the hog feels stuck to the floor. The women are looking at me in disbelief. I look away when Fergus appears, but he comes over and lifts the forelegs, gesturing with his head for me to get on the other end, so we can sling it along to the gate and then out along the walkway to the pit, where its fiery end awaits. Fergus’s eyes glance off mine a few times. I don’t want him to know how my shoulders ache from the effort. Talorcan joins us to help the hog down into the embers, and then the children form a circle to pile earth on top.

All morning, we’re making custard and bannocks, gathering more roots from the fields where the soil is hard and unwilling to yield its crop. The plants are too withered in the cold to tell what type of roots we are gathering. All I know is, they are not carrots.

The smell of slow-roasting pig escapes from its earth oven in little gasps of steam as people begin flocking in from roundabouts, some on foot, most in curraghs from other parts of the loch. The last to arrive are the musicians, who, in their colorful matching hats, seem to be something of a troupe.

Iona spends the day working alongside us. When Radha deems we will need more bread, I am set to grinding the grits of some kind of wheat, greyer than the
one I know, together with oats and tiny balls of millet and the odd acorn. The stone quern I turned at the museum was not that different from this one; the smooth wooden handle feels warm in my palm. But it is not long before it is wearing a groove in my skin, and then blisters form that I have to let pop as I carry on. The quern yields little flour for the effort.

The bannock dough is heavy and unleavened, mixed with a drop of sour milk. We sit around the fire patting balls of it out flat between our palms while the large bannock stone,
clach bannach,
heats over the embers. The old woman works her hands over it, offering words of thanks, then spits onto it to test its heat. She arranges batches of the rounds across the stone, and they give off a hot floury and nutty smell. It is my job to flip them over once they have browned on the underside. This is not so very different from watching Mrs. Gillies roll out and cook girdle scones on the top of her range.

The morning mist on the water clears and burns off the overcast sky. Children are running about their tasks in the sun, not a hot sun but enough to melt the snow and become a source of warmth a child could lift its freezing toes against. I go out to suggest it to Illa, but her feet are covered in ash from the pit, and she is using the fish bucket to catch what must be some kind of bloated animal innard. I stand by the gate and smile at these children, far rougher than their descendants will be, but children will always be willing to chase a ball around.

Somewhere between one child kicking the ball and another catching it, there’s a rumble. I look off to the far hills for black clouds, but the sky is quite clear. Then a louder rumble tilts the world for just a few seconds, and I have to stagger to keep my balance. I notice Illa fall against the edge of her empty bucket. But she gets up and keeps trying to capture the ball in it. Surely this can’t be the famous earthquake. No one else pays it much attention.

I almost forget about it, as dusk brings a stillness to the farthest reaches of the loch. I want to check to see that the pig is not burning, but I suppose I am the newcomer here, and the men seem to have the bake in hand. I sit with the other women wrapping holly about orange candles that we hang on the wattle walls, making this night feel like any Christmas from my childhood.

When it is dark and everyone is gathered, the singing begins, sort of out of nowhere. There is no conductor tapping his stand to draw everyone in on the same note, same beat, but somehow they manage it. We are gathered in a circle that fills the room under the high thatched roof, and the voices fill the quiet that had settled on the loch, move into the space between every person, loud singing, like the Welsh will be famous for. I hum along to its strange melody, sure that no one can hear me. It’s a song of many verses, no doubt chronicling some saga of the past. There is something magical in the strange guttural sounds of Pictish.

Without warning, suddenly the singing stops. The circle parts, and Iona walks in ceremoniously, dressed in a bright red woven robe, trailing ivy and wearing in her hair the mistletoe we gathered. As the circle closes behind her, she throws spices and wood shavings into the flames. They crackle and have a short life of their own, sputtering and fire flying before they expire in the dark. As the fragrant smoke drifts out from around the edge of the fire, the people waft it towards their heads.

When they lift their hands to the east, Iona begins her chant. And then the direction changes—all hands and bodies turn to face the west. To each direction she has a prayer and then up towards the roof of the crannog the people bend back, offering their hands. The smoke smells sweet, and I feel a little dizzy as I strain my head back and notice deserted birds’ nests at the apex of the thatch.

Lastly they all crouch and splay their hands flat on the floor, their eyes closed as though they were at a prayer meeting. Iona is chanting, staring straight ahead. She’s talking to the fire, spreading her arms out wide. I pick out the words as she repeats them:
Brigid Queen of Fire, behold your child this night as I honor thee and thy realm. I stand humble before thee, asking for thy blessing and favor through the remaining dark months. Lift now the veil between the worlds that I may come to you.

Afterwards we stand out in the courtyard of the
crannog bounded by wattle fencing, and look up at the moon that is not full but crescent-shaped and weaves in and out of grey clouds as though in a dance. Iona is still moving trancelike, up and down on her toes, saying her prayers to this sliver moon. She spins until she drops, her veils blurring behind her, then lies shaking on the ground.

As though the show is over, everyone turns and leaves Iona to herself. The musicians strike up inside where the old man is pulling the cooked boar apart. Only I hold back, hovering over Iona, trying not to give in to the reflex to help her to her feet. Nobody else seems to feel the need to.

I go in eventually, because Illa tugs at my sleeve. We squat by the fire, waiting for the meat to make its way around the chain of hands. Not exactly sanitary, I think, but when I look down at my own hands, I see they are no cleaner than anyone else’s. I pass the meat that is put in my hands until the people at the end of the circle take and eat of this flesh and this blood shed for us.

I take a strip of meat and tuck it inside a bannock. Illa finds this funny, but follows suit, perhaps her first-ever sandwich. The bread has a nutty flavor and complements the meat, which is not tough and must have been a young member of its family. The boiled root we gathered earlier stands off to the side of the fire in an earthenware pot. I try one with my sandwich and find it oddly pungent, something like parsnip. Great stone
jars of something that I would wager is heather ale are brought out, into which cups are dipped. One eventually reaches me, a stronger ale than before, but I take the communion drink, and then take some more. Everyone is coming under the influence of the
fraoch,
drinking more, and the singing is loud and drives any thought out of my head. I drink until the clear flame of the candles blurs, and I am not entirely sure anymore where or in what era I belong. For now I am where I should be.

When Iona wanders in, she sits by the fire, and the people take turns touching her head. I line up and place my hand on her flaxen hair under the wreath of ivy and mistletoe. I don’t know what she is supposed to be giving off, but whatever it is, I could use it. I sit back down and lapse into a kind of drowse.

Then suddenly out of nowhere, a man in a stag headdress bursts into the circle, startling his audience and rousing everyone to their knees. It takes me a moment to see through the smoke and din that the stag is Fergus. A fit of giggles wants to take me over, as he paws the ground with his shoe and dances in towards Iona and back. I see to my astonishment that his steps resemble those of what will become known as the Highland Fling. In and out, then back in towards her. I get the feeling that this dance is more sexual in nature than the Highland Fling, and my impulse to laugh flees.

There’s no singing now, just a lot of jeering and calling. Iona seems fairly oblivious—her head back, her
eyes shut. Every time Fergus dances towards her, the women shout, trying to grab him, sliding their fingers up around his crotch and backside while the men whistle and jeer. I have to fight myself not to run out or jump up and keep the other women off him. I shrink back against the wall, looking for Illa, but she is occupied with the other children and doesn’t appear moved by the sight of her father dancing around the women in what is clearly a heightened state of excitement.

One more approach, then Fergus is on his hands and knees swooping over Iona, and I can tell from his face what is going on in the folds of his leg wraps. Down and up without ever touching her. I find my feet and I start to move towards the door. But then he stops moving and is standing tall, adjusting his antler headgear and dancing within the circle with the women still reaching for him. He dances once around the outside of the circle, and then dashes out through the open door to much calling and whistling.

I go for more ale and don’t find myself until the morning. The first thing I register is that Fergus is not beside me. My mind flies back to all I witnessed the night before, and it makes no more sense now than it did then. Iona is Fergus’s niece, for God’s sake, though she certainly wasn’t acting like a niece last night. Perhaps it was all only a passion play, but I feel oddly betrayed by it.

At any rate, no one saw fit to stay sober enough last
night to tend the fire, so it is a pitiful specimen, being poked and rearranged by Illa to no great effect.

I get up and nudge her aside. “Illa, will you bring bigger sticks?”

She goes off as Fergus comes towards me wrapped in a blanket stitched over a deer pelt. The gaiety of last night has evidently worn off him, because his face is serious as he moves about, gathering things, several daggers, I see, that he slips into a fold of cloth.

“Cait am bheil thu dol?”
I ask him. Where are you going?

He says, “Dunadd.”

“Carson?”
Why?

Talorcan comes in dressed very much like Fergus. He sees the question in my eyes and moves out of range for answering. When they leave together, I follow after them, but Fergus walks back to me and holds me by the upper arms. “I’m going to Dunadd to get the queen. You must stay here with Illa. I have asked Iona to teach you what she knows about healing arts.”

In spite of last night, I take his head in my hands and kiss that crooked nose. “Will you come back?”

But he’s all business this morning and doesn’t answer. He and Talorcan start saddling the horses. But I can’t leave.

He takes me by the arm and leads me towards the water. “You have to be strong, Ma-khee. You must learn to be like Iona.”

I shake his hand off my arm. “I can tell you like Iona.”

He watches me walk away, before he goes back to Talorcan packing the horses with bundles of food and daggers.

He nods farewell to me as I stand far off by the crannog door. I watch them ride away, all knotted up in my throat because I don’t know if this might mean the last of Fergus for me. I find Winnie and curl with her at the fire. I hate to know so little of what is going on. I don’t understand these people and what they do, what that fondling ceremony last night could have meant.

Illa comes back in with a hefty load of sticks. I want to pull her close beside my cat and me, but I content myself with watching her move: the way she squats and decides which stick to put where, the intent look on her face. She seems unperturbed by her father’s sudden absence.

But what if Fergus has no plans for coming back? What if he was only ever here for a while to settle us out of danger, and now he’s returning to whatever it was he couldn’t risk our being around? It suddenly occurs to me that with winter solstice behind us, the new year might already have begun, and that as far as the ancient calendar goes, we are already in 736. If the Picts are about to take over Dunadd, Fergus could be in real danger. I know his people are not going to come out of this conflict well.

But history is moot on the point of Fergus, son of Brighde. No one knows what happens to Murdoch and his war, except that this year, still a week off on the Gregorian calendar, marks his last.