The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (14 page)

Flowers and boughs were piled at the feet of the god-posts, and a chain of flowers linked them, marks of the festival just past.

Diarmuid’s folk were gathered on a cobble-paved space before the outer doors of his house to greet the Royal party, about forty of them including some who must be guests. The shock-headed children might wear anything from nothing whatsoever save an anklet of luck-beads to a shift-like shirt. Adults were in the baggy wool
Feileadh Mòr
, the wrapped and pinned Great Kilt in the blue-brown-red tartan of their Clan. This folk preferred that one-piece garment to what Órlaith privately considered the more elegant phillabeg version that Mackenzies used, with its separate plaid. Though it was a matter of opinion; McClintocks had been known to refer to the Little Kilt as a
little pleated skirt
, something which had started brawls. Some here wore the Great Kilt alone, with its upper part thrown over a shoulder, and very little else down to their bare callused feet; except in the coldest parts of winter it would serve as cloak and blanket as well.

Diarmuid himself wore ankle-boots, knee-hose, a broad tooled-leather belt with a golden dragon buckle to hold his basket-hilted sword and dirk and sporran with its edging of badger fur, and a sleeveless shirt-tunic of fine saffron linen embroidered with green thread at the neck and hems. A slim torc of twisted gold circled his neck now—the mark of the handfasted in both Clans—and two chased gold bands were on his bare muscular upper arms. He was a young man of medium height, slim but broad-shouldered, with dark-blue eyes and seal-brown hair in a long queue, his chin shaven unlike most McClintock males but a mustache on his upper lip.

His new bride stood beside him in a fine embroidered linen
leine
, a long shift, under a newly woven arisaid in the Tennart colors. An arisaid was the most formal of woman’s garb and not much worn by those below middle age on anything but the greatest occasions . . . such as a wedding, or a Royal visit. It was much like the everyday kilt that all usually wore, but with the lower portion far longer, down to the ankles, and only a dirk on the belt. She had high cheeks and narrow gray eyes above a snub nose. Hair the color of birchwood flowed down in many long plaits confined by a flower garland of creamy white meadowsweet, often called Bridesblossom when put to this use.

One of the Japanese muttered: “Tattoos!”

Well, yes,
Órlaith thought, suddenly conscious of them through a stranger’s eyes.
And the way he says it . . . it
feels
like tattoos are something . . . dangerous and risqué.

It was what you’d first notice if you weren’t used to McClintocks, which not many apart from their immediate neighbors were. Diarmuid himself had elongated blue curves on his arms and legs, body and face; his lady Caitlin had the wings of a monarch butterfly around her eyes, the colors tawny-orange and black. Many of the others were both more gaudy and more crude.

There were a few non-McClintocks present. Their leader seemed to be a stocky man of medium height with ruddy-brown skin and his graying black hair in braids, dressed in plain homespun trousers and deerskin hunting-shirt and moccasins, and a few others with a family resemblance.

Yurok,
she thought, nodding in his direction and getting a sober inclination of the head back.
Have I met him?

She’d have guessed his tribe even without the Sword and the newfound communion with the Land of Montival—that was curiously muffled and incomplete as yet, probably because she hadn’t gone through the Kingmaking.

The Yurok folk still dwelt along the Klamath River south of here and more towards the coast, very far out of the way. Which accounted for their survival in their ancient homeland both in the days of the Americans and after the Change; her parents had made one visit there, when she was eleven, and it had been a hard trip. The Yurok had become autonomous again when the ancient world fell, absorbing most of the other dwellers in the region, and they’d made alliance with the first McClintock chieftain for mutual help against bandits and Eaters. Though they were part of the High Kingdom, such few dealings as they had with outsiders were mostly through his Clan.

And didn’t Diarmuid once tell me a family story of the Tennarts . . . yes, there’s some of that heritage on his father’s side. When the ancients first came to these lands two centuries ago one of his ancestors married a Yurok woman and brought her north to the valley of the Rógaire. He wasn’t the only one hereabouts. Not surprising. Even
conquerors as hard and stark as the old Americans rarely sweep a land absolutely clear; some of the blood of the vanquished endures, however scattered or unknown, as water moves unseen through sand.
Da’s father Mike Havel was a quarter Anishinabe, after all. Nonni Sandra had a Nez Perce great-grandmother married to a Quebecois trapper, and Grandmother Juniper had some Cherokee, very far back.

Órlaith reined in and raised her hand in greeting. The McClintocks cheered, a high ululating sound, pipers added the raw wail of the drones, and a drum boomed.

The adults—which with McClintocks meant anyone big enough—all brandished their weapons thrice in the air as they shouted, a gesture of greeting and fierce loyalty. That included a good many yew bows, spears, tomahawks, gruesome-looking Lochaber axes with their hooks and two-foot blades on six-foot poles, and swords that might be either basket-hilted claymores or the original
claidheamh mòr
, greatswords four feet long worn over the back in a rawhide sling. Nobody was wearing armor, beyond round nail-studded shields with a central spike, they’d come here for a festival-feast and a wedding after all—the nailheads were polished bright. But McClintocks didn’t so much as go out to the privy without something in the way of a weapon. That was a habit that had been fading elsewhere lately, but it remained quite lively here.

The Japanese attracted looks and murmurs and some plain dropped jaws—most of these forest-dwellers would never have been outside their dùthchas in their lives, save for some of the older ones who’d marched off to the Prophet’s War and come home to tell the tale. A few started to bristle dangerously at the strangers, and Órlaith cut in before scrambled backwoods rumor about who’d been responsible for what got out of hand. These were a fierce folk, readier with their steel than her father’s people.

“These
Nihonjin
are our guests, and they share our feud,” she called, her hand on the hilt of the Sword to remind them that she could not mistake the truth of the matter. “As our guests and allies, they are under the Crown’s protection.”

The scowls turned to smiles, or sheepish foot-shuffling when Diarmuid turned and glared at them for breaking the peace of his greeting.
She dismounted and handed off the reins of her horse before she went to one knee briefly and took a clod of earth in her hand to touch to her lips.

When she rose she spoke formally:

“I, Órlaith, daughter of Artos and Mathilda, of the House of Artos and the line of the High Kings of Montival, ask welcome on the lands of Clan McClintock and the sept of the Tennarts. I come as a guest claiming guest-right for me and mine, by the leave of the Clan and its Gods and its folk, and of the
aes dana
of rock and tree and river, bird and beast.”

Diarmuid and Caitlin stepped forward and each exchanged the ritual kiss on both cheeks with her. Diarmuid’s clean male scent of hard flesh and woodsmoke and wool was familiar and comforting even just as a friend, and Caitlin’s garland of bridesblossom had an overpowering sweet lushness that had soaked into her hair.

“The House of the
Ard Rí
and our
Bana Ard Rí
to be are always welcome on this land and among our folk,” he said gravely. “For our land is the land of Montival and we are of the High King’s people.”

His voice had the McClintock accent, a deep burr that rolled the “r” sounds and swallowed others:
our
became ooo
rr
and
to
became
tae
. That was a legacy of the first McClintock too, as the soft Mackenzie lilt was of Grandmother Juniper. The early followers of both had adopted the habits of speech as a sign of belonging and it had spread as more joined them. To their children and grandchildren and now great-grandchildren it was simply the way they spoke, changing slowly as a living speech rooted in a settled place and people did. Few realized it had ever been otherwise, or that many had thought the original fashion excruciatingly artificial.

Especially Grandmother Juniper. Whereas the McClintock reveled in it. Ah, well.

“A hundred thousand welcomes, tae ye and all yours!” Caitlin added, with what seemed like perfectly genuine enthusiasm.

It is,
Órlaith knew with a slight chill.
She means it . . . and sure, I can
tell
that she does. Useful, but I can see now why Da thought the Sword a burden and a danger to the bearer.

“In the name of the Mother-of-All and the Horned God and all the kindreds o’ land an’ water and sky who dwell wi’ us here,” Caitlin went on.

One of Diarmuid’s followers handed Caitlin a carved cedarwood platter piled high with little wedges of dark wholemeal bread beside a bowl of salt. His eldest sister Seonag was about twelve, and stood with a frown of grave concentration on her face and a great carved ox-horn in her hands, brimming with red wine, its tip and rim bound in pale gold. Their mother Gormall—who was also High Priestess here, in the usual way—wore a white robe bound with the Triple Cords and carried a carved rowan-wood staff tipped with the waxing and full and waning moons in wrought silver. She signed the plate and horn with it before it was brought forward.

Órlaith took a piece of the bread and dipped it into the salt in the carved wooden bowl, ate the morsel and took the horn, raising it to the four Quarters before pouring out a small libation, taking a sip of the full strong liquor and passing it on; when it came back she drank the last drops and ceremoniously turned it upside-down. Mackenzies would probably have used mead instead, but the ritual was much the same as that of her father’s birth-folk.

So were Gormall’s words, more or less: “Holy and peace-holy is the guest beneath our roof and on our land,” she said proudly; she was a gaunt woman in her late forties, with graying dark hair. “Keep ye all the
geasa
of
a’ocht
, of sacred guest-right, or suffer the anger of the Keeper of Laws and the Wise One.”

With the formalities out of the way, Diarmuid’s face was intent as he studied hers.

“So it’s true, then, Orrey?” he said quietly.

She nodded, and he bit his lip and shook his head. “Och, he was a man in ten thousand, a hundred thousand,” he said. “We bewailed him here when the courier came, but I’d hoped . . .”

His mother shook her head as well, in disagreement rather than negation. Her voice was somber:

“Naen wi’ the Sight could hae doubted it. The Earth’s very self wept and keened him, when his blood lay upon it. It weeps yet, and rages, that the sacred King was slain untimely by the weapons of foreign men, and that his life was spilled on the holy eve of life’s beginnings.”

Órlaith swallowed and nodded. “I’ve no wish to darken your handfasting,” she said. “Or to strain your stores, it being spring”—the hungry season, farthest from the last harvest and before the earth yielded much in the way of crops or garden stuff—“and you having had your own feast to find these past days.”

Diarmuid smiled a little. “Nae, we’re well-placed for food-stores this year. The first salmon run was very good, and the wildfowl abundant, thanks be tae Modron, and the wild herds are as thick as I’ve ever seen now that they’re moving up tae the high country.”

Edain nodded, and flicked the string of his bow with a thumb. “We took two elk and a young boar yesterday. Cernunnos was generous; fair ran into us, they did, and us so many and making enough noise to fright the fae. They’re gralloched and slung over a pair of mules, but I’m thinking they’d do more good in your kitchen than over a campfire, if you don’t mind being offered your own,
feartaic
.”

That was both true and tactful. The prime cuts would go on the table tonight and however long the Royal party stayed, and the rest would go into the icehouse and help stretch the household’s supplies for days to come.

“I don’t mind in the least, master-bowman, ye’ve lang had leave tae hunt oor land,” Diarmuid said. “Enter then, a’, and be welcome; the bath-house is heating and the stoves are ready.”

•   •   •

The bagpipes sounded, overpowering within the little hall as the pipers strutted around the inner side of the hollow square the tables made, their plaids swinging as they paced. Behind them solemn youths and maidens carried the platters—mostly grilled salmon brushed with oil infused with garlic, onions and ginger, baked on cedar planks that still smoked and sputtered aromatically. But they were accompanied by roast boar and elk and a smoked bear-ham, baskets of loaves, vegetables in the wicker containers used to steam them, and salads of wild spring greens and much else. Órlaith found herself sniffing at the scents with interest; they’d been many days with nothing but trail rations.

“Ith gu leòir!”
Diarmuid called.

The pipers downed their drones, the helpers set their burdens within
everyone’s reach between the butter-crocks and wheels of cheese, and sat on the benches themselves; the thirty or so diners said their thanks in their various ways. Órlaith drew the Invoking pentagram over her plate and murmured the Blessing.

“Eat plenty!” Diarmuid added, translating the ritual cry into the common speech.

His new wife smiled up at him, and his mother fondly at both of them. The older woman had a wistful look to her, probably because she saw her man in her son, and her own youth in her daughter-in-law. Diarmuid himself beamed around with pride.

He’d seen the splendors of the north at court and on visits; Órlaith thought the better of him that his standards of judgment remained solidly grounded here in the land that had born and nourished him, in his own
heimat
.