Veil of Time (24 page)

Fergus shook his head. “Sula says they can’t be beaten. They might kill King Oengus and they might defeat his forces, but she has seen the boar carved into our hill.”

“She’s just an old woman,” said Brighde. “The monks say she should be carried beyond the fort and burned.”

Fergus grabbed his mother’s knees. “You have to listen to her, Mother. She says the Picts will reign over Dunadd, and that in short order.”

Brighde withdrew her hand. “Will you run away from me and leave Dunadd, this land of our mothers that we came from Erin to conquer, that we have fought to keep?”

Fergus looked up to see his mother’s face. “Of course I will not run from my duty towards you. I will never leave Dunadd. How could I?”

Fergus ran down the fort, through the gates, across the bridge that swung under his feet, across the beaten earth of the village back to Talorcan.

Once in Talorcan’s house, Fergus bent over to catch his breath.

“What is it, Fergus? Speak to me.”

“Murdoch,” he said, “he has ridden out to gather the men of Dál Riada to ride north against King Oengus.”

Talorcan let out a sigh. “I have just heard they left before light. How many men can he gather?”

Fergus stood up. Talorcan fetched him water in a wooden dish. “There is a list. Each settlement I collect fealty from has so many boats. The druids know the details. The island of Jura has twenty seven-benchers, the isle of Islay, ten more than that. The hills down to the Strath of Clyde will yield more. Perhaps two thousand men in all.”

“Oengus’s army is greater than this and is familiar with the territory to the north,” said Talorcan. “Remember that fifty years ago the Picts defeated the Northumbrians, who were a strong force. Murdoch doesn’t stand a chance against the Pictish army.” Talorcan turned to Fergus. “What will you do?”

“No, my brother,” said Fergus. “What will you do?”

Talorcan’s wife came into the hut with one of his daughters, the unusual one, who also bore the mark of the boar on her forehead. She saw the faces of the men and said, “What is the matter?”

Talorcan drew his wife to his side. “You must take Fergus and his family away. They will not be safe here.”

“I could take them east across the land to my mother at Loch Glashan,” said the wife.

Fergus shook his head. “I cannot leave Dunadd.”

The wife said, “The loch is well hidden. The people there still live in their houses on the loch. You will be safe out in the crannog.”

Fergus said, “No. My mother will never leave. I will stay at Dunadd.”

Talorcan grabbed his arm. “Then you will die, my friend. Surely you must heed the warnings of your own druidess.”

Fergus took his arm back. “Sula has been wrong before.”

Fergus left. He didn’t know which way to go. It was not in him to run away and hide. Yet he could no longer feel himself on the same side as Talorcan. He thought of the woman’s golden ring beside his dirk in the sheath he wore under his arm, but now the question of taking her for a wife seemed small next to the possibility of having to leave Dunadd for good. He felt foolish for even thinking of her when everything was dissolving about him.

When it grew dark, he went back to the house to find her, so strange to walk to his old house anticipating another woman. He laid his fingers on the latch, but he could not go in to her. He could find no peace in his thoughts after what Sula had told him. Now that he finally had a woman for himself and a mother for Illa, the ground had been pulled from beneath his feet. How could he lie with the woman now that he couldn’t put a hand on any of his feelings?

He strode quickly away to find the slave Marcus and set him to guard his house, though he didn’t know what he was guarding against. He ran to the top of Dunadd and sat in the heather above the sea. A strange light spread out from behind the islands into the dark dome of sky. Day or night, he needed this view from the fort like a child needs a mother’s lap. His family had always lived here, and he could not conceive of living elsewhere. How could they command the area, continue trade with other lands, without the lookout of the fort, its proximity to the sea? He would defend Dunadd to the last, even though he knew it could mean he would die.

18

I
hammer on Jim’s door, my eye on the bare finger where my wedding ring used to be. I bang my knuckles hard against the wood. When he opens up, I walk in without comment.

“You were asleep on the couch for hours,” he says. “I tried to wake you.”

I walk to the oven, then back to him. “Will you make me a cup of tea?”

He nods. “What’s the matter with you?” He peers into my face. “You don’t look well.”

He turns away to fill the kettle.

Before I speak, I have to catch my breath. “Was the Stone of Destiny ever at Dunadd?”

He goes to his kitchen door and lets Winnie in. “So
they say. But it ended up in Scone in Perthshire, where the seat of the king was moved, away from the marauding Vikings. There, away in and sit by the fire now, and I’ll bring you your tea.”

I can’t help myself; I grab Jim by the arms. “I couldn’t just have dreamed that.”

He looks a bit worried. “Aye, but it’s not an unknown fact.”

“It is to me.” I am almost singing it. “At least it was unknown to me until I sat on the bloody thing up there in the queen’s house!”

Jim is sort of squinting at me, as though if he waits I might come into better focus. “Go and sit down. I’ll get the tea ready.”

He pours enough boiling water into the teapot to make the tea bags float at the top, and then he carries the tray into the living room and sets it down on the table by the fire. I start to speak again, but he shushes me so that he can pour the tea and offer me a biscuit from a rose-patterned plate. The astringent scent of tea competes with the acrid smoke from the fire.

He takes his cup to his chair. “Now,” he says, “what is it you’re blethering about?”

I set my cup by my feet and the biscuit beside it. “It’s not blether, Jim; you have to grant me that.”

He takes a noisy sip. “Do I now?”

“You do, and here’s why: I asked Marcus the slave
how long Murdoch had been in power. He said two years. That makes it 735, right? They are carving the foot into the rock even now, and, guess what, it’s a woman’s foot and has nothing to do with crowning kings.”

He sets his cup in its saucer. He’s interested now. “What does it have to do with then?”

“The lesser lords paying fealty, putting their foot in it, so to speak.”

Jim chuckles. “Swearing allegiance to the king in it.”

I sigh. At last he is on my side. “Did you already know that?”

He shakes his head. “No, but they took the custom over to Perth with them. There’s a mound called Boot Hill there, where they did the same thing.”

I am breathless. “So do you believe me now?”

He shakes his head, as though it could save him from making such a wild leap. “Did you really see the Stone of Destiny?”

I have to laugh. “I got invited for dinner by the queen, and I was sitting on this stone by the fire until I realized that it was the Stone of Destiny, for God’s sake, just sitting there by the fire.”

Jim takes a deep breath. “Have you told any of this to your Fergus brute?”

I shake my head. “What am I supposed to say, that I am come from his future and know how all this plays out?”

Jim takes a sip of tea. “Suppose not. But he’d better get himself out of there. You’d better get yourself out of there, too.”

I sit back in my chair. Jim’s right, and I had better get back there to warn Fergus and Illa that they have to leave. I don’t care if history needs them dead. I want them with me in the land of the living.

Jim says, “Your cat’s drinking your tea.”

I pick Winnie up, stroking her back until she purrs.

“Not to mention, there were monks there,” I say, “which is another fact I didn’t know. They’re trying to get the queen on their side, leaving her Bibles, and another book called
Vita Colum
something by Adam somebody, something else I’ve never seen.”

Jim jumps up and goes rummaging on his shelf. “Saint Columba’s biography.
Vita Colum Cille
by Adomnán.”

He hands me a copy of this selfsame book, only this one is bound in glossy paper, not cloth and hide like the one I saw. I take the book and hold it against my chest. “Sula doesn’t like the monks.”

Jim chuckles a little. “I’m sure she doesn’t. I’m quite sure the monks don’t like her, either.”

I get up and look out the window. “In 735 that one standing stone out there belongs to a complete circle.”

“Well,” he says, placing his cup and saucer on the hearth, “it’s a lot to swallow.”

When I turn back, he smiles. I don’t know whether
he believes me or not. I don’t know whether I believe myself. It is a lot to swallow, and every bleeding psychiatrist who ever built on Freud is laughing his head off. But then, these were men dedicated to the march of reason. There is nothing reasonable here. I am strictly in nonreason territory.

“Fergus has a young daughter called Illa,” I say.

Jim looks away. “Well, he’d better get her off Dunadd, too. It’s not just the Picts you have to worry about. Don’t forget the earthquake. You may not have much time.”

I kneel by his chair and take his hand. “Thank you, Jim.”

He taps my fingers, and at this moment I can tell he will believe anything I want him to believe. We finish our tea and stack the cups in their rattling saucers, stare at the uneaten biscuits.

I take myself home, still jumping around inside, walking meekly along the path that I recently walked with Sula. I stop by the circle of Standing Stones, at least by the one the Presbyterians left. More than a millennium separates the me who is here from the me with Fergus, and it shows on this stone with its grooves and the top that is no longer square. I lay my cheek against its lichened surface, as if it might talk to me and tell me all that it has seen and what the outcome is to be.

When it gets dark, I lie down and sleep heavily for a while. Somewhere in the night, I find myself awake,
caught between my life with Fergus and this other life hurtling me along its corridor to a hospital bed. It is merciless in facing me with a choice I cannot make. From the doorway of the cottage, the field seems lit by a strange light. The outlines of hares move among the sleeping sheep, their feet in a sort of haze rising from the grass. Who’s to say that this is where I belong, that this is any more real than my life in the heyday of the fort?

For the next few days I scribble on my notepads and take walks, but always in the background is the urgency to get back to Fergus. I worry that the events of ancient Dunadd are scurrying along without me, though I have no evidence that they do. I want to know what happens next in the story of Fergus and Maggie. But most of all, I need to get him out of Dunadd. I stand by the sink with my bottle of pills and know I can’t keep taking them. I need to get back now.

But nothing happens. Only the rain. Each morning when I get up, the rain persists under low grey cloud. I go back to my thesis and read over my descriptions of the witches who were tried, how they were made to admit all manner of foolery about ice-cold devil penises and having their blood sucked and flying through the night on brooms. It strikes me then, with my reading glasses pushed onto the top of my head, my back hard against the chair, that maybe witches flying through the night is what I have been doing. What Sula is doing
when she throws her stones onto the floor is flying through the night on her broomstick.

I don’t see Jim for a couple of days, so I leave my pages and get into my car to find him at the museum. As I drive past his house, I pass a couple of rain-hardy travelers in sou’westers and knee-length raincoats, struggling against the wind. They wave at me as though I might rescue them from their decision, but I am only rescuing myself today.

I find him with a group of schoolchildren in the interactive displays. He throws a handful of grain into the top hole of the quern and shows them how to use the stick to turn one stone against the other to make flour.

When he’s done, Jim takes me to the hanging gardens of the museum coffee shop for scones. Through the large window by our table, we can look out on a full circle of standing stones, and in the distance more. The rain runs rivulets down the glass and patters off the roof. But it is a well-lit and exotic place, this little eatery, at odds with the damp dark places it represents.

I look around at the other patrons, tourists or more permanent imports. The locals don’t drink coffee and don’t walk around museums even when full of artifacts fashioned by their ancestors. They still live in the dark and damp, and it’s what they know, not that much different from the people in the village at the base of Dunadd. They have bigger houses, and some may have central heating, but they are still driven like the rain.
They are elemental, as people always were, until they became dispensable.

“You’re quiet,” Jim says. “Not like you.”

I shake my head. “Actually, very like me. You’re just used to seeing the excitable, far-fetched me.” I laugh. “You don’t know what to make of me, do you?”