Veil of Time (4 page)

To his left he passed the first of the ancient circles of standing stones that gave the valley its name, put here not by his own people but by the Picts who had ruled before. In the distance, the cry and chatter of voices at Dunadd held its breath. In a moment, the cheer would go up as the torch took its ritual path from the high fire down to light those in the villagers’ houses for the start of winter. But for now in the dark, only the far-off song of the wolf could be heard, only small patters among the rusted leaves, perhaps the sound of the dead themselves, for this was the time in all of the year when the veil between the living and the dead grew thin enough to allow spirits through.

The horse’s back twitched under Fergus’s thigh. He sat up straight and pushed his hair back over his shoulders, trying to shrug off the voices of those ancient Picts who might demand the return of their land. Inside the
neck of his tunic he found the godstone on the string of acorns that the druidess had given him before he departed. It had protected him on his long journey; he hoped it had enough strength left to keep him safe along this last uninhabited stretch.

The call of an owl muted the subtler sounds; wings fluttered suddenly to his left. A good portent, Sula would say. He had not meant to be away this long, too long since the day he left his daughter in the arms of her grandmother. Already, in his absence, the celebrations for her eighth year had come and gone. Two years since the plague had taken her mother, and now there was talk among the Britons of another round of the pestilence coming up from the Sassenachs in the south. If it spread this far north, he would take his daughter to the people who lived away from Dunadd, in the houses on the lochs, until the danger had passed. Illa was all he had left of Saraid, and he meant to hold on to her.

Fergus leaned forward into the smell of his horse, ran the coarse strands of her mane between his fingers. Horses were like the druids in a sense, hearing and seeing more than they should. Only a little while now and he would be home—not the home he had shared with Saraid, for he had closed that door two years ago after the body had been burned. He slept now on his mother’s floor, just as the king himself sometimes did, though he had a wife and children and other women enough.

Like stone and like sand, these two brothers, their father had said. He had been dead since before either Murdoch or Fergus was old enough to take a wife. Ainbcellaig was his name, though the boys went by the name MacBrighde, since their royal line came down through their mother, Brighde. Murdoch was dark and brown-eyed like his father and the line of Scots that had sailed over from Erin two hundred years before he was born. But the mother had Pictish in her line and had passed blue eyes down to the second son, a point of scorn for the proud king, who wanted nothing to do with the Picts who made up half his kingdom.

“Pale-eyed Pict!” from Murdoch was enough to rouse his brother’s anger and have them rolling in the dirt.

Still, Fergus had taken his wife from the Picts, and his daughter—rust in hair and light of eyes, long-legged like her mother—was more Pict than Scot, a stark contrast to the dark-eyed pale-skinned children Murdoch spawned. For the Scots came down from Scotta, a dark princess who had sailed across seas to Erin from a land far off to the east. It was she who had brought the sacred stone that those Scots had in turn brought from Erin to this land two hundred years ago.
Gaels,
the Picts called those sailors from Erin.
Strangers.

Fergus’s horse jolted to a stop just before a branch that hung low in the dark. The mare reared, and it was all Fergus could do to catch her reins and slip off her
back. His foot came down hard on the soft moss, making him cry out louder than he should in this place on this night. He pulled his dirk from its halter under his arm.

Fergus waited and listened. “Sssh.”

Even the dead from his own people shouldn’t know his whereabouts tonight, in case they tried to haul him back with them. He had sunk his blade into the chest of a Northumbrian, cut the heart still quivering from a dying Sassenach, but he had no defense against the dead; nothing else could make his own heart quiver. While his fingers fumbled again for the godstone against his neck, the horse broke free and bolted.

All Fergus could do was run, not across the open fields, but weaving between the scrubby hazels, and now he didn’t know if it was the trees or the dead ripping at his hair, blood from the scratches running down his cheek, down his shins, and him panting now, not from the running but from the tight grip on his throat, and surely the ghouls would suck this last drop of life from him. If only he could reach the houses, but his ankle shot pain up the length of his shin, and he was no match now for the spirits.

He called on Cailleach the goddess, who had sustained his people all these years, though she was turning in aspect now from the beautiful nymph of summer into her winter stage of the crone. She might be deaf now to his plea, but he kept up his petition, dragging his foot, asking for his life that he might return to his daughter.

His horse was gone clattering into the night, but the fire on the hill of Dunadd drew closer. He could see the torch leading off from the great fire on the hill and moving down towards the houses; if only he could keep going, he could run through the fire himself and purge this touch of death.

Coming at last to the village of many thatched huts at the river’s edge, Fergus dragged himself forward into the faint smell of smoke and dung. Without offering any greeting, he ran through the maidens in their games of fortune hunting and kept up his pace until he was deep into the smell of blood sausage and boiling turnips. It was into the arms of Talorcan, brother of his wife, that he fell, a laughing Talorcan until the man saw that the look in the eyes of this horseless traveler was no cause for laughter.

“Fergus, I would rather take my chances with an army of Sassenach than walk alone in the Valley of Stones tonight.”

Fergus bent over, touching the ground of the settlement with his fingers, needing to find himself safe here. The villagers came in a crowd about him, knowing who this was in his fine clothes, this brother of King Murdoch. Talorcan fought them back.

“My horse,” said Fergus.

Talorcan patted his back. “She came trotting in a while ago. She is content now among the sheaves laid out for Samhain. Come, I will walk you across the bridge to the gates, unless you would stop and eat with us.”

Fergus stood up, took in for the first time this tall brother of his wife, with the green eyes and the tattoo of the boar across his forehead. “I must go to Illa. How is she?”

Talorcan smiled. “She has grown tall in your absence.”

He marked the place on his jerkin where the top of his niece’s head came. Fergus smiled.

“Long in leg like her mother,” said Talorcan. “Do you remember?”

Fergus nodded, though he wished Talorcan wouldn’t torture him. “Yes, I remember.”

Talorcan laughed. “She could take you to the floor even then.”

Fergus did not speak. He wanted to get to the druidess and see if she could find the spirit of his long-legged wife tonight before the time passed.

“Where is Murdoch?”

A look of disdain crossed Talorcan’s brow along the lines of the tattoo. “On the fort. His royal highness only enters the village when he has run out of women on high.”

He wrapped an arm about this husband of his dead sister and led him through the houses along the lanes towards the rope bridge that crossed the river and separated the fort from the village. The common folk, some Pictish, some Scotti, parted to let them through. They liked this brother of King Murdoch, a softer type, good
in battle, though fair defeated by the death of his lady. Many a woman would gladly have taken her place in his bed, but he was a strange one, this Fergus MacBrighde.

Before they reached the bridge, Talorcan nudged him. “A woman has been found. I have not seen her myself, but the guards who took her to the druidess say she wears gold and is dressed in strange clothing, unlike any they have ever seen on friend or enemy. She says she comes from Glasgow.”

Fergus stopped walking. “Then why has she come so far?” He placed his hands on his knees and leaned over to grab his ankle. “Where was she found?”

“Just below where we stand now. She is not still young, but comely enough,” said Talorcan. “They say she has the smell of the courts of the Romans.”

Fergus said, “But the only Romans about these days are either slaves or monks. Is she a runaway slave?”

Talorcan laughed. “Perhaps, if you have a mind, you should see her for yourself.”

Fergus shook his head. “Talorcan, she’s just another woman, and I have had enough matches lately.” A smile creased his cheeks. “This is not like you. You are the brother of my wife. You should know better.”

“I know,” said Talorcan. He patted Fergus’s back. “But your druidess saw something for you in her stones, something strange. And this woman, so they say, is unlike any other.”

4

S
omething in me it is that pulls me to fire. I tug my raincoat on and climb to the top of the fort in the wind today, stopping at the cleft in the rock where in my dream the gates stood. I remember them down to their heavy wooden smell and the knot in the wood above the sliding hatch. And I notice on my way up this time, and wonder why I have never noticed before, several holes in the rock where the gateposts must once have been lodged. There’s a stain of rust leaking out from iron rods that must still exist somewhere deep in the rock. I gain the flat, grassy area where the houses stood in my dream, but now instead of buildings, I am standing among rubble, half submerged in grass, looking like nothing at all.

On the summit, I sit on the little ledge of stone left
from the original seat in the witch’s hut. If I close my eyes, I can hear the snap of the fire, smell the drying herbs hanging from the rafters. Even now you can see why the ancient people picked Dunadd as a fort, for it looks straight across the Mhoine Mhor, a great stretch of peat moss leading down to the Atlantic. Off to the south, through the dips of the foothills, you can see mountains; to the north and east great forests rise and fall, and along the valley floor the River Add wraps itself around the fort before snaking through the Moss, as though it really would prefer not to get to the sea at all. The sun is setting behind the islands, casting the world in an orange wash. From below, only the raucous call of the pheasant interrupts the stillness.

When I get down from the hill, Jim Galvin is standing by his back door. He lifts his hand in greeting and looks away, the typical Highland gesture. But he is at the fence as I pass through the stile.

“I’ve seen you going up there every day,” he says.

I didn’t know I was being spied on. I pull up the collar of my raincoat against him. “Did there used to be a big stone where your house sits now?”

“Aye.” He shakes his head. “It was moving that stone that did my back in. In the end, I had to dynamite it. But how do you know about it?”

I shrug. “I used to come here as a child.”

I smile to have found an answer, both to his question
and mine. Of course, I must have remembered that stone from way back.

“You’ve a pretty enough smile,” he says, “when you choose to use it.”

This seems very forward for a Highland man, and I’m not sure how to respond. And anyway, I have other questions.

“What do you think that round wall at the top was part of?”

He sniffs, rubs his nose with the back of his finger. “It might well have been a dwelling for the chief druid, though the history books will not tell you anything of the kind.”

I look into his face. A bit of a defensive face, I think, but raw enough that my gaze makes him turn away.

I say, “I was having a dream about a
ban-druidhe,
just this afternoon.”

He looks back at me. “Is that a fact?” which is the Highland way of dismissing facts.

This time, I’m the one who looks away. When I look back, he’s gesturing me through his gate. I don’t want to give this man an ounce of encouragement, but I follow him through his back door into a kitchen that looks as though his wife had kept it well, but there has been little in the way of keeping ever since. Past the kitchen, a small living room seems crouched about a fire, its walls lined with bookshelves.

I stand in the middle of the room, fighting for something to say. “Quite the scholar you are, eh?”

Because of the books, I have to admit, I look at him with new respect. I can’t help it, because it’s the way life thinks of itself in the Western Hemisphere.

I want to ask him if he has read them all, but it would sound insulting, and I have a way of offending people just by the way I ask things. Oliver used to say I should edit myself better, and this time I do.

“This is all very impressive,” I say. “I’ll have to come up to the museum and pick your brains.”

He stands by the fire rubbing his backside, I’m not sure if as a gesture to me or just to warm flesh that in this climate all too often needs warming.

“Any time is fine with me,” he says.