“No.”
Now they had to see what was under the kilt. “Oh, Dylan! Please! Please, please, please!” they chorused. Cay giggled like a maniac, and Silvia jumped up and down.
With a heavy sigh, he reached for his hem. The three stood back, wide-eyed and breathless that he was actually going to do it. He stifled a grin, then rucked the red plaid wool up to his hip.
They laughed. Tucked into the kilt was his linen shirt, and the tail of it was almost as long as the kilt itself. It covered all, like a slip, nearly to his knees.
He let down the tartan. “Happy?”
“No,” said Cay with a big, sunny smile.
He chuckled and started off again. They followed.
“Think this thing’s got enough cloth?” Cay tugged at the plaid thrown forward over his left shoulder, slung around the right side of his waist, and then across his back and up over the shoulder again. The end was secured with a large steel brooch bearing the Matheson crest of a hand, wielding a sword, emerging from a crown. Engraved along the outer circle of the brooch was the motto: Fac et spera. Do and hope.
“Don’t pull, it’s all of one piece. The kilt and the plaid.”
She pulled again. “It sure is soft.”
“I said, let go. It’s soft because it’s real Highland wool.”
She poked at his belt. “Really?”
He dodged. “Really. It’s an authentic feileadh mór. An old-style Great Kilt. To put it on, I have to spread it out on the ground, lie down on it, then belt it on. Leave it alone—you’ll pull it crooked. . . .” She pulled on it, and he warned, “I’m fixing to smack your hand, girl.” Finally, just as they reached the admin tables, she listened and quit fooling with his belt.
Some of the folks there whom he’d met at other games, and others just from around town, greeted him and he waved back. There were lots of unfamiliar faces as well, all eager to experience the culture of their ancestors. Dylan took a deep breath as his soul eased with the pleasure of the day, and wondered if this was how it had felt at a real gathering of the clans, where greeting old friends and making new ones was as important as the games themselves.
Cody Marshall caught his attention in the midst of the milling people, and he gave her a cheerful smile as she wended her way toward him with Raymond, her husband, in tow. Dylan had known Cody all his life, but not the husband; the man always seemed a mite vacant. Weenie was the word that popped into Dylan’s mind. His hair looked like it was made of polyester, long in front and graying just enough to give it a sheen of plastic fibers. But Cody loved the guy to pieces, so who was he to criticize?
Cody was in a seventeenth-century plaid overdress and bodice, her shiny red hair plaited and pinned under a white linen kerchief folded into a three-cornered corrachd tri-chearnach. But Raymond wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that declared him a Titans fan. Dylan said to Cody, “Well, if it isn’t the Scottish Maiden!”
She laughed. “You think I don’t know what that means, but I do. You think I want to cut off your head?”
“I’ll just bet.”
She said, “But I wouldn’t, because you’re the one who taught me how.”
He gave her an air kiss and murmured, “Ciamar a tha thu?”
“I’m fine,” Cody replied to his query, which was the only Gaelic she knew. “Yourself? Where’s Ginny?” She looked around.
Dylan’s gut clenched, and he shrugged a shoulder. “History.”
Cody gave him a bless your heart smile of sympathy and said in a low voice, “You’ll forgive me if I fall down dead from Not Surprised.” Dylan peered at her, wondering what she knew, but she shrugged. “I had a feeling.” Then she put her hand on his arm and changed the subject. “Oh! I just saw the most fabulous claymore! A real one!”
Dylan’s interest perked. “No kidding? How old?”
“Centuries. At least four hundred years. Maybe five.”
Dylan looked around at the milling crowds and display tables, hoping to spot the sword. “Fantastic! I’ve got to—”
Raymond interrupted. “Something I’ve been wondering about. Isn’t Matheson an English name?”
“It’s not.” Dylan almost slipped into a Scottish accent at the thought of how his ancestors would have reacted to such an accusation.
Raymond smiled. “But the son part—”
“The clan’s traditional homelands were in the western Highlands. Matheson is only English in that it’s an Anglicization of MacMhathain, which, I’m told, means son of the heroes. Or son of the bears, which in the traditional iconography means more or less the same thing.”
Raymond’s eyebrows went up, which Dylan found annoying. The man said, “I keep forgetting how well read you are on this stuff.”
Dylan shrugged and looked around for an excuse to leave, but found none, so he replied, “I got curious when I was a kid and found out I was named for a famous member of Clan Matheson. My grandfather used to tell this story all the time before he died. He didn’t know exactly when the guy lived, but there was a Matheson, name of Black Dylan, who was a highwayman. Used to rip people off all over Scotland, but they still thought he was some sort of hero. Dad thought of the name because of the color of my hair, and Mom liked it because she was a huge Bob Dylan fan at the time. So I’m named after a guy who was probably hung for lifting cattle, or robbing coaches, or something. Which, I expect, is more than you ever wanted to know.” He offered Marshall his social smile, with teeth.
Raymond said, without a sign of sarcasm, “For someone who lives in the past the way you do, it must be hell to live in the twentieth century.”
Cody chirped, “Twenty-first century.”
Raymond smiled at her. “No, hon, not for another three months when the calendar turns 2001.” His voice went to a conspiratorial stage whisper. “That’s why the movie wasn’t called 2000: A Space Odyssey.”
There was a brief silence as Dylan and Cody stared at Raymond. “Anyway,” Dylan said, “come on, Cody, show me that clay—”
“Dylan Matheson?” It was the admin guy with a form in his hand. “I need you to fill this out. Insurance. We need it if you’re going to take that there sword out of its scabbard.” He wore a green-and-black military-style kilt with a matching waistcoat and plaid. His hair was decidedly non-period, neatly trimmed for a twentieth-century office job.
Dylan sighed and went to do paperwork, and Cody wandered off with her husband to enjoy the rest of the festival. Dylan figured he’d hook back up with them later.
The broadsword exhibitions weren’t until the afternoon. Ronnie would arrive after covering the Saturday morning classes at the dojo, so Dylan and the girls hung out for the morning and watched the more brawny types throw telephone-pole-looking cabers, stones, and whatnot. Dylan was well built, but some of those men were like mountains. Several wore their hair long, and on the field at their competitions reminded him of Klingons in drag. He himself was built more like a quarterback than an ox, and he liked his swords just fine. He didn’t much see the point in hurling logs, a sport Cay called “chunking the pole,” which struck Dylan as so funny he chuckled periodically for the rest of the morning.
The girls followed him around the entire morning, and along the way the group picked up another couple of students, Steve and Jeff, who were also in a Saturday morning class. The day was beginning to feel like a field trip, and he wondered if there was anyone left for Ronnie to teach. They caught up with Cody and her husband in time for lunch.
The food booths offered meat pasties and sausage rolls, scones and bannocks, turnip greens cooked in ham (though Dylan wasn’t sure if that was a concession to the Tennessee crowd or a Scottish thing that had become a Southern thing by emigration), tarts, fish and chips, shortbread, American beer, and imported English ale. The kids ate hot dogs and drank Coke, though Dylan was able to talk Kym into trying a bite of mincemeat pasty. Haggis was available, but not even Dylan wanted to eat boiled sheep guts, no matter how traditional.
Ronnie arrived just in
time to eat with them, and the group squeezed onto one cement picnic table. The breeze was gentle and the trees threw dappled shade over them. A cluster of marching pipers passed, and Cody grimaced. “You know, I like bagpipes, but I swear, if I hear ‘Scotland the Brave’ one more time, I’m going to run, screaming, into the next county. I’m beginning to feel like I’m trapped in a men’s cologne commercial.”
Dylan hee-heed into his lunch. “Well, watch out. Their other song is ‘Amazing Grace.’ ”
Cody rolled her eyes, then chattered about how wonderful all the men looked in their kilts. She ragged Ronnie a little about not wearing one, and he declared them uncomfortable.
She nodded and said, “I bet for guys that wool and linen under there must get pretty rough. Probably a lot easier for Dylan to wear those things, seeing as how he’s not been circumcised.” She took a big bite out of her pasty.
The table fell silent. Dylan’s ears warmed, and he began picking flakes from the pastry of his meat pie. Raymond stared hard at his wife. The students sneaked looks at Dylan’s reddening face.
Cody looked around the table, swallowed the bite she’d taken, and said, “What?” Then she laughed. “Oh, for crying in a bucket of bolts! We were four years old! We played Show Me Yours I’ll Show You Mine in the bushes behind his garage. I haven’t seen it since. Relax, you guys.”
The girls giggled helplessly, snorting through their noses. Dylan sighed. Raymond said to Cody, “And did you reciprocate?”
She rolled her eyes again. “Of course, I did. I’m not a welcher.”
Dylan cleared his throat and said, “Anyway, I find my kilt comfortable enough, thank you all for your concern.”
The girls collapsed onto the table in paroxysms of laughter.
The broadsword exhibitions were after lunch. Dylan gave an instructional talk to a fair-sized cluster of onlookers about the techniques of broadsword fighting. He demonstrated some in slow, careful motions, then trounced Ronnie in a carefully staged and rehearsed duel, complete with dialogue. Dylan played the Jacobite hero defending his homeland, and Ronnie was hissed and booed by the crowd as the Lowland fop, waving a lace handkerchief in his free hand. It was nearly impossible to keep a straight face while shouting at each other, “You scoundrel!” and “Filthy Sassunach!” At the end Ronnie gave a less-than-convincing, staggering, reeling death that had Dylan smothering a smile as he scabbarded his sword.
“You ham,” he said as he helped his assistant off the grass. Ronnie just laughed and bowed to the crowd.
After his own bow and the crowd’s applause, Dylan took his entourage on a tour of the sword display tables. He was pleased to show his martial arts students a wider variety of European weapons than his own collection. He pointed out the differences between the English and Scottish broadswords (in general, fancy vs. affordable), then discussed how to tell those from a rapier and a rapier from a smallsword, explaining the century-long evolution from broadswords that cut to smallswords that could only stab. Then they came upon the claymore Cody had seen.
Dylan uttered a small moan at sight of it, and reached out to touch the glass cover of its case. It was a real claymore from the fifteenth or sixteenth century, maybe even earlier, not the later basket-hilt claybeg.
He’d never seen one up close that wasn’t a replica, and he ached to hold it in his hands. The straight quillons that slanted toward the blade had no finials and were sharp, and the grip had an intricate, interwoven Celtic pattern so graceful as to entrance the eye. It was a monster weapon, able to cleave a man’s head in half to the shoulders, not meant for stabbing so much as for hacking pieces from an opponent. It had a two-handed grip, which was required to control and balance the long blade. Oh, how he longed to try it out!
The owner of the sword, a Yankee named Bedford, declined to allow it. “Can’t,” he said. “It’s a family heirloom. My great-great-great . . .” He paused for a moment, counting on his fingers, “great . . . well, one of my ancestors was in the English army back during the reign of Queen Anne, and he captured it somewhere in Scotland. Up until about ten years ago, it hung in the house where my grandfather grew up, in London. When his brother died, my grandfather asked my cousins for the sword for me.”
“It belongs in a museum.” Dylan couldn’t take his hands off the case, as if by pure will he could feel the weapon beneath the glass.
“Maybe when I die. Unless one of my kids wants it.” He had an odd way of speaking. Precisely, but with utter ease and a vocal tone that was almost lazy. He was the most casual, composed Yankee Dylan had ever seen.
“How did you get it out of the country, it being an antiquity and all?”
Bedford grinned and slipped into a passable English accent. “Smuggled it up me arse.”
Dylan and his entourage laughed, then Dylan looked the man in the eye and said, “I really want to hold this sword. What’ll you take just to let me heft it?”
The request didn’t bring the laugh he’d expected, but Bedford’s eyes narrowed instead. “I saw your exhibition. You’re pretty good. You ever do any real sword fighting? Sparring, I mean?”
Dylan’s interest perked. “Of course.”
“Spar with me to first touch? Beat me, and I’ll open the case for you.”
“And if you win?” Dylan now assessed the guy as an opponent. Tall, broad shoulders, broad hands, and an elegance he knew could be deceptive.
Bedford grinned. “Then I win. Hey, if we make it look like another exhibition, the insurance geeks won’t have a hemorrhage.”
Dylan knew he was being talked into a bit more than just a sparring match. There was a certain reckless thrill to sparring without protection, and the chance of drawing blood made the proposition as intriguing as it was dangerous. Dylan agreed to it with whole heart.
They moved to the empty exhibition field just beyond the display tables, Dylan windmilling his broadsword in a fidgety mulinette to the side as the energy built. His pulse picked up, and his muscles were alerted to the contest. He took a deep breath of the fall air, and a thrill ran down his back. A smile crept onto his face.
Bedford wielded an Italian storta, with curved quillons and knuckle guard, which he swung back and forth by way of warming up. Dylan figured it was a replica, seeing as how a real antique would be worth too much to risk in a fight. His own sword was lighter and faster, but the storta was longer, which meant a longer reach. In a real fight the storta could do more damage, but here a touch was a touch, they would be attacking with the flat of the blade, and the amount of potential damage should be irrelevant.
Hopefully. Dylan figured, though, someone was going to bleed today.
The contestants squared off and saluted each other, then went to en garde. Bedford’s stance was haughty and assured, and relaxed in a way that seemed natural to him. In an instant, he rushed. Dylan parried, again and again in a flurry of clanging swords, until he was almost backed against the boundary line. Then he feinted, sidestepped, and attacked Bedford’s flank. The attack was parried, so Dylan went high to be parried again. Bedford captured the broadsword blade with his own and threw it aside. The metal sang. Then he backed up to gain room, but Dylan pressed him.
The storta flew, and Bedford wielded it with speed astonishing for such a large blade. Dylan grinned at the challenge of a skilled opponent who was not his employee. He beat hard with his broadsword, not trying to meet Bedford’s speed but throwing him off with each hard, odd-timed beat. It was working; Dylan was wearing him down. Bedford backed toward the tables, parrying fast as he went, lips pressed together. Dylan looked for openings, but Bedford gave none. Then Dylan laid off and circled.
Bedford laughed out loud and shouted. “Fucking hillbilly!”
Dylan refused to take the bait, so the expected attack didn’t come. That threw Bedford off balance, and he was momentarily unsure of himself. He attacked in confusion. Dylan parried and lunged for a sidestroke that took Bedford at his rib cage.
“Gotcha!”
Bedford stagg
ered sideways, though Dylan had pulled the attack, then he laughed again and shouted with heavy breaths, “Ah! A touch! A touch, I do confess it!”
Applause rose from the spectators, and the combatants both bowed to them. Then they saluted each other with swords and shook hands before walking together to the display table. Dylan scabbarded his broadsword, lifted its baldric from his shoulder, and handed scabbard and baldric off to Ronnie, who hurried to put it in its case. “Yo! Ron!” His assistant turned, and Dylan threw him his car keys. “It’s locked.”
“That was a right good fight,” said Dylan to Bedford, still trying to catch his breath, then he saw Bedford held his side. “What, did I get you?”
Bedford shrugged. “I think you cut my shirt. Maybe a little skin. No big deal.” He showed the hole in his shirt, and a thin red line that looked like a long scratch.
“Dang. Sorry about that.”
Bedford shrugged again. “You win. You now have the right to molest my family’s property.” He winked and gave a white grin as he unlocked the case and opened the glass cover.
Dylan reached in, reverent in the presence of such an historical weapon. He slipped both hands around the hilt and lifted it from the case. For such a long sword, the weight was only a few pounds, easily wielded by two hands, and the balance was amazing. It felt warm in his grip. Goose bumps rose all over him, and he shivered them down as he let the sunshine glint from the blade. But the tingling in his hands remained. The warmth increased until he had to set the sword back in its case. Puzzled, he stared at it and at his still-warm hands.
“What’s wrong?” Cody asked.
“Don’t rightly know.” The heat in his palms grew, though they no longer held the sword. He stared at them, and the tingling swept through him. Frowning, he tried to shake it off, but it wouldn’t go. He looked around, afraid now, almost in pain. Everyone around him stared at him, concerned.
“Are you all right?” Cody reached for him, but he held her off. Something was very wrong, and he didn’t want her to catch whatever it was.
His heart leapt in his chest as the world went black. He tried to stay conscious, but focusing on faces did no good. He reached out to them as they disappeared into swirling nothingness.
Son of the Sword Page 3