Dylan made a face. “I need a translator. What’s going on?”
“Judgment.”
That explained the breathless tension that filled the room. The mood in the hall was more serious than the evening gatherings, but the proceedings still weren’t conducted with the formality of the courts of law to which Dylan was accustomed. Iain merely sat in a creaky wooden chair near the hearth at the kitchen end of the hall, Malcolm stood behind him, and persons in dispute took turns presenting their problems. Sinann informed Dylan that the man now standing before Iain, wearing a ragged and faded kilt and yellow shirt, was Colin Matheson, accused of stealing grazing.
Iain glared at the defendant without hearing any more than the accusation from someone who appeared to be the plaintiff. “Colin, did I nae tell you to give over that land? It isnae part of your tenancy now.” Sinann translated as he spoke.
Colin was surly, obviously unhappy with having a portion of his land parceled out to someone else. “I cannae live without that land.”
“And why not? Your rent was reduced accordingly. You’ve as much land, and of the same quality, as everyone else of your need.”
“But Iain—”
“Dinnae argue with me, man! Ye’ve been told. Now, pay for the grazing at one Scots shilling per day, or what you can give in kind valued according to your rent payment. And if we find your cattle off your own pasture again, you’ll spend time in the guardhouse. Are we clear on that?”
Colin took a long time to reply, but finally said, “Aye.”
When Sinann finished translating, Dylan whispered back, “Stealing grazing?”
“Grass feeds the cattle, which feed the people. Mathesons are thick on the ground these days, and the ground they’re thick on is smaller and smaller each year, as the English and the Whigs take more and more from us. The cattle have little to eat in the winter, so a few blades of grass can mean the difference between a dead cow and a live one come spring. Cattle dead of starvation can mean the difference between an expectant mother having enough to eat or not, which can mean the difference between a live birth or a still one, or a child surviving an illness or not. It’s a serious thing Colin Matheson has done.”
Dylan found himself agreeing.
The next case was a very young woman who seemed to be showing a pregnancy, though it was hard to tell with the style of dress being what it was in these times. The man at her elbow appeared to be her father, an older and very angry man. Dylan’s suspicions were confirmed when Sinann translated that the complaint against the girl, Iseabail Wilkie, was unlawful congress. Her father, Myles Wilkie, jerked her arm, trying to get her to confess the name of the baby’s father, but she stared at the stone floor and would not speak, though tears ran down her cheeks and dripped from her chin.
Sinann said, “Everyone knows who the father is.” Dylan looked at her. “It’s Marsaili’s husband, Seóras Roy Matheson.” She pointed with her chin to a thin, quiet man with dark auburn coloring, who sat against the far wall amid three children. He also stared at the stone floor, his face as white as his shirt.
Iain asked some questions, and Dylan said, “What is he saying now?”
“He wants to know if there are relatives to whom Iseabail can go.” The girl began to wail and tug at her father’s restraint. Great sobs shook her as she cried. Sinann continued, “He’s going to banish her.”
Dylan frowned, and Sinann explained with strained patience, “The Laird cannae suffer fornication to flourish in the glen. If he were to allow bastard babies to stay without support, they would soon outnumber those born legitimately, for it’s far easier to make a child than to raise it. And if you want my opinion on it, a man who cannot or will not support his by-blow should also be banished along with his seed. It’s a burden on the entire clan. The Laird must be firm in this, or lose the respect of every man in the glen who supports his children.”
Dylan stared at the white-faced Seóras and wondered what sort of coward would just sit there and let Iseabail be banished without saying a word. When the case was decided, he looked to Sinann, who translated, “She’s off to relatives in Inverness.”
“And if there were no relatives in Inverness?”
Sinann shrugged. “She would go somewhere in any case, whether it be Inverness, Glasgow, Aberdeen . . . it matters not where. The long and the short of it is that she cannae stay here, not with a fatherless baby.”
Dylan peered again at the baby’s father, who didn’t seem any happier for being off the hook. Whatever might be going on in the man’s mind, Dylan couldn’t know.
That night there was some sort of celebration in the village, involving a lot of singing and dancing around a bonfire, but Dylan didn’t attend. He only heard the bagpipes on the distant hill from where he lay in his bunk, trying to sleep. He was cold, dirty, and more pissed off by the day. This was an ugly place, and he wanted to go home.
By the fifth week, the harvest was in, the cattle turned out to graze on the oat stubble, and Dylan was put to work helping cut pieces of peat moss from a bog above an inlet of the lake.
The man named Robin worked with him and cut the peats with a hoelike cutting tool. The blade was L-shaped, and with his foot he shoved the tool into the peat, sliced again, and pulled up pieces about the size of a modern building brick. Dylan packed them in large baskets astride small, shaggy horses called garrons, which looked to Dylan like Shetland ponies. The work went in silence, since Robin’s English was as poor as Dylan’s Gaelic, but the silence was companionable. Each man did his job with a minimum of fuss and, though each evening they tried to communicate on the way back to the castle to lay out the peats for drying, Dylan found out little more than Robin’s last name, which was Innis, and that he was a distant cousin to Iain on his mother’s side. Except for the chestnut-brown hair and slender build, he was like a Matheson in height and in the blue eyes everyone around here seemed to have.
On a hill above where they worked, a cluster of women were throwing oat corns into the air and letting the chaff float off on the wind. Dylan strained to see if Caitrionagh was with them, but had no luck.
Sunday came again, a day of rest and no church since the parish priest made the circuit only every few weeks. Though the cold was still very near, a sickly sun low in the south was out and most people were outside. Over on the mainland, near the loch shore, a cluster of boys ranging in age from barely school-age to young teens were playing soccer with a brown ball of leather. They shouted and chased each other, some in kilts and some wearing only shirts. Ranald scurried up and down the field and though he didn’t play, he urged the players on with his squealing and laughter. Dylan watched them for a moment as his soul turned nostalgic for his soccer days, then went to soak up the few rays available by the south wall of the castle where the stones held the heat.
The view was of green, brown, and gray peaks reflected in the perfect silver surface of the lake, which he’d come to know was Loch Sgàthan. He leaned against the wall and sighed as his sore muscles relaxed. He’d never in his life lived in a place of such unrelenting cold, and even the scant warmth of the sun-washed stone behind him was welcome relief. He drifted, and for a while felt less like an ice pop and more like a human being. The rest of the men were inside, playing chess and backgammon. He liked backgammon, but needed the sunshine more than he needed to challenge his bunk mates in competition that would probably only get him in trouble anyway.
He dozed, and was awakened by distant singing. Women’s voices drifted to him from somewhere. Down by the water, he thought. He shaded his eyes to see under the willow tree that hung over the island shore, and made out a gathering of women in pale overdresses and blouses of yellow and red, pounding laundry in large, wooden tubs. They stood in the tubs and swished the clothes with their feet, like stomping grapes. It struck him that this method looked a whole lot easier and more fun than bending over to do laundry by hand.
He got to his feet and wandered toward the women to listen. They sang what seemed to hi
m a call and response, where one woman would sing a line and the others would answer in chorus. The rhythm of their work drove the music, and Dylan smiled as the tune reminded him of home, of oldies CD’s, and a rock and roll song called “Doo Wa Diddy.” His heart lifted at the memory, and he began to sing to himself. It really did fit with the rhythm of the women’s singing. He went with the pleasure of it and danced a couple of steps, shook his shoulders, and tossed back his hair as he rocked out by himself, still singing. He did a Michael Jackson turn, and came face-to-face with the Laird’s daughter.
Her eyes were bright with amusement, and when he turned she could no longer hold it in, but held her hand over her mouth so it snorted through her nose. Dylan’s cheeks burned and he wanted to walk away, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Now that nobody else was there to see him looking, he wanted to memorize her face for later when there would be male relatives all over the place and he wouldn’t dare stare.
She went around him and headed for the water. He turned with her and said, “Are you going to do laundry?”
“Not likely,” she replied as she spread her arms to indicate her lack of laundry to do. She opened her hand to show him the kitchen knife she carried. “I’m off to the willow tree. This winter we will need a good bit of bark.”
“Willow bark? Why?”
“That tea I gave you for your head was made of it. The bark eases pain.”
Dylan felt his now-healed skull where her father and uncles had clobbered him. “Oh, yes. Then by all means get all the willow bark you can. Don’t let me stop you.” She turned to go on her way, but he stopped her. “I’m Dylan Matheson, by the way.”
A smile touched her lips, which made him smile in return. She said, “I know.”
He spoke quickly to keep her from turning away again. “I’m sorry, I’ve been here awhile, but I never caught your name.” It was a lie, but it was also the only line he had left.
Her smile widened to a grin. For one horrible moment he thought she would walk away, but she said, “My name is Caitrionagh Matheson. Or Caitrionagh NicIain, if you will. Iain Mór is my father. That makes you my cousin.”
Dylan glanced around at the countryside. “Is there anyone within a hundred miles of here who isn’t your cousin?”
She shook her head, serious, though he’d meant the question as a joke. “Only my parents and my uncles.”
There was an awkward silence, and Dylan plundered his brain for something else to say as he found himself drawn into her eyes. She had the biggest, deepest eyes he’d ever seen. Her skin was pale, but each cheek held a splash of pink and seemed to glow from deep inside. As she turned, he blurted out, to keep her from going away, “How come those women are working on Sunday?”
Her smile this time was indulgent. “And when else are they likely to get a man’s sark off his back?” Then she reached out to tug on his sleeve. “Yours could do with a bit of a wash.”
Boy, could it! He shrugged and pulled the fabric away from his body. Even the new shirt tended to stick to him, and they were both so disgusting he could hardly stand them. “I don’t know how to do it myself.”
“And neither should you. Here, take it off and I’ll give it to Seonag who washes for my father.” She held out her hand for his shirt.
He hesitated. Plunked down in the midst of a century he knew only from books, he couldn’t be sure that stripping to the waist in front of the Laird’s daughter wouldn’t get him killed. Or at least beaten again. But she waved her hand, impatient for him to comply. Maybe it was okay. So he slipped his plaid from his shoulder and removed the two shirts he wore.
The chill air gave him goose bumps as he handed over the shirts, one white and one almost beige. She took the wad of linen, and her eyes on him made him shiver once. For a long moment she stared, and he stared back, then she blinked and smiled. The spell broken, he pulled his plaid back over his shoulder and secured it in his belt again.
“Seonag will have these back to you this evening.”
“How will she tell them from your father’s shir . . . uh, sarks?”
Caitrionagh laughed. “Yours will be the ones that do not look like ship’s sails.”
Dylan chuckled, and watched her walk away.
Sinann’s voice beside him said, “A bonnie lass, true, but not for you.”
“Sez you.” He turned to see the faerie also staring after Caitrionagh.
Sinann said, “You’ve no imagination. It’s time you were taught to think outside yourself. With your head, and not with your nether regions.”
Dylan sighed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come, lad.” She started toward the castle, but he hung back. She stopped, leapt to hover just over the ground, her voice impatient. “I said come. We must make the most of the time we have.” Still Dylan only shifted his weight and stared, so she said, “Get over here, laddie, or I’ll give ye warts on your bonnie wee nose.”
That moved him. He followed her across the drawbridge to the village. “Where are we going?”
“To a private place. Nary a body goes there because they believe it’s enchanted.” She gave him a sly glance. “The wee folk frequent the place, don’t you know.”
He chuckled. “I bet they do.”
It was a long walk by Dylan’s standards. He hadn’t walked much of anywhere since his sixteenth birthday when he’d passed his driver’s test. Out the other side of the village, Sinann ducked off the main trail and followed the creek, or “burn” as he’d learned it was called here. Up the north side of the glen she took him, and around a hill dotted with white birches and wide-crowned oaks yellow for the fall, then up a narrow gorge choked with trees and bushes. Thick pines with knotted trunks and twisted branches shaded the burn as it burbled over rocks and under gnarled roots, over which Sinann and Dylan made their way along a faint trail.
Fungus ridged some trees, and huge toadstools grew in large, brown colonies that brought to mind dancing figures of women twirling their skirts. Reeds growing in the water bent with the flow and gave the streambed a furred sort of appearance. Yellow flowers were everywhere in the woods, and Dylan found it strange to find blossoms so thick in the fall. Back in Tennessee, flowers were the glory of spring and sometimes seen in summer, but in the fall back home, colors came from dead leaves. Lower among the growth were some tiny purple blossoms as well, but they were fading to brown on their green stalks.
Finally they came to the grassy flat of a short, narrow valley surrounded by steep granite peaks, where a ruins stood in mossy antiquity.
Stone walls, furred with moss that was dark in spots but shiny, velvety green in others, seemed to melt into the sod like a green and gray sand castle washed by rain. The walls had been crumbling for a long time, centuries, perhaps millennia, and the structure was now little more than a windbreak a couple of stories high. Where the door must have been was now only a tall, narrow gap in the wall. Sinann guided him through it.
“What did this used to be? Why is it here?”
“A broch. Tower, to you. Nobody knows how old it is, even me. But if you could fly, as I do . . . well, see for yourself.”
She pointed to his feet and leapt into the air. Something seemed to grab him by the ankles and lift. He almost fell, but as his feet rose he spread them for balance and managed to keep upright. Steadily he was lifted. His heart thudded in his ears as he reached a dangerous height and kept going. “Tink,” he said in a deadly warning voice. “Stop this.”
“Och, it’s harmless, lad. It’s not as if I were changing you and couldn’t change you back. Take a look around, see the answer to your question now that you can look out from where the top of the broch once was.”
Dylan straightened, steadied his balance, and looked. Sinann said, “When the thing was at its full height it looked out over yonder trees, giving it a wide view of the east end of the glen, which is the only approach by land to your Laird’s castle.”
Dylan then understood. “It was a lookout tower. A pla
ce to garrison men and ambush anyone approaching the village along this valley . . . I mean glen. The shortcut we took is how messengers warned the castle of attack.”
“Aye. You’re not as thick as you appear.” Dylan curled his lip at her. “Except the tower is a great deal older than the castle. There was a time when it stood on its own as a place of shelter and yonder bolthole was a route to boats on the loch. But that was before my time.”
In the midst of the glen beyond was a long, low stone building surrounded by tenant fields. “What’s that?”
“ ’Tis the barracks the Sassunaich built to house their lobster-backed minions. It’s wise they were, to put it out of sight of the castle. Here they’re close enough to make their presence known, but not in the midst of things where they might be hurt, should the villagers take a notion to remind the soldiers they are outnumbered.” Then she sighed and said, “Also, like those who built this tower, the English know this is the easiest approach to the glen by land.”
Dylan stared hard at the barracks, as if he could wish them away, then said, “Let me down.” He dropped, and yelled in alarm, but then slowed just above the ground and landed as if he’d leapt from a sidewalk curb.
Once recovered, he looked around at the curved walls. Worn stone stairs rose along the inside in a spiral that came to an end near an upper window. A tall oak tree grew just outside and poked through that window, its gnarled branches twisted by the stone and grown to it then spread out across the tower interior, throwing shade both inside and out. A small, stone-lined hearth overgrown with grass, nothing more than a depression about the size of a car tire in the center of the enclosed area, was partly grassed over, and Dylan guessed the ceiling had once vented smoke through a hole. Some large pieces of fallen wall lay about, scattered across the sod floor. Dylan sat on one of them, which was almost entirely covered over with moss and lichen. The grass at his feet was spotted with a black fungus that grew all through it like crabgrass.
Son of the Sword Page 9