by Jules Watson
When Minna stifled an exclamation, Orla hastily clarified, ‘But Fa doesn’t shout at us.’
‘No?’
‘We only make him smile, don’t we, Finola, because when we grow up we’re going to fight by his side with swords – he would love us for ever then. And that’s why,’ she finished, returning to her theme, ‘we don’t want any old priest, because Fa hates them.’ She folded her arms. ‘And we don’t want to learn any nasty priest things from you.’
‘Orla!’ Finola squeaked, kicking her sister beneath the covers.
With a cry, Orla flung them back and delivered a pinch to her sister’s arm. The younger girl burst into sobs; the puppy ran around the bed madly.
At long last Minna calmed the girls and got them to sleep. But she could not easily join them, for the tremors running through her.
She could still feel the dread that slammed into her belly in the vision, like a fist doubling her over. But she had never seen so much; never remembered it so vividly, felt it, tasted it, smelled it. What could it mean? That something had cracked open in her – perhaps she was going mad.
Minna lay down and cradled her cheek, eyes wide to the darkness.
Chapter 11
The next morning Minna ate a bread roll with gritty eyes, the hard dough forming a knot in her belly. ‘Bannock,’ Orla instructed through the crumbs. ‘That’s what we call them.’
She turned to run off with Finola, but Clíona’s hands held both girls there as she turned to inspect Minna. Clíona was deceiving, that plump body, gold hair and milky skin suggesting softness. But there was nothing soft about this woman: her square hands were reddened, her brows lowered.
Through Orla, Clíona told her she must care for the girls’ clothes and baths once a week, learn to cook bannocks on the hearth-stone and porridge in the pot, and when she wasn’t busy with them, bring firewood and grind grain and any other things she saw fit.
Minna had never been ordered this way. Ashamed, her fingers brushed the welt on her neck, stinging after her restless night. Clíona saw and pointed at a small clay pot. This time Minna caught one in five of her words. The woman mimed rubbing something between her hands. ‘Sheep fat. Skin.’ She pointed at the slave-ring. ‘Help skin.’
‘She said—’ Orla began, but Minna cut her off.
‘I heard what she said.’ She didn’t know what to make of this unexpected kindness, until Clíona shrugged and said something else before turning away.
‘She says if that chafing turns into a wound you’ll be no use to anyone.’
Minna halted the sinking of her belly. She was just the same now as the pigs that gave meat, the cows that gave milk and the geese that gave feathers. Just the same, and no more.
Two weeks slid by with Minna confined to the king’s hall, the tiny shed she had taken over for the lessons, and the waste-pit on the cliff edge. At first she only spoke to the girls. The queen was still asleep when they all crept down in the morning, and they were abed when she came into the king’s hall at night.
Clíona barked only brief orders at her, but now and again she caught the maid watching her, as did all the servants. Wondering, Minna supposed, whether she would sink or swim. She thought of Cian’s last words to her: Swim as hard as you can, until I can get us out of here. He was her only – albeit tenuous – link to home. And he had risked himself to save her, despite his brittle sarcasm and scorn of loyalty. She clung to those words and the last sight of his pale face.
After a few days, Clíona sent one of the servants to teach Minna her tasks. Keeva was around her age, but small, with a wiry build, black hair and dark eyes. She wore her hair in a side-braid threaded with gull feathers, which, according to Orla, denoted her as Attacotti, a tribe allied to the Dalriadans who lived on islands in the western sea. She was quick-witted and sharp-tongued, and studied Minna with great suspicion.
Beneath those beady eyes, Minna threw herself into working hard, pride prodding her to prove all the servants wrong. After a week, her dress was stained with a mix of salt, meat blood, flour and mud, the old wool already wearing through into holes.
Sniffing disdainfully, Clíona dug out a pile of old clothes from the storage baskets, indicating that Minna should pick what she wanted. After a wary moment she pounced on two pairs of worn deer-hide trousers – for to her surprise women wore them here – tunics in a dull brown check, a flax belt and a hooded cloak of rough, undyed wool. Avoiding her eyes, Clíona also threw in some sheepskin boots. Minna gratefully peeled off her muddy sandals and dug her toes into the warm wool. The wind was growing more bitter up on the crag, blowing in blustery sheets of rain.
Minna’s attempts to speak Dalriadan were clearly frustrating Keeva and she seemed to assign herself to setting that right first, instructing her as they worked side by side. Between Keeva, Finola and Orla it wasn’t long therefore before she was swiftly picking up the barbarian speech. Uncannily swiftly.
Minna told herself it must be because of Mamo, shrugging away the unease at how familiar it felt. Mamo’s tales had many words from Erin, and Erin is where the Dalriadans came from, Orla said.
As the days passed, she gradually sank into the sea of language around her, snatching at meanings until words resolved into sentences and then sense. Fluency came easily, as if floating up from inside her. She spent her days asking and listening, leaving no time for anything else to make its way in.
She did it to exhaust her mind, so the only time she was alone, in bed, she prayed to the Mother Goddess for Cian and then curled into a ball, fleeing grief. Hiding in sleep.
The sky clouded over from the sea, and when storm rain began to pour down one day Minna thought she might at last be able to slip unnoticed to the village to seek out Cian. After all, she wasn’t leaving the dun, as Brónach had expressly forbidden, just the crag, and since everyone was inside for once there was no one to see her go. The drops pounded the earth so hard the air was a curtain of needles, echoing her frightened, thudding heart. The few who braved the sodden paths were buried in cloaks, heads down. The guards at the rock arch were huddled in their tower, no longer pacing the walls.
The land all around the crag was obscured by rain, the thatched roofs streaming. Minna leaped over muddy rivulets and edged under dripping eaves. She kept pausing to listen and found the stables by the whinnies of the horses – and the smell.
The doors at each end of the long building were propped open for air. Avoiding the end where the horse-boys diced and cleaned tack, Minna went to the other side of the stables and discovered Cian in an empty stall on his own.
He was sitting in the straw against the wall, eyes closed, head back. The first thing she saw was the vivid purple bruise along one cheek and other, fading marks over his neck and jaw. She sank on her knees beside him. His eyes opened quickly, flashing with an instinctive, wild defiance. ‘Oh …’ she breathed, and went to touch the bruise, as if she might soothe it.
He jerked his head away, avoiding her eyes. ‘Don’t.’
She sat back, crooking her arms about her knees. His tunic was smeared with blood and manure, and he had no knife or shears so his jaw was shadowed with stubble, his black hair longer and matted with straw. ‘How did this happen? This wasn’t … your master?’
‘Not yet.’ His smile was bitter as he tilted his head towards the horse-boys. ‘Little bastards down the other end don’t take kindly to being bettered by a Roman, that’s all.’
‘Bettered?’
‘I’m the best rider by far. And I curse them in words they can’t understand.’ He shrugged. ‘I can hold my own against two or three, but ten …’ The others were boys of thirteen and fourteen, scrappy and bold.
Her eyes fell to the scabs across his knuckles, and a pang of fear for him loosened her tongue. ‘You told me we had to swim.’ His head came around, his eyes sparking dangerously, but she ploughed on. ‘I thought you meant … well … keeping our eyes down and our mouths shut, biding our time.’
A desperate anger flared in
his face. ‘Don’t tell me what to do, Tiger. You don’t know … anything.’ He bit off his words.
‘Then tell me what I don’t know,’ she whispered. All this time she had been struggling to make her way here, trying to keep her mind blank, and he had been suffering like this.
He merely turned away, his chin jutting out. ‘Surely it’s better not to provoke them,’ she said softly. ‘Or they might hurt you worse.’
He stared out of the open door. ‘You have to show these people that you have no fear, or they will be on you like a pack of wild dogs. You don’t know what they can do: they’re animals.’ The loathing in his voice turned her stomach, and she searched what she could see of his face, confused by this change in him.
His humour had often been self-deprecating, his smiles sardonic. But now a mask had been torn away and it was raw anger that beat upon her senses. Her belly twisted with a frightening, instinctive revulsion. How could she feel that for Cian, who had saved her, who had teased her? Only now he wasn’t teasing, and there was darkness in his face beyond the bruises, a pressure in the air about him that thrust her back.
After a moment the tension went out of him and he sighed, pressing his head back against the wall. ‘I’m sorry, Tiger. I just … hate …’ He stopped himself, forced a bleak smile that went nowhere near his eyes. ‘I hate this.’ He touched the slave-ring around his neck.
Gingerly she curled up beside him, relieved by the hint of smile. ‘Me, too.’ They both gazed out into the rain, their combined frustration so heavy it was almost tangible.
‘They are bloodthirsty savages,’ Cian hissed after a while, ‘and we are going to get out of here and find our way back home to civilized lands, and never see another filthy, stinking barbarian in all our lives.’
She understood the words, but all that came to Minna in that moment was that she had no real home to go to. As the rain hammered the earth outside, they sat and watched without speaking again.
Chapter 12
‘Finola,’ Minna prodded. ‘Answer me.’
The dreary rain had trapped them inside for days at their lessons. This meant that both girls could now write their names, and that Minna had grown more fluent in their own language. However, though Orla galloped swiftly along with her astonishing memory for language and letters, Finola struggled, often slipping into a dreamy state, staring into space.
Now it was late afternoon and needles of rain pattered on the tiny window in a drowsy rhythm. The heat of the small fire in the corner had thickened the air; the puppy Lia dozed in a basket. Finola was gazing at the window, eyes glassy, small white hands spread over the sheet of birch bark on the table.
Minna put aside her charcoal and brushed her dusty fingers. ‘Finola,’ she repeated sharply, pressing a hand against the girl’s cheek. It was burning. She waved her fingers before Finola’s vacant eyes.
‘She’s seeing.’ Orla squirmed under Minna’s elbow and poked her sister’s shoulder. ‘Finola, wake up!’
Finola blinked, and her body went rigid from feet to head. ‘Sails …’ she whispered, her soft mouth quivering. ‘There are sails and boats and red men and … the swords hurt, they hurt!’ Then her eyes rolled back and she shrieked, ‘No, no!’ and tossed herself over before Minna could stop her, striking her head on the bench.
‘Finola!’ Minna cried, taking the child in her arms. At her touch Finola shuddered and broke into sobs, her eyelids fluttering. Goddess … She raised Finola’s chin, brushing back her wispy hair. Just above the child’s temple the skin was marred by a trickle of blood and a bruise. ‘There, little one,’ she soothed. The child wailed, her arms hanging onto her neck. Slowly, Minna dragged herself up, the puppy jumping up her legs, yipping excitedly.
‘She hurt her head,’ Orla observed.
‘I know,’ she replied unsteadily. ‘We will have to get it seen to. Here, take her cloak and help me wrap it around her. And put that dog back in its basket.’
Minna’s knees shook as she staggered under Finola’s weight, the whimpering girl clinging to her like a limpet as Orla trotted beside her. She had to brave Brónach’s house. The refrain ran through her mind. She had only seen the old lady from afar – a full moon not having passed yet. And now she must come to her with this. A royal princess injured in her care.
She paused at the healer’s door, moistening her dry lips. Orla put her head beneath the door-hide, then leaned back and shook it. Inside, the room smelled only of herbs and peat: Brónach was away.
Minna tipped Finola onto the sick bed, surveying the room. The pulse of energy she had felt in this house was here again, raising goose-bumps on her arms. ‘Orla, take that pan and fill it with water, then set it on the coals.’ With one look at her face, Orla ran to do her bidding. Minna pressed her hair against her temples, staring down at Finola. The bruise had spread and sweat dampened the little girl’s dress. Think! she berated herself. Act!
Her heart hammering, she stood before Brónach’s workbench. The herb bunches were curled and dry from the fire, their leaves shrivelled. Tentatively, she reached to bowls on the bench and jars on the shelves, peeling back lids to smell, dust powder on her fingertips, slick unguent on her wrists. The answer was here, somewhere, but so many plants were unfamiliar to her, the way they were prepared unusual.
Then, gradually, a kind of trance crept over Minna, and her panic began to dissolve into the swirl of musky scents. Her spinning mind slowed, then paused, suspended. Her eyelids closed as if pressed by an invisible hand, and it was her fingers and nose and some other sense that reached for what she needed. A jar here: she pushed it to one side. And here, a glass vial, and there, a bark packet that crackled as she unrolled it. Then her fingers sought of their own accord a bundle of leaves and stalks tied to a post with twine.
In this haze, time moved peculiarly. As she ordered Orla to stir the pot, Minna pressed raw leaves into a mortar. When the scent was released, a song came to hover on her lips, rising and falling in the back of her throat. Distantly, she knew that the song was meant to call to the life in the plants, the … the source of it all … and draw it up so it would give that same life to a child’s blood. She knew the song as she had known the language; she unconsciously understood how the bubbling water and rhythmic grinding of pulp in the mortar went perfectly together.
The song was spun thread, knitting everything into a shimmering weave. A pattern that would heal.
At some stage – how much later? – she slowly became aware of Brónach standing before her. The old woman brought the smell of night mist with her, clinging about her cloak and hair. Her cold, grey eyes were boring into Minna.
Minna stirred and sat up. She had been slumped on the sickbed beside Finola, and Orla was curled asleep on the hearth cushions.
‘What are you doing here?’ Brónach’s voice tore the remnants of the veil, the song, from her heart.
She rubbed her eyes, her gaze straying to Finola. The girl was asleep, breathing deeply. ‘The princess had a fever, and then she fell and hit her head …’ She trailed off.
Above Finola’s brow a lumpy compress trickled dark green liquid down her cheek. Beside the bed, an empty bronze pan with speckled dregs stood on a three-legged table. Minna didn’t remember doing any of these things clearly, but in the hours since, the heat had faded from Finola’s face.
Brónach picked up the pan and sniffed it, then leaned over the bandage on Finola’s brow-bone. She dabbed at the liquid and touched it to her tongue before finally sitting down on the bed and regarding Minna with a set face. ‘What did you use for the fever?’ They had both slipped into Dalriadan.
‘I …’ Minna bit her lip, then took up the pan herself and sniffed it. ‘The one with the little white flowers, that grows tall … I think.’
‘There is more than that,’ Brónach snapped. ‘Why use the sun stalk? Why that? I keep it for stomach troubles and the flux.’
Minna was pinned there by the intensity of her stony gaze. ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know the
plant of which you speak.’
Brónach flung out a bony finger. ‘Show it to me!’ she demanded. ‘You must know it if you plucked it.’
Her eyes followed that finger to the roof-posts. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed, just as confounded as Brónach. Now, all the bunches looked the same, a mass of dull green twigs and leaves. ‘It … it called to me to take it. It wanted me to.’ Her voice subsided in embarrassment.
Brónach’s breathing had quickened. ‘And the poultice? You’ve used noon-flower and long-hood together. Why together?’
‘I don’t know,’ she repeated helplessly.
‘I would not have thought that,’ Brónach murmured to herself, studying Finola’s face. ‘It keeps the fleas away, but that is all.’ She pulled up the edge of the bandage, peering at the skin. ‘How bad was the fall?’
‘Bad. She had some kind of dream, a fit. She fell to the ground before I could catch her, and her head cracked the bench. It bled and there was a dark bruise.’
‘There is no bruise now.’
Chewing her lip, Minna craned to see. Beneath the pulped herb, the angry colour had been leached from the cut. The only bruise was a sliver of purple around its edges. Abruptly, Brónach replaced the bandage and peeled off her cloak. The sleeves of her blue dress were rolled up, exposing her wrists. In the glow of the coals Minna could see dark stains on her palms and nails.
‘So,’ Brónach murmured, ‘you know not only the plants, but how to use them.’
Minna stared down at the floor rushes. What she had done for the boys, treating their scrapes and sniffles with the same herbs everyone used, bore no relation to this, the blossoming of knowing inside her, the way her hands had moved without her conscious direction. A tremor ran over her. ‘I truly did not know what I was doing.’