Veil of Time

by Claire R. McDougall

  Marcus hangs back and lets Talorcan take me by the arm up towards the gates. He talks quickly as though he thinks I can understand everything, when all I want to ask him is about Fergus’s wife. He is telling me something about the Picts, how they used to rule Dunadd, how his ancestors were on this land long before the Gaels. I’m not sure of this man, what his hand in the small of my back means. It is with some relief the guards bar him from entering the fort and Marcus is put back in the role of lead. I hear the slam of the gates closing as I follow Marcus up to the flat esplanade where the houses sit. I wonder about this Talorcan, what he wants from me.

  Before we have gone much farther, Marcus reaches back and slows me down; in front of us, a figure is taking shape out of the dark.

  Marcus’s voice is quiet as he says, “King Murdoch.”

  I already feel apprehensive before we get up to the king, so I hang back a little. He is shorter and stockier than his brother. His hair is curlier and somehow there is less intelligence in his gait.

  He doesn’t speak to me, barely looks in my direction. His orders are directed at the slave. Marcus bows and leads me to a house from which I can hear the music of a harp. There is light and warm air seeping out from under the door. I hope Fergus isn’t in there because I don’t know how to be with him now. After Murdoch has left, Marcus announces us. Marcus Paullus agus Ma-khee. When the door opens, he leads me inside. Unlike the house we have just come from, this one is rectangular, with a fire and a rude clay chimney at the far end. Superior torches in silver clasps on the upright beams illuminate the tapestries that cover the stone walls and the carpets strewn over wooden floors. The underside of the turf roof is lined with wooden slats, and the furniture is fine, the chairs and table carved with animals in Celtic design. A man seated on a stool by the door with a lap-size harp is singing in a falsetto, a little raucous to the ear.

  Fergus rises as I approach the fire, and my heart stops. He wants to meet my gaze, but my gaze wants to be anywhere else. There are other people in the room, but I am not looking at them either. Marcus pushes me gently in the direction of an older woman seated between two monks. I suppose they’re monks because of their coarse brown cassocks, which apparently aren’t going to change over the next millennium. One of them holds in his hand a pole with an ornate copper bell at the end tied by a leather thong. Welded onto the face of the bell is a crucifix. The woman gets up with regal bearing and circles me in a way that would be rude in my day, but I’m not caring. I have Fergus in my peripheral vision; he has turned away from me.

  Marcus tells the woman my name is Maggie. The woman’s heavily embroidered robe swishes over my feet as she stops in front of me. There’s a look of Fergus about her, in the eyes, in the shape of the brow.

  I imagine this is the queen mother, with her gold and garnet brooch and the ornate chain about her neck. Her bony wrists and fingers are bedecked with other finely crafted gold pieces. Her braided hair is wrapped around a band of gold and sits off her shoulders.

  At any rate, she seems unimpressed by me and goes back to her chair. I see Fergus motion Marcus forward, and the slave shows the queen all the aspects of my clothing that were of interest to him and Sula earlier, including the bra. I’m particularly interested to see what the monks make of that. I catch Fergus smiling to himself when they make a show of looking off to the wall. I wish I could smile back at him, but I have already taken too much for granted.

  Marcus shows the queen my fingernails, which I suppose betray a life of ease. But the monks want her attention, and have more luck, redirecting her towards a leather-bound book.

  All of a sudden, the door opens, and Murdoch comes in leading a handsome woman he introduces as Colla. The harpist ceases his song. The woman’s long hair is very dark and ringed with a coronet braid. She is not young, but younger than me. Fergus seems annoyed when Murdoch sets the woman next to him. Perhaps this is the wife Talorcan mentioned. She certainly seems to have her eye on him, certainly shuffles her bum as close to his as possible. I begin to think Talorcan might be my best ally—he knows what these royals are up to.

  Fergus indicates to Marcus that I should be led out. Before I turn, he shoots me a look that concedes he is not happy. I tell my face not to show what I am feeling. I think I have already let down too much of my guard to Prince Fergus. He can have his dark-eyed woman. I don’t know why I thought Dark Age men would have higher standards, but I have to admit he put on a good show.

  After the well-lit room, the outside is very dark, so much so that I almost fall over Fergus’s daughter. Like any child, she has been hovering about the doorway listening to adults through the cracks. I can’t see her well, but just finding her makes me fight for breath. I wait a moment for my eyes to adjust, to make out the features of this girl who looks so much like my Ellie. Her hair is longer, of course, the front strands twisted and pulled back to a piece of twine at the nape of her neck. She must think my staring at her has to do with her misbehaving.

  “Hello,” I say quietly.

  I place my hand on her head and say her name. Illa, not Ellie, but still the word strangles in my throat. She turns her head slightly towards me and then back to the crack in the door she is peering through. I take a step and touch her back. When she looks, I smile. She doesn’t flinch this time but looks back with a smile I have seen a million times before. But Marcus is tugging me upward towards Sula’s hut. I wave to the girl and hope this is a universal signal. She nods, not understanding, I think. I nod, too, anything to bridge the gap between her in her time and space and the thing that is me, here and now, confused. Marcus is confused, too, not understanding the tears, as we walk around the final fortress of wall and up onto the hill.

  Sula asks me what’s wrong when we walk into the musky air of her hut. Her eyes are wandering all over me, but it is my heart that is in pain, and I’m not sure she has anything for that in her pots. She kneels by my twisted ankle and bids me sit. She holds her hands skyward, then rubs them together so quickly I expect to see sparks. But they feel warm and afford some relief when she wraps them around my ankle, pressing in at certain points on my foot. It feels good to be back in the care of Sula, like it used to feel sitting on the lap of Mrs. Gillies when I was a child.

  I begin to wonder if Colla was any more persuasive with Fergus once I left. I wonder if he is now touching the tips of her fingers to his lips. Still, I am quite hungry, having declined that stew earlier. Sula seems to know and sends Marcus off for food. When he is gone, she starts telling me about the monks. She does a very good impersonation, walking tight with hands folded, ringing her imaginary bell with a sour look. She throws her arms up in a dismissive gesture. But Marcus is back with food, finer than I have seen yet; perhaps the monks are being treated to dinner. What seems to be a kind of custard fills one bowl, and it tastes very good, a sort of sweet scrambled eggs, with a flat cake sweetened with honey. He brings whisky in a small earthen jug, which I don’t normally like, but I sip it and it sears my insides enough for me not to notice the cold so much, not to pay as much attention to the thought of Fergus.

  Once the meal is over, Sula wraps herself in her cloak and lies down by the fire. Now I am glad for the extra material in mine. It doesn’t make the floor any softer, but it provides a couple of layers of heat. The room is hazy from the smoke and dim, lit only by a stone lamp. I bunch up one end of my cloak for a pillow and let my eyes close. Sleep comes, but dreams do not.

  Some time later, I am awakened by the plague of many a tenant in Glasgow on a Saturday night—drunken singing outside the door. They’re not singing they belong to Glasgow, for I’m not even sure if Glasgow properly exists yet, but whatever it is they are singing about, it seems to be funny to them. The racket doesn’t appear to awaken Sula or Marcus. But I creep to the door and, still wrapped like a mummy, peek out. The stars are bright against the waning moon, and I can just make out two figures lolling upon each other, one of which I realize quickly is Fergus. I close the door again.

&n
bsp; But Fergus has seen me. In a moment, he is banging on the door. “Ma-khee, mo chridhe.”

  Mo chridhe. Mrs. Gillies used to call me that when she was in a good mood. It means “my heart.” And my heart has picked up on it, because it is beating faster than it should.

  He bangs on the door again. “Ma-khee.”

  But Maggie takes her shawl and lies back down by the fire. Prince Fergus should go back to his wife. He isn’t in any state to know what he is saying. And he should stay away from me with his lack of eunuch-ness and his mo chridhe. I don’t want to think about this now. I want only sleep. And will get things straightened out in the morning, if the morning in this Dunadd ever dawns.

  14

  Fergus woke up shivering by the midden on the far side of the fort. He emptied his stomach onto the grass, and then stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. He hadn’t often had whisky, but the monks from Iona had brought bottles from their distillery, and he had decided to drink himself to the point that he could no longer hear their speeches and the tinkle of their bells.

  Brighde had served them custard and cake as though they were royalty, not eunuchs from an island where sacred women once lived. The thought of women brought back the image of himself banging at Sula’s door. He bent over double, fearing there might be more to lose, but only retched, and then groaned for having played the fool in front of the woman Ma-khee.

  Fergus heard a voice off to his left and found the king, his brother, low down among the bracken, rubbing his face.

  Fergus offered his hand. “The monks will be the death of us,” he said.

  Murdoch stood up, shivering. “At least we will die happy.”

  Fergus laughed, nudged his brother. Murdoch laughed, too, making himself stagger and almost fall. They were boys again, hiding from their mother, free for just a few more moments.

  “Colla is a good woman,” said Murdoch. “What did I tell you?”

  Fergus shook his head. “Not for me, my friend.”

  Murdoch wagged his finger at his brother. “That is not what I saw last night.”

  Fergus rubbed his eyes. Things might be worse than he feared. “What did you see?”

  In truth, Fergus couldn’t remember much of the evening of drinking. He had a vague recollection of holding the woman on his knee, but he also recalled it was more of a taunting for the monks than for the woman.

  “I saw a good match,” said Murdoch. “I saw my little brother with a wife of his own kind. I saw a woman who would give him counsel and love him well, whose daughter would be a friend to Illa.”

  Fergus began to walk away, past the druid’s hut and down towards their childhood house.

  “I hope you will not reject Colla,” Murdoch called. “I have already told her of your interest.”

  Fergus turned back. “Then you told her wrong.”

  They found their mother and the two monks just as they had left them, their heads inclined over a book. The language of Erin had never been written in books. The druids counseled that the life in the language would dwindle if it were reduced to scrawls on a page. Everything there was to tell could be passed on by voices. It took many years for the druids to learn the history by rote. Sula knew much of the tradition, too: she was the one who knew the exact number of summers from this to that, from when MacErc and his brothers left Erin, the summers measured back to Finn M’Coul and all the heroes from the other country. But Sula’s main use to the people of Dunadd was in her predictions, her charms, and her healing ways. There were other druids living within the fort who kept the history better, who knew the patterns of the stars and their meaning; a few boys who were learning the trade.

  Brighde looked up. “I am glad you came back. There is more to what the Christians have to say than comes out of a bottle.”

  Fergus laughed. “The spirits of the bottle speak the most clearly.”

  Murdoch sat down on a stone by the fire. “What is in the book?”

  Brighde said, “It is a story of a savior, not here but far to the east where winter never comes.”

  “To be saved from winter,” said Murdoch, glancing at his brother, “would please the people well.”

  The monk with white hair spoke. “From a winter of the soul, brother.”

  Brighde said, “This savior performed wonders of divination and brought men back from the dead.”

  Fergus drew closer. Could this savior from the east bring his own father back? Could Saraid come back even now? He asked, “Where is this savior?”

  The young monk barely had a beard yet. “The Romans killed him.”

  Murdoch shook his head. “The Roman armies killed many with their chariots and armor.”

  “But if he is on the other side himself,” said Fergus, “how can he bring back the dead?”

  “He sits at the right hand of God,” said the older monk.

  “Which god?” asked Murdoch. “The horned god?”

  “No,” said the monk, laughing, “the horned god is no god. There is only one God. It says so in this scripture.”

  Fergus was confused. The mightiest power was Cailleach, the triune goddess, who kept them through the dark days, who nourished the earth with sun and rain in the spring, and who put seeds in the belly of woman.

  “He is the god of Moses and Abraham. His name is Yahweh,” said the young monk.

  “A man?” Fergus laughed. “How could the only god be a man? How could a man give birth to the world by himself?”

  “A father,” said Brighde. “A spirit father.”

  Fergus was in need of a father. Still, he didn’t like the monks and their strange ways.

  He took a step towards them. “Why is woman now banished from Iona?”

  The younger of the two monks looked embarrassed.

  The older one spoke. “Columcille, who brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to this land, decreed it.”

  Murdoch said, “Columcille? Didn’t he come from the land of my ancestors across the channel in Erin? He took no such habits from Erin. He must have taken this from Rome.”

  “Woman,” said the older monk, bowing slightly to the royal woman in his company, “it says in the book it was woman’s fault that suffering came into the world. She listened to a snake and defied God; she tried to have more knowledge than she should have.”

  “How can a woman have too much knowledge?” Fergus asked. “What good would a woman be without knowledge?”

  The old man spoke. “Woman tempts man from his spiritual path. This is why we have neither women nor any female beast on Iona.”

  Fergus began to pace. “This is madness.” He stopped and raised his arms to his mother. “How can you listen to this—you, the chief woman of this band of Scotti?”

  Brighde coughed to interrupt and directed herself towards the monks. “It is true that the island of Iona bears the bones of the royal line from Fergus MacErc on. My mother and her mother are buried there. If you will admit no women, then how should I be buried with my line? I would want nothing less.”

  The monk seemed to feel he was losing ground. “As a royal woman, of course, you would be admitted to the island and permitted to lie with your ancestors.”

  “As a royal dead woman.” Fergus turned to the young monk. “What kind of a man shuns the female kind? You are yet young; do you not wake in the morning with the need for a woman?”

  The young monk tried to form words, but no voice came with them. The older monk stepped in. “There is no carnal lust where there is love of Christ our Savior.”

  Brighde coughed quietly. “The Christians have brought other news. The Picts in the north have been moving south. They say their new king Oengus is a ruthless man.”

  Murdoch furrowed his brow. “So I tell my brother, who would sooner marry a Pict than fight one.”

  Fergus felt his arm move to strike.

  Brighde stepped in. “The Christians say we must reject the gods and the ways of the Picts, allow them no purchase, or we will be overrun once the forces from
the north join with their brothers here under the sign of the boar.”

  Fergus’s breath was coming fast. “If we make enemies of our Pictish brothers and sisters now, we will drive them to ally with their cousins in the north. There has never been conflict between us. Their gods and customs have served us well enough. We understand each other.”

  Brighde glanced at Murdoch. “Take the Christians,” she said. “I will talk to Fergus alone for a while.”

  “Come,” said Murdoch, helping them from their seats. “Our Saxon metalworker makes all manner of gold ornaments. Perhaps there might be something for your cape.”

  The monks followed Murdoch out, leaving their book in the hands of Brighde.

  “Pay no heed to that,” said Fergus. “So many words on a page telling us how we must live. They care only for selling their wares, nothing more.”

  “Still,” said his mother, “there is much in here to be admired. Peace instead of war, love instead of hate.”

  “If they love so much,” said Fergus, “then why do they hate women? Do you think your kind brought suffering into the world?”

  Brighde shook her head and laid down the book. “Still, we would do well to learn this writing from the Christians.”

  “No,” said Fergus, “you know my father believed the druids on this matter. The Romans wrote everything on this paper, and look, where are the Romans now? The words of the heart beat louder than this.”

  “But Fergus, if we could have it written down that we, the Scotti, own Dunadd, then perhaps there would be no need for battle.”

  Fergus shook his head. “Even if we believe what the written word says, the Picts would trample such words into the dirt.”