by Lynne Jonell
“The Picts came from Ireland!” shouted a voice from the back of the crowd.
“No, they were descendants of the original people that were here in the Stone Age—” said someone else.
“No, you’re wrong, Pictish is closely tied to the Q-Celtic languages—”
“Absolutely not, it’s P-Celtic—”
“That has been totally rejected by all reputable scholars!” cried the man in the glasses. “It’s a Germanic language, everyone knows that!”
Breet stared at the Roman and Pict reenactors, all arguing heatedly, their mock battle forgotten. “I do not understand these people. You say they were pretending to fight? What for?”
Nan tried to explain, but Breet’s frown only grew deeper. Meantime the argument had somehow moved on to something called the “Pictish beast.”
“It’s not a real animal; all reputable scholars agree,” the chubby man insisted. “It’s got a snout like a crocodile, antlers like a stag, coils like curled flippers instead of feet—” He stepped forward, jabbing a finger at Breet’s armband. “That is only a modern imitation, not particularly accurate, of course, but still the snout indicates—”
“Stop waving your arms!” Breet ordered. “You’re frightening the horses!” She broke away from Nan’s restraining hand and climbed the front of the chariot to get to the ponies. She stroked their shaggy necks, crooning words Will suddenly did not understand.
The chubby man pushed his glasses up on his nose, looking angry. “Stop pretending to speak Pictish, you silly girl, and get out of here so we can continue our battle. If you wanted to be in it, you should have registered in advance and paid your dues.”
Breet’s eyes narrowed at the sneering tone. She tossed back her wild hair and took a belligerent step forward.
“Uh-oh.” Will got out of the chariot and pushed through a group of people examining its painted sides. “Excuse me—excuse me, please—”
“This chariot is remarkable,” said a woman, reaching out a hand to stop him. “And the lashings seem surprisingly authentic. Where did you get it?”
He didn’t answer. Breet was saying something back to the man, and it didn’t sound friendly at all. Will strained to hear the words, but nothing that he heard made sense.… Why couldn’t he understand her anymore?
The man wiped his sweating forehead. “You’ve got a nerve, disrupting everything, charging in with horses and talking gibberish. We’re trying to make history come alive for these people, and you—you’re not even authentic! Where did you get your ideas for how to dress like a Pict, from Hollywood?”
Breet’s arm went back; Will lunged for the hand that held the whip. “No! Stop!”
Breet did not take her eyes off the chubby man. “I may not know his tongue, but I understand a rude and insolent tone,” she said through gritted teeth. “No one insults the daughter of a chieftain without penalty! And let go my arm!” She gave it a furious shake.
Will, relieved that he could understand her again, held on grimly. Things would get out of control fast if she started whipping anyone she didn’t like.
“You’d better take your friend away.” The man glared at Will. “Get her out of here before I call the police on you lot.”
“No one is going to call the police. They’re coming with me.” Nan’s father was slightly breathless from running, but his voice was calm. He gave the chubby red-faced man one brief glance, then raised his voice to address the crowd. “Step back, please, give us room to turn the vehicle around—that’s right, thank you. We’ll let you get on with your battle in just a moment. Nan,” he added quietly, “give me the reins; I’ll lead them. Is this a friend of yours?”
“Yes,” said Nan hurriedly. “Dad, this is Breet, from … over the hill a bit. Breet, this is my father, Ewen Menzies.”
Breet stared uncomprehendingly.
Will still had hold of her arm. “That’s Nan’s father,” he whispered in Pictish.
Cousin Ewen gave her an absent smile, clucked to the horses, and walked slowly in the direction of the castle. The horses followed, and the chariot rolled behind. Nan jumped out to walk with Will and Breet.
Breet said something that sounded furious. She tossed her head.
Nan glanced at Will, startled. “I don’t understand her!”
“It happened to me, too,” Will admitted. “But when I got next to her, all of a sudden I knew Pictish again.” He frowned, thinking. “Time Hearing worked when we were with the Picts. Now that we’re back in our own time, maybe it won’t work unless we’re touching her?”
“But I could understand her when we first got to our time,” Nan objected. “We were talking the whole way, in the chariot.”
Will shrugged. “Time Hearing takes a while to kick in when we’re in the past. Maybe it takes a while to wear off, too. Anyway, we were crammed in so tight in the chariot, we were always touching.”
Breet muttered something again, frowning at them.
Will flung an arm over her shoulders. “Sorry. Say that again?”
Nan, on Breet’s other side, reached her arm around the girl’s waist.
“Those were not my people at all,” Breet said, casting a last scornful glance at the crowd behind her. “Why were they pretending to be?”
“Ha!” Will grinned at Nan. He was right—touch was the key! Then, in Pictish, “Maybe they like history. You know, showing people what battles were like in the past.”
“That was not a battle,” Breet said, her face grim. “Do they think fighting Romans was a game?”
“Well, you can’t expect them to kill people nowadays,” Nan said. “Anyway, they probably are your people. They’re your descendants, anyway.”
“My descendants?” Breet flung back. “Running about on a field, pretending to bleed?” She snorted. “If they are so anxious for a battle, why don’t they find a real one to fight? Or are there no enemies left?”
“There are plenty of enemies,” Will said slowly, “but they aren’t always close by.” The thought of his mother, always in the background of his mind, came to the fore, and his throat tightened until it ached. She had gone among enemies when she had traveled to that far country, only she hadn’t known it. It was hard to know how to fight enemies like that.
Breet was still talking. “… and I didn’t like that little man with the red face and soft belly. I didn’t understand his words, but I could see he thought he knew everything. And he wasn’t even a druid!”
Nan suddenly spoke in English. “Will, how is Breet going to understand my dad when he tells her about Romans? He won’t know her language. And she won’t know his.”
Will wrenched his thoughts back to the problem at hand. Cousin Ewen might develop Time Hearing if he went back to Pictish times for a while, but there was no way Will was going to let that happen. Having Gormlaith stuck back there was bad enough.
“Maybe,” said Nan brightly, “Time Hearing will work for Breet, too, and she’ll understand English all at once!”
“I doubt it.” Will rubbed his nose. “Didn’t we figure out that Time Hearing worked because some genes or something in our bodies, passed down from our ancestors, almost remembered the language? So when our bodies were actually back in that time period, the memory came back?”
“Y—es,” said Nan. “Something like that.”
“Well, then, Time Hearing can’t work for Breet, because this isn’t her past. She can’t remember a language her ancestors never spoke.”
Nan’s forehead wrinkled. “I suppose I was hoping it would work for her, anyway. Because if we have to translate into Pictish, my dad will think we’re just … you know.”
Will knew. Cousin Ewen would think they were playing a childish game, wasting his time. He would think they were being rude on purpose.
Nan asked Breet in Pictish, “Did you understand what we just said?”
Breet’s leather boots crunched on the gravel drive. “Nay.”
Nan wiped her forehead and trudged on with the others,
following her father up the driveway. It was hot; whatever breeze there had been had died long ago.
Breet, sweating in her heavy blue cloak, undid the pin at her throat—a curving bit of iron shaped like a sea creature, with the same long nose—and ran forward to throw the woolen cloak into the back of the chariot.
Nan’s father half turned. “I’ll bring the horses around the back of the castle, where they won’t be spooked by the cars,” he called. “Then you can tell me what happened back there.”
Breet turned to Will and Nan and said something. The Pictish words didn’t make sense, since she wasn’t touching them anymore, but they hardly noticed. They were each busy with their own thoughts.
Nan worried what her father would say when they spoke Pictish in front of him. Will wondered how to get Gormlaith away from the Romans.
He could not shake his dread at having to go back among real Romans and Picts, with their swords that were honed to a killing edge. Their blood would not be fake. And anyone who died in battle wouldn’t get up after it was over and go home.
Breet rapped out another sentence, louder this time. She sounded angry. Will and Nan ran forward, each taking hold of an arm, and asked her what she had said.
The Pictish girl frowned. “Why are you always holding on to me? And why do you not answer?” She pulled away with a sharp jerk, glaring fiercely.
Nan grabbed her elbow. “Listen, you can’t—”
“I can do anything I want! Loose your hold, you worm. I am a chieftain’s daughter!”
“Worm, is it?” Nan’s tossing hair whipped across Will’s cheek. “Fine then, see if I care about helping you!” She threw up her hands and ran to walk by her father.
Breet said something that sounded like it might be swearing. Will gripped both her wrists and shook them. “Stop calling names, and listen for a minute.”
Her gray eyes were icy as winter. “If you weren’t holding my wrists so tightly,” she said with dangerous calmness, “I would slap you for the insult. I am a chief—”
“Oh, shut up. What did you have to go and lose your temper for? Haven’t you noticed you can’t understand a word we say unless we’re touching you?”
Breet frowned. “I am a chieftain’s daughter. Naturally I will lose my temper with anyone who displeases me.”
Will rolled his eyes. “Get over it. Nobody cares here if you’re a chieftain’s daughter—and they wouldn’t believe it if you told them, anyway. Look, if you don’t want me to hold on to you, then you hold on to me.” He dropped her wrists. “See? I bet you can’t understand me now, you little ingrate,” he muttered in English.
The blue-painted chin lifted higher, and the gray eyes stared without blinking. But Will noticed the chin tremble slightly. He looked away.
A crunch of tires sounded on the gravel drive; a car rolled past with a quick honk. Breet jumped away with a smothered cry and stumbled against Will. He put out an arm to catch her, and she clung to him, trembling.
“Everything here is so strange,” she said in a low voice. “And back in my true time, my people are…” She swallowed. “They are preparing to die. Truly, I do need you to help me. And I am sorry.”
Will gave her a fleeting smile. “That’s okay. It’s Nan you should say sorry to, not me.”
Breet looked as Nan and her father walked around the corner of the castle. The horses’ braided tails flicked, the chariot gave a last bumping rattle, and then the whole equipage was out of sight.
She took hold of Will’s arm and started forward. “Is that man—her father—the one who can tell me about the Romans in my time?”
“Yes.”
“But I can’t understand him when he speaks.”
“We’ll translate,” said Will, sighing inwardly.
Breet held his elbow firmly and marched him around the castle. The horses, calm now, grazed on the patchy grass beside the low garden wall as Nan stroked their necks.
Ewen Menzies bent to examine the chariot with keen eyes. “Marvelous workmanship,” he muttered. “Someone put a lot of effort into making this authentic … wooden pegs, rawhide, root lashings! Unbelievable…”
He looked curiously at Breet. “You’re Nan’s friend from school, are you?”
“Actually, I just met her today,” Nan said quickly.
“One of the reenactors, then? She’s a bit young to be doing that on her own, not to mention having charge of two horses, small though they are. Or is she with her parents?”
“Um…,” said Nan. “I met her parents, but I don’t know where they are, exactly.”
“Mmm. What was all that fuss about, back there? Someone was actually threatening to call the police. What happened?”
“I’m not even sure how it started,” Will said. “All of a sudden, everyone was arguing about where the Picts really came from in the first place. This one guy got really mad. And then he made fun of Breet because she was talking Pictish. I mean,” he amended, “trying to talk Pictish.”
Nan said, “She’s dressed like a Pict, so naturally she’s going to try to talk like one, right? But this guy thought she was being rude.”
“All the arguing was frightening the horses,” Will put in. “Breet tried to calm them, but the mean guy insulted her, and she got mad and raised her whip. I don’t think she’d have used it,” he added hastily, “but that’s when you came in.”
“Ah.” Ewen Menzies looked at Breet kindly through his glasses. “Well, lass, maybe we’d better get you back to your parents.”
“Dad,” Nan said, “Breet is really interested in the Picts and Romans. She wants to know all about Pin—Pinnata something—”
“Pinnata Castra?”
“Inchtuthil,” said Breet.
“That’s right; good for you!” Cousin Ewen’s eyes seemed to grow bluer as he gazed at Breet. “What do you want to know?”
Breet turned to Will.
“Um,” said Will, “I think she’s a little—er—shy?” He gazed at Breet with her wild hair, fierce gaze, and blue painted designs. He had never seen anyone look less shy in his life. “I mean, she’s kind of…” He looked helplessly at Nan.
“Intense,” Nan said at once. She stepped closer to Breet, then hesitated.
“She’s sorry she called you a name,” Will said quietly. “She told me.”
Breet nodded. She held out her hand.
Nan’s dimple showed as she took Breet’s hand in hers. “See, she’s really into this Pictish thing. She tries to stay in character, you know? So please don’t think she’s rude if she acts like she can’t speak English.”
Nan’s father’s mouth quirked at the corners, and his eyes twinkled. “But if she wants to ask me questions, how am I supposed to understand her?”
Will hesitated, feeling foolish. “I guess we’ll translate,” he began, but at the same moment another voice spoke over his.
“I will ask in your language,” said Breet in slightly accented English. She grinned at Will and Nan, showing the space between her teeth, and whispered, “All in a moment I could understand. But keep hold of me, or it might go away.”
Will nodded his complete agreement. Maybe Time Hearing was like electricity—you had to make a connection before current flowed. It made sense. After all, the others had to touch him to see through the time window. Time Hearing could work like that, even in reverse. He didn’t really care why or how, just so long as it did work.
“What would you like to know about Inchtuthil?” Ewen Menzies asked. “Do you have an interest in Romans?”
Breet leaned forward, her whole body tense. “How long did they stay?”
“At Inchtuthil? Let’s see … it was built after the Battle of Mons Graupius—that was a huge battle between the Picts and the Romans, about AD 84, when thousands died.”
“We call it the Battle of the Bloody Hands,” said Breet soberly.
Nan’s father lifted one eyebrow. “Indeed? Well, it was bloody enough, according to all accounts.” He gave Breet a considering look.
“That’s a piece of history not many learn, nowadays. What school do you attend?”
Nan cleared her throat. “She’s—er, homeschooled, Dad.”
“Ah. Well, you can tell your parents for me that they’re doing a fine job of teaching.”
Breet’s eyes seemed to turn darker. “I would be without honor,” she said, very low, “if I could forget a battle in which my brother died, and my father was wounded, and my mother broke her heart for weeping.”
Cousin Ewen’s eyebrows twisted up sharply. “And when do you imagine that this battle took place?”
“I do not imagine. It was two springs ago.” Breet’s shoulders rounded as she stared at her feet. “I only wish I could forget it, as you seem to expect.”
Nan’s father shot a glance at his daughter. “She does stay in character, doesn’t she?”
Nan nodded fervently.
“Well, then, I’d better play along. Let’s see. If the Battle of Mons Graupius was two springs ago—and this is summer, so that’s, say, a year and a quarter, perhaps—then the fort at Inchtuthil must have been only recently built.”
Breet nodded. “This past year they began it. It is not finished, but already it is strong, and now they send their warriors out to raid our people.” She pressed her lips together as if to keep them from trembling.
“Then to answer your question, the Romans will be gone in one or two more winters. Perhaps even three, but no more.”
Breet sucked in air between her teeth. “How can this be? The Romans never leave a place until they have conquered!”
“They will leave this one. They will leave suddenly, with little warning—and they will never come back. The fort will be abandoned.”
Breet just stared at him. “Why?” she whispered.
“No one knows. One of the reasons, I think, was that they realized they could never win in the Highlands. Our people could not beat the Romans on an open battlefield—but in the narrow glens and thick forests, they could disappear, attack when the Romans were not expecting it and then retreat into the caves and hidden places to fight another day.”