by Jack Whyte
When Cardoc's song eventually died away to silence, no one spoke for a long time, until Liam turned to me again and said softly, "Master Merlyn, I have been sitting here thinking, as I listened to Cardoc, that there must be many things in this land of ours that are strange to you, perhaps confusing. I know how ill it is to be a stranger in an unfamiliar land, unused to the customs of the folk around you, and fearful of committing some offense through simple ignorance, so I wish you to understand you run but little risk of offending anyone here by such an accidental slip. Ask me anything you wish about anything you do not understand. I will answer you as plainly as I can, without evasion." He nodded to where Donuil sat beside me, listening. "Young Donuil here I have known since the day of his birth, and he is an able, worthy young man, but not sophisticated in the ways of such as you and your people. There is much that will simply never have occurred to him as being needful of explanation." He stopped, and then grinned at me, the expression taking years away from the age in his face. "Listen to me, the world traveller. In truth, I can be little better than Donuil, but I am older, and I have travelled farther and more freely than he has, having travelled to your land in my youth."
"You have been to Britain, Master Liam?"
He nodded, his eyes on Cardoc. "Aye, several times. And on one occasion, when I was a mere boy, I remained there for more than a year, living among the Romans, in Londinium."
"You surprise me," I admitted. "What took you there?"
He smiled again and sniffed, turning his gaze back to me and hitching his humped shoulder as he had done before, when I first arrived. "This did. I was an acrobat. That should surprise you even more greatly, I suspect." It did indeed, but he gave me no chance to say so, continuing with that self- deprecating smile I was coming to recognize as one of his key attributes. "Contrary to what most people believe, Master Merlyn, a young hunchback is not necessarily at a loss for normal, bodily movement—within certain clearly defined limits, of course. As a lad, I was agile and physically gifted. What I lacked in dexterity because of my twisted spine was more than compensated for by the greater than normal ease of movement I had in my arms and legs. An ability to contort them, allied with my small size and weight and the naturally amusing quality of my . . . differentness, made me a popular figure at entertainments, and I did well for myself for several years, travelling the lands with a troupe of showmen. We were particularly popular in Britain, where we travelled widely among the various garrisons and military bases, amusing the troops. I have always had a good head on my shoulders, thanks only to good fortune, and I managed to acquire enough in silver, and even a little gold, to start me off in my life here when I grew too old to perform."
"How old were you then?" His recitation had fascinated me.
He drew his brows together, reckoning. "I began to stiffen up in my thirteenth year. . . Once it began, however, it progressed quickly. I began to suffer, as did my performances. Within the year came three consecutive occasions when, where a short time earlier I would merely have fallen and bounced easily to my feet, I broke bones instead; once in my arm, twice in my right leg. By the third time, my tumbling days were finished. I was home less than seven months later, having used my small store of hoarded coin to purchase six healthy, breeding pairs of well-matched goats from the hill country in the north of Britain and then to ship them back here to Eire with me. Iain, Athol's father, who was our king in those days, gave me back the right to farm my father's land—my parents had been dead, and thus my claim forfeit, since shortly after I left home, although I had been unaware of it— and I began to build my own herds and mind only my own affairs from that day forth. By the time King Iain was killed, a half score years later, and Athol elected king in his place, I had established a fine herd of goats and another of cattle, and a few sheep, too." He shrugged, a tiny, self-deprecating gesture. "I suppose I had earned myself a reputation, too, for being both fortunate and singleminded. At any rate, the new king, Athol, sought me out more and more often in the first few years after his election, always to ask for my advice, it seemed to me, on things about which I knew very little, if anything at all." He sniffed again. "I thought at first he came to me merely to placate his first wife, Rhea, who was sister to my mother, but he always seemed to listen to what I had to say, to follow my advice and to value my judgment. . ." He shook his head and sat silent, staring into the fire, obviously overtaken by thoughts that were far removed from where we sat. Neither Donuil nor I sought to interrupt them. I, however, raised my cup to sip again and discovered, to my great surprise, that it was empty. Liam sensed my plight immediately and returned from his wool-gathering.
"Och, you are dry! Donuil, have you no eyes at all for seeing to our guest? Here, Master Merlyn, let me bring you another." He took my cup and looked at Donuil, one eyebrow raised high. "I suppose yours is empty, too? Cardoc, another?" Cardoc shook his head in polite refusal, but Donuil proffered his cup sheepishly and Liam snatched it from him in mock surliness, smiling as he moved away to refill both. While he was doing so, his daughter Shelagh swept into the room, moving quickly and with confidence, her hand outstretched to greet me and the hem of her long garment brushing the floor, concealing any movement of her legs and giving the distinct impression that she glided rather than strode with long, sure steps.
"Master Merlyn, welcome to our house." She looked me straight in the eyes and made no attempt to apologize for not having been here to greet me when I arrived, and as I took her hand in greeting, her eyes were already scanning the rest of the room, taking a brief, keen inventory. Apparently satisfied, she looked back at me. "Has Cardoc been singing for you?"
"He has, and very well."
"Aye, he is our finest bard, in my opinion, although I keep that private, for the good of all." She flashed a smile at Cardoc and then her gaze moved on to Donuil, who was gazing into the fire again, but her next words were still for me. "I can see Prince Donuil is as talkative as he has been since he arrived. Father? Will you pour a cup for me? I'm parched from the heat of the kitchens. Be seated, Master Merlyn, and I will, too." She sat down immediately, in the seat her father had occupied, and he returned silently, holding a cup for her and one for me, after which he returned to collect his own and Donuil's before settling into the next chair on his daughter's right. I, too, sat down again, holding my cup aloft and smiling with admiration at this mercurial young woman.
There was no sign in her of the harassed and road-weary traveller I had met earlier in the day. The creature who sat easily beside me now, taking a deep draught of the brimming cup her father had poured for her, was wondrous to behold, with long, carefully tousled, burnished hair of a deep, rich brown, interspersed with lighter textures that caught the light in streaks and reflected the glimmer of flames from fire and candle. Artless in their abundant artifice, her tresses were luxuriant, waved, rather than curled, and held casually in place by several jewelled pins and one finger-wide band of polished amber that circled her high forehead a fingersbreadth above her eyebrows. Her eyebrows were remarkable: straight and full, they rose slightly upward at the sides, creating a dark band the entire width of her face, broken only by the space, again a single finger's width, between them. Beneath those startling brows, her eyes tugged at my consciousness, suggesting something I could not at first define, and therefore demanding my closer attention. They were the colour of hazel, neither brown nor green and yet a blend of both with overtones of grey, but it was the shape of them that had caught my attention, I decided moments later. They were straight, almost as though ruled across the bottom, making them starkly different from the eyes of others. Most young people's eyes are rounded, top and bottom. Only the advance of age mars their perfection, tugging and twisting inexorably downward with the years, until the eyes of older people become as individually different and wrinkled as their owners. Shelagh's eyes were straight across the lower lids, and only slightly curved upward across the top, yet they were huge, large and lambent and beautiful. She was speaking now to her
father, turning her head slightly towards him and away from me, allowing me to look more closely at her, seeing her almost in profile, and only now did I recognize another artifice to match the skill with which she had arranged her hair: she had highlighted the shadow of her upper lids with some kind of cosmetic, very faint and only slightly darker than her natural skin colour. That hint, the merest suggestion of additional depth, lent her eyes the appearance of slanting slightly upward as they swept out from the narrow bridge of her nose, and lent emphasis also to her cheekbones, which were already full and high, smoothing the skin that covered them to polished planes. Her nose, narrow, clean-edged and perfectly proportioned to her face, was very slightly hooked; not aquiline in the sense of the great Roman beak of my own forebears, but a gentler, less aggressive yet unmistakably avian curve. A hawk, I thought, seeing that. This woman is a hawk! She is a kestrel, soft to the touch and beautiful, once trained, and a pleasurable, exciting companion, but intrinsically savage and untamable unless she herself has chosen to accept a master, after which her loyalty will be unswerving until death.
Surprised and slightly uncomfortable with these thoughts, I glanced away again, towards Donuil, only to find him gazing at the woman as raptly as I had been. There was an open vulnerability in his expression that I found even less comforting than my own thoughts, and so I returned my eyes to Shelagh, aware that I had absorbed no word of the conversation taking place between her and her father.
Now I heard her say, "They should be ready now. I'll go and start them moving so we can eat." She tossed back the remainder of her mead, tilting her head backward and gulping it like a man, then stood up, smiling widely at Donuil and me. "We will eat within the quarter hour, I promise you, but now I'm back to the kitchens." I watched her lips, wide and bright red and full, forming the words, and admired the perfectly shaped brightness of her strong teeth. Belatedly, remembering my manners, I began to rise to my feet but she was already gone, and I watched her move quickly and surely across the floor and disappear behind the screens that masked the far end of the house, where I could now hear the sounds of other people talking and moving Liam himself had twisted around in his seat to watch his daughter leave, and now he turned back to me, a small smile of bemusement on his lips.
"She's the wild one, and I love her more than is good for either of us, I fear, but there are times when I cannot help wondering what she is, and times when I wonder if she knows, herself." He saw my look of mystification and his smile grew a little broader. "Daughter or son, I mean. Oh, she's all female; the gods know, a blind man could see that, but she has some fearful male attributes about her from time to time. She refuses to be . . . what's the word I want? . . . constrained's as good as any, I suppose. She refuses to be constrained by her womanhood." He paused, his head cocked to one side, regarding me. "D'you understand what I mean by that, Master Merlyn?" I shook my head, not trusting myself to words. "Well, I'm not complaining, you understand, not really. She could not be a better daughter, and she lacks none of the affection or the warmth an old man looks for in his daughter. She looks after me as though I were an egg, too fragile to be entrusted to any but the gentlest care. And she's beloved, I truly believe, of all the other women in this place, helping them with their troubles and their children, and as you can see, she keeps a house for me that is unlike any other in this land, in terms of comfort and cleanliness." He finished off the contents of his cup before continuing. "But there's the other side of her. She prides herself on being a hunter and a warrior and, truth be told, she is one of the best and strongest fighters in the place. No other woman can match her with sword or spear or club, and precious few men would care to face her in earnest, either. And with a knife, she is almost a demon. She can throw a knife—any knife—and pierce a target, clean and centre, nine times out of ten . . ." This time his pause was long. "No other that I know—no one anyone else knows, either—can do that. But she's my daughter. . ." I heard a note of agonizing plaint in his voice, but before I could respond, another voice broke in.
"She could always do that." I turned in surprise, This was almost Donuil's first contribution to our talk since I had arrived.
"What? With the knives?"
"Aye," he nodded. "When she was no more than ten years old, she could hit and kill a running rabbit with a knife; with the point of it, I mean, not just the weight of it."
"A running rabbit?" I could hear the doubt in my own voice. "Not regularly, surely? I mean, she might have hit the odd one. I can believe that. But not consistently, Donuil. That's not possible."
He shook his head, smiling and pursing his lips. "I can't blame you for doubting, Merlyn, but it's not only possible, it is true. I saw her do it often, and she missed no more than occasionally. Mind you, the rabbit had to be quite close, and not yet settled into its run, but she could do it. We used to spend hours, creeping about, knives in hand, stalking the things. I never killed a single one, but we seldom came home empty-handed."
I shook my head again, believing him this time in spite of myself, and then we were disturbed by the beginnings of a period of activity radiating from the kitchens, during which the main table by the side wall was laden with food brought in by a half-dozen people, each of whom made a number of return journeys to the kitchens, where the proceedings were evidently being supervised by Shelagh. At length the hubbub died down, Shelagh rejoined us, and we each pulled our own chairs over to the table, which groaned now beneath the riches piled upon it. Before we began to eat, I gazed at the bounty provided from Liam's kitchens.
"Are we to dine alone, the five of us? There's enough here for fifty."
He smiled at me again. "Aye, so we must try to leave some for our friends who worked so hard preparing this. Normally we would all eat together, but tonight is a special night. My daughter has returned from a lengthy journey, as has Prince Donuil, and you yourself are an honoured guest, so our friends have graciously decided we may eat alone, to talk of things we wouldn't think to discuss were they all with us. Where would you like to start?"
I ate far more than was my habit, succumbing to the excellence and variety of the food laid before us. And as we ate, we talked and drank, although I sipped but sparingly at the fiery, potent mead, and then we talked further, barely pausing as the table was cleared and the fire replenished and we dragged our chairs back into the crescent they had formed before we ate. Liam was the perfect host, in the grand, Roman style—although he might have been appalled to hear the thought—attentive to his guests and assiduous in making sure each had enough to eat and drink, and topics enough on which to speak. Donuil had found his tongue again as the meal began, and Cardoc had proved himself to be a gifted thinker and a quick-minded debater. Shelagh was a complete delight, quick-tongued, as I already knew, and possessed of a devastating wit that she used mercilessly and without compunction on each and all of us, including her father. As the night wore on, I grew increasingly pleased with the open and wholesome attraction that she and Donuil were rediscovering for each other, each of them, I thought, losing the reticence born of long separation and intervening maturity, and returning almost seamlessly to the friendly intimacy they had shared throughout their childhood. Lucky man, Donuil Mac Athol, I thought on more than one occasion, for it was plainly evident, to me at least and surely to the others, that the friendship of old between these two had been transmuted into an attraction deeper and more adult than they had known before.
It was late in the evening by the time we were interrupted by the arrival of a rain-soaked young man looking for Cardoc, who took him aside and listened carefully to what he had to say. The bard then asked him several low-voiced questions before returning to where we sat watching, curious about this new development. Rud, his sister's husband, he informed us, had failed to return home from checking his traps that afternoon in the neighbouring forest. His sister, Cardoc explained to me, was heavily pregnant and frantic with worry, and he begged Liam to allow him to eave and go to her.
Liam had risen
instantly to his feet when Cardoc began to speak, all concern and offering immediately to accompany Cardoc to his sister's house, and to assist in forming a search party if need be, but Cardoc would not hear of such a thing. He knew where Rud had his trapping territory, he insisted, and he and his own two brothers, aided by Rud's two brothers and his oldest son, would be more than enough to find the missing man, who had probably injured himself and fallen along the path.
In spite of Cardoc's embarrassed protestations, nevertheless, Donuil and Liam insisted upon accompanying him to his sister's house to see what might be required if the need arose for a larger search. I was ready to go with them but was overruled and persuaded to remain with Shelagh, by the fire, since Donuil and Liam would not be gone long and would return to take up our evening again, doubtless wet and cold and in need of more mead and a welcoming blaze.
XVI
Liam's house was very quiet after the door closed behind the three men. No sounds came now from the kitchens as Shelagh and I stood side by side, facing the closed door, our backs to the fire. I cleared my throat and waved a hand towards the screens at the far end of the room.
"Has everyone gone, back there?"
She nodded, moving away to stand in front of the great fire. "Some time ago. They all went home to share their supper with their families." She was holding her hands out to the blaze and speaking to me over her shoulder. "That is one of the benefits my father enjoys from his wealth. He can't do it often, for fear of offending the fierce pride in some people, but from time to time, when we have an occasion important enough, like this visit of yours and Donuil's return, he takes the opportunity of preparing a private feast much too large for our own needs, and insists that the remains be divided equally among the folk who worked preparing it. They then take the food home and their families eat better, while the leavings last, than they would normally." She turned back to face me and smiled. "The most difficult task, apart from making the events look natural, is deciding in advance which families we will ask to help us with the preparation each time."