Firebrand

by Gillian Philip

  That was kind of my point. ‘He’d take us on as professional fighters. You know that.’

  Like the other chiefs, he’d call up the men of his clan—only the men!—if he went to serious war with a neighbour, but for his regular raids and small quarrels the MacLeod kept around him a small band of well-paid men who were not even of his own family, but who were fiercely loyal and fought like demons with a grudge. The gods knew where they came from, those private mercenaries of his. They were his personal bodyguard, and they were the terror of the glen because they had no allegiance to any clan member but its chief. Why did he need them? The ordinary clansmen could fight, and very much liked to, dashing off at the drop of a whisky flask to snatch their weapons from the thatch of their hovels and fling themselves into battle for the head of their clan and its honour. But the MacLeod’s guard lived better than any clansman, in their captain’s castle; they were a privileged elite, and they existed only to fight. I liked the sound of the job.

  ‘It would be a better life than grubbing in the dirt,’ I said. ‘Half what we grow we have to turn over to the laird anyway.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate.’

  I wasn’t exaggerating much. ‘We can fight. We’re born fighters too. We’d be valuable to him, we’d be rewarded. And see that last scythe you made? It was crap.’

  He gave a small amused gasp, his fingers flicking out lightning-fast to clip my ear.

  ‘I’m not a farmer, Conal. I’m a hunter. I’m a fighter.’ I was sick of tilling a pathetic rig of land with a borrowed horse and a community plough. I was meant to trade for grain and bread, trade for it with wild meat and the farmer’s guarantee of my sword arm in his defence.

  ‘Ach, you’ve a long life ahead of you, if you’re lucky.’ Conal gave my arm a mock punch that hurt quite a lot. ‘You’ll learn to do most things. Fighting all the time dulls your mind. Sometimes it’s good to sit still and work at a trade.’

  ‘You sound like Kate,’ I said. ‘As if it’s good to be humbled. I never saw her humble herself.’

  ‘I’ll not argue with that,’ he said with a roll of his eyes. ‘But it’s not about humbling. It’s about learning patience.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve done that,’ I snapped.

  Conal laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you. Anyway, we hunt, don’t we?’ He tugged his bow out of the thatch, bringing down a light rain of mouse droppings. ‘Speaking of which, I’ll get breakfast.’ With that he slouched out into the early morning darkness.

  I had a job coaxing the smoored fire back to life, but I didn’t think I’d lost all track of time, so I was shocked when I heard Conal curse foully enough to make me wince. Back already?

  The door slammed open. He didn’t have his bow in his hands, or indeed any breakfast, but a parcel of some kind.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ he barked. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  With gentleness he laid the bundle on the table, and the filthy rags that bound it fell away, and I saw what it was. So I don’t know why I said: ‘What the hell is that?’

  There were tears in his eyes, but still he gave me a dry look.

  I took out my knife. ‘We have to kill it.’

  Violently he struck the knife out of my hand. ‘It’s a baby!’

  ‘It’s a dying baby! Have you gone mad? It’s in pain, look at it!’

  ‘It wouldn’t be dying if some poverty-stricken cur hadn’t left it out all night!’

  ‘Well, they did! That won’t survive.’ I took a step back from it as if its inevitable death would be catching. Conal took one look at me, a look I did not like, and took the creature into his arms. It didn’t cry; I wondered when it had stopped crying. Some time last night, I thought. If it ever had the strength to cry at all.

  I think it breathed its last even as we watched. It was a rickle of bones anyway, and probably diseased, because it stank. Conal didn’t put it down even when it was dead. He stroked its hollowed cheeks, and brushed its thin eyelids down over sunken eyeballs, and then he shut his own eyes and pressed its fragile dead face into the hollow of his throat. As if it could feel anything now, as if he could make up with a little belated affection for its brief hideous life.

  ‘Jesus, Seth. Jesus.’ He’d taken to barking their god’s name when he was angry or upset. ‘This isn’t ancient Greece, it’s the back end of the sixteenth century.’ He opened his red eyes to glare at me. ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘Just what I keep asking you.’ I shrugged. ‘We need to, ah…what is it they do?’ I took as little notice of their rites as I could, but I was pretty sure they didn’t give their dead to the raptors and the wild beasts.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and then, ‘They bury them.’

  ‘In the ground?’ I tried not to raise my eyebrows. Different people, different cultures. ‘So what do we do? You’d better put it in fast, or it’ll rot.’

  ‘But it needs…it would want…’

  I gave him a droll look. ~ It isn’t capable of wanting.

  ‘I know, but…’ Carefully he laid it back on the table and unfolded the remaining rags, gave the tiny naked corpse a brief glance, then covered it again. ‘It’s a girl.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I didn’t want to go on calling her it. Listen, we can’t just…put her in the ground. We need to get the minister.’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  He had that stubborn look I’d grown to dislike. ‘It’s not just the rites. It’s…I don’t want to do this without his knowledge. It might be trouble. I need to ask his advice.’

  ‘You ask me, the most trouble we’ll get is if anyone else knows about this.’

  ‘Somebody already does,’ he pointed out. ‘Whoever left her. Gods, did they expect me to find her sooner? She was quite close. On the edge of the clearing. Shit, shit, shit.’

  I hated Kate more and more for this exile. I’d never before known Conal to be insecure and indecisive, so uncertain of himself. It was my first experience of being the one to do the reassuring, the one to take decisions. I wasn’t sure I liked it after all. Besides, me taking decisions was pointless when Conal wouldn’t accept them.

  ‘Let’s put it in the ground,’ I said.

  ‘Her.’ He shook his head. ‘Her. I’ll get the minister.’

  * * *

  I sat with it—with her—while Conal was gone. If it had been a dog or a horse I might have left it and got on with my chores, or forced myself to look at the book Conal had ordered me to read, but for some reason I didn’t like to turn my back on the creature. It lay there like an accusation.

  There was no point pitying it, so I tried—without much success—to pity whoever had left it on the cold ground to die. Or perhaps not to die. Perhaps they had indeed left it for Conal. Perhaps he was their last hope. Suddenly I understood the panic in his eyes, and his despair. What am I supposed to do?

  There was nothing he could have done, nothing, you could tell just by looking at it. How did full-mortals react, I wondered, when their last hope failed them?

  ‘Trouble,’ I said aloud. ‘Trouble.’

  I stood above the pathetic cadaver, unfolded its wrapping of rags. I used to see stretched hides hung in the tannery: that’s what this looked like. Dry taut dead skin hung on a framework of bone. Glancing at its eyelids, I half-expected movement beneath them, for its eyeballs to shift as if it was dreaming, dreaming of daylight. Instead a fly buzzed onto the frail lashes. Even then I expected the infant to blink and stir and cry, but of course it didn’t. Angrily I batted the fly away, but it was quick to return.

  I felt an urge to pick the infant up as Conal had done, to cradle it against my neck and warm it back to life. Stupid impulse. I shook my head, and rubbed my red and tired eyes. The otherworld god could bring people back to life, I knew that, so if he wanted to do it he would. It was his job, not mine.

  My gods didn’t make crazy promises. They kept themselves to themselves, and my
life was no business of theirs. I liked it that way, I liked that they weren’t interested in my personal development, that they didn’t try to make me feel guilty just for being born. I’d had enough of that. Martyrs didn’t impress me, judges didn’t frighten me, and even those petulant Greek and Roman warrior-gods left me cold. They couldn’t let a battle go the way it should but took sides and chose favourites, they interfered and destroyed fine fighters on a whim. Gods! It was fantasy to brighten grey lives and greyer deaths.

  I waited and watched, but this little one’s god wasn’t interested in her either. The fly settled on the table by the tiny corpse, and I took my chance, slamming my palm onto it. It clung to my hand, sticky and vile. Furiously I rubbed my palm against my trews, then washed my hands in the bucket of cold water in the corner. With wet chilled hands I wrapped the infant once again in its swaddling, tugging the cloth carefully over its face before more flies could come.

  When the priest arrived, the first thing he did was uncover it again. I wanted to slap his hand away.

  ‘Unbaptised,’ he said, and shook his head.

  So that explained the god’s indifference. I kept my face stony and uninterested.

  ‘What does it matter?’ asked Conal. I knew from the way the priest looked at him in surprise, from the way Conal’s gaze shifted and he bit his lip, that he’d made a mistake.

  ‘To me? It doesn’t,’ said the priest. Fumbling in a small leather bag, he drew out a vial of oil. ‘To others it will.’

  ‘Um,’ said Conal. ‘Can you, er…bury her, then?’

  The priest blinked at him. ‘Of course she has to be buried. But we can’t put her in the graveyard. She can’t go in consecrated ground. Now, if you’ll give me a moment?’

  Glancing at me, Conal shrugged slightly, looking bewildered, and I made a wry face.

  ~ Different cultures, I said.

  ~ Bloody incomprehensible cultures, he retorted.

  ~ What’s consecrated ground, when it’s at home?

  ~ No idea. Same as holy ground?

  ~ So how do they define that, then? Not like ours?

  ~ Dunno. He went back to watching the murmuring priest, who was making crossing motions with his fingers on the baby’s face. When he’d finished whatever bizarre rites he was conducting, he stepped back and smiled sadly at Conal.

  ‘There are those,’ he said, ‘who would say the child is trapped in Limbo, barred from Heaven. I want you to know I don’t think that.’

  ‘No,’ said Conal, trying to look as if he understood what the man was on about.

  ‘So can we dig a hole for her now?’ I asked.

  I knew, from the way the priest looked at me, that I’d put my foot in it. So I gave him my simplest smile, and after a moment he returned it, with a kind look of understanding that made me want to punch him.

  Conal’s mouth was twisted; I could tell that even in these evil circumstances he was trying not to grin.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ said the priest. ‘Best if you’re not involved.’

  Conal stared at him for a moment.

  ‘I promise I’ll bury her,’ said the priest gently. ‘In the birchwood. It’s a lovely place. I’ve done it…’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve put them there before.’

  Conal nodded, his arms tightly folded.

  ‘I think you understand,’ said the priest, and he glanced at me, and said again, ‘Best if you’re not involved. Neither of you.’

  ‘I understand. Thank you,’ said Conal.

  The priest folded the scraps of cloth back around the infant, and lifted her into his arms. ‘Thank you for calling on me, my child.’

  I opened my mouth to point out that Conal was the son of Griogair, not the priest; Conal gave me a mental cuffing in the nick of time. It must be an expression they used, I thought, rubbing my forehead crossly.

  ‘You should have left her where you found her,’ I said, when the priest had gone and Conal had shut the ill-fitting door behind him. Outside the breeze had risen. A breath of cold snaked in, and my skin prickled.

  ‘You know I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Sentimentalist. There’ll be trouble.’

  He shrugged, looking tired. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘The child was exposed, Conal. The woman left her near you to salve her own conscience, that’s all. The creature was one hungry mouth too many and it was sick. If she thought it could survive she’d have brought it to you.‘

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. He was about to lose his temper but at least he’d also lost that miserable defeatist look. ‘What did you want me to do, Seth? Pretend I hadn’t seen the child?’

  ‘And you’re the one that wants us to keep our heads down,’ I spat. ‘Well, I’d rather have the MacLeod’s protection and a weapon and a fighting chance. You know what Ma Sinclair told me? You put a foot wrong with all your damn healing and you’ll burn.’

  ‘I could not leave that baby!’ he yelled.

  I’d caught him in a weak moment. ‘What’s Malleus Maleficarum?’

  Wrong-footed, momentarily silenced, he kicked out a stool and sat down. He didn’t meet my eyes. ‘The Hammer of Witches.’

  ‘Yup, I worked that out. Did that priest give it to you?’

  ‘Minister. Yes. But not because he believes it.’

  ‘It was written by priests.’ Impatiently I slung the cover open. ‘Here. On the authority of Innocent the Eighth. Innocent, if you please!’

  ‘It’s just a name.’

  ‘His true name?’

  ‘No, not like that. I think they choose their names themselves.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ I shook my head in disgust. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘Some high priest of theirs,’ said Conal. ‘Popes, they call them.’

  ‘See? They don’t have high priests any more, but your ministers go on reading their filthy books. They’re all the same.’

  ‘That one isn’t.’

  ‘He’s a hypocrite! He’s supposed to be of the new church, but even I know oils and crosses isn’t Covenant business.’

  ‘He’s a realist! And he’s a good man.’ Conal sighed and rubbed his temple. ‘He gave me that book as a warning. Innocent made witchcraft a heresy, and yes, heretics are for burning.’

  ‘We’re not witches,’ I pointed out.

  Leaning across, he pulled the book to himself, turning the thick pages till he found what he was looking for and shoved it back to me. ‘There you go. Read it to me.’

  I growled, but I began to read.

  ‘Many persons of both sexes…by incantations, spells, superstitions and horrid charms…blast and eradicate the fruits of the earth, the grapes of the vine and the fruits of trees…I read all this.’ I gave a barking laugh. ‘We can’t do any of that. Even our witches can’t do that! Why would we want to?’

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘It gets better.’

  ‘I know, I know. These wretches afflict and torment men and women…with pain and disease…oh, it’s bollocks, Conal, come on. Witchcraft’s mind manipulation, that’s all.’

  ‘Not quite all,’ he said patiently. ‘It’s misuse of your abilities. It’s taking advantage of your…advantages. But go on.’

  ‘They do not shrink from committing and perpetrating the foulest…’ I was stumbling over the words now, out of distaste more than ineptitude ‘…the foulest abominations and excesses, whereby they offend the divine majesty and are a cause of scandal…for crying out loud, Conal. Presumably it was the divine majesty who gave me a pr…’

  ‘Whoa, enough!’ he interrupted with a snort of laughter. ‘It’s not personal, Seth. This is all folk memory and hysteria, and filthy minds, and fear of nature, and fear of their own natures.’

  ‘So it doesn’t matter what we do?’

  ‘Hell, no. If I’d cured the damn baby they’d have thought me even more of a witch. It’s not so bad just now. All we need to do is keep quiet, keep our heads below the parapet, but this witch-fever comes and goes. Like a tide or a disease. If it rises here, s
taying out of sight won’t be enough. We’ll have to run.’

  I tapped the book. ‘You said it yourself. Even the priest—minister—doesn’t believe this stuff. These are extremists.’

  ‘Did you get to part three?’

  ‘No, I got all caught up in part two and what we get up to. All that shape changing and sexual deviance. What have you been getting up to behind my back, you selfish bugger?’

  ‘Heh! I know it’s a riot, but you really should have got to part three. It makes torture and death compulsory. In a witch-hunt any witness can testify, and their motives don’t matter. The religious inquisitors are in charge, no questions asked. Here. The MacLeod’s a law unto himself, of course, but look at this bit.’

  I took the book again. ‘The inquisitors be empowered to proceed to the correction, imprisonment and punishment of any persons for the said abominations, without let or hindrance, in every way…’

  I swallowed hard.

  ‘Now do you want the girls to notice you?’ he asked dryly.

  ‘I want to go home,’ I said.

  ‘So let’s keep our noses clean. Kate will recall us one day, and we’ll have to kiss her hand and swear loyalty on our knees, and you, Murlainn, will have to do it without a sarcastic sneer on your face, just as I will. Until then, let’s just survive, shall we?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘And let’s be grateful for the Veil,’ he added, ‘even if it means scratching our own itch.’

  I managed to laugh.

  13

  THIRTEEN

  I needed some air. We both did. Conal didn’t want to think about the dead infant; I didn’t want to think about how homesick and afraid I was. So we did what we always did when we were miserable. We went hunting.

  Or, as the MacLeod might put it: we went poaching.

  There was more forest even in those days, beautiful, dark, breathing with life. A hunt was easy enough, if you were discreet. Game, to many of the full-mortal clansmen, was fair game, and there was plenty of it: coneys, birds, hares. If we could get away with it Conal and I liked venison: we liked the stalk and the chase as much as the smell and the smoke of it choking us in our blackhouse and the warm fat feeling in our bellies. In the wake of the winter just past, we liked knowing that our hidden meat store was full.