The Lyre Dancers

by Mandy Haggith

‘Oh a splendid figure of a woman. She was red haired, like you, and tall. I think Fergus was frightened of her. She oozed magic. I’ve never known a shaman like her. She could sing so strangely, the stars would fall from the sky at her feet. Animals adored her; dogs would walk for days to pay obeisance, horses would throw their riders and gallop up to her. Whenever she went on a boat they said dolphins would come and dance around it. She had pet birds that brought her fish and flowers. She had few friends but she didn’t seem to care. She would take men to her bed and they would emerge like boys. Fergus tried beating her to make her do his bidding, but it was like trying to tame a badger. She was invincible. And her son, your father, was the same.’

  There was a pause while a coughing spasm shook the old woman. Rian stroked her back until she was able to continue.

  Her voice was a croak. ‘I used to see it in you too, Rian, when Drost would try to order you around as a child. You’d listen to him and then you’d do just what you were planning anyway, as if that was what he had demanded. Magris used to say, “My soul is stone. You can never break me.” And Farspag was another stone-souled child. He was a beautiful boy, white-haired and always big for his age. Fergus himself was a handsome man, and Farspag had his big bones and his green eyes. You have his eyes.’ She stopped and peered into Rian’s face.

  ‘Tell me more about him,’ Rian urged.

  She chuckled. ‘He was a trouble maker, and he caused mayhem in Fergus’ household by organising all the boys into a gang. They were like an army, with Farspag in the lead. They would borrow Fergus’ horses and ride out hunting together and bring them back all in a lather. Eventually Fergus gave up trying to punish him and sold him to a trader, one of Ussa’s ilk. He ended up down the coast there, with the chieftain of Glenelg.’

  ‘What was his name?’ Rian asked.

  ‘Oh goodness, I forget. Ruaridh, I think. It doesn’t really matter. He was a big jovial character with red hair. Farspag was made part of a building squad, because he really knew how to handle stone. I don’t know where he learned it, maybe it was the stone in his soul.’

  Now Rian understood why she had always felt she had rock inside of her. Her eyes egged Danuta on.

  The old woman’s story was flowing now. ‘The old chief tamed Farspag by giving him building work and he became the head of the team of stone masons who built the broch there. Your mother was the daughter of the big house. She was fifteen and as pretty as a rosebud.’

  ‘And she fell for the stone mason?’ Rian said.

  ‘That’s right. I don’t think there was anything the old man could have done to stop them, and her mother was dead by then. Nothing could have kept the pair of them apart. Even if she had been locked in a dungeon Farspag would have found a way in. Unfortunately, she was promised to the son of another big family. There had been endless conflicts over who had control of which bit of shoreline and who could fish where. The idea was to bring everyone in the area together in one clan to keep the peace, so she had been promised to him since she was young. But he was a good bit older than her, you know, and he made a big thing of the purity of his bride to be. He was powerful, but he was ugly, and a slip of a thing compared to Farspag. I don’t imagine she was very impressed by him.

  ‘Anyway, the inevitable happened, she got pregnant, and she was terrified about what would happen to the baby if anyone found out. So after you were born she tried to do away with you. That’s when I got involved.’

  Danuta paused. It was incredible that someone so old and frail could have so much of a story inside her.

  ‘What happened?’ Soyea said.

  Danuta looked down at her, as if surprised that she was there.

  Rian was chewing her lip and gazing out to sea. ‘Uill Tabar said she left me on the beach and the sea must have brought me here.’

  ‘Uill Tabar makes up what he doesn’t know. I found you on the beach. I was there at the birth. At Imbolc there was a gathering at Brigid’s Cave, and I traveled down to it. I was one of the sisters who helped to deliver you in secret.’

  ‘Is that why you were there? For the gathering?’

  ‘Aye. I was there with Buia. It was her maiden day. I had hopes for Buia back then, that she would follow me and become one of the sisters. I took her to all the great rituals. You know. How much of this does Soyea understand?’ She turned to the girl. ‘Are you initiated?’

  Soyea shook her head, uncertainly.

  ‘Anyway, Seonag the Priestess was helping her to have her baby without anyone finding out, for Magris’ sake more than anything.’

  ‘What was her name?’ Rian asked.

  Danuta tutted. ‘I wish I knew. We were introduced to her as Cara but we guessed that wasn’t her real name. She was a silly slip of a lass: a pretty thing, but vain and meek. Seonag would have let her bring the child up within the sisterhood if she’d wanted to join us, but she just wanted to pretend the child didn’t exist, as if she was still a maiden, as if Farspag was a fairy man, not a real one, as if all that the men wanted to believe about her was true. Seonag hid her at her place near the cave for the last few months, making out she was doing a special purification before the marriage, as Brigid’s spring maiden. Well, shortly after the birth, she walked to the beach to get stones for the healing fire and came back and said she had slipped and you had been caught by the sea and washed away and drowned. But I’d been following her. I was watching what went on, and that’s not what happened at all. She put you down at the water’s edge and turned her back and walked away. And I went down there after she’d gathered her basket of stones and stomped away back up the hill, and I rescued you.’

  Danuta smiled at the memory and Rian reflected on what she had heard. Eventually she said, ‘Are you tired? Do you need to rest?’

  ‘Rest for what? You’re here. I’ve been waiting to tell you this for years. Can you imagine, Rian, ever since Ussa took you away I’ve been regretting that I never told you before you left. It’s been gnawing away at me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ Rian didn’t look at her.

  ‘I swore on my life to Seonag that I’d not tell while her husband was alive, to protect the girl’s reputation.’

  ‘How did I come to be here, with you?’ Rian’s voice was higher than normal.

  ‘I carried you back up to Brigid’s Cave and by the time we got there you were howling. The girl refused to have anything to do with you. There was a scene. It was dreadful, but there was a young mother there from the north end of the island whose baby was nearly weaned and she let you feed. Seonag had you stay with her for the next few months, and you fed from one breast after another, and then before long we had you drinking goat’s milk and you probably moved onto solids earlier than any child ever has. I guess you knew it was your only chance of survival. I don’t know why I stayed with you. Strictly speaking you were the priestess’s problem as it had happened on her patch, but she was a busy woman and not obviously one for caring for a baby, and I loved you. You know Mara, Drost’s wife, had always wanted a little girl, but all her daughters died before they came to term. You reminded me of what our family didn’t have, and you had such trusting eyes. And you were strong. A fierce, tough little thing. And then Farspag came to Brigid’s Cave to see you and that settled everything. Ruaridh wasn’t stupid. I think he had drawn the obvious conclusion and sent Farspag packing.

  ‘He was raging when he found out what the girl had tried to do. And he had a temper on him that boy, it was frightening to watch. Between Seonag and me and Farspag, we decided to take you both away from there, father and daughter. I knew his building skills would be welcome with us, and I wanted to look after you, so when I returned home I had the two of you in tow. And this fine tower is the result.’ She patted the stone under her.

  ‘My father built it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Rian turned to look at Danuta, frowning. ‘Why did I never know before now? I don’t understand why it was kept a secret from me.’

  ‘I promised. Everyone
was frightened of the girl’s father and if he had found out you were here, well, who knows what would have happened.’

  Rian said nothing to that.

  Then Soyea asked, ‘What happened to Farspag?’

  ‘Of course, this is your story too, isn’t it, little bird.’ Danuta smiled. ‘I’m sorry to say he barely lived to see your mother toddling. When people from over the water saw the job he and the team made of the broch here, they wanted him to go over and build for them. He never really got on with Drost. He drank too much and he’d goad him, or Drost would think that he was having a go at him when he was cracking jokes. Anyway, he went off to the long island to help build a tower there and never came back. He fell off. It’s dangerous work. There were suggestions he was maybe not sober at the time. He had a tendency to lark around, show off. I don’t know. There were different stories about it. All I can tell you is he never returned. It was the death of his mother as well, and that was a sorry loss. You’d have been three years old and by then you were well settled here, so you stayed, even after Bael was born and Mara died. Until that day. Oh, little bird, I’m so sorry about that day.’

  SOYEA

  CLACHTOLL

  We take Danuta back inside, and Mother sends me off to wash bed clothes where a stream flows out of a lochan nearby. They are flimsy and reeking, but there is soapwort near the stream and I soon have them rinsed out and no longer filthy, if not exactly spotless. I hang the blankets on a line that I presume is for such a purpose. I am anxious to get back. I am no doubt missing important conversation.

  But when I bow into the broch again, Mother and Danuta are quiet. Danuta has had a wash and is wearing a clean slip. Mother is carefully combing her hair and the old woman’s eyes are glazed over. I am frightened by her but also fascinated. It is a horror I could never have imagined, that a body so ancient could still contain a spark of life.

  ‘Perhaps you could make a little porridge Soyea,’ Mother says.

  I am about to protest but there is such an atmosphere, it is almost like being in a sacred space, that I back out. There is a chest by the hearth and I find a filthy cooking pot and a spirtle. Everything needs to be washed. I put three sticks on the fire to keep it alive and take the pot outside to scrub it with bog heather.

  As I return, a weird-looking woman appears. I think she has come from the hut where I saw smoke earlier. She looks half-witted and pale. Her legs are swollen and she waddles, rather than walks. Her hair is thin and straight and plastered to her forehead as if she has just got out of bed.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ She looks at the pot in my hand and back to my face.

  I tell her my name. I am closer to the entrance of the broch than her and now I feel awkward. I cannot pass through the entrance ahead of her so I stand aside, but she doesn’t seem intent on going in. I need to get in to tend the fire. Perhaps she will know where I can find some oats.

  She is looking me up and down as if I have stolen something and have it secreted about my body.

  ‘What are you doing with that pot?’

  ‘I washed it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make porridge.’

  ‘Who asked you to make porridge?’ She takes a step towards me.

  ‘My mother, for Danuta.’

  ‘Rian, you mean.’ She takes another step and I can smell her breath. It is rotten. I want to move back, away, but the broch wall is behind me. I nod, and wonder if she is dangerous. She doesn’t meet my gaze, her eyes are fixed to my left, which makes me want to look over my shoulder, as if there’s something behind me I have not seen.

  ‘Do you know where I can find oats?’

  ‘What do you want oats for?’

  I am definitely scared of her now.

  ‘To make porridge.’

  ‘Why are you making porridge?’

  Her eyes focus on me at last, and they are wild and lost. I duck into the passage entrance to the broch. She tries to grab me but I slip out of her grasp. I’m too quick for her and she is uncoordinated. I burst in on Mother and Danuta.

  ‘There’s a woman out there.’

  ‘Is Buia here now?’ Mother says mildly.

  Danuta is back on her bed, eyes closed.

  ‘I don’t know where the oats are but I found this and cleaned it.’ I show her the pot.

  She comes out into the main room, takes the pot from me and sets it down beside the fire. Then she goes to the chamber in the wall opposite Danuta’s room and pulls a sack down from the stone shelf. From another she picks a stone jar without even checking to see what is in it. When she hands it to me I see it is salt.

  ‘Nothing has moved in eighteen years,’ she says. ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’

  I am fascinated to have met Danuta, who I’ve heard so much about. She is the source of Mother’s herbal knowledge. This is as close as I have come to having a grandmother. I remember when I was little being so jealous of the children who had real families, proper families, with fathers who loved them and grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. There were none of them for me. For us. Just Mother and Rona. And the endless waits for Manigan and then the disappointment, not knowing what all that waiting was about.

  Manigan, he’s like hay fever. He turns up just as things seem to be going well and he gets up my nose. His mouth says things to me that sound innocuous enough, but I’m not blind. I can see what he thinks of me. I am not his, not really. Whoever my father was, Manigan hated him and so I am like a little doorway into the part of him that hates. Mother says I bring out the worst in him. She says I should avoid annoying him if I can, but I get sick of creeping about when he is there, as if I am not allowed to exist. Especially as Rona can do or say no wrong as far as her Daddy is concerned. Mother says, ‘We love you both equally,’ but she may as well say the rain falls inside as well as out. It doesn’t make it true. Rona is adorable and you can’t help but love her, but Mother has to try to remember to love me and Manigan has never known how.

  It doesn’t matter.

  I don’t need love. Only weak people need to be loved. I may not be beautiful, or elegant, or talented at dancing and singing, but I am strong. Mother says I take after a tree. What Danuta said about Mother’s grandmother, that rang a bell with me. We have stone souls. Stone is even stronger than wood. Stone is stronger than everything.

  Perhaps this is why I am getting used to the broch. I have made myself a comfortable bed in one of the alcoves between the walls. Mother showed me how to make a fresh heather bed for Danuta. I was amazed by how comfortable it was, so I made myself one yesterday. I gathered heather, bundles and bundles of it. It smells sweet, and it’s springy, much more pleasant than straw.

  We have organised the pigs too, set up some hurdles to pen them around the back so they don’t make so much mess. They have a clean bed of straw and they seem happy about it, grunting and squealing, turning round and round in circles to make it into a big nest.

  There is so much gathering to be done. Each day we go out cutting, bundling, stripping leaves. I wish I had a proper basket to carry herbs in. Everything here is old and damaged, mended, mended again, coming apart. But the broch is starting to smell like home, with drying bunches hung from the rafters and rustling trays of leaves and petals. Later, there will be berries and mushrooms to gather, but for now it’s all about drying herbs. There are seaweeds too. I don’t know most of them. I wish Danuta could get down to the rocks to show me what’s worth gathering and what’s not. She knows everything. I thought Mother was pretty good at the herbs, although I wouldn’t admit it to her. But the old woman can tell from the scent on my hand what I’ve touched, and she has a rhyme or a story to help you remember what everything is good for.

  Today Mother and I are going to the woods. Donnag has her arms in a bucket of clay and looks almost happy.

  Danuta asks me to go and get Buia because she has a nose for herbs and mushrooms. She talks about her as if she is an animal, a favourite pig, perhaps. I am scared of Buia, of her madness.
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br />   She has her own hut. It is no bigger than a sty. I do not want to enter but when I rattle the hurdle door and call her name she says, ‘Come in, come in, welcome.’ Suddenly she is there pulling it open, tugging me inside. It smells rancid. There are bones everywhere. The roof is lined with them, as if she has been deliberately thatching herself in with them from the inside. A lattice of bones of all kinds, from the huge leg bones of cows to the light wings of birds. Skulls hang on strings from the rafters. There is a pile of ribs and vertebrae taking up the right-hand side of the hut. On the left is her bed, a nest of grungy fleece. The side opposite the door has her hearth. It isn’t central. Everything is wonky. There is a gap in the wall above it and I can see the sea. Smoke drifts out through the hole.

  She propels me to a stool beside the hearth and pushes me down onto it. She is stronger than she looks. She curls herself into her nest and smiles wide-mouthed satisfaction. She has captured me! She doesn’t seem to need to talk to me. She takes a dead bird up from the floor into her lap and resumes plucking its black feathers. When she turns it, I see it is a cormorant. I sit, mute, watching her wiry hands tug at the feathers, one by one. She lets them drop around her, occasionally looking at me and nodding, as if I am saying things she agrees with, wise words. I swear she is listening to my thoughts, tilting her head as if in question and then nodding at my answer, all the time plucking, plucking.

  I say, ‘Danuta says we’ve to ask you to come to the woods to look for herbs.’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ she murmurs, turning her grey head in slow refusal. ‘Today I’m flying in the sea.’

  I think that’s what she says.

  ‘Danuta says you’re good at finding things in the woods.’

  ‘No, no,’ she says. ‘I’m flying.’

  She doesn’t meet my eye, looking past me out of the gap in the wall. I watch her hands, tugging at the plumage of the cormorant. She is a pale mermaid with a black tail of feathers.