‘He told me he is jealous of you getting to spend all your time with her.’
‘And I envy him for being free.’
‘Like he said, you both had what the other wanted.’
‘It’s been like that for years.’
‘It’s a wonder you got on as you did.’
I turn to stare at her. ‘What makes you think we got on?’
‘Oh, did you not?’ She is all innocence.
I laugh, and wonder if I should tell her everything, but just say, ‘No.’
‘Well, he’s gone.’
‘He’s gone.’
‘And by the time he gets back you’ll be well on the way to becoming a healer.’
HERBS
My study of herbal medicines begins by making a series of concoctions for Danuta: a coltsfoot expectorant for her cough, poultices of elder leaves and figwort gathered when the tide was coming in for her aching joints, and a sleeping draught of broom flowers, primroses and valerian root, which smells divine. Some of these she seems to have no confidence in, but they turn out to be useful for all kinds of other things. I realise I am getting an intensive study in making up ointments in different ways. She’s a good teacher, and one day when I am peeling off a waxy poultice she smiles and says, ‘People always want the potion or the ointment, but the treatment’s just as much about feeling someone’s hands on your skin, the massage.’
‘You mean I might as well be smearing dripping on you?’
‘Aye, although it wouldn’t smell so nice.’
We laugh together, then she takes my hand. ‘But don’t forget to make a little request to Brigid in your head, for she’s the one who’ll guide you best in healing. Go and pick some of her balm and think about what that means to you.’
The weeks pass quickly. She gets me to shift her bed to the fireside so she can supervise my work. Each day I get up early to go out for a walk looking for new plants, either those I don’t know or things Danuta has told me to look out for, and each day there’s a new flower in bloom. Today I found clanicle and bog bean. What is prettier than bog bean? Such fluffy delicacy, growing out of black mud. It makes me feel there must be good hiding in even the most wicked and foul-tempered soul. I am sure there are guiding spirits opening up buds when they see me coming, offering up their secrets. I try to listen to them as Danuta tells me to. I make pure decoctions of many plants and drink them, meditating on the flavour, trying to distil meaning from their taste and smell, committing to memory everything I can of what the old woman tells me of the magic of each herb. I have begun a collection of sticks with the names of plants carved into them in ogham script, to guide my thinking about them.
Often there are rhymes to help me remember, like ‘raspberry leaf gives pain relief’. I love the wordplay most of all and make up many of my own verses. They are just for my own fun, for they contain secrets I cannot share with anyone, but they help me remember the lore. My best one is ‘reed roots and elder fruits, let them bubble for breathing trouble’.
One day a man comes in, knocking on the door as he opens it. ‘Hello. Anybody home?’ He stops as he sees me. ‘Oh, excuse me.’ He tilts his head in a bashful way. ‘Is Bael here?’ He looks around.
I shake my head and expect him to leave again, but Bael’s absence seems to be what he wants, and he comes in and steps towards me. ‘I don’t know you.’ He is looking at me curiously.
I start to my feet.
‘No, don’t get up, I didn’t mean to disturb you. It smells good.’ He gestures to the pot on the fire.
I’m making a shellfish soup with ramsons and butter. As I stand I realise how tall he is. He’s a giant of a man, with a weather-beaten face. I look down. His feet are huge.
I make for Danuta’s room, where at least I’ll feel safe, but he follows me. I find myself pressing back into the wall to avoid him.
He stoops to enter, his frame almost bent double to get in. When he unwinds, his head almost touches the vaulted ceiling. He smiles down at Danuta. ‘You’re still with us!’
She reaches an arm up to him. ‘Alasdair!’ She says his name as if it’s a favourite food. ‘You get more handsome each time I see you. Soyea, do you know who this is?’
I can’t see past him to make eye contact with her, but before I can speak he has swung round to me.
‘Soyea! So you’re the daughter of Rian? I heard a rumour she was back and has daughters named after islands. What do you make of Assynt?’
I swallow, wishing the wall would push back and let me escape. ‘All right.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m intimidating you. Barging in like this. I’m just putting my head in to see how Danuta is. I’ll not stay.’
‘You’ll stay as long as you like,’ Danuta says. ‘Alasdair’s chief. He lives in a fine place over there at Rubh an Dunain. Your grandfather built that as well as this.’
‘Is that right? Your grandfather? Well, well.’
‘Would you like some ale, Alasdair? And something to eat? Do we have an oatcake to offer him, Soyea? She makes lovely cakes this girl.’
He grins. ‘You know me, Danuta.’
‘Fetch the man a cup of something, little bird, if you don’t mind.’
‘But not if it’s a trouble,’ he says.
‘It’s no trouble.’ I slip past him out to the hearth and pour ale, sweetening it with a little mead, a big beaker for him and Danuta’s favourite cup for her. I set out a plate of oatcakes and cheese.
The effusive thanks when I take them in make me blush. He has sat down beside Danuta.
‘When they said Rian had a daughter, they didn’t tell me she was so lovely.’ He takes a bite of an oatcake and his eyes widen as he chews. ‘Delicious!’ His mouth is still working. He takes a second bite.
‘She’s clever, eh?’ Danuta fixes her dimpled smile on me and I’m finding one squeezing its way onto my face too.
The big man lifts his mug and with a ‘Slàinte’, takes a slug. He swallows. ‘Well, it’s good to see someone taking care of you, Danuta. I can reassure a few folk. You know,’ he turns to me, ‘I’m glad Rian’s back. You’re welcome. And the Mutterer. He’s all heart, from what you hear, and what a seafarer.’
I look back at him blankly.
‘The poor man was almost thrown out of here by Bael.’ Danuta rolls her eyes. ‘That boy still has no idea of hospitality.’
‘He’s not a boy, Danuta.’
‘Oh, I know, I know. I despair of him, though.’
Alasdair chomps his way through another oatcake and finishes his ale, while Danuta tells him about Mother and I and all we’ve tried to do for her. It’s embarrassing, but pleasing all the same, to be so appreciated. I find myself liking the big man, and I relax a bit. He has a verve that reminds me of Manigan and somehow this casts my stepfather in a better light than usual. I almost feel proud of him as Danuta and Alasdair discuss his exploits out hunting on the northern ocean, and how thrilled he was to be taking Mother away with him.
As if he is reading my mind, Alasdair turns to me. ‘There are good people in this community too, you know. Though I’m here with a warning. There’s a thief about. We don’t know who, but there are things going missing. We had a ceilidh a few days back, a big throng of folk, and afterwards some things had gone for a walk, valuables, you know, a couple of bronze cups and my wife’s favourite necklace. It makes you sore, to think someone here would do such a thing. It gives you a bad taste.’
Danuta shook her head. ‘That’s awful. Who’d do such a thing?’
‘Well I don’t want to go casting aspersions, you know, but that trader’s in the area, the one-eyed woman.’
‘Ussa.’ Danuta grimaced. ‘She’s not welcome here.’
‘Aye. That’s no surprise. But your lad Bael is thick with her sometimes, you should know that. And she has slaves with her. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them.’
‘His father was in thrall to her as well.’ Danuta rubbed her forehead as if it was hurting.
&nb
sp; ‘Sorry to have brought bad news.’ Alasdair looks abashed.
‘No, no. It’s best to know these things. We’ll keep our eyes open, won’t we Soyea?’
I nod.
Alasdair nods back at me, gravely. ‘Good. I’m going to be going over to the Long Island tomorrow. Any messages?’
‘Oh yes. I’d like you to ask the Wren to visit us. And Donnag may have some too. Soyea, could you go and ask her?’
I head out to find Donnag who puts on a rare smile at the suggestion of being able to make contact with her people and rushes in to see Alasdair.
Otherwise our life is quiet. Only Bael disturbs it with his huffs and tantrums, but he goes off for days at a time. I don’t know where and I don’t care. It is always better when he’s gone. I hate him more than I have ever hated anyone.
Danuta closes her eyes when he comes in, and after a particularly bad night of his brooding presence and the ranting that gets more and more angry as his flask of drink empties, she asks me to take her back into her chamber between the walls. It is cooler in there and dark, and I am worried that all the improvements to her health that she has shown since she took up her place by the fireside will fall away. But she says she is weary. She wants some peace and quiet. I position her in there so she can still see the fire and its light, and so that sunshine can reach her through the doorway.
He comes in one rainy day in a foul mood. I hear his voice raised in his room upstairs. I can’t hear Donnag’s responses, but when he returns he is in a rage and he strides over to where all her newly made pots are laid up drying by the fire. He upends the tray and stamps on them. Pottery smashes in all directions.
I run to my room.
THE SISTERS
A few days before midsummer Danuta tells me we’ll have some visitors and we must prepare for them. Donnag gets excited, or as close to it as I’ve ever seen her, when she hears one of the names of the women who may be coming – The Wren. She is Donnag’s great aunt, apparently, but from the way she breathes the name it is obvious that she is special.
I am sent to Achmelvich to tell Eilidh that The Wren is coming for midsummer, and her reaction is to hug me and kiss me with delight. Such effusion makes me even more intrigued.
Donnag and I work together to air bedding and make enough oatcakes to feed a fleet. It’s good that we do, because when the women come they arrive en masse, fifteen of them, ranging in age from five to seventy-five. I have never had so much fun in my whole life. Bael flees, I don’t know where, but Buia emerges from her den and becomes almost like a real person, instead of the ghost we are used to. Donnag seems terrified, making excuses to rummage about upstairs for things, hiding from the constant babble of conversation.
Danuta gets us to carry her bed out again and holds court at the hearthside like a queen. Everyone treats her with absolute respect, even awe. I am proud to be beside her, apprentice, assistant, nurse, whatever I am. I feel like her granddaughter. In other words, I feel like a princess. But more than anything, I feel like a woman. I tend the fire, boil water, heat soup. I am in the centre of it all.
Most of the women are a blur of busily obedient workers, but one stands out because she is by far the oldest and does absolutely nothing from the moment she arrives. She barely needs to stoop to enter the broch and crosses directly to Danuta’s bed, where she clutches her hand and beams a toothless smile. She perches like sunshine on Danuta’s bed, legs crossed, nodding approvingly as all the preparations for the women’s visitation are made, receiving a bowl of soup second only after Danuta and refusing everything else offered to her. I find it hard to take my eyes off her. She is pale as a moth but chirpy as a wren. This is The Wren, of course.
When Donnag emerges from upstairs, she goes straight to the bed and kneels before her. The old woman cups her face with her hands, then leans forward to kiss her on the forehead. Donnag speaks intently to her, and she says a few words. After a while, Donnag bows her head, then goes off to sit in her favourite spot on the stairs, barely visible, but able to watch what is going on.
There’s a woman my mother’s age, maybe a bit younger, who takes total charge of practical things like food, beds, even toilet arrangements for the whole crowd of them. They have brought the sail up from their boat to make a tent. This woman, Arna, gives everyone else tasks. I have never met anyone so commanding but no one seems to mind her being like that. She is strong, grey-haired and big-boned, and she makes me think of one of those dogs that runs around barking at all the other animals, making them do its bidding. And they are all surprisingly biddable. She leaves me out of her orders and even apologises to me once, ‘for the intrusion into your space,’ as she puts it, in her big voice. ‘We’ll do everything, don’t worry, we’ve no intention of being a burden on you. We’ve brought everything we need and we’ll leave you everything we don’t use.’
After we have all eaten and the dishes are cleared, I can allow the fire to ease for a while. The old woman asks me to sit by her. She quizzes me intently about all sorts of things: my mother, my life so far, what I know about herbs and why I feed the fire the way I do. If my answers are too long, she interrupts me and asks a different question, and some of these are very strange. She asks me where I think my monthly bleeding comes from, what would I think if I found a frog in the house, how to comfort a cow if its milk stopped coming, what age the sea is – that’s one of the strangest. I get a lot of the answers right I think, but some of them wrong. What to say to a wild boar if you meet it in the woods, for example.
I don’t know, so I say, ‘I wish you many nuts.’
‘Nearly.’ She pats my knee. ‘You thank him kindly for leaving some of the acorns to grow into oak trees.’
‘We’d just say, Oak Thanks,’ Danuta interjects. She’s been following the interrogation intently without interrupting, and now she has managed to break in she adds, ‘We found an oak cask up there that you’ll be happy about.’ She points above our head and winks at me. I go and fill a flask with mead and make Danuta her usual yarrow and self-heal concoction.
The Wren takes hers neat. It’s too sweet for my liking, so I water mine down, then I take the rest of the flask to Arna and tell her there’s more where it came from. To my surprise, she turns it down, saying they won’t abuse our hospitality by drinking something so precious. I insist there is plenty, but she is firm. I relent only after she promises that they’ll all drink heartily the following night. All the women have gone except her. I ask where they’ve gone, and she smiles and shrugs and says, ‘Where women go.’ I want to ask her what she means but she shoos me away. ‘Go and talk to The Wren. Mind and treat her like your honoured guest. You’ll not regret it. There’s time enough to meet the rest of us tomorrow.’
The Wren and Danuta are chuckling about something when I come in. They allow their laughter to die away like a tumble of stones coming to rest on a slope of scree. I have never seen Danuta enjoy herself so much. I see the fire needs attention, so I feed it three sticks in the way Mother taught me.
‘You’re a good fire keeper,’ The Wren says. ‘Your mother showed you well.’
I bow to her. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’ll do. You’ve more to learn, but we all have, even Danu. Isn’t that right?’
Danuta smiles. ‘More than ever. I’m forgetting more than I remember these days.’
I know this isn’t true but I don’t know how to argue with her without sounding rude. I say to The Wren, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever asked her something she doesn’t know.’
‘And I gather you’ve asked plenty.’ She and Danuta chuckle.
I’m embarrassed. ‘I like learning.’
I must sound put out because Danuta says, ‘Don’t take it the wrong way, little bird. I’m happy with all your questions. They make me feel old and wise and young all at the same time. Your curiosity has been a tonic to an old woman at the end of her life. You remind me so much of your mother, bless her, and listen little bird, you know I did wrong by her?’ She is sitti
ng up in bed and speaking with an intensity I have never heard her use. ‘I let her be taken away. I watched while that monster sold her as a slave. But I’m going to do the right thing this time. You must have the chance she never got. I call you child, but you’re not. You’re a woman now. You’ve the heart and the head to be one of the Sisterhood. Your body’s ready. You’ll do, as my friend here has said.’
The Wren nods. ‘You’re not polished, shall we say, but there’s the beauty of the raw stone in you and I’ll happily set you in the ring.’
It dawns on me then what they’re telling me.
‘You mean I’m to be initiated?’
I look between the two smiling crones.
‘But I don’t know any magic,’ I blurt.
‘Shame on you. The whole of our Mother’s way is magic,’ says Danuta. ‘Show her your sticks.’
I fetch the sticks I’ve been making with herb names carved into them, and The Wren handles them lovingly, reading every one, naming them. ‘Nettle, woundwort, sneezewort, clanicle, sorrel…’ I am on tenterhooks to hear what she might make of them.
‘You know enough,’ says The Wren eventually. ‘And in your own words, you love to learn. We are all just beginners, and like the spider and the salmon, we play our part in the great world-weaving. Tomorrow, if you’re willing, you can join our merry throng and share some solstice secrets.’
‘Will I have to leave here?’
‘I don’t see why. If you want to visit any of us you will always be welcome. We each have our own path in life. The Sisterhood is not a burden.’
I am smiling so much my cheeks will ache later. I have been chosen! Rona has always been the favoured one – the little one, the pretty one – but this time it is me! I remember, at last, to be polite.
‘I am honoured.’ I kneel and bow before The Wren. ‘May I fill your cup?’ I reach for the mead flask and she chortles.
‘Yes, you’ll do.’ She proffers her beaker and when I’ve filled it, she holds it up. ‘All the sweetness of our Mother to you, Sister.’
The Lyre Dancers Page 9
