The Lyre Dancers

by Mandy Haggith

  ‘Of course I’m not. How could just leave her there? All your talk of propriety, worrying about me and Eadha, and you leave her body there, unburied. You’d treat an animal better. What do you expect me to think of you when you treat your own mother like that?’

  ‘Oh don’t be ridiculous. She is in Aonghas’ good hands,’ Rian retorted, but the gibe had truth in it.

  After that Rona refused or talk to any of them, or to eat. She lowered her head when the boom was swung but took no part in the sailing work. Rian felt herself tearing in two as she watched her daughter’s misery. Manigan and she had agreed that unless someone who knew better told them otherwise, they would consider Rona’s marriage annulled. Four months would need to pass to rid her of the defilement of the four-month long period of incest. Until that time, she would have to be considered unclean.

  She looked back and even her daughter’s distraught state couldn’t quite quench the excitement at their growing lead over Ussa’s boat.

  ‘I can beat that old tub in this situation with no bother at all,’ Manigan said, and it seemed to be true. The bigger vessel could not point anything like as close to the wind as Bradan, and it was still labouring down the loch when they turned east around the Point of Sleat, then north up the Sound, the wind firmly behind them.

  Rian found herself humming the old song that Toma had taught her, and a minke whale surfaced ahead of them, its fin curving up above the water and rotating back down. Everyone, except Rona, whooped with the thrill of it.

  Manigan tousled Rian’s hair. ‘There you are, my love, you’re free again. And the whale has come to prove it.’

  She smiled. ‘Ussa can’t have me.’

  He chuckled. ‘No, she can’t. Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep you out of her grasp. We’re getting good at it, eh?’ They powered along now, Manigan gleeful. ‘We’ll beat the tide, I know we will, and if she misses it she’ll never catch us.’

  By midday the Sound was a narrow channel and the water became complex, whirling and furrowing as they approached the kyle between the Winged Isle and the mainland to the east. Manigan, Badger and Kino were laughing with delight at the speed they made as the boat was swept through Kyle Rhea with the full force of the spring tide. Manigan had to hang onto the tiller at times to keep the boat on course among the eddies and swirls. They had left Ussa’s boat far behind and Manigan was jubilant. ‘By the time she arrives at the narrows, the tide’ll be turning and it’ll be against the wind too. She’ll have to anchor and wait till midnight, if she dares attempt it at night, which I doubt. And we’re away!’

  By nightfall they were in open water and it was a clear night for sailing north, the breeze still helping them along their way past the northernmost end of the Winged Isle. By morning, the Assynt mountains were showing on the distant horizon.

  SOYEA

  PIG

  I am preparing the evening meal when the shadow of a man falls across the hearth. Bael drags a carcase in after him, letting it drop to the floor beside the fireplace. It is the sow. She is bloody from the wound at her throat and leaves a smear across the floor. Her swollen teats show she was still feeding her young. From a pocket Bael pulls out a piglet and tosses it down beside her. He stands, legs astride, between the body and the door, then looks up, taking in the flowers festooning the place.

  Buia says. ‘You’re back.’

  I can’t believe she doesn’t express any outrage about the sow.

  ‘What the hell’s been going on here?’ he says.

  ‘Summer.’

  He rolls his eyes at the reply. ‘It stinks in here.’ Then he looks at me, although I am trying to be invisible. ‘I hoped that ugly bitch would go off with the witches. Where’s Donnag?’

  He addresses the question to me, but I’m not going to speak to him. I point out of the door. She is setting up the kiln again out the back to fire more of our pots, but he can find that out for himself.

  Bael’s return changes everything. Buia shuffles off to her hovel and flowers are replaced by bones again. Donnag retreats into herself, and although she continues working on the kiln to bake her pots, the fire goes out from her eyes. Instead of eating with me by the hearth, she reverts to her old habit of taking her bowl to her solitary perch on the stair. I feel much more exposed now tending the hearth on my own.

  Bael prowls in and out of the broch, peering suspiciously at everything new, sniffing into corners. He stares at me while I cook. It unnerves me, and I drop a favourite bowl, which breaks in two. I cut myself while I’m chopping silverweed roots. He laughs with a wide open mouth, a mocking ha-ha-ha that makes me feel completely foolish. I staunch my bleeding finger and wish the pain on him. When the stew is ready, I take my food up to my cubby hole, leaving Bael to rage alone.

  He hung up the sow right beside the door so it’s impossible not to see her every time we go in or out. I think he wants us to hate him.

  I am sitting by the hearth stripping wood sage leaves off their stalks just outside Danuta’s old room. I can feel her presence, as if the aroma is reaching her wherever she is. I need this comfort.

  Then Bael comes in. ‘Roast the pig. There are people coming tonight.’

  I take a breath and try to stay calm. I can’t imagine who would want to be his friend and if there’s a purpose to his feast he doesn’t share it. ‘Have you a way of purifying her?’

  He looks at me as if I am his next prey and he is deciding where to poke his spear. ‘Just roast it.’

  There is no way I am going to touch the sow. The curse of the mother-killer is not something I am willing to risk. In theory I know what would have to be done to lift it, but that’s for him to instigate, not me, and I’m not confident I could do the whole sequence of appeasements correctly, even if I was willing to try. I want to ask Danuta, of course, and what was once her presence becomes a huge and painful absence. I pick up the next stalk and pluck its leaves, one by one, deliberately not looking him in the eye.

  ‘Well? What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m making sage sauce. You’ll be pleased later. Donnag loves it.’

  He takes the sow’s carcass off the hook and drops it down on the floor at my feet. It is stiff now and the trotters clatter onto the stones. One of them bashes against my foot. I try not to flinch, and slowly pull my leg back, but now I have to say a charm to stop its evil entering me. I mumble it under my breath.

  ‘What witchery are you up to now? If you don’t get that pig over a fire, I’ll skewer you and give you the roasting you deserve.’ He looks as if he is pleased with himself for saying this. He’s swinging the meat hook on one finger.

  I make an effort not to let my hands tremble as I take up another stalk and start at the bottom, tearing the leaves off one by one.

  ‘Bael. Come here.’ It’s Buia, speaking from the doorway.

  I move my bundle of sage and bowl of leaves aside and shift so he doesn’t come near me as he obeys her. I’m amazed that he does, but since Danuta died, Buia seems to be the only one he has any respect for, though until now I have never seen her use her authority.

  I can’t see what he does now but I’m sure she knows fine well I can hear every word she says to him. The fear slumps out of me. He is like a dog, obedient to just one voice, this voice.

  ‘The Mother is hurting. I feel her pain. You ripped a suckling baby off her.’

  ‘How should I know it was feeding?’ He sounds sulky as a child. ‘It drove me mad, rubbing its filth on me whenever I went near it, mud everywhere.’

  ‘She’s waiting for you to ask forgiveness. Can’t you feel her curse?’

  ‘But we need meat. We can’t live on flowers.’

  ‘Danu says we need forgiveness.’

  ‘Why can’t you just do whatever we need for that? Or the girl? She loves all that witch stuff.’

  ‘Danu says you killed the sow.’ Then suddenly she has Danuta’s voice, as if she is speaking from beyond the grave. ‘It’s your breath that must
speak remorse,’ she says. ‘Beg of the mother.’

  I get rapidly to my feet and with the bundle of sage in one hand and the bowl in the other, I tiptoe to the guard room behind the door to hide.

  ‘Be good and do what’s right…’ I can’t believe what I am hearing. It’s the old woman’s voice, back from the dead. Her last few words bring a smile to my face. ‘…And you should clean yourself. You stink.’

  I cheer silently at the cheek of the woman and duck into the dark little room. Then once I’ve heard him stomp back inside I slip out.

  It is drizzling outside but I don’t care one bit. I go to see Buia, but she is not in her hut, so I drift on down to the shore.

  There’s no end to the time I can spend watching waves unfurl onto rock, their endless patterns. I told The Wren this and she said, ‘Watch it, if it fascinates you. There is never the same pattern twice, yet just as in life, there is the force of motion and the force of stasis. Some things flow and some things appear to stand against the flow, but the rock that resists is shaped by the water and the water must accommodate the rock. Everything gives and everything must be negotiated.’

  I watch the water and think about what she said. It is completely unsatisfactory, this view of the world. I know it makes sense at some level, but the world, life, needs to be less acquiescent than that. Where are the deeds we do? Are they no more than waves lapping rocks on a shore; one act, one wave among all the other waves? If that’s all our actions mean, what is the point of doing anything? The next thing, done by the next person, will over wash it all, no matter how strong it seemed.

  The persistence of the waves has no limit, and in the end I turn my back on them. There is no soothing to be found on this windy, wet afternoon. Only a long, bright strife seems to be offered by the breeze, lifting the sea into biffing scraps. The sky lowers, threatening a wetting.

  I go back in. There is no alternative.

  Bael is still there, of course. With the pig. I know I am bound to be roped into it.

  He is in a mess: sweaty, bloody, guilty, out of his depth having gutted it and making a poor show of the butchery.

  ‘When are people coming?’ I ask.

  I make a ceremony for forgiveness of the sacrilege. I don’t know what Bael has said or done, but the animal is dead now and it would be worse to let it go to waste. I cook the sow on a spit, and later people arrive, mostly men, and they eat it. I do not touch the meat. That would be one step too close to condoning his action.

  Drink flows. I don’t know who most of the people are. There are three from Inver Pollaidh, who I have met before, and Alasdair is here again with his three brothers. They all look similar, big and round-faced with scars from fighting. Everyone else is new to me. There is a group of men, women and boys from Coigach, and one of them asks me about Badger so I am briefly inclined to stay and talk, but once they open the second flask of Donnag’s father’s foul brew I have had enough of them. They repeat themselves, talking endlessly of cattle, and they are all so angry, raging about raids by islanders and blaming the weather for everything.

  There are too many weapons in the building and I alternate between boredom and fear. I notice Donnag has made herself invisible in her usual spot on the stair and I feel I must pick up the duty to keep a fire burning in the hearth.

  One of the men from the north bursts out with an angry invective about islanders and turns to me with a snarl. ‘Where are you from, anyway?’ He pinches the skin on my arm.

  I want to escape. I tell him the truth, that I was born on one of the Seal Isles and brought up far, far south, so I am new here. There is the start of a discussion about my mother: everyone knows the story of her being sold as a slave. Bael soon puts a stop to it. As soon as he has distracted them with the likelihood of an impending visit by a smith I slide away. I nod to Donnag on the stair as I pass her and take refuge in my cubby hole.

  Early next morning I sneak out of the broch and watch my back all the way to the woods. I am soon tripping over golden birch slipper mushrooms. I gather the few that I can bundle up in my scarf but I’m cursing that I haven’t brought a basket with me. I love the way they hide in moss, and how, like treasure, they give themselves away with a glimpse of bronze; as you pull back the stems and leaves of grass, primroses and ferns, the big fleshy mushrooms are revealed.

  While I am teasing apart some particularly tangly moss I hear a squeak. It’s not a bird I recognise. I look up, and high in the birch above me, paws around the trunk, is a bear cub. It makes the same noise again. It’s almost a whimper. I back away to another tree and look around. The cub is pretty, with big furry ears and its tongue lolling out. I feel quite sorry for it, but I know I need to be wary. Its mother will be somewhere nearby and is likely to be protective of her young. She may be looking for birch slippers too.

  I scour the undergrowth, but it is dense bracken, brambles, willow and hazel. A bear could be just a few metres away and I’d not know it. The cub squeaks again and starts descending the tree towards me. If it is curious about me I’m in real danger from its mother, and I don’t know where she is. My heart is racing. I move slowly towards the next big tree, a rowan, and press my back to it. There’s still no sign of the mother.

  I step around the other side of the tree to try to get a view all around me, scouring the bank above. I’m sweating. If only the mother would give herself away! Is she watching me? I’m probably looking suspicious, skulking here. Should I make a big noise, announce myself? Or will that just frighten the cub? I decide that alarming it is too big a risk and take a breath, then walk as calmly as I can to the next sizeable tree, an aspen. I look back at the cub. It is still up in the birch tree. I hope it is forgetting about me. I tiptoe my way, tree by tree, back to the path, my breath slowing, heart calming gradually as I get further and further away without encountering the mother.

  I return to the broch. Bael is still drinking with five other men.

  I tell no one about the bear.

  PRESERVATION

  When our alcohol supplies run out, everyone leaves, including Bael. It has been two days of hell but I recover, gradually, and return to the work of gathering and preserving herbs, experimenting and learning all I can from Buia. She teaches me to make a dye from a lichen that comes out a beautiful red, and it is so lovely I vow to spin more wool so I can dye more next year.

  Bael returns three days later and sleeps like a stone for two days solid, getting up only to eat and drink. Finally, he washes himself and seems to come to his senses and purgatory begins again. He wants something from me. He follows me like a mosquito, trying to land on me, touch me if I get within arm’s reach, poking and pawing, his sunken eyes leering at me. If I hated him before, I loathe him now. My skin creeps when his hands make contact, as if he conveys disease. I want to spit on him.

  Today is blue and breezy so the daily chores are a pleasure. I take mash to the remaining piglets. Buia is milking the cow and singing to her.

  I notice that there’s lots of yarrow in bloom and I remember Danuta told me it’s an excellent thing to preserve in mead, as it’s helpful for so many ailments. Buia might know the recipe. I’ll ask her. And if not, I’ll just experiment.

  I wonder how the mead I made earlier in the summer is maturing, but I know it won’t be ready for months. I am not sure if there will be any of the old stuff left after Bael’s last blow out. Normally he leaves it alone, preferring the dark ale he brews, but there were people with him who might drink anything.

  On my way back into the broch, Donnag is coming out, wearing boots and an old shawl, carrying a spade.

  I back out of the entrance to let her past. ‘What are you doing today?’

  ‘I’m going for clay. There is some in a stream bed down towards the beach.’ She points south. ‘The old man there told me I could go and dig some and he’d show me where it’s good. His father made pots.’

  It’s a long speech for her. She is taking our project far more seriously than I expected. I wish her goo
d luck.

  ‘It’ll be good to have fresh clay,’ she says.

  ‘And it’s a beautiful day,’ I say.

  She looks around, seeming to notice for the first time that the sky is blue. ‘So it is.’ She smiles.

  I take her gentle mood with me into the broch and feel my own smile on my face as I sprint up the stairs and go rummaging for mead. The case where I found it last time I looked is now empty, but I know there are others stashed under the drying loft. Between here and there, though, is a clutter of empty flasks and upended boxes, all mixed in with a tangle of fishing gear. My eyes see the empties as opportunities, now that I have a barrel of mead underway, so I grab a box and start gathering them, trying to match bungs and stoppers to the ceramic flasks that still seem to have life in them. I fetch another box, into which I chuck the cracked and broken pots. They may as well be ditched. Given her burst of fervour for pottery, maybe Donnag will make some more for me to use.

  ‘Poking about where you’re not supposed to again, I see.’

  His voice is a whip.

  I swivel round to face him. There is too much clutter in the way to give me much room to keep my distance from him. He steps closer. Buia is right. He stinks. I don’t know what it is. Dried vomit, maybe. That would also explain the stains on his jerkin.

  He is grimacing at me, his scarred face distorted by a grin, one eye half-closed as always. His face doesn’t know how to smile properly. It makes him look as if he is in pain. The falseness of it is uglier than a scowl would be.

  ‘If you want to see something secret, I can show you something.’

  The smile becomes a leer.

  ‘I’m just getting some mead. I’m going to get Buia to show me how to preserve yarrow.’ I don’t want to be cowed by him, but it’s impossible not to be frightened. I’ve seen him when he’s violent, lashing out. I’ve heard Donnag’s stories. His boast of having chopped someone’s fingers off for touching her.