The Lyre Dancers

by Mandy Haggith

  ‘Where is the mad bat? She’s not in her hut.’

  ‘Around the back, with the cow.’

  ‘So, nobody here but me and you. My slut wife has gone for a mud bath. It’s the perfect opportunity to show you what you really want to see.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He imitates me in a whiny voice. ‘You know damn well.’ He grabs me by the wrist.

  ‘I don’t want to see anything of yours.’

  He tries to slap me but I flinch away.

  ‘Playing coy, eh? I know you’re gagging for it.’

  His hand on my wrist hurts.

  ‘Let go of me.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  He pushes me back and I lose my balance and stumble, knocking over one of the boxes of flasks with a clatter of breaking pottery. I look down, relieved to see it was just the damaged ones, but just that momentary loss of attention is all he needs.

  He is standing over me, and with his other hand he grabs the arm I try to steady myself with. Clasping both of my wrists in one of his hands, he pushes my arms up over my head and thrusts me back onto something hard, one of the chests probably, pinioning me there with his knee. With his other hand he starts pulling aside his clothes.

  ‘No. Don’t hurt me.’ I don’t know exactly what I’m saying but it is all refusal.

  I wriggle and tug my arms but all that achieves is his knee rammed between my legs and his hand pulling my wrists to an excruciating angle.

  ‘I like hurting people.’ He brings his face close to mine.

  I try to look him in the eye but there’s nothing there except an animal. I look instead at the scar on his face. I see how it healed and imagine it as a gaping wound.

  ‘Who caused that scar on your cheek?’ I say. Is there a person in there, with memories?

  ‘Shut your ugly mouth.’

  There is an angry boy inside this monster. ‘Did Danuta stitch it up for you? Or someone else?’

  ‘I told you, shut it.’ He jerks my arms almost out of their sockets. I daren’t speak now.

  He has pinned me at an agonising angle over the box and my lower back feels as if it will snap. His leg has my thigh and hip slammed against a sharp corner and his foot is crushing mine. He is trying with his other hand to get his clothes off without loosening his grip. Then he starts on my skirt, but I do all I can to hinder him.

  ‘Look at me,’ he says.

  I will not. Not if that’s what he wants.

  He starts calling me filthy names. I try an old trick my mother taught me, going completely limp so he will loosen his grip and I can make a spring for it.

  ‘You think I’m stupid, don’t you?’

  He pulls my arms into an even more painful position.

  ‘You might as well faint. I’m going to skewer you anyway, just like that pig. You’ll probably enjoy it, though, you slutty little bitch, gagging for it.’

  His breath is foul against my face. He is tearing my skirt. I can hear it ripping. My legs are bare. I am crying now. He’s going to force himself into me.

  ‘Weepy, weepy.’ He is laughing. I shut my eyes. I can’t bear to look at the scar anymore and I’m breathing through my mouth trying not to smell him.

  Then he’s ripping away my moss pad. It’s my bleeding time of the month.

  He makes some filthy statement about my blood and I call him a bastard. He pauses.

  ‘Perking up, are we? Go on, call me more bad names. I love it.’

  ‘Bastard,’ I say again.

  ‘Is that the only one you know?’

  ‘You bastard.’ I’m screaming at him and he has paused. Perhaps, even though I can’t fight him physically, my voice is a kind of weapon. I yell it again and again.

  And suddenly he’s off me and somebody is pulling at him. He draws a knife and there’s Mother, yelling at him.

  ‘Get your filthy hands off her.’

  Then he has her down on the floor, but she has hold of his wrist, so he can’t use the knife. They’re struggling and he’s kicking her.

  I try to pull him off her, tugging at his jerkin. Something I do – or maybe it’s Mother’s hand on his wrist – makes him drop the blade. It skitters towards me. All I have to do is bend down and pick it up, and when he turns towards me and lunges, I stick it in his neck.

  I see his anger turn to astonishment. His hand goes towards his throat and touches the knife handle, a gesture that seems almost delicate, as if he is stroking it. There’s blood streaming from the wound. Then his eyes glaze and he crumples, toppling sideways among the bottles. When the clattering stops, all that’s left is a wailing sound, and when I close my mouth it stops.

  I slump down on the casket and look at Mother, who is sitting on the floor, staring first at Bael, face down, blood pooling among broken pottery, and then at me.

  RIAN

  AFTERMATH

  Rian sat on the chest looking at the body. Soyea was crying beside her.

  There were footsteps on the stairs. Fin took one step towards them, then stopped. He bowed his head and retreated.

  Rian heard shouts and then Manigan was beside her. She did not know what he was saying.

  Fin took Soyea to her cubby hole. She seemed pliant with him, sobbing, clinging onto his arm, babbling about the knife, the blood. ‘Shh, shh,’ he was saying as he led her away.

  Rian allowed Manigan to persuade her to go down to the hearth. She turned her back on Bael and took the stairs slowly.

  Once downstairs, Manigan said, ‘Get that fire going. Heat some water.’

  She reached for some kindling and began to do the one thing she could always do.

  Manigan went back up and he and Fin carried the corpse down the stairs and laid it out under a sack. Then he went out. A while later he returned. He and Badger dragged Rona between them. Once inside the broch Manigan shut the door behind them.

  Rona was tousled and furious. ‘It’s not fair. Mother, tell him.’

  Rian got up and hugged her little daughter. ‘I know it doesn’t feel fair, little bird, but you’re going to have to bear it. Just for a while. You’ll get over him.’

  Rona pushed Rian away. ‘Get over him? I won’t ever. Why can’t you see that?’

  Rian tried to hug her again but Rona kicked out, inconsolable. She seemed oblivious to the corpse. Rian returned to the hearth, and patted the stool next to her. ‘Come and sit here, we’ll talk about it.’

  But Rona made a burst for the door and when Manigan caught her she tried to bite him. He picked her up like a child and carried her away upstairs. There was banging and shrieking for a while, then he reappeared and pulled up a stool beside the fire.

  ‘I’ve shut her in one of the chambers. There’s a bed in it. I don’t know what else to do for now.’

  ‘We can’t just keep her locked up,’ Rian said.

  ‘She’s still going on about running away to find Eadha. That’s all we need. I’ll let her out when she calms down.’

  ‘Let me go and talk to her,’ Rian said.

  ‘Given the names she was calling you, I don’t think there’s any point.’ Manigan shook his head.

  Rian couldn’t bear the idea of her daughter caged in a cell, but what could she do? The punishment for incest was unambiguous. She was just going to have to endure it.

  Badger and Kino were standing just inside the door. ‘Shall I go and find someone?’ Badger asked. ‘Who’s the big man around here these days? Is it Alasdair?’

  Rian registered that the question was directed at her, and nodded.

  Manigan got to his feet. ‘He’s in another broch up the coast, we’ll need to sail there. Do you know where it is, Badger?’

  Badger scratched his head. ‘It’s up around the Rubha, I think. Culkein, isn’t it? Or is it Drumbeg?’

  ‘Rhu an Dunain.’ Rian said. ‘You’ll be quicker walking. It’s just up the hill and over across the other side of the peninsula.’

  Badger nodded. ‘I can go on my own. You�
��d better stay here, Manigan, with Rian and your daughters.’

  They clarified the directions, and then Badger set off. Kino said he would go and see if he could find Eilidh and Tormaid in Achmelvich.

  Fin remained, perched on a stool, his back to the wall. Manigan paced, then, hearing bangs from upstairs, went up to see what Rona was doing in her fury. Downstairs, the hush was intense. Rian could not look at Fin and sat poking the fire.

  After a while Donnag came in, muddy with clay. She took one look at the body and put down her bag, then lifted a corner of the sack, saw who it was, and let it fall. Rian waited to see what she would do. She gazed at her and at Fin, then poured some hot water from the pot by the hearth into a bowl. Rian held her breath. It looked as if she would head up the stairs to wash without saying a word, but instead she turned to Rian. ‘What happened?’

  Rian couldn’t hold the fierce gaze of the thin woman. Looking down at the fire, she wondered what to say.

  Eventually Fin spoke. ‘He tried to rape Soyea.’ His voice reverberated into the pause.

  Donnag’s forehead crumpled with concern. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Distraught.’

  ‘Did she kill him?’

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘Poor Soyea.’

  Rian looked up at Donnag and saw that she was more saddened for Soyea than for the dead man on the floor, who she barely glimpsed at before slipping away upstairs with her bowl.

  Rian put more water on to heat and fed the fire. Before long Buia came and looked and sat beside her, and Rian, in a soft voice, explained what had happened. Buia made little moaning sounds and shook her head, then went out to her hut, returning a little later with a basket of grey gull feathers. She lay them in a line, end to end, from Bael’s throat, down his body, then across the floor of the broch and out of the door. Rian followed her, to see where she was taking the line.

  Outside in the breeze, it was harder to make the feathers lie still, and Buia was painstakingly fastening each one down with a stone. Rian helped her by bringing her big pebbles. The strange grey river flowed right around the back of the broch, stopping when it reached the midden. Rian felt an involuntary shudder go through her at this channel of evil made manifest.

  Her task completed, Buia took a deep breath and allowed Rian to lead her back inside.

  Men’s voices signalled the return of Badger with Alasdair, who took a long hard look under the sheet. As he stood up, Rian met his gaze.

  ‘We just sailed in today. He was raping my daughter. I tried to pull him off and he got a knife out. You can blame me.’

  ‘You don’t need to take it on yourself,’ Alasdair said. ‘Nobody needs to hide anything.’

  Manigan, who was standing in a shadow by the staircase, said, ‘I don’t think anyone’s trying to hide anything. It was Soyea who stuck the blade in him. He was raping her. Rian caught him, heard the girl shouting up there, and in the tussle Soyea got his knife. I’d call it self-defence.’ He took a step forward, his voice rising. ‘That man Drost, Bael’s father, sold Rian into slavery, and if you ask me he taught his son everything he knew about treating people like dirt.’

  Alasdair faced him. ‘You didn’t like him, I take it?’

  ‘No, I didn’t like him. That’s one way of putting it. Did you?’

  ‘Sit down, man. Has anyone sent for Eilidh?’

  ‘Yes. My brother went for her,’ Badger said.

  Manigan sat down. ‘Did you like him or not?’

  Alasdair didn’t respond. ‘When Eilidh gets here, we’ll talk it through. Is there any ale in this house, do you know? We’ve had a bit of a walk.’

  It wasn’t long before Kino arrived with Eilidh who shook her head and sat by the hearth beside Buia. She held her hand and nodded as Rian gave her version of events.

  ‘So there doesn’t seem to be any dispute that your daughter is the murderer,’ Alasdair said.

  This brought Manigan to his feet, indignant. ‘This doesn’t count as murder.’ He appealed to Eilidh. ‘You know what healers the women are, they wouldn’t hurt anyone. Young Soyea’s been learning herbs from her mother all her life, and she had it from Danuta. They save lives, they don’t take them. Alasdair. They’re not murderers.’

  ‘He’s not alive any more though, is he?’ Alasdair said. ‘Someone killed him. Are you sure it wasn’t yourself? You’re a professional killer, I gather.’

  ‘I’m the Walrus Mutterer. I hunt the Old Gentlemen of the Sea. I don’t kill men, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Well I was only asking. When I first came in Rian was suggesting she had done it. I’m just trying to get clear what went on.’

  Manigan sat down again and spoke as if to a boy. ‘Rian even made out to me that it was her at first, she was wanting to shield her daughter, it’s the mother’s instinct. I guess she knows she’d have done it if the knife had been in her hand.’

  Rian gave a little nod, feeling her face burn red with embarrassment at Manigan’s angry outbursts.

  ‘What exactly did you see?’ Eilidh said to Manigan.

  ‘Me? I just saw the man with his arse bare and a blade in his gullet, lying in a pool of blood and enough empty bottles to prove the man was a drunkard as well as a rapist.’

  As if Eilidh could sense Rian’s discomfort at his behaviour, she said, ‘You don’t need to be disrespectful, Manigan. Life is short, we all know it. Men die. Children die. It’s what happens. But not like this. It’s not the kind of thing you can easily accept. I think we should all calm down. It’s a horrible thing but it’s not going to be helped by insults and foul tempers.’

  Eilidh and Alasdair left, saying they would go and tell other people in the village what had happened. For a while Rian tried to stick to doing practical things like cleaning up the blood.

  At one point Soyea came out of her room. Fin seemed best able to calm her down, and persuaded her to wash and put on fresh clothes. Buia took her away upstairs and for a while there were sounds of chanting and a drum.

  When it fell quiet, Buia appeared at the bottom of the stairs, red-eyed, carrying a small drum and beater. She stood by the body of Bael and banged wordlessly: a short, brittle repeated pattern of two single beats and a triplet, each phrase directed at a different part of the body, a spell against evil spirits. She worked her way slowly from the feet up to the head, then with a drum roll she stomped away out of the broch. Rian heard her bang away furiously outside the door and then grow fainter as she walked around the broch, presumably following the trail of feathers. Eventually the drumming stopped.

  They covered the body with another layer of sailcloth, trying to limit the smell, then Rian set about clearing up all the empty bottles and flasks upstairs. Donnag emerged from her room and helped, and it was she who opened the big chest.

  She stopped moving. ‘What’s all this, do you think?’

  Rian came to look. Donnag propped the lid open. The chest was full of bronze: cups, plates and cooking implements, but also knives and an embossed shield. Most of it was intact, but there were also broken bits of riding equipment, handles, and scrap pieces no good to anyone. It was all mixed together, with no order.

  ‘I wonder where it all came from?’ Rian picked up a chain and ran it through her fingers.

  Donnag pulled a knife with a long slim blade out of the tumble of metal, then laid it back on the surface. ‘Why would you have things like this hidden away?’

  Rian picked out a goblet. It had an elegant shape, curving in at the middle.

  ‘That was my mother’s.’ Donnag reached for it and Rian handed it to her. ‘It went missing. I remember her complaining about it.’

  ‘Is it all stolen, do you think?’

  Donnag turned the goblet in her hands like a sacred vessel, her bottom lip trembling. She said nothing.

  Rian gently shut the lid of the chest. ‘Perhaps we should show it all to Alasdair and Eilidh. See if other people recognise things in here too.’

  They showed i
t to Alasdair when he passed by on his way home that evening, and he also recognised several pieces from his own home: two cups and a necklace. He suggested they bring it all into the light, and helped Fin, Badger and Manigan to carry the chest downstairs. They laid out all its contents. It glittered like guilty secrets beside the corpse.

  Rian took herself to bed as soon as Alasdair had left. When Manigan made his way there later, she was lying awake, red-eyed, and fresh tears flowed as he hugged her. ‘Murder and incest. My daughters. I can’t bear it. What punishment is this?’ She wept as if her heart would break.

  He held her until the tears subsided. ‘I don’t know what you’ll make of this, but I promised I’d tell you.’

  ‘What?’ She got up to find a cloth to blow her nose, then got into bed again.

  ‘Well, I made some comment about Soyea – who would want her now, a woman who stabs a man in the throat and her not exactly a beauty,’

  ‘You didn’t. That’s not fair.’

  ‘It was just a joke, you know. We’ve had a few. You can smell the evil from the corpse. You have to drink to stand it. No body of an animal I’ve ever killed has stunk like that one. But the point is, Fin said, “I want her.” I hadn’t realised what a shine he’s taken to her. When did that happen?’

  ‘I saw them together the last time we were here.’

  ‘Well, I never noticed. He says they love each other. And then he said, “Can I handfast with Soyea? Will you give us your blessing?”’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake. This is hardly the time is it?’ She sat up in bed, shaking her head. ‘What’s he doing here anyway? I don’t trust him, he’s got too much of Ussa about him.’

  ‘Steady on. There’s no need to get cross with Fin. He’s trying to be helpful. Is it not Bael who deserves your anger?’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to feel.’

  Manigan opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again.

  Rian was kneading the blankets between her hands. ‘You didn’t agree he could have Soyea did you?’