In the Shadow of the Wall

by Gordon Anthony

  Brude asked around the village to make sure nobody had any objections to his chosen site, a flat piece of rather stony land near the foot of one of the steepest parts of the hill. It was unused land and nobody minded except his mother, who did not understand why he wanted to build a house of his own. “You can stay here,” she said. “There’s only Seoras and me. Some families have ten people in one house. There’s plenty of room for all of us.”

  He made excuses, which didn’t satisfy her, but she eventually realised that his mind was made up and only occasionally mentioned that a new house was an unnecessary luxury. Seoras offered to help with the building but Brude told him he wanted to try to do this by himself, which made Seoras and Fothair burst out laughing. “Have you ever made a roundhouse?” Seoras asked him.

  “No,” Brude admitted sheepishly.

  “It will take more than the two of you,” Seoras told him. “Unless you want it to take all year to build.”

  “I’m not doing anything else,” said Brude. “And Fothair wants to build up his muscles.”

  “Do you know how to thatch a roof?” Seoras persisted, his eyes gleaming with amusement.

  “I remember seeing it done years ago,” Brude said. “We’ll figure it out.”

  “You’re game, lad, I’ll say that for you,” laughed Seoras.

  Seoras helped anyway and so did a few other villagers when they learned what Brude was planning. Castatin came down from the broch most days with some of the other boys so Seoras organised them to clearing the site, lifting all the stones and levelling the surface off as much as possible while Brude and Fothair went off to find suitable trees; oak for the rafters and door, and hazel wands for the walls. Even with the axes Caroc had provided, it took them days to fell the trees, then cut and trim the stakes. They used Brude’s mule to haul the wood back to the site. Brude felt pleased with himself but Seoras told him he did ot have enough wood so they had to go and find more. After two weeks of chopping, trimming and shaping the wood, Brude began to realise it was going to take a very long time to build his house.

  Mairead came to see them one afternoon, laughing as she saw them struggling to haul another load of timber to Seoras, who was patiently scraping and polishing some of the beams. “You’re mad!” she laughed when she saw Brude.

  “And you’re very beautiful,” he told her.

  She made a face but he saw that she was pleased by the compliment. “Why don’t you ask Colm to send some of his men down to help? They spend most of their time lazing around pretending to be warriors.”

  “Do you think he would do that?” Brude asked doubtfully.

  “Probably not, but if you offered him something valuable enough he might do it.”

  “I thought he was rich enough already,” Brude said.

  Mairead frowned. “He’ll never be rich enough to satisfy him.”

  “That’s not the way to live a happy life,” Brude said. “He needs to learn to be content with what he has.”

  “Like you?” Mairead asked, raising an eyebrow quizzically.

  “I’ve got everything I need,” Brude nodded. Mairead was about to speak but bit back the words when he held up his hand. He knew what she was going to say. “And I learned from a very wise man in Rome that there is no point in dreaming about things I can’t have. That would only make me unhappy.”

  Mairead’s blue eyes stared into his. He saw her lips tremble, then she pulled herself together and snapped, “Well I am glad you can be so happy, Brude. Not everyone is as lucky as you.” She turned, stamping her way back to the track that led up the hill. Brude followed her with his eyes and saw the giant warrior Cruithne waiting for her at the foot of the hill. The big man glared at him, then followed Mairead as she climbed the track.

  Brude gave himself a mental kick. He turned to see Seoras and Fothair watching him. “Let’s get back to work,” he told them.

  Castatin appeared the fond ng day, approaching cautiously and staying at the edge of the trees at the foot of the hill. When Brude saw him, he waved him over but the boy shook his head, signalling to Brude to come to him. Putting down his axe, Brude wandered over to say hello.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” Castatin told him, his eyes constantly moving, looking for anyone who might see him. “My father says I’m not to come here any more and neither is my mother.”

  “Then you’d best be off,” Brude told him. “I don’t want you to get into any trouble.”

  “Mother was crying yesterday,” said Castatin. “She was upset when father started shouting at her, but she told me to come and tell you why we wouldn’t be down any more.”

  “I understand. Thank you for telling me. Now you’d better get back before anyone sees you.”

  Castatin scampered back into the trees and began clambering up the rocky slope. Thoughtfully, Brude returned to the pile of wood he and Fothair had gathered. He picked up his axe, returning to the never-ending task of trimming the beams. He tried to banish all thoughts of Mairead and Castatin from his mind, losing himself in the monotony of the work.

  “Lost another helper?” Fothair asked.

  “Apparently. It seems I am not popular with Colm. And you’re supposed to call me Master.”

  Fothair ignored the last comment, just as Brude knew he would. It had become more of a joke between them than anything else. Instead he said, “Well, it’s your own fault.”

  Using the axe to lop off another small branch, Brude asked, “What do you mean? I’ve barely spoken to him since that first day.”

  Fothair laughed. “Keeping out of his way won’t help you. You’ve done a much worse thing than that. You came back when he thought you were dead and gone. And his woman wants you instead of him.”

  “No she doesn’t!” Brude protested.

  Fothair laughed. “If you say so. I expect you’ll tell me next that you don’t want her either.”

  “Why don’t you go and chop down another tree,” Brude suggested. “Build up your arm muscles.”

  “Ha! I was right. I knew you wanted her.”

  “I never said that,” said Brude, growing annoyed at Fothair’s intrusion into his privacy.

  “You didn’t have to,” said Fothair. “Well, I’ll go and find another tree, shall I, Master?”

  By the time of the Lughnasa festival they had still barely started on the house. It had taken weeks to find, gather and shape the wood. Brude realised that, without some help, they would never finish in time for winter even if the fine weather held. Still, they rested for Lughnasa and enjoyed the feast, which Colm arranged for the whole village. It was harvest time so food was plentiful and there was music and dancing. Mairead danced with everyone, even Brude, but they were barely able to exchange more than a handful of words because Colm was watching them closely and Mairead soon moved on to dance with someone else.

  The fires were lit and everyone daubed their faces with the ash, blackening their features in symbolic attempts to conceal their identities. Some, especially the children, played pranks on each other and on unsuspecting adults. The adults themselves grew more and more uninhibited as the drink flowed and Brude knew that the village would have a few more babies in the springtime. There were more men than young women in the village, though, and he suspected the drink might cause some arguments or fights among the young warriors, so he slipped away, returning to Seoras’ house as the sun was setting.

  Most people rose late the following morning but Brude and Fothair were back at the new house early, gouging a circular perimeter line using a wooden peg hammered into the ground where the centre of the house would be. A long piece of twine was tied to the peg and attached to a sharp piece of antler, which they used to mark a line in the ground where the walls of the house would be built. Then they began hacking at the turf with more antlers, digging a narrow circular trench. It was hard work. Brude was tempted to ask Caroc the smith to make some metal picks and shovels but he knew they would take time to make and, by the time they were ready, they could have the t
rench dug using the traditional tools.

  Seoras came over to watch them working. “I’ve organised some help,” he told them. “It will take you a year to build at this rate. Lulach the thatcher and his son will gather reeds and dry them out. Seoc’s sisters will start making the twine and rope. Seoc will help, when he can, and I’ve asked Gruoch to help with the wood. He’s supposed to be building ships for Colm but that work won’t be starting until after the harvest is all in, so he says he’ll help out with making the beams.”

  Brude felt a mixture of relief and concern. “Why would they do that for me?” he asked.

  “Because,” Seoras replied, “you’re one of us, even if you do seem a bit odd to some folk. Mind you, you’ll be expected to return the favours in kind.” He laughed at Brude’s puzzled expression. “Lulach could do with some meat and some clothes. Gruoch needs wood and Seoc needs a husband for his sister.”

  Fothair laughed aloud as Brude held up a hand in shock. “Hold on! I don’t mind cutting more wood or doing some hunting but I’m not looking for a wife. Whose idea was that?”

  Seoras gave him a gap-toothed grin. “Your mother’s keen on it. Barabal will be sixteen by next year.” Barabal was the elder of Seoc’s sisters, Brude knew. She was a pretty girl who seemed shy and hardworking, but he barely knew her and he had not even considered taking a wife. Apparently his mother had other ideas. “A man your age needs a wife,” Seoras told him. “It would mean fewer problems with Colm,” he added pointedly.

  Brude ignored the advice.

  Seoc turned up the next day, helping them to knock oak pillars into the trench they had dug, each pole as long as Fothair was tall. They hammered them in to the trench so that about two thirds of their length remained above ground, the distance between the stakes carefully measured by Gruoch, the carpenter, who had also come to help. Brude, Fothair and Seoc started weaving hazel rods, some horizontally between the oak stakes and others vertically to form an interlocking wall, the wattle as it was known. While they were doing this, Gruoch and Seoras began to work on the longer stakes they would need for the roof. Gruoch had a fine selection of metal tools which he used to cut and shape the ends of some of the shorter stakes Seoras had told them to chop.

  As they worked the flexible hazel between the stakes, Brude said to Seoc, “I hear my mother has been trying her hand at match-making.”

  Seoc looked embarrassed. “I thought you knew. Do you mind?”

  “I prefer to sort out my own life,” said Brude. “Don’t get me wrong, your sister is a pretty girl, but I’m almost twice her age and I don’t even know her.”

  Seoc nodded. “She’s a bit afraid of you,” he said. “But she’ll need a husband next year and I’d rather she didn’t end up with one of the lads from the broch.”

  “Plenty men to choose from up there,” Brude commented dryly.

  “Oh, I suppose some of them are all right but most of them look up to Colm and are too impre h themselves for my liking.”

  “So why do you serve him?”

  “It was either that or be a fisherman and I don’t like being on the water,” Seoc said with a grin. “I’m no good as a farmer either.”

  “Are you any good as a warrior?” Brude asked him, smiling to let him see the question was intended to be light-hearted.

  “Not really,” Seoc admitted cheerfully. “I can just about hold my own with most of them. Mind you, the way things are going, we might all find out soon just how good we are.”

  Brude’s ears pricked up. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Colm has refused Gartnait’s latest offer to buy back his son. That’s three times now.”

  Brude glanced at Fothair. He saw that the tall man was listening intently as he worked on the hazel wall. “I expect Colm won’t ever release him unless Gartnait offers him everything he owns,” he observed.

  Seoc nodded. “It’s worse than that,” he said. “Caroc sent for some high grade iron ore from the Damnonii but Gartnait has stopped the wagons and seized the ore. His messenger arrived this morning with the news that no ore will come through unless his son is released.”

  Brude stopped work on the wattles and stood up straight, stretching his back muscles. “How did Colm take that?” he asked.

  “Not well. I think he’s planning a raid to get his iron.”

  “Well if he does, you take my advice and volunteer to stay behind to guard the village,” Brude told him. “It would be daft to get yourself killed over such a stupid argument.”

  “I don’t expect that will be a problem,” Seoc replied. “There are plenty of them up there who are dying to have a go at fighting someone. I never wanted to be a hero, not after my dad left and never came back.”

  “He never wanted to be a hero either,” said Brude. “But he was one, in his own way. He was a good friend to me for the short time I knew him.”

  Seoc nodded grimly. “I never forgave lorfor leaving us like that.” He sniffed and wiped his eye. “Damn wind. Making my eyes water.”

  “Mine too,” said Brude.

  Later that day, as they sat in Seoras’ house and Brude’s mother dished up their evening meal of fish stew with wild mushrooms and pulses, Fothair said to Brude, “I think I might have to run soon.”

  Seoras shot him a startled look but Brude knew what was troubling the tall man. “You want to warn Gartnait?”

  “Peart is my home,” said Fothair. “What do you expect me to do? Wait for Colm to attack and slaughter my people?”

  “Gartnait is no fool,” Brude told him. “He’ll be expecting Colm to do something rash. Anyway, unless you grow wings you’ll not get there before Colm’s horsemen, even if you start now.”

  “I can’t sit here and do nothing!” Fothair protested in helpless rage.

  “You can’t stop the wind blowing off the sea either,” Brude pointed out. “And if there’s nothing you can do about things, you might as well forget them.”

  They argued long into the night but none of them could come up with any plan for getting word to Gartnait. Fothair fretted and cursed but, when Brude awoke the next morning, he was still there, a look of thunder on his face, but clearly having decided not to run. He looked at Brude and said, “I know you would do something if you could. I just don’t like feeling so helpless. But I’ll stay and hope that nothing too bad happens.”

  They went back to work on the house, resuming the weaving of the wattle while Gruoch carved and smoothed more wood in preparation for building the roof. Seoc’s two sisters, Barabal and her younger sister, Seasaidh, arrived bringing great lengths of hemp rope they had twisted. Brude thanked them. Barabal, the older girl, dark-haired and with shy, dark eyes, blushed in embarrassment but her younger sister, who was nearly fourteen years old, precociously piped up, “Seoc says you’re going to marry Barabal. Is that true?”

  Brude looked at the older girl who was now blushing a bright red and nudging her sister in an effort to shut her up. He looked at Seasaidh and replied, “I honestly didn’t know anything about that until yesterday. I think some people have been trying to make a match without asking the people involved.”

  Seasaidh looked at him with eyes that were older then her years. He had seen that look before on young girls, and it disconcerted him much now as it had before. Seasaidh, he thought, would be a handful for whoever married her. She ran her gaze over his chest and arms. He was stripped to the waist because the day was warm but now he was starting to regret it. “You’ve got a lot of muscles,” Seasaidh said boldly, “and a lot of scars. If you don’t want to marry her, I’ll marry you instead. I think you would give me strong sons.”

  Brude didn’t know what to say. Fothair burst out laughing while Barabal tried in vain to hush her sister. Brude was annoyed with himself for feeling so disconcerted by a thirteen-year-old girl but he felt that anything he said would only land him in deeper water, so he just smiled, thanked them for the rope and told them he had to get back to work. The girls stayed a short while
then went off, Seasaidh promising they would be back with more rope the next day. “I’ll look forward to that,” laughed Fothair.

  Gruoch chuckled as the girls walked away. “She’s a vixen, that Seasaidh. Needs a damn good thrashing but she’s never had one because her father died before she was born.”

  “It looks like you’ve got them waiting in line for you,” Fothair told Brude.

  Brude threw a clod of earth at him, hitting him unerringly on the chest. “Get back to work, Slave,” he ordered.

  Fothair grinned, bobbing his head. “Yes, Master.”

  In the afternoon a young warrior, wearing a sullen expression on his beardless face, arrived with a summons for Brude. “Lord Colm wants to see you.”

  “What for?” asked Brude.

  The young man shrugged. “How would I know? He just said to fetch you. Now.”

  Brude picked up his shirt and pulled it on over his head. With a word to Fothair to keep working, he followed the warrior to the track and up the hill. Neither of them spoke. They went through the south gate, past the buildings and straight to the broch. The two guards stood aside, allowing the warrior to duck inside. Brude followed.

  It was the first time he had been inside the broch since his return home more than four months previously. This place had once been his home where his father had held court and his mother had lived. He felt he knew it intimately. The doorway was small and the entrance tunnel, stone on all sides, dark and low. They reached a passageway running left and right, a circle formed by the massively thick inner and outer walls of the great broch. Each wall was three paces thick, filled with rubble and faced with smoother stones. By the standards of the Boresti it was an impressive building but again Brude, when he considered it against the wonders of Rome, had a feeling of disappointment at its crude construction. He wondered whether he was perhaps more Roman than he cared to admit.