LITMIR.BIZ

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up! We’ve got a guest, and all by Evandar’s doing.’

      ‘Evandar? Is that the man of the Seelie Host? You know him?’

      ‘Better than I wish to, I’ll tell you, far far better than that. Now come in, lad, and let’s get you warm.’

      The door was creaking open to flood them with firelight and the smell of resinous smoke. They brushed past the servant woman who’d opened it and hurried into a great hall where fires crackled in two hearths of slabbed stone, one on either side of the square room. The walls were made of massive oak planks, scrubbed down and polished smooth, then carved in one vast pattern of engraved lines rubbed with red earth. Looping vines, spirals, animals, interlace – they all tangled together in great swags across each wall, then swooped up at each corner to the rafters before plunging down again in a riot of carving …

      Domnall followed his rescuers across the carpet of braided straw to the hearth at the far side. At a scatter of tables sat a scatter of men, all short and bearded, and in a carved chair right up near the fire a lady, wearing a pair of drab loose dresses and heavy with child. Like the men around her, she was not very tall, more like the grain-fed Sassenach far to the south in stature, and since her pale hair hung in a single braid, Sassenach is what he assumed her to be. Domnall knelt at her feet.

      ‘My lady,’ he said. ‘My thanks and my blessing to you, for the saving of my life.’

      ‘My men saved you, not me,’ she said in a low, musical voice. ‘But you’re welcome in my hall.’ She glanced round. ‘Otho! Fetch him a tankard and some bread, will you?’

      ‘As my lady Angmar commands.’ One of the men, a bare four feet tall, and white of hair and beard, rose from a table. ‘Sit in the straw by the hearth, lad, and spread that bit of cloth you’re draped in out to dry.’

      They had to be Sassenach, all of them, because they wore trousers and heavy shirts instead of proper plaids and tunics, but he wasn’t about to hold their birth against them after the way they’d rescued him. Since the hearth was a good ten feet long, Domnall could move a decorous distance away from the lady to sit near a brace of black and tan hounds. He unwound his plaid, stretched it out on the straw to dry, and sat in his tunic by the fire to struggle with the wet bindings of his boots. By the time he had them off, Otho had returned with the promised tankard and a basket of bread.

      ‘A thousand thanks,’ Domnall said. ‘So, this is Haen Marn, is it? I’ve never seen your isle before.’

      ‘Hah!’ Otho snorted profoundly. ‘And I wish I never had either.’

      ‘Uncle!’ A young man sprang up from his seat at a table. ‘Hold your tongue!’

      ‘Shan’t! I rue the day that ever we travelled to this cursed place. I just get myself home and what happens? Hah! Wretched dweomer and –’

      ‘Uncle!’ The young man hurried over. ‘Hush!’

      ‘You hold your tongue, young Mic, and show some respect for your elders.’

      The two glared at each other, hands set on hips. During all of this Lady Angmar never moved or spoke, merely stared into the fire. Behind her, shoved against the wall, stood another carved chair, fit for a lord but empty. Domnall wondered if she’d been widowed; it seemed a good guess if a sad one.

      ‘Well, now,’ Domnall said. ‘Do you all hail from the southern lands?’

      ‘Who knows?’ Otho snapped. ‘It could have been any wretched direction at all!’

      ‘You’ll forgive my uncle, good sir,’ Mic said. ‘He’s getting old and a bit daft.’ He grabbed Otho’s arm. ‘Come and sit down.’

      Muttering under his breath, Otho allowed himself to be dragged away. Domnall had the uneasy feeling that the old man wasn’t daft in the least but speaking of grammarie. Yet his mind refused to take that idea in. He found it easier to believe in a lady sent away by her brothers after a husband’s death, or perhaps even a lady in political exile, allowed to take a small retinue away with her. The Sassenach chiefs were always fighting among themselves, and he’d heard that their women could do what they wished with their bride-price if their husbands died. The welcome fire, the warm straw, the steamy reek of his drying cloak and plaid, the taste of ale and bread – it all seemed too solid, too normal to allow the presence of magic. As he found himself yawning, he wondered if he’d merely imagined the man named Evandar and the blazing tree. They might merely have been the mad visions of a man come near death by cold.

      At length Lady Angmar turned and considered him with eyes so sad they were painful to look upon.

      ‘I can have the servants give you a chamber,’ she said, ‘or would you prefer to sleep here by the banked fire?’

      ‘The fireside will do me well, my lady, and I’d not cause you any more trouble.’

      Her mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile.

      ‘There’s been trouble enough, truly,’ she said, then returned to watching the fire.

      Angmar never spoke again. At length she rose and with her elderly maidservant left the hall. Young Mic brought Domnall a blanket; Otho banked up the fire; they took the lantern and left him with the dogs to curl up and sleep.

      When he woke cold grey light edged the shutters. Otho was just letting the whining dogs out at the door. Stretching and yawning, Domnall sat up as the old man came stumping over, poker and tongs in hand, to mend up the fire.

      ‘I’ll get out of your way, good sir,’ Domnall said.

      ‘You’re a well-spoken lad.’

      ‘It becomes a Christian man to watch his speaking.’

      Otho glanced puzzled at him.

      ‘A what kind of man?’ he said.

      ‘A Christian man, one of Lord Jesu’s followers.’

      ‘Ah. Is this Yaysoo the overlord in these parts?’

      ‘Er, well, you could say that.’

      Otho hunkered down and began lifting the chunks of sod away from the coals. Domnall pulled on his boots, bound them tightly, then stood up to wrap and arrange his plaid.

      ‘The Lady Angmar? Has she lost her husband then?’

      ‘Lost him good and proper,’ Otho said. ‘No one knows where he may be or if he lives or lies dead, and here she is, heavy with his child.’

      ‘That’s a terrible sad thing.’

      ‘It is, truly. If she knew he was dead, she could mourn him and get on with life, but as it is …’

      ‘The poor lady, indeed.’

      ‘It’s just like him, though, to do something so thoughtless. An inconvenient man, he was, all the way round. Ah, but who knows why women choose the men they do? She’s still wrapped in sorrow over her Rhodry Maelwaedd, no matter what we may say.’

      That was doubly odd. What was a Sassenach woman doing married to some lord from Cymru? Or could this be the reason for her exile? Otho glared at the coals, then blew a bit of life into one of them and threw on a handful of tinder.

      ‘Do you have a home near here, lad?’

      ‘I do. I serve Lord Douglas and live in his hall.’

      ‘Then let me give you some advice. Get out of here while you can and head home, or you may never see it again. The snow’s stopped falling, and the boatmen will row you across.’

      ‘I’ll need to give the lady my thanks first.’

      ‘She’ll not come down till well past mid-day. Her grief rules her. Get out while you can, while the sunlight lasts, and that won’t be long, this time of year. I warn you.’ The old man glared up at him, his face red and sweaty as the fire leapt back to life. ‘Haen Marn travels where it wills, and faster than spit freezes on a day like this.’

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