Veil of Time by Claire R. McDougall Read Free Book Online Page A

and a cup of fraoch —for a dusty traveler, she said, making her father smile. Too much of her life the girl had spent with her grandmother and only an uncle for a father.
    “Illa, bring me my bag!”
    Talorcan came forward with the bag and handed it to the girl. She danced her steps over to her father, laidher hand on his thigh while he went through the deep pockets of his deerskin satchel, feigning frustration. But when he noticed his daughter’s dismay, his hand closed around the small wooden box that had been given him by the Briton his mother now wanted to hear about. Illa took the box and kissed it.
    “Wasn’t she a good woman?” Brighde asked.
    Fergus threw up his hands. Such questioning, always questions from the mother who had survived her husband but sometimes, he felt, should have gone instead.
    “I was told she was both young and beautiful,” said his mother.
    Fergus laughed. “Beauty, what is that to me? A trinket in the moment for the man whose eyes do not see far. Youth I no longer have myself. Time has brought me forward with scars and knowledge. How could I entrust myself or my daughter to youth that knows nothing of these, that has not properly lived?”
    He took the box from Illa’s hands and showed her how to slide the secret door open. Illa gasped.
    “Very clever,” said Talorcan. “From the east, no doubt.”
    “I believe from the Far East. A bauble for trade.”
    Illa took the box and slid the top open for herself. She sat down in her father’s lap and laughed as he poked her sides and nuzzled her face.
    When she had struggled free and straightened the folds of her tunic, she said, “There’s a stranger with Sulathe ban-druidhe . She wears a short tunic and the leg bindings of a man.”
    Fergus looked to his mother. “Have you seen her?”
    Brighde shook her head. “She was found wandering at the bottom of the fort, in strange clothing, probably one of the traveling people, though she wears gold on her finger and in her teeth. Murdoch had her taken to Sula.” She gestured into the air with her hand. “I’ve heard nothing since.”
    His mother tried to smile at him, but her eyes showed no happiness. Fergus walked to her by the fire and fixed her wool wrap about her shoulders with the pin that had been his father’s, a small golden shield studded with garnet.
    “Then I will go to Sula myself and find out what she knows.”
    Illa jumped up. “May I come?”
    Fergus motioned her to his side. “First, let me eat. Then we’ll see what’s to be made of a woman in the leg bindings of a man.”
    Illa laughed. Such a laugh, the same mouth and now the adult teeth same as Saraid. Brighde brought out from a heavy box a glass from the Gauls who brought the wine on ships and took away fine jewelry made by the Saxon Oeric at the forge, the same craftsman who had fashioned the brooch Brighde wore on her shawl. For the glasses she had traded two slaves brought in on raids from the south.
    But Fergus had little taste for the Gaul’s red wine. He gestured to Illa to pass the fraoch, ale made of heather, the common man’s drink. He swallowed in great gulps, letting the bitter brew run down his gullet and warm his belly. The Britons had served sweet mead that did not sit well in his stomach. By the warmth of the fire, Fergus’s eyes started to close, but he still had to climb the hill to greet his brother, Murdoch. More than that, he needed to seek out Sula and make use of this night of the dead.
    Fergus wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he emerged from the smoky house into the night made loud by drums and singing from the camp below, the black air redolent with the blood of animals and the cooking roots of the peasants. Illa was already running ahead, as though her father needed a guide. As they passed the house where Fergus had lived with his wife, he looked for her at the door. Tonight he saw only the door.
    With his daughter running ahead, Fergus pulled Talorcan close. “I have