The sweat ran in rivulets on Niall’s back, and it was a
good feeling, swinging a mallet and not a sword, driving the pegs
in just so, to mend the grain-bin before the new harvest came in,
the fields standing golden white in the sun.
A dour-faced boy brought him water: he dipped up enough to drink
and poured the rest over his head, blinking in the stream, and the
boy Scaga took the dipper back and sulked off about his rounds, but
that was ever Scaga’s manner and no one minded. Birds lighted
on the fencepost when the boy had gone, cocked wise eyes at Niall,
darted down to peck a bit of grain from the dust as he turned back
to work again. Dinner was foremost in his mind, one of
Aelfraeda’s fine hearty dinners set beneath the evening sky
as they ate in summertime, beneath the spreading oak that shaded
the Steading; some would sing and some would listen, and so the
stars would light them to bed until the sun waked them out of
it.
That was the way of the days at Beorc’s Steading, and
Beorc himself ordered matters in all this wide farm so that no days
were idle and everything was done in its season, like the mending
before the harvest. There were full two score hands to work, men
and women and children. The fields were wide, and the orchards
likewise, and the sheep grazed the hill by the spring while the
cattle and the pony pastured down by the tiny brook it made. There
gnarled willows shaded time-rounded stones and a child could wade
most of it. Closer, where the brook came nearest the barn, lived a
herd of fat pigs and a flock of geese as fat as the pigs and
noisier, who bullied their way about the farm. But also about the
hillside there was a wolf, a well-fed and lazy cub who liked
ear-scratching; and a fawn who strayed in and nosed her way
everywhere. A badger had his hole in the hollow next the turnip
field; and a host of birds lived round about, from the heron who
lived on the brook to the family of owls who lived in the barn.
They were all lostlings. They had all come like the cub and the
fawn and fallen under the peace Aelfraeda maintained. There was
such a spell on them they never preyed on each other, except the
heron fished the brook and the owls had the barn mice who minded no
laws at all.
This extended to the two-footed kind—for they all had
come, excepting Beorc and Aelfraeda themselves, as lostlings
themselves, both old and young, and none were kin at all. There was
old grandfather Sgeulaiche, as wizened and withered as last
winter’s apple, whose hands and clever blade turned out the
most marvelous things of wood, who sat on the porch in a pool of
sweet smelling curls of wood and told stories to whatever girl or
boy who was set to work the churn or card the wool—for there
were children here, half a dozen of them, no one’s and
everyone’s, like the fawn. There was of course half-grown
Scaga, who pilfered food at every chance and hid it, though
Aelfraeda would have given him both hands full of anything he
asked—he fears being hungry, Aelfraeda said; so, let him hide
all he will, and eat all he can—someday he will smile. There
was Haesel hardly six and Holen more than twelve; and Siobrach and
Eadwulf and Cinhil in between. Of adults there was Siolta, who was
lame and in middle years, who baked and made wonderful cheeses, and
there was Lonn who had a great swordcut running from brow to chin
and many others beside, but his hands were sure and good with the
cattle: Siolta and Lonn were man and wife, though never they had
known each other before this place. There was Conmhaighe and
Carraig and Cinnfhail and Flann; and
Diomasach, Diarmaid and the other Diarmaid; and Ruadh; and
Fitheach and the other men and women, so that there were never
workers lacking for the hardest tasks inside the house or out,
besides Beorc and Aelfraeda themselves, who were wherever work
wanted doing, cheerful and foremost in any task.
In all, the weather blessed the place and the grain grew tall
and the green apples grew round and fine; and the brook never
failed in summer. There was a haze of light about the hills by
daylight, so that it made the eyes sting to try to look into the
distance of the Brown Hills; and the mountain shoulder lay between
the Steading and the river away to the south, and between it and
the harrying of An Beag and other names which seemed a dream
here.
“Do you not set a guard?” Niall had asked of Beorc
early, while they had tended him in the house and fed him until he
was less gaunt than before. “Do you not have men to watch the
way to this place? I would do that. Weapons are what I
know.”
But, “No,” Beorc had said, and his face, broad and
plain and ruddy, had creased with laughter. “No. You had luck
to come here. Few are lucky, and them I welcome. So there is a
great deal of luck on this valley of mine. If you will stay, stay:
if you will go, I will show you a way to go, but if you turned
round again after, I do not think your luck would find the place a
second time.”
Then Niall said nothing more of boundaries and borders,
perceiving some force in Beorc that kept its own limits and
expected everything about him to do likewise. He is, Niall had
thought then with a queer kind of shiver, more like a king than
not. And king did not fit Beorc either, with his wispy nimbus of
gray-red hair, his cheeks wind-burned above a beard as wild and
lawless as his mane. Like a fire he was, a gust of wind, a great
broad man who laughed much and kept his own counsels; and Aelfraeda
was like him and unlike, a woman of strong hands and ample girth
and beautiful golden braids coiled crownlike about her head, who
carried her own milkpails, thank you, and wove and spun and fed
strays both two and four-footed, having the law in her house and
for scepter a wooden spoon.
It was a place that luck smiled on, and in which more than a
usual share of amazing things happened: for weeds that happened
into the crops turned up in the morning wilted and limp beside the
rows so that hardly ever did one have to take a hoe to the
vegetables; and if some few vegetables vanished in the same night,
no one spoke of it. Tools one would have sworn were lost turned up
found in the morning on the porch, fit to set a shiver up a less
complacent spine. Likewise the pannikin of milk and the buttered
cakes Aelfraeda faithfully set out each night on the bench on the
porch turned up missing, each and every crumb, which might have
been the wolf cub’s doing or the fawn’s, or the geese,
but Niall never spied the cakes vanishing and had no wish to go out
of nights to see.
And most peculiar, there was the Brown Man, or so Niall called
him, skulking here and there in the orchards, or among the rocks,
fit to account for a great deal that was odd hereabouts. “He
is very old,” said Beorc when Niall reported it. “Never
trouble him.”
Old he might be, Niall suspected, old as stone and hills and
all, for there was something uncanny about him and bespelled.
Nothing could move so quickly, coming into the tail of the eye and
out again, and skipping away among the rocks. There he sat now, a
small brown lump by the barn, barefoot, knees tucked up in arms, and
watching, watching the mending of the bin. He was wrinkled as an
old man and agile as any child; and his brown hair fell down about
his hairy arms and his beard sprayed about his bare and
well-thatched chest. His oversized hands and feet were furred just
the same. Brown as a nut and no taller than a half-grown boy, with
hair well-shot with gray and usually flecked with wisps of straw,
he hung about the barn and nipped apples from the barrel and
sometimes sat on the pony’s back in the stall, feeding him
with good apples too.
And this Brown Man had a way about him of being there one moment
and elsewhere in the next, so that when Niall cast him a second
look round the corner of the shed he was gone.
On that same instant something prickled his bare back and he
spun about with an oath and almost a sweep of the hammer. As
quickly as he spun a shadow dived in the corner of his eye and he
kept spinning, following it as it nabbed a fistful of grain from
the bin: but it was gone, quick as he could turn, and round the
corner of the shed. “Hey!” he cried, and hurled himself
round the corner, but it was gone a second time, a wisp of brown
headed around the corner.
Once he had followed it: he knew better now. It had led him over
fences and stones and over the brook and back again. Now he dived
back again around the corner and caught it coming round behind him.
He flung the mallet, not to hit it, but to scare it.
It screamed and tucked down instead of running. It kept tucked
down, its face in its hairy hands, and peered out quickly to see if
another mallet was coming.
“Here now,” Niall said. “Here.” He was
suddenly in the wrong and hoping no one had seen.
It ventured another eye above its hands, then spat and scampered
off on its short legs.
“Perish it,” Niall muttered to himself, and then
wished he had not said that either. Nothing went well this day. He
left his pegs and his mallet and followed it to the barn and
inside.
Straw showered down his neck. “Plague on you,” he
cried, but it went scampering through the rafters disturbing the
owls in a flapping of wings. “Come back!”
But it was gone and out the door.
“Do not try.”
It was Beorc who had come in behind him, and shame flooded
Niall’s face. He was not accustomed to be made sport of or to
be caught in the wrong either. “I would not have hit
him.”
“No, but you hurt his pride.”
A moment Niall was silent. “What will mend it?”
“Be kind,” said Beorc. “Only be
kind.”
“Call him back,” said Niall in sudden despair.
“That I cannot. He is the Gruagach and no one has the
calling of him: he will never tell his name.”
Niall shivered then, for his luck seemed to have left him. It
will end now, he thought, for frightening one of the fair folk: he
remembered how he had come to the Steading, and how it needed luck
to find the place and needed luck to stay.
That night he had no appetite, and set his dinner on the porch
beside the platter Aelfraeda set out; but in the morning
Aelfraeda’s gift was taken and his was left
Yet there was no certain turning in his luck, except that
now and again he had straw dumped on his head when he went into the
barn and now and again his tools vanished when his back was turned,
to appear on their pegs in the barn when he came hunting
others.
All this he bore with patience unlike himself, even setting an
especially fine apple out where the theft was returned—which
gift vanished: but so, daily, did his tools. All the same he taught
himself to smile about it, concealing his misfortune and making
little of it, no matter how long the walk.
So great a patience did he achieve that it even extended to the
boy Scaga’s thefts, so that one day that he came on the boy
pilfering his lunch in the field he only stood there, and Scaga
looked up with his eyes all round with startlement
Niall had a mallet in his hand this day too, but he kept it in
his hand. “Will you not leave a morsel?” he asked.
“I’ve been hard at my work.”
The boy looked at him, down on his haunches as he was and
ill-set for running. And he set the basket down.
“Will you have half?” Niall asked the boy.
“I’d like the company.”
“There’s not much,” the red-baked rascal said,
looking doubtfully under the napkin.
“There’s always enough to give half of,” Niall
said, and did.
It was a silent lunch. Scaga stole from others after, but never
from him. And sometimes his tools came back on Scaga’s quick
legs before he missed them.
One day about that time the Gruagach came and sat and watched
him, and he spied it looking round the corner of the barn at
him.
“Here,” he said, his heart lifting at this approach.
He offered a handful from the bin, “here’s grain.
I’ve a bit of bread about me if you like. Good cheese.”
The head vanished before the words had left his mouth. But it
lurked about and looked at him and stole his tools only now and
again, just to remind him.
His luck lasted, and the days rolled on, from summer heat to
harvest: the fawn grew gangling and the wolf cub yelped at the moon
of nights; and the sickles turned up sharpened on their own each
harvest morning.
But one nooning a man came stumbling up the valley from the
south, off the shoulder of Raven’s Hill, startling the
geese.
Niall came as all the house came running. The man had fallen
trying to cross the fence, a bony huddle of limbs and weapons, for
he carried a bow and an empty quiver, a sword at his side. Lonn had
caught him up and held him, and so Niall came, and stopped and fell
to his knees in dismay, because he knew this man. “His name
is Caoimhin,” Niall said. A fear had come on him as if all
his safety wavered. For the briefest moment he looked beyond the
fences, where the folding hills trapped his sight, half-expecting
to see pursuit coming hard on Caoimhin’s heels. But then he
felt a hand close on his and looked down in shame.
“Lord,” Caoimhin said, and his hand trembled in its
grip on his, Caoimhin, best of bowmen they had had. “O my
lord, we heard that you were dead.”
“No,” said Niall, “hush, be still, lean on me:
I’ll help you walk”
Caoimhin let him lift him up, trusting only him, clinging most
to him and leaning on him, so with Beorc and Lonn and Flann and
Carraig and all the troop they brought him into the yard, and so
into the house and Aelfraeda’s care, than which there was
none better.
It was broth that day and bread and butter, but Caoimhin limped
as far as the porch in the evening, and then to the yard where the
table groaned with food beneath the oak, and the harvesters came
singing home. Having gotten that far he only stared with that far
lost look of a man too hard for tears, but Niall came to rescue him
and Beorc clapped him heartily on the shoulder and called for a cup
of ale for him, and another plate at table.
“Here,” Niall bade Caoimhin quickly, and gave up his
own seat until everyone rearranged themselves and Siolta brought a
dish and cup for him. “He is Caoimhin,” Beorc said,
lifting his cup to him. So they all did, and fell to one of
Aelfraeda’s grand good meals.
Caoimhin tried, a bit of this and that, but his hands shook and
at last he sat there with the tears running down his face and a bit
of bread in his hand. But Niall put his arm about him and held him
in his place, he was so weak, and if the company grew quiet a
moment, they understood and the merriment picked up again.
“What is this place?” Caoimhin asked when he had had a
sip of ale.
“Refuge,” said Niall. “And safety. A place
where ill has never been. And never shall.”
“Are we dead then?”
“No,” Niall laughed. “Never dead.”
But a niggling fear was on him. He even wished Caoimhin had
never come, because this man reminded him what he had been, and
brought the stink of death about him. More, he was afraid for the
peace of all this place, as if it had taken some great danger to
its heart.
Caoimhin lay about the house the next few days, or rested on the
porch in the sunlight and the breeze, and slept much and drank and
ate wholesome food when he waked, so that his face looked less
haggard and less desperate.
In those first days he wanted at least his sword by him and kept
it by him even napping in the sun. And ever and again his hand
would stray to find it in his sleep, and his fingers curl about the
sheath or hilt, so his face would lose its moment’s trouble
and he would rest again. But on the third day he let it go; and the
fourth he walked out of the house and left it behind, beside the
hearth with his bow and his empty quiver. So he sat with old
Sgeulaiche on the porch and finally strolled about the yard and out
to the threshing.
There Niall saw him and wiped the sweat and the dust from his
brow and came over to him.
“What,” Niall said lightly, “does Aelfraeda
know you’ve strayed?”
“By your leave—”
Niall’s brows drew down. “No. Not mine. Not
here.”
“My lord—”
“No lord, I say. No longer—Caoimhin.” He
clapped him gently on the shoulder. “Come aside with
me.”
Caoimhin walked with him, as far as the barn and into the shadow
inside, and there Niall stopped. “There is no lord in the
Steading,” Niall said at once, “if not Beorc himself;
no lady if not Aelfraeda. And that is well enough with me. Forget
my name.”
“I have rested. I am well enough to go back again—I
will bring you word again. There are men of ours in the
hills—”
“No. No. If you leave this place I do not think you will
find it again.”
The eagerness died in Caoimhin’s lean face. From toe to
crown Caoimhin looked at him and seemed to doubt what he saw as if
it were his first clear look. “You have got calluses on your
hands and not from the sword, my lord. There is straw in your hair.
You do a farmer’s work.”
“I do it well. And I have more joy of it than anything I
did. And I will tell you there is more good in it than ever I have
hoped to do. Caoimhin, Caoimhin, you will see. You will see what
this place is.”
“It has cast a spell on you, that much I see. The
King—”
“The King.” A shudder came over Niall and he turned
away. “My King is dead; the other—who knows? Who knows
if he even exists? I saw my King dead. The other I never saw. A
babe smuggled away at night—and who knows whose babe? Some
serving maid’s? Some beggar’s child? Or any child at
all.”
“I have seen him!”
“So you have seen him. And what proof is that? Any child,
I say.”
“A boy—a fair blond boy. Laochailan son of
Ruaidhrigh, like him as a boy could be. He has five years now.
Taithleach keeps him safe—would you doubt his
word?—always on the move through the hills, so that the
traitors will never find him, and they need you
now—They need you, Niall Cearbhallain.”
“A boy.” Niall sat down on the gram bin and looked
up at Caoimhin with the taste of ashes in his mouth, “And
what am I, Caoimhin? I was forty and two when I began to serve this
hope of a King to come; and my joints ache, Caoimhin, with five
years’ sleeping under tree and stone. And if this boy ever
comes to take Dun na h-Eoin—look at me. Twenty years it will
need to make a boy a man; and how many more to make that man a
king? Am I likely to see it done?”
“So, well—and who of the men dead on Aescford field
will ever see him king? Or shall I? Or shall I? I do not know. But
I do what I can as we always did. Where is your heart,
Cearbhallain?”
“Broken. Long ago. I will hear no more of it. No
more. You’ll go or you’ll stay as you wish, when
you can. But stay for now. Rest. Only a little time. And see what
things are here. O Caoimhin—leave me my peace.”
A long time Caoimhin was silent, looking desolate and lost.
“Peace,” Niall repeated. “Our war is done.
There is the harvest; the apples are ripening; there’ll be
the long wintertime. And no need of swords and no help at all we
can be. It’s all for younger men. If there’s to be a
king, he will be theirs, not ours. If we have begun, others will
finish. And is that not the way of things?”
“Lord,” Caoimhin whispered softly; and then a sudden
alarm came into his eyes at a quiet scurrying, a shadow by the
door. Caoimhin sprang and hit the door and hurled the listener in
the dust. “Here are spies,” Caoimhin cried, and nabbed
the brown man by the hair and hauled him back struggling and
gasping as he was and slammed the door.
“Let it go,” Niall said at once, “let it
go.”
Caoimhin had a look at it and flung his right hand back with an
oath and an outcry, for it bit him and scratched and clawed, but he
held it with the left. “This is no man,
this—”
“Gruagach is his name,” Niall said, and took
Caoimhin’s hand from the brown man. The creature hugged
Niall’s arm and danced behind him and fled, peering out again
from the refuge of a pile of hay, with straw and dust clinging all
over its hair.
“Wicked, wicked,” it said, a voice as slight as
itself, that lifted the hairs on a man’s neck.
“He will never hurt you,” Niall promised it. Never
had he heard it speak, though others said it could. “Open the
door, Caoimhin—open it! Let it go!”
Carefully Caoimhin pushed at the door and light flooded in. The
Gruagach stirred himself and sidled that way, closer than ever
Niall had seen him clearly, face seamed and brown and bearded, eyes
lightless as deep water peering out from under matted hair. It
looked up at him and bobbed as if it bowed on its thick legs. And
then it fled, scuttling out as quick as the breeze, and was
gone.
Then Niall looked toward Caoimhin, and saw the dread there, and
all the surmise. “There is no harm in it.”
“Is there none?” Caoimhin leaned against the door.
“Now I know where the cakes go at night, and what the luck is
in this place. Come away, Cearbhallain, come
now.”
“I will never go. No. You do not know—the way of
this place. Come, a bargain with me—only a little time. You
would always take my word. Stay. You can always leave—but you
will never find the way back again. Was it ill luck brought you
here? Tell me that. Or tell me whether you would be breathing the
air this morning or eating a good breakfast and looking forward to
dinner. There’s no dishonor in being alive. It’s not
our war any longer. It was our luck that brought us here; it
was—perhaps something won. I think so. Think on it, Caoimhin.
And stay.”
A long time Caoimhin reflected on it, and at last looked at the
ground and at last looked at him. “There’s autumn
ahead,” Caoimhin said, weakening.
“And winter. There is winter, Caoimhin.”
“Till the spring,” Caoimhin said. “In the
spring I’ll go.”
The apples went into the bins; the sausages went to smoke; the
oak tree shed his leaves and deep snow drifted down. The Gruagach
sat on the roof by the chimney and left prints by the step where
the cakes and mulled ale disappeared; and of nights he kept the
pony and the oxen company.
“Tell us tales,” young Scaga said, as all the
household sat about the fire. Marvelous to say, Scaga had taken to
making the pony’s mash this winter without being asked; and
never a thing had been missed about the house since summer. He had,
from being last and least, become a thoughtful if sober lad, and
attached himself to Niall’s side and by adoption, to
Caoimhin’s as well.
So Caoimhin told of a winter on the Daur and a storm that had
cracked old trees; and Sgeulaiche recalled being lost in such a
storm. And after, when the whole house curled up to sleep each in
their warm nooks, and Beorc and Aelfraeda in their great close-bed
in the loft: “It is a young man’s winter,”
Caoimhin said to Niall whose pallet was near his.
“A young man’s war,” said Niall.
“They have taken your lands,” Caoimhin said,
“and mine.”
A long time Niall was silent. “I have no heir. Nor ever
shall, most likely.”
“As for that—” Now the silence was on
Caoimhin’s side, a very long time. “As for that, well,
that is for young men too. Like the winter. Like the
war.”
And after that Caoimhin said nothing. But in the morning a
lightness was on him, as if some weight had passed.
He will stay, Niall thought, taking in his breath. At least one
man of all that followed me. And then he put that prideful thought
away, along with my lord and Cearbhallain and
bundled himself into warm clothes, for there was winter’s
work to do, the beasts to care for. The children fought snowball
battles: Caoimhin joined in, stalking with Scaga round the barn.
Niall saw the stealth, the skill that Caoimhin taught the boy. A
moment the chill got through: but they were only snowballs, and the
squeals and shouts were only children’s laughter.
The Gruagach perched on the roof, and let fall a double armful
and laughed and ran.
“Ha,” it cried, going over the rooftree. “Ha!
Wicked!”
“Wither it!” cried Caoimhin, but the ambush was
sprung and the battle lost in pelting snowballs.
A moment Niall watched, and turned away, hearing still the
squeals and hearing something else. He turned and looked back to
prove to his ears and eyes what it was he heard, and succeeded, and
went his way.
The sweat ran in rivulets on Niall’s back, and it was a
good feeling, swinging a mallet and not a sword, driving the pegs
in just so, to mend the grain-bin before the new harvest came in,
the fields standing golden white in the sun.
A dour-faced boy brought him water: he dipped up enough to drink
and poured the rest over his head, blinking in the stream, and the
boy Scaga took the dipper back and sulked off about his rounds, but
that was ever Scaga’s manner and no one minded. Birds lighted
on the fencepost when the boy had gone, cocked wise eyes at Niall,
darted down to peck a bit of grain from the dust as he turned back
to work again. Dinner was foremost in his mind, one of
Aelfraeda’s fine hearty dinners set beneath the evening sky
as they ate in summertime, beneath the spreading oak that shaded
the Steading; some would sing and some would listen, and so the
stars would light them to bed until the sun waked them out of
it.
That was the way of the days at Beorc’s Steading, and
Beorc himself ordered matters in all this wide farm so that no days
were idle and everything was done in its season, like the mending
before the harvest. There were full two score hands to work, men
and women and children. The fields were wide, and the orchards
likewise, and the sheep grazed the hill by the spring while the
cattle and the pony pastured down by the tiny brook it made. There
gnarled willows shaded time-rounded stones and a child could wade
most of it. Closer, where the brook came nearest the barn, lived a
herd of fat pigs and a flock of geese as fat as the pigs and
noisier, who bullied their way about the farm. But also about the
hillside there was a wolf, a well-fed and lazy cub who liked
ear-scratching; and a fawn who strayed in and nosed her way
everywhere. A badger had his hole in the hollow next the turnip
field; and a host of birds lived round about, from the heron who
lived on the brook to the family of owls who lived in the barn.
They were all lostlings. They had all come like the cub and the
fawn and fallen under the peace Aelfraeda maintained. There was
such a spell on them they never preyed on each other, except the
heron fished the brook and the owls had the barn mice who minded no
laws at all.
This extended to the two-footed kind—for they all had
come, excepting Beorc and Aelfraeda themselves, as lostlings
themselves, both old and young, and none were kin at all. There was
old grandfather Sgeulaiche, as wizened and withered as last
winter’s apple, whose hands and clever blade turned out the
most marvelous things of wood, who sat on the porch in a pool of
sweet smelling curls of wood and told stories to whatever girl or
boy who was set to work the churn or card the wool—for there
were children here, half a dozen of them, no one’s and
everyone’s, like the fawn. There was of course half-grown
Scaga, who pilfered food at every chance and hid it, though
Aelfraeda would have given him both hands full of anything he
asked—he fears being hungry, Aelfraeda said; so, let him hide
all he will, and eat all he can—someday he will smile. There
was Haesel hardly six and Holen more than twelve; and Siobrach and
Eadwulf and Cinhil in between. Of adults there was Siolta, who was
lame and in middle years, who baked and made wonderful cheeses, and
there was Lonn who had a great swordcut running from brow to chin
and many others beside, but his hands were sure and good with the
cattle: Siolta and Lonn were man and wife, though never they had
known each other before this place. There was Conmhaighe and
Carraig and Cinnfhail and Flann; and
Diomasach, Diarmaid and the other Diarmaid; and Ruadh; and
Fitheach and the other men and women, so that there were never
workers lacking for the hardest tasks inside the house or out,
besides Beorc and Aelfraeda themselves, who were wherever work
wanted doing, cheerful and foremost in any task.
In all, the weather blessed the place and the grain grew tall
and the green apples grew round and fine; and the brook never
failed in summer. There was a haze of light about the hills by
daylight, so that it made the eyes sting to try to look into the
distance of the Brown Hills; and the mountain shoulder lay between
the Steading and the river away to the south, and between it and
the harrying of An Beag and other names which seemed a dream
here.
“Do you not set a guard?” Niall had asked of Beorc
early, while they had tended him in the house and fed him until he
was less gaunt than before. “Do you not have men to watch the
way to this place? I would do that. Weapons are what I
know.”
But, “No,” Beorc had said, and his face, broad and
plain and ruddy, had creased with laughter. “No. You had luck
to come here. Few are lucky, and them I welcome. So there is a
great deal of luck on this valley of mine. If you will stay, stay:
if you will go, I will show you a way to go, but if you turned
round again after, I do not think your luck would find the place a
second time.”
Then Niall said nothing more of boundaries and borders,
perceiving some force in Beorc that kept its own limits and
expected everything about him to do likewise. He is, Niall had
thought then with a queer kind of shiver, more like a king than
not. And king did not fit Beorc either, with his wispy nimbus of
gray-red hair, his cheeks wind-burned above a beard as wild and
lawless as his mane. Like a fire he was, a gust of wind, a great
broad man who laughed much and kept his own counsels; and Aelfraeda
was like him and unlike, a woman of strong hands and ample girth
and beautiful golden braids coiled crownlike about her head, who
carried her own milkpails, thank you, and wove and spun and fed
strays both two and four-footed, having the law in her house and
for scepter a wooden spoon.
It was a place that luck smiled on, and in which more than a
usual share of amazing things happened: for weeds that happened
into the crops turned up in the morning wilted and limp beside the
rows so that hardly ever did one have to take a hoe to the
vegetables; and if some few vegetables vanished in the same night,
no one spoke of it. Tools one would have sworn were lost turned up
found in the morning on the porch, fit to set a shiver up a less
complacent spine. Likewise the pannikin of milk and the buttered
cakes Aelfraeda faithfully set out each night on the bench on the
porch turned up missing, each and every crumb, which might have
been the wolf cub’s doing or the fawn’s, or the geese,
but Niall never spied the cakes vanishing and had no wish to go out
of nights to see.
And most peculiar, there was the Brown Man, or so Niall called
him, skulking here and there in the orchards, or among the rocks,
fit to account for a great deal that was odd hereabouts. “He
is very old,” said Beorc when Niall reported it. “Never
trouble him.”
Old he might be, Niall suspected, old as stone and hills and
all, for there was something uncanny about him and bespelled.
Nothing could move so quickly, coming into the tail of the eye and
out again, and skipping away among the rocks. There he sat now, a
small brown lump by the barn, barefoot, knees tucked up in arms, and
watching, watching the mending of the bin. He was wrinkled as an
old man and agile as any child; and his brown hair fell down about
his hairy arms and his beard sprayed about his bare and
well-thatched chest. His oversized hands and feet were furred just
the same. Brown as a nut and no taller than a half-grown boy, with
hair well-shot with gray and usually flecked with wisps of straw,
he hung about the barn and nipped apples from the barrel and
sometimes sat on the pony’s back in the stall, feeding him
with good apples too.
And this Brown Man had a way about him of being there one moment
and elsewhere in the next, so that when Niall cast him a second
look round the corner of the shed he was gone.
On that same instant something prickled his bare back and he
spun about with an oath and almost a sweep of the hammer. As
quickly as he spun a shadow dived in the corner of his eye and he
kept spinning, following it as it nabbed a fistful of grain from
the bin: but it was gone, quick as he could turn, and round the
corner of the shed. “Hey!” he cried, and hurled himself
round the corner, but it was gone a second time, a wisp of brown
headed around the corner.
Once he had followed it: he knew better now. It had led him over
fences and stones and over the brook and back again. Now he dived
back again around the corner and caught it coming round behind him.
He flung the mallet, not to hit it, but to scare it.
It screamed and tucked down instead of running. It kept tucked
down, its face in its hairy hands, and peered out quickly to see if
another mallet was coming.
“Here now,” Niall said. “Here.” He was
suddenly in the wrong and hoping no one had seen.
It ventured another eye above its hands, then spat and scampered
off on its short legs.
“Perish it,” Niall muttered to himself, and then
wished he had not said that either. Nothing went well this day. He
left his pegs and his mallet and followed it to the barn and
inside.
Straw showered down his neck. “Plague on you,” he
cried, but it went scampering through the rafters disturbing the
owls in a flapping of wings. “Come back!”
But it was gone and out the door.
“Do not try.”
It was Beorc who had come in behind him, and shame flooded
Niall’s face. He was not accustomed to be made sport of or to
be caught in the wrong either. “I would not have hit
him.”
“No, but you hurt his pride.”
A moment Niall was silent. “What will mend it?”
“Be kind,” said Beorc. “Only be
kind.”
“Call him back,” said Niall in sudden despair.
“That I cannot. He is the Gruagach and no one has the
calling of him: he will never tell his name.”
Niall shivered then, for his luck seemed to have left him. It
will end now, he thought, for frightening one of the fair folk: he
remembered how he had come to the Steading, and how it needed luck
to find the place and needed luck to stay.
That night he had no appetite, and set his dinner on the porch
beside the platter Aelfraeda set out; but in the morning
Aelfraeda’s gift was taken and his was left
Yet there was no certain turning in his luck, except that
now and again he had straw dumped on his head when he went into the
barn and now and again his tools vanished when his back was turned,
to appear on their pegs in the barn when he came hunting
others.
All this he bore with patience unlike himself, even setting an
especially fine apple out where the theft was returned—which
gift vanished: but so, daily, did his tools. All the same he taught
himself to smile about it, concealing his misfortune and making
little of it, no matter how long the walk.
So great a patience did he achieve that it even extended to the
boy Scaga’s thefts, so that one day that he came on the boy
pilfering his lunch in the field he only stood there, and Scaga
looked up with his eyes all round with startlement
Niall had a mallet in his hand this day too, but he kept it in
his hand. “Will you not leave a morsel?” he asked.
“I’ve been hard at my work.”
The boy looked at him, down on his haunches as he was and
ill-set for running. And he set the basket down.
“Will you have half?” Niall asked the boy.
“I’d like the company.”
“There’s not much,” the red-baked rascal said,
looking doubtfully under the napkin.
“There’s always enough to give half of,” Niall
said, and did.
It was a silent lunch. Scaga stole from others after, but never
from him. And sometimes his tools came back on Scaga’s quick
legs before he missed them.
One day about that time the Gruagach came and sat and watched
him, and he spied it looking round the corner of the barn at
him.
“Here,” he said, his heart lifting at this approach.
He offered a handful from the bin, “here’s grain.
I’ve a bit of bread about me if you like. Good cheese.”
The head vanished before the words had left his mouth. But it
lurked about and looked at him and stole his tools only now and
again, just to remind him.
His luck lasted, and the days rolled on, from summer heat to
harvest: the fawn grew gangling and the wolf cub yelped at the moon
of nights; and the sickles turned up sharpened on their own each
harvest morning.
But one nooning a man came stumbling up the valley from the
south, off the shoulder of Raven’s Hill, startling the
geese.
Niall came as all the house came running. The man had fallen
trying to cross the fence, a bony huddle of limbs and weapons, for
he carried a bow and an empty quiver, a sword at his side. Lonn had
caught him up and held him, and so Niall came, and stopped and fell
to his knees in dismay, because he knew this man. “His name
is Caoimhin,” Niall said. A fear had come on him as if all
his safety wavered. For the briefest moment he looked beyond the
fences, where the folding hills trapped his sight, half-expecting
to see pursuit coming hard on Caoimhin’s heels. But then he
felt a hand close on his and looked down in shame.
“Lord,” Caoimhin said, and his hand trembled in its
grip on his, Caoimhin, best of bowmen they had had. “O my
lord, we heard that you were dead.”
“No,” said Niall, “hush, be still, lean on me:
I’ll help you walk”
Caoimhin let him lift him up, trusting only him, clinging most
to him and leaning on him, so with Beorc and Lonn and Flann and
Carraig and all the troop they brought him into the yard, and so
into the house and Aelfraeda’s care, than which there was
none better.
It was broth that day and bread and butter, but Caoimhin limped
as far as the porch in the evening, and then to the yard where the
table groaned with food beneath the oak, and the harvesters came
singing home. Having gotten that far he only stared with that far
lost look of a man too hard for tears, but Niall came to rescue him
and Beorc clapped him heartily on the shoulder and called for a cup
of ale for him, and another plate at table.
“Here,” Niall bade Caoimhin quickly, and gave up his
own seat until everyone rearranged themselves and Siolta brought a
dish and cup for him. “He is Caoimhin,” Beorc said,
lifting his cup to him. So they all did, and fell to one of
Aelfraeda’s grand good meals.
Caoimhin tried, a bit of this and that, but his hands shook and
at last he sat there with the tears running down his face and a bit
of bread in his hand. But Niall put his arm about him and held him
in his place, he was so weak, and if the company grew quiet a
moment, they understood and the merriment picked up again.
“What is this place?” Caoimhin asked when he had had a
sip of ale.
“Refuge,” said Niall. “And safety. A place
where ill has never been. And never shall.”
“Are we dead then?”
“No,” Niall laughed. “Never dead.”
But a niggling fear was on him. He even wished Caoimhin had
never come, because this man reminded him what he had been, and
brought the stink of death about him. More, he was afraid for the
peace of all this place, as if it had taken some great danger to
its heart.
Caoimhin lay about the house the next few days, or rested on the
porch in the sunlight and the breeze, and slept much and drank and
ate wholesome food when he waked, so that his face looked less
haggard and less desperate.
In those first days he wanted at least his sword by him and kept
it by him even napping in the sun. And ever and again his hand
would stray to find it in his sleep, and his fingers curl about the
sheath or hilt, so his face would lose its moment’s trouble
and he would rest again. But on the third day he let it go; and the
fourth he walked out of the house and left it behind, beside the
hearth with his bow and his empty quiver. So he sat with old
Sgeulaiche on the porch and finally strolled about the yard and out
to the threshing.
There Niall saw him and wiped the sweat and the dust from his
brow and came over to him.
“What,” Niall said lightly, “does Aelfraeda
know you’ve strayed?”
“By your leave—”
Niall’s brows drew down. “No. Not mine. Not
here.”
“My lord—”
“No lord, I say. No longer—Caoimhin.” He
clapped him gently on the shoulder. “Come aside with
me.”
Caoimhin walked with him, as far as the barn and into the shadow
inside, and there Niall stopped. “There is no lord in the
Steading,” Niall said at once, “if not Beorc himself;
no lady if not Aelfraeda. And that is well enough with me. Forget
my name.”
“I have rested. I am well enough to go back again—I
will bring you word again. There are men of ours in the
hills—”
“No. No. If you leave this place I do not think you will
find it again.”
The eagerness died in Caoimhin’s lean face. From toe to
crown Caoimhin looked at him and seemed to doubt what he saw as if
it were his first clear look. “You have got calluses on your
hands and not from the sword, my lord. There is straw in your hair.
You do a farmer’s work.”
“I do it well. And I have more joy of it than anything I
did. And I will tell you there is more good in it than ever I have
hoped to do. Caoimhin, Caoimhin, you will see. You will see what
this place is.”
“It has cast a spell on you, that much I see. The
King—”
“The King.” A shudder came over Niall and he turned
away. “My King is dead; the other—who knows? Who knows
if he even exists? I saw my King dead. The other I never saw. A
babe smuggled away at night—and who knows whose babe? Some
serving maid’s? Some beggar’s child? Or any child at
all.”
“I have seen him!”
“So you have seen him. And what proof is that? Any child,
I say.”
“A boy—a fair blond boy. Laochailan son of
Ruaidhrigh, like him as a boy could be. He has five years now.
Taithleach keeps him safe—would you doubt his
word?—always on the move through the hills, so that the
traitors will never find him, and they need you
now—They need you, Niall Cearbhallain.”
“A boy.” Niall sat down on the gram bin and looked
up at Caoimhin with the taste of ashes in his mouth, “And
what am I, Caoimhin? I was forty and two when I began to serve this
hope of a King to come; and my joints ache, Caoimhin, with five
years’ sleeping under tree and stone. And if this boy ever
comes to take Dun na h-Eoin—look at me. Twenty years it will
need to make a boy a man; and how many more to make that man a
king? Am I likely to see it done?”
“So, well—and who of the men dead on Aescford field
will ever see him king? Or shall I? Or shall I? I do not know. But
I do what I can as we always did. Where is your heart,
Cearbhallain?”
“Broken. Long ago. I will hear no more of it. No
more. You’ll go or you’ll stay as you wish, when
you can. But stay for now. Rest. Only a little time. And see what
things are here. O Caoimhin—leave me my peace.”
A long time Caoimhin was silent, looking desolate and lost.
“Peace,” Niall repeated. “Our war is done.
There is the harvest; the apples are ripening; there’ll be
the long wintertime. And no need of swords and no help at all we
can be. It’s all for younger men. If there’s to be a
king, he will be theirs, not ours. If we have begun, others will
finish. And is that not the way of things?”
“Lord,” Caoimhin whispered softly; and then a sudden
alarm came into his eyes at a quiet scurrying, a shadow by the
door. Caoimhin sprang and hit the door and hurled the listener in
the dust. “Here are spies,” Caoimhin cried, and nabbed
the brown man by the hair and hauled him back struggling and
gasping as he was and slammed the door.
“Let it go,” Niall said at once, “let it
go.”
Caoimhin had a look at it and flung his right hand back with an
oath and an outcry, for it bit him and scratched and clawed, but he
held it with the left. “This is no man,
this—”
“Gruagach is his name,” Niall said, and took
Caoimhin’s hand from the brown man. The creature hugged
Niall’s arm and danced behind him and fled, peering out again
from the refuge of a pile of hay, with straw and dust clinging all
over its hair.
“Wicked, wicked,” it said, a voice as slight as
itself, that lifted the hairs on a man’s neck.
“He will never hurt you,” Niall promised it. Never
had he heard it speak, though others said it could. “Open the
door, Caoimhin—open it! Let it go!”
Carefully Caoimhin pushed at the door and light flooded in. The
Gruagach stirred himself and sidled that way, closer than ever
Niall had seen him clearly, face seamed and brown and bearded, eyes
lightless as deep water peering out from under matted hair. It
looked up at him and bobbed as if it bowed on its thick legs. And
then it fled, scuttling out as quick as the breeze, and was
gone.
Then Niall looked toward Caoimhin, and saw the dread there, and
all the surmise. “There is no harm in it.”
“Is there none?” Caoimhin leaned against the door.
“Now I know where the cakes go at night, and what the luck is
in this place. Come away, Cearbhallain, come
now.”
“I will never go. No. You do not know—the way of
this place. Come, a bargain with me—only a little time. You
would always take my word. Stay. You can always leave—but you
will never find the way back again. Was it ill luck brought you
here? Tell me that. Or tell me whether you would be breathing the
air this morning or eating a good breakfast and looking forward to
dinner. There’s no dishonor in being alive. It’s not
our war any longer. It was our luck that brought us here; it
was—perhaps something won. I think so. Think on it, Caoimhin.
And stay.”
A long time Caoimhin reflected on it, and at last looked at the
ground and at last looked at him. “There’s autumn
ahead,” Caoimhin said, weakening.
“And winter. There is winter, Caoimhin.”
“Till the spring,” Caoimhin said. “In the
spring I’ll go.”
The apples went into the bins; the sausages went to smoke; the
oak tree shed his leaves and deep snow drifted down. The Gruagach
sat on the roof by the chimney and left prints by the step where
the cakes and mulled ale disappeared; and of nights he kept the
pony and the oxen company.
“Tell us tales,” young Scaga said, as all the
household sat about the fire. Marvelous to say, Scaga had taken to
making the pony’s mash this winter without being asked; and
never a thing had been missed about the house since summer. He had,
from being last and least, become a thoughtful if sober lad, and
attached himself to Niall’s side and by adoption, to
Caoimhin’s as well.
So Caoimhin told of a winter on the Daur and a storm that had
cracked old trees; and Sgeulaiche recalled being lost in such a
storm. And after, when the whole house curled up to sleep each in
their warm nooks, and Beorc and Aelfraeda in their great close-bed
in the loft: “It is a young man’s winter,”
Caoimhin said to Niall whose pallet was near his.
“A young man’s war,” said Niall.
“They have taken your lands,” Caoimhin said,
“and mine.”
A long time Niall was silent. “I have no heir. Nor ever
shall, most likely.”
“As for that—” Now the silence was on
Caoimhin’s side, a very long time. “As for that, well,
that is for young men too. Like the winter. Like the
war.”
And after that Caoimhin said nothing. But in the morning a
lightness was on him, as if some weight had passed.
He will stay, Niall thought, taking in his breath. At least one
man of all that followed me. And then he put that prideful thought
away, along with my lord and Cearbhallain and
bundled himself into warm clothes, for there was winter’s
work to do, the beasts to care for. The children fought snowball
battles: Caoimhin joined in, stalking with Scaga round the barn.
Niall saw the stealth, the skill that Caoimhin taught the boy. A
moment the chill got through: but they were only snowballs, and the
squeals and shouts were only children’s laughter.
The Gruagach perched on the roof, and let fall a double armful
and laughed and ran.
“Ha,” it cried, going over the rooftree. “Ha!
Wicked!”
“Wither it!” cried Caoimhin, but the ambush was
sprung and the battle lost in pelting snowballs.
A moment Niall watched, and turned away, hearing still the
squeals and hearing something else. He turned and looked back to
prove to his ears and eyes what it was he heard, and succeeded, and
went his way.