previous | Table of Contents | next

## TWO

### Beorc’s Steading

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.

previous | Table of Contents | next