Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

I thought it might be close, and told him so, looking to Donuil for his concurrence, but he was looking elsewhere, his eyes wide and filled with pleasure and something else that I defined instantly and without reason as awe. Curious, I turned my head to follow his gaze and saw a figure crossing the open space outside the forge, head down against the pouring rain, its shape tilted to one side from the weight of the burden it bore. I saw no more than that; a shapeless, indeterminate figure, obscured by the rain and by a long, heavy cloak. Intrigued, I glanced back to Donuil, seeing him still rapt, and then returned my gaze to the newcomer. As I did so, the figure lost its footing in the mud and slipped, almost falling, dropping its burden. It was no more than a momentary loss of balance, but it provoked a surge of energetic resentment from the cloaked figure, who seized a fresh, firm grip on the heavy bundle and swung it mightily, releasing it to fly through the air and land with a sodden thump mere paces from the open front of the smithy. Even before the bundle had landed, the thrower was moving towards it again, grasping it afresh with surprisingly small hands and propelling it, with a heave of shoulders and a guiding knee, into the open doorway.

"Shelagh," Donuil said, his voice almost a whisper. The figure stopped in surprise, then straightened, peering into the darkness of the smithy and raising one arm to pull back the hood from its head. Beyond surprise for some reason, I saw that it was a young woman, whose long, dark hair hung down in rain-plastered ringlets over a featureless face.

"Donuil? Is it you then?" She stepped forward into the shelter of the doorway, combing her wet hair off her face with the fingers of one hand, and stood there for a moment, staring hard at Donuil, her expression unreadable. None of us moved. Finally, her lips formed what might have been the beginnings of a smile and she nodded, a tiny movement of her head, and then her eyes moved to where I stood watching. She ignored Maddan completely. She regarded me from head to foot and back again, and spoke again to Donuil.

"I heard you were back. I met Finn on the path to the mountains yesterday. I would have been here to greet you, but none of us knew if you were yet alive, let alone coming home." Her gaze returned to me, looking me straight in the eye. "You must be the Merlyn fellow. You're almost as big as Donuil. I've seen you before, but not clearly, and even so, you're better- looking than I expected from what Finn told me of you, but it was obvious even then that you and he had not made friends the moment you met. I'm Shelagh. Donuil and I were friends once, long ago, before he went off to be your prisoner." I was confused, and becoming more so by the moment. What had she meant by saying she had seen me before? She could not have, unless she had been in Britain recently, and had I met her I felt sure I would have remembered.

I bent my head in a courteous nod, but before I could respond she had turned her attentions once more on Donuil. "Well, I can see they didn't starve you over there. Have you been to my father's house yet?"

"No." I could tell from the slow, deliberate way Donuil shook his head in emphasis that he was far from being at his ease in this meeting.

"Well, that's something, at least. Why not?" She answered her own question. "Och, never mind. I know why not. My father was probably waiting for me to come home, to look after him as well as you. There's little comfort in a house that has no woman in it."

"No," Donuil finally rallied some words. "We haven't had time."

"Time?" She threw him a look of wide-eyed astonishment. "Then what have you been doing since you came back? Never mind. Will you have time tonight?" Donuil nodded, wordless again. "Good. Then we'll expect you." Her eyes flicked back to me. "You, too." Now she turned to Maddan, indicating the sodden bundle on the threshold with a wave of her hand.

"There are eight wolf pelts there, Maddan, a bearskin, a badger and four of them lovely tree fellers with the big, flat tails." I did not recognize the name she used, but it was plain that the animals were the dam-building creatures the Romans called castora. "They're all salted down," she continued, "but they need to be stretched and dried out. Will you be a love and make some frames for me? You can have the bearskin, if you will." Maddan merely nodded, smiling patiently and saying not a word. I could see that these two had worked together before. Shelagh smiled at him now, in a flash of white, even teeth. "And I'm carrying half the soil of Eire on my body and in my hair with this rain and the mud. Would you heat me some water for a bath?" Again, a silent nod from Maddan. "Thank you, sweet man. I'll see you two tonight." And suddenly she was gone, leaving Donuil and me staring at each other.

He smiled at me, suddenly shy and awkward. "That was Shelagh."

"Aye, I gathered that," I answered, making a determined effort to keep any trace of irony out of my tone. "But who is she, and who is her father?"

"Liam, Liam Twistback's her father."

"Liam?" I was too surprised to dissemble. "Is she . . . ?" I broke off, belatedly, not wanting to ask the question. The long cloak could have hidden any deformity.

"Is she what? Oh, you mean is she a hunchback?" He laughed, and I heard Maddan behind me laugh with him. "No, Cay, she's no hunchback, not Shelagh. She was always the pretty one in the old days . . ." His voice faded, and then resumed with wonder. "But I'd no idea she'd grow to be so . . ." He coughed and turned his attention immediately to the long- forgotten spearhead on the bench beside us, picking it up and hefting it in his hand before stooping to peer at it closely, angling it towards the light. "There's a lot of rust on this thing, Maddan."

I covered my smile and respected his reticence for the time being, and we returned to the topic that had brought us to the smithy, picking up our discussion almost as smoothly as if we had not been interrupted. We agreed that the existing spearhead, with minor modifications, would be as good a starting place as any, and Maddan thrust it immediately into the fire of his forge and began to work his bellows, making it clear to Donuil and me, without the insult of words, that our continued presence in his smithy was likely to be a distraction thereafter. We pulled on our heavy, waxed wool cloaks and walked out into the downpour.

"What now?" I asked Donuil, raising my voice above the hissing roar of the rain.

He glanced up at the leaden clouds and sniffed. "Doesn't make much difference, seems to me," he shouted back. "Whatever we do, we'll be wet."

"Hmm. I think I'll go over to the camp and visit the others. Will you come?" Aware of the pitch of both our voices against the noise of the weather, he merely nodded now, and we made our way towards the main gate and out towards where "the horse camp," as the townspeople were already calling it, had been set up. Donuil hitched his cloak more comfortably around his shoulders and spoke again, loud-voiced against the elements, but without looking at me this time, his eyes fixed on the waterlogged ground where we walked.

"Well, Caius Merlyn, you have been here two nights now. Different from Camulod, isn't it?"

"Aye, it is," I called back. "Very different. But I expected that. It's a different land altogether."

"Aye. Primitive, would you say?"

I stopped walking immediately, forcing him in turn to stop and look at me. "What do you mean?" I asked, lowering my voice and moving close to him so that he could hear my words clearly enough. His face was flushed, as though angry, but I knew I had given him no reason for anger, so I sought another cause for his evident discomfort and could only come up with defensiveness. I knew immediately I was correct, although his reasons and the timing for such feelings escaped me.