Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

Donuil had steadfastly refused to speak of Shelagh at all throughout the day, and I had eventually decided not to pursue the matter, aware that his discomfort stemmed more from doubts over his own feelings about the young woman than from any natural reluctance to discuss her with me in front of strangers, even though those strangers had become his friends. Given the opportunity, I guessed, allied with a modicum of genuine encouragement from me, he would have talked me to death on the subject.

The rain had abated but still fell steadily as I made my way through the darkness to the house of Liam Twistback, which was, next to that of the king himself, the largest building in Athol's stronghold. I had learned, at least, that Liam was the wealthiest of all Athol's people, a situation, strangely, that had resulted from Liam's physical condition. Born unfit by his deformity to be a warrior among a people who prized physical abilities above all else, Liam had used the brilliance of his mind and the power of his personality to become the most successful landholder among his peers. He had expended years of singleminded effort in the husbanding of arable land and the gathering and breeding of cattle, goats and oxen, and had established himself as the prime commercial source—indeed, the only reliable, consistent source— of provender to his people. All this, Donuil had told me, Liam had managed to achieve without provoking either jealousy or envy among his fellow Scots who, over the long years during which Liam had amassed his wealth, had simply come to accept that in the little hunchback's industrious but eccentric nature, they had been gifted with a unique asset that was worthy of protection and pride. Liam was wealthier than his king, and wealthier by far than any of his tribe, but he bore his riches casually and self-effacingly, giving offense to none. The only things upon which he lavished his wealth were his house, and his daughter Shelagh.

As a young man, he had wed a cousin of the king, an unmarriageable young woman born, like himself, with a physical deformity. In her case—her name, Donuil had told me, was also Shelagh—the disfigurement had been twofold, consisting of a withered right leg, malformed at birth, and an unsightly, dark red blemish that stained her neck and lower jaw on one side. That both she and Liam had been permitted to survive their birthing had been akin to miraculous, apparently, but each had been born to prominent, elderly and otherwise childless couples. Liam, the elder of the pair by a decade and more, had watched the little girl grow up, an outcast like himself, and had befriended her. By the time Shelagh began to approach marriageable age, Liam had long been successful in impressing his people with the powers of his mind and intellect, and his industry and single-minded application to whatever tasks he set himself had attracted the friendship and admiration of the young king, Athol, to whom Liam had become, at the youngest age in living memory, a personal adviser. Athol it was who, at the risk of scandalizing his entire people, had given his regal and personal blessing to the union of the two most unsightly people in his lands.

That two such people, each set far outside conventional comeliness, had combined to generate a child of such exquisite, glowing beauty as their daughter Shelagh had been a wonder still unforgotten among Athol's Scots. Liam's wife, however, had died in presenting him with their child, and for years Liam had been inconsolable. As the child grew lovelier and stronger, however, the hunchback had transferred all of the love he had harboured for her mother to her. He would never have a son: but he had more: his daughter Shelagh was living proof that his flawed exterior was capable of generating more beauty than any of his sound-bodied contemporaries. He had built her a house to live in, rather than a hut, and had filled it with everything he could devise to make her happy.

As I approached that house for the first time, curious to see inside it, it seemed I was the only person astir in the entire settlement, and yet I could smell the smoke of many cooking fires in the moist air, a blend of wood- smoke and some other, unrecognizable but distinctive-smelling fuel. As I raised my hand to knock on the door, the top half of it swung inward and Donuil himself looked out at me and then sprang backward in fright, as surprised as I at the unexpected confrontation. He had been about to come looking for me, he told me moments later, but had not expected to find my face within a handsbreadth of his when he opened the door. And so I entered Liam's home amid lighthearted laughter that was to be sustained throughout the major part of an extremely pleasant evening.

Liam's house was justly famed among the Scots. Large and spacious, thick-walled and rectangular like the Great Hall, it was high-roofed and quite untypical of the other dwellings in the settlement, which were, in the main, squat, circular, solidly built huts of a material Donuil called wattle—clay strengthened and bound with a strong, interwoven framework of willow sticks.

The interior of the house into which I stepped directly from the door-yard was partitioned into at least two large, separate areas by high screens of plaited reeds, painted and varnished in bright colours. The entrance door, the only one of which I had been aware, was situated far on the left of the longer wall of the rectangular structure, which stretched laterally from there to my right, to where my view was blocked by the painted screens that stretched inward from front and rear walls, overlapping approximately in the centre of the room to create a passageway to the other half of the building. The large main area in which I now stood was brightly lit, and my admiration for our young hostess grew as I recognized the source of the brightness as a large number of the fine candles I had presented to King Athol. I accepted her enterprise in this immediately, for it did not cross my mind for a moment that Liam himself might ask for such bounty from his king. The candles were clustered in four main concentrations of candelabra: one cluster, by far the largest, on the massive, black wooden table that stretched the length of the shorter wall of the house to the left of the door, another on a smaller, circular table in the centre of the room, and one more on either side of the great stone fireplace that filled up much of the long wall opposite to where I stood. My eyes were filled with impressions of bright colours, flickering light and hospitable warmth. Donuil stood beside me, one hand on my arm, and another man sat opposite me, by the side of the great fire that roared in the hearth, holding a small harp in the crook of his arm. As I saw this man, recognizing him as one of the minstrels who had performed the previous evening and whom I had met twice now although his name escaped me, Liam Twistback himself came into the room through the gap in the overlapping screens to my right.

"Caius Merlyn! Welcome to our home." He moved quickly towards me, his hands outstretched to enfold my own, and I had time to admire the way the long, rich-looking robe he wore was cut and draped to minimize his deformity. When he took my hands, his large, intelligent brown eyes looked smilingly into my own, and he hitched his left shoulder, the humped one, and glanced down at it quickly, smiling a wry smile. "If you'll recall, they call me Twistback for good reason, but the twist is no more than physical. My mind has no unwelcome kinks, at least none I'm aware of, and I am looking forward to listening to your words this night. Be welcome, and sit down over here, close by the fire. It has been a foul day, but my daughter assures me that the evening will be very different. Have you met Cardoc, our minstrel?"

Cardoc. That was the name I had forgotten. I nodded towards him, smiling, and he returned my gesture, smiling easily. Liam, meanwhile, was ushering me towards a solid, wooden chair with a deep, curved back, one of a grouping of five that had been placed in an arc in front of the open fire. As I sat down, Donuil dropping into the chair on my left, another figure emerged from behind the screen, this one a woman, carrying a heavy tray on which stood a jug and a number of cups. She placed it on the circular table and withdrew without speaking. As I watched her leave, Liam sat down on my right, then rose again immediately and went to the newly stocked table where he busied himself pouring what I took to be some kind of mead into four cups.