‘I can understand that.’ Dougie patted her hand, then raised it to his lips and kissed it, fish stains and all. ‘Let me think about this, lass. Mayhap I can come up with some scheme to get us married.’
Berwynna walked him down to the jetty and saw him off. For a brief while she lingered on the pier and considered the boathouse, a roof and walls with lake water for a floor. A narrow walkway ran along one side to give the boatmen access to the ladder that led up to the loft where they slept. Besides the magnificent dragon boat, the island owned two coracles, a large one for the fishing, and a small craft that Marnmara and Berwynna used for their rare trips to the mainland. These hung out of the water from pegs on the boathouse walls.
The question, Berwynna decided, was whether she could creep into the boathouse at night, get the coracle down, and lower it into the water without making a splash or other noise that would wake the boatmen. Not likely, she thought. If only she could, she could row across and meet Dougie, and perhaps Father Colm would marry them before her family caught her. Even less likely, since he thinks I’m a witch. She picked up a stone and hurled it into the water as hard as she could, then turned on her heel and stalked back to the manse.
In the great hall the others had gathered around Marnmara, who had come over to Angmar’s table to look at Dougie’s gift. Angmar sat to her right, the mending unnoticed in her lap, while Tirn stood just behind Marnmara and peered over her shoulder. When no Mainlanders were around, the island folk talked in one of the two languages that Angmar called ‘our home tongues.’ Since Tirn knew no Dwarvish, they spoke the mountain dialect of Deverrian whenever he joined them. In fact, he seemed to know it oddly well, better than any of the rest of them. Berwynna sat down on a bench opposite her mother just as Marnmara opened the sack and slid out its contents: a book, bound in white leather, with a black leather piece in the shape of a dragon upon the cover.
Tirn gasped, tried to choke back the noise, then coughed. Marnmara twisted around to look up at him.
‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘For a moment there I thought it was a book I used to own. That one had a black cover with a white dragon upon it.’
‘Indeed?’ Marnmara said. ‘What sort of book might it be? A grammarie?’
‘What’s that?’ Tirn looked puzzled. ‘I’ve never heard that word before.’
‘A book of spells.’ Marnmara was trying to suppress a grin.
‘Ah.’ Tirn hesitated, caught, then shrugged. ‘Well, it was that, truly.’
Marnmara allowed the grin to blossom. She opened the book randomly, then frowned at the page before her.
‘Be somewhat wrong?’ Angmar said.
‘I did hope I could read this,’ Marnmara said, ‘but I’ve not seen these letters ever before.’ She turned round again and looked Tirn full in the face. ‘Except right there, tattooed on your skin. What language be they?’
‘That of the Seelie Host,’ Tirn said.
Berwynna made the sign of the Holy Rood.
‘Truly?’ Angmar quirked one eyebrow. ‘Now, I myself have seen such letters before, and they were made by someone as much flesh and blood as you are.’
Tirn face’s turned scarlet between his tattoos and scars.
‘My apologies,’ he said. ‘You must know about the Ancients, then. Some call them the Westfolk, others the Ancients. Do they dwell in this country, too?’
‘I know not,’ Angmar said, ‘but they do dwell in my homeland. Indeed, the father of my daughters did have Westfolk blood in his veins.’ She leaned back to study his face. ‘I think me that you come from the place the Deverry folk call Annwn, not from Alban, no, nor Cymru nor Lloegr, either.’
‘You’ve caught me out, my lady.’ Tirn smiled and ducked his head in apology. ‘I didn’t want to say anything at first because I thought you’d never believe me. I didn’t realize that you too hale from Deverry.’
‘I come not from Deverry proper, but from the north of it, in the country known as Dwarveholt. Now, can you read that book?’
‘Alas, I cannot in any true sense. I can read well enough in three languages, but that of the Ancients isn’t one of them.’ Tirn raised his bandaged hand and pointed at the tattoo on his left cheek. ‘These marks? Among my kin they’re thought to bring good luck or the favour of the gods. They’re very old, and their meaning’s been long forgotten.’
Angmar continued studying his face, while Marnmara paged through the book, frowning at a bit of writing here and there and shaking her head over the lot.
‘What I can do,’ Tirn went on, ‘is sound out the letters, though I don’t know what many words mean. Well, truly, they’re not letters in the way that the holy book of this country is writ in letters. Each one stands for a full sound, what mayhap would take two or three letters in some other tongue.’
Everyone stared, puzzled, but Marnmara, who laid a finger on one mark. ‘This one?’ she said.
‘La,’ Tirn said, ‘and the next is sounded drah.’
‘Be you a scholar, then, Tirn?’ Berwynna said. ‘Father Colm does warn against the studying of books, saying it leads to sorcery.’
‘Does he?’ Tirn grinned at her. ‘He may be right, then, for the first time in his fat life.’
Berwynna began to laugh, then stifled the sound when Angmar glared at her. Tirn shifted his weight from foot to foot, then walked round to sit down on the same bench as Berwynna. She moved over to give him plenty of room. Angmar gave both of them a sour look.
‘Is somewhat wrong, my lady?’ Tirn said to Angmar.
‘There be Horsekin blood in your veins, bain’t?’ Angmar said.
Tirn blushed again, then nodded.
‘Mam, Mam!’ Marnmara looked up from the book with a sigh. ‘Matters it to you, with all of us so far from home?’
‘Not truly,’ Angmar said. ‘I find truth sweeter than lies, is all.’
‘It is, and I owe you an apology,’ Tirn said, ‘but I feared you’d have me killed or suchlike if you knew about the Horsekin.’
‘If you realized not that we be from Annwn like you,’ Angmar said with some asperity, ‘why did you think we might know about the Horsekin?’
Tirn blushed again, then spoke hurriedly. ‘I’m an outlaw among them, you see, and I’ll swear to the truth of that. They’d kill me if they ever got hold of me.’
‘Now, that I do believe,’ Angmar said, ‘because of the fear in your voice.’
Her mother and old Lonna had told Berwynna tales of the Horsekin, vicious killers who worshipped an evil demon named Alshandra. Now here was one of them, sitting next to her, a very ordinary man by the look of him, and badly injured to boot.
‘Do you believe in Alshandra, then?’ Berwynna said to him.
‘I don’t,’ Tirn said, ‘and that’s why I’m an outlaw.’
‘I see.’ Angmar rose and began to collect the mending in a basket. ‘Well and good, then.’
Berwynna followed her mother out of the great hall and up the stairs to Angmar’s room. She’d been planning on badgering Angmar about Dougie, but her mother’s mood had turned so grim that she thought better of the plan.