A Strange Scottish Shore Read online

  Silverton stopped speaking and raised my hand to his lips, turning his body a few inches toward mine, and just as he kissed my knuckles, the scarred man jumped forward and began to jabber angrily. Magnus looked at him and frowned, the way a schoolmaster might regard a troublesome student. He lifted his hand and drank from a pewter tumbler, and I saw how enormous his fingers were, the last one encircled by a plain gold ring.

  A real man, I thought. Not some flattened figure in a history book. A real man, wearing a real ring, made of battered gold. Fully alive in his own present.

  The future—my present—did not exist. Only this world. These people. Living and breathing, eating and drinking, talking and fighting and loving, with no possible knowledge of the world that lay a hundred years, five hundred years in the distance.

  Their present. Their bodies, arms and eyes and hair and fingers, as real as mine.

  So transfixed was I by this thought, by the sight of this hand and the ring upon it—so incomprehensible were the words bursting from the scarred man’s mouth—I hardly noticed when the speech became heated, when Silverton’s hand tightened on mine.

  When, without warning, the scarred man turned around and tore Silverton’s long cloak from my shoulders.

  A dozen gasps drew the air from the room. Magnus bolted to his feet. I remember the sound the chair made as it scraped along the stone floor, and for the first time I noticed the tall gray dog who rested there, and who now rose on his paws and growled.

  But only for an instant. Silverton made a noise of fury and yanked me behind him, and the world became a jumble of movement, a flash of light on a short silver blade. Somebody grabbed at my waist. I threw him off with a strength that must have surprised him, for I had time to spin around and snatch one of the knives from the table before he lunged at me again. I slashed at his face, then at his grasping hand—two quick strokes, a spurt of blood, and he fell back howling. To my left, Magnus roared. Footsteps pounded on the floor. A company of guards formed a half circle around us. Silverton straightened away from the scarred man’s throat and let his blade fall to his side. He made an apologetic swoop of his head in Magnus’s direction, to which Magnus scowled ferociously from the middle of his magnificent auburn beard.

  He spoke in a low, rumbling, ominous voice. I could not strip my eyes away from him. Both Silverton and the scarred man stood before him, arms lowered, and because I saw nothing else, I didn’t notice that every other man in the hall—every man, for there were no women—was staring at me.

  Me, in my plain dress of navy blue, fastened at the back with horn buttons, pleated at the waist, shaped by the undergarments of another age. I was no slave to fashion. My corset did not bend my figure into the elongated S then in mode; I disdained the explosion of ruffles and tucks, the excess of decoration, the gargantuan hats worn by Lady Annis and her set. I dressed with a view to practicality and comfort rather than style, but the materials, the details, the needlework, the shape of my dress did not belong to this world, any more than Max’s motorcar would.

  And because we humans are still animals, after all, and retain certain animal instincts, I realized sometime in the middle of Magnus’s thunderous lecture that these gazes lay upon me. That all the men in the hall now stared at me, at my unnatural dress, so violently exposed by the scarred man when he tore away Silverton’s long cloak. My skin flushed, my pulse sped. I moved not a muscle, but I felt the weight of all those staring eyes, pressing against my flesh, until at last Magnus himself turned to regard me.

  I met his gaze without flinching, though I knew I should not. The lot of women in my own time is not without its injustices, but we may safely look a man in the eye when the occasion demands it. Here, I knew, I enjoyed no such privilege. The very absence of women in this hall spoke to my precarious standing. More. I felt the antipathy, the affront of nearly every man in that hall, the way your skin feels the sting of a slap long after it’s delivered. Somewhere to my right, a man stood bleeding from the wounds I had just delivered him. I, a woman! The shame of it! His hatred was a palpable thing, pulsing, close to strangling me.

  But still I returned Magnus’s gaze squarely. I could not do otherwise; I could not cast my eyes downward and still be Emmeline Truelove.

  Magnus came to the end of his sentence, and it sounded like a question, delivered to me. I raised my eyebrows and spread my hands. Silverton spoke up, in measured words. Magnus turned and asked him a short question. Silverton answered. Magnus turned back to me.

  To my amazement, his face was kind, if grave. He stepped toward me and held out his hand. A draft blew across my skin from some unknown quarter, making me shiver, but I went forward regardless and placed my hand in that rough, enormous palm. The contact electrified me. This man, this hand created and born in the thirteenth century, now clasped mine. The fear I had held at bay now engulfed my belly and my brain, and it was all I could do to remain standing.

  Magnus turned to Silverton, still holding my hand, and gestured to his lordship. Silverton went readily forward and made a movement of obeisance, which Magnus waved away. Instead he drew my hand forward, placing it in Silverton’s palm, and then he wrapped his own fingers around our bound fists and said a short, reverent sentence.

  A burst of astonished conversation broke out around us, which Magnus quelled with a single word. I heard the frustrated rustle of feet behind me, though I didn’t dare look. Magnus was speaking again, almost in a chant, and then he released our hands, looked above our heads—we were both kneeling—and addressed the men assembled there.

  “What on earth is going on?” I whispered to Silverton.

  “It’s the devil of a thing,” he replied, in the same low voice. “It seems he’s just married us.”

  • • •

  “I was only trying to protect you,” Silverton explained, across the table. Around us, a banquet was taking shape. Perhaps two dozen men had gathered along the wooden benches, and serving maids were now emerging from some hallway to the right, bearing platters of bread and meat and fruit. Several rounds of ale had already filled the tumblers laid out before us, and the men had emptied them just as rapidly. Under the effects of this bounty, the atmosphere had turned buoyant. Even the man I had bloodied now rose to his feet and began a ballad, in a voice not quite precise. His companions joined him, and under cover of this noise, I replied to Silverton.

  “Protect me? But what did you say to him?”

  “That I had fallen in love with you.” He drank from his tumbler, without breaking his gaze from mine. “That we were betrothed.”

  “I see.”

  “I had no choice. Thorvar—”

  “Thorvar?”

  Silverton gestured to his right eye. “Chap with the scar, the one who broke into the hut the other day. He was accusing you of sorcery, just now. Your confounded dress, our strange behavior on the ledge outside. He said you were a magical creature, not human, and that therefore—well.”

  “Therefore what?”

  “You must understand, my dear, it’s a different age. A brutal age. A less abundant age. They haven’t the luxury of broad-mindedness. That’s the sort of rubbish that can get you killed.”

  “So they want to kill me first, before I can infect them with my strangeness.”

  “Or banishment,” Silverton said cheerfully. “We may still have to leave the island, if Magnus’s little maneuver here isn’t enough.”

  I turned to look at Magnus, who sat at the head of the table, directly to my left. He was watching the ballad singer thoughtfully. One hand gripped his tumbler, the other lay gently fisted on the table. His nose was large, and looked as if it had been broken at least once. A serving woman reached between us to lay a platter of meat on the table, and I turned back to Silverton.

  “But by what authority has he married us?”

  “Why, he’s the Earl of Orkney’s vassal here in Hoy. He can pretty much d
o as he pleases.”

  “What about a priest?”

  Silverton shrugged. “There is no Marriage Act, Truelove. No regularization of these matters. Remember divine rights and all that. Your ruler is nearer to God than thee.”

  “But we can’t be actually married.” I leaned forward over my empty plate. “My God. This is absurd. I never consented. I don’t feel married.”

  Silverton’s gaze had wandered down the table toward the man singing the ballad, who seemed to be reaching a chorus of some kind. He now returned his attention to me. “I imagine—” he began.

  But Magnus rose to his feet, bringing all conversation and ballad singing to an abrupt end. I would have said he was frowning, but that wasn’t quite right. His expression was heavy, thoughtful, and those thoughts—so I imagined—were not joyful ones. He raised his tumbler and said something in his massive, rumbling voice, and the other men answered him in a roar.

  Then he set down his tumbler and stretched his hand to me.

  “Stand up,” whispered Silverton.

  I stood and placed my hand in Magnus’s palm.

  Magnus turned to Silverton, who also rose and made fist with his leader. And Magnus spoke again, and the men answered once more in unison, making the stone walls ring with their full-throated, masculine voices, and Silverton’s words returned to me: If Magnus’s little maneuver here isn’t enough.

  But it is enough, I thought, looking back to Magnus’s rough profile, his grave, ageless expression. In one gesture, in one spontaneous wedding banquet, arranged with a snap of his fingers and a few words, he had united us.

  • • •

  Though the meat was unfamiliar to me—tough, stringy, greasy—I ate as much as I could bear. I had little else to do. Magnus, unable to speak to me, engaged Silverton instead, so I swallowed my notions of hygiene and stuck my fingers into the pile of viands that Magnus himself had carved for me, by the slice of his own knife. I had thanked him, and he had nodded. There are certain words that may be understood across all human civilizations. The meat was mutton, I thought. I sopped it up with the same coarse, brown bread I had eaten with Silverton.

  But then the servers arrived bearing more platters, and these were loaded with something else: fish. Great filets of cod, dressed with herbs and fruit; whole trout, baked in its skin; herring, saithe, other varieties I didn’t recognize.

  “Ah, there we are,” Silverton said.

  “I never knew you admired fish so much.”

  “You might say it’s grown on me.”

  It was strange, speaking like this, knowing that we couldn’t be understood, the way some people spoke in French in front of the servants. Without asking—of course, he couldn’t ask—Magnus filled my plate and then Silverton’s, and lastly his own. There was nothing to wipe my fingers on, no way of cleansing myself, so I simply dipped my fingers bravely into the cod and ate, and the freshness of the flesh astounded me.

  “This is quite good,” I said to Silverton.

  “Of course it is. Plucked from the seas within the past few hours, I’ll bet.”

  He turned to the man on his left, exchanging some joke, and I took another piece of cod and thought, This is my wedding banquet.

  A serving maid passed by, wearing a loose homespun robe bound at the waist. A pair of long dark braids wound about her head, and as I examined her, I realized she was casting me the same curious gaze. Our eyes met, and she looked away swiftly, but not before I felt her hostility penetrate the layers of my modern clothing to strike my bones.

  I ate another bite.

  Before me, Silverton’s head still turned to the side, and though the beard disguised his face, it could not disguise his handsomeness, his glamour, the peculiar ease with which he met every strange turn in his life. I stared at the tendons of his neck, flexing with speech, and I thought, This is my husband.

  Except he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. I hadn’t said any vows, and neither had he. I hadn’t said, I will take thee, Frederick, as my husband.

  I drank from my tumbler, which somebody had refilled without my noticing. It wasn’t quite the same ale I knew, but it was fermented, only more sweet and spicy. At my feet, something stroked my ankles—something wet—and I looked down to see the large gray dog earnestly licking my stockings.

  I bent and rubbed his ears with my left hand—not my right, greasy with mutton and fish—and he gave off licking and looked at me lovingly.

  “What a wicked fellow you are,” I murmured, “a very wicked fellow,” and when I straightened once more, I discovered Magnus’s face studying mine, no more than a foot and a half away.

  I confess, I startled slightly. His expression was so fierce, his eyes a terrible blue, and everything so large: his nose, his brows, his mouth, his bones. My breath froze somewhere in my ribs, a strangled noise rather like a hiccup. But I did not look away.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I said aloud, not for his benefit but for my own.

  His face changed. His thick eyebrows lifted; his eyes crinkled at the corners. His mouth stretched into a wide, toothy smile, like that of a playful wolfhound, and he nodded—just once, deeply, a bow of acknowledgment.

  Then he spoke.

  “No, you are not,” he said, and he turned to signal the serving maid for more ale.

  • • •

  “You’re quite sure he spoke in English?” Silverton said. “There are certain Norse words that—”

  “Quite sure. His accent was deep, of course, but I didn’t mistake him.” I paused to frown at the wall next to Silverton’s neck. “Even if I did, he understood me. That was clear.”

  “Hmm,” Silverton said.

  “Hmm? Is that all? You don’t find it extraordinary that a medieval Orcadian both understands and speaks modern English?”

  Silverton crossed his arms and tilted his head upward, as if discovering some flaw in the ceiling. “I might have taught him a few words, that’s all.”

  “You taught him? Why?”

  We stood in a snug corridor off the main hall, which led presumably to the jakes. This was the excuse I’d given Silverton for our departure from the table, that I required the privy. In fact, I did, but I had no intention of subjecting myself to the sanitary whims of a medieval public convenience, particularly in a building so thoroughly masculine as this one. The hallway was dim and cramped, smelling of damp, and the shadows lay at strange angles across Silverton’s face. We stood close, whispering, and I felt the heat from his body seep into mine, felt his ale-saturated breath touch my forehead. My head was a little dizzy from the spiced ale, or whatever it was, and the seconds seemed to stretch into infinity as Silverton considered his reply.

  “Well?” I demanded.

  “It’s rather a long story.”

  “Then you had better speak quickly, hadn’t you? Why did you teach him English?”

  He lifted his hand and rubbed his forehead with his thumb. “Because he was the fellow who brought me here from Edinburgh. The one who rescued me from imminent disaster at the hands of a pack of fearsome chaps who—as I believe I already explained—had taken a violent dislike to my unusual bearing.”

  I stared at his shadowed, unblinking face in shock. “That was Magnus? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “Don’t look angelic. You know very well you didn’t.”

  “Ah, you’re cross with me.” He hung his head.

  “Of course I’m cross! You’re supposed to trust me.”

  “I do trust you. I wasn’t trying to hide anything, Truelove. Only I saw no reason to burden you with any unnecessary information. After all, weren’t we supposed to be back in the good old twentieth century by now, the two of us, six hundred years away from all this?”

  “But I don’t understand. What was he doing so far south? Visiting the Scottish court?”

&
nbsp; “Well, no. Not exactly. He wasn’t lord then, you see. Just an ordinary man, transacting a bit of business. But he’s a fair man, Magnus, the truest fellow you’ll ever meet. Rather like you, in some respects, now that I think on it. In any case, he saw an injustice being done, and he set about mending it. Luckily he’s got a measure of might to those shoulders. Afterward, he offered to bring me home with him, and it seemed to me like a gift from God. So I took it.”

  “And you taught him English along the way?”

  “Something like that. It’s a long journey, you understand, without the assistance of the Highland Railway, or even a friendly horse. In return, he taught me his own language.”

  “How friendly.”

  Silverton shifted his long limbs, uncrossing his arms and looming over me, so that I stepped back and pressed my spine against the wall. He placed his palm on the cold stone next to my ear.

  “I owe Magnus my life, Truelove. Not just the physical miracle of my existence, but whatever scrap of faith has driven me out of bed and into the light, each morning of the past three years. There’s no amount of loyalty on earth to equal what I owe him. Nothing at all I wouldn’t offer him in return—my life, my blood, my fortune—except one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You, of course.” He touched the side of my face. “And now I owe him that debt as well. So let’s—”

  An enormous hand landed on his shoulder. We startled around to find Magnus himself, as if summoned by our conversation, blocking whatever meager light found its way down the hallway with his two massive shoulders. He nodded politely to me and addressed Silverton tersely in Norse, and Silverton answered with a sound of affirmation.