The scarlet circus, p.6
The Scarlet Circus, page 6
“Simon!” she cried, turning back.
But Simon and his century were gone.
13.
Andrea returned home but she didn’t feel at home. The sky over Chappaqua had a dirty, smudged look. The air reeked. She could not bear the billboards along the highway nor the myriad choices of toilet cleansers and bath soaps at the super market.
She shut off her TV and sold her fax. She went shopping for long skirts and shirtwaists in secondhand shops.
She told her customers that she had a great deal of back work to do and gave them the names of several other jewelers they might patronize instead.
She said goodbye to her three friends.
“I’m thinking of moving to Scotland,” she told them. She did not tell them where.
Or when.
Then she sold her parents’ house, took the money in a banker’s check, bought a ticket on Icelandair, and flew with a small suitcase of secondhand clothes to Scotland.
The Royal Bank of Scotland was more than happy to open an account for her, and she rented a small flat in Leith.
Then she set to work. Not as a silversmith, not as a jewelry maker. She became a researcher, haunting the Edinburgh churches to see if she could find where Simon had been buried. To see if there was some mention of him in the town rolls.
Her search took her the better part of a year, but she had time.
The rest of my life if needed, she thought. Her parents’ house had brought in a great deal of money. It was not money that worried her. It was the rest of Simon’s life she was afraid of.
Once she’d been through every cemetery in the city she was at a loss, until she remembered that Simon had once spoken of being an East Neuk lad. On a whim she went by bus out to Crail, the little fishing village Simon had mentioned.
It was a pearl of a village with a mercat cross topped by a unicorn in the center of the upper town. The tolbooth was a tiered tower with a graceful belfry. When she went along the shop row, passing a bakery and a butcher’s, she was stopped by a glass-fronted jewelry store. It sold both new pieces—rather simple and not terribly interesting—and antique ware. Glancing up at the sign over the lintel, she was stunned.
MORRISONS
JEWELRY SINCE 1878
Trembling, she went in.
14.
You’ve guessed it now.
How the story ends.
But you are wrong again.
Andrea does not find Simon, for he is long gone and no amount of standing about in electrical storms can bring her back again in time.
Who she finds is the great-great-grandson of Simon Morrison, who is also named Simon.
And that Simon, on hearing the name Andrea Crow, immediately gives her a job as a jewelry maker in the shop because it has been a family legend—accompanied by a notarized document—that some time in the new century such a young woman would come. Black curls, violet eyes, and a master jeweler’s skill.
In his early thirties, this Simon looks nothing like old Simon. He has a roundness to his face and a sunny disposition. He does not so much make jewelry as sell what others make.
After half a year, he proposes and Andrea accepts and they marry, though Andrea explains that some part of her will always belong to old Simon.
This young Simon understands. It is, after all, part of the family tradition. Scots are big on lost causes.
Andrea’s designs become popular in Scotland and then England and then the Continent. Neiman Marcus rediscovers her work. She and Simon have three children.
And in time they fall in love.
In time.
Dark Seed, Dark Stone
They have already started on Father’s stone, right after the blowing of the horns. The first cut by Painted Oengus was for the broken spear because Father was the clan’s greatest warrior. He was called Bridei’s Hound because he had so often run before the king. And Bridei’s Shield, because he put his body over the king’s when the spears were the thickest.
A great warrior, and brother-in-law to the king, but not, alas, great enough. He had a mere man’s skin after all, and a Northumbrian’s knife pierced it easily. Such a small slice for life to have leaked out.
After we watch Painted Oengus set his chisel to the stone, we come here to lay out Father’s body for burial. I fasten his cloak around his shoulders with his best brooch, the one Mother had made for him to honor his first battle. I set my long finger over the wound in his neck. It covers the wound completely. Stepmother shouts at me and I take my hand away. But not before I feel how small Father’s death is.
I walk away from the corpse table then, because Stepmother shouts and because I cannot stand to see her weeping over Father as if she loved him. She married him for status alone after my mother—Bridei’s sister—died. But Stepmother never showed him softness while he lived. It shames us all how she carries on now, anointing his cold flesh with her hot tears. I think she worries that no one will ask for her in marriage once the mourning year is over, or that Bridei will not allow it, wishing her to mourn Father for the rest of her life. She has not shown herself fertile and her tongue is sharp enough to cut off her lips. Who would marry a barren woman, no matter how tall she is, how beautiful.
I go from the hall where his body lies and find my way to the byre to be with the cows, who are at least warm and smell of the earth, not flower scents ground in a mortar and warmed behind a woman’s ears.
Cattle cannot cry falsely. Indeed, they cannot cry at all. Nor can they rail at me. I like that.
No one bothers me here, in the round stone byre. I am, after all, only a third daughter of a dead wife of a dead warrior. I am not beautiful like my sister Alba of the White Arms, who looks like our mother. I am not a fine weaver like my sister Golden Eithni of the Upright Loom, who has our mother’s skills. Both of them are already married, and to warriors nearly as great as Father had been.
Me—I am no one. Bryony, the Dark Seed. I am short and have Father’s black hair and dark skin, his broad hands and large feet. Although it is true I have his knowledge of the land and a fierce heart, those are not a woman’s skills. I am already thirteen and no one has spoken for me yet.
I doubt any will.
Really, cows are better company than men.
But I do not want to stay with the cows, whose conversation is so limited. I head back to where Painted Oengus is at work on the next carving, using as his guide the pictures tattooed on his arms, his ankles, his chest. I know that next he will chisel out a sword, then a horse or a chariot, Father’s honors as a warrior.
There will likely be a salmon as well. We are the Salmon people, my father’s mother having come from among the tribes of the Great Silver River where salmon were once so thick, one could cross to the far side by walking on their backs. Or so she used to tell me.
And there will be other Signs—whatever Bridei instructs. He is king and Father was his Hound and his Shield after all.
Even Stepmother cannot override Bridei’s wishes. Sometimes I wish that I could be king. But I am a girl. My wishes should be for a husband and children, for yellow corn, fat cows, a tight loom—as my sisters do not hesitate to remind me.
Bridei had sent for Painted Oengus all the way from the Black Firth to make Father’s stone, and he had begun the work at once. Now he is kneeling before the stone, holding his great chisel and pounding it with a wooden hammer. The one finished picture—of the broken spear—stands out boldly. I think he has rubbed it with red clay to bring out the lines. Father’s blood had dried to that color. I know it well. I washed the wound with my tears first, water after.
The second carving—a hound with its hair streaming behind—has already been outlined on the stone. Painted Oengus is a careful carver, but he is quick, too. The best of all The People, so Eithni says.
I stand behind him, peering over his shoulder. Since Stepmother is not here to yell at me, no one will stop me from watching.
Painted Oengus is a short man, though no shorter than Father. His hair—the color of the flaming sunset skies—is shot through with strands of white. He hums as he works. It is not a tune I know. But then Painted Oengus comes from afar. His bards would not be our bards.
I dare a question. “Will there be a mirror?” A mirror would mean that my stepmother has paid for the stone. Mirrors are women’s signs. As are combs.
He grunts, which is not an answer.
Just then Bridei is at my shoulder. “There will be no mirror, Bryony,” he tells me. “I have paid for the stone and the carver.” He strikes his chest for emphasis. “This stone is the clan’s doing, not the outland wife’s. Your father will have a warrior’s signs because he was my brother-in-law and a man. In life and in death.”
I nod, unable to speak, the word death filling my head.
“Now go home and help with the mourning feast or that woman will have a fit and call down her dark gods upon us.” He says that woman with much bitterness. “And that will dishonor my Shield.”
Well, he is the king and must be obeyed. In peace as well as in war. Unlike some clans over the sea I have heard of who are ruled in peace by Speakers and only in war follow their king.
So I go home to the long house, the house that was once my Father’s and is no more.
When I arrive, Stepmother screams at me that I have failed to get the fire started or fetch in the water. Of course, we both know that there are servants to do all this, and they have not failed. The fire is roaring in the hearth. In the wooden bucket, water brims to the top. The table is already set with platters piled high with slabs of venison and boar. There is ale in the mugs. Salads of sorrel nestle in bowls, as well as boiled scurvy grass and nuts finely cracked, and dried berries and plums from last year’s fruiting.
But Stepmother needs to take out her worry in anger, and as I am Father’s only child still at home, I am convenient.
Her voice is so loud, it carries throughout the settlement, and she shames us both. The guests already starting across the grass to our house hear her shrilling. I can see through the open door the pain and embarrassment on their faces.
I run outside past the guests, back to the byre again, knowing I will not starve with cow’s milk to hand. And I can sleep there, warmed by cow’s breath and my father’s second-best cloak, which I have hidden in a rock safe for just such a purpose. It is not my first time sleeping away from my stepmother’s house. It will not be my last.
My sister Alba finds me.
“Bryony,” she says, “do not shame us more by absenting yourself from the feast.” She puts her arms about me. I love the familiar smell of breast milk and slightly damp woolen cloth. Alba has a new baby, another girl, a sweet little thing named Ionia. But still I pull away from her and shake my head.
“I hate our stepmother. I will not go back.”
“She is nothing, that one,” Alba continues. We can both still hear Stepmother. “She is less than nothing. A woman with an empty womb and no future. Soon sent back to her own people with only her jewels, if the gods are merciful.”
I nod. Of course Alba is right. But still I hesitate.
“Come back to the feast, Bryony,” she says. “For Father. For his honor.” She puts her small white hand on my broader, darker hand.
“For Father,” I whisper, and leave the cows.
Even Stepmother cannot spoil the feast, though she tries. She complains about me, about Father who left her, about the rough lives of The People compared to her own clan, about the weather and the wind and the little black bugs that bite. It is her way and nobody but me really listens anymore.
There is plenty to eat, which honors Father. Alba and Eithni contribute breads and small cakes. Our cousins—Father’s sisters’ families—have slaughtered a cow, and not an old one, either.
Every warrior who has fought by Father’s side brings a gift: cloth, combs, silver torques and chains and pins. We will choose the best to bury with him, the rest will reside in my stepmother’s coffers.
Until she leaves.
I keep that thought to myself, warming my cold heart with it. Until she leaves.
The Speaker has made a prayer for Father’s passage and the bard sings a new song—“Song of the Hound and Shield” he calls it.
Some of the words I will never forget:
Take our Hound to the bright lands,
Let him course through sweet meadows,
Oh, let him follow the deer.
The men cheer at each verse. The women call out Father’s name and say his virtues. And Bridei makes toast after toast. Bridei and his children have brought along enough strong ale to drown the entire clan.
Everybody drinks, Stepmother most of all, for she is trying to keep up with Bridei, to show that she is her husband’s equal and not to be sent back like a useless slave. But at last she collapses, her head on the table.
Bridei winks at me and signals his children to carry her off to bed.
I smile back at him. But I am worried, too. Without Father to be Bridei’s Shield—for he has no sons and no more brothers—who will guard him in the next fight?
At last the guests go, at least those who are still standing. The rest will snore away the night at our long table. I cannot ask the servants to clean up till morning. That would bring dishonor to those who have feasted Father. They have to be left to their dreams.
I go outside for some fresh air.
The stars above are many but there is no moon. I walk past the byre, past the houses of the clan. Climbing up the stairs to the great walls of the settlement, I adjust the shawl on my shoulders, pinning it tight against the chill with my mother’s silver-and-red enamel brooch.
There are no guards on the wall this night. I have left them sleeping at our table.
As I walk, I pray silently: Let me be Bridei’s Shield now that Father is gone. Let me guard his back.
The gods do not answer. I am not a Speaker, after all. Only Speakers get to talk to the gods and expect an answer. Of course, our Speaker would warn me, had he heard me, that the gods’ answers are not always what we wish. But I do not care and this time say my prayer aloud. “Let me take Father’s place as Bridei’s Shield.”
For a long time after I stand on the wall, gazing out across the rolling land. Far away, on the other side of the long meres, are our enemies, the Northumbrians. Father’s killers.
I think about them, the dark warriors with their iron hats. I think about them and hate them so fiercely, there is a white-hot flame searing beneath my breastbone.
Suddenly a strange light streaks across the sky, making a sound like a thousand cicadas. I tremble and fall to my knees, for when a star travels from one side of the world to the other, it is a sign from the gods. It means a journey of greatness.
Will it be my journey? I wonder. Or does it signify Father’s trip to the underworld?
When I look down again at the rolling land, I see someone running along the ridge. A man. It is too dark to see if he is one among many, but he is not wearing an iron hat. He is not sneaking as do Northumbrians. He is running tall, like one of The People.
I hurry down from the wall and go straight to the king’s house, knocking frantically at the door.
Bridei himself opens it.
“There is a man,” I say. “Coming. Coming . . .” I cannot get it out all at once, for I am almost out of breath. “No guards . . . on the wall . . . But I . . . I saw only . . . one!” I draw in an enormous breath and finish with a burst, “One running man on the ridge!”
Bridei does not smile. He reaches for his great spear that stands at the door, and shouts back to his household. “Get the men up!” He turns to me. “It would be just like the Southerners to attack at night. And when we are feasting our dead. They have no honor.” He hefted his spear. “Just one you say?”
“I could see no others.”
He hands me a knife. “Are you your father’s daughter?”
I nod. I have gutted deer and boar. I guess I can gut a man.
Bridei shouts again. I hear people stirring in the darkness behind him. Then he looks at me.
“Wake your sisters’ husbands and the rest.”
“And the guards sleeping at our table?” I ask.
He reaches a hand out to tousle my hair. “Throw water on them if necessary. The gods will understand. There will be no dishonor in it.”
I run off to do his bidding.
My sisters’ husbands are easy to wake. They get up from their pallets and immediately take spears and bows, though at night a bow is almost useless. Still, morning will be on us soon.
The men asleep at our house are more difficult. I shout but no one stirs. I do not touch them. They are men and I am an unmarried girl.
There is little water left in the bucket and no time to get more. I pour good ale on two of them and leave them to wake the rest. Then I hurry back to see Bridei and his household guards rushing out of the gate.
Painted Oengus, who has slept in the king’s house, stands looking at them.
“Why are you not off fighting with them?” I ask.
“Not my fight,” he says in his grunt voice. “I be no fighter.”
“You carry a spear,” I tell him with passion, nodding at his left hand. I show him my knife.
He throws back his head and laughs loudly. “Must have protection from wild beast. They do not know I be great carver.” He hits his chest with the flat of his hand.
I am furious. “Do not laugh at me. Not when we are about to fight for our clan.”
Painted Oengus stops laughing, though there is still a smile on his face. “Little fierce one,” he says, “your clansmen do not go to fight. They go to greet runner. He be alone, streaking across ridge like great star.”
