I wake with something nasty in my mouth. Straw? And it’s rank! I go to spit, when I remember where I am, what happened.
Mel. Oh, Mel. Oh, sister.
I press my lips together hard to hold in a sob.
Weak dawn light seeps through the building. Someone has opened the door wide. How did I not wake at the very first sound? My throat constricts; I can’t breathe. I’m hot. Hunger squeezes my stomach.
The one in the doorway shouts. But he yanks at the rope around the first cow’s neck. It’s her he’s shouting at, not me. He hasn’t spotted me.
My throat eases and breath comes harsh. I shrink back till I’m pressing with all my might against something rough and pitted. And good Lord, how much it hurts to move. I can’t even say the source of the pain, there are so many.
The boy shouts again in some garbled language, and how on earth will I make people who speak like that understand who I am and that they should take me back to Eire? The boy tugs so hard his whole body is at a slant. He’s urging the cow outside. The idiot. That’s no way to get an animal to do what you want. Or it is, but a stupid way. At least he’s putting all his effort into budging that one cow. He knows that if he gets the one at the front, the others will follow.
At last the cow moves sluggishly. The other animals turn too, jostling one another, blocking my view of the doorway. All I see is a crowd of different-sized hairy legs. But I hear the boy shouting at them, and even not knowing the words, I can tell he’s mean. I’ll have to find another home to ask for help—with nicer people. Once I’m feeling better. I reach out to grab more straw to hide myself, and alas, the scab on my hand breaks open. It feels like I’ve just grabbed a fire poker. Who’s the idiot now?
I curl tight and small and stop my breath voluntarily this time. Please, Lord, don’t let that boy notice me.
Shuffle, shuffle. Bleat. Baaa, baaa, baaa.
Then quiet.
Really?
Or is someone waiting to pounce?
I keep still.
But it’s getting colder, and my body wants to move. I stretch my neck to peek out from my little burrow. The door still stands ajar, making a pool of light on the floor that rises up with little motes of dust and straw swimming through. An open door makes sense. It gives the barn a chance to air out. And it will warm up again fast from the animals’ body heat once they come back. But who knows how long that will be? The animals might graze on new spring shoots all day. The barn door might stay open till evening. And there’s a wind again today. I hear it outside. It crisps my skin like hide held too close to the fire—like the vellum they make in the monastery at Dunkeld that Mel and I visited with Mother. The sweat that rolled off my forehead when the animals were here has dried and left me chilled.
I lick my hand—which won’t cure it the way a cow’s lick does, but at least soothes it—and look around. Nothing but straw over hard earth and open boxes built into the side walls—for feed in deepest winter, I’m sure. The walls are tree trunks split vertically and placed standing in the ground, each tight against the next with something shoved into the crevices to keep out the wind. I put my face to the damp wall behind me and sniff: dung. Not mixed with hazel wattles or heather or even grass—just plain dung. It can’t be as good insulation as a proper mixture. These people don’t know how to treat their animals.
I swallow and my ears pop and then buzz loudly, and I feel all dizzy for a moment.
Mel should have jumped. She should be here now, taking care of me. Immalle. Together. As Mother said. Sisters don’t abandon each other.
But maybe Mel couldn’t help it. Maybe someone grabbed her and stopped her. Maybe she’s right now searching for a way to get back here, to find me. She’ll do it. Mel can do things.
I snuffle back tears and get to my feet and immediately sink to my knees again. My feet are no use. I feel them with my good hand. They’re ripped up on the bottom from going barefoot across the frozen ground last night. I imagine Mel scolding me. When Mother put us on the nag dressed as peasant boys, Mel insisted we keep our shoes. Princesses can’t go barefoot.
But last night I had no choice. I had only one shoe, and I couldn’t hop on that one foot with all the water inside turning to ice and stabbing my toes. I had to rip it off. Anyone would have done the same. Even Mel.
I crawl on my knees and my one good hand, till I’m against the wall beside the open door, and I lean sideways to see out.
A woman passes so close I hear the flap of her long undershift with each step. She could have reached out an arm and touched me, easily.
I fall back on my heels and scrabble away to the nearest corner, pressing into the shadows. I don’t know what to do. And I have little strength. I wait.
I’m hot again.
I lift my tunic clear and relieve myself and then move to the side, away from the wet.
I need a plan. I want Mel. I’m always the one who comes up with plans, but she’s the one who knows which plan will work. My eyes feel like huge, hot balls. They keep closing. I have to think. But I can’t keep my eyes open. My head falls to the side and hits the wall. I don’t bother to lift it.
* * *
Scrape.
I jerk awake.
The door has been closed. A person moves inside the barn and plunks something down on the ground with a heavy thud. Light comes dimly through cracks around the door, and I make out a form. The person lifts off a wide cloak and drops it. A man. He’s wearing a huge floppy tunic over those funny baggy things the Norsemen in Dublin wore—trousers. Lord no, have I found myself among Norsemen? I swallow, and my ears ring now.
He lurches forward, and though his back is to me, I can tell he’s sick. He groans in pain. He yanks wildly at the drawstring on his trousers, and now he’s ripping them off. He squats and he’s stifling yells, I’m sure of it. His head writhes on his neck and the pain goes on and on. Misery like that can only come from a struggle with the devil. I hug myself hard and wish I could shrink to invisible.
At last he lets out a cry, just small and wavery, a pitiful cry, and seems to go all heavy and slack. He takes something from between his legs and throws it into the center of the room, the pig area. It lands with a slop. It was a large something. The smell makes my nose wrinkle. Stale eggs.
He reaches into that something on the floor beside him, and I hear splashing. It’s a bucket and he’s squatted over it now, washing his privates. He stands and stuffs something between his legs and pulls on his trousers and dumps the bucket and struggles into his giant cloak. He turns. But this time he spins toward me, not away.
Our eyes meet.
His mouth drops open, and his face crumples.
I stare back.
He says something. Quiet. Like he’s trying to convince me. Like he’s making a pact. His face is young and hairless. It shivers with fear at me seeing what he did. He won’t tell on me, no he won’t, because what he did was secret.
My heart beats so hard I hardly hear him, but I wouldn’t understand anyway. I nod.
He opens the door wide and leaves.
I can’t stay in this corner, that much is clear. And something’s gone wrong with me; I can’t crawl anymore. I wriggle and thrash my way along the wall, heading for my corner. When I pass level with the center, I stop a moment and listen hard.
A snuffling noise.
No! I shouldn’t have stopped. I shouldn’t have listened. I can’t do anything. How could I do anything, all messed up the way I am? Besides, if I went over there, with the door wide open, anyone looking this way would see me cross the floor. I can’t do it.
But I can’t not, either.
I move slow slow toward the snuffle. It’s covered in slime. But it moves. It moves. I’m clearing that slime away now, as fast as I can. Energy has come from nowhere. I’m cleaning off the head frantically—the head has to be first. I may be only eight, but I know that much.
The baby lets out the smallest noise, like a chick that doesn’t realized it’s hatched yet.
I slip the body from the caul and feel. It’s a boy. A sweet boy. I can’t use my tunic to clean him, because it’s so filthy and the coarse nettle would be too harsh on his tender skin anyway. But the only parts that really need cleaning right now are his eyes and nose and mouth and ears. The rest can wait. So I lick him. That’s what animals do. I gag at first. But I mustn’t do that again. I pretend to be a cow. And he’s my calf. I can do this. I have to.
Then I push on my back the rest of the way to my straw burrow, holding this babe on my chest. We need to burrow away. I’m dripping sweat. It rolls into my ears.
When Father’s men came home from slogging through wetlands last summer, the horses got hot like I am now. They bled from their nose. They died.
But my brother Nuada got through his fever when the Viking youth chopped off his hand. That was when? Only weeks ago. It seems like forever ago. Nuada had Liaig, the royal physician, looking after him, though. This babe and I have only each other.
I pull the straw around us and bite my bottom lip hard. I don’t really have the energy to cry, but biting my lip seems a good precaution anyway. I am not a cow, and this babe is not my calf. So he’s sure to die, but I’d rather be damned for all eternity than let crying be the last thing he hears.