Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale (2 page)

The silversmith looks at me inquiringly. He’s very tall.

I walk past the belt buckles and sword hilts and pretend to be engrossed in browsing through the brooches on his display counter. His eyes heat my skin. I’ve never been close to a Norseman before. A common silversmith has no right to look at a princess like that. I lift my chin to confront his impudence with my own eyes.

He’s polishing a large cup with two small handles, one directly across from the other. Enamel and glass stud it in the classic design of circles holding four petals in a star. It makes me think of my favorite chalice in our cathedral. It’s lovely. This Norseman isn’t the least bit crazy. He’s no Viking.

And now I look at the pieces in the display counter more carefully. This jewelry is extraordinary. I would love to examine each piece carefully, slowly.

The silversmith picks up the brooch my eyes have settled on several times now. He pulls a length of black
wool from a box and smoothes it flat. Then he places the brooch in the center. A darling four-footed animal—not a calf, nor a lamb, but something halfway between. Looping around the little creature are tendrils that curl into intricate leaves. The spirals caress the dear one. Almost like tongues.

A tingling sensation starts at my temples and runs down cheeks and neck, out shoulders, down arms, through ribs, around the curves of my flesh. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. It seems almost sinful. The sort of pleasure our abbot rails against.

I must have this brooch.

I fold my hands in front of my waist, as much to keep them from snatching the brooch as to appear ladylike. Are my cheeks flushed? Do my eyes shine? I press my lips together and swallow the saliva that has suddenly filled my mouth.

“I’m not allowed to bargain, sir,” I say, hoping my tone of voice alone will carry the message, since I can’t offer a single Norse word. “Please, set this one aside. I’ll fetch my mother promptly. We have cattle. Sheep. Hogs. I’m sure we’ll find an agreement.”

“Certainly,” he says in Gaelic, with a completely unassuming smile.

A fine salesman, indeed. The brooch is mine.

I step out into the street again, just as the shriek comes. High and sharp and bone-chilling.

“Brigid!” I shout. Oh, good Lord in heaven, is it her? “Brigid!” And I’m running up the road, and turning the corner.

One scream. Then nothing. That’s worse than a continual cry. I don’t know where to look. I run frantically from hut to hut, thrusting my head through doorways, calling.

“Mel!”

I twirl around and Brigid runs into my arms.

Oh, Brigid, I thought you—”

“I thought the same about you.”

We hold each other in silence. She smells of horse. The livery. I should have known that’s where she’d be. She loves animals. I hug her tighter.

Then fear breaks and we’re swinging in a circle together, laughing, stupidly laughing in relief.

“It sounded bad,” says Brigid. “Who was it, do you think?”

“Melkorka! Brigid!” Father’s old manservant Aonghus comes hobbling up the street. “Come immediately.” His face is stricken.

“What’s happened?” I ask, as Brigid and I run to him, hand in hand.

“It’s Nuada.”

Nuada? That scream was Nuada’s? My dear brother’s? My heart thumps hard again. “What happened? Where is he?”

“We have to hurry.”

Brigid and I race past Aonghus and onto the main street, where our chariot and the servants’ wagon still wait outside the toolmaker’s. Mother’s maidservant, Sybil, stands with both hands over her mouth looking into the chariot through the window. Father has one foot raised, about to climb up beside Brogan on the driver’s bench.

“Father!” Brigid reaches him first.

Father lifts her as though she’s a tiny girl again. Brigid locks her legs around Father’s waist. He looks past her at me, his mouth slack and open.

I run to the chariot and Sybil steps back so I can lean in the window. Nuada lies there, his head on Mother’s lap, for all the world seeming dead. He’s wrapped in Mother’s cloak. It’s soaked with blood.

“Nuada?” I say. “Nuada?”

“He can’t answer, Melkorka.” Fish eyes shine from Mother’s pale face, round, unblinking.

“Is he …?”

“Badly hurt. Yes. We must bring him to Liaig fast. You and Brigid will ride in the servants’ wagon.”

“What happened?”

“Go get in the wagon. Don’t worry, Strahan will ride behind.”

The cloak slips just a little. Nuada’s arm shows. His right hand is gone. I step backward, shaking my head at this horror.

“Take her, Melkorka.” Father passes Brigid to me.

I am stunned, unable to think, but his face contorts in misery, and I cannot refuse. He climbs up beside the driver and they’re off, clattering fast up the wooden road.

I hug Brigid as hard as she hugs me.

“Is he dead?” she whispers in my ear.

I put her down just in time to lean over and vomit in the street.

Brigid cries. “Poor Nuada. Poor dead Nuada.” She’s got both hands in her hair and she’s pulling. “Poor dead brother.”

“He’s alive,” I say when I’ve got the air to speak again. “Thank the Lord, he is alive. But his hand got cut off.”

“His hand?” Brigid wipes at her tears in confusion. “Which hand?”

“Does it matter?”

“His real hand?”

“That’s all we have.”

“It won’t grow back,” says Brigid. She takes a loud,
deep breath. And I don’t know whether it’s my smell she’s just taken in or the news, but she leans over and vomits in the road too.

Sybil helps us into the back of the wagon. Then she climbs in herself. Aonghus is already there.

Torney sits on the driver’s bench. He slaps the reins and our wagon follows the chariot. Strahan rides behind on his horse.

Brigid’s crying again. She grabs at me. I make a tent for her of my arms and cloak, and lock her inside tight.

The wagon sways and bumps over rough ground, going faster than our stomachs can endure. Though they are empty, they continue to retch. I take off both our belts to try to make us more comfortable. It doesn’t work. I push the straw on the wagon bed into plumpy seats for us. But the straw is wet from yesterday’s rain. It’s dense and hard.

Brigid crawls back into my arms again. I rock her, murmuring, “My little colleen, my little dear one, colleen, colleen.”

She snuffles in a funny way and I realize she’s fallen asleep. But I don’t stop stroking her. I don’t stop rocking. I don’t stop murmuring.

We drive straight through at a pummeling pace. Still, it’s late night by the time we finally get home.

Sybil turns us over to the other women servants.

“Clothes off, young lady,” says Lasair to Brigid.

Brigid sways on her feet, only half awakened. Her arms hang limp at her sides.

“Poor child. All right.” And Lasair undresses Brigid.

Delaney does the same to me. I open my mouth to protest, but I close it again. It feels good to surrender to her hands. I was the big one in the wagon, comforting Brigid, comforting myself. But we’re home now; I can be taken care of.

They wash us. Even our mouths are scrubbed out, though the action makes us retch again. Then clean, white night shifts slip over our heads and we’re led to the kitchen.

Torney and Aonghus and Sybil and Brogan are already there. They look haggard from the journey. I must look haggard too.

I stiffen. It’s not proper to sit at table with servants, and Brogan isn’t even a servant, he’s a slave—sitting with a slave is never done. But nothing is normal today. Brigid and I take our places and huddle together, as far from the others as possible.

We eat a soup of leeks and pigeon stock, milk, parsley,
and oats. Oats and barley are peasant grains, but Father likes them, so the cook makes them when we have no guests. Usually I prefer finer food, but I have no trouble eating now. The soup goes down heavy and burrows in my entrails, like a wounded animal.

As each person finishes, they leave, making soft shuffles through the rushes on the floor, until it’s just Brogan and Brigid and me.

“Did you carry Nuada in, Brogan?” asks Brigid.

“Yes, little mistress .”

“Did you see …?” Brigid swallows loudly. “Did you see his arm?”

“Yes.”

“Will it give you nightmares?”

“Brigid!” I say, shocked. “Don’t ask such a thing.”

“I’m past nightmares,” says Brogan. “Before your father bought me, when I was still a boy, I was owned by a man who had a wicked temper. If a slave crossed his path when he was fuming, he’d cut off a part.”

“A part?” asks Brigid. “What part?”

“An ear. A finger. Sometimes in his rage a hand or foot or—”

I clap my hands over Brigid’s ears. “Enough, Brogan!”

“Sorry, mistress princess.” Brogan leaves.

How dare he present such grisly images to Brigid.
How dare he compare a slaves mutilation to a prince’s. But now my quick anger leaves as suddenly as it came. My hands fall to my lap. I shiver, though the night is not cold.

The manor house hushes. We sit a long while, silent.

Finally we go to the sickroom and hover outside the door.

Leather-shod feet slap softly as Delaney and Lasair pass in and out. Their basins are clean going in and brimming with bloody rags coming out.

The door is open, of course. A sickroom must have the door on each of the four walls open at all times so the ailing patient is visible from every direction. But we know we aren’t allowed in until beckoned. And it’s bad luck to look in before that.

We have hovered like this on other occasions. Usually we can hear well through the open sickroom door. But no one speaks in the usual way tonight. Whispers soak through the wood walls, reaching us only as a formless moment of heat.

“Come in, girls,” calls Mother.

Of course she knew we were here. She knows these things.

We pad in. A bench has been pulled up beside Nuada’s bed mat. Mother motions for us to sit there. We move quickly, in silent obedience.

A servant passes by us and puts new reeds dipped in animal fat in the lamp, then hurries out again. Mother and Father stand on the other side of Nuada, with Liaig, our physician. They talk in hushed voices. Nuada’s eyes are closed. A sheepskin covers him from the neck down. His face is pale in the lamp flicker.

Since Mother’s eyes are on Liaig, I dare to get off the bench and lean over Nuada’s face, hoping hell let me into his thoughts. Nuada and I can tell each other everything just with our eyes and eyebrows—we’ve done it since we were small. We’d get punished for having plotted some trick together and be forbidden to talk to each other, so we learned to manage without words. But now his
maelchair—
the space between his eyebrows—lies flat; his brows are silent; his closed eyes, a secret.

His breath is sweet with mead. At least he’s drunk himself beyond pain. His mouth moves, as though he’s talking. There’s a large mound under the covers by his right side.

Bent over like this, I can see Liaig’s bag of instruments and medicines. It lies open on the floor beyond Nuada’s head. A needle still glistens with blood. Long blond hairs coil beside it. Liaig has used strands of Mother’s hair to stitch up Nuada. My lips go cold.

“It was a long ride,” says Liaig quietly to Mother. “That
caused a great loss of blood.” He taps the fingertips of one hand against the fingertips of the other in a nervous gesture. “The delay in treatment complicates the matter further.” His tapping speeds up. “I cannot guarantee Nuada’s fate.”

My jaw clamps shut in anger. Nuada is Liaig’s responsibility. Father had this sickroom set up exactly as Liaig told him it should be for the very best cure, regardless of the ailment. A rivulet of water runs across the middle of the floor. Slaves dug a trench and lined it with stones. They diverted the nearby stream into it. That way there’s access to clean water at all times. Everything here is just right, perfect. Liaig has no excuse!

I drop back onto the bench and grab the edge on either side of my legs. I feel I’ll fall forward if I don’t hold on tight. I’m trembling now.

Brigid reaches out and lifts the edge of the sheepskin. I know I should stop her. Mother should be the one to reveal the injury. But I understand Brigid’s need.

Nuada’s right arm ends with a thick bandage where his hand should be. The bandage rests on a cushion.

Mother comes around the end of the bed and sits on the bench beside Brigid. She straightens the sheepskin over Nuada again. “It’s gone. Nuada will show you for himself when he’s ready.”

“But how did his hand get cut off, Mother?” Brigid spreads her fingers wide and stares at her own hands as she talks. She clasps them together in a sudden, fierce energy and presses them against her chin. “How?” Tears stream down her face.

Though my cheeks are dry, I taste tears too. Deep inside me.

“I was in the back room of the toolmaker’s, looking at the special collection” Mother’s voice is level and tired. It seems she’ll fall asleep before the next breath. Instead she pulls Brigid onto her lap and slides along the bench toward me. One arm around Brigid, one arm around me. “When he screamed, I ran to the front room. No one else was there. Nuada had passed out on the floor”