The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [2]
Dougie felt an all too familiar urge to throw the contents of his tankard into the holy man’s face. As for Diarmuid, he wasn’t in the least holy, merely too old to challenge to a fight. Dougie calmed himself with a long swallow of ale. Father Colm set his tankard down on the ground, then pulled the skirts of his brown cassock up to his knees, exposing hairy legs and sandaled feet.
“Hot today,” the priest remarked.
“It is that, truly,” Diarmuid said.
In the spring sun, the three of them were sitting outside the tumbledown shack that served the village as a tavern. Since most of the local people were crofters who lived out on the land, four slate-roofed stone cottages and a covered well made up the entire village. It was more green than gray, though, with kitchen gardens and a grassy commons for the long-horned shaggy milk cows. From where he sat, Dougie could see the only impressive building for miles around, Lord Douglas’ dun, looming off to the west on a low hill.
“If this new fellow’s not a demon,” Diarmuid started in again, “then who is he, eh?”
“He doesn’t remember much beyond his name,” Dougie said. “It’s as simple as that. Tirn, he calls himself. Some traveler who ended up in the lake, that’s all.”
“Burnt a fair bit, and him with unholy sigils all over his face? Hah!” Father Colm hauled himself up from the rickety bench. “Now, frankly, I don’t think he’s a demon. I think he’s a warlock who was trying to raise a demon and paid for his sinful folly. Speaking of paying—” He laid a hand on the leather wallet hanging from his rope belt.
“Nah, nah, nah, Father,” Diarmuid said. “Just say a prayer for me.”
“I will do that.” Colm fixed him with a gooseberry eye. “For a fair many reasons.”
With a wave the priest waddled off down the dirt road in the direction of Lord Douglas’ dun and chapel. Diarmuid leaned back against the wall of the shed and watched the chickens pecking around his feet. Dougie had stopped by the old man’s on his way to Haen Marn to hear what the local gossips were saying—plenty, apparently. Diarmuid waited until the priest had gotten out of earshot before he spoke.
“Well, now, lad, you’ve seen this fellow, haven’t you? Do you think he’s a demon?”
“I do not, as indeed our priest said, too. He must be a foreigner, is all, and most likely from Angmar’s home country.”
“Imph.” Diarmuid sucked the stumps that had once been his front teeth in thought. “Well, one of these days Father Colm’s going to work his lordship around to burning these witches, and that will be that. I’m surprised he’s not done it already.” Diarmuid spoke casually, but he was looking sideways at Dougie out of one rheumy eye.
“It’s Mic’s hard coin,” Dougie said. “Who else around here can pay his taxes in anything but kind? A silver penny a year the jeweler gives over, and that buys my gran a fine warhorse for one of his men.”
“Well, now, you’ve got a point there. The village folk keep wondering, though, if his lordship holds his hand because of your mother.”
“Are you implying that my mother’s a witch?” Dougie rose from the bench and laid his free hand on his sword hilt.
“What?” Diarmuid nearly dropped his tankard. “Naught of the sort, lad! Now, hold your water, like! All I meant was that she’s the lordship’s daughter, and you’re her son, and there’s Berwynna, and uh, well, er . . .” He ran out of words and breath both.
Dougie put his half-full tankard down on the bench.
“I’ll just be getting on,” Dougie said. “You can finish that if you’d like.”
Dougie strode out of the yard and slammed the rickety gate behind him for good measure. Although he owned a horse, he’d left him behind at the steading. Still glowering, he set out on foot for Haen Marn.
Dougie had good reason to be touchy on the subject of witchcraft. All his young life he’d overheard rumors about his mother and father. In the impoverished loch country of northern Alban, the steading of Domnal Breich and his wife, Jehan, had flourished into a marvel. Every spring their milk cows gave birth to healthy calves, and their ewes