The Posy Ring

Episode 73

Francisco was striding after the child, but Lilias lingered and Mateo hung back with her. “This was where I first saw you. You were standing near this tower. What is it? Was it a part of your house? A watch tower?”

“Maybe. I don’t know for sure. It’s said to be very old. We call it Dun Faire, which certainly means the watch hill or fort. But we don’t build such round towers now, nor do folk even know how to build them, or so I’m told.

“They were made by people who were here before us. Long, long ago. A strange and monstrous people who came from the sea. Well, some say they were monstrous and some say they were beautiful beyond compare.

“Our threats have always come from the sea, you know. For hundreds of years. Long before you came in your big ships.”

“In our big, bold and not very adequate ships.”

“That’s a brave admission, Mateo de Tegueste. Who am I, a mere woman, to say whether it’s true or not?”

Pirates

She was laughing at him again, he saw, even flirting with him, and he began to laugh with her.

“But all the same, there have been so many enemies. Inter lowpers in the lowland tongue. The Gall-Ghaidheil, the foreign Gaels from the outer islands, and the fierce Norsemen before that.

“Pirates. Men from Ireland, or from the Scottish mainland too. That’s why we have our own big tower, back there, and why there are guards set on top of it during times of trouble. Looking out for the enemy.”

She smiled at him enigmatically. “But this tower was already a ruin when my father was a boy, and when his father before him was a boy too. It’s a curious place, though. Come I’ll show you!”

All unexpectedly, she took his hand and pulled him along until they reached the tower. The short afternoon was almost done, the wintry sun sinking behind the island hills. Soon this coast would be in twilight.

A mist was rising from the sea and starting to drift across the sand, making ghosts of the rocks. He had never been so close to the tower before. He could see that it must once have been very tall, a monumental structure, its stones fitting together beautifully without benefit of mortar or clay or any other means of fixing them.

“Quickly, quickly, before they notice we’re missing!”

She took his hand and pulled him into the shadow of the building. He saw that there was a doorway in the stone, also wellconstructed, and once through it, he realised that the walls inside were double, with a dark passageway between them.

Peering along, he could just make out a stair. Still holding his hand, she kilted up her skirts and clambered up the precarious stones so that he couldn’t help but follow.

The place smelled of damp and cold stone and the sea. There was a cell built into the thickness of the double wall – a guard room perhaps – and then they were in a completely circular upper chamber. The place was quite open to the darkening sky but he could see that there had once been more floors, joined by a string of galleries and stairs.

Now they led nowhere. In this room, there were flagstones set upright, forming an enclosure of some kind, and others in the shape of a rudimentary flat-topped table or cupboard.

Runaway lovers

He stood still, intrigued and surprised. “Did people live here then?” he asked.

“We don’t know. Maybe. Maybe they lived here before Achadh nam Blàth was ever built. Although my father tells me that our Great Hall is very old indeed. Older than the tower at the end of the hall. And this is older still.

“But if they did live here, they must have been quite cramped. Maybe they kept the beasts down below. Who knows?

“I sometimes wonder if that was a bed. You could fill it with heather, and sleep there. Like Diarmuid and Grania.” “Who were they?”

“They were lovers. They ran away together. She was meant to marry somebody else. He made her a bed of heather.

“Perhaps they used this as a lookout, the people who lived here, and if they saw the enemy approaching, they might assemble in here.

“It would be hard to breach this and a few fighting men could defend it.”

“But wouldn’t the enemy have come from the west?”

“Not always. And besides, there was once another tower just like this on the west side of the island. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes, back when my brother and I used to roam the moors beyond Dun Tarbh.”

“Thank you for showing it to me.”

Fairy washerwoman

The Posy Ring, first in the series The Annals of Flowerfield, is written by Catherine Czerkawska and published by Saraband. It is priced at £8.99. “It’s a very private place,” she said. “Nobody comes here. Even from our house. They say that the fairy washerwoman can be seen washing the shirts of those who are about to die, down there beside the shore where the water from the burn gathers in pools.

“But I don’t think so. I think it’s just a little sad. Like you, my friend.”

She was standing so close to him that he could feel her breath on his neck, and she hadn’t relinquished his hand. All of a sudden, she stood on tiptoe and planted a lingering kiss on his cheek.

Then, before he could respond, she had turned and was pulling him after her, out of the tower. She let go of his hand. The space between them seemed vast.

The dogs came rushing up from the beach, their coats sandy where they had been rolling on pieces of seaweed and other fouler things.

They were followed by Ishbel with Francisco, the child still holding up her skirts, full of shells and small sticks, although Francisco had taken his share of the burden, as many as he could hold in his arms.

“Where were you?” Ishbel asked. “You didn’t come.”

“No. It’ll be getting dark soon, and I wanted to show Mateo the old tower. But we’d best be going home. Beathag will be fretting and wondering where you are, Ishbel.

“Here. Give me some of your sticks as well. Mateo can take some too. That way, we’ll go more quickly.”

She was standing so close to him that he could feel her breath on his neck, and she still hadn’t relinquished his hand