The Gloaming of Bitterness

The Gloaming of Bitterness

Brora leaned over the balcony wall, taking a slap of wet wind to her face. She held tight to the iron baluster and wondered what it would feel like to uncurl her fingers and let herself fly. The palace courtyard was two stories below and paved with rough-cut flagstone. Some weeks earlier a young servant, suspected of treachery against the Earl, had been dangled over the east tower parapet then deliberately dropped, legs first. He hadn’t died, had been sent in agony by mule cart back to his co-conspirators in Stromness.

The balcony wasn’t high enough to kill her, but it surely was high enough to kill the poison that grew in her womb. Brora didn’t know if it was Lord Patrick’s bastard or his father the Earl’s, but she knew she wished it dead.

Around her body, shroud-like, was wrapped a heavy linen she’d pulled from Lord Patrick’s bed when he’d done with her and passed out. The rain pasted it to her body but she didn’t mind the cold. Her thoughts were of the dagger in her hand, freshly honed, and how easily it would slice into the sotted neck of the man sleeping in the room behind her. She didn’t fear the fountain of blood that would come; she feared the gods who would condemn her to Hell for murder. It was Lord Patrick who deserved the eternal fire. Why should she be punished for sending him there?

Nothing was her fault. Not the servitude she’d been forced into, sent when she was seven to work in the palace of Lord Robert Stewart, Earl of Orkney. Not growing into a body that made men leer and grab at her, not her thick red hair that Lord Patrick liked to drool into, that the Earl liked to wrap around his fingers, that the Earl’s angry wife liked to yank. Not the game of trading her back and forth between her tormentors, father and son. Not this thing festering inside her. Not the weight of each day that broke her body and soul.

The wind blew hard and her bare feet on the wet stone began to numb. She could put the knife into Lord Patrick, she could put the knife into herself, she could do both, or she could find another way to end her wretchedness.

#

Earlier that day the palace halls had echoed with the Earl’s voice bellowing at his son.

“This is your doing, Patrick! Damn you! Send word to Barnbarroch that he needs to find that damned Zetland pirate and destroy that letter, or you and I will both be biding our time in the king’s dungeon!”

There were few secrets in the Earl’s palace. Everyone in Birsay knew he wanted to rule Orkney as sovereign. His previous attempts had already gotten him four years in prison at Linlithgow, saved from worse only because he was the bastard son of King James V. Another treasonous act could cost him his head. The servants smirked; the Earl had no sympathy from the townsfolk who knew him as a greedy and tyrannical ruler. His son Patrick Stewart, heir to the Orkney Earldom, was more of the same and worse.

After the uproar was over, Lord Patrick had stalked down to the scullery to grab Brora and drag her into the laundry room.

“Stop yer caterwauling, you whoring bitch!”

He slapped her, then clamped his hand over her mouth and pushed her down. She froze, but he didn’t like that, not when he was angry, so he slapped her again and again until she fought back and bit his hand.

“There! That’s it! Fight, pretty! Come on!”

And then came out the fury at his father—Brora had suffered it before—and he was too busy at his task to notice that young Reynold, delivering firewood to the kitchens, had come to investigate the noise. Brora didn’t see the boy’s shocked face when he first came into the room but noticed his movements, then saw his disgust as he took up the laundry fork and lifted it above his head, pointed down at Lord Patrick’s heaving back.

“No!” Brora cried.

“Yes, you whore! Tramp!”

Brora shook her head furiously at Reynold then turned her head away from Lord Patrick’s wet mouth. When she looked back, Reynold was gone.

#

The Earl had departed, after his tantrum, for the castle at Kirkwall to meet with the king’s assembly. Lord Patrick commanded Brora to his bed that evening, had trays of food brought to the room, and bottles of spirits. He made her feed him as he wiped his hands and mouth on the bedclothes. Cup after cup he filled and drained, then pulled Brora open and over, time and again, until her brain deadened and her body screamed.

It seemed finally done. He began to drift off, mumbling, and she was at last left alone and about to slip away when he started up suddenly, yelling and stumbling about the room.

“The bastard has ordered me to send a message to Barnbarroch. Ha! I told him I would and I’ll tell him I did but I won’t! D’you want to know why? Because I don’t have to ask Barny to find the damned letter. I know where it is. That feckin’ pirate doesn’t have it. I have it! That’s right! I have the very letter that could lose the Earl his feckin’ head if it gets into the wrong hands. I have it!”

He took up a bottle and staggered toward her, his blousy shirt hanging open to his pale and bloated body. Now close, his slavering mouth sucked on the bottle then he put it to Brora’s lips. She gagged on the sour stink of his saliva.

“Why?” He became pathetic and weepy-eyed. “Why is he revered just for the title of earl? I’m cleverer than he. You see that, d’you not?’

“Aye, Milord. You’ll be a much better earl when your time ever comes.”

Brora knew this was a sore spot and it made him roar.

“Yer damn right I will!”

 She took pleasure in the pain of his insecurity, and spoke deliberately. “But his spies are everywhere, Milord. I saw Ylva cleaning in here today, poking her nose into your chests.”

Lord Patrick drained his bottle and threw it down. “Why would she do that?”

Brora closed her eyes. He really was as dim as a mud toad. She’d heard others laugh about it, that he couldn’t add numbers, couldn’t even recite the Lord’s prayer.

“It seemed she was looking for something. Maybe the Earl told her to search your rooms.”

“For what?”

She would have to lead him by the nose. “I don’t know, Milord. Have you hidden something the Earl might want?”

“God’s blood! The letter!” He lunged for his jewel box, opened it and fiddled with the lid then remembered, too late, that the servant girl was in the room. But when he looked up Brora was gazing out the window.

He punished her anyway—slapped her all the while cursing his father, then brutalized her again and finally fell asleep, his body splayed across the bed.

#

Her wood-soled boots clacked loudly on the stone stairwell despite her cautious steps. The servants were asleep; even the guardsmen were slumbering because the Earl was away. But even if seen she had every reason to be on the back stairs so late at night; they all knew of her doings in the palace. Still, she didn’t want a witness.

It would be several hours before Lord Patrick’s man would come to stoke the fire. He would see his Lordship passed out on the bed—Brora had thrown a blanket over him—clothes and bottles strewn about the room, and would let things be. It would then be well past dawn before he came back to wake Lord Patrick with a breakfast tray. Plenty of time to make good her escape.

The palace torches were extinguished on such a wet night; Brora had to feel her way along the outbuildings to find the wood shed. In back was the room where Reynold slept by a small fire. He shouted awake when the wind banged the door out of Brora’s grasp.

“I’m sorry to startle you, Reynold. I’ve come to ask you something.” She put down the bundle she carried. “First, I want to thank you for what you tried to do today.”

The boy’s face showed the same grimace she’d seen that afternoon. “How can he do that to you? Why do you let him? Why don’t you tell someone?”

He was three or four years younger than Brora and had lived a different life: a home with his family in the mining village until orphaned the year before when the tenements collapsed. The Earl had taken funds allocated for housing repairs to pay off his gambling debts.

“How am I to stop him from taking what he wants?” Brora said. “Who should I tell that would care? And what were you thinking? If he’d seen you your balls would be swimming right now in the pig slop!”

“You shouldn’t have stopped me!”

“And let you do murder?”

“I wouldn’t have killed him. Just put a fork up his arse.”

“Foolish lad. I have something much better for you to do and I haven’t much time so listen carefully.” She unraveled her bundle—Lord Patrick’s heavy woolen cloak—and pulled open a satchel hidden within. “I have an important task for you, if you’re willing. I know, because you tried to help me, that you’re a brave lad.” She rummaged in the satchel and pulled out a jeweled ring that gleamed brilliantly in the meager light of the fire. “This is for you, Reynold, if you promise to deliver something for me. A very important thing. You must deliver it to who I say and no one else, then straightaway buy passage on a ship to Aberdeen. And you mustn’t ever come back.”

Reynold’s eyes glowed with the colors of the jewels.

“Bring this ring to a moneylender in Kirkwall and don’t haggle the price. He’ll cheat you but will still give you more than you need. Then deliver the thing I will give you. Will you do this for me, Reynold?”

“Aye, I will!” he said, his eyes still glowing.

“Here then. Take this ring and keep it hidden in a place no one will find. Do you understand what I mean, Reynold?” She poked him. “Are you listening, boy?”

 “Aye, I understand.”

“And here is the important thing to deliver.” She pulled out a letter.

#

Stromness was thirteen miles away, an easy enough walk on a warm summer day. But tonight was a land-lasher blowing hard from the northwest, and very dark. She had to stay off the main road, slog through cow pastures and climb over water-logged hummocks. Slow going—it would take all night to reach the southern port and by then the search for her would be well underway.

Lord Patrick’s thick cloak dragged over the muddy ground and weighed her down, but its seal fur lining kept her warm. She found the footpath then lost it, slipped and fell to her knees countless times. She knew only by the clamor of the sea off to her right that she was still headed south. The rain fell harder; puddles sucked at her boots and filled them with icy water. There had been no silhouettes of the village houses along the way, it was that black a night. She couldn’t tell how long she’d been walking.

Then there was an emptiness, a black abyss before her and sounds of violent water far below, and she realized where she was—teetering on the sheer cliffs of the Bay of Skaill. Only half her journey done! It was a hard blow. She thought she’d been walking well east of the footpath and had passed the bay long back. Her knees buckled; she collapsed on the rocks and wept with weariness. The sea assaulted the scarps, thundered and hissed as the storm waves slammed into the deep-cut notch, a sound that chilled Brora, despite the warm cloak. This notch was the realm of the wicked finfolk, creatures of the sea who sang poems and lured people to their deaths, especially on nights like this. It was just an old fable but Brora knew plenty who believed, and now as the wind pummeled her senses she felt suddenly out of place, out of time, drawn into the whistle of the finfolks’ song. She quickly pushed to her feet and turned away from the cliffs.

And then she remembered the ruins. Skerrabra—a long mound of earthworks spread across the clifftops hiding a secret buried within, a village of ancient stone houses. Local folk had tunneled into the earthworks to expose some of the buried stone, creating a cave of sorts, a refuge for thieves and lovers. Brora skirted the mound and found the entrance. There could be trouble within, but she could hardly be in more trouble than she was now. Her dagger was tucked into her waistband.

“Is anyone here?” Her voice echoed into the depths. There was no response so she stepped inside, pulled off her hood and listened. The wind behind her was muted.

Just a few minutes’ rest, she thought. The blackness was complete, like blindness; the air felt thick. She heard small sounds—was it the wind or something within?

“Hello?”

She stayed by the entrance and sat against a stone wall. Here in this space, many thousands of years ago, people had lived and birthed and loved. And died. They dug rocks from the ground to build their homes. They wore animal skins and used tools of wood and stone. They had no proper shoes, no linens, never tasted fine foods. Their lives were better than hers.

But no more. Her gut ran cold with thoughts of what the coming day might bring—good or bad or possibly the end of her, but she promised herself she would never go back. If they found her, if she saw them coming, she would pull the dagger across her throat. She would never go back.

Her eyes closed for just a moment. The world dipped away and her ears filled with wailing wind, faint song, ancient voices urging her on—and she woke suddenly with the feeling that hours had passed. There was no way to know; it was still dark. She hurried on.

The wind was calmer but the rain continued so she pulled the hood back up. How would she explain this fine cloak and why it was soaked through and muddy to the knees? She would have to roll it and wrap it in something—her petticoat—so it would resemble a bundle of laundry. And there would have to be a story—an urgent visit to a sick aunty in Thursa, perhaps.

She hadn’t killed Lord Patrick but had let him sleep where he lay. She’d found the letter behind a false panel in the jewel box, and almost as an afterthought had dumped the contents of the box into a satchel that lay nearby. It was only later that she found, at the bottom of the satchel, Lord Patrick’s fat coin purse.

Brora didn’t fear for Reynold. They would be looking for her, not him. He would walk to Marwick after his morning chores then use the coin she’d given him for a coach to Kirkwall. There he would find a royal guardsman to complete his task and be safely on his way to Aberdeen by nightfall.

“Pass on the letter and slip away quickly,” she’d told Reynold. “But if they hold you just tell the truth. Name me if you must. It won’t matter. By then I’ll be gone or dead.”

She did fear for herself. There was danger ahead—the Earl’s spies were everywhere in Stromness because the town was a nest of seditionists. But it was a busy port, and with a bit of luck she might find passage to Thursa that very day. Once across the firth she would be safe; the Earl of Caithness was a bitter enemy of the Orkney Stewarts.

The rain finally abated and a few stars appeared. She trudged on, keeping a steady pace. Soon there was light in the east and Brora allowed herself to plan. She had coin, and she had wealth in the jewels folded into her undergarments. From Thursa she would take a coach to Inverness, then west for passage to Ireland. There she would seek sanctuary to spend her confinement and give the bastard away. And then—then she would truly be free.

The landscape emerged from the gloom, a scattering of smoking houses that brought drafts of morning fires. Birdsong threaded from the dripping bushes.

Brora considered what might soon happen, the triumph she’d feel on hearing news of the treasonous letter, of the Earl and Lord Patrick being dragged through the city and hanged at the Kirkwall Gate. Her step quickened.

The receding clouds, the bleed of daylight, revealed the wide sea ahead. There below was Stromness, its cobbled streets shiny wet, its upright buildings gray and stolid and steaming in the morning sun. And beyond—the harbor and the docks, already active, cluttered with waiting ships.