Outlander aka Cross Stitch - Gabaldon Diana (библиотека электронных книг txt) 📗

“Oh, he called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl, and he called for his fiddlers threeee,” I sang irreverently under my breath, eliciting an odd look from the girl Laoghaire. She was seated under a tapestry showing a hunter with six elongated and cross-eyed dogs, in erratic pursuit of a single hare.

“Bit of overkill, don’t you think?” I said breezily, waving a hand at it and plumping myself down beside her on the bench.

“Oh! er, aye,” she answered cautiously, edging away slightly. I tried to engage her in friendly conversation, but she answered mostly in monosyllables, blushing and starting when I spoke to her, and I soon gave it up, my attention drawn by the scene at the end of the room.

Harp tuned to his satisfaction, Gwyllyn had brought out from his coat three wooden flutes of varying sizes, which he laid on a small table, ready to hand.

Suddenly I noticed that Laoghaire was not sharing my interest in the bard and his instruments. She had stiffened slightly and was peering over my shoulder toward the lower archway, simultaneously leaning back into the shadows under the tapestry to avoid detection.

Following the direction of her gaze, I spotted the tall, red-haired figure of Jamie MacTavish, just entering the Hall.

“Ah! The gallant hero! Fancy him, do you?” I asked the girl at my side. She shook her head frantically, but the brilliant blush staining her cheeks was answer enough.

“Well, we’ll see what we can do, shall we?” I said, feeling expansive and magnanimous. I stood up and waved cheerily to attract his attention.

Catching my signal, the young man made his way through the crowd, smiling. I didn’t know what might have passed between them in the courtyard, but I thought his manner in greeting the girl was warm, if still formal. His bow to me was slightly more relaxed; after the forced intimacy of our relations to date, he could hardly treat me as a stranger.

A few tentative notes from the upper end of the hall signaled an imminent beginning to the entertainment, and we hastily took our places, Jamie seating himself between Laoghaire and myself.

Gwyllyn was an insignificant-looking man, light-boned and mousy-haired, but you didn’t see him once he began to sing. He only served as a focus, a place for the eyes to rest while the ears enjoyed themselves. He began with a simple song, something in Gaelic with a strong rhyming chime to the lines, accompanied by the merest touch of his harp strings, so that each plucked string seemed by its vibration to carry the echo of the words from one line to the next. The voice was also deceptively simple. You thought at first there was nothing much to it – pleasant, but without much strength. And then you found that the sound went straight through you, and each syllable was crystal clear, whether you understood it or not, echoing poignantly inside your head.

The song was received with a warm surge of applause, and the singer launched at once into another, this time in Welsh, I thought. It sounded like a very tuneful sort of gargling to me, but those around me seemed to follow well enough; doubtless they had heard it before.

During a brief pause for retuning, I asked Jamie in a low voice, “Has Gwyllyn been at the Castle long?” Then, remembering, I said, “Oh, but you wouldn’t know, would you? I’d forgotten you were so new here yourself.”

“I’ve been here before,” he answered, turning his attention to me. “Spent a year at Leoch when I was sixteen or so, and Gwyllyn was here then. Colum’s fond of his music, ye see. He pays Gwyllyn well to stay. Has to; the Welshman would be welcome at any laird’s hearth where he chose to roost.”

“I remember when you were here, before.” It was Laoghaire, still blushing pinkly, but determined to join the conversation. Jamie turned his head to include her, smiling slightly.

“Do ye, then? You canna have been more than seven or eight yourself. I’d not think I was much to see then, so as to be remembered.” Turning politely to me, he said, “Do ye have the Welsh, then?”

“Well, I do remember, though,” Laoghaire said, pursuing it. “You were, er, ah… I mean… do ye not remember me, from then?” Her hands fiddled nervously with the folds of her skirt. She bit her nails, I saw.

Jamie’s attention seemed distracted by a group of people across the room, arguing in Gaelic about something.

“Ah?” he said, vaguely. “No, I dinna think so. Still,” he said with a smile, pulling his attention suddenly back to her, “I wouldna be likely to. A young burke of sixteen’s too taken up wi’ his own grand self to pay much heed to what he thinks are naught but a rabble of snot-nosed bairns.”

I gathered he had meant this remark to be deprecatory to himself, rather than his listener, but the effect was not what he might have hoped. I thought perhaps a brief pause to let Laoghaire recover her self-possession was in order, and broke in hastily with, “No, I don’t know any Welsh at all. Do you have any idea what it is he was saying?”

“Oh, aye.” And Jamie launched into what appeared to be a verbatim recitation of the song, translated into English. It was an old ballad, apparently, about a young man who loved a young woman (what else?), but feeling unworthy of her because he was poor, went off to make his fortune at sea. The young man was shipwrecked, met sea serpents who menaced him and mermaids who entranced him, had adventures, found treasure, and came home at last only to find his young woman wed to his best friend, who, if somewhat poorer, also apparently had better sense.

“And which would you do?” I asked, teasing a bit. “Would you be the young man who wouldn’t marry without money, or would you take the girl and let the money go hang?” This question seemed to interest Laoghaire as well, who cocked her head to hear the answer, meanwhile pretending great attention to an air on the flute that Gwyllyn had begun.

“Me?” Jamie seemed entertained by the question. “Well, as I’ve no money to start with, and precious little chance of ever getting any, I suppose I’d count myself lucky to find a lass would wed me without.” He shook his head, grinning. “I’ve no stomach for sea serpents.”

He opened his mouth to say something further, but was silenced by Laoghaire, who laid a hand timidly on his arm, then blushing, snatched it back as though he were red-hot.

“Sshh,” she said. “I mean… he’s going to tell stories. Do ye not want to hear?”

“Oh, aye.” Jamie sat forward a bit in anticipation, then realizing that he blocked my view, insisted that I sit on the other side of him, displacing Laoghaire down the bench. I could see the girl was not best pleased at this arrangement, and I tried to protest that I was all right as I was, but he was firm about it.

“No, you’ll see and hear better there. And then, if he speaks in the Gaelic, I can whisper in your ear what he says.”

Each part of the bard’s performance had been greeted with warm applause, though people chatted quietly while he played, making a deep hum below the high, sweet strains of the harp. But now a sort of expectant hush descended on the hall. Gwyllyn’s speaking voice was as clear as his singing, each word pitched to reach the end of the high, drafty hall without strain.

“It was a time, two hundred years ago…” He spoke in English, and I felt a sudden sense of deja vu. It was exactly the way our guide on Loch Ness had spoken, telling legends of the Great Glen.

It was not a story of ghosts or heroes, though, but a tale of the Wee Folk he told.

“There was a clan of the Wee Folk as lived near Dundreggan,” he began. “And the hill there is named for the dragon that dwelt there, that Fionn slew and buried where he fell, so the dun is named as it is. And after the passing of Fionn and the Feinn, the Wee Folk that came to dwell in the dun came to want mothers of men to be wet nurses to their own fairy bairns, for a man has something that a fairy has not, and the Wee Folk thought that it might pass through the mother’s milk to their own small ones.