Hush: An Irish Princess' Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

face. “I hope he told them better than you do.”
    “He loved poor people. And women.”
    “All men love women.”
    “Like you know anything about it,” I say.
    “I heard Brogan. That’s exactly what he said.”
    “Brogan is a slave.”
    “So what?”
    “Slaves are ignorant, Brigid.”
    “You just said Saint Luke was a slave, and he became a physician.”
    “He was an exception.”
    “Well, then, what about Saint Patrick? Everyone knows he was a slave”
    “Don’t be absurd. He was a saint. All saints are exceptions.”
    “You call everyone I name an exception. That’s cheating, Mel. Slaves seem like anyone else to me. Some are ignorant and some aren’t.”
    “You make me tired, Brigid.”
    “I’m more tired than you. I want Nuada back. You couldn’t tell a good story to save your life.”
    “We’re not trying to save my life today. Did you forget?”
    Brigid’s eyes tear up. “Oh.”
    “I’m sorry I said that. Listen, Nuada will be well soon, and he’ll tell us lots of stories.”
    “You promise?”
    I push my hair back from my temples. Last night Isat in the sickroom and declared Nuada would be all right. But that was before the fever took him. Now I’m unsure of everything.
    “It’s all right,” Brigid says softly. “I hate false promises more than I hate bad storytelling.”
    We leave the library and pass a three-sided shed that exudes the stench of excrement. One monk presses filth on a calfskin. I know about this: the excrement loosens the hair. Another monk stands by a frame with a calfskin stretched on it and scrapes the last bits of hair off it with a knife that comes to a wide end rather than a point. They’re making vellum for the pages of their manuscripts. How beautiful works can start from such revolting slime is part of the mystery. Or that’s what Father says.
    We go out and sit beside a large stone cross with carvings, also in Latin. We wait and wait. The sun weakens.
    Finally Mother appears. She takes us each by the hand and we get into the chariot and go home. We don’t talk on the way. Soon Brigid is asleep with her head in my lap. I envy the way she can use sleep to escape. I have no refuge. Nor does Mother. She wrings her hands continually.
    As we cross the bridge through Nun’s gate on thenorth side of town, a servant comes running. I hold myself rigid against the news. “The fever broke.”
    Mother cries. I collapse against her side.
    Women’s work has prevailed.

CHAPTER FOUR C OMPENSATION
    Nuada is going to live. He’s awake now, though hardly lucid, since he’s plied with spirit drinks every moment. Nothing else can dull such severe pain. And he still cannot tell us what happened. He says he doesn’t know. An ax came down on his hand. He saw the blade. He saw his hand severed. That’s all he remembers.
    Still, he is lucid enough to enjoy a party, a celebration that he will live. That’s what we’re preparing.
    “On such short notice,” says Mother, “we’ll have to settle for a wandering bard.” Which, her face says, means a man of lesser skills. This is a disappointment, for poetry is the highlight of a party.
    “If you please, my queen, not so,” says Strahan. “There happens to be a famous
filid,
a poet of the noble class, visiting in Armagh.”
    “Indeed? Well, summon him immediately.”
    “Stories,” says Brigid. “Not just poems, Mother. We need lots of stories.
Seanchais—
storytellers. Nuada loves stories much more than poems.”
    “Of course.”
    Brigid is jumpy all the rest of the day. I admit I am too. I may be bad at telling stories, but I love listening. From
Samhain
to
Beltain—
November 1 to May I—we welcome itinerant storytellers, who give much pleasure in return for a meal and a pallet to sleep on. They help us pass the rainy nights of winter and early spring. Oh, this will be a fine party if only the slaves can work faster. Mother and I have to nip at their heels, there are so many blankets to rinse and pots to fill.