Free Veil of Time by Claire R. McDougall

told.
    For a minute he chews around the word gold, then lifts my hand and points to my wedding ring.
    “Yes,” I say, “gold.”
    Communication has taken place. We have a word in common.
    He turns back to Sula and says, “Or. Gold.”
    He places his filthy hand on my chest. “Wiffman.”
    “A’bhean,” says Sula.
    “Woman,” I say.
    Oeric shakes his head.
    Sula places her hand on Oeric’s chest. “Fir.”
    “Mann,” he says.
    “Yes,” I say, “Man.”
    I look into Oeric’s square face with the cleft chin, but I understand not a word when he starts to talk in what must be Saxon. After all, hundreds of years separate modern English from Chaucer, and The Canterbury Tales was hard enough. I gesture with my hands that he is making no sense to me.
    Oeric gives up and goes back to Sula, shaking his head. They must be concluding that I am not from South of the border, if the border during these times even exists. In their talk I pick up the words Frank and Goth .
    “No,” I say. “I’m Scottish!”
    Sula leaves with the Saxon and doesn’t come back as before. I lay myself out on the narrow ledge as much as I can with the blanket around me. It has been a long day, too much pissy liquid, and I have to close my eyes against the smoke. How I sleep in a dream that is already in sleep is another thing I don’t ponder until later, but when I do awake alone in the cell, the candles are out, and the only faint light comes from outside. The door is unlocked, and things have quieted, so there is no one to notice me run onto the top of the hill, not even Fergus. The fire is down to embers and the sudden odd flare. Behind me, at the rim of the hills, the sun is forcing a band of light on the eastern sky.
    I follow the sound of waves and stand over the cliffedge, line my toes along the rim, and look down, as I have on so many occasions in waking. It has never made any sense to me that if Dunadd was such a central port, the boats had to stop miles away in Crinan Bay or follow the river upstream. And no wonder it made no sense, because here’s the reason why: tonight the breeze that runs against the underside of my shirt, up my neck, and against my lips is salty. Down below me, in the time of Fergus, in my dream, the Atlantic Sea does not stop out in Crinan Bay as it does in my time. Tonight the waves are crashing right against the side of Dunadd fort.



7
    T here’s no full moon and there is no sea as I pick my way down the trail to the car park at the base of Dunadd hill. I stop by the stile, incline my head towards the black ceiling of night, trying to pick out a constellation: the Plough, Orion, the Pleiades. Tiny pinpoints of light coming at me from distances too vast even to think about. But I’ve been on the fort for hours, and I need to sink into a hot bath. It’s when I’m up to my ears in warm water that I think about Fergus. I see him crouched beside me with his dirty fingers in my water, with that quick smile of his and the glance away. If his hands were really here, I might pick them out of the water and kiss each one and then lay them against my heart for that part of me that is still living. And then I would let hishands go, to see if there is more than pain in his look. I would hope that there was longing and that the water would turn cold long before we unraveled ourselves and realized what we had done.
    With only half the medication in me, I awake the next morning with a nice clarity. A morning cup of tea in my window, watching the river run, makes me hum something from my childhood or my children’s, there’s probably not much difference. I sigh with my head against the top of the chair as my thoughts begin to play with this Fergus character of my dream. I lift my hand to smell if there is any trace of him left. But logic rushes to inform me that dreams leave no trace on the skin.
    I feel foolish for conjuring my medieval knight, but it has been a very long time since I longed for the touch of any