The man outside stamped and panted like Cearball in a huff, but Iylaine could not quite make herself believe that this was simply another squabbling interlude in the adventures of her husband and his exasperating friend.
“We should start with the bread,” Kraaia announced breathlessly. “What is its nature?”
She hurried past Lena without waiting for a reply. Lena turned to follow her and asked meekly, “What kind of bread?”
Ete and Aileann had been tucked into their beds, and now Aengus lay sprawled on the bench like a forgotten doll, limp from lack of stuffing, lolling from little fist and foot weights of lead.
“Oh, lord, don’t you look fine?” Lena cooed.
Even his grand new tunic could not have broken through Lena’s usual reverent timidity, Osh well knew, and the mere sight of him could not have provoked such breathless, blushing giggling.
Maire did not want to be angry at her girls, but she wanted to be something. Angry was the easiest thing to be. Mama had a headache: she had warned them. Mama needed quiet; they were squealing. Anger was the easiest thing to feel.
Wulsy was not in the court. Gwynn had scampered down the back stairs with such nervous haste that her spirit was queerly quenched to find it empty, like a red-hot iron plunged unstruck into the trough for lack of hammer.
Kilts. Kraaia counted four on her way down. She knew the one soft Gaelic-speaking voice for Aengus’s, but she did not think she had heard the others before. Then again, she had never learned to distinguish pigs by their grunts.
One-legged, lame, Malcolm toppled back against the chimney as if shoved.
“Where were you getting that?” he howled. “Where were you getting that?”
“Still raining?” Malcolm grumbled.
He only asked because something had to be said. He’d already lain a long while awake, sulking with his eyes shut, listening to the rain falling on the eaves.
“Sometimes I wish you were an ordinary girl.”
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