Cearball speaks the language he can

“There’s green in them, no denying,” Cearball said. “You’ll be being the only man who cannot see the color of her eyes.”

He scarcely recognized the tautness of his own voice, for he was not a man accustomed to carrying on arguments with words. However, he could not simply stroll up and give the man the thrashing he deserved – not in this company, and certainly not before this innocent, unsuspecting girl.

The man straightened his arm and pushed himself away from the wall. He lifted his chin and leveled his shoulders, making himself a broad target, saying clearly without words: “Go ahead and hit me, if you dare.”

And with his crude Gaelic he said, “Excuse me?”

“Ach, Captain!” Condal piped up between them like a little seabird. “Have you met my friend Cearball? Cearball, this is my friend – ah… the Captain of the King’s Guard. Ead – Ead – ”

Her friend! Whose name she did not even know!

“Eadred,” the man purred down into her trusting, unsuspecting little face. “Call me Eadred, Connie, if you will.”

She dutifully peeped, “Eadred,” and curtsied slightly to the man, as though they had just met – which, give or take a few minutes, Cearball thought they had.

Then she turned to Cearball and instructed him, “Cearball, we must be taking care to speak clearly, for Eadred isn’t speaking the Gaelic as well as you or I. But it’s very kind of him to be speaking it, to make it easy for me.”

Very kind! To be humming and hawing after every three words, only to spew forth such a crude jumbling of bastard Gaelic as washed up on the shores of ports peopled by the riffraff of the world?

Very kind! When Cearball had regaled her all through supper the night before with his high, courtly Gaelic, such as had been spoken in the time of Conchobar and Cuchulainn; such as was taught at the knees of queens and princesses to the lisping little sons and daughters of Irish kings? With his lilting accent that made the girls of the world swoon?

“I understood,” the Captain said coolly. “I was only wondering what he was meaning by it.”

Cearball’s hands clenched into fists again. The Captain saw it, and Cearball watched his eyes as they glanced at one and the other. Those eyes had a color, he thought, and he could surely name it if he tried. Bog water. Pig bile. Cow shit.

It had been that hussy Flann who had told the man about the Color Without a Name, to be certain – the sort of wench who would shake her tits at a man the one day and shake her husband at him the next. He could see her running off to this red-​​headed creature – one of her lovers perhaps – to make a jest of a pretty, foolish thing said to please a little girl… and between the two of them to make a trap for the poor innocent, by making their unholy, lustful game seem the fulfilling of a prophecy to her.

And to think the girl was left to the care of such women as these! A fair little maid she was with her glossy hair and her unsullied dress, sitting all unawares beneath a swollen, blistering, maggoty mass of black fruit rotting on the vine. It might drip and stain her at any moment; it might fall and splatter her with unspeakable filth. Cearball longed to snatch her up and carry her to shelter – he thought he would, if only he knew where – if only he dared.

“I thought it was plain, Captain,” he sneered. His voice was firm, but he found himself breathless from unsteady panting. “Or may I call you Eadred? You’re making friends so quickly.”

“You may call me sir, lad,” the man smiled. “I’ll be a knight by the time you – you make up your mind to – to address me a polite word,” he faltered.

“You’ll be the Sultan of Damascus by that time,” Cearball muttered.

“You will?” Condal asked breathlessly. She had not heard Cearball’s remark. She had not even heard it and chosen to ignore it; the face she lifted to Eadred was pure as snow with her guileless earnestness.

“Sooner than that even,” the Captain winked at her. “Praise God.”

Cearball clenched his lips together in frustration. Could the poor girl not detect how false was the gentleness of the man’s voice when he spoke to her – even when she could contrast it with the cold, cocky way the man spoke to him?

“The sisters of you weren’t telling you that?” the Captain asked her. His cheeks suddenly flushed to an unhealthy shade of pinky-​​red, but Condal’s nose did not wrinkle in disgust as it ought. “The King means to knight me three days before Christmas this year.”

“He does?” Condal gasped. “That’s my birthday!”

Immediately her own cheeks blushed a beautiful, dusky pink, like a setting sun shining through the amber of her face. She feared she had said something silly – Cearball knew that feeling so well his own cheeks warmed in sympathy.

But the other man proved insensitive to such delicacy, and he merely laughed a bastard braying of a laugh and leaned himself carelessly against the wall.

“Ach! Forget all that knight business, then!” he grinned. “I’d rather be going to your party instead.”

Condal was speechless; the dismay on her face ought to have been plain. Perhaps, Cearball thought bitterly, a maiden’s discomfort was colored green.

She would be thinking that there were no plans for a party – indeed, the shy girl would be embarrassed by the mere thought that anyone could have a party in her honor. She would never reply in the way the grinning ogre had intended.

“She’s too young for flirting!” Cearball snapped at him.

The man straightened in a bound, and Cearball had to take care not to flinch.

“Excuse me?” he demanded.

“She’s too young for your flirting. To be coming back at you with an ‘Ach, but perhaps I shan’t invite you,’” he crooned, thinking of Flann, “and coy and cute and what have you. Leave her be! Did you get that?”

Condal breathed, “Cearball…”

“No, lad, I didn’t quite get that,” the Captain said coolly. “Why don’t you step aside with me and – and be explaining it calmly?”

He did not wait for a reply but immediately stepped aside.

Cearball hesitated before Condal, so astounded by his own outburst that he could not guess whether she would be angry or relieved.

Condal seemed to hesitate, too, and each stared for a moment into the face of the other. For that moment Cearball imagined she could see straight down to the heart of him, behind all his blundering, and see something like her own reflection staring back at her, with her own wide eyes, with their own unspeakable color.

For that moment, to his unspeakable relief, he imagined she understood everything, and he would not have to explain his way out of the mess he had made. He would only have to lift an arm and touch her, and tell her with his hand.

But it was Condal who stepped forward and laid a light hand on his arm, stilling it before it could move.

“Cearball,” she murmured, “after you explain to the Captain, I want you to go and greet Hetty. Not a word have you said to her yet, and she’s not likely to come out soon, for she’s a little shy and fears to walk beneath the mistletoe, I’m thinking.”

She had noticed. All the while he had tried to catch her eye, tried to get her to look at him or even simply acknowledge his presence by turning deliberately away – all that time she had been aware of his every move, even to his lack of movement.

“No shyer than you,” he tried to joke, but his laughter was stuttering and awkward. “I’ve not seen you go in by the fireside. If you had, I might have followed.”

“I’m too hot as it is,” she said. “Now go, and tell the Captain to go, too. You are both being rude.”

She laid a hand on his belly and pushed him off. He turned and tottered away on stiff legs, so mortified that he had already forgotten his adversary.

“I believe I’m understanding what you were trying to say, lad,” the Captain said softly as he passed, “but if you like, I’ll meet you outside later, and we can talk it out in a language we’re both speaking.”

“If you’re understanding,” Cearball hissed, “it won’t be necessary. And don’t call me lad!”

“Sir,” the Captain corrected coolly. “Excuse me.”