THE tower’s entry hall was dim. The only light came from the ambient glow through the decorative windows, so it was difficult to tell how big the space was. The reflected sound, however, suggested it was massive. The hooves clopped loud as anything, and Merida couldn’t believe that no one had come out to tell them off. Horses! Inside a tower like this.
Perhaps there was no one to come out and tell them off.
“Maybe that man and woman were ghosts,” Merida said in a low voice. She didn’t really believe in ghosts, but then again, she was in a pact with two gods. Anything was possible. “How would we know?”
“You wouldn’t be asking me that if you’d smelled them,” Fergus said, as they pressed deeper in. “Spirits don’t have odiferous armpits.”
Merida believed him, but nonetheless, she found the lightless tower eerie. Intimidating. She’d spent many nights in empty landscapes, but darkness in the vast outdoors felt like just a consequence of night. Darkness in a tower like this felt hollow. There were candles and lamps on tables and fixed to the walls, but none of them were lit. The people who lived here had the option of light, but no one had chosen it.
“Ladies!” Fergus said broadly.
They had finally come across some women. Handmaidens, perhaps. Courtiers. Like the others, the women were dressed in feast-ready finery, but they were not celebrating. They simply stood against the wall as if they were waiting for something.
“Where is your mistress?” Fergus continued, his voice still jocular. His good humor was his DunBroch solution to this peculiar situation; he would be jolly even if no one else would be. “Where are the stable boys? You see we have to lead our horses through your halls for want of welcome!”
The handmaidens looked at him with an expression Merida thought first was contempt and then realized was apathy. Some of the women even turned away, posture bored.
Merida and her father exchanged a look. Hamish hugged the top of Fergus’s head from his position on his shoulders and looked worried. (Other things he was afraid of: handmaidens who didn’t answer direct questions.) Humor nudged the back of Merida’s hand, reminding her of the absurdity of the situation. Ponies in a castle. Handmaidens paying visiting nobility no mind. An empty town on a beautiful summer night.
After a long pause, Merida thought about it very hard and then asked the handmaidens where the king was. In French. Her French wasn’t very good, but Elinor had insisted she learn enough to speak to the nobles who preferred it as their courtly language.
And to her surprise, she was rewarded with a vague response: one of the handmaidens gestured limply deeper into the castle.
Fergus gave Merida a subtle, approving nod. Merida was strangely moved by the smallness of the communication, as opposed to his usual bluster. She’d never been unsure of her father’s love for her, but for once, she felt like he was seeing her in a way that he never had back at DunBroch: like an adult, not a child. Like an equal.
Deeper in, they found one flickering candle and, around it, a handful of soldiers. Like the others, they were dressed in absolute luxury, and also singularly uninterested in the family DunBroch. Eventually one of the soldiers directed them further into the castle, but no one offered even an escort.
“This is not the Kinlochy I remember,” Fergus said.
Finally they came to a great hall with a few torches lit along the walls. Now there was enough light for Merida to see how wealth had shaped this place. Fantastically carved tables had marble inlays. Floor torches had great gold feet in the shape of bird claws and fish tails and animal paws. Tapestries and banners hung from the high ceiling, each intricately designed and threaded through with gold. Musical instruments both domestic and exotic gathered dust on an elevated stage (Hamish stared at these).
There were humans there, too, but they seemed nearly as lifeless as the instruments. They curled next to the harps or leaned on the tables, dressed in the same jeweled finery as everyone else. Like the others, they also did not react much to the presence of foreign royals and horses right in their great hall.
Merida wanted to shout, What is wrong with you? but somehow felt it would be rude, awfully rude, more rude than they were being by not responding. It felt like there was something deeply wrong here, but to point it out would be unkind, as the people they encountered already knew it themselves. Their faces were so bleak and detached.
“Can we go, Dad?” whispered Hamish. “Can we just go?”
“Is it enchantment?” Merida asked. She thought about what she had seen at the rock at Keithneil. “Are they sick?”
Fergus said, “We need to find Ronald. That’s all that matters right now.”
In a library farther down the hall, they found a young man about Merida’s age, his chin on his hand, a book in front of him. The book had been open long enough to the same page that the ink had faded beyond reading, but he stared at it as if it would make sense.
“Rory!” Fergus said, his voice shocked. But he quickly became just as jolly as before. As her parents always did when faced with an unpleasant situation, he tried to turn it into something positive. He lifted Hamish from his shoulders and set him beside the desk. “Look at the height on you since last we met. Look at your beard. Where is your father, Ronald the king?”
This was the young man Merida been thinking she’d have to avoid? This was no potential suitor. This was a living statue.
Slowly, Rory lifted his gaze. Probably he had been handsome at one point, but it was hard to tell now, since his hair and beard hung limply around him and his skin was gray.
“We’re looking at the books,” he said. His voice had a recited, monotonous quality to it, as if instead of holding a conversation, he were repeating a poem or hymn he had heard many times before, one he was bored of. “We’re looking for those funds. We’ll get back to you. Take a table or a chair or sculpture if you need satisfaction before then. I’ll find you in the ledger. I’ll find you.”
“Rory, I’m not here about business!” Fergus said, slamming his big hands on the desk on either side of the book. “We’re here to have a royal visit of revelry and catching up! Don’t you remember me from that summer of fireworks? Where is your mother? Where are your kinsmen? Why is there no music, why is there no light?”
“There’s no light?” echoed Rory. He looked puzzled, and then he said in a dull tone, “We can’t afford it. We’ve had to give it away. Made a mistake in the ledger. Must have. Something marked down wrong. We owe everyone everything. Just take what you think you deserve.”
Coming round the desk, Fergus lifted Rory to his feet. “Get up, man. I don’t know what’s happened to you, but this is no way to handle it. Lead us to your father.”
Without even a whisper at this physical treatment, Rory just did as Fergus asked, his body stiff and unpracticed with movement. As they headed back into the hall, his eyes glanced off Merida and she shivered at what she saw. There was something flat and reflective about them, like an animal’s eyes seen by torchlight, and when the light passed, nothing remained but that dull apathy. He didn’t seem at all surprised that they were leading horses through his father’s halls. Instead he just trudged ahead of them without looking over his shoulder to ensure they were following.
Merida put her free arm around Hamish as they walked. She could feel his fast little heartbeat where her hand was against his neck, and it matched hers. Her mind wasn’t properly afraid, but her body was nevertheless prepping for an unseen battle.
They walked and walked, following Rory down vast hallways with soaring roofs. This castle! The tower they had seen was only one corner of it. The rest continued in great sweeping levels down toward the sea, which Merida could see out the windows. This dark maze must have been very grand indeed when Fergus was here, filled with hundreds of soldiers and traders and craftspeople and courtiers. They passed a room where children dozed with a nursemaid, and a room with a few elderly businesspeople slumped over ledgers, and yet more rooms of courtiers leaned against cushions and dusty chairs.