'My lady,' Murdo said, snapping himself straight. He turned to see her flying towards him, green skirts bunched in her fists, dark eyes flashing.

'A fine my lady! Look at you!' she said, exasperation making her sharp. 'Wet to the bone and muddy with it.' She seized him by the arm and pulled him roughly towards her. A head or more taller than the slender woman, he nevertheless delivered himself to her reproof. 'You have been at that cursed game again!'

'I am sorry, mam,' he replied, his man-voice breaking through the boyish apology. 'It's the last time, and-'

'Hare and hunter-at your age, Murdo!' she snapped, then looked at him and softened. 'Ah, my heart,' she sighed and released his arm. 'You should never let them treat you like that. It is neither meet nor fitting for any lord's son.'

'But they could not catch me,' Murdo protested. 'They never do.'

'The abbot is here,' Niamh said, tugging his damp, dirty siarc and brushing at it with her hands.

'I know. I saw the horses.'

'He will think you one of the servingmen, and who is to blame but yourself?'

'What of that?' Murdo replied sourly. 'It's never me that's going.'

'How should you be going? For all it is only ten and four you are.'

'Ten and five-in five months,' Murdo protested. 'Besides, I am taller than Paul, and stronger.' But his mother was already moving away. He stepped quickly beside her. 'Why is the abbot here?'

'Can you not guess?'

'It's the gathering,' Murdo answered.

'It is that.'

'When?'

'Ask the abbot,' replied Niamh. 'It's him you are greeting soon enough.'

They proceeded across the yard-a flat expanse of hard-packed earth enclosed on three sides by the barn and storehouses, and on the fourth by the great grey stone manor house itself. In all, Hrafnbu was as fine a manor farm as any in Orkney; the estate, or bu, had been in Murdo's family for five generations, and it was the best place Murdo knew.