“I had made Ruar a promise, just after the Taiva, that I would help him regain Sorham. When he asked me to go north, to find out certain things, I could not say no. And I wanted to go home, Cillian. To Gundarstorp.”
“Older loves,” he said. “Older loyalties.”
“Yes, in a way. But my father is dead, and I have given Gundarstorp to Roghan — I never went there; it was too dangerous for him and his family. And Ruar will not ask me to go north again. But if I stay; if I take this position, am I still working to free Sorham?”
“Do you think I would ask you to forgo that?” Cillian asked. “Ruar marrying into Varsland is a beginning. It was in his note to me,” he added. “But I envision more than that. We spoke of it once. Private plans, I said. Do I need to remind you?”
“No. It is still sedition, Cillian.”
“It is. And because of that, only I can know all of it. I will keep the vows I made to shelter and protect, in this context.”
“Then there is something you should know. Unless Ruar told you this, too? About Bjørn?”
“Bjørn? No. Who is he?”
“My torpari-born son,” I said, watching his face, seeing the doubt. “Or that is what the world has been told. I brought him south with me, and he is at the Ti’ach na Asgaill. He is nine years old, Ǻsmund and Irmgard’s youngest son, sent to Linrathe for his safety, and only I and Ruar, and now you, know who he really is.”
Cillian sat back. “Is the older boy alive?”
“Yes.” I told him of the earls, and the meeting at Dugarstorp, of the plan to declare a regency in Bryngyl’s name. “I gave the names to Ruar,” I said. “Everything I knew.” I grinned. “I put them all to music, to remember them. I had to sing the songs to myself as I wrote them down, to remember.”
“There is more than one way to train a memory,” Cillian said. “Well done. What will you tell Druisius?”
“Blood runs high in young men,” I said. “Girls were part of my — investigations. I would not have needed to explore much further for there to be a child among our torpari.”
He nodded. “Lena will be told the same. I understand now why Ruar plans to arrive earlier than he had originally said. Will you be here, my lord Sorley, to join those discussions?”
All I had ever wanted, once, was to be a scáeli, and to be at Cillian’s side. I hadn’t counted — hadn’t realized, in my innocence — the cost. The danger of uncharted ways. “How can I say yes?” I asked. His hand clenched, the knuckles white.
“What is stopping you?”
“You have not welcomed me, Cillian, not properly.”
He laughed, deep in his throat, and pushed himself upright. He held out his arms. I went into them, feeling his hands tight on my back. He was too thin, fragile again after the winter’s pain. One hand went to the back of my head before he kissed me, his lips moving from mine to my hair. I didn’t try to stop the tears.
A few weeks later, I returned from riding the lands, evaluating flocks and the conditions of pasture with Anndra, who had been managing the torp competently. He also knew — as I did not — the exact boundaries, pointing out the standing stones and trees that defined them. We had more land than I had expected: a challenge to Druise and his torpari men to patrol.
At the stables, I heard Druise giving instructions. “Three horses, ready at dark.” He’d learned basic Linrathan quickly, as he had Ésparian. I left my horse to walk up to the hall with him. “I am riding patrol tonight,” he told me. “There is no moon, so the most dangerous time, and the men are not yet experienced. I will be gone until dawn.”
“I see,” I said. “Is there really a threat, Druise?”
He shrugged. “I do not know. But I have my orders.” He touched my shoulder, an innocuous gesture. “You could play xache tonight. Cillian has been very patient.”
He was with Lena and Gwenna, in what was their living room when he wasn’t teaching. I poured myself tea from the pot on the table, but I didn’t sit. I still had work to do, and I was still unsure of my welcome from Lena.
“So-lee,” Gwenna said from the floor where she played at Cillian’s feet. She pulled herself up, using my leg, and leaned her face against my knee.
“Fickle child,” Cillian said. I laughed. Lena stood.
“She needs changing. I’ll take her to the nursery.” Gwenna slept with Mhairi, on the girls’ bedroom floor. She picked Gwenna up, to a wail of protest, and carried her out.
“Does Anndra mind that you are overseeing the torp now?” Cillian asked.
“No. He says he’s relieved; it was getting too much for him. And I need his advice and his knowledge. There is much to learn.”
“And to teach?” A tentative note in his voice. “The game is unfinished.”
“If you are not in too much pain, we could play tonight,” I said.
“A little cannabium and willow-bark will ensure I can,” he said. “After this winter...well, there are times they are appropriate, so that,” he grinned, “my inclination to self-sacrifice does not hurt the ones I love. Druisius will not mind?”
“He rides patrol all night, training the torpari. He made sure I knew. But Lena?”
“She was angry because you left me. Why would she now object to our time together? Did she not tell you that?”
“She did,” I said. She had meant it, I thought. “Tonight, then.” I put the cup down. “But I must go. I have accounts to review and a leaky barn to inspect. Anndra will be wondering where I am.” I bent to kiss his forehead. “Until dinner,” I said.
“Until dinner. And later, Somhairle.”
Chapter 61
15 years after the battle of the Taiva
We walked along the clifftop the next morning, Gwenna and Druise and I, looking down at the waves breaking on the rocks visible only at low tide. Seals basked, stomachs turned upward to the sun. Seabirds cried overhead, and black-and-white sea-pies fed among the rocks visible at low tide.
“It is so lovely here,” Gwenna said again.
“But also cruel,” I said. “Those rocks have taken more than one boat, and they killed my father.”
“How?”
“He had waded out to try to help a fishing boat. A gale had blown up, out of nowhere, Roghan tells me, and the tide was rising. The boat had run onto one of the rocks and was sinking. My father was a big man, and strong, but a wave knocked him over. It is thought he must have hit his head, because he didn’t come up again. They found his body on the beach the next day.” Broken and torn by the force of the waves on the rocks, Roghan had said, but I didn’t want to tell Gwenna that.
“Oh,” she breathed. She slipped a hand into mine, to my surprise. A shout came from the hillside above us. Hairle waved in greeting from the back of his horse, then continued riding out of sight. “Where is he going?” Gwenna asked.
“To Pietarstorp, to discuss the price offered for wool this year.”
“He’s trusted with that?”
“Gundarstorp will be his one day,” I said. “And Hairle is a man, in Sorham’s eyes. I was doing the same at his age.”
“A man,” she said. She glanced up the hill again, to where Hairle had been. “This all should have been yours.”
“I gave it to my brother,” I said.
“But you still love it here.” She shook her head in frustration. “That’s not right. More than love, but I don’t know how to say it.”
“Dùthcas.” She looked up at me quizzically. “I can’t translate it,” I said. “Belonging is close. It’s as if I carry this place deep inside me, and I hear it calling to me, always.”
“Always?” I nodded. “Does my father know that?”
“He does.”
“Did he, when you were sixteen?”
Had he, the wanderer with no ties of blood and memory to field and fell and sea? You are home to him, Lena had said once. Not all knowing was of the mind. “Yes,” I said.
“He broke his oath so you could stay here. But you didn’t.”
&nb
sp; “He kept me safe,” I said. “I wasn’t disowned. Leaving was my choice.”
“To be with him.”
“Yes.”
“Druise said he isn’t a hero. But he was trying to be, wasn’t he? He thought he could keep you safe, and Linrathe, even though he was supposed to be working for Liam.”
“That,” I said with a grin, “sums up Cillian extremely well, Gwenna. A concerning tendency to self-sacrifice, I told his father once.”
She smiled. “Mathàir would say it is Catilius’s fault.” She glanced up at me, and I felt her hand tighten, just a little. “Sorley, are you and my father lovers?”
I had waited for this the entire summer, and now, with no warning, the moment was here. I heard Cillian’s voice: Do not mislead her. I took a breath.
“Yes,” I said, for the third time.
Chapter 62
14 years earlier
I should have turned left from my room, to reach the first exit from the building. But I didn’t. I let my feet take me right, and right again to the corridor where Cillian’s study was. Light flickered under the door. I stopped. My head pounded in time with my heart. No, I told myself. You are too angry. Keep walking. I continued down the corridor, toward the door that would take me out into the night.
Then I turned. At Cillian’s door I knocked, my quick triple tap.
“Come,” he called, just loud enough. I went in. He was contemplating the xache board, studying the game we had left unfinished. “Sorley,” he said. “Have you come back to finish the game? It was your move.”
I picked up a piece almost at random, moving it the requisite spaces.
“Are you sure?”
“Does it matter?”
He frowned a little. “You are still upset.”
“Yes,” I said.
He sat back. “Will you pour us both wine?” I did as he asked, but I didn’t sit. “How do I make amends?” he asked. “I was dismissive, I admit.”
I drank a little wine, for courage, although it would not help my head. “Before Druise left,” I said, “he came to talk to you. About me. I overheard much of that conversation.”
“I see,” he said. “I believe I remember the conversation to which you refer. What do you think you heard?”
“That in your eyes I am still a boy.” Anger blossomed again. “That I don’t know you, and that I need to be treated carefully. Still, Cillian? After Casil, after your illness, after trusting me with your plans? How dare you treat me as if I am a child?” I had never spoken to him like this. I could feel myself trembling.
The lamplight flickered. He picked up a xache piece, turning it in his fingers, his eyes hooded. I waited. His fingers tightened around the gamepiece. Deliberately, carefully, he put it down, spreading his fingers wide as he did. “You misunderstand,” he said.
“Then use your vaunted skill with words to enlighten me,” I replied.
“Will you help me up?”
I couldn’t refuse. I put my wine down, moving around the table to offer him my arm. He gripped it with one hand, the other grasping my shoulder as he rose, the action pulling me towards him. My arms went around him, instinctively; he mustn’t fall. Under my hands his breathing was shallow, rapid, as if he were in pain. Regardless, anger still seethed, behind the reflexive concern. Did he think an embrace, words of regret, were going to placate me? I stepped back a little, to say as much.
What I saw on his face stopped me. Not pity, or remorse, but something not revealed — not allowed, I understood somehow — since a spring night so many years before. Desire.
Anger became confusion, and then disbelief. He brushed the hair from my eyes with one hand, the beginnings of a smile on his lips. His hand moved to cup my cheek. I turned my head, joy and need rising. I kissed his palm, hearing his taken breath. “Somhairle,” he whispered, before his lips found mine, gently at first, and then not, not at all. His hand tightened on the nape of my neck. I moaned, my hands travelling to his hips, pulling him closer. His lips moved to my throat, making me shudder. “Do you understand now?”
I couldn’t find words. “But... you cannot... Lena.”
He laughed, softly. “Ésparias is not Linrathe. She is fully aware this moment might come, and she sees nothing wrong in it, although it has taken her some time to convince me she truly means what she says.”
I fought for clarity. “How can I believe...” If he decides the way I think he will, it is with my blessing. “She told me too, but I didn’t understand.”
“It is for you to decide,” he said. “To resolve, mo duíne gràhadh.”
“Why?”
“Because I have chosen twice for us, once at Gundarstorp, once at the Ti’ach. The third time decides the path: that is the saying. Or have I waited too long?”
I was not Gundarstorp’s young heir, nor the student of music newly come to the Ti’ach, not now. I was innocent of my desires and my needs no longer, and what might have been between us once was only a dream. But that did not mean all paths were closed. I could not stop the trembling that had begun in my limbs. “No,” I whispered. “Not too long.”
His hand moved on my back. “I am,” he said, “not capable of rugs by fires, now. Will you find the treatment bed...inappropriate?”
I shook my head. Words were beyond me. In the adjoining room, he indicated the door to where Apulo slept. “Lock that.” He was lighting lamps. I pulled off my shirt, helped him with his, my fingers exploring the skin of his chest. He covered my hand with his. “You do realize, my lord Sorley,” he said, “you will have to teach me what to do?”
Spent, still not quite believing what had happened, I lay beside him, my hand on his chest, his arm around me, sensation still resonating. He hadn’t needed much teaching. He kissed my hair, and I opened my eyes, smiling. I traced his lips with one finger. “I love you,” I said.
“I have been so unfair to you,” he murmured.
“No,” I said. “It had to be this way, Cillian. Or you would not have Lena, or Gwenna, and I could not ask that.”
“Nor I. She is as necessary to me as breathing.”
“Your greatest love,” I said, remembering. “She said...Cillian, she said she was afraid, a little, of...this. What might happen, as a result. But it won’t, will it? You would never hurt her.”
“Not even for you, no.”
“This is just the once, isn’t it? A memory to hold.” A memory of tenderness and laughter, and a singing joy. He kissed my fingers, not replying. Loss and gratitude twisted inside me.
“Oraiáphon convinced the god to give his love back,” Cillian said, almost inaudibly. “In all the stories, none said what was expected of her, in return for her life.”
“An offering, then?” I said. No surprise, and no hurt; only an encompassing peace.
“An offering. A thanksgiving, too, and an atonement, mo Somhairle gràhadh.” My beloved Sorley. I closed my eyes, breathing in his scent, willing myself to hold on to this moment. He spoke again. “But surely the god will need to be propitiated more than once.”
Amusement in his voice. I opened my eyes. “But how can we?”
“How many nights have you kept me company with music or xache when I cannot sleep? Why should we not find other ways to enrich those times; not often, but occasionally? A grace note in our lives, you might say, rarely played.”
A grace note. I liked that. “Will you tell Lena about tonight?”
“Of course.”
“And if she discovers she is angry, or hurt?” I asked.
“She assures me she will not be. But you are suggesting we cannot decide what happens between us, until we are sure of her reaction, now what was only a possibility is real?”
“Yes.”
“And Druisius?”
“He meant what he said.” All the overheard words made sense now. “Pragmatic Druise. We are good companions, and maybe more, but he stays for you and Lena, and his beloved Kitten now as much as for me.”
“Gwenna more than all
of us. Druisius has found his higher loyalty in her, perhaps.” He stretched, easing his leg. “Understand that I must follow the practices of the women’s villages before I return to Lena, and I must be with her, or where she can easily find me, each morning. We reflect each other’s vows, as best we can.”
“She will always come first. I understand. But the practices?”
“Before a woman returns to her partner, after Festival, the baths are required. She has asked me to do the same.” They had talked about this, planned for it. I couldn’t imagine those conversations. “That means I must go to them very early. But morning is some hours away.”
Chapter 63
15 years after the battle of the Taiva
Gwenna’s body tensed. From the corner of my eye, I saw Druise move a step or two closer. If she ran, he could reach her. Her eyes, wide and worried, were on me. “Always?” she demanded.
“No. Not always. Since the year you were born.”
She nearly threw herself against me, her arms around my waist. “I am so glad,” she gasped. “I was afraid. I thought — I thought what I saw last year was something new, and if it was, and other people noticed, we might have to leave the Ti’ach. And Athàir loves it there, and we are safe.”
“We’ve always been careful,” I said. I met Druise’s eyes over her back, making a face to reflect my bewilderment. He grinned, shrugging. “Or so I thought. But Gwenna, what did you see? Were we careless in front of you and the other daltai?”
“No,” she said. “Never then, and I have been watching. Only in front of me and Colm. He won't have noticed,” she added. “I did, though, the last time I was home. We’d had lessons, you see, on watching people, looking for what they were hiding, and I was practicing. We were having tea the day I arrived. You went to fetch Athàir another cup, and when you gave it to him, your hands touched...it was just how he looked at you, and you at him. I had seen it, between men, at the fort. And there were other times too, once I knew what to look for, but only when we are in our private rooms.” She hesitated. “Mathàir seemed unhappy, too, watching you. She doesn’t mind, surely?”
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