by Jules Watson
Maeve stroked her stallion’s dark mane. “He is a big lad,” she agreed. “And headstrong. When he was young he scared most of the boys off. That’s why I wanted him.”
“Of course. I heard that somewhere.”
It was disturbing to hear that clipped voice emanating from such a sweet mouth. What did I expect? Maeve expected nothing, because the sliver had been cut out of the world … her heart … as if it did not exist anymore. Unable to think, she blurted, “I can outrace all the warriors with him.”
Talking about horses seemed to soothe Finn. “He looks too heavy to be fast.”
“Not fast? He’s the swiftest racer in Cruachan.” The stallion’s ears turned back. “Yes, a stór,” Maeve murmured, stroking his neck. “Or perhaps it’s just the love for your mistress that gives you wings.”
Finn was staring at Maeve’s hand with an odd expression. She flushed, tossing her copper crown of coiled braids. “Nél is the one to beat. Father got him from a Greek trader from Massalia. He’s so light, he’ll outpace any mount as stocky as yours.”
“Ah,” Maeve returned with a smile. “Meallán’s legs are powerful, but also long. Look at the arch in his neck! He was bred from a Roman horse whose sire came from Parthia in the east. That’s why his coat is red.”
That trumped Greece. Finn’s eyes kindled, the sullenness in her face burned off by excitement. In that moment, she looked like a little girl. “Race me, then.”
Maeve recognized that thrilling mix of defiance and terror very well.
“Come on,” Finn cried. “If you think he’s unbeatable!”
With that impertinence, she wheeled her horse and trotted to a rowan tree that clung to the windswept hill, its withered berries picked out by the early sun. Maeve considered for a moment, then nudged Meallán to her side. A long pale track cut through the emerald turf of the ridge. “We cannot race up here,” Maeve argued. “It’s too dangerous.”
Finn’s flushed cheek was averted, her hands smoothing her horse’s dappled gray coat. “Surely you are not afraid?” Her voice was muffled by the wind. “Tales are told of your bravery all over Laigin.”
Maeve sighed and squinted along the ridge. “Very well, but don’t venture off that path. At the end, before the ground falls to the plain, two rowans have grown together. That is where we finish.”
Maeve gathered her reins. Meallán pawed the ground; Finn’s mount shook his head and pranced. With a startling whoop, Finn was off, and Maeve let her stallion have his head. The two horses streaked side by side, plunging up and down the hollows and rises as if sailing over green sea-waves.
They soared and thudded across foaming streams, dodging bare, bent trees as the riders lurched in the saddle. Maeve’s heart was in her mouth, though she had never been afraid on horseback before, her gaze locked to the perilous progress of Finn’s mount. Eventually, she had to drag it away to focus on her own ride. The freezing wind pulled her braids apart and flung her hair into her open mouth.
Only when she felt Meallán pulling ahead did she dare another glance, and was surprised by a savage look on Finn’s face. The girl was bent over, clenching the reins to her chin, and her mutters in her stallion’s ear now looked like pleading. Desperation.
The blow winded Maeve, and her knees fell slack. Meallán’s stride began to slow.
Finn saw him falter and cried out again. “Nél! Faster, a chuisle, faster!”
Finn reached the rowans first in a shower of mud-clods and threw her head back with a shout, galloping in a circle. Her stallion was pacing by the time Maeve walked Meallán up. Maeve’s horse was snorting, and flecks of foam from his mouth coated her hands.
She was about to speak when Finn hauled Nél around. The wind had also torn Finn’s hair free, and it whipped across her, the red-gold mingling with the stallion’s gray. Finn flicked it from her face and her eyes blazed out—the mask stripped away. Her cheeks were crimson slashes, her mouth awry. “Why did you leave me there?”
Undefended, Maeve vainly shielded her breast with one hand.
“You just threw me away, like you do your lovers …” With every word, Finn flung out her arms, making Nél prance on his back hooves, shaking his mane. “Aye, I heard the whispers of you in Mumu and the Ulaid—as did everyone who laughed behind my back. When you left, you made Father look an old fool, and me nothing more than a pup you kicked away when you got bored. My kin called me the spawn of Cruachan.” Her mouth crumpled and she yanked her hands so violently Nél reared and slammed down again, nearly unseating her. “You made me a stranger in my own home!”
The dead place in Maeve beckoned. She knew how to curl up in its dark and cold, blessedly numb. For if she faced this child, these memories, it would bring back the other lost one as well.
Her voice emerged without her will. “Did they wed you to anyone?”
Panting, Finn scowled.
“Then you are lucky to escape such enslavement. Insults mean nothing; that is the least of what happens to women. You have been …” She swallowed. “You have been blessed.”
Finn gasped and spurred her stallion forward. “How dare you say my pain is naught, when I have been waiting years to lay it at your feet!” She crowded her horse into Meallán and grabbed Maeve’s wrist, dragging them both off balance, her eyes senseless. “You will not baffle me with words or run from me again. Tell me why you left and never looked back!”
That touch was the thrust of a spear, instantly shattering Maeve’s numbness.
Despite herself, she ignited.
“Why I left?” She flung off Finn’s hand. “I was twelve when my father sold me to yours, Finn; a man five times my years! I almost died birthing you when I was younger than you are now! My father dragged me away, but you belonged to Ros Ruadh and he would not let you go.” She choked on it. “You were Laigin’s … always Laigin’s.”
Finn was gulping at the storm she’d unleashed. “Why did you not defy your father, then—or mine? You are fearless and willful—they all say that about you!”
Guilt was a fist sunk into Maeve’s belly, and all the fighting she had done, and all the tears, suddenly meant nothing. “If he had let me live, my father would have named me traitor; cursed my name and banished me from Erin forever. Would you defy your father to spend your life cursed and alone?”
Finn’s eyes streamed in the wind. “With me, you would not have been alone.”
A pained silence fell. “You cannot judge me.” Maeve’s voice shook. “Your father protects you. He loves you. Count yourself lucky for that.”
“Lucky?” Finn barked a laugh, dashing tears from her cheeks. “Everyone was suspicious, thinking I would turn out like you. No one wanted to be close to me but Father. No one wanted to know what I thought, or felt!”
There was only the sound of their harsh breathing, mingling together. Maeve scrubbed her face with the heels of her palms, resting them over her throbbing brow. Find the cold, the dark. “Be glad, then, you were not ground down by some grunting man, until you could barely remember yourself.”
Finn gasped again, dragged her stallion about and spurred him away. She rode straight into the rising sun, until when Maeve raised her head she could not see her anymore.
The women were still avoiding Maeve’s glowers at her bath the next day. The wooden tub sat at the rear of the women’s lodge on flagstones, near a hearth to heat the stones. This day the water bore a slick of oil of lavender, one of Maeve’s Roman treasures, and some of the tight buds bobbed around her shoulders.
Her wedding day. Again.
Knees up, Maeve drank in the steam, trying to let it warm her inside. The brethim laws meant no one could stop her—she was a freewoman, not a queen yet. Messages would still be flying south to Fraech’s kin like poisoned barbs, though, for this was not about marriage alone, as Idath and Felim would know.
Afterward, servants rubbed her with linen towels and applied honey balm to her skin, another working at the snarls in her hair with an antler comb. Maeve closed h
er eyes. This primping was familiar … having her glossy mane brushed out, being prodded toward an old man who would slap her rump and cackle, “A fine filly!” to her father.
It is different now. She just had to get through it. Her throat was parched. How would she speak loud enough for all the people to hear? “Wine,” she croaked. A maid held a cup to her lips and she gulped.
Her eyes flickered open. At high-sun she would hold the mead cup to Ailill’s lips like this. She imagined a horde of people all staring, and she standing distant from it all.
Finnabair, her thoughts whispered. Fair spirit, it meant. White ghost.
Unwillingly, a glimpse came of Finn haunting Laigin’s halls as a lonely wraith. Maeve batted the comb away. “There isn’t time, Niamh, you know what my hair is like. Pile it up and curl the ends, and no one will know it’s a bramble-patch.” Some of the women tittered nervously, but no one was fooled by her hollow voice.
That girl on the horse was no wraith, Maeve said to herself. Finn smoldered.
And I lit that flame. I lit it.
The wedding was held outside the temple of Lugh, with the lords who supported her in attendance, and restless masses of people on the churned-up meadow below. As befit the worship of Lugh, everything was chosen to dazzle, and capture the god’s light.
The audience was a muddy river of brown workaday clothes, worn leather, red cheeks, and windblown hair. The wedding party blazed. Rich things glinted and gleamed, their furs, their glossy woolens, and their jewelry.
The daunting Galeóin formed a glittering arbor of spears along the steps. Every part of Maeve was braced by unyielding metal and stiff robes of felted wool and heavy embroidery. She was a husk that moved and smiled beneath the dome of cold, blue sky, vacant-eyed as she lifted the sacred cup of mead, Tiernan’s voice droning in her ear.
When the battle horns blared and people cheered, Maeve realized with clarity that nothing made this different. Her father had trapped her with duty, necessity … and now she did it to herself.
Inside, her heart began racing, longing to sweep her out the gates. To fly after him over the silver lake to a distant shore that glimmered, far beyond the world …
She bit her lip and lowered her lashes to blot out Ailill’s smirk. Afterward, she fled to her bedchamber to disrobe.
A servant lifted off the gold headdress of scrolled leaves and bird-heads, and Maeve began pulling out pins. She didn’t care that her hair would be a mess for yet another feast—her skull ached. “That’s better.” She turned, massaging her scalp.
Finn had followed the servants up the stairs into the alcove off the sleeping floor. Maeve had not seen her since their ride—indeed, she wondered if she would ever see her again. Maeve was baffled as to why she was here now, after they had flung such hurt at each other.
Finn leaned on the wicker hurdle that screened Maeve’s bed, huddling into her arms. Her bold demeanor had been stripped away.
Maeve dismissed the maids. She glanced warily at Finn as she placed her bracelets in a dish on her wooden dresser. “Shouldn’t you be eating, or dancing, or having some fun in the hall?” Someone should.
Finn ignored the question, staring at the headdress on the beaver-fur blanket with a frown. “You didn’t look afraid.”
So she was in the crowd. Maeve held up a bronze mirror to hook a ring from her earlobe. There, she could watch Finn in its polished surface.
“Everyone looking at you, and you just stand there untouched.” Finn sounded frustrated. “How …?”
The glow from the little lamp made Finn’s pale face float amid shadows. Maeve was struck again by its familiarity. The clean sharp bones had yet to fully emerge from those plump cheeks, but the hints were there in Finn’s chin and the tilt of her eyes. It could almost have been her … before the etching of pain. At that moment Finn lifted her gaze.
She didn’t look young anymore.
The mirror clattered to the dresser. Maeve’s smile was tight. “I was raised to take part in such rites.” She took out the other ear-bob. “To help the people feel safe. I have been goddess, warrior, doting daughter.” Her lashes lowered. “Whatever is needed.”
Finn touched the embroidered mantle hanging over the screen. “And I suppose you have performed this ceremony before—more than once.”
“Well, there is that.”
Finn swung to her. “You were not afraid, but you were not happy,” she blurted. “You were thinking of something else.”
Heat flooded Maeve’s cheeks. Was that intuition some trick of shared blood? She rose, ducking to avoid the slope of thatch roof, and tossed a rope of amber beads to the bed. “For once this was my choice, so I am happy.”
“Your choice, and you pick Ailill?”
Maeve fumbled with the chain around her waist, an ache in her chest she could not ward away. What if Finn harbored dreams of a mother who would nestle her in plump arms, cook her tidbits, bathe her fevers? What if Finn were hoping she was not as the tales painted her?
When I am many things worse than that.
She could not stir up what was buried and still stay strong enough to survive. This was the Maeve who had endured, and this was all she could be: for her sake, for her people’s sake.
There was nothing left of anything else.
Still, she knew all about yearning, and hoping, and how bitter it was when a dream was shattered. She could not inflict that on Finn. Let her know about Maeve now, when Finn’s defenses were still braced like a shield.
“It is a rare sister who thinks highly of her brother.” Maeve’s hands dropped away, and she turned to her daughter. “I killed mine.”
The horror in Finn’s eyes was eclipsed by a slower darkness, which descended like the bleak fall of night.
CHAPTER 13
Maeve was trapped inside a bard’s tale, nothing but a listener in the audience as some other person’s story played out around her. There was a woman at her wedding feast, a bride to a rich prince of Laigin …
In the king’s hall, chattering people leaned past to grab roast beef, crisp-skinned pig, and honey-cakes from the low, carved tables. Laughter pierced warm air thickened with sweat, perfume, and charred meat. A drumbeat rumbled off to one side as a whirl of dancers blurred the flames of the fires. Lamps had been hung from the thick rafters, all of them blazing.
Maeve was surprised by the unconscious movement of her own hand as she poured more ale for Ailill. Her sleeve fell back, baring her wrist, and she stared at the stark veins. Her blood was beating.
Ailill gulped the ale in one swallow and slumped on her shoulder. “Need … sleep …” he slurred, wreathing her in fumes. “Wake for you … t’night.” His paw reached around to squeeze her breast.
Maeve snatched up a different jug, sloshing mead into his empty beaker. Blearily, he threw it down his throat. A chieftain on his other side shouted in his ear, and Ailill lurched toward him, letting Maeve go.
She sank back on the cushions and sheepskin throws and fixed her gaze on a bronze lamp before her, fashioned in the shape of a boat.
Her sight went out of focus and the flame wavered. Flickering, sinuous, it gradually blotted out the noise and stink of the feast, the rush of color and movement.
It was done now, for the children and women, the druids and fighting men. She had a husband, and an alliance with Laigin. She had riches to feast many warriors. A girl who already hated her now hated her more, but Finn must know what she was or suffer a greater hurt.
It was done. She would make them all safe from the clouds in the North.
This vow brought no relief, though, only a rawness that gnawed deeper the longer Maeve sat still. She topped up Ailill’s cup again, and he planted a wet kiss on her cheek and clapped the chieftain next to him on the shoulder, both roaring with laughter.
Maeve winced and leaned the jug on the table, which was stained with spilled ale and meat juices, the empty earthen platters scattered with bones. People flocked about their bench, bodies crushed on top of ea
ch other. Hidden from everyone’s eyes, her fingers drifted slowly to her lips and rested there.
A memory of his touch. The only thing of hers this day.
Ailill’s men could not carry him to bed, so Maeve asked them to cover him with furs and leave him snoring on one of the cushioned benches. Other warriors simply slid to the floor in untidy piles. The hounds sniffed about beneath the tables, crunching bones.
When everyone was beyond sense, she slipped away.
The feast had begun not long after high-sun, and she made her way along the last league of the trail to the lake as night fell. There she stood among the trees as the glow of dusk faded. She had to wait for daylight—and real life—to disappear before she could walk into the dream.
Step by step Maeve crept closer, until she saw the flame flickering through the ground-mist that rose from damp pools among the black woods. His campfire. She wove toward it.
Ruán was already on his feet by the time she stumbled from the trees. He did not lunge for his knife, though.
He knows me.
He recognized her without sight, when people’s eyes had been following her all day and seeing nothing of her. The throb of that was like a tide, pulling her over the dark grass toward him.
Ruán had dragged his nest of furs from the hide shelter to the fireside. Her blood coursing, her heart too full, Maeve glanced up to the spangled sky to steady herself, wondering why he lay under the stars when he could not see them.
He feels them … Hadn’t she watched him, drinking in the world?
Ruán wore a wolf-pelt she had given him. The shaggy folds were bulky, but she would recognize from afar the poise of the body beneath. His head was lifted high, chest proud, as he turned toward her. The firelight turned his hair copper. Maeve’s lips parted, trailing puffs of mist. She knew him, too.
“I thought you had no need of this place now.” His voice was soft, considering the violence she had last meted out to him.
Maeve halted. The world was so cold its frozen air seemed to have splintered, jagged on her raw skin. “I thought so too, but …” She faltered. But sitting there I couldn’t breathe, and now she is here and I cannot think, or feel … and there is Ailill … and Fraech’s kin … they will know by now, they’ll come …