by Jules Watson
They set off—Maeve, her men, and ten rowers in a long blade of a boat.
The ocean was calm in the dawn. As the sun broke, the Stone Islands reared in three humps on the horizon, gray-scarred whales breaching from a dark sea. Maeve’s face was set to the cold wind. “What do you know of the druid Ruán?” Her tongue twisted on his name.
One of the fishermen spoke, his breath broken by the strain of the oars. “The gods returned the red druid, the islanders say, lady. The blight on their crops passes and they no longer cry from hunger.”
Maeve flinched as she was spattered with seawater. He had been her secret. No one else must speak of him. He could not walk in daylight, amid the noise and bustle. He was always twilight, soft and silent.
Waiting for her.
The Big Island was shaped like a wedge, the low coast facing east, the thick edge a wall of cliffs that plunged into the Western Sea. There, the fishermen told her, Lord Donn lived in a fort on the edge of a great drop.
In the sheltered turquoise bay where they disembarked, women were unloading creels of fish from long curraghs. Men knotted ropes, others gutting the catch.
The village was a shoal of tiny huts roofed with seaweed. There was a single ox to haul rocks from the sparse fields. Maeve unclasped another arm-ring, and she and her men were soon swaying in the back of the cart while a squint-eyed farmer drove the ox westward along sandy tracks.
The island was mostly treeless, grooved rocks breaking through the thin covering of sheep pasture. Lord Donn’s dun reared on the skyline, an enormous stone fort buttressed against the wind. It was guarded by immense walls, cold and forbidding. Ruán would wither here, Maeve thought, dazed. A barefoot girl was driving geese along the track. Maeve moistened her lips and beckoned to her. “I need to send a message to the druid Ruán.”
“The Red Man?” The girl pointed. “He doesn’t bide in the dun, lady. His house is by the spring.”
Looking around, Maeve saw that some of the breaks in the ridges were filled with green leaves, copses of hazels, oak, and rowan speckled with brown and gold. Of course.
Maeve left the men and cart on the track and made her way down a slope through a small patch of woodland. Despite the sun, she pulled up her hood with unsteady hands. There was a glade with a stone hut at its heart. Its door stood open. She approached, then saw no one was inside.
On the grass before the door stood a lathe, a bench with pedal and flax rope to turn a piece of wood against a chisel. Maeve approached carefully, touching the array of tools and the little curls of shaved wood. Slowly, she picked up a carving of smoothed oak. Although crude, already she could see life emerging, a suggestion of curves and rounded head narrowing at one end. A seal.
Maeve cradled the creature, her head bent over it.
A sound drew her back. Voices. The spring.
She crept along the path, willing herself to disappear into the dappled shadows and rustling leaves. A smaller clearing opened up through the trees. Springwater ran off the ridge and seeped down a rock face. It was gathered in a pool at its foot by a little well built of stones.
Maeve pressed herself against a hazel tree, hiding among its fluted leaves.
Ruán sat on the lip of the spring. His ruddy hair was longer, the tangled hanks held back by two thin braids tied at his nape. The sun hit his cheekbones, picking out the dips that ran to the bow of his mouth. He was lightly browned, the glow about him copper and golden now.
Silver no more.
The man and woman beside him were barefoot and thin, dressed in threadbare tunics. The man stood back, clutching a scrap of fishing net as a sack. The woman crouched, holding a babe on her lap and trying to make it drink from a wooden cup while an older boy clung to her skirts.
The babe squirmed, pushing the cup away. Even from where she stood, Maeve could see he was flushed with fever, his hair damp. All of them were hollow-cheeked, the parents weathered by salt and wind.
Ruán spoke to the woman and held his arms out for the babe. Maeve froze as Ruán nestled him in his lap, pointing into the pool and murmuring. The child stopped crying, gazing down at the water.
Absently, Ruán began stroking him from his crown down his back. Maeve could not take her eyes off his hands. As he whispered, Ruán paused to cradle the babe’s head, then the nape of his neck, and finally he spread his palm on the child’s back. The sunlight rippled, glowing brighter to Maeve’s eyes. A trick of the light, she told herself.
Except she had felt that warmth flow from Ruán’s hands when she was ill. She had felt it in her. She had to stop her body from being drawn to it now, holding to the tree trunk, her knuckles white.
Ruán groped for the cup and sprinkled something in it from a bowl beside him. He tried again to make the babe drink. This time the boy gulped, distracted by Ruán’s murmurs. The older child ran over, leaning on Ruán’s knee to gaze into the water. Ruán held the cup out, bestowing the same touch on his golden hair.
He placed the younger babe in his mother’s arms, and with a gentle smile proffered a package of leaves wrapped in twine to the father. The fisherman bowed, stowing it in his sack. Stammering their thanks, the couple swung their children up and plodded away down the track to the village.
Ruán bent his head, touching his fingers to his lips and then to the surface of the spring. He sat for a moment, face lifted to the sun, his shoulders sinking.
Maeve’s attention was caught by his blindfold. The stained deerskin had been replaced by one of brown-flecked wool. The edges were embroidered with blue sea-waves, and in the middle there was a spiral to echo the one on his chest.
Maeve was shaken by an urge to tear it from him, for in those stitches she saw another woman’s touch.
Ruán looked up when he heard her step, his face still soft. He thought her someone else. Maeve tasted bitterness, squeezed up from the black inside. “You lied to me.”
Ruán’s dreamy smile faded.
She stumbled closer. “I know the sídhe were there all along—you were with them all along.” She wanted him to deny it. She longed for it.
Ruán got up, uncurling with grace to his full height. His tunic was rough-spun, his trews scattered with shavings of wood. He wasn’t draped with jewelry and furs, but he stood as if he was. She wanted to see in him what she felt.
“My journey to the sídhe was not about you, but about me.” Ruán’s voice was deep and even. Distant.
Maeve’s throat burned. “You knew I sought them.”
“You didn’t need them. You won your hall, you gathered an army. News comes even to us here on the edge of the world.” That wry smile was so familiar. He lifted a shoulder in a shrug … as if he had never craved her at all.
“That is not the point.” Her words were strangled. “You lied to me, after all we shared.” What we share. She fought the instinct to hide her belly with her hand. He would know the truth if she even thought it, and she would not reveal that hold he had over her. Still, her weakness broke through. “I … trusted you.”
I only trusted you. If he had not guessed, if he had not seen it—when he saw everything—then he must not want it. Pride kept that turmoil silent.
But something was tapping on her mind. His tense face and curled hands formed a shield—but against what? Was he not calm after all? Her pulse skipped.
Ruán felt for the bowls beside the spring, his hair falling over his cheek. Tiny shells were threaded through the copper braids at the sides. Someone else wove those in, too. Maeve dragged her eyes back to his face, and swore his jaw betrayed a tremor.
“I did not break your trust, Maeve. I told you that every person’s journey to the sídhe is theirs alone.”
“You could have helped me! You could have shown me!”
“I showed you enough!” The roar stunned them both.
Stifling a curse, Ruán charged past Maeve to reach the path back up through the trees. She spun about and followed.
Ruán’s lope kept his feet low to the ground, feeling for the clear trail h
e had beaten in the sand. At his house, he hit the wall of mud and wattle, then felt along it before ducking through the door. Maeve came to a halt inside.
The hut was starkly furnished, with a fire-pit, an oak bench, a chair made of driftwood, and a bracken bed against the wall. Bunches of herbs scented the air, however, and amulets of stone, shell, and wood hung in the breeze by the door. Maeve caught a pearl shell in her hand, carved into a glimmering fish. There were otters, deer, and gulls shaped from memory, from yearning.
Ruán gripped the back of his chair, using it as a barrier. “This is my home. You cannot charge in here without my leave.”
Maeve did not trust herself to answer, her eyes stinging.
He sighed, lowering his shoulders. “Because of me, you gained the anam of the otter and defeated your brother. I walked the dream with you and saw the ambush. I drew the fever from your body. What more could you want from me, Maeve?”
“The truth.” Her voice cracked. “For once, for someone to not hold anything back.”
His laugh was bitter. “And you did not hide yourself?” He moved to the shelves pegged to his wall, fingering a row of little stone carvings, his hands restless. “This fire in you overrides everything, and so I could not expose the sídhe to you. I could not let you drive them away.”
Maeve lifted a hand and dropped it. “But … that is not all I am.” Did he not remember the warmth of the furs, the whispers in the darkness?
“It doesn’t matter.” He drew a breath, drawing straight. “I know now they are beyond your power and mine, and did not need my protection. And I did tell you truth—you have to bare your heart to the sídhe. I cannot deliver them to anyone.”
The meaning in his words slipped from Maeve, drowned by desperation. She saw herself with a sword raised against an Ulaid warrior, his blade smashing hers. She imagined strength surging through her, because behind her at the lake Ruán waited. There, amid the peace and beauty was … love. Something for herself, alone, that gave her a reason to survive.
She was eclipsed by a terrible bleakness. It was only a dream. There was nothing for herself, now, on the war-path to the Ulaid.
Her ragged breaths echoed off the roof, and Ruán frowned. “You told me I would do a service to you, Maeve, and you saw true. My fate was to help you to power.” He wet his lips and swallowed. “And so it has been fulfilled.”
His face was closing in again—he sought to shut her out. Maeve flung herself on the chair and grabbed his hand. “I don’t believe you. The people here offered you something you missed, shelter, belonging … I don’t know. But I will give you all of that.”
And you will stay long enough to come to love me, too.
There was a white line around Ruán’s mouth, his forearm like iron. “What could I ever be in your world: the blind, scarred bedmate of a queen? It would taint you, weaken your power with the warriors. Would you give up all you’ve won, Maeve, for me?”
Yes. It went to fly from her heart, gloriously free.
But at once it was caught in the cage of her ribs. The lords would cry against her bringing what they saw as infirmity into the king’s hall, and demand a leader who was pure. The warriors and crafters would think their goddess Macha lost to them. The Ulaid would crow that they were weakened. The derbfine would splinter, turn their swords on each other and forget Conor creeping up behind them.
She must hold them all, somehow.
Maeve hesitated only a moment, but Ruán smiled.
She knelt up on the chair. “You could join the druids at Cruachan.” Her voice shook.
“I am needed here, by good people. I can make a difference, as I wanted to long ago.” He lifted his head, as if drawn by the power of the spring.
The longing in his face, the tenderness, pierced her. “We could live by the lake. I would protect you with my life.”
“I do not need your protection.”
“Then stay there alone! I’ll give you land, build a house. No one will ever come there but me.”
Without warning Ruán’s hands gripped her cheeks, dragging her toward him. “You saw me as part of the Otherworld, but they tell me I must be a man in Thisworld now. And I am starting to discover what I can do for my people.” He shook her. “Maeve, let me be!”
The back of the chair pushed the air from Maeve’s lungs. She drank in every pore on his face, every speck of stubble. He smelled of thyme, and there was sand in his hair.
Nothing else of them touched but their swift breaths … and yet still, his lips parted at her nearness.
A footstep outside made Ruán spring away from her. By the time a slight, fair-headed woman tripped inside, Maeve was backed against the wall near the door, Ruán by his hearth-bench.
“My lady!” The woman bobbed her head.
The braids about her crown had once been golden but were faded now, like barley cut from the stalk. Her hazel eyes were still shrewd, but for the rest, she was salt-dried like all the people here, her face shrunken, the harsh sunlight off the sea carving deep lines around her eyes.
The woman’s wind-scoured cheeks grew even redder. “I heard you had blessed us with a visit, my lady, but we have no comforts here for a great queen, and—”
“Orla.” Ruán was composed, sinking to the oak bench. “The queen only came to thank us for our care during her sickness. She knows we were not expecting her.”
Maeve was glaring at him when she realized this other woman could see her. She folded her trembling hands in her sleeves. “Yes, please do not distress yourself. This is a sudden visit.”
Orla clucked, shaking her head and spooning porridge from a fire-pot nestled in the coals at the edge of the hearth. Despite her frazzled manner, she cast sharp glances at Maeve. She bobbed and held out the steaming bowl. “Please, mistress, sit and eat.”
As if she had the right to invite someone to this home. “Thank you, but I am not well after the journey.” Maeve could not keep her furious gaze from flying to Ruán.
Orla approached him. “You have it, then,” she murmured. “You’ve been with the fisherfolk all morning.” She nestled the bowl in Ruán’s lap with chapped hands, pressing a spoon to his fingers and muttering about drafts.
Ruán smiled at her as he set it aside. “I’ll have it in a moment.”
Maeve thought she might be sick again, and wished she would not. She scrutinized the room. There were no spindles or loom, no quern-stone for grinding grain, no needles or cloth. One wooden cup, one bowl. This Orla was not his woman. Yet.
Orla set herself behind Ruán. “I am sorry we do not have better food,” she mumbled, eyes cast down. “We are humble folk here, but Lord Donn enjoys all the comforts you are used to. Shall I send a girl to tell him you’re coming?” Her little red hand crept onto Ruán’s shoulder.
Maeve could not take her eyes off it. “No,” she managed. “I will go myself.” Only then did she realize she could not say anything that would make any difference. Queen Maeve could only be here to thank Ruán for rendering her a service. And he didn’t seem to want anything more.
She dipped her head to Ruán. “I hope you find what you need here. I do, truly, only wish that for you.” She glanced at Orla, and caught a hint of triumph about the woman’s cracked lips. Defeat settled over Maeve. “Good-bye.”
She had just crossed the threshold when Ruán caught her outside, staying her by the wrist. The sun poured over them, blotting everything else out. Maeve looked at the glinting hairs on the back of his hand.
“To win your victory, ceara, be brave enough to face yourself. Something whispers to me that you must know your own heart to understand that of others—and that will win you freedom.” Ruán’s nostrils flared. “I fear you are in grave danger if you don’t heed me.”
Her scalp rippled. He called her ceara.
And he bade her go.
Crushing her pride, she let herself touch his cheek. There was a rime of salt on it; this island was claiming him. She wanted to rub it away, draw his mouth to hers so
there were no words. “As you said, I won my army. That is all I can rely upon now. But I do … thank you … with all I have in me.”
His lips thinning, he nodded. She thought he was paler now, that something else hovered that he might say.
If he begged her now, could she turn from her duty to her people, as Deirdre did? Break faith with those who trusted her … watch them die … be rotted by shame and pain, forever?
But Ruán did not ask. He released her wrist so slowly she did not sense the moment their flesh parted, until the cold breeze blew across her bare skin.
At the lip of the dell she paused and without thinking lifted a hand to him. Ruán remained at the door, unmoving.
Maeve turned, and her hand curled into a fist at her side. “We will return home now,” she said to her men. She could not stay a night in this place of jagged rocks and harsh sea-wind.
There was only one path left to her now, and it ran north.
The Ulaid.
By the time Maeve and her men clambered out of the curragh, dark had nearly fallen. The low black clouds pressed on her breast so that she could hardly breathe.
They led their horses behind the fisher huts and into a rolling expanse of bare rock, bog, and black pools. Maeve suddenly halted, thrusting Meallán’s reins into the hands of her nearest guard. “Go, all of you, over that rise, and wait for me.”
Exhausted, they did not argue, casting fearful glances at her before hastening away with the horses.
Standing on the brink of a dark lake, Maeve watched them go, trembling from feet to head. There was no place to hide in this blasted landscape, only pockmarked rocks and a black sky that began to weep rain on her head.
Alone, she collapsed on the peaty ground, her elbows braced above the opaque water, her head hanging. The single cry that came from her was swallowed by the cloying mass of moss and sedge beneath her knees.
Dark disgorged to dark.
Maeve drove Meallán and her men home through curtains of rain that followed them from the sea. She let it run in rivulets down her face and did not wipe it away. The stone of the islands had seeped into her body.