Down he plunged. His long hair drifted in soft swathes, and bubbles of every size swarmed up around him like a cage wrought of pearls. He swam and kicked, then arrowed upward until his head broke the surface. His boat floated nearby. With a toss of his head, he flicked the wet hair from his eyes before striking out for his vessel and hoisting himself back on board, dripping. A sharp chill stung his flesh all over, but his purpose had been achieved. He had washed off the filth of the curing hut.
Yet he could not rid himself of the taint of the fight. He was deeply ashamed of striking the son of Earnán and wished he might rinse it from his memory as easily as he had rinsed his clothes.
Eoin refused to consult Cuiva Stillwater about his injuries. “I’ve nought but a few scratches,” he said roughly to Tolpuddle, “which the Ashqalêthan clown would not long have boasted of had you not come between us.” Drawing shallow breaths to forestall the stabbing pain of a cracked rib, he added, “But you can row me home, since I see you’ll not be content otherwise.”
Tolpuddle rowed him home with surprising proficiency, haphazardly bandaged his head with a torn rag, and left his ungrateful patient with only his yellow retriever, Sally, for company.
After noon, Sally barked a warning. Jarred came to the door. In his hand he bore a package.
“I have brought you some herbs and bandages,” he began.
Eoin hurled a stool at him. Misaimed, it hit the doorjamb and slid to the floor. “Get thee hence!” hissed the eel-fisher. “Get from my house and never come here again!”
Without another word, Jarred placed the package on the doorsill and departed.
At sunset, Lilith stood on the threshold, stooped to pick up the package, and entered Eoin’s door. The hound greeted her with a flourish of her feathery tail, and Lilith stooped to caress the blond head.
Pale gold pencils of light gilded the table in the center of the main room, limned the wooden stair spiraling up to the loft, and embellished the back of the rocking chair in which Eoin slumped. Loosely he grasped the stem of his pipe. Opaline ribbons of fragrant smoke twined upward from the bowl, forming a flowing knotwork of patterns. Lilith took note of her stepbrother’s closed eye, plump and purple as a plum, his other eye swimming and bloodshot, his bandaged head, his split and blackened lip. Her own eyes were two amethyst wells of tears. That she should see him in such a sorry state exacerbated his humiliation.
Without preamble, Lilith put the package on the table and said, “I beg you to repair this quarrel with my husband. He has told me what took place, and I am desolate. Jarred is contrite. He wishes to make amends.”
It came to Eoin that she was unaware of the depth of his hatred.
“Make amends?” he repeated, speaking thickly, as though his tongue was cooked. Two gory pits gaped in his upper row of teeth. “He presumes to speak of making amends! If he comes nigh me again, I’ll unstitch him from chin to gizzard, I swear. He’s brought nothing but ill fortune to the Mosswells.”
“Prithee!” cried Lilith, dismayed. “Will you not for my sake resume your tolerance of my husband? If you knew how distraught he is—”
“I know how distraught you are,” spluttered Eoin, “and all for love of that calamitous drone, that conceited, arrant recreant you call ‘husband.’ It sickens me to see you plead for such an unworthy wretch. I’ll suffer it no more.”
With that he threw down his pipe and stormed from the house, staggering a little as he crossed the floating staithe to the islet. Sally bounded after him. Through the open door, Lilith saw her stepbrother disappear into the apple grove, heading toward the walkway which led to the cruinniú.
Left alone, she seated herself at the table with her head in her hands. The burned hand of despair held her in its grip. Lying on the floor, Eoin’s pipe went out.
The evening frog chorus had begun. Rapid tk-tk-tk-tk calls mingled with high-pitched ringing tching … tching … tchings and a long, harsh kra … a … a … a … ack. The sun, which had been hovering like a wan bubble over the western treetops, subsided. Shadows stole into the main room of Eoin’s cottage. Atop the gable, the weather vane squeaked.
And footsteps came to a halt on the landing stage outside.
“Who’s there?” said Lilith—or rather, she tried to say, but the words would not issue from her parched mouth and all that came forth was a whispering croak like a frog’s. A velvet cushion seemed to be beating her about the temples.
She went to the door and looked out. No one was there.
“Who’s there?” she said, more clearly now; there was no reply.
Faltering, she stepped back to the table and grasped its corner in case she should be overwhelmed by the unforeseen feebleness that had enveloped her limbs.
Out on the staithe, three footfalls approached the door and stopped at the threshold.
Terrified, Lilith almost ceased to breathe.
The frogs symphonized as before, and sunset’s afterglow illuminated the heliotrope sky of the cloudless evening.
But there was a vacancy at the door.
Lilith retreated all the way up the spiral stair to the loft, too scared to venture near the portal. With shaking hands she found Eoin’s tinderbox and set fire to every candle and lamp she could find in this eyrie, as if banishing darkness would ward off fear. For a while she believed she had succeeded, but she was unable to summon the courage to peer into the lower chamber. She sat very still, hoping ardently that Eoin might return.
Downstairs, a prolonged silence waited.
Then the steps resumed. Having entered the house, they suddenly circled the table like someone running and began to come up the steps toward her, two at a time, pounding with such weight as to make the treads groan. The lamplight still filtered thinly down the stair; she saw nothing approaching, heard only the steps.
The loft’s window beckoned. She sprang toward it but stopped short as if someone had clapped a hand on her shoulder. Without daring to turn around, she whispered, chokingly, “What is it? Who is standing behind me?”
Then she fell to the floor in a fit.
Jarred found his wife lying in a swoon on the floor of Eoin’s loft. As he bore her across the islet to the Mosswell cottage, her butterfly eyes opened.
“Lilith,” he said, with such a weight of tenderness in each syllable. They entered the house, and he laid her on the pallet by the hearth.
“Do not be distressed,” she said, reaching up to caress the straggling locks of his cinnamon hair as he kneeled beside her. “’Twas merely a bout of weariness. As you see, I am now hale, as before.”
But Liadán’s daughter knew full well the ancestral curse had found her out at last.
In that very hour, Eoin returned to his abode. Cuiva Stillwater, having heard news of his predicament, came and tended him despite his unwillingness and ill humor.
“White Carlin,” he grumbled, “’tis that jackanapes from Ashqalêth you should be nursing. I thrashed him soundly enough.”
“Then he heals quickly,” said Cuiva, “for I’ve seen no mark on him.”
Eoin scowled, peering at the young carlin from his rheumy and red-veined eye.
The act of wielding oars, continual bending forward and hauling back, was to a man with cracked ribs remarkably similar to being repeatedly gored in the side with a knife. Eoin was, however, fit enough to stand and propel his punt with the long pole. At the first opportunity, he returned to the curing shed. Suibhne Tolpuddle had been there before him and cleaned the place as best he could. He had lined up the tools of butchery on the remains of a workbench. Two gutting knives were among them. Eoin picked them up, examining them with his good eye, testing their blades. “Sharp and strong,” he muttered, gouging an X-shaped furrow in the wood of the bench, “and yet I could swear …” A vision snapped open and shut in his mind: that of a blade piercing Jarred’s throat. His head ached. He recalled that a blow to the skull could make a man see strange things. He also recalled the amulet of bone Jarred wore around his neck. With a shrug
and a curse he threw down the knives and hastened from the wreckage.
Tolpuddle and others among his comrades helped Eoin move his house to a new mooring, farther from the cottage of Earnán. Before he left, his grandmother visited him.
“You must be reconciled with Jarred,” she told him, “else I fear worse harm may come of it.”
He remained stubborn.
“You are grown somewhat arrogant, a garmhac,” said Eolacha. “Perhaps it comes from living so long as a man of means. Do not allow wealth and comfort to lead you astray.”
“I will not,” said Eoin, avoiding her penetrating gaze.
“That which appears easily may disappear just as easily,” said Eolacha.
Her grandson shuffled his feet.
“I know you are a hard worker and a canny merchant,” said Eolacha deliberately, “and I am aware that chance favors you in your games of dice. But work and trade and gambling do not entirely explain your consistent accumulation of wealth.”
A furtive look stole into Eoin’s unwounded eye.
“Have you ever heard,” Eolacha went on in a speculative tone, “tales of folk who, having performed a good turn for some seelie wight, are rewarded with one or two gold coins every day for the rest of their lives?”
“Hush, a seanmháthair!” Eoin said suddenly, darting nervous looks into the shadows festering in the corners of the room. “We must respect the secret ways of wights. Who knows but eldritch ears might be listening even now as we speak!”
“Which ought not to bother us,” returned the old woman, “since we have no secrets to keep. However, if I were one of those folk receiving the benevolent daily gift of a grateful wight, I should fain keep altogether silent on the subject.” She leaned closer to her grandson. “Because, as everyone knows, wightish gifts cease instantly if their source is revealed.”
He stared pleadingly at her.
“Everyone does know that,” he choked.
“The sun is low in the sky and I must be getting back,” said Eolacha. Raising her voice, she announced, “I am sure you have no secrets.” Dropping to a lower pitch, she said, “Besides, you know full well I would never betray a kinsman under any circumstances.”
Fondly, relieved, he kissed her papery cheek. “Your wisdom is boundless, á seanmháthair. Naught escapes you.”
“Still, think well on my words regarding Jarred.”
He replied with a grunt.
Throughout Spring and Summer, Lilith concealed the truth about her fainting fit from Jarred and the rest of her household. In a foment of dread, she expected to hear again the tip-tap of footsteps in the distant recesses of her consciousness. She was nervous, and the sound of any footfall discomfited her, yet nothing dire came to plague her. After several weeks, she became convinced that what she had experienced was merely an aberration, a unique episode that might never reoccur.
Jarred’s overtures of amendment to Eoin were always rejected. Eoin behaved as though Jarred did not exist, refusing to acknowledge him, look at him, or speak to him. Defeated, Jarred eventually resigned himself to his apparent exile from Eoin’s awareness.
Meanwhile, Eolacha became weaker and frailer, until she was bedridden. Sometimes it seemed to Lilith that the sunlight from the unshuttered window passed right through the old woman. Her hair had turned to the finest gossamer, like spun silver; her skin was fragile crepe draped across gaunt wands of bones. “I am near the end of my journey,” she would say, while she still could speak. “Do not fuss.” But her family would not be content, and they did fuss around her, and they told each other she would mend.
She died on Rushbearing Eve.
The entire town grieved, and many lifted their voices in the slow songs of passing. Eolacha had played a pivotal role in the lives of the marshfolk. She had been loved and revered by all for her wisdom, her skill, her kindness and good humor. Over the long years of her life, countless children had been helped into the world by her gentle hands, and innumerable people owed their health and vigor to her ministrations. People were accustomed to coming to her for advice on all manner of subjects. She would be missed sorrowfully and deeply. On the night she died, torrents of rain came pouring down hour after hour, and it seemed that even the marsh itself was weeping.
Two evenings afterward, the flames of a pyre on Charnel Mere leaped so high they might have singed the stars. The glory and the splendor of that conflagration could be seen even from the green hills of Bellaghmoon.
The loss of Eolacha sorely pained Lilith. It was as if the shattering events in her life acted as a trigger, because not long after Rushbearing Eve the macabre footfalls started up again.
Faint and distant were they at first, stealthily approaching. Terror reared its blind muzzle, gathering strength, and Lilith began—despite herself—to glance in fear over her shoulder. Whenever the first subtle stirrings came to pluck at the outer edges of her consciousness, she would try to find an excuse to go out. Then she would run, like her mother before her, up to Lizardback Ridge. Irrationally, it was fixed in her mind that if she could find some high place, swept by unhindered airs, the feet that walked, propelled by no human agency, might not follow her there.
A swift, sharp breeze raced along the ridge. It chased the woman walking up the slope from the marsh, tugging at her skirts, making the gray-green grass stems caress her bare feet and the frayed hem of her kirtle. Loose tendrils of smoky hair had escaped from beneath her headscarf. The wind whipped them about her face, but she did not notice its teasing. Her eyes were uplifted, fastened on the barren crest of the ridge ahead.
Once, she glanced over her shoulder with a rapid, darting motion, like one who fears that something malign is following. Yet all that could be seen were the grasses bending in waves to show the silvery undersides of their blades, and bright yellow splashes of late-blooming rockroses, and the dagged stars of maiden pinks, and the purple wings of crowthistle. She quickened her pace and her breathing, though she knew there was no advantage in running.
But after all, there was someone following.
A man hastened up the slope behind her. Less than five-and-thirty years of age, he was handsome, slender yet broad shouldered, with the look of physical strength about him. His face was hard and lean, and his spice-colored hair had been tied in a club at the nape of his neck.
He caught up with his wife at the top of the ridge, where the land dropped away precipitously. When she first perceived him, she gave a start, but her look of terror melted instantly to a tremulous smile.
“You can keep your secret no longer,” said Jarred, winding his arm about her waist. “I have suspected the truth for more than a sevennight.”
The playful wind pounced on his words. It carried them, frivolously, away out over the wide, undulating grasslands of southern Slievmordhu, tapestried with their leafy copses and belts of beech and ash, sprinkled in the near distance by the whitish blotches of grazing sheep and goats.
Lilith raised her sapphire eyes to her husband. Fervently she said, “I am glad, now, that you share this burden with me. It has been difficult to bear alone.”
“In hindsight I surmise that my fight with your brother may have unlocked the curse, and grief at the passing of Eolacha may have hastened it. I have long felt disquiet about your well-being, despite your protestations.”
“You must never fault yourself for the inevitable.”
“Others have also harbored doubts—Earnán and Cuiva. Jewel too.”
Lilith bit her lip. “Our darling … Alas, how I longed to spare her.” They both fell silent. Below their feet, the three stunted ash trees leaned from the limestone cliff face. Their leaves tossed and nodded in the breeze. “How long have you wondered?” Lilith asked.
“Almost since Rushbearing Eve.”
“You never spoke of your guesses.”
“In the hope that your own peace of mind might be powerful enough to repel this wickedness which stalks you, I let you believe you had deceived me. But time for mere hope is past. �
�Tis time for deeds.”
Lilith laid her head on his shoulder. The tears that fled glistening down her face caught the blueness of her eyes, or of the sky.
“What deeds can there be?” she said brokenly. “What can possibly halt this slide to insanity and death? For my grandfather and my mother we sought answers to the curse. Even Eolacha could give us none.”
The wind beat at her skirts, pulled at her headscarf, tormented her hair.
“Recall,” said Jarred, holding her closer, “the first time you went with me to Cathair Rua. A Druids’ Scribes’ Hand was holding forth upon an oratorium. Subsequently a Scribes’ Hands’ Assistant’s Intercessionary Collector, or some such minion, came by. We laughed in our sleeves and called all the druids leeches, but Chieftain Stillwater said, “Not all men of the druidic echelons are so oblique. I have heard that there is one Druid’s Scribe who can actually cure afflictions such as madness.”
“I do recall,” said Lilith, lifting her tear-wet face.
“This very day I called upon Stillwater and told him of our plight. The news was a blow to him, and he was greatly saddened. Delving deep into his memory he remembered, at last, that Clementer is the name of this druidic healer. We must go to the city and find him.”
“Not I!” she exclaimed.
He looked at her, puzzled. “Why not?”
“I fear travel now. With the footsteps forever waiting at my shoulder, the slightest unfamiliar noise disconcerts me. Here, where all is known, I feel safer. Besides, we cannot be certain the druid bides in Rua, or if he visits abroad, elsewhere in the Four Kingdoms.”
“Very well. I will go to the city alone. If this healer is still to be found in Rua, I will bring him to the marsh. If not, I will scour the known lands until I find him.”
“Yet you place hope where there is none,” said Lilith earnestly, turning her back to the wind that it might not take her words hostage. “Even if you find him, these druids ask for more than a mere handful of glass beads and a goat cheese in payment. We own nothing valuable enough to pay for their services. Do you think to beg?”
The Iron Tree: Book One of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 41