Uncertain Magic

by Laura Kinsale

  There were no chairs. Roddy hoped Faelan knew better than to lean against the unstable desk. He stood next to it, looking very much as he always did, which was enough to put the cottiers in a misery of tongue-tied unease. The rough surroundings only made him more elegant and mysterious and intimidating than ever, while at Roddy they dared not look at all.

  The cottiers stood unhappily, not knowing what to do and expecting Faelan to speak. They had no notion of taking the initiative. The father had begun trying to remember an old tale he’d heard of a man who’d sold himself to the devil, uneasily comparing the details of the story to this scene. Roddy suddenly thought that the five-shilling offer was a mistake, that it was so low as to be suspicious. Here in this remote valley among ruins long dead, it was all too easy to believe in ancient tales. She kept her own eyes carefully away from the men and sought desperately for some way to undermine their fears. To make Faelan and herself human.

  Martha began setting china cups out on the table for the tea, and the clatter seemed very loud in the silence. Redhaired Fachtnan cleared his throat nervously.

  “Tea, gentlemen?” Faelan said finally.

  In a fright that he would break the cup and humiliate them all, Fachtnan said, “No, thankee, m’lord. No, thankee. We don’t take tea.”

  The others nodded agreement.

  Roddy was still watching Faelan, afraid he would lean on the table and precipitate his own humiliation. She saw him shift his weight and reach out his hand, and stepped forward in quick reaction. Her foot encountered something soft. The next instant a loud squeal cut the tension in the air.

  MacLassar shot out from beneath her skirts, snuffling and crying piteously. He ran between the elder O’Sullivan’s legs, found no comfort there, and darted toward Martha’s skirt. The maid—no country-bred girl—shrieked, “A rat,” and with a move that was completely unpremeditated threw herself headlong into Fachtnan’s strong arms.

  She nearly knocked him down. He staggered back, clutching her as much for balance as for giving support, but by the time he had recovered, a flash of very masculine appreciation coursed through him as his hands fitted around Martha’s sturdy torso. He slid his palms upward in the guise of steadying her and his thumbs curved under her heaving breasts. “There now, miss. ’Tis no but a wee pig, do you see?”

  “I believe it belongs to the countess,” Faelan said calmly, reaching down to where MacLassar cowered with deep-throated, sorrowful grunting underneath one of the cookpots.

  He handed the piglet across the table.

  Roddy grabbed her charge hastily and slung him into his favorite position with his small forefeet dangling over her shoulder and his snout pressed lovingly behind her ear. She dared one glance up into Faelan’s face. Fearing the worst, she took a moment to interpret the strange twist and hardening of his jaw.

  Donald O’Sullivan coughed in a strained way. The air in the room had changed; Roddy felt the cottiers’ eyes on the Devil Earl and his countess as they faced one another across the table. The vision formed in her head in all its absurdity—the dingy room, the china cups; herself staring apprehensively up at her husband with a piglet slung over her shoulder and Faelan with a belly laugh trapped behind the fierce set of his mouth.

  Roddy bit her lip. MacLassar grunted and snuffled in her ear. Her body began to shake. “Oh, my,” she gasped. “I’m so s-sorry!”

  Martha giggled. Donald O’Sullivan began to chuckle. “Ah, well,” he said. “An’ we was after thinkin’ m’lord and m’lady too fine and fearsome to traffic with the likes of pigs and poor dairymen.”

  Roddy met his eyes while the laughter still lit her own, and was pleased and astonished to find that at that moment he’d rather look at her than not. Everyone in the room was smiling at her—directly at her—and she felt as giddy and self-conscious as Martha had under Fachtnan’s appreciative gaze.

  A half hour later, the O’Sullivans had departed with the promise of twoscore cows in exchange for a pound sterling at the end of a year. They could sell their butter for cash to Faelan. Fachtnan and Evan were to begin work on the mansion house, and spread the word that the wage of fifteen pence a day was no dream, but real enough for any cottier who would come to work and lease Faelan’s cattle.

  Martha had seen them out with all the pomp that was possible under the circumstances. When they had gone, Roddy set MacLassar on the floor.

  “You see,” she said as the piglet snuffled and snorted in mild complaint. “He’s good for something.”

  Faelan moved around the table. Success and humor lit his blue eyes with something that made her breath catch in her throat. “Little girl.” He came close and drew her into his arms. “I know what won them.”

  “What?” She stood with a smile that changed to a giggle as he squeezed her.

  “’Twas you, of course. Magical sidhe.” He tilted her chin up to plant a deep kiss on her quivering lips. “’Twas you,” he whispered at the edge of her mouth. “Because you’re so beautiful when you laugh.”

  Chapter 17

  Roddy hugged MacLassar, sniffing the scent of the lavender water she’d bathed him in and smiling to herself at the memory of Faelan’s way of expressing gratitude. With Martha occupied by her new beau and Senach off wherever Senach spent his time, there had been a few hours of privacy that day in the empty stall where they’d made their bed.

  It suited her better, she thought, to take a roll in the hay like a stablehand than play the gently bred Countess of Iveragh. It had been cold, but Faelan could always warm her; his words and his touch and the sky-fire of his eyes. A bed or barn, it made no difference when she was aware of nothing but his body hard and hot against hers.

  That afternoon seemed long ago now, the last time in over a month that Faelan had been awake and hers alone. Winter was blowing in, and there was only work and more work in the sharp demand of the damp west wind.

  Their cottiers had grown accustomed to the earl hammering beside them like a common laborer and the countess sweeping and hauling trash and bringing the workers tea and oatcakes with her pig and her maid in tow. That kind of acquaintance bred a measure of trust—at least they had stopped equating Faelan with the devil, by the simple logic that the devil would never have to work as hard as Faelan did to get a roof over his head.

  Of Roddy they were less certain. Only the O’Sullivans spoke freely to her, and even with them the doubts would creep in if she happened to meet their eyes. It seemed that her difference was stronger here, and somehow more apparent. On those occasions, Roddy would smile at them and they would remember her laughing, and it set their minds at rest.

  She wished it were so simple for herself. She knew now how it felt, that uneasy sense of facing a power beyond common humanity—knew it for reality, instead of through her gift. Every time her talent faded and slipped away and she looked up from whatever she was doing to find Senach’s blind gaze upon her, her heart pounded and her legs trembled with the need to flee.

  Public nakedness could not have been worse. She knew those empty eyes saw through her, pinned her and judged her: the petty fears and selfish needs, the times she’d used her gift to cheat—just a little, just a quick answer to spare her from a scolding, a remark made to sting and unsettle. And worse, far worse—the place in her heart that feared and adored and hungered for her husband, the place that cared not what he was, but only that he held her.

  She could lose him. If he guessed her talent; if Senach told him and made him believe— Roddy huddled in her cloak. The wind traced her exposed skin with cool, wet fingers, like Senach’s lifeless, probing touch. She sat, clutching MacLassar and his comforting small mind, where warmth and food were all that mattered and both were provided in plenty. But even as she drowsed there with him, she felt the connection slip away. She had climbed the hill to escape Senach. When she opened her eyes he was there.

  “God bless,” he said, and smiled at her. He was standing on the path below her, leaning on a staff. Farther down, the men still worke
d, and the sound of their voices blew away with the wind.

  She took a breath, trying to slow the thump of her heart. “Good afternoon, Senach.”

  Her politeness was useless, all sham and humiliation; she knew that he saw through it to the loathing in her heart. Go away, her mind shouted. Leave me be.

  “I’ve come,” he said, “to show ye the way.”

  Roddy’s arms tightened around MacLassar. The piglet shifted with a sighing grunt. “I’m just resting awhile. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

  Senach’s pale eyes found hers. She recoiled, refusing the challenge, jerking her face away to stare out to sea. Don’t. Don’t look at me.

  “Your lad’s father, he come here,” Senach said. “He were a wee laddie thattime, and he come away up here to think.”

  Roddy looked down at her toes and fingered a tiny white flower that she had not noticed there before.

  “Fionn’s Kiss, he would call that wee blossom.”

  “It’s pretty,” she whispered.

  “’Twill not last long. Away back then, in the olden times, the women would distill the wee petals and make a drink—no taste nor scent to it. ’Twould bring…sleep, of a kind. And other things, sometimes.”

  Roddy frowned at the gray and green spread before her, hoping that, if she showed no interest, Senach would go away.

  He didn’t. He went on, with a more certain rise and fall in his voice. A story he was telling, whether she would listen or not. “Aye, your laddie’s father used to come here. He were a good lad, a stout strong lad, and smart as a whistle. But he were a dreamy fellow, do you know. Always looking for something, and it weren’t there.”

  She found her eyes drawn to Senach’s hands, resting like brown knots on the tall staff.

  “The big men, the landowners, they sent their sons away,” he said. “To the schools. For to be made into men. Most of ’em—ah, and many and many—they never come back. And if they do, they have forgotten. An’ yer lad’s father—Francis, that be his name—his father, he had to keep the land, do you know.” Senach shook his head. “No blame in that, be God, no blame to him, though most say different. It’s like a mountain, says I to yer laddie’s father, an’ the Catholics go up one side, an’ the Protestants go up the other. But in them days, do you see, the big men, they had to be Protestant. They had to sign a paper, or say a few words renouncing their creed—apostatizing, they call that—they had to become Protestant, to hold the land.”

  Roddy stared at Senach’s hands, caught up in the tale despite herself.

  “And yer lad’s father’s father—he did so,” Senach said. “He signed the paper, and he kept this land. He sent his son away for to be educated with the English. And not for a long while, a very long while, did he come back. We never thought to see him come back atall.”

  But he would, Roddy thought. If he were a dreamer, he’d come back to this place.

  “Aye.” Senach smiled. “He did come back. He brung with him a wife—a quare lady, oh, she were that beautiful, with fine clothes and fine airs, as fine as we’d ne’er seen.”

  Roddy sat there with her muddy cape and her windblown hair, clutching a baby pig. Not like me.

  The old man chuckled. “Och, but there’s many a fine lady, and don’t he never think of none.”

  He lifted his opaque eyes to hers, and Roddy felt the chill of blind sight like a shiver down her spine. She set her lower lip and turned away.

  “But this fine lady,” Senach went on, “she were the countess. She were the countess before you, do you see. She had this boy—this one boy, and that be your laddie away down there. And his father says to me, he says, ‘I’ll not be sendin’ that wee laddie away. I’ll be educatin’ him meself. Ye and me, Senach,’ he says. ‘We’ll be his masters.’ Because Francis, he had pined away for this place all them years. He had pined away until he could not abide, and he come home. And he took up the old religion, the Catholic creed, in secret. At first it was secret. But then he began to be seein’ that there wouldn’t be no other son; that this son, this laddie of yours, he could hold the land all in one, from here to there, and get out of the law that way—not to divide it up amongst all his sons when he died because he were of the old faith.”

  Senach turned, twisting his hands around the staff, and looked down the hill. “I have to tell you that ’tis not so long ago that if a man were of the Catholic creed, and his wife or son did what they call apostatize, as I be sayin’, then they didn’t any longer answer to him. They were set against him by the law, and free of him, and the land all went to the son, and the father were no more than his tenant.”

  Roddy frowned uneasily. “What are you saying?”

  “Och, I’m saying that the rebellious wife, the unnatural son—they had only to convert to seize the land. A wee laddie, ten years old, had only to say that he were of the Established Church, and he would be taken from his father and put in a Protestant’s care, and as much of the estate as the magistrate deemed fit and proper would be given over, and the father made a tenant, like the dairymen down there.”

  “That can’t be true,” she said. “A child—”

  “A child of ten. He had only to say so, and the law gave him the land.”

  “Do you tell me Faelan did that?”

  Senach made no answer. A light wash of rain spat a few drops onto his wrinkled hands.

  “He couldn’t have done that,” Roddy said sharply. “He hadn’t had the land until now.”

  “I hear crying,” Senach said. “Do ye hear it?”

  “No.” Her fingers moved nervously.

  “Aye. Oh, aye. I hear it. And Francis dead and murdered.”

  “What are you telling me?” she cried. “Say it in plain words!”

  Senach shook his head. “Dead now and gone. Do the wee pretty pig be crying?”

  “No.” The word was a sob. She felt unreasonable hot tears on her cheeks.

  “Ye can help yer lad. ’Tis the truth ye be wanting.”

  Without meaning to, she looked down at the house. Through the sparkling blur, a single figure took shape, a fine, proud figure, black hair and white shirt against the browns and blues. He was working, rebuilding, and if she could not feel his drive and his weariness through her gift, she could guess it. She could remember every night for weeks, how he’d come in from working until midnight by torchlight, to eat and undress and take her in his arms and fall asleep as he buried his face in her hair.

  Senach looked through her, and smiled. “He were a gallant lad, when he were childer. Aye. And then the dark come on him, and it has never left him from that day to this. ’Twere the day his father died, it was. The day the dark come on him.”

  She did not understand Senach. She was afraid to try.

  “But you—” the old man said. “You be the flame. You be the light. Ye cannot go thinking of yourself only.”

  Roddy stared down at her knees. “I think of him,” she whispered.

  “Aye. Oh, aye. And when you think of him, ye fear.”

  No, she thought. And, Yes. She drew her legs up and hid her face in her hands.

  “A gift ye have. Or so you call it. And you think ’tis a curse instead.”

  “It is,” she cried into her hands. “I hate it!”

  He chuckled softly. “Ah. ’Tis a sad sight. Cryin’ and pityin’, and who is that for, I ask ye?”

  “Don’t tell him what’s wrong with me.” She could not keep the quiver from her voice. “Don’t tell him.”

  Senach did not answer that.

  “Please,” Roddy whispered. “You know I can’t—with him. You must know. There’s nothing. Nothing! It wouldn’t be fair. He’d think I—” She stumbled on the enormity of what Faelan would feel if he knew of her talent, if he thought that she read him the way Senach read her. The horror of it almost choked her. “Oh, God, it wouldn’t be fair. I could never make him believe I can’t. He’d send me away. He wouldn’t have me here.”

  “The truth, now.”

  Sh
e scrambled to her feet, pushing MacLassar aside. “That is the truth! You know it’s the truth. He’d send me away.”

  Senach’s blind eyes followed her with uncanny accuracy. She tried to make herself believe that it was coincidence, or acute hearing—anything but what she feared. Impossible, that he should share her gift. Crazy, to talk to him as if he knew. She was alone in the world. She’d always been alone. A freak. Somehow that was easier to accept than the notion that Senach’s words were anything more than the senile ramblings of an old, old man.

  He leaned on the staff, his pale eyes turned toward her. He’s blind, she assured herself. Old and blind.

  And Senach began to laugh.

  Her nerve broke at that. With a small cry she turned, abandoning even the nominal courtesy of a farewell. She began to run up the path, up the hill, with the rough furze dragging at her cloak and the rocks clattering beneath her shoes. She could hear nothing but that and the sound of her own harsh breath.

  At the top of the hill she stopped and turned. MacLassar was struggling to follow, his small feet scrabbling for purchase on the wet, rocky slope. Senach was nowhere to be seen.

  She stamped her foot, ridiculing the idea that no one of his age could have walked out of sight down the hill in that short time. There would be other ways, paths and hollows that she could not see—places an old man bent on terrorizing silly children would know.

  MacLassar came panting up beside her. She picked him up and slung him over her shoulder, heading away from the mansion into the high hills and the mist.

  She had no forethought about where she was going. She walked, because it seemed that she must put distance between herself and the insidious memory of Senach’s words. The cold air stung her cheeks. Above her the black choughs followed and then wheeled away. The mists shifted, retreating and advancing, reaching out to envelop her.

  Somewhere far back in her mind she was surprised that she did not stop. The path went on, though the world had gone to white and shadow. She followed it. Up and up, until her chest was heaving for air. MacLassar was strangely quiescent, bouncing along on her shoulder without complaint.