He released her hand and turned away, head bowed, his shoulders rising and falling as he struggled for breath.
She started to go to him, but then heard his voice again. “Tell me, Lady Muriel…is it better to have nothing and be content with it, or to have everything and watch it disappear? Who is happier—my father, or me?”
She caught her breath as the pain of his words filled her heart. “Those are terrible questions. I do not believe that any answer is a good one when it comes to such things.”
“You are right,” he agreed. “But I will have the rest of my life to think of them…all my life to dream of a woman such as you, a woman who would never have taken notice of me had I lived out my life as a slave. A woman who would never have known me at all.”
She moved closer, though he was still turned away from her, and placed her hand on his arm and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “I would like to think that I still would have found you somehow,” she said. “That in one way or another, our lives would have intersected and we still would have been together, we still would have—”
“We would have been nothing to each other.” His voice was as still and as final as death. “You would be a lady of nobility and magic. I would be a slave. We would be nothing to each other.”
He turned to face her, but made no move to reach out. “You would marry none but a king, Lady Muriel, as you said. And you have good reason to do so… I saw it for myself. A man born into slavery is the last man you would have considered.
“A man like me.”
She started to answer but became aware that he was now looking past her, across the torchlit grounds of the dun. She turned and saw three druids approaching, walking slowly, almost hesitantly, as though reluctant to join them. But Brendan faced them with the same stillness, the same resignation, that Muriel found so fearful.
The three druids stood before him. Muriel realized that one of them held a stack of folded woolen garments with a plain bronze brooch resting on top of it. “I know why you are here,” Brendan said. “Please wait.”
Muriel watched as he walked calmly inside their house, leaving the door swinging open—and then she hurried after him.
In the darkness of the building she could hear him searching through the wooden chest that held his possessions. There was the faint clink of metal on metal. She stepped out of the way as he walked outside again, but he paid her no attention, as though he did not know she was there.
“This is what you have come for,” he said to the druids. In the torchlight she could see a shining heap of gold in his outstretched hands. The druids surrounded him and took all that he offered—wristbands and armbands and finger rings and large, heavy brooches, all of his finest gold work.
“And this,” Brendan said. Tucked between his arm and his side was the tanist’s torque. He held it out to them, and they took it from him, and he let his arms fall back to his sides as the heavy gold piece left his hands. All of the gold disappeared into a large leather bag, the torque last of all.
Brendan glanced at the stack of folded garments, now resting on the ground near his feet, and reached for them. Over his simple linen clothes he pulled on the dark woolen trousers and tunic, wrapping the plain, brown leather belt around his waist and tying it through the heavy iron ring. The leather of the boots was just as plain and coarse. Last of all he draped the rough wool cloak over his shoulders and pinned it with the small bronze brooch.
“The rest of it—the fine clothes, the good boots, the weapons—all will remain here. I will not enter the house again.”
The druids stood silent, as if they wanted to say something to him; but at last they turned and walked away into the night without having spoken a word.
Now Brendan stood alone in front of Muriel yet again, and he turned to her with something like a smile on his face—though his eyes still held that frightening stillness, that terrible emptiness. He looked down at himself, smoothing the rough dark wool of his new garb. “My real father saw this as a great step up in his world only a short time ago. I must learn to feel the same.”
“Brendan, please do not say such things! Your father is…he was…King Galvin.”
He cocked his head and looked down at her. “Muriel, surely you cannot say such a thing after what you have learned tonight.”
“It is true that Gill gave you life. And it was through no fault of his own that he was not able to care for you. He and his wife—your mother—made the unselfish choice to give you the hope for a better life.
“But it was Galvin who raised you as his own. No one has ever questioned your parentage—have they, Brendan?—though you bore little resemblance to the king.”
He shrugged and looked down. “Sons may not always resemble their fathers in every way.”
“That is true. They may not. But no matter what your appearance, no matter how strange your eyes, Galvin and his queen accepted you as their son. They, and all of their people, wanted nothing more than to have you as their tanist and, one day, as their king. There is no doubt of that!”
“But someone must have known. The guards who opened the gates that night and found an abandoned infant dressed in iron and rags, the midwives present at the queen’s childbed—”
It was Muriel’s turn to shrug. “A few probably did know. But they also understood what had happened to the queen, and respected their king’s decision to ease her grief. And as the child grew and his strength and personality became evident, any lingering questions about his origins were forgotten.”
“Until tonight.”
Muriel closed her eyes. “Please. You must come inside. You are still my husband!”
“I am not. Not any longer.”
“Then I will come with you! I will sleep beside you in the rushes of the hall if I must! Please—I am so sorry! We must find a way! We must!”
He closed his eyes. “Muriel…it is all too much right now. You were right. We should wait for the council of druids. They will help us decide what to do.”
She tried to look at him, but his face was hidden in the darkness; even his strange eyes were shadowed. His words made sense, but his tone was cold and dead. Then, almost to her surprise, he stepped close and took her gently in his arms. “Stay here in the house, Lady Muriel, safe and warm, and imagine my arms wrapped around you—arms that were once those of a king,” he said, whispering close to her ear.
She reached up for him and pressed her body close to his, feeling his warmth and strength beneath the coarse wool and the cold iron of his clothes. “I must be alone for a time,” he continued. “I am sure you can understand. If I know that you are safe, then I can go and be alone with my thoughts, and that will help me to do what I must. The druids will hold their council tomorrow. They will have an answer in a few days’ time—perhaps even by tomorrow night.”
Brendan pulled her close one more time, gently stroking her hair, her shoulder, then he drew back and bent to kiss her, his mouth as soft as the mist and as warm as the summer heat. And then he walked with her to the door of the house, and helped her up the step so that she stood inside, and pulled the door closed in front of her. All she could hear was his footsteps walking away into the darkness.
In the morning Muriel awoke alone. The only thing with her in the house was silence and stillness. The only thing beside her in the bed was a wide, empty space of smooth linen, covered by a sealskin fur.
The terrible events of the previous night slowly surfaced in her mind—very slowly, as if she could hardly bear to think of them. But think of them she must, for nothing in her life would be the same from this point forward.
Her worst fears had come true. The mirror had been right. Brendan was not and had never been a king, would never be a king. Not by birth, not by law.
But she had married him.
There could be no doubt of her love for this man. Last night her only thoughts had been for Brendan, whose entire life had come crashing down around him. This was proof, if proof was needed, that she h
ad not merely accepted him because of his station. She had never wanted to simply wait to find an available king and coldheartedly marry him for her own purposes. She had been determined to marry a king whom she could love, and who would love her in return, or she would never marry at all.
But she and Brendan had loved each other as much as any man and woman ever had and had made the best of marriages. Even now, when she knew with certainty exactly what he was, she wanted nothing more than to run to him and pull him close to her and do what she could to ease his pain. She’d told him she would sleep beside him on the floor of the hall, among the other servants, if that’s what it took for them to be together. And she had meant it.
But another sort of cold dread sat at the back of her mind. It was well known that the women of her family lost their power of magic, and lost their spirit and vitality as well, if they married any man but a king. And the man she had married was born of the very lowest ranks.
She did not know what would happen to her and her magic. It was almost too frightening to think about, for there was no undoing it now. But at this moment, her husband had need of her, and she would go to him and do what she could to help him.
Wearing only a white linen gown, she threw back her own fur covers and got up out of bed. Through the high windows she could see that the sky was just a faint gray. Peering around the tall leather screens, she saw that even Alvy was not yet awake but still lay sleeping on the low ledge in the far wall, wrapped in a thick wool cloak.
Muriel threw on the first woolen gown she could catch hold of. It was a blue-and-cream plaid, which struck her as fortunate, since she knew that Brendan liked to see her dressed in blue—but why was she thinking of such trivial things now? She pinned her long blue cloak over the gown, tied on her boots, pulled a wooden comb through her dark hair, and stepped out into the dawn to search for her husband.
The sun was high above the horizon by the time Muriel returned to her home, her anxiety rising higher by the moment. She was still alone. She had searched throughout the dun and spoken to everyone she saw, but no one had seen Brendan—not the servants, not the guards, not anyone she could find.
Even Gill was at a loss. “If he is not with you, he is nowhere,” he had said to her, shaking his head. “I have not seen him.”
She took the buttered oat bread and boiled codfish that Alvy offered her, knowing she must eat something if she was to have the strength to continue.
“Keep looking,” Alvy had counseled. “He’s got to be somewhere. He would not leave you, no matter what has happened. Men sometimes need to get away to think. You’ll find him when he’s ready to be found.”
Muriel could only nod, doing the best she could to swallow the bread and drink a little fresh milk along with it.
At last, though fear gripped her tighter with every step she took, Muriel left the house, turned away from the direction of the gates, and walked past the houses and the hall. She continued on toward the sea, toward the edge of the cliffs, past the line of stones laid on the ground that showed the safe limits of Dun Bochna. Beyond that line, no one ever stepped—and with good reason.
Her heart hammered as she ventured out onto the smooth and dusty ground. Its surface was littered with rocks and untouched by anything save the wind and the rain. She approached the crumbling edge and stood as close to it as her trembling legs would allow her to go, standing on the edge of the world with nothing in front of her but the cold sea wind and a vast, sheer drop to the rocks and surf far below.
Yet she calmed her nerves and steadied herself, and slowly she peered out over the edge to the beach. There, far to one side, where the cliff receded and the narrow strip of sandy beach began, was a small, dark figure, a man in a rough cloak sitting on a rock and gazing out to sea.
Muriel turned away from the edge of the cliff, caught up the hems of her skirts in both hands, and raced through the crowded dun straight for the gates of Dun Bochna.
To her great relief, he was still there when she arrived.
Brendan sat on the same rock where Muriel had placed her water mirror the night before. His cloak was wrapped close around him, with the top of it pulled up over his head, in much the same way that Gill always wore his own cloak.
Muriel hurried up to him, breathless from the long run down the winding path from the dun and from the fear of what she might find; but even when she stood right in front of him, he seemed not to notice. He merely went on staring out to sea.
All she could see was Brendan’s face, so pale that it seemed almost gray—as gray as mist. His hair was damp and flat from the wet wind off the ocean. And the same aura of stillness, of lifelessness, that she had found so unnerving the night before had now settled over him until it seemed unshakable.
In his damp clothes, pale and wet and still, he resembled more and more the mysterious stranger she had rescued so many nights ago at Dun Farraige. But that man, half-drowned as he was, had been full of life and determination and an unbreakable fighting spirit. The man before her now seemed drained and empty, as though he found it hardly worth the effort to breathe, as though his heart could barely trouble itself to beat.
A sudden apprehension struck her. Had he had gone beyond the place where she could help him? Filled with a terrible fear, a kind of fear she had never known before, Muriel walked close to the rock where he sat and reached up to take hold of his arm.
“Brendan,” she said above the ceaseless noise of the waves, “please talk to me. Tell me what you are thinking. Tell me what I can do to help.”
For a long time he remained silent and still, watching the waves as they rushed onto the beach and then receded over and over again, as they had done since the beginning of time.
Then, just as Muriel was ready to shout at him or drag him down off the rock or even douse him with seawater to get his attention, she saw him take a sudden long, deep breath.
It was as though this were the first real breath he had taken in ages. And then, very slowly, he turned his head in her direction.
For a moment she felt nothing but relief. Perhaps she would be able to get through to him after all. But with a shock she realized that he was looking not at her, but through her, past her, far up the beach, to the place where the path from Dun Bochna met the sand, the place where nine druids and thirty warriors now came walking toward them.
Chapter Fifteen
Muriel thought that Brendan would throw the cloak back from his head and shoulders in order to face the approaching druids and warriors with nothing hidden, but then she realized that was something the old Brendan would have done.
She knew well that Gill had kept his hood up over his head as part of his effort to hide who he was, in order to keep Brendan—and anyone else—from ever suspecting that he could be Brendan’s father. And it seemed as though Brendan now was the one who wanted to hide what he really was.
The nine druids stopped, and then they lined up from the cliffs to the sea, as if blocking the way to Dun Bochna. The warriors gathered close behind them. At last one of the druids—Loman, who had recited the contracts with some difficulty at the marriage ritual— stepped forward and began to speak.
“Brendan,” Loman called. “We are here to tell you that the council of druids has reached its decision.”
Brendan sat unmoving on the rocks. Muriel stayed very close to him and raised her chin to look at Loman. “You have not wasted any time in making this decision,” she said, even as a cold feeling of fear crept through her.
“That is true, we have not,” agreed the druid. He took another step forward. “Brendan,” he said again to her husband. “You have been considered a member of King Galvin’s family almost since your birth. You became one of our boldest warriors and you were chosen as tanist by the free men of our tribe. We had no reason to doubt that you should be our next king. But now such things have come to our knowledge that cannot be ignored.
“You were taken into the king’s own family. He considered you his son, and as his son you w
ere one of those who could rule over us as our sovereign. Such adoptive sons have been kings in times past—yet it was always the case that they had been originally born into some family of high rank and so still carried the blood of free men.
“The son of a slave, however—even if raised by a king—is not, under the law, one who could ever be considered to rule.”
Muriel closed her eyes. Brendan said nothing.
“A new king has been chosen.” Loman glanced over his shoulder, and two of Dun Bochna’s warriors came forward through the row of druids.
Between the two warriors was a small man with a gentle face, his eyes large, his glance nervous…a man dressed only in the long tunic and flowing cloak of a druid, but with a sea-dragon torque now resting large and heavy on his neck.
“Colum!” cried Muriel. She looked up at Brendan, and then back at Loman again. “Colum is a fine man, but he is a priest, hardly a warrior! And I do not believe that he ever wished to be a king.”
Brendan raised his head to look. “He is the image of Galvin, my lady. There will never be any doubt of his parentage.”
“Colum is the choice of the free men of Dun Bochna to be their tanist,” said Loman. “He will be confirmed as king at Lughnasa next.”
Lughnasa next…
“What will happen to Brendan now?” Muriel asked. “I have made a contract of marriage with him. What of that?”
Loman turned to her. “We have discussed that matter, too, among ourselves. I am sorry to tell you, my lady, that under the law your marriage contract is invalid.”
“Invalid,” she whispered. “How can this be?”
“It was a union of deception. Yours was contracted as a marriage between a man and a woman of equal rank, but now we are aware that this was not true. A man born of slaves has no legal right to make such a contract. And so we have determined that your marriage no longer exists.”
She held tight to Brendan’s arm. He sat quietly, listening to the druid’s words.
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