by David Waid
On the settle, Teresa’s mother sat with wet, red-rimmed eyes, but no tears fell. She glanced from her husband to Sando with lips moving, rosary beads chattering like teeth between her fingers. A thick strand of hair had come loose from her chignon and wavered in front of her, but she seemed not to notice.
When all was ready, Don Abozam led them from the house and into the street. He kissed his wife, saying things in a soft voice that no one else could hear. They embraced, and then he and Sando lit torches and without another word stalked off. Teresa slid to the side of the door to follow, but a hand clamped her shoulder. The housekeeper, Maria, swung her around. “You have had enough danger, mistress.”
Glancing over her shoulder, Teresa saw her father and brother, dark blots against the light of their torches, walking through a grotto of wan, colorless houses. “Let me go. They don’t know where to look.” She tried to pull away, but Maria’s grip was unrelenting.
“Your father knows what he must do. It’s you who does not. Go inside and ease your mother’s fear.”
“Let go of me.” Teresa twisted and yanked, but could not get free. “You don’t tell me what to do.”
“Inside, you spoiled girl or I will make your backside sting.” With that, Maria pulled her past and gave her a swat. Teresa jumped, yelping with surprise and outrage, and the housekeeper fell in behind, pushing her through the hallway and into the stone chamber.
Her mother was on the settle now, blank-faced and staring at the fire, her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders. There was a space beside her, and Maria guided Teresa there, pushing down on her shoulders until she sat. Maria then stood off to the side, between Teresa and the arch leading to the hallway, sending the other servants in and out on errands. Someone brought a tray of food, but Teresa ignored it. How can they remain here, doing nothing?
She wanted to get up. She could hear her own loud breathing, yet her mother sat beside her, quiet as a mushroom. How far could her father and brother have gotten? It was impossible to know how much time had passed. Per Dio! What was happening? And what were they going to do? With every imagined noise in the street, she wanted to rush to the windows, but whenever she looked at Maria, the housekeeper frowned and shook her head.
At last, she could take it no more. “I need to go to the privy,” she said.
“That works for the priest, not for me,” Maria replied.
Teresa sagged back against the settle and her mother leaned against her shoulder. “Your father and brother will return soon,” she said. Teresa pressed her lips together and looked away as her mother spoke on. “You are so brave.” One of her knuckles brushed Teresa’s cheek. “Let me rest my head on your lap for a moment. Just for a moment.” Teresa could feel Maria’s eyes burning the side of her face. “Yes, mother,” she said.
And now she was trapped.
They shifted on the settle and the weight of her mother’s head lay on her thighs. Looking down, Teresa saw — for the first time — long gray hairs. There were many, and she had never noticed. She bent forward. Yes, tiny lines at the corner of her eyes. The kerchief was wadded up in a fist by her mother’s mouth, and she spoke into it, whispering, “I cannot lose my son.”
Teresa had nothing to say to that. She laid a hand on her mother’s hair and began to caress it in long, light strokes. The hair pressed down beneath her fingers, soft and cold to the touch.
“You are very strong,” her mother said. She spoke so quietly Teresa almost didn’t hear. Then her mother’s breathing became quiet, too, and even asleep she looked tired. Outside, a bird twittered as though it didn’t know night had fallen and Teresa wondered how long it would be until morning. She tried to twist her head around to see a window but couldn’t. Her mother needed to be deeper in sleep before she could get up; Maria needed to step away from her place by the door. The woman was seated now, but still there. Teresa continued to pet her mother’s head and the fire dwindled. The only sound was the occasional snap of wood in the fireplace. Red sparks wobbled up the chimney.
Time passed. Teresa’s head nodded, but she fought sleep. Philippa came down the stairs and to the archway once. The woman said nothing, just stared at Teresa with her mother’s head in her lap. Teresa wanted to make a face at her, but she was too tired. Instead, she returned the stare and Philippa left again.
A little longer and Mother would be fast asleep. Maria would sleep, too, and then she could do as she pleased. Father and Sando might already be coming home. Maybe they were still at the Maestro’s. Or standing at the lip of the filthy canal. She pictured it, her father there with sword, axe and jerkin, and the place did not seem so frightening. Teresa sank away into sleep then, the fingers of one hand curled by her mother’s ear as her head tipped forward.
The sounds of quiet conversation and the smell of food woke Teresa where she lay on her side, curled on the settle with a blanket over her. The trestle table was out and the family sat to breakfast with the curtains drawn back and morning light shining through the windows. Her father was in his place at the head of the table. A jolt of excitement ran through her until she realized Ignacio was not there.
“What happened?”
They looked startled, glancing at each other from lowered heads. Father stared at the table between his arms. Teresa dug her nails into her palms, leaving marks like little red moon slivers. Sando spoke.
“We went to the canal to find the body you saw, but nothing was there. Even so, we found the Maestro’s house and hammered on the door. Father shouted for him to bring Ignacio out. Candles were lit inside, but of the Maestro there was no sign. The man is a coward. His servant shouted about bandits from behind the door.”
“One can understand,” murmured Philippa.
Sando scowled, his angry gaze lingering on his wife before he resumed. “When the Maestro would not show himself, Father used his axe on the door. The noise aroused the neighbors who shouted at us from their windows and soon enough we faced a patrol of the Duke’s soldiers. We almost came to blows, but Enrico Jacobeli was leading them. He recognized Father and gave his word of honor that he would himself take the matter up with the Duke.”
“We came home,” said her father. “Yet we will have justice. The Duke must hear the claim of a de Borja.”
After that, everyone ate in silence. A knock came on the front door and Maria went to answer it. She cried out and the tramp of booted feet resounded in the hall just before soldiers surged into the room.
Don Abozam leapt to his feet. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Signore de Borja, I regret to inform you that you and your son are detained on the orders of the Duke of Genoa.”
The great man’s face reddened. “Impossible. Where is Jacobeli? This is an outrage.”
The captain made an impatient gesture and two of the guardsmen crossed the room to stand on either side of Teresa’s father. For the first time, he seemed to realize the soldier’s weapons were drawn. Two others led Sando from the room. He twisted in their grip, trying to look over his shoulder.
Don Abozam put a hand out to steady himself on the table. “For what are we arrested? My son, Ignacio, has been kidnapped or murdered. The man you should be arresting is Maestro Lodovicetti.”
“The Maestro has friends, Signore. You should be careful whom you accuse.”
The soldiers on either side of Teresa’s father motioned towards the door. His eyes jittered around the room until he saw Teresa. Dropping his gaze to the floor, head bent, he shuffled toward the exit.
“You can’t do this,” Teresa screamed, attacking one of the guards from behind, hammering with her fist and kicking at his legs. She pulled on his tabard to stop him. “You. Can’t. Do this!”
The captain, coming up behind, bunched the shirt fabric at the back of her neck and pulled her away. “You’re a little viper, all right. I wish my own had half your spit and venom.”
He pushed Teresa into her mother’s arms so hard it almost sent the two of them sprawling. Then he laughed a
nd, shaking his head, followed the remaining soldiers from the chamber.
Teresa squirmed and tried to follow, but her mother held tight. She screamed, “No” over and over until the front doors slammed shut with a bang.
In the new, dreadful quiet, there was now only the sound of Teresa panting, her mother and the other servants crying while Philippa stared at the door her husband had been taken through. The hush pulled at them like a black tide as Philippa turned to Teresa and spoke.
“Do you see now what you have done?”
7. Dreams in the Farmhouse
Leinster
Eamon roused in Nairne’s farmhouse at a quiet hour when everyone else slept, the house pitch black and bitter cold. He sat up, feeling Caitlin at his side, curled like a cat among the blankets she’d pulled off him in the night. His clothes, and even his hair reeked with the smell of cold ash from the fire.
Crawling to the nearby hearth, he searched for a piece of wood in the pile beside it and stirred the ashes until he uncovered a dull, red coal. By its feeble light, he cleared a space and built a pile of sticks and wood, placing the coal at its center on a piece of bark. He blew on it and sat back on his heels, staring at the tentative yellow flames and the sinuous line of smoke.
Duff slept a few feet away, beneath layers of skins. A rope of matted hair curved over the man’s eyes and his rough hands crossed on his chest, nails as dirty as if he’d been the one sifting cinders.
The light and warmth acted as a balm. Eamon wondered how all his boring, predictable days could change so quickly, as if he’d gone to bed one person and woken as someone else.
Just half a day earlier — before the wolves attacked on the mountain road, before his mother died — Father Rhys had come to their cottage on the outskirts of the village, banging his fist against the door. As soon as Eamon opened it, the priest told his news.
“The village will be attacked. You must flee the mountain.”
Duff asked questions until Father Rhys held up his hand. “I’ve hitched a wagon and loaded it with the things you’ll need and the things from the church that must be saved. Gather only what you must. Leave immediately.”
“But who—?”
“Cahill na Coppal’s band. Same as attacked Ballylow.”
Brigands. Eamon’s mother touched her cheek as if she’d been slapped. Duff’s eyes grew wide. Ireland had been ravaged by pestilence and war, and the people, dispossessed, their families gone, feared nothing. Half dead already, they lived as they could, banding together and stealing from lone travelers more often than not. In the mountains, there had been one exception, Ballylow, the only village to be sacked.
Every scrap of food was taken, but the worst was beyond understanding. Every boy child had been dragged to the woods while their parents screamed. Later, when the brigands left, the children were found dusted with snow, their throats cut, gathered in a pitifully small pile beneath the evergreens.
Ballylow had inflamed and emboldened the bandits. Father Rhys said their sights were now set on the fat prospect of Eniskeegan. The village would ensure their survival at least until the snows melted.
When Duff asked Father Rhys how he knew this, the priest answered that one bandit feared God’s wrath more than he feared his chief. The murdering of children had broken him. Now his people planned to add robbing a church to the manifest of their sins. They laughed, openly discussing it in fireside council, and while they did, this one fled. He escaped past sleeping sentries and went along darkened files of pine, skirting frozen fields until he came at last to the stone church and warned Father Rhys.
With the priest urging the family on, they gathered what they could. Father Rhys would alert the rest of the village and follow. And so that night found Eamon at the bottom of Cill Manthain, torn by his mother’s death, troubled by the words Nairne spoke.
The fire crackled, burning strong now, but Duff and Caitlin slept on and no one stirred beyond the yawning doorways to Baodan and Nairne’s rooms. As he sat by the fire, a sudden bout of dizziness gripped Eamon. He swallowed the coppery taste of blood, but when he put a hand to his tongue, the fingers came away clean. A jolt ran through him, the briefest seizing of his muscles, then gone.
“No. Please, no.”
Eamon began a prayer, rushing out the words, yet he’d barely started when the seizure returned. Bright. Buzzing. Replacing all thought, until, just as before, he was released.
He wanted to scream, but could barely whisper. “Help me.”
The taste of blood washed through his mouth once more and the hairs on his arm rose like the prickle before lightning. A deep bass rumbled in his chest like the world was coming apart, but no one else in the house stirred. Eamon’s muscles contracted and his world was filled with light and buzzing. Then, though awake, he dreamt.
Eamon walked through fog so thick he could barely see. Ripples billowed out behind him like the wake of a sailing ship and spun off whorls like vapor flowers. He strode barefoot through snow but his feet weren’t cold. The buzzing had stopped. In fact, the only sound in the fog was his own breathing.
The mists thinned and Eamon saw shapes leaning in on either side: frightening, suggestive shadows. Yet as the fog dissipated, the shadows resolved into squalid little dwellings that seemed familiar. A dog crossed his path no more than five feet away, stopped to look at him. As he watched, the dog turned and trotted off, tail between its legs. Thinner and thinner the fog grew until it disappeared and Eamon saw that he stood in one of the lanes of Eniskeegan.
Fifteen years had passed since Father Rhys had taken vows as a priest. Seventeen since he’d worn mail or buckled a sword belt to his waist, yet knowing the attack would come forced his mind to the issue of tactics and terrain. An old, welcome instinct. The people of Eniskeegan noticed it at once and he thought it might be why they listened to his plan even though, as a Welshman, he’d never really been one of them.
Some spoke for abandoning the village, but it was Cúán, in his soft, plodding voice that convinced so many to stay.
“I’ll not leave,” he said.
“Och, ye fool, then ye’ll die.”
“Aye. And if they take our food we’re like to die anyway. I’m a freeman by the labor of these hands. If I lose eve’thin’, me family will fall under the lord’s bond again.” He looked around at the people seated in pews. “I’ll not leave.”
“Cúán’s right. We’ll send young Padeen off to Bray for O’Byrne’s boys. This is the protection they’re meant to provide.”
“They’d never get here in time.”
“Let’s take what we can and run. Ye can build again, if yer alive.”
Rhys had been watching for this moment. “The cutthroats will follow,” he said. “And you’ll be too heavily burdened to outrun them.” To a short man with a crumpled hat in his hands, he said, “Columb, you know how well one man can hide his tracks in deep snow, much less an entire village.”
Columb blinked and nodded and the Father rounded on another. “And if you managed your escape, Seamus, what then? They would return another time when you’ve no warning and you’d lose your life as well as possessions.”
“I’ll not leave,” Cúán repeated.
Cúán’s words echoed the thoughts of others. First Bróccan then Guaire and Colcu stood up to say that they were staying to lend a hand in the village’s defense, and just like that it was decided.
After the men left, Father Rhys sat in a pew, looking alternately between his hands and the wooden image of Christ behind the altar.
“It’s not fair to put this decision upon me,” he said.
These men of the village had no chance to live through the day no matter what they did, and Rhys knew it. They could still save their families, however. And if they didn’t hold the brigands long enough, Eamon would not escape the mountain. That of all things musn’t happen.
Only the priest knew the attack wasn’t about this village. It was about the boy and a family Rhys had been set to guard with his
life sixteen years earlier — before the boy had even been conceived. Now his queasy suspicion was confirmed. The hunt for Eamon had been behind the murders of Ballylow, and he cursed below his breath.
As the only one with this knowledge, Rhys was also the only one with a choice in the matter. He’d already damned his soul to hell a thousand times with battlefield decisions, wagers he’d made with the lives of others. The things he’d seen and done had almost destroyed him. Now he questioned God’s very existence and that might be the worst of it. If God didn’t exist, nothing and no one could absolve him.
God in heaven, please hear my prayer. Please be there to hear my prayer.
The light through the church’s high round window had changed. Precious time was passing and doubt could only steal his strength. The decision was made: he would stay and fight for the boy’s chance at escape and, by doing so, doom the villagers in a war they didn’t even know was being waged.
The church had a small room below the altar, a sepulcher, though it had been years since he’d entered. He stood and crossed to the altar, moving aside the stone at its base to reveal a thin flight of stairs with treads of worn basalt.
Taking up a lit candle, Father Rhys descended. At the bottom lay the chamber with its heavy, earthen ceiling that made his head bend and his heart pound. Small niches contained the skulls and bones of forgotten priests. He held his light up and stood in front of a limestone sarcophagus for some time before plucking up the courage to push the lid back. It contained no skeleton, just the remains of a life he had believed long dead. The priest took a deep breath. His hands were shaking as he reached in and lifted out his yellow surcoat, carefully folded, with a red dragon emblazoned on the chest. Next came his mail, his sword and the shield painted with his device: Gyronny of eight, Or and Sable, a dragon rampant regardant Gulles.