by David Waid
After eating, the old woman searched the door with her hands until she’d found the latch and fastened it. She leaned her head against the door. “This must stay sealed from now ‘til cock’s crow in the mornin’. Yer sister’s life depends upon it, do ye understand? It must be shut, no matter the ordeal.” She rubbed an unguent on Caitlin’s chest, then drew from the bags a sprig of dried lavender and a piece of rough chalkstone. Feeling her way around the door and the floor before it, Nairne inscribed white, angular marks. She brandished the sprig and intoned words that sounded like gibberish.
Watching the old woman go about her sorcery, the hairs on Eamon’s neck stood up and for a moment he forgot about his sister.
“Is this some Devil’s work?” he said.
Spinning from the door, Nairne said, “Foolish boy and foolish words!” She clucked her tongue. “‘Divil’s work,’ he says. As well condemn yerself. Ye’d do best to hope this work saves yer sister from the divils ye so lightly invoke. When one who’s touched by the power dies, the passing attracts spirits, like vermin to a carcass.”
Turning back to the door she took a breath that lifted her shoulders, then dropped them. She made a few quick strokes with the chalk and her hand fell to her side. “Forgive me, boy, to speak so blithe of yer sister. ’T was poorly said, though true. Caitlin’s dyin’ will call them hither like beggars to a feast.”
He collapsed onto a stool. “Caitlin is dying?”
“She’s close even now, so they’ll come in the night.”
Eamon grew still and Nairne seemed to sense his change.
“If she can be spared by any craft of mine, it will be so. Unless,” she ticked off several more chalk marks, “ye wish to put all faith in yer god and let his angels bear her to heaven or health, as they will.”
There then, was the choice put into words: piety and loss or the Devil’s plunge for a chance to save Caitlin’s life.
“Help her.”
“That’s best, I think.” Nairne frowned. “Do as I tell ye and keep the door shut. Open it fer no one and no thing, do ye understand? Mornin’ will tell all. If yer sister draws breath come sunrise, she’ll live.”
Nairne returned to the side of the bed, hissing that Eamon was in her way, yet she didn’t tell him to move. She tucked the blankets around Caitlin, who slept, and busied herself with small things. In the moments where he could, Eamon held his sister’s hand and whispered, “Don’t go,” in her ear.
Though the air was cold, Caitlin’s face grew hot. Strands of hair lay plastered with sweat to the skin of her forehead. Her lips moved and he leaned close to listen, but Caitlin’s eyes opened and she glanced past him to the door. When her hand touched Eamon’s forearm, he felt the heat of it through his sleeve. With a feeble pull, she drew him closer until he felt her breath on his cheek. “Who’s out there?” she whispered.
He looked over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“There’s someone outside the door.”
“There’s no one there, Catie.”
“I see the shadow of someone’s feet. He’s standing outside our door.”
The space at the foot of the door showed faintly with light from the taproom, but there were no shadows.
“He’s not moving,” she said. “Why is the man standing outside our door?”
“There’s no one there, Cate.”
“I’m frightened. Don’t let him in.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
This settled her agitation for a while, at least, and she stared at the wooden beams of the ceiling. Without shifting her gaze, she said, “Do you remember when you named the stars for me, Eamon?”
“Yes.”
“These ones are all different.”
He followed her gaze to the dark ceiling. Outside, Eamon knew, the sun could not have set.
“What do you see?” he whispered. Caitlin made no response. The dark hollows of her eyes scanned the ceiling and the walls of the room. Eamon could only imagine what strange landscape she viewed, what blackened trees, stunted, twisted and leafless stood in the murk, clawing at strange stars that wheeled overhead.
At last, her eyes closed and he worried his sister would expire while he sat clinging to her hand. Shortly, though, her breathing became more regular, her fever seemed to abate and she dozed once more. He sat back and the tightness of his shoulders eased a fraction. And as she slept, he thought of the things he’d seen. He returned to memories of the frozen river and Corc’s death. It was clear he had some power. Clearer still, he had no idea how to use it beyond trusting to blind luck and perhaps some small shred of intuition. Could he help Caitlin?
And if this power was some trick of the Devil, what then? Looking at his sister, Eamon realized he didn’t care. He would risk everything to keep her alive. Nairn had stopped her bustle and sat on the room’s other stool, lost in thoughts of her own.
“Can you teach me how to use my power?” Eamon said. “Maybe I can help Cate.”
“I thought ye worried about devilry,” Nairne said, but her attempt at a smile failed. Shaking her head, she sighed. “I’m not the person to do the teachin’ when it comes to a gift as great as yers. I am too small, I fear, to even…” She gestured to Caitlin. “To even help this poor child.”
“Don’t let her die.”
“I’ll do what I can, but the sickness has her.” She ducked her head. “Yer sister is too young fer the ordeal to come.”
The two settled into silence. The room was dark, save for the feeble light of a foul smelling fish oil lamp and there seemed no sense of time other than the slow rise and fall of Caitlin’s chest. Eamon could not remember falling asleep, but his next sensation was of the coarse wool of the bed’s coverlet under his cheek. Still seated on a stool, his head, arms and shoulders rested on the bed top and a blanket had been laid across his shoulders. He remained part way in slumber, thoughts wandering and unclear. Nairne had made a bed of blankets nearby and lay on her back with her mouth open.
From the common room came the sound of conversation and Eamon imagined people gathering by the fire and the sky outside growing dark. Someone drew fingers across the strings of a harp. For a time, murmurs and the tuning of the harp were the only sounds, until the unknown jongleur struck up a slow, mournful melody, keeping time with his foot, and Eamon thought it strange he could hear it down the hallway, tap, tap, tapping against the floor. A man’s voice rose up, sweet and clear. He sang Armagint, the lament of a soldier coming home to find his family murdered.
The sound of her laughter has been replaced
by dry leaves blowing
through the door.
The babes, like herring gulls,
have all flown Eire’s shore.
Seal calves bark and corncrakes call
‘Twere better I’d died
than seen the empty house by Gweebarra Bay
on the rocky shores of Donegal.
Drifting in and out of sleep, Eamon listened as the music continued on. Some of the songs were lively dances accompanied by clapping hands and others bawdy reels like the Tale of Paidín’s Pig. The common room’s assembly roared with laughter and stomped their feet. They called the musician by the name of Mead Paw and cries rang out to him from both men and women, “My love to ye, Mead Paw!” and “Another pint fer the master!” After a time, the music and the cries fell into the background, weaving into strange half dreams.
In a rare moment of quiet, someone whispered. It sounded like it came from inside the room. Confused, Eamon drifted in light slumber until it came again. Caitlin spoke, her voice so soft he nearly missed it. Sitting up, he rubbed the remains of sleep from his eyes.
“Catie, who are you talking to?”
Caitlin had been whispering towards the door, and when Eamon straightened, they were face to face. He pulled away, shocked by the change in her. Shadows around his sister’s eyes had turned to purple-black circles while the rest of her skin had
become pale, bloodless. Her hair looked dry and lifeless as straw, her lips chapped and peeling. Caitlin’s hands, shaking visibly, lay in her lap.
“Who were you talking to?” Eamon asked again.
Her sunken eyes flicked past him to the door. “No one.”
Whirling, he saw in the space between the floor and the door’s bottom edge, two shadows, like feet blocking red firelight from the common room. Eamon sucked in a breath. The music started up again, only this time it sounded warbling and distorted.
Caitlin fell back, eyes rolling up into her head. Her shoulders pushed back into the bed and her chest thrust up. Muscles in her neck stood out and her face grew red, a horrible, strangled noise coming from her mouth. He turned to wake Nairne, but couldn’t think straight. The air tasted stale, filled his lungs grudgingly. That cloying thickness was in his mind, too, and each thought slipped away unfinished, forgotten.
The tiny chamber reeked of illness and herbs. The stench of the lamp was in his clothes. He yearned to breathe the clean, sea-tinged air outside, to sear his lungs with its frost. In fact, it would be blessed relief to drink even the air of the common room, laden though it must be with grease and smoke. In the tumbling confusion of thoughts, the only constant was this urgency to escape the room. His hands shook and he could think only of kneeling in the bracing, cold snow beneath heaven’s cast, panting clouds of steam.
Strange, jangling music rolled in from beyond the door. A burst of laughter from the inn’s guests had an evil lilt to it. He imagined a man in the adjacent bedchamber, crouched with his ear pressed to the wall, hand over mouth, and thought he heard the man’s tittering laughter through thin partition wood. Then, behind the fear and the shrill, wavering music, Eamon caught a different sound, one that was clear, if distant. He paused and cocked his head. It came again, a musical note that rose, ghostly and plaintive, trailing off at the end. Once more the sound, lofting high, echoing and solitary, then joined by another and another in a strange, familiar chorus.
The mere act of concentrating on this new music brought some order to his mind. The notes transformed, becoming cries; the cries, howls; the howls, wild ranging wolves singing to the moon. With that, the clouds that veiled his mind broke apart. The music of the common room returned to normal. The laughter of the guests held mirth only, and no threat.
The wolves howled again and Eamon knew their voices like he knew his sister’s. It was the pack they’d encountered descending the mountain. His pack. He shook his head, clearing it of the last wisps of reverie and was startled to find himself by the door, across the room from where he’d been sitting. Looking down, he saw his hand resting on the latch, an instant from unclasping the thing and throwing back the door. Yanking his fingers back as though burned, he looked with horror at the shadowed crack along the door’s base.
“You can’t have her,” he said.
Running back to Catlin’s side, he tried to put himself between her and the door. Caitlin lay in her blankets, body still, skin as pale as death. It seemed no breath lifted her chest. Nairne wheezed from her place on the ground and a quiet cough came from outside the door. No doubt a guest, but to Eamon’s mind it was long-legged Jack a’Gaunt, straight out of a child’s tale, come to claim Caitlin with spidery fingers and moist palms. It was all imagination, he told himself, but to no avail. Oh, it might be there was no Gaunt, but there was threat. Palpable threat. Growing black and swollen beneath the inn’s gabled roof.
He called Nairne’s name, but she didn’t reply. Again and again he called her, but still she slept. Scratching noises came from inside the room’s four walls. Spinning, he dropped to his knees by the old woman and shook her by the shoulders. Her eyes jittered wildly beneath her eyelids, but she didn’t wake. Spaces between the floorboards were wide and filled with shadow. There were cracks in the wall. Why hadn’t he seen these things before? All at once, the door seemed a frail, pointless barrier. Summoning his courage, he slapped Nairne’s face. The smack echoed in the little room, but did nothing to wake her.
Laughter sounded, but when he whirled around, no one was there. Putting his back to the bed, Eamon drew his knees up and dropped his head into his hands. In the suddenly hushed room, his sister spoke.
“Eamon,” she said.
Scrambling around onto his knees, hope surged only to crash again. Caitlin lay pale and stiff, hands folded across her chest. Her eyes were open, but glassy, unseeing. Only by the tiniest, trembling jerks of her pupils could he see she wasn’t dead. But she was close.
Even as he looked at her, she spoke. Her eyes remained unfocused, pointed at the room’s ceiling. Nothing moved but her lips.
“Eamon,” she said.
Relief flooded through him. “Catie. Oh, Catie.”
“Listen to me.”
“What is it?”
“She stands at the gate but won’t step through.”
“Who are you talking about? What gate?”
“Only ill and evil can result if she won’t step through.”
A terrible thought occurred. “Who are you?” he asked.
Caitlin’s head fell to the side, dull eyes pointed at him.
“Open the door, Eamon, and let me in.”
24. Flight and Pursuit
Northern France
Teresa stared at Father Hugh across the red glow of the wagon’s brazier. The old man sat hunched forward, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, fingers tugging threads along the edge. He wouldn’t look her in the eye and she tried to understand what he had just said.
There was no ship to Dublin.
It had all been a lie. A trick to get her to Paris. She leaned forward, trying to catch his eye. “How could you do this?” she said. “You promised!”
When he looked up, the priest’s eyes held shadows and hurt. “Ask instead how I could ever escort you to your death.” His eyes wavered, flicked away from her face.
“You’re a liar,” she whispered. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time. “You want to control me. That’s all you’ve ever wanted. Me and Ignacio.” Tears stung Teresa’s eyes and she furiously blinked them away. “I’ll go to Ireland by myself.”
Father Hugh shook his head. In a soft voice, he replied. “You have always been a stubborn girl.” The old man lifted the blanket off his shoulders and let it slide down his back. He reached for his cloak.
“What are you going to do?” Teresa asked.
“I? Nothing.” He shook his head. “Yet I care enough to keep you from killing yourself.” He opened the door and cold air knifed into the wagon. In the jaundiced light of the candles, Teresa saw men gathered outside. There were three, and they wore dark cloaks and wide-brimmed hats pulled down to obscure their faces.
“Quick and gentle,” the priest said.
One of the men spoke to the priest in Genoese, heavily accented with French. “You did not give her the sleeping draft.”
“No.” Father Hugh shook his head. “Unnecessary. She has not yet come into control of her power.”
“Let us hope you are right.”
The tears came back, wobbling on Teresa’s lashes. “I trusted you,” she said.
“Trust me now. Come with me.”
She said nothing and Father Hugh sighed. He hung his legs off the back and let himself down into the snow. The wagonbed lurched as the impatient Frenchman pulled himself in and his bulky frame blocked the door. Teresa stood and backed away, looking for a weapon, an escape, anything.
The compartment’s ceiling hung too low for the man to stand, so he assumed a half crouch and held his arms out. The sliding wooden door was behind her. If she tried for it, he’d have her legs before she could pull them through. Candlelight flashed on the man’s wide belt buckle…and an idea struck her.
Teresa forced herself into the concentration she’d practiced. In her mind, the gibberish chant began. The Frenchman took a step as she imagined reaching out to the brazier with her power, fixed that picture in her head. And just as before, the glowin
g coals were snuffed, instantly dull and dead, smoke rising in the air. The Frenchman’s eyes flicked to it, then back to Teresa. He couldn’t help but drop his glance to the trembling candle flames and she almost smiled. When his eyes came back, she saw fear.
“Mon Dieu!” he said. Blackness dropped.
Teresa’s mind jabbed again. The sliding door whipped aside, slamming open. The air outside was almost as dark as the wagon’s interior, the starlight blocked by thick clouds, but Teresa felt the cold of it. She scrambled to the side — away from the door — until the interior wall was against her back.
With the wagon pitching, her assailant crashed forward into the hot brazier and cursed, stumbling across the chest. Teresa flattened herself against the wall. The air of his movement brushed close and she turned her face to the side, fists and eyes squeezed shut. He cried out right in front of her. “Elle a échappé à l’avant!” She has escaped from the front!
“A l’avant! A l’avant!” The man scrambled past Teresa through the sliding door. Answering shouts rang out from the two men who’d been gathered at the back as they ran along either side of the wagon.
Silence descended. There was no telling how long this deception would last. She must move. A small cough sounded by the door at the wagon’s rear, a crunch of movement in the snow and the dark. She stopped, paralyzed.
“Teresa, what have you done?” said Father Hugh.
She clamped a hand over her mouth. Did he speak to her or to himself? She didn’t reply, just held still, not even daring to breathe. Time stretched unnaturally. The priest shifted in the snow. Then, without another word, followed his confederates, running beside the wagon toward the front of the baggage train.
The merchants were roused by the Frenchman’s shouting. Through the rear door Teresa watched lights spring up along the line. Voices raised, some in fear, some yelling questions. Tripping over a blanket, she barked her shin against the chest, air hissing through her teeth. That’s when she remembered the Maestro’s grimoire. In her terror, she’d almost left it behind.