“Excuse me.” Anluan was on his feet and out the door almost before I had time to blink. His faithful shadow rose from the table and hastened after him.
Dismay must have been written all over my face. Magnus poured a cup of ale and set it in front of me, while Eichri wrapped his bony fingers around mine.
“I’ll have Muirne’s supper,” said Olcan.“Pass it up, Rioghan, will you?”
“If he didn’t want an honest answer he shouldn’t have asked for one,” I said, furious with myself for upsetting Anluan again, when he had been so open with me earlier.
The silence that followed was like the first ice of the season, brittle and dangerous.
“Anluan won’t tell you this,” Rioghan said, “but Irial died by his own hand. He used poison; we never found out exactly what kind. It must have been easy for him to concoct, since he was so knowledgeable about plants and their uses. Sixteen years ago, that was, and as clear in our minds as the day it happened. He was still alive when we found him out in the garden. It was . . .” He shivered. “It was bad. I’ll never forget his skin, all blue-gray like one huge bruise. His eyes went cloudy. Whatever it was that he took, it affected the lungs. He found it harder and harder to catch his breath. It seemed to me there was something he wanted to tell us, but his voice was gone.”
I could think of nothing to say. I probably should have guessed that this was the explanation for Irial’s outliving his beloved Emer by only two years.
“There’s more,” said Olcan. “On a dark day, long ago, I found Conan out in the woods with a very efficient stab wound to the heart and his hunting knife still in his hand. He may not have been the sort of fellow folk warmed to, but at least he waited until his son was a man. It’s a pattern those of us who are close to Anluan don’t much care for.”
Sixteen years. That meant Anluan was only five-and-twenty. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This must be distressing for all of you.”
“You’re one of us now,” Magnus said quietly.“It’s good that you know. We don’t like him upset, that’s true. But he did raise it, and he did ask you to be straight with him.That’s not a blunder, Caitrin, it’s two steps forwards. He’s trying hard. But you’ll have to go carefully. He bears a lot of scars.”
“I suppose Irial simply couldn’t go on without Emer. But it seems a terrible thing to do when his son was so young, only a child.” It had troubled me, reading his record of grief, that Irial had barely mentioned his boy. It was another reason not to draw the margin notes to Anluan’s attention.
Magnus sighed. “When she died, Irial’s whole world fell apart. He never got over the loss of her. Two years, he held on, but the world grew darker and darker for him. Not that I ever expected he’d act as he did. I thought he had the strength to endure it for Anluan’s sake. I’d give a lot to be able to turn time backwards. I’d like to talk to Irial, say all the things I should have found time to say while he was still here.”
“I should go and find Anluan,” I said, getting up. “I should apologize.”
“I wouldn’t.” Magnus’s gray eyes were somber.“Talk to him tomorrow, by daylight. He’s best alone tonight.”
“He’s not alone,” I pointed out. “He’s got Muirne.”
Perhaps there was something in my tone that revealed what I really thought about this: that Muirne’s presence was likely to make him more, rather than less, despondent.With Irial’s story fresh in my mind, and Conan’s, Anluan’s dark moods had begun to take on a troubling significance. I bitterly regretted upsetting him.
“Don’t much care for Muirne, do you?” Olcan asked with a smile.
“She doesn’t like my being here,” I said.“That makes it rather difficult to be friends. I understand a little better now that Anluan has told me more about the host. Muirne is devoted to him, that’s obvious. She thinks my presence will exhaust and weaken him, and perhaps there’s some truth in that. I suppose she fears that if he gets too tired, he may not be able to keep the host in check.”
“Take my advice,” Magnus said. “Give Anluan time to think this over. He respects your judgment, Caitrin. But it’s new to him, this talking openly about the past. He’s never dared hope for a different kind of future.”
“He did hire me.”
“True,” Eichri said,“though that may have been more act of desperation than act of hope. He thinks the world of you, Caitrin. Don’t doubt it, despite the way he snaps. But you’re an exotic creature to Anluan, a curiosity from a far-off land.You challenge him in more ways than you could imagine.”
I looked from one member of this inner circle to another. Their love for their chieftain shone in their words and on their faces.
“Very well,” I said. “I won’t trouble him tonight.” No doubt there would be a light burning in Anluan’s quarters, visible through the tangle of foliage in the courtyard as usual. I wondered if he wrote in his little book by lamplight or simply stared into the flame. Maybe, like Nechtan, he pursued branches of study that could not be carried out more openly. There were no grimoires in the library.That didn’t mean there were none in the house. I had been taking Irial’s notebooks to my bedchamber, a different one each evening. Anluan might have a whole private collection in his quarters. Might not such a collection include Nechtan’s books of magic?
I excused myself, lit my candle with a taper from the fire and went up to my bedchamber, wishing my mind had not traveled down this last path. Anluan had said he did not use sorcery to command the host, only a knack. I had believed him. But he had made the others conceal the truth from me so that I would stay at Whistling Tor. That was only one step from a lie. Perhaps he had lied about the sorcery. He’d seen how horrified I was by the mirror vision. If he were a practitioner of the same dark arts as Nechtan, he’d hardly be open about it.
My chamber door was ajar. Inside, a child in a white smock was sitting cross-legged on the floor, in the dark, with my little doll Róise on her lap.The girl’s hair was white, too, drifting in a pale cloud around her head and shoulders. She was crooning a wordless lullaby. The hairs on my neck rose. A glance around the chamber told me she’d been investigating all my things. Clothing spilled out of the storage chest, my comb lay on the floor and the bedding had been disordered with more violence than such a fragile being seemed capable of. I took two steps into the room.The child raised her head, fixing shadowy eyes on me.
“Hurt,” she whispered.“Baby’s hurt.” Her skinny hand moved tenderly to stroke the silken threads that formed Róise’s hair. Even by the fitful light of my candle I could see that the doll was the worse for wear. Some of her hair had been pulled right out and her skirt was in shreds. My stomach tight with unease, I cast my eyes around for knives, bodkins or other dangerous implements. “Oo-roo, baby, all better soon,” the child sang, rocking the doll in her arms.
A rustling sound behind me in the open doorway. I whirled around.
The young warrior in the bloody shirt stood there, the one from out in the woods. His arms were wrapped across his chest. A febrile trembling coursed through his body. Whatever it was that shook him so, rage, fear, a malady, it possessed him utterly. Brighid save me, what had I begun?
“Tell me the truth.” His voice was dry and scratchy, as if he’d been long out of the habit of using it. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Can you give us what we need? Or did you speak lies and false hope? We have waited long.”
I almost yelled for Magnus.The young man had a sword and a dagger at his belt. He sounded desperate. He looked poised on the brink of violent action. But I did not call out. I was the one who had set this in motion and I must be brave enough to deal with the consequences.
“I wasn’t lying,” I said, doing my best to hold his nervous, darting gaze. “I’ll do my best to help you.Tell me, what is it you need most?”
For a moment his eyes were full of whirling visions, images of pain and struggle.
“Sleep.” He spoke the word on a sigh.“Rest.That is what we long for. It is what we cr
ave.Tell the lord of Whistling Tor to let us go.”
“He would if he knew how,” I said. “I’ll help him search for a way. But ... I must be plain with you. I am only a ... I am not ... I have no position of authority here at Whistling Tor. I cannot swear to you that there’s a remedy to be found. All I can promise is to do my very best for you.”
The young man bowed his head.With a sound like shivering leaves he faded away before my eyes. I turned my attention to the child and to my disturbed chamber. Since I could think of nothing appropriate to say to a small ghost girl—I could hardly tell her she should be tucked up in bed by now—I began methodically to set my belongings to rights. First the blankets; I gathered them and began to fold. A moment later the child had set Róise carefully down and was holding two corners for me, her sorrowful eyes intent on my face. We moved towards each other as in a dance; I gathered the top edges together, the girl took up the lower corners and we repeated our measure. I laid the folded blanket on the foot of the bed and picked up the second.
“Thank you,” I said. “You’re a good helper.”
“Baby’s hurt.” Her tone was mournful. She glanced at Róise, who now sat on the floor with her back to the storage chest, her embroidered eyes fixed on us.
“She’s only a doll,” I said cautiously. “I’ll mend her. But I’m sad that someone damaged her. My sister made her for me. Róise is my memory of good things.” It was hard to know how much to say. The girl seemed harmless. But she’d been in my chamber and the fact that she was helping me now didn’t make up for what she’d done to my belongings. “Please pick up the comb and put it on that chest.”
She did not put the comb away, but brought it to me, then turned her back in clear expectation that I would tidy her wispy pale hair for her. I set the second blanket down and began a careful combing.
“Where’s my mama?” the child asked suddenly.
My heart turned over.“I don’t know, sweetheart.” Her hair was as flya way as thistledown; the candlelight seemed to shine through it.
There was a long silence as I gently combed, and then she said,“I want Mama. I want to go home.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. I knelt down and put my arms around her. She was ice-cold, preternaturally cold, and although she had substance, she felt nothing like an ordinary child—she was far less solid in form than Rioghan or Eichri. I suppressed a horrified shudder. There was nothing I could say that would help; no promise I could make that a small child might understand. I could not send her home. She had no home. I could not find her mother. I could not offer her a place to stay, a bed to sleep in. She was a spirit child; she did not belong with me.
“Your hair looks lovely now,” I said. “My name is Caitrin. What is yours?”
Her voice was like the passing of a breeze in the grass. “I don’t remember.”
Down in the garden, Fianchu exploded into a fanfare of barking, seeing off some nighttime creature. In my arms, the child vanished. One moment she was there, the next I was holding nothing at all.
“Caitrin?” Olcan called from outside.
My skin in goose bumps, I went out to the gallery. He and the dog were coming up the steps.
“Thought I might leave Fianchu with you tonight,” Olcan said.“You’ll be nervous after what happened earlier with your unpleasant kinsman and his cronies. You needn’t have this fellow in the bedchamber with you, though that’d be his preference without a doubt.You can leave him out here when you bolt your door, and he’ll sleep across the threshold.”
“Thank you.” Fianchu’s presence would be more than welcome.“I had visitors just now. From the host.Will Fianchu keep them away as well?”
“You’ll be safe, Caitrin.You’re Anluan’s friend.They won’t harm you.”
I considered this as I lay in bed a little later with the door shut and bolted and Fianchu on my side of it, comfortable on one of the two blankets, for I had not had the heart to shut him out. If dogs had been able to smile, he’d have had a big grin on his brutish features. Everyone seemed sure that Anluan could protect me; that his mastery over the host meant the uncanny presences of Whistling Tor would not harm his household or the chieftain himself unless he crossed that invisible line he had shown me. I wondered about that. The young man in the bloody shirt had seemed almost inimical when he accused me of lying.There had been anger in his voice when he bade me tell Anluan to let the host go. Anluan was Nechtan’s descendant, and Nechtan was the one who had brought these folk forth and, I assumed, condemned them to their strange existence on the hill.Were we really safe from them? Or might it take only a wrong word or a trivial error of judgment to turn them into the chaotic, destructive horde of Conan’s account, a force that destroyed friend and foe alike? When they had confronted Cillian this morning, they had looked ravening, fearsome, malevolent.
My mind went to Anluan. I recalled his courage as he stepped out to face my attackers, all alone. Now he was alone once more, probably in his quarters brooding over his father’s sad end. Alone save for Muirne. Solici tous, protective, devoted Muirne. Even if she had been a living woman, as I had believed until this morning, she was wrong for him. “He needs someone as perfect for him as Emer was for Irial,” I told the enormous hound. “Someone who will be kind to him, but not too kind. Someone who won’t mind living in this strange place. Someone with the patience to help him learn.”
Fianchu made no comment, only lifted his head, sighed, and stretched out luxuriously on the blanket.
“Someone who respects him,” I added. “Someone who sees him as strong, not weak. Someone who needs him as much as he needs her.”
The dog was asleep. I blew out my candle and pulled the blanket up to my chin. “And no, I don’t mean myself,” I murmured. “I’m not so foolish as that.Though I’d surely do a better job of it than she does.”
Despite Fianchu’s protective presence I slept badly. I rose at dawn with the tangled remnants of my nightmares hanging close about me.When I opened my door to let the dog out there was a sudden movement along the gallery, a blur, as if a ghostly presence had kept its own watch outside the door.
Mist shrouded the garden, creeping into every corner.Within the shifting shapes of it I could see them: the wounded, the sorrowful, the furious, the desperate folk of the hill.Their eyes were fixed on me.There were no threats, no entreaties, indeed there was no sound from them at all as they passed, but I heard the unspoken words in my heart: Find it. Find a way.
“I will,” I muttered, more to myself than to the host. “If I can, I will.” But as I threaded my way through the maze of chambers and passages towards the kitchen, I reminded myself, uncomfortably, that I was here at Whistling Tor because I had run away from my own problems. The host had been on the hill for a hundred years. It had blighted the lives of four chieftains, their families and the folk of the region. Anluan had hired me to translate Latin for him, not to achieve what nobody else had been able to do in all that time.
Magnus was in the kitchen making up the fire.
“I’m off down to the settlement soon,” he said. “You sure you’re all right, Caitrin? You’re not looking well, even now. It’s not every day you discover all of a sudden that you’re living alongside—well, I’ve never been quite sure what to call them. Must have been unsettling, at the least.”
“I slept badly.That’s nothing new. Yes, it was a strange day. It wasn’t the host that most disturbed me, it was the way Cillian managed to find me, just when I was starting to feel safe. When Tomas and Orna first sheltered me, I told them I was running away and expected to be followed. It’s hard to believe they would tell him where I was.” Even in this quiet chamber, with this kindly man as my only company, the words did not come easily. “It had been quite bad, at home, before I came here,” I made myself say.“It took me a long time to be brave enough to leave. I was so terrified he’d drag me back, I hardly thought to be afraid of the host.”
The fire was blazing now. Magnus set the kettle on its hook. “If that f
ellow’s typical of your kinsfolk, you’re best off without them, in my opinion,” he said. “What is he to you, Caitrin? A cousin? How was he able to get away with those acts of violence?”
“His mother is a distant cousin of my father’s. Before Father died, I hardly knew them. And afterwards ... well, they came to look after me, at least that was what they said, and ... I don’t want to talk about it, Magnus.”
Magnus was frowning.“The situation sounds irregular at the very least, Caitrin. Why don’t you have a word with Rioghan? He knows all about the law. Explain it to him and ask what he thinks. Sounds like something’s wrong to me.”
I would never go back to Market Cross. Never. So it didn’t matter what advice Rioghan had, since I would not be acting on it. “I’ll talk to him some time,” I said. “Not today. After yesterday’s disruptions, I need to spend all day in the library.”
So early in the morning, the light was barely adequate for writing. I busied myself preparing a broad-tipped goose-feather quill and scoring a fresh sheet of parchment.As the sun rose higher and the chamber grew brighter, I set these items aside—they were not for my use. I got out my own quill and ink, and took up the task of copying my most recent document listing from wax tablet to parchment. I had filled the tablet five times over now, transcribing each list in turn when the wax surface was covered, then erasing and beginning again. It was a thankless, tedious task.All I wanted to do was plunge frantically into the Latin documents in the quest for spells and charms. Common sense prevailed. I must maintain the catalogue as I progressed, or as soon as I left Whistling Tor the library would descend into its old chaos. I wrote quickly, using a common hand. There was no need for this work to be finely executed; it just had to be legible.
From time to time I was aware of a whisper of feet on the flag-stoned floor, a shadowy movement at the corner of my eye, but when I glanced up there was nobody to be seen. I knew they were there watching me. “I’m working as fast as I can,” I muttered, acutely aware that the real work still lay before me. If the truth about Nechtan’s sorcery lay in this library, it would be in those Latin documents. I glanced at the chest that held the obsidian mirror. From within the squat form of the box I could feel the malign power of the artifact. Use me. If you want the answers, use me.
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