by Kate Forsyth
They would feast and dance the night away, and many, intoxicated with the sparkling rose-coloured wine, the warmth of the sweet-scented wind, would take their lover’s hand and leap the fire together, pledging their troth.
For a year and a day, they could lie together like man and wife, and take their pleasure, and explore their love. Then, on Midsummer’s Day the next year, if both were still willing, they could come again to the embers of the fire and leap it again, their wrists bound together with cord. Once the marriage vows were sworn, and the wedding rites fulfilled, they would be man and wife, their lives entwined together for evermore. The thought of it dazzled and frightened him, and filled him with both joy and terror.
For Lewen and Olwynne planned to jump the Midsummer’s Eve fire that night. No-one else knew. Olwynne was sure her parents would put a stop to it if they realised, and Lewen knew she was right. He, the son of a soldier and a tree-shifter, was not at all the bridegroom the Rìgh and Banrìgh would have planned for their only daughter, and the shadow of Rhiannon hung over them, disturbing both their sleep with nightmares.
‘Maybe we should wait,’ he had whispered to Olwynne the night before, in the stuffy darkness of her bed. ‘I mean … Rhiannon …’
She had seized his face in both her hands. ‘I ken ye are shocked by the verdict, Lewen, and I ken ye blame yourself. But it was no’ ye who shot Connor through the back, and no’ ye who lied and gave false testimony! She has brought this evil fate down upon herself. Forget her! This is for the best, canna ye see?’
He was dismayed to feel tears stinging his eyes. Unable to answer, he turned from her and buried his face in his pillow. Olwynne had fitted her body all along his back, cradling him with her arm. ‘Trust me,’ she had whispered. ‘The sooner ye forget her the better. Jump the fire with me, Lewen! Let us tell the world how we feel for each other!’
He had said nothing and she had drawn away from him. ‘Do ye no’ love me?’ she demanded. ‘Do ye no’ wish to be handfasted?’
He had shifted a little so he lay on his back, looking for her in the darkness. Her scent overwhelmed him. ‘Aye, o’ course I love ye,’ he had whispered. ‘It’s just I …’
‘I ken,’ she answered, and kissed him on the mouth. ‘Truly I do. But she is no good for ye, Lewen. It would have meant ruin for ye. I will be a good wife to ye, though, I’ll love ye and help ye, and ye’ll have all ye’ve ever wanted. Canna ye see how much better it is this way?’
He had nodded, and she had hung close over him so her breasts weighed on his chest. ‘If ye love me, jump the fire with me, Lewen. For I need ye to show the whole world that I’m the one ye love. If ye canna do that, ye canna really love me and I’m better off without ye.’
The idea of being without her had plunged him into panic, and so he had promised. He had lain awake then, all the hot night, trying to banish the image of Rhiannon with a black hood being drawn down over her lovely face, of her body jerking as the boards opened beneath her …
He knew Olwynne slept badly too, for she whimpered in her sleep, and cried out, and some time before dawn got up to sit by the window, staring out into the garden. Lewen felt in his heart that it was not a good omen, to toss in nightmares the night before one planned to jump the fire, but he could not bear for Olwynne to doubt him and so he kept his resolve firm, refusing to think on Rhiannon at all.
Now the shadows of the cypress trees were lengthening over the pavement, and the golden domes of the palace were blazing in the last light of the sun. He heard singing and turned to watch a long procession of witches come along the road from the Tower of Two Moons, their heads crowned with flowers. His hands were damp with nervousness. He wiped them on his best handkerchief, and straightened his jacket.
As the sun slowly sank behind the trees, the Keybearer spoke the midsummer rites then, as dusk fell over the garden, she flung up her hands, so the bonfire lit with a great whoosh of flames.
Lewen stood quietly and watched as the revellers laughed and danced, and the last light of the day ebbed away into darkness, the red glowing eye of the bonfire seeming to burn brighter and brighter even though it too was dying. His whole body ached with grief. The more he tried not to think of Rhiannon, the more she occupied his thoughts; and he had to lift his hand and press it to his eyes. The flames of the fire were blurring and doubling, though Lewen had touched no wine or ale. He watched as one couple after another joined hands and jumped the fire, some giggling, some in awe and struck with shyness. For some reason, the sight affected Lewen powerfully. Grief, or envy, or longing, struck him as sharp as a spear in the side. Blindly he turned aside, and went to stumble away.
But Lewen felt a gentle touch on his hand and turned. Olwynne stood beside him, smiling shyly. She was dressed all in golden silk, with a circlet of roses and violets on her fiery hair. It hung unbound down her back like a river of molten lava. Lewen could not take his eyes off her. I’m doing the right thing, he told himself. This is the beginning o’ my new life. Olwynne is my true love. Forget Rhiannon, who tricked and lied to and ensorcelled me …
Olwynne met his eyes and smiled so radiantly the heavy ache of unshed tears in his breast suddenly melted away. He smiled back and stepped forward to take her hand. Then, to the accompaniment of cheers of surprise and encouragement, they ran hand-in-hand at the bonfire and leapt high over the glowing embers. Sparks flew up at their faces like attacking bees, and Lewen’s eyes suddenly stung with the smoke, so that he had to rise his hand and scrub at his eyes, glad of the darkness that hid his face from view.
Rhiannon sat on her hard cot and stared at the brick with the dark blotch shaped like a flying horse. If mere will and desire could break down walls, the stones before her would be exploding into dust and she would be on Blackthorn’s back, flying free into the night. She wished for it with every fibre of her being. But Sorrowgate Prison had been built to contain stronger and darker spirits than hers; spells of strength, binding and containment had been spoken over every stone. The only thing breaking was Rhiannon’s own heart.
It was late. Outside, the sound of the Midsummer’s Eve feast rose from the square – squeals of laughter, the hum of conversation, the lilt of fiddle and guitar, the beat of dancing feet.
Inside the royal suite all was subdued. Lachlan and Iseult were still shocked and dismayed by the sight of their only daughter leaping the fire with a boy they were not at all sure they approved. Lewen may well have been the son of one of Lachlan’s most faithful lieutenants, but he had no money and very little land, and he had only recently broken free of the toils of a murderous satyricorn. The whole court was buzzing with the scandal, and the only redeeming factor was the glow of happiness on Olwynne’s face.
Through the windows came the flickering orange light of the bonfire. Lachlan stood with his hand on the window clasp, watching the dancers twirling about the pyre.
‘I am troubled, I must admit,’ the Rìgh said. ‘It goes against the grain to hang one so young and fair, and one championed by some o’ my auldest and dearest friends. I am just glad they did no’ find her guilty o’ treason too. I could no’ have stomached the drawing and quartering.’
‘They are rioting in the city,’ Iseult said, sitting very straight on her blue-and-gilt chair, her red brows drawn together. ‘The faery quarter is up in arms. Something about this satyricorn lass has captured their imagination.’
‘It is the tale that lass from Ravenshaw tells,’ Brun the cluricaun said. He was sitting comfortably on a low sofa, a foaming mug of ale resting on his broad paunch. ‘I seen her at the Nisse and Nixie – she sure can tell a tale! It fair creeps my blood, when she talks about the dead laddie touching Rhiannon with his icy hand, and whispering how cold he is all the time. She’s pulling bigger crowds now than the masked singer I was telling ye about, the one who insists on sitting all wreathed in smoke, and disappears anytime I come near her.’
‘Is that the lass Owein is moping over?’ Iseult said sharply. ‘The pretty one, keeping her chin in
the air?’
‘Aye, that’s the one,’ Brun said and drank some of his ale, smacking his lips noisily. ‘She should be on the stage, that lass. Wasted as a duke’s daughter.’
‘If only Donncan had no’ gone and killed a Yeoman himself!’ Lachlan said gloomily. ‘O’ course it looks bad, him being cleared after a mere enquiry, and this Rhiannon girl being condemned to death.’
‘The enquiry was fair,’ Iseult said defensively.
‘Was it? Ye canna tell me that any other young man would have been treated so well. Donncan was spared the indignity o’ a public trial because he is my son, no other reason.’
‘Ye canna want Donncan to face a trial!’
‘O’ course I do no’ want him to! Nor do I think he should. It was self-defence, clearly enough. It is just bad timing, this murder trial happening right on the heels o’ the young guard’s death. Ye must admit it doesna look good.’
‘Nay,’ Iseult agreed slowly, ‘but what can we do about it?’
‘Do ye mean to pardon Rhiannon?’ Isabeau asked. She was sitting in the window seat with Buba the owl nestled in her hands. Still dressed in her ceremonial robes, she had pulled off her crown of flowers and it lay on the cushion beside her, the flowers wilting.
‘I dinna ken,’ Lachlan replied slowly. ‘Dillon and Johanna are howling for her blood, and even Finn and Jay seem convinced her motives in killing Connor were no’ as pure as she makes out. They were the ones who found this wild man and brought him in, and certainly his testimony was damning. Yet …’
‘Yet she saved Roden from the laird o’ Fettercairn,’ Isabeau said.
‘Aye,’ Lachlan agreed.
‘Nina says she could’ve escaped then, if she had wanted to,’ Dide said. He was sitting sideways on a low stool, gently strumming his battered old guitar. ‘She risked her life to save him. Nina does no’ ken how she is to explain to Roden that Rhiannon is to be hung.’
Lachlan winced and gave a little groan. ‘No’ a task I’d relish, I must admit,’ he said.
‘It was a fair trial and the judges made their decision on the evidence presented,’ Iseult said impatiently. ‘Ye ken they willna like it if ye go meddling in what is really none o’ your business.’
Lachlan frowned. ‘I am the final arbitrator o’ justice in this land, I have the right to issue a royal pardon,’ he reminded her.
‘Aye, but that doesna mean the Inns o’ Court will like it,’ she replied.
Lachlan shrugged his shoulders irritably.
‘She has Talent,’ Isabeau said, returning her gaze again to the garden. ‘The strongest we’ve found in a while.’
‘So ye think I should pardon her? Because ye want her for your Theurgia?’
‘I do want her, but I would no’ ask ye to pardon a convicted murderess simply because I think she has Talent. No, there’s more to it than that. I think the judges made a mistake.’
‘How so?’ Iseult’s voice was not encouraging.
‘How many o’ us can state with utter truth that our motives in this life are always pure and simple? I ken I canna.’
Iseult’s face relaxed. She shrugged ruefully, saying, ‘How true. Ye think perhaps they failed to understand that? In regards to this satyricorn girl, I mean?’
Isabeau nodded.
Lachlan brought the Lodestar to rest between his knees, staring down into its swirling white heart.
‘It would be a bad omen, to have gallows-fruit hanging on the gate the day Donncan and Bronwen finally jump the fire together,’ Dide said.
‘Yet she admits she killed Connor,’ Lachlan said with a spurt of anger in his voice. ‘He was one o’ my best, my most loyal men! I have too few o’ ye, Dide, I canna afford to have them being shot in the back by a wayward satyricorn lass. If I pardon her, am I no’ declaring the murder o’ a Yeoman is o’ no account?’
The room was silent. Dide’s fingers were still on the guitar strings. Lachlan sighed heavily and rubbed his forehead. ‘So many o’ them died in my service,’ he said. ‘Parlan, Artair, Anntoin … Tòmas …’
They all heard the dull grief in his voice. It had been a cruel death, that of Tòmas the Healer, who had spent his strength saving others and then died in the last moments of that desperate war. The Rìgh still smarted from the injustice of it, and they knew he felt for Johanna, who had mourned Tòmas so savagely, and now mourned her brother as well.
Brun wiped away a foam moustache. ‘I have a riddle for ye,’ he said.
‘And what may that be?’ Lachlan answered with grave courtesy. He had learnt many years before to listen well to the wise old cluricaun’s riddles and jests.
Brun held up his hairy paw, the first finger and thumb touching to form a small circle. ‘What is no bigger than a plum, yet leads the Rìgh himself from town to town?’
‘I canna tell ye,’ Lachlan replied, smiling a little.
‘His eye,’ Brun replied, and winked.
There was a short silence as they absorbed the cluricaun’s possible meaning. Brun buried his mouth back in his ale.
‘Aye,’ Lachlan said slowly. ‘A Rìgh must see clearly. A satyricorn should have the same justice as a prionnsa. I canna hang this girl, and let Donncan walk free.’ He sighed heavily. ‘I will stay the hanging. She must serve us some other way. I will go now, and explain to Johanna. I fear she will no’ be happy. She has conceived a hatred for this lass that I must admit has surprised me.’ He got up, frowning. ‘I shall make the announcement tomorrow, at the wedding banquet. I shall pardon all the prisoners who have been condemned to hang, so we have no grief or horror to mar the wedding.’
‘Ye had best tell Dillon and Finn and Jay too,’ Iseult said.
Lachlan nodded. ‘But no-one else. Let us keep it quiet till then.’
‘May I tell Nina?’ Dide asked. ‘She is making herself sick with grief and self-recrimination.’
‘Aye, tell Nina,’ Lachlan said. ‘We want her in good voice for the wedding.’
As he went towards the door, Isabeau stopped him with a hand on his arm.
‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘Thank ye, Lachlan!’
‘I do it for Roden’s sake,’ he said. ‘He is Dide’s only heir.’
Isabeau said abruptly, ‘Lachlan, do ye remember the Samhain Night we won ye Owein’s Bow?’
‘O’ course,’ he replied in surprise.
‘Ye remember giving the League their choice o’ gifts in the auld relic room? Finn took the MacRuraich horn and used it to call up the ghosts o’ her clan?’
‘And she took the cloak o’ nyx-hair too, on the sly,’ Lachlan said, nodding in remembrance. ‘O’ course I remember.’
‘What did ye give the others? Do ye remember?’
‘Dillon took the sword, o’ course, Joyeux. Who could forget that? Jay took the viola d’amore, to replace his lost fiddle. Johanna took some bauble, a bangle, I think.’
‘She wears it still,’ Isabeau said. ‘It was the wedding bracelet o’ Aedan’s wife, Vernessa.’
‘What!’
‘Aye. I looked it up in The Book o’ Shadows. I was interested in those gifts, ye see. So many o’ them proved to have power or history o’ some kind.’
‘Johanna wears the wedding bracelet Aedan Whitelock gave his wife?’ It was clear Lachlan felt such an heir-loom should have stayed in the clan, and Isabeau had to remind him gently that he had offered the members of the League of the Healing Hand a gift of their own choice as a reward for their assistance in gaining the throne. Johanna’s bracelet was not the first time he had lived to regret his generosity.
‘What were the other gifts, do ye remember?’ she urged him.
‘The other boys took swords too, I think.’
‘No’ Connor. He took a music-box, dinna he?’
‘Aye, that’s right. It was a pretty trinket. It was like carrying an orchestra around in one’s pocket. It played a hundred different tunes, and needed no more than a turn of its key to wind it. I remember he loved it as a boy.’
‘
I wonder who it belonged to, to end up in the relic room,’ Isabeau mused. ‘I have found no mention o’ it in The Book o’ Shadows.’
‘Why so interested, Beau?’ Dide asked.
‘I’m always interested in things o’ power,’ she replied, smiling at him. ‘Just think on Dillon’s sword. What a gift to give a small boy! A sword that will fight to the very death once it is unsheathed, even if the bearer o’ the sword must die himself o’ exhaustion. A cursed sword, that longs always for blood.’
‘I dinna ken what it was when I let him have it,’ Lachlan interjected angrily.
‘O’ course no’. My point is ye kent what none o’ it was. Yet they must all have been things o’ power, for Meghan to seal them up like that on the Day o’ Betrayal, hiding them from the Red Guards.’
‘Why ask me about them now, though?’
Isabeau hesitated. ‘Rhiannon had the music-box among her things. I saw it in the courtroom today. Plus a very fine dagger, that Aidan made much o’.’
‘Aye, well, that showed she took all Connor’s things,’ Iseult said impatiently. ‘What is your point?’
‘There was a silver goblet there too,’ Isabeau said. ‘It strikes a dim chord in my mind …’
‘Parlan chose a goblet,’ Lachlan said. ‘I remember thinking it was an odd choice for a lad. I would’ve thought he would take a sword, like the others.’
‘What happened to the gifts ye gave the other Leaguers?’ Isabeau asked. ‘After they died, I mean?’
Lachlan did not know. ‘Meghan had them, I think,’ he said vaguely. ‘She was angry with me for giving them away. I think she locked them up in her chest. Certainly she took Joyeux away from Dillon, but he went and took it back, afore he kent what it was.’
Isabeau nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. I wondered … I thought perhaps Connor may have been given their things once they died … or taken them.’
‘Highly possible,’ Lachlan agreed. ‘But what does it matter, Isabeau?’
‘I just wondered,’ she said. ‘That goblet … it fairly shrieked magic at me when I saw it. I’d like to know what it is. I think I’ll consult The Book o’ Shadows about it.’