Confusion spinning in her mind, Clíodhna closed her eyes. “Please, let’s find someplace to sit. I’ll tell you all I can.”
* * *
Ita pressed her lips together. “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t come back for a visit. The coast isn’t that far away. Twenty winters! Not even your children knew how to find you. I raised Aileran as best I… but…” Her words choked off with a sob.
While clasping her hands tight, Clíodhna said, “I heard he died of a fever, but not until yesterday. What happened?”
With a mighty sniff, Ita shut her eyes. “He had but seven winters. He’d just become a real help around the farm, and my daughter took him everywhere with her. One day, he didn’t feel good, and I put him into bed. His skin seemed cooler in the night but then, when I woke… he’d grown cold since I last checked him.”
She glanced up, anger in her eyes. “That’s when I tried to find you. You said not to, but I had runners out searching for any word of you. I found nothing. Nothing! Not one scrap of information across the countryside. It’s as if you vanished in a puff of smoke.”
Clíodhna ground her teeth together. She should have known Ita wouldn’t accept the story without digging in, but she had to plant the seeds. Ita had always been a bit of a gossip. The lie had only been a slight bend of the truth. She’d spent her time away from everyone she’d known in a distant place, only in Faerie and not the mortal realm on the ocean. Still, that small change meant she might answer questions, since she’d grown up in such a place.
“I wanted solitude, after Oisinne… I couldn’t face people, not for a while. Then, once my mind had healed, I had gotten used to being alone. I didn’t want to be around others, especially those who had known my husband.”
Ita shook her head. “Him. He would have been a handful, true enough. He never recovered.”
Blinking, Clíodhna jumped to her feet. “Recovered? What do you mean recovered? He died! I saw lightning strike him, and his corpse burnt and smoking!”
After letting out a snort. “That one. No, he didn’t die, Clíodhna. ‘Twould have been far kinder if he had. Instead, he lingered on in agony, being passed from one household to the other. No one had the room to care for him. His skin had been so scorched and his bones broken, he lived like an infant. A querulous, mad infant, capable of great violence. No one wanted to give him the chance to harm their own children. Etromma tried to keep him for a long time, but even she couldn’t stand it.”
Clíodhna didn’t want to ask, but she must. “What happened to him then?”
With a sidelong glare, Ita shrugged. “No one else would take him. Since we couldn’t find you on God’s green earth, he crawled around with a begging bowl. The monks took him in. They cared for him for a few moons before they sent him to another of their houses. One which specialized in healing, they said. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of the poor creature since.”
Poor creature. Her husband, burnt to a crisp by her own magic. She’d left him, believing him dead, but had instead abandoned him to the whims of fate. She’d expected incredible guilt at having left her children, but this fresh attack of guilt left her breathless.
A chill swept over her and her skin pebbled. She rubbed at her arms to warm them, but it didn’t work. Oisinne lived somewhere, perhaps. A shell, a husk of his former self. His mind had already fled before he returned, but she’d destroyed his body. What had been left of the man she’d married so many seasons ago? Should she search for him?
Ita broke into her guilty reverie. “Word came from the monks he died last winter. They’d had a bitter season, and his body didn’t have the defenses against the cold. ‘Tis a mercy, to be sure. Poor man.”
The monks had taken him in, despite his ruined state. Perhaps the Christians had some good notions, despite their indoctrination and hate. Or perhaps not all of them harbored such intense hatred as Abbot Pátraic had exhibited.
“Thank you, Ita. I am glad someone took care of him, and he didn’t die alone.”
Ita related the news of others in town. Of the chandler’s grandson and the baker’s daughter, of the tanner’s wife and her affair with a monk. Clíodhna bit her lip at that, thinking of her night with Odhrán, but that news must have faded with time. Her mind drifted to Odhrán as Ita spoke, and she wondered when she should seek him in the gardens.
Ita slapped her hands on her knees. “The horses won’t muck out their own stalls. I must get on home. My eldest does his best, but the house still needs a woman’s hand to run things. Will I see you in the morning, at the next service?”
Clíodhna agreed with reluctance. She didn’t mind attending the service, but didn’t want to risk encountering Pátraic, not after their past confrontations. Still, if she appeared to be part of their religion, he might have little to complain about in her actions.
She ambled back along the path, noting differences as she walked. The old oak which had stood at that bend must have been hit by lightning. Only a blackened stump jutting out of the ground remained. The pines along the left side had grown considerably taller and almost blocked out the midday sun. Had midday arrived already? Ita talked a lot. She’d forgotten that detail.
A movement caught her attention and she turned to find what had moved. She’d expected a squirrel or groundhog, but what she found made her smile. A young
