host’s past activities, including Mella’s death. I’d even shown her one or two pages of Anluan’s notebook. She had asked many questions; the curious mixture of folk making up Anluan’s inner circle clearly intrigued her. I wished she could have come with me.
As my various rides took me slowly, oh so painfully slowly, towards Whistling Tor, I considered what might await me there and prayed that I would find Anluan alive and well. The mirror came with me. I looked often into its dimly shining surface, to meet my own worried eyes gazing back. The weather was bleak. We traveled on under lowering skies, down tracks treacherous with mud, across flat lands where the wind whistled keenly, sharp and salty as we neared the western sea.
The further we went, the less ready carters were to linger.When each reached his destination he dropped off his load, left me at the nearest inn, then headed straight back. The inns were full of talk, and it set a new fear in me. A force of Norman soldiers had been spotted heading west. Rumor had it that they’d been sent to seize the territory of a local chieftain and establish one of their own in his place. Nobody was quite sure where this was happening, but they thought it was near the holding of a chieftain named Brion. I asked how many soldiers and was told too many for any Irish lord to prevail over. I asked how long ago they had passed and was told ten days or more. Nobody had heard of Stephen de Courcy, but they had no other name to offer in its place. As the men-at- arms had gone by on their fine warhorses, with their chain-link garments and their carts loaded with supplies, folk had withdrawn silently into their houses and barred the doors.
Near the territory of Silverlake we saw something lying across the road ahead.The man who was transporting me along with three protesting pigs drew his cart to a halt. “I don’t much like the look of that,” he muttered. “Couple of fellows off to the side there, in the bushes. Could be anyone.” His hand went to his belt, where a worn leather sheath held some kind of weapon. There would be no turning around silently and retreating unobserved, not with pigs on board.
“Halt!” someone called out, and a man stepped onto the track beside the barrier. Peering through the rain that had accompanied us for some time now, I saw that the obstacle was a solid length of wood, the trunk of a small tree that had perhaps been brought down by a storm, then dragged across to bar the way. The man wore woollen breeches and tunic, both garments saturated. He did not look dangerous. “Where are you headed?”
“Three Trees Farm,” said the carter, both hands back on the reins. The fellow on the road was a Connacht man. “Five miles down this track, but how I’m to get the cart around that thing I don’t know. What’s the trouble?”
“Who’s your passenger?”There were two men on the track now, both of them giving me the once-over. My clothing and my general demeanor must have made it plain I was no carter’s wife.
“I have friends at Whistling Tor, near Whiteshore,” I said.“I’m going to visit them, and I’m in a hurry. Someone may be gravely ill.” Let that not be true.
“Whistling Tor? Isn’t that the place—” one said to the other.
“You’d best go no further,” said the second man.“There’s a fight brewing; anyone on these roads is asking for trouble.You should take this young lady back to the last inn, and the pigs with her.That’s my advice.”
The carter stared at him, and so did I, wondering if I could ask whose pay he was in, for it was obvious the barrier had been placed across the way, rather than falling there in an entirely convenient manner.The carter spoke before I could frame a question.
“Don’t know a lot about pigs, do you? What do you expect me to do, ask the innkeeper to put them up for the night in his best bedroom, with a pint of ale apiece thrown in? Move that thing for us, will you? If I don’t get them to Three Trees soon I won’t be home before nightfall.”
“The lady heading to Three Trees as well?”
“I told you,” I said,“I’m going to Whistling Tor.This man is taking me as far as Three Trees; then I’ll get another lift.Will you do as he asks and let us through, please? We have to get on.”
“You won’t get to Whistling Tor,” said the second man. “There’s an army of Normans camped all around the place, waiting to starve the local chieftain out.You wouldn’t even want to go near. Apart from Normans on the road, there are . . .
“Things?” I queried, my heart cold with the thought that I might be too late. How could I reach Anluan in the middle of a siege? How could I change the future if I couldn’t even let him know I was here?
“Strange things. Things that shouldn’t rightly exist. A horse all bones; a dog as big as an ox. Shadows and voices.You wouldn’t want to go any further than Three Trees.”
It seemed they’d decided to let us through. The carter got down to help the two men shift the log. When they had eased it far enough to let us slip by on the hard-packed earth of the road, I asked,“Who arranged for you to be here? One of the local chieftains?”
“You’re foolish if you expect an answer to that,” said the first man. “Be glad we were here or you’d have driven straight into trouble. Take my advice, lass, and go back where you came from as soon as this fellow’s dropped off his swine.” Seeing my expression, he added, “Maybe your friend got out before the Normans laid siege to the place.” His tone did not inspire confidence.
We drove on to Three Trees Farm, which lay within the border of Silverlake, southeast of Whistling Tor. In this region Maenach had once been chieftain, Maenach whom Nechtan had viewed as a bitter enemy. Pigs unloaded, the farmer offered us mead and oatcakes and a chance to warm ourselves before his fire. It was plain that the carter intended to start straight back as soon as the simple meal was over.
“I’m not going with you,” I told him. “I must get to Whistling Tor as soon as possible. If there’s nobody who can take me, I’ll walk.”
The farmer, his wife and the carter all turned their heads to the half-open door, beyond which the rain was falling steadily.
“You’re crazy,” the farmer said.
“We could give you a bed for the night.” His wife sounded dubious. “But you won’t find anyone to take you to Whistling Tor today, tomorrow or any time soon. It’s not just the Normans. Nobody goes to that place.You know what they say about it.”
“That the chieftain is a misshapen good-for-nothing and that the hill is swarming with monsters and giant dogs?” I said, fighting to stay calm. “Yes, I know that; I lived at Whistling Tor all summer. I must get there. Isn’t anyone using the roads?”
