“Just checking that all’s well.” His eyes widened.“Got company, I see.”
“I’m fine, thank you, Magnus. I’m sorry I walked out.”
In the dim light, I could not read his expression clearly. “No trouble. Olcan said to tell you he’ll send Fianchu up. I heard you had a different kind of guard on the door today.”
“Who told you?”As far as I knew, nobody had been here while Cathair was on duty.
“Word gets about.They all knew about it: Eichri, Rioghan, Muirne.”
“Magnus, I’m sorry I upset Anluan again. I just wish he would ...” My voice faded. Anluan had good reason to be angry with me. I wanted things to be different. I wanted him to be the man I had seen in the courtyard facing up to Cillian. Now, in the quiet of the bedchamber, it came to me how unrealistic that was. What he faced now was not a mob of bullies. It was a Norman lord, with all the power and authority that implied. It was the formidable force of men-at-arms such a lord was likely to have at his command. What did I want: that Anluan should perish, taking the folk of forest and settlement with him, simply to prove to me that he could be a man? “He told us not to discuss it,” I said miserably. “But I can’t think about anything else.”
Magnus folded his well-muscled arms. He had not advanced beyond the doorway. “We’ve weathered a lot here, you know. Terrible times; sorrowful times. I never thought I’d say this, Caitrin, but maybe this really is the end.Whistling Tor’s got no men-at-arms, it’s got no resources, it doesn’t even have the trust of its people to fall back on. He knows what he should do, but the risks are high. Step off the hill, even for the time it takes to walk to the settlement and attend a council, and he puts everything he cares about in jeopardy. Suppose he does that, and defies Lord Stephen. Then he’s committed to armed conflict. Where’s his army?” He waved a hand out towards the forest. “He’s only got
“There must be a new way of looking at this,” I said. “I refuse to believe there’s no solution.” But then, hadn’t Anluan accused me of having persistent hope, hope that saw possibilities where there were none? “Magnus, if Eichri and Rioghan can go beyond the hill without dire consequences, doesn’t that mean the others could do the same, given the right conditions? Eichri just offered to go to Criodan’s, which is quite a distance from Whistling Tor.”
“Eichri and Rioghan are different.”
“But they weren’t always different. If they could change, why can’t the rest of them change?”
Magnus looked bemused. “With enough time and the will to do it, I’m prepared to admit that might be possible. We have less than a turning of the moon.”
I glanced down at the child on her improvised bed. I thought of the look in Cathair’s troubled eyes as he’d marched back to the forest with his head held high. “All Anluan needs is for them to stay on the Tor while he goes to the settlement for a meeting,” I said.
“And what would you have him do when he gets to this meeting? Threaten the Normans with a fighting force of twenty villagers wielding pitchforks?”
“It sounds foolish, I know. But maybe, if he took that first step, the people down there would think better of him. And it’s not as if Lord Stephen himself will be here at full moon, along with his fighting men. Mightn’t Anluan have time to rally support in the district?”
Before Magnus could comment, Fianchu came bounding into the bedchamber and went immediately to the child. He turned a few circles, somehow managing not to step on her, then lay down gently beside her. Her uncanny cold did not seem to disturb him, but then, just as she was no ordinary girl, he was no ordinary dog.
“I’ll leave you in peace,” Magnus said. It seemed our discussion was over.
“Good night, Magnus.”
“Good night, lass. In the morning, maybe we’ll see this with fresh eyes.”
A fine, persistent rain fell over the towers and gardens of Whistling Tor, pooling in corners, trickling down stone walls, making me shiver as I walked between living quarters and library.The heart’s blood plant had put up three flower stems; the oaks were clothed in tender green. I counted the days as they passed: twenty days until the Normans came; nineteen, fifteen ... Not only was that time looming, but so was the first day of autumn. I had been hired only until then.
The spinning of my mind was unbearable. I tried to keep it at bay with work, plunging into my task with a feverish energy. Anluan spent much of the time shut away in his quarters. I would see him occasionally in somber conversation with Magnus or Rioghan, but he hardly spared me a glance. He did not come to the library; he did not sit under the birch tree in Irial’s garden. Muirne took him his meals on a tray.
At night, when my troubled thoughts kept me awake, I went out onto the gallery and looked across the courtyard. In the dark of the moonless night, Rioghan paced up and down in his nightly ritual. Across the pond and beyond the pear tree, I could see the glow of Anluan’s lamp. I whispered to him. “Why won’t you talk to me? I thought we were friends.”
I missed him. I missed the little glances he would turn my way; I missed his awkward conversation; I missed his crooked smile. Even his bouts of ill temper would be better than this absence, this silence. It extended to the rest of the household as well; I deduced that Anluan had ordered them not to discuss the looming crisis with me. I wanted to help him, to talk to him, to be a listening ear. But on the rare occasions when I happened to meet him crossing the courtyard or pass him in a hallway, he looked so grim and distant that I could hardly bring myself to speak.
I needed more time. The documents might still reveal a way of banishing the host forever and freeing Anluan from the curse. If there were no host, he could build ties with his neighboring chieftains. If there were no host, he could become the leader he was born to be. Then maybe he would have a chance of standing up to the Normans. If only I could find a counterspell. Fifteen days left.
Morning after morning, I was in the library as soon as there was light enough to read by, and stayed there until almost suppertime. In the evenings I worked in my bedchamber, making an Irish version of Irial’s margin notes on vellum pages I had cut and sewn into a tiny book. I had pored over everything the library contained in Irial’s hand, but this record remained incomplete. If there had indeed been two years between Emer’s death and her husband’s, some of Irial’s writings must be missing. Or he had ceased to keep this record for a season or so before his own demise. He had become too sad to set pen to page, perhaps. His last note read:
Day five hundred and ninety-four. The leaves of the birch, spiralling down, down. A lark’s pure notes in the endless sky. Is there a sleep without dreams?
