For half the morning I walked without seeing a soul. I grew thirsty and stopped to drink from a stream a little way off the track. I grew hungry. My precipitate departure had left me ill equipped to travel far without help. Memories of my flight to the west returned. I suppressed them, making myself move on. My feet were hurting; Emer’s boots were not such a perfect fit after all. The day grew warmer. I took off my shawl and stuffed it into my bag.
A rumbling, squeaking sound and the thump of hooves sent me down under the bushes to the side, wary of carters traveling alone. A pair of stocky horses came into view, pulling a well-kept cart laden with bundles. A man and a woman sat on the bench seat; she had a child on her knee.
I stepped out and waved a hand. A little later I was perched on a sack of grain in the back, on my way eastward. I imagined the mist-clad slopes of the Tor behind me, slowly diminishing until they could no longer be distinguished from the ordinary landscape of fields and woodland. As the cart moved further and further to the east, I did not once look back.
It made a difference having funds. I spent two nights in a village inn, with my own chamber and a lock on the door. I got directions and arranged lifts. I read a letter for a local trader in return for a place on a conveyance that was going all the way to Stony Ford, a settlement about three days’ travel north of Market Cross. Father and I had executed commissions for the chieftain there, and I was fairly sure Shea and his fellow musicians would be known in that house.
My fellow passengers on this somewhat larger and grander cart must have thought me dour and uncommunicative. They could not know the whirl of thoughts that filled my mind every moment of the day, those I fought to banish and those I tried to concentrate on, in particular how to track down Maraid and Shea without going too near Market Cross. If Stony Ford did not provide any clues I must try other places Shea had mentioned when telling us of his traveling life, but those were few and far between. I thought I could recall a town called Hideaway or Holdaway, where the band had regularly played to entertain people at a big weekly market. Lean enough pickings, Shea had said with good humor, but if they stayed on for the evening’s dancing there would generally be a few extra coins tossed their way.
Failing that, I could look for Shea’s family. That would mean a far longer journey, as they lived somewhere well to the northeast, close to Norman-ruled territories. His father’s name I had forgotten, but he had been a master harp maker before his hands were afflicted by tremors, and such craftsmen would be few in any part of the land. I had a good chance of finding him eventually. Eventually. How long would it take?
As the cart rolled steadily on and my fellow passengers chatted about the weather or how long it might be until the next stop, I pictured Anluan, Magnus, Rioghan and the rest of them in pitched battle against Lord Stephen’s army. I imagined the spectral voice filling the ears of the host with poison and sending them into howling, tortured disarray. I thought of Anluan cut down, wounded, dying, while I went from village to village asking about a band of musicians who might or might not have passed by some time earlier. I saw the Latin words of the counterspell clean on a parchment page, useless without me there to translate them. Often I came close to tears, and it was necessary to remind myself that if Anluan had really loved me, he would not have sent me away forever.That worked for a little, until my mind began to tell me that perhaps Anluan had banished me because he thought there was no chance of defeating Stephen de Courcy, and that he and Magnus and Olcan were all going to die, leaving the host leaderless and adrift. Once this perfectly logical idea had come to me, I couldn’t shake it off. It made me cold all through. I sat on the cart’s padded seat with my shawl hugged around me and my gaze set straight ahead, seeing nothing but Anluan’s pale face, his bright hair, his lovely crooked features. Over and over I thought of the unforgivable words I had said to him, and of how he had looked when he heard them.
The journey to Stony Ford took several days. We stopped one night in a hostelry that was a cut above the others. Two of my fellow travelers, Brendan, a physician, and his wife, Fidelma, had shown me particular kindness on the way.They and I sat down to supper to find the other folk at the inn table in spirited discussion about the Normans.
“They say there’s been a treaty signed,” said an old man nursing a mug of ale between knotted fingers.
“If you can call it that,” said another man, grim-faced. “More or less gives away all the lands of the east, and a lot besides, to this King Henry. May the Ui Conchubhair break out in a rash of blisters, every one of them from the high king downwards. That man’s handed our birthright to a bunch of gray-shirted foreigners, as ready to burn a good Irish town to ashes as they are to listen to their own folk.”
“You’d want to watch your mouth,” a third man said, voice lowered.
“War’s not over.”This from an ancient in the corner, who had seemed fast asleep.
“Ruaridh Ui Conchubhair’s not the only leader we’ve got, though he may see himself that way,” said a brawny man at the far end of the table. “We’ll keep on fighting till the last of us lies on the sward with his blood soaking into the breast of the earth. Ui Conchubhair’s gone weak in his old age, if you ask me. He was something of a leader, once, a man almost worthy to be called high king. He’s fallen far.”
“No king lasts forever.” Brendan spoke quietly. “As for Henry of England, I know of this agreement, and you’re right—under the terms of it the high king keeps sovereignty here in Connacht, and in other places where the Normans haven’t yet set their mark. But the fact is, Henry can’t keep effective reins on his own lords—they’ve got used to taking what they want, by force if necessary, from us and from each other. They’ll still be jostling for territorial advantage, treaty or no treaty.”
“They’ve proven themselves no respecters of boundaries,” said Fidelma.
I cleared my throat, regretting deeply that I had not taken much interest in such matters when I lived in Market Cross. I had always believed that Connacht, at least, was safe from invasion.That was what everyone said. So far west, with much of the land too barren for farming, it had not seemed a place the English would want. King Henry’s treaty sounded quite true to that theory.
“Has any of you heard of an English lord called Stephen de Courcy?” I asked.“He—I heard that he threatened to take an Irish chieftain’s holding, quite some way to the west of here. I was told there’s a tie of kinship by marriage between Lord Stephen’s family and that of the high king. That means Ruaridh Ui Conchubhair won’t step in to help this chieftain.”
All eyes turned to me.
“Never heard of the fellow you mention,” said the old man. “But it happens. Place up north, can’t remember the name, they rode in and cut down the chieftain’s men-at-arms; a rout, it was. Put their heads up on pikes afterwards, Northmen-style, as a warning to other leaders not to stand up for what was rightfully theirs. Burned the settlement; killed women and children as if they were less than human.That’s what they think, of course. That we’re no better than dumb beasts of the field. It sickens me.”
“You believe something like that could happen right on the coast of Connacht?” I felt a lead weight in my belly. “It makes a mockery of Ruaridh’s title. A high king should protect his own, surely.”
