Tower of Thorns

  “I was,” says Blackthorn. “The king’s away. Prince Oran is presiding at court. He’s something of a scholar, and very fond of tales. His wife’s the same. My guess is, you’ll be welcome to stay there as long as it suits you.”

  The three of us walk back together, me carrying Blackthorn’s basket with the herbs, which she’s forgotten all about. The hound, Ripple, pads along beside us. Flannan’s trained her well. He only has to move a finger or murmur a word and she does what she’s meant to. Nice to watch, that. Makes me think how good it would be to have my own dog, a proper one, I mean.

  Nobody talks much on the way back. Flannan hadn’t expected to walk into his old friend here in the north, and she’s shocked to see him. There’s a story behind this. For some reason she thought he was dead, and he isn’t. But they don’t talk about the past now. I’m guessing Flannan doesn’t know yet if he can trust me. Doesn’t want to talk with me around, which is fair enough. As for Blackthorn, she still hasn’t got her head straight. But one thing’s plain: she’s happy. Happy deep down, like I’ve never seen before.

  6

  Geiléis

  When would word come from the druid? Midsummer Eve was drawing ever closer. She cursed herself for agreeing to wait; she should have dismissed that idea straightaway. Now precious time was being wasted, and for no good reason. She didn’t want a druid. She wanted a woman. More precisely, she wanted Mistress Blackthorn, who had made it quite clear she was not interested. The wise woman was the prince’s friend. Moreover, she was clever and cautious. Not to be coerced, that one. What argument would influence her? What was it this healer wanted most in the world? Could it be that curiosity alone might draw Blackthorn west? Geiléis spent her days pacing as she thought up one unlikely approach after another and discarded them as quickly. At night, in her dreams, the thorns closed around her in a piercing, bloody embrace. Perhaps time would weigh her down until she went entirely mad.

  Each evening, at dusk, she told the story. Over and over she told it: the young woman in the forest, the mysterious tower, the precious day of discovery . . .

  He stirred, his dark lashes fluttering, his slow, steady breathing becoming a sudden gasp. Lily shrank back. The young man might have the appearance of a handsome prince, but that did not mean he was a good person. It did not mean he would not hurt her. It came to her, rather too late, that she was alone in the tower with a complete stranger, that she had told nobody where she was going, and that she had no weapon with which to defend herself. The tiny ferryman was unlikely to be much help if this man decided to attack her.

  He opened his eyes. Ah, such eyes! They were deep and dark, and there were shadows around them, as if his sleep—if indeed it had been only sleep—had been troubled by unwelcome dreams.

  “I don’t . . .” he murmured. “I can’t . . .”

  “Are you all right?” Lily could not stop staring. The voice of common sense urged her to get to the stair, to be ready for a speedy departure, but she could not make herself obey. Oh, she gazed and gazed, and her whole body trembled with new feelings. “Are you hurt? You were lying there so still, I thought you were dead.”

  The young man struggled to sit up. His torn shirt revealed rather too much of his well-muscled body, which bore bruises and scratches as if he had been in a fight. Belatedly, Lily remembered her good manners and dropped her gaze.

  “Who are you?” the man said. “I thought . . .”

  “They call me Lily. I live nearby. What has happened to you? I can fetch help—”

  “No!” Such was the urgency in his voice that she looked at him once more, and saw a matching panic in his eyes. “No, don’t tell anyone I’m here, please!”

  “But you’re hurt—”

  “I’ll be fine. See?” He pushed himself to a sitting position, then tried to stand. A woeful effort, as it turned out; his legs failed to support him. Lily was quick to kneel beside him, but hesitated to touch. “Really,” he said, “you had best just go away and leave me. As you see, I am fit for nothing right now.”

  Lily felt a pang of disappointment. Worse than disappointment. Was this mysterious stranger no more than some local lad who had taken too much strong drink and got into trouble with his friends? Had those friends perhaps left him in the tower as a rather cruel kind of joke? Now was the moment to step away, to go home safely and leave him to sort himself out. But she had not smelled ale on his breath. “What is your name?” she asked, sitting down on the floor a safe arm’s length from him.

  For the first time, the young man looked at her; really looked. He smiled, and her heart turned over anew. “If you are Lily,” he said, “then I am Ash.”

  “Ash.” It could not be his real name, any more than Lily was hers. This felt like being five years old again and playing a game of pretend. But different. There was a wanting in it that left her breathless. “I have a water skin with me. Here.” She took it from the little bag she was carrying on her back and handed it to him.

  Ash drank deeply, as if he had been long thirsty. “By all the gods, that tastes good. Tell me, Lily, what brings you up into this chamber? This is not a place where a young lady should be wandering all on her own.”

  She found that a little annoying. He was not so old himself. Besides, look at the trouble he’d got into, with those bruises; it was hardly for him to give her advice as if she were a child. “I live here,” she told him. “This is my father’s land. I can wander where I like.”

  “How did you get across to the island?”

  “By boat.” Let him make what he wanted of that.

  “Best if you don’t stay. Best if you go home. Best if you never see me again.”

  Lily found a courage she had not known she had. “Nonsense!” she said briskly. “You’re hurt, you’re confused, you’re too weak to stand up. And you don’t seem to have any supplies here, not even water. I could turn my back and go away, but that would be irresponsible. Either let me fetch help, or let me bring you what you need. At least tell me where you came from, so I can send word to your family.”

  “No! Please!”

  Already sickly pale, he turned still whiter, and Lily wondered if he might faint away. “You should eat,” she said, trying to be practical. What would she do if he expired right here in front of her? Whom could she tell? She had no idea who he was or where he came from. “I have bread and cheese; here.” She divided the small supply she had brought with her and handed him half. “And an apple for later.” Gods, how silly she sounded! What would he think of her? “Try some, please. It will make you feel better.”

  Ash nibbled at a corner of the bread. After a while he said, “You are a kind girl. Too kind for your own good.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He managed a smile; it made her heart skip a beat. “Truly, you would do better to leave me on my own. Forget you found me.”

  “Why?”

  His gaze dropped. “Because you can’t help. I thank you for the food and water, and your kind words, and . . . and your goodness. You are a lamp in the dark; a fair flower in the shadows. But this is no place for you, and if you wish to find a friend, or more than a friend, you should search anywhere but here.” His eyes gave his words the lie; he could not stop looking at her. And her eyes returned that look a hundredfold. Something had happened between them; it was already too late to stop it.

  “More than a friend,” echoed Lily, feeling strangely bold. “What are you suggesting?”

  “You are the daughter of a nobleman,” said Ash, “if what you told me is true. You are of an age to be wed, if not now, then surely soon. I suggest nothing improper, Lily. Only that your father must be looking about for a husband for you. Perhaps you are already promised.”

  “Perhaps you are already promised,” she said, as quick as a flash. “In fact, I am not; my parents are not over-keen to see me leave home just yet.”

  “But
sometime soon?”

  She felt her cheeks flush. “Maybe.”

  “Then you should not be here with me, alone.”

  “I did not know you would be here when I climbed the tower,” Lily said, quite reasonably, she thought. “And how can I go away and leave you when I cannot be sure you can get home safely on your own? Given the choice, my father would surely want me to take good care of a stranger in difficulty rather than run away in order to preserve my reputation. Just tell me where you live, and I can at least get word to your family.”

  “No!”

  His answer was too forceful, too full of terror for this to be a simple case of a young man who had taken more strong drink than was good for him, and been led astray. “You’re scared of something,” Lily said quietly. “Is that why you’re in here? Are you hiding?”

  “I can’t tell you.” Ash wrapped his arms around his drawn-up knees. “It’s safer if you know nothing. Safer if you just go. I want you to go, Lily. Please, just do as I ask.” His voice was rich with feeling. He looked at her as if she were the last good thing in his world. She knew that, in his heart, he did not want her to leave him. But she had not entirely lost sight of reality. When rest time was over, her handmaid would come looking for her. If she could not be found, Muiríol would tell her mother, and her secret expeditions would be over. If she wanted to see Ash again—and she did, oh, so much—she must leave him now.

  “Farewell, then,” she said, rising to her feet. “I hope you will soon be recovered.” It sounded stilted and formal, and in no way conveyed the feelings in her heart. “I wish you would let me help.”

  “You cannot help,” said Ash. “But I will treasure the memory of our meeting; I will hold it close when you are gone. Good-bye, Lily.”

  She made her way down the stair with her thoughts in turmoil; she had hardly a word for the wee boatman as he ferried her over from the island. She ran all the way home, and was just in time to clamber up the tree and in her window before Muiríol came to wake her from her nap. All through supper time and afterward, she could think of nothing but Ash: his pale skin, his dark, dark hair, his sorrowful eyes. His sweet words and the way he had looked at her.

  Tomorrow, she resolved, when it was night and she was at long last alone again. Tomorrow I will take salves and soft cloths and some proper food and drink for him. Tomorrow I will find out who he is and why he is in the tower. Tomorrow . . .

  7

  Blackthorn

  Even when I was young and content and thought life would bring good things for me and mine, I didn’t believe in miracles. Magic, maybe, of the kind wrought by the fey. But that wasn’t the same. Magic could seem to deliver the remarkable, the impossible, the stuff of wild dreams, but such gifts all too often came with hidden tricks, nasty surprises, the drop of poison in the golden chalice, the venomous lining in the silken garment. A real miracle, such as the survival of a dear old friend whom one had believed long dead, was truly wondrous.

  Close on thirteen years. That was how long it had been since I’d last seen him, when he’d waved Cass and me farewell and headed off on one of his scholarly expeditions, the one that had ended up saving his life. When disaster had struck us and our fellow conspirators, Flannan had been far away in Mide, working in some monastic scriptorium and, in effect, out of Mathuin’s reach. Not that the chieftain of Laois wouldn’t be able to track someone across Mide and Ulaid and Dalriada if he chose to—I still lived in fear that one day he would find me. But he wouldn’t remove a man by force from within a house of prayer. Not if that house lay within King Lorcan’s borders. Lorcan of Mide was married to the High King’s daughter.

  Those thirteen years had marked both of us. Flannan’s dimpled smile came less often than it once had, and his green eyes were not as limpid as they had been in the younger man. His hair bore traces of gray. But he was still himself. Flannan, my friend. Flannan, who had introduced me to the man who became my husband. Flannan, whom I had known since I was a child growing up in the south. His return was indeed a miracle.

  For a while, after he’d been made welcome by Oran and Flidais and had settled into the men’s quarters at Cahercorcan, we simply enjoyed the remarkable gift of finding each other again. Our talk was of the good times past: the way Flannan had introduced me to Cass, his friend and fellow scribe; the long arguments the two of them used to have over obscure points of law or calligraphy; the fierce debates we three had conducted in lowered voices as it became more and more apparent that the new chieftain of Laois was both cruel and unjust.

  Flannan had heard of Cass’s death, and Brennan’s. He had not known whether I had survived. I gave him the bare bones of the story. That I had been in Mathuin’s prison, though not because of the plot that had seen Cass punished so terribly. It had been later, after I’d fled south near-unhinged by grief, then, after a time so dark I could not bear to think about it, had come back to confront my demons. I’d faced up to Mathuin. Or tried to. I’d sought a hearing and spoken up for the women he’d wronged. For my pains, I’d been laughed at and thrown into the lockup.

  “You were in that place?” Flannan was shocked—it was well-known that few survived incarceration there. “For how long? And how did you get out?”

  “For a year. Me and Grim. The details don’t matter. I’m out now and making my life again.” I held back from telling Flannan any more, though I knew he was trustworthy. Grim’s story was his own to tell, and as it had been tangled with mine since the day Conmael’s magic freed us, I would not share either. “Strange, isn’t it? After everything that’s happened, here we both are. You and me.”

  “Here we both are, safe, well, and out of Mathuin’s reach.” There was an odd quality in Flannan’s voice as he said this, something that made me look at him more closely. But his gaze was turned on the floor. “And I feel ashamed,” he said.

  “Ashamed? Why? We’ve all made errors. We’ve all done things that are uncomfortable to own up to.”

  “All this time,” he said. “All these years, and I never went back. Not once.” His hands were clutched tightly together. He looked up, not at me, but across the chamber to the spot where Grim’s big cloak and my smaller one hung side by side from pegs on the wall. He was avoiding my eye. “Messages came from Laois. I heard that the others had been taken into custody. I knew what that meant; knew none of them would survive Mathuin’s attempts to force information out of them. What could I have done to help them, all on my own? I got on with life, as you have. I spend my time between one house of learning and another, copying, writing letters—safe, innocuous letters—reading, discovering, making notes.”

  “Notes?” It was a short enough tale after nearly thirteen years of silence.

  “For a book. A collection of old tales with a scholarly commentary. In Irish, not Latin. Magical stories related to the elements.”

  I grimaced. “And how do your monkish hosts view such an un-Christian project?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Flannan said, flashing a smile that brought back the young man in an instant. “Many of them have a love for the old tales, the kinds of stories druids and wise women told more widely before the brethren brought their new teachings to these parts. They’re well practiced in shaping the old stories to fit Christian rituals and beliefs. I may be providing more grist for their mill. For me, the exercise is to preserve this ancient lore before it is forgotten; to record it for posterity.”

  I held back my opinion that such tales were better passed on from mother to daughter, from father to son, from elders to community. Fixing them with pen and ink felt wrong to me, like forcing a flowing river into confines it would always fight to escape. But he was a friend, and he meant well.

  “A woman came here recently with a very odd tale,” I told him. “Lady Geiléis of Bann. She’s still at court. Brought a sort of petition to the prince, one he had no real answers for. I’d never heard the story before, though I though
t I remembered the Tower of Thorns from somewhere. Is that name familiar to you?”

  Flannan frowned. “I can’t say it is. Bann—that’s close to the monastic foundation of St. Olcan’s, isn’t it? Quite some distance west of here?”

  “That’s what she said, yes. Have you been there?”

  “Not yet. What was this tale?”

  I gave him the bare essentials: the tower, the howling monster, the hedge of thorns, the so-called curse that had set a blight on the land all around and made the ford impassable. “Lady Geiléis mentioned the monks using birds to carry messages. But what’s happened makes travel difficult, especially to the west of her holdings. There’s a roundabout way, but it’s long and inconvenient. The oddest thing was that Lady Geiléis seemed to think this had all happened before, in the time of her ancestors. Possibly more than once.”

  “You’re intrigued by the tale. I see it in your eyes.”

  “You do?” Flannan had been in the habit of teasing, back in the old days; it had been hard, sometimes, to tell whether he was serious or not.

  “I recognize that look. You always did like a challenge.”

  I dropped my gaze. “That was a long time ago. I’m a different woman now. Lady Geiléis must find help elsewhere. I’m looking after Lady Flidais; I’ve promised to deliver her child.” It wasn’t a lie; just half the truth. Nobody knew about my promise to Conmael—nobody but Grim—and I planned to keep it that way.

  There was a silence. Then Flannan said, “Even with my limited knowledge of such matters, I can see that Lady Flidais’s child is unlikely to be born for some time. Would you not be able to go to Bann, sort out the monster, and return before her confinement?”

  “Sort out the monster? Who do you think I am, Cú Chulainn?”

  “I feel sure this puzzle would not be beyond your considerable abilities,” Flannan said. “Cass once told me he believed you could do anything you wanted to.”