She was asleep, snoring gently, relaxed as a small child. Very slowly, very carefully I withdrew my mind from hers and, tucking the blanket around her bony shoulders, stood and stretched, feeling the ache of utter exhaustion in every part of my body. Finbar had spoken true; one did not perform such work without a cost. I walked unsteadily to the narrow window and looked out over the courtyard, thinking I must reassure myself that the real world was still there, for my mind was full of evil images and confused thoughts. I was drained of energy and very close to weeping.
The moon was waning, a thin crescent in a dark sky full of scudding clouds. Down in the courtyard there were torches burning, and I could see dimly the forms of the ever-present sentries on patrol, both below and high above on the walkway. All night they maintained their guard. It was enough to make you feel like a prisoner, and I wondered how Aisling and the rest of the household could stand it. I stared out into the night sky, and my mind reached beyond the stone walls of the fortress, beyond the marshes, beyond the lands to the north. I was bone weary, so tired I longed for someone to put strong arms around me, to hug me and tell me I had done my best and that everything was going to be all right. I must indeed have been exhausted to allow myself such weakness. I gazed into the dark and my mind pictured those men around their cooking fire, listening enraptured as I told the tale of Cú Chulainn and his son, Conlai, a tale of great sadness. And I thought, fianna they may be, but I would rather be there than here, that much I know. I closed my eyes and felt hot tears begin to flow down my cheeks; and before I could tell myself to stop, my inner voice cried out: Where are you? I need you. I don’t think I can manage without you. And at that precise moment, I felt the child move for the first time inside me, a little flurry as if he were swimming, or dancing, or both. I laid a hand gently on the place where he had made himself known, smiling. We’re leaving here, Son, I told him silently. First we help Niamh. I don’t know how, but I have promised, and I must do it. Then we go home. I have had enough of walls, and gates, and locks.
Bold words. Not that I had imagined Niamh would come back to herself easily or quickly. If hope is gone, the future becomes barely worth contemplating. It was as well I carried my child within my body and felt his will for life with every fluttering movement, or I might myself have been drawn into the pit of her despair.
The days passed, and the time came nearer when Eamonn and Fionn would return to Sídhe Dubh and I must go home. Niamh remained insubstantial as a wraith, eating and drinking barely enough for survival, speaking only when the demands of basic courtesy made it essential. But I could see small signs of change in her. She was able to sleep now, as long as I sat by her bed holding her hand until she drifted off; and these times on the margin of consciousness I found to be the best for slipping into her mind and gently pushing her thoughts toward the light.
She would not come out walking with me around the top of the wall where the guards were, but she did come down to the courtyard, well covered in long-sleeved gown and matronly veil, and went with me between armory and grain store, smithy and stables. She was very quiet. To go out among folk seemed an ordeal for her. I read in her thoughts how unclean she felt, how she believed they were all watching her and thinking her a slut and ugly. How they were whispering among themselves that it was just as well, after all, that Lord Eamonn had not wed her as they had once expected he would. Still, she walked with me and watched as I greeted this one and that, giving my opinion on their ailments, and the exercise brought a little more color into her pallid cheeks. On wet days we explored the inside of the fortress instead. Sometimes Aisling went with us, but more often than not she was occupied in kitchens or storerooms or deep in negotiation with household steward or lawman. She would be a good wife for Sean, a balanced, orderly complement to his bold energy.
Sídhe Dubh was indeed a strange dwelling. I wondered greatly at the character of Eamonn’s ancestor who had chosen to settle here in the very center of the inhospitable marshlands. He had certainly been a man of imagination and subtlety, perhaps a little eccentric, for the place had many oddities. There were the carved pillars in the main hall, with their fanciful beasts grinning down, small dragon, sea serpent, and unicorn. And there was the construction of the fortress itself with its covered passage up from the gate, and the family’s two-floored dwelling built against the inner wall. Never have I seen a house with more strange branching passageways, concealed openings, and false exits, more trapdoors and secret ways and sudden treacherous wells. I had a chance this time to discover places I had never seen before, for I had been a child when I had last visited Eamonn’s home and forbidden to wander too far. In my desire to keep Niamh moving, for I knew the body must be healthy if the mind is to heal, I led my sister down the long, covered way that wound around the hill from the main gate, snaking beneath the earthen rampart and stone walls to emerge into the courtyard. This path was always torchlit and alive with shadows, and many smaller ways led off on either side. Some were lined with timbers and some with stone. These Niamh was reluctant to explore, but my curiosity had been aroused, and I went back later in the afternoon when she was sleeping. It was necessary to use some tricks I had learned from my father, which were to do with getting past guards unobserved, to achieve this. I thought it best that nobody noticed my sudden interest in possible exits from the fortress and made a decision to forbid such expeditions. I took a lantern and followed the branching ways to discover a storeroom for cheese and butter, like the caves we used for such a purpose at home. I found a small room that simply had no floor; there was, instead, a very long drop, and when I threw in a stone, I counted to five before I heard the splash. And farther down the same way there were lightless cells, each holding a bench and shackles fixed to the wall. There were no prisoners, not now. The place was choked with cobwebs, unused for many years. Perhaps Eamonn did not take captives. I was glad I had not brought Niamh here, for the very walls cried out with despair; there was a dark hopelessness about the place that set a cold hand on my spirit. I retreated quickly, vowing to myself to curb my curiosity next time. As I came up the covered way there was the slightest of sounds behind me, and a cat shot past, streaking up from farther down that dark, shadowy passageway with the disused cells, a black cat moving so fast I only just had time to see that it bore in its jaws a very large and very dead water rat. So there was a way to the outside. A narrow way, maybe too narrow for a person to squeeze in or out. But it was nonetheless a way. I was tempted to go back down and investigate, but it was close to suppertime and I did not wish to attract undue attention. One day soon, Son, I said silently, feeling that at some level he understood me, one day we’re going down there, and maybe we’ll get out of this for a while. Find ourselves some space. If we’re lucky we might see a bird or a frog. I need to breathe deep. I need to see beyond stone walls.
I had asked Aisling already, as politely as I could, and received the answer I expected. “Don’t you ever go out?” I’d said. “Doesn’t it drive you crazy being shut up all the time?”
Aisling raised her brows at me. “People do go out,” she said, puzzled. “It’s not a prison. Carts bring supplies, and the men ride across on patrol. There’s more movement when Eamonn’s at home.”
“And I suppose every cart is searched from top to bottom going in and out,” I said dryly.
“Well, yes. Don’t you do that at Sevenwaters?”
“Not if it’s our own people.”
“Eamonn says it’s wiser. You can’t be too careful these days. And he did say—”
She paused.
“What?” I asked, looking her in the eye.
She reached up to smooth her red curls behind her ear, looking slightly abashed. “Well, Liadan, if you must know, he said he preferred if you and Niamh did not go out while you’re here. There is no reason for you to venture beyond the walls. We have everything here that you could possibly want.”
“Mmm.” I did not like the thought of Eamonn making rules for me, especially now t
hat there was no possible chance of a marriage between us. Perhaps, after what had happened to me, he believed me incapable of staying out of trouble.
“Don’t take me wrong, Aisling,” I said. “Your hospitality is not to be faulted. But I miss Sevenwaters. I miss the forest and the openness. I don’t know how you and Eamonn can live here.”
“It’s home,” she said simply. And I remembered Eamonn saying once, It will not be home until I see you standing in the doorway with my child in your arms. I shivered. The goddess grant there would be chieftains at Tara with marriageable daughters, and that Eamonn would make his intentions known to them. There should be many a girl with no reluctance to warm his bed and give him an heir, once he put word about that he was looking.
Many days had passed, and the moon had shrunk to a mere sliver of light. When I got home, I would have to apply myself to sewing, for my gowns were getting uncomfortably tight over my breasts. I sat with Niamh day by day, and she failed to notice any change in my appearance. I could not tell her. How could I find the words, when she held in her poor, confused mind the guilt of not having conceived a child for Fionn after three moons, of not even succeeding in that most basic requirement of a good wife? I said to her it was early days, and not every bride bred straight away. Besides, now that she would not be going back to Tirconnell after all, surely it was better that she was not carrying Fionn’s son or daughter.
“I wanted to bear Ciarán a child,” she said softly. “More than anything. But the goddess did not grant it.”
“Just as well,” I retorted, finding it hard not to lose my temper with her. “That would really have set a stir among the Uí Néill.”
“Don’t joke about it, Liadan. You cannot hope to understand how it feels to love a man more than anything in the world, more than life itself. How wonderful it would be to carry that man’s child within your body, even if the man himself is—is lost to you.” She began to cry, very quietly. “How could you know of such things?”
“How indeed,” I muttered, passing her a clean handkerchief.
“Liadan?” she asked, after a while.
“Mmm?”
“You keep saying, I need not go back to Fionn, I need not go back to Tirconnell. But where am I going?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’ll work something out, I promise. Trust me.”
“Yes, Liadan.” She spoke with a meek acquiescence that terrified me. For time was fast running out for us. The men would not stay in the south too long, with winter approaching and their own lands to attend to. By the time the moon was half full again, they would be here, and in truth I had very little by way of a plan. Niamh could not simply come home, not without explanation. So she must go somewhere else, somewhere she could be taken before Fionn returned. She must be kept in hiding, for a while at least. Later, perhaps, the truth might be told, and she could come back to Sevenwaters. A Christian convent would be the best place, perhaps in the southwest, somewhere away from the coast and safe from the Norsemen’s raids, a place where they did not know the name of Sevenwaters. There was no place where they did not know the name of Uí Néill, but maybe that part could be kept quiet. If someone could just provide sanctuary for a while, if Fionn could somehow be convinced that she was gone forever, if … I lost patience with myself quickly, knowing I was getting nowhere, realizing if I did not come up with a practical plan very soon, we would run out of time. It was becoming obvious I could not do this alone.
A promise was a promise and could not be broken. I thought Niamh was wrong. How could the alliance be more important to Liam or Conor or my father than Niamh’s happiness? Surely her bruised body and shadowed eyes were too high a price to pay for the future support of the Uí Néill, for all their wealth and their great band of fighting men? But I had given her my word. Besides, there was more to it than the alliance. There was the secret they were all keeping from us. There was something bigger behind this that we did not understand, something so terrible it seemed to me I must act with the greatest caution lest I bring alive the evil they spoke of with hushed voices and haunted eyes.
One thing was clear to me. I had to get Niamh out before the men returned, and there was nobody in the household whose help I could enlist. They were all Eamonn’s men and women, and Aisling’s, and no secret would be kept from their young master and mistress. Besides, wasn’t every cart searched? I thought about disguises, and abandoned the idea, knowing the close watch on all traffic in and out meant we would be immediately detected. My mind whirled with plans, each more unlikely than the last.
When it was dark of the moon, I could not light my special candle, for it still stood in my chamber at Sevenwaters. But after Niamh was sleeping, I lit another and placed it near the window, and I sat by it through the time of darkness. And now, as I drew Bran’s image into my mind, he was no longer sitting under strange trees, but pacing restlessly to and fro in a more familiar setting, a lantern casting shadows on the cunningly constructed walls, the arched roof and ancient ritual stone of the great barrow that had sheltered us, so long ago it seemed. There were others there with him, and they were disputing something, and he was impatient. I felt his sense of urgency, the anxiety that drew a frown between his dark brows, the tension in his hands. But I could not hear their words. I did what I always did on those dark nights, when I knew he tried, above all things, to remain awake. I reached out to touch his mind with my own, to let him know he would never be quite alone, not now; to remind him that even for an outlaw with no past and no future, each day could be lived well. But tonight, my own dark thoughts intervened, my concern for my sister, my growing panic at not having a solution for my problem, with time so short. These things got in the way, and I could not tell if I did him any good or not. I stayed awake all night. That much I could do for him. It was not possible to see his image all the time in my thoughts, but it came to me now and then, striding out of the barrow, leaving his friends behind; standing in the darkness there, staring down at his tightly linked hands. Later, sitting cross-legged not far from where we had made our little fire with pine cones when Evan was dying and I had told him his last story. Sitting with his shaven head in his hands, and the smallest of lanterns to keep away the darkness. I’m here, I told him. I’m not so far away. Just wait a little longer, and dawn will come. But I had to work very hard to silence that other voice within me, the one that was clamoring, Help! I need you! Nobody could help me here at Sídhe Dubh. There seemed no way out. Unless … unless you were a cat, maybe.
It was worth a try, I told myself as I slipped quietly down the covered way, just after dawn next morning. The skills I had learned in the forest of Sevenwaters served me well. I thought I passed by the guards unseen. I needed the lantern, for the side tunnel was narrow and the floor an uneven jumble of broken rocks. I went past the empty cells, feeling again the cold breath of fear that lingered in their shadowy corners. I ventured farther down, and the track became narrower and steeper, and water trickled down the walls so that I was walking in a streamlet. And then, abruptly, the water went gurgling away underground, and the passage seemed to end; there was an unbroken wall ahead of me, though light still filtered in from somewhere. A dead end. But the cat had got in. I set the lantern down and moved forward, touching my fingertips to the wall. My shadow loomed in front of me, huge in the lantern light. And I heard them: familiar voices, quiet, deep, so deep they were almost below hearing. Words spoken with a slowness that seemed ancient, as if it came from the very stones themselves. They were not, after all, fled with the coming of man; they had merely gone deeper underground, biding their time. I stood still, listening, awaiting their bidding.
Down.
I squatted on the ground, wondering what to look for, what to feel for. A trapdoor? A secret way? Some sort of sign?
Down.
Think, Liadan, I told myself, shivering. I moved along the rock floor, following the base of the wall with my hand, feeling for any sign, any clue as to what I must do.
Good. Good.
My hand touched something, a metal object that was wedged under a protruding stone. My fingers curled around it. It was a key, large, heavy, ornately wrought. I rose to my feet. The lantern light showed me the same unbroken stretch of rock wall before me, the same featureless walls on either side. There was no sign whatever of a door. I lifted the lantern high, low, examining every surface there was. I could not find the smallest sign of an opening, no crack or crevice into which this key might be fitted. My heart sank.
Go back, said the voices. Back.
What were they telling me, I wondered grimly as I made my reluctant way out of the underground passage and into the house again. That I must stay at Sídhe Dubh and let things take their course? That had been their advice at the place of the great barrow, and look where it had got me. Ancestors or no ancestors, I began to wonder if they knew what they were doing. The Fair Folk had told me not to heed these old voices. that they could be dangerous. Still, the Old Ones had given me a key. A key was, at least, a start.
That evening Aisling told me, very politely, that it might be better if I did not go down into those underground parts of the fortress anymore. “My master at arms is concerned about your safety,” she said rather formally. I could see she was embarrassed at having to set out rules for a friend. Things had been easy between us at Sevenwaters. Indeed, sometimes we had seemed more like sisters than Niamh and I were. But here she was mistress of the house, and I sensed there was little point in argument. It shocked me that she had learned of my explorations; I had been so careful.