I could hardly speak. “So you would replay the story of Cú Chulainn and Conlai, is that it?”
“A tale of great sadness,” he said softly. “It seems to me that is exactly what this is.”
The two of us sat quietly, watching the baby as he propelled himself across the sand with a determination not always matched by his control of his limbs. He would wobble on hands and knees and topple sideways, and haul himself up again.
“I was wrong, I see that,” Bran observed after a while, “when I called this a burden. It is no burden, but a priceless gift. Such a gift should not be squandered on a man like myself.”
“Ah,” I said softly, “but gifts come unsought. Each of us accepted one the night we lay together. Your son does not judge you, and nor do I. To him you are a clean page, where anything might be written from this day on. As for me, I have never asked you to change. You are what you are. I have strong hands, Bran. Through the blackest night, I have kept watch for you. At dark of the moon, my candle has burned to light your path. You may choose to reject this gift, but I will not let go so easily. I carry you in my heart, whether you wish it or no.”
He nodded. “I knew that, without understanding. There were times when I believed I saw you, there in the darkness. But I dismissed it as a weakness of the mind. Liadan, you should not tie yourself thus. You deserve better, much better: a life of honor and purpose; a man you can walk beside without shame. My world is one of danger and flight, of shadows and concealment. That will not change. I would not inflict such an existence on you, or on the—or on my son.”
“If you cannot see a future in which we are together, then why did you come to see me?” I asked him straight out. “Why not simply do your business with Sean and leave as secretly as you came? You asked me once to go away with you. Perhaps you have forgotten that. You changed your mind when you learned my name. And yet, you allow my brother to pay you. What is the price for this mission? Why do you work for the son of Sevenwaters when you have rejected the daughter? It makes no sense.”
“I suppose,” he said wearily, “it is like the net your mother cast over Hugh of Harrowfield, which made him weak with desire so that he abandoned his duty to follow her. I find the merest thought of you makes me do, and say, things that astonish even myself. My need for you warps my judgment. I told you once that telling tales was dangerous because it makes men want what they cannot have. Since I met you, I am tormented by visions of a different existence, one in which I would not be alone. But a man like myself must remain alone. To befriend such a man, to—to commit yourself to such a man is sooner or later a death sentence. You must move on without me, Liadan.”
There was a terrible ache in my heart, but I kept my tone light. “Then you think I should have married Eamonn when he asked me?” I said, brows raised. “He did ask me, several times. Even after the child was born, he wished me to be his wife and was reluctant to accept no for an answer.”
“What?” He sprang to his feet in outrage. “That man would have taken my woman and my child for his own? A man whose father was a traitor of the worst kind? By the powers of hell, I should have slit his throat when I had the chance.” His tone changed abruptly. “Is he supposed to be eating that?” he queried, looking at the child.
The baby had discovered a fat, squirming insect on the sand, and had managed to grasp it in his small fist. Now he was conveying the wriggling morsel toward his mouth.
“No, Johnny!” I called, and moved to free the creature from his grip and to divert him quickly with a game of mud pies while the insect made its escape.
Behind us, Bran had gone suddenly quiet. And then he said, “What did you say?” and it became clear to me that my mother’s intuition had, once again, been exactly right.
“I called my son by his name.”
“Why would you choose this name for the child?” His voice was very hesitant.
“He is named for his father, and for his father’s father, a man of great integrity,” I said quietly, my hands still busy forming a little castle from the damp sand. As soon as I had finished, Johnny reached out his hand and demolished my construction.
“But—how could you know this? This name—this name has been unspoken for so many years that I had almost forgotten it myself.” There was a dark pain in his tone that chilled me.
“In the house of Sevenwaters, the name of John has not remained unspoken,” I said gravely. “Your father was my father’s dearest friend. They spent their growing years together. My father told me it gave him great joy that his grandson was also John’s grandson.”
“How could he know this? I do not bear my father’s name. Not now. He died. He died before I could know him, killed in defense of your mother when she came to meddle in the affairs of Harrowfield and entice Lord Hugh away from his responsibilities. Perhaps my father was a good man, as you say. I never had the chance to find out.”
I sighed. “Clearly, whoever told you this story had a particular slant on it. Perhaps you were too young to see that it might not be the whole truth. Who did tell you this story?”
His features went suddenly blank. “I will not speak of that.”
“It might be better for you if you did speak of it,” I said carefully. “You could tell me.”
“Some things should remain buried. This burden is such that it cannot be shared.”
“It is, perhaps, only by sharing it that its weight can be taken from your shoulders.”
“I can’t, Liadan.”
After a while, I said, “I didn’t answer your question. I’ll tell you a little more of your story, the only part I do know. You see the small blanket there under the trees, where Johnny was sleeping? Bring it here.”
Bran’s fingers moved across the surface of the rug I had made, touching one patch and then another.
“This is …”
I nodded. “I took the liberty of making some adjustments to your coat, so I could wear it. This blanket holds the hearts of Johnny’s family and warms his sleep with their love. My sister Niamh’s rose-colored gown; my riding dress; my father’s old shirt, stained from his labors on the farm. Your coat that covered me when I slept under the stars. And …”
His fingers had stopped and they were touching a patch of faded blue, where ancient embroidery trailed delicately across the fabric, a vine, a leaf, a tiny, winged insect. Then he turned his arm over, and there, graven with needle and inks on the inner wrist, was the selfsame creature, the very first design he had requested when he was nine years old and determined he was a man.
“This fabric comes from a gown my mother wore and treasured,” I said. “She had a friend at Harrowfield, John’s wife, Margery. Margery made this gown herself; she was very skilled with the needle. It was a gift to my mother, a gift of love. For when Margery’s son was born, it was only my mother’s skills as a midwife that saved his life. When my own Johnny was born, my mother said it was just another such labor, and the infant was so like that other that it could not be coincidence. She said, I think I could put a name to this child’s father. Iubdan—Lord Hugh—agreed. I wished to give my son his father’s name. I wanted to give you back your name. Your parents would not want you to hate, Bran. They owed a debt of gratitude to my mother, and she to them. They sheltered and loved her.”
“You cannot know.” His tone was bleak.
“I want you to tell me something. You said my brother is a good man. I believe you do not think ill of me, for all your talk of nets of enchantment, nor of my sister, whom you aided at considerable risk. But we are our father’s children, Bran, and our mother’s. Perhaps you should consider the possibility that Hugh of Harrowfield acted from both love and duty when he came to Sevenwaters. He did not simply walk away without providing for his people.”
“You cannot understand. Best that you do not understand, that you never know.”
“What happened to your mother? What happened to Margery?”
Silence. The hurt, whatever it was, lay too deep to be uncovered
thus. It was well locked away.
“I will ask you one more question and let that be an end of this. What if I were in some place of danger with the child and you arranged a guard for us, Gull perhaps or Snake? What if there were an attack, and that guard was killed? Would you consider you acted unreasonably in asking him to undertake that duty?”
“He would not be killed. My men are the best. Besides, that’s not the way it would be. If you and—and Johnny were at risk, I would guard you myself. I would not leave such a task to another. The question is inappropriate. I would ensure such a situation never arose. If I were—responsible for you—you would never be placed in a position of danger.”
“But if it did happen?”
“My men take such risks every day,” he said reluctantly. “Lives are lost, and our work goes on. For this reason we have no wives, we have no sons.”
“Mmm,” I said. “Well, you’ve broken the code at least twice now. Will you tell them when you go back?”
There was a pause.
“I will not go back until this mission is complete,” he said. “And I spoke truth when I said I was here to see your brother. It grows late; I must do so and depart.”
He got up, the small blanket still in his hands. Johnny was engrossed in his labors, both fists full of sand. I rose to my feet.
“It’s pointless, I suppose, to ask you to come back to me safely,” I said, working hard to keep my voice steady. “Perhaps it’s pointless to ask you to come back at all. But I will keep my candle burning while you are gone. Please be careful.”
“I must go, Liadan. Do not fear for my safety. Both your brother and I are fully aware of the risks. I—I must say farewell now. By all the powers,” he said suddenly, gathering me into his arms again, “I think I would pay any price to spend tonight in your bed. You see how my judgment deserts me, when—” And he kissed me again, deeper and harder this time. It seemed to me this was a last kiss, the kiss given by a warrior who goes to battle knowing he will not return. It should have been a simple matter to step away and let him go. But my arms seemed to have a will of their own, to hold on; and his were warm and tight around my body.
“You still believe this is some spell, some woman’s snare that I have laid on you against your will?” I breathed.
“How can I think otherwise? The merest touch of your hand is enough to make me forget who I am, and what I am, and what I am not.”
“It’s a well-known phenomenon,” I told him, attempting a smile. “When a man and a woman are together, and their bodies speak one to the other … maybe that’s all it is.”
“No. This is different.”
I did not contradict him for I believed his words were true. The longings of the flesh were one thing, and very powerful they were, as I had cause to know. But what was between us was infinitely stronger than that: ancient, binding, and secret. I had not forgotten those voices that called me in the place of the great barrow. Jump.
“Liadan,” he said, with his lips against my hair.
“What is it?”
“Tell me what you want from me.”
I drew an unsteady breath and pulled back just far enough to see his face. Under the raven markings, he looked very serious and, for the first time, very young; no more than the one and twenty I had found so hard to believe.
“That your spirit could be healed of its scars,” I said softly. “That you could see your way. That’s what I want.”
For a moment, he seemed lost for words, and a small, perplexed frown creased his brow. “Your response is not what I expected. Always, you have an answer that silences me.”
My fingers reached up to trace the pattern that marked his features, that circled his steady, gray eye, that defined the plane of the cheek and the strong line of the jaw. “I’ve been told something like that before,” I said. “By my Uncle Conor. He invited me to enter the nemetons and become a druid along with my son.”
“Don’t go away.” His response was instant, an echo of that child I had heard in my mind, screaming in the darkness. His arms tightened around me so I could scarcely breathe. “Don’t take him away.”
My heart thumped. He had frightened me. “It’s all right,” I said quietly. “I will keep my light burning for you. I told you that, and I will never lie to you.” I rested my forehead against his chest, wondering how I could bear the moment when he would take his arms away from where they held me fast and vanish back into the forest.
“You have told me,” he said very quietly, “what you want for me. But what do you want for yourself?”
I looked up into his eyes for I believed he should be able to read the answer on my face. I would not put it into words; not now. “I’ll tell you that when you come back,” I said, my voice wobbling dangerously. “You are not ready to hear that answer. Now you’d better go before I give you another excuse for your argument that women turn on their tears whenever they choose, just for effect.”
It was very hard to let go. But we did, and Bran knelt down next to his son on the damp sand of the little beach. Johnny looked up and said something in his incomprehensible infant language.
“Indeed,” Bran replied gravely. “It was just as well, I think, that you woke when you did this afternoon. We might otherwise have made another small son or daughter to be born into a world of shadows and uncertainty.” His long fingers moved very gently to touch his son’s brown curls, and then he rose to his feet.
“I have no answers for you,” he said, and his expression was somber. Now he was maintaining his three paces’ distance, as if it were too dangerous to move close again.
Holding back my tears was becoming harder by the moment. “I have no expectations,” I told him. “Wishes and hopes for the three of us, that’s all.”
“Good-bye, Liadan.” He picked up his little pack and went away from me, walking up the sward into the shade of the willows. There he paused and turned back, looking first at Johnny and then at me; and it seemed to me the shadow was in his eyes and all around him.
“Farewell, dear heart,” I whispered, and bent to pick up the damp, sandy infant, for it was long past time for us to return to the house. Still Bran stood watching, and his expression took my breath away, such a wondrous mixture it was of love and pain. Then he turned his back on us and was gone.
After that, the Sight came to visit me unbidden and with a vengeance. I believed myself strong, but it was a test such as I had never yet encountered. I understood the capricious, deceptive nature of this gift, how it did not always show literal truth, how past and present and future, how has been and will be and may be were jumbled together in its seemingly random visions. This was just as well, since without that knowledge I would indeed have run mad, as did some folk cursed by the same gift. It clutched at me quite without warning; and all of its images were dark ones. And even when the visions were absent, I could not escape the feeling that I was being watched; that, somehow, everything I did was under scrutiny, and being judged.
Sometimes it was quite short. I would be walking back from the cottages, my basket over my arm, and I would feel a little faint; and then, right before me, I would see the carved beasts on the pillars, and Eamonn’s face, white with a desperate rage, and his hands around Bran’s neck, squeezing tight. And this time, Bran’s knife fell to the floor unused as the patterned fingers lost their grip, and his features grew purple and distorted, and I felt in my own chest the frantic struggle for breath, saw before my own eyes the blackness rise to take me. Or I would be sitting by the fire at home, while Johnny played on the floor with some wooden animals my father had once made for Niamh. I had not forgotten my own skills with the knife, and alongside the fat sheep and horned cow and the hen with her chickens, there were one or two I had added. A wolfhound, fierce and strong. A coiled snake. A sleek otter. There was no need for a raven: we had Fiacha, a constant, vigilant presence. I watched my son as he sat at my feet, and suddenly the creatures were alive, and one was a horse, and on it was a rider who wore o
n his tunic the emblem of Sevenwaters, two torcs interlinked. It was my Uncle Liam, somewhere beyond the forest, traversing a narrow way between rocky inclines. And there was a whirring noise and a thump, and with a look of mild surprise on his face my uncle toppled silently from his mount to lie motionless on the earth, a red-feathered arrow protruding from his chest. The vision faded before I could see the aftermath, and I was back in the quiet room again.
“Wooh,” enunciated Johnny, practicing.
“Right; that one’s a dog,” I answered shakily. Liam was at home and in good health. That was one of the problems with the Sight One might tell of what one saw and offer a warning. But there was no guarantee that would alter the course of events. One might decide to keep quiet to avoid worrying people. Then the things might happen, and there would be a terrible guilt If only I had told them. If only I had warned them … I kept this vision to myself, for now. I did not ask Sean what mission the Painted Man undertook for him or what the price might be for such a service. I knew he would not tell me. But we were wary with one another, and it was uncomfortable. It was as if what each of us knew of Bran made us cautious, as if our separate knowledge, put together, would be in some way dangerous. Of my father, there was no word, as autumn progressed toward winter and the harvest was over. It was past time for culling stock, and root crops must be stored, and butter and cheese laid away for the cold time. There was an edginess about the household, and down in the settlement folk began to come down with a bitter, racking cough.
“Where’s Iubdan when I need him?” I heard Liam muttering as he strode about the farm with a cluster of workers all asking questions at once.
The moon went through its cycle once, twice, and the nights became colder. I lit my candle, and watched my child grow. There was a chill in the air that was not simply winter’s coming. I thought of the Painted Man, away somewhere beyond the farthest reaches of the forest, perhaps beyond the margins of Erin itself, carrying out some desperate, dangerous task, a suicide mission. My brother was unusually taciturn, and I could see his anxiety on his face. He and Liam had long consultations alone, and once with Seamus Redbeard, who came and went in the space of two days. Business was afoot, and they weren’t talking about it. Nobody spoke of Fionn’s death. I held my tongue. But I feared for Bran, and I told myself that if I ever got the chance, next time I would have to put it to him openly. It was less than a life, to spend your life waiting; to spend your brief moments together saying farewell. I would have to present him with some sort of choice. To change his path and set his skills to another purpose, or to turn his back on me forever. And yet I thought I knew what his answer would be, and I feared to hear him say it.