Child of the Prophecy

  This keep had once been the only major settlement in the forest of Sevenwaters. But now there were others, established by my uncle and tenanted by his free clients, whose own bands of armed men he could call upon in time of need. Thus the túath had been made less vulnerable, with strong outposts serving as a reminder, should powerful neighbors think to stretch out a hand a little further than was appropriate. These free clients were part of the Council, as were the richly clad leaders of the Uí Néill in their tunics blazoned with the scarlet symbol of the coiled snake. In the household of Sevenwaters there was a brithem and a scribe and a poet. There was a master at arms and a fletcher and several blacksmiths. But it was others, unseen others, who intrigued me more.

  Aunt Liadan was my mother’s sister, and Sean’s twin. My father had said she lived at Harrowfield. I had not realized how far away that was. Strangely, she dwelt in Britain among the enemies of Sevenwaters, for her husband was now master of an estate in Northumbria which had once belonged to her father. When they were not living there they were at Inis Eala, some remote place far north, surely so distant it was hardly worth thinking of. But when my uncle Sean spoke of his sister it was as if she lived as close as a skip and a jump across the fields. Conor talked of her as of an old and respected friend. I tried to remember what my grandmother had told me. I thought she’d said something about wishing Ciarán had chosen the other sister, because their child would have been cleverer, or more skillful. It had not been the most tactful of remarks to make to me. But that was Grandmother for you.

  Liadan and her husband had sons. I started to learn about them not long after my arrival. For all my efforts to retreat to my room for some time alone, to shrug off the Glamour for a little, or to repeat in peace the secret incantations of the craft, I had not been able to avoid a regular influx of small, curious visitors. As Muirrin had predicted, I soon learned to distinguish them, for all their matching mops of red hair and lively freckled faces. Sibeal was the odd one out; dark, like her eldest sister, and quiet. And she had very strange eyes, clear, colorless eyes that seemed to look beyond the surface of things. Eilis was very small, and very mischievous. You had to watch her. Maeve was in the middle, and had a dog that followed her everywhere like a devoted slave. And Deirdre and Clodagh were twins. When they grew a little older, it would be just like having two more of my aunt Aisling running around making sure everything in the household was perfect. I began to understand soon enough why Muirrin spent a great deal of her time in the stillroom working, or down at the cottages tending to the sick.

  On this particular day I had the twins in my room, seated one on each bed, and Maeve as well, with the dog. The dog, at least, was quiet, though its huge bulk blocked the little fire’s heat from reaching the rest of us.

  “Is this your doll? Can I hold her?” Maeve had queried immediately on coming in, and had picked Riona up before I could answer. Her confidence took me aback, and I did not reply.

  “Did your mother make it?” asked Clodagh. Deirdre glared at her.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What’s her name?” queried Maeve, inspecting Riona’s rose-pink skirt, and screwing up her nose at the strangely woven necklace.

  “Riona.”

  “Muirrin made me a doll once. But it’s not as nice as this one. Can I play with her?”

  “She’s not for playing with,” I said, and I went over and took Riona out of the child’s arms. I placed her carefully back where she belonged, gazing out of the window, down to the margin of the forest.

  “Baby,” said Deirdre, making a face at Maeve.

  “I am not a baby! Eilis is a baby. Coll’s a baby. I’m ten years old. I’m grown-up.”

  Deirdre lifted her brows and grimaced.

  Maeve burst into tears. “I am! I am! I am, aren’t I, Fainne?”

  These children confused me. Their life was as different from mine as a lapdog’s from a wolfs. We had nothing in common, nothing at all. What kind of girl might I have become if I had grown up among them? Maeve was still crying.

  “You can play with Riona, if you like,” I said magnanimously.

  “Don’t want to now,” pouted Maeve, but she took Riona down again, and sat there hiccuping with the doll in her arms.

  “Here,” I said, handing her my hairbrush. “She could do with a tidy-up.” I turned to the older girls. “Who’s Coll?” I inquired.

  “Our cousin.” Clodagh liked to explain things; she enjoyed sharing her grasp of affairs. “That makes him your cousin too, I suppose.”

  “Aunt Liadan’s son?”

  “One of them. She’s got heaps.”

  “Four, actually,” put in Deirdre. “Coll’s the smallest one.”

  “There’s Cormack, he’s fourteen and thinks he’s quite a warrior. There’s Fintan, but we don’t see him, he stays at Harrowfield. And there’s Johnny.” This name was spoken in a very special tone, as if referring to a god.

  “I’m going to marry Johnny when I’m old enough,” said Deirdre in tones of great assurance.

  Her twin glanced at her with a wry expression. “No, you’re not,” said Clodagh.

  “I am so!” Deirdre looked as if she were about to explode.

  “No, you’re not,” repeated her twin firmly. “You can’t marry your first cousin, or your nephew, or your uncle. Janis told me.”

  “Why not?” demanded Deirdre.

  “Your children would be cursed, that’s why not. They’d be born with three eyes, or ears like a hare, or crooked feet or something. Everyone knows that.”

  “What’s wrong, Fainne?” asked Maeve suddenly, looking up at me. “You’ve gone all white.”

  “Nothing,” I said as cheerfully as I could, though Clodagh’s words had set a chill on my heart. “Tell me. These boys, these cousins. Don’t they live rather a long way away? But you seem to know them quite well.”

  “We see them sometimes. Not Fintan; he’s the heir to Harrowfield, and Aunt Liadan says he’s just like his grandfather, and would rather be on the estate plowing fields or settling arguments than spending his time traveling all the way to Ulster. And Cormack stays at Inis Eala most of the time. But Aunt Liadan brings Coll when she visits. Terrible combination, Coll and Eilis. Nothing’s safe when those two get together.”

  “What about the other one? Johnny, is that his name?”

  “Johnny’s different.” Clodagh’s voice had softened. “He’s here a lot, learning about Sevenwaters, all the people’s names, and how to run the farms, and all about the alliances and the defenses and the campaigns.”

  “Johnny’s a good rider,” put in Maeve.

  “What would you expect?” Clodagh said with no little scorn. “Look at the way he was brought up, among the best fighters in all of Ulster. He’s a real warrior, and a great leader, even if he is only young.”

  “So, he is a fearsome, wild sort of man?” I queried.

  “Oh, no.” Maeve stared at me, brows raised. “He’s lovely.”

  “So lovely,” added Clodagh, grinning, “it’s amazing he isn’t wed already. Some day soon he’ll turn up with a beautiful, highborn wife, I expect.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” grumbled Deirdre.

  “I do so,” retorted Clodagh.

  “Do not!”

  “Is it true what they say,” I ventured, “that this Johnny is the child of the old prophecy? Do you know about that?”

  “Everyone knows that story,” sniffed Maeve, who was plaiting Riona’s yellow hair into an elaborate coronet.

  “Well, is it true?”

  The twins turned their small faces toward me.

  “Oh, yes,” they said in chorus, and Deirdre gave a sigh. I did not think I could ask more, without seeming unduly inquisitive. I kept silent, and after a while they grew bored with me, and went off to bother someone else.

  So, there was Uncle Sean and his girls, and Aunt Liadan and her boys. A much-beloved grandfather had died recently and been laid to rest under the oaks. And there w
as Conor. The druids dwelt deep in a secret part of the forest, as is the habit of the wise ones. But Conor was part of the Council, and therefore remained at Seven waters while the discussions proceeded behind closed doors. Indeed, he was the most senior member of the family, and much deferred to. And there was another uncle, Aunt Aisling’s brother. Him I met on the very first day, by chance, as I walked down the stairs with Muirrin on my way to supper and passed him coming up. I’d have thought nothing of this well-built, richly dressed man of middle years, pleasant featured, brown haired, but for the way he suddenly froze when he set eyes on me, and turned white as chalk.

  “Uncle Eamonn,” said Muirrin as if nothing at all were amiss, “this is my cousin Fainne. Niamh’s daughter. From Kerry.” A well-rehearsed statement, which said just enough, and invited no awkward questions.

  The man opened his mouth and shut it again. Expressions warred on his features: shock; anger; offense; and, with a visible effort, polite welcome.

  “How are you, Fainne? I’m sure Muirrin is helping you settle in here. This visit was—unexpected?”

  “Father went out to meet Fainne this morning,” Muirrin said smoothly. “She’ll be staying here awhile.”

  “I see.” Behind the now well-controlled features, I could tell his mind was working very quickly indeed, as if putting the pieces of a puzzle together with speed and purpose. I did not much like the look of this.

  “We’d best go down now. We’ll see you at supper, Uncle Eamonn.”

  “I expect you will, Muirrin.”

  That was all; but there were more than a few times after that when I saw this man watching me, at the table when other folk were engaged in talk, or across the hall when people gathered in the evening, or in the gardens walking. He was influential, I could tell that from the way the men of the alliance seemed to defer to him. Muirrin told me he was master of a huge estate, two really, that curled right around the west and north of Sevenwaters. He had acquired Glencarnagh as well as Sídhe Dubh, and that meant he controlled more men and more land than Sean did. All the same, he was family and therefore no threat. But he watched me, until I grew annoyed and began watching him back. I had no doubt what my grandmother would think of this man. She would say, Power is everything, Fainne.

  Time passed, and Dan Walker and his folk moved on. I had scarcely seen them, for I was caught up, despite myself, in the daily routine of the family, and when I was not needed I fled to my chamber or out into the garden for precious time alone. It began to be clear to me why the druids chose to remain so isolated, emerging only at the times of the great festivals, or to perform a handfasting or a harvest blessing. To keep the lore in your mind, to tap into your inner strengths and maintain your focus required silence and solitude, for them as for us. For a druid it required also the company of trees, for trees are powerful symbols in the learning of the wise ones. In a landscape almost devoid of trees, I had learned their names and forms before I was five years old. Sean had questioned my father’s wisdom in choosing to live in Kerry, so remote, so far from Sevenwaters. To me, it became ever plainer that my father had known exactly what he was doing. Perhaps, at first, he went away in order to protect my mother. But I recalled those long years of study, of silent meditation, of self-imposed privation, and I knew that if we had not dwelt there in the Honeycomb, near encircled by wild sea, canopied by rain-washed sky, watched over by the cryptic forms of the standing stones, I would never have become what I was. Father had taught me well and I had learned eagerly. What he had intended for me I still did not understand, for he had spoken of it cryptically, like the druid he still was at heart. He had said he hoped I might find the right purpose for my gifts, and had given me the tools to do so. The irony of it was that he had forged a weapon like a true master; his mother’s weapon. Perhaps he had never really escaped the legacy she left him, for in this had he not done exactly as she wished? She had used the love we bore one another to twist me to her will. She need only show me that image of my father coughing, choking, suffering, to ensure I turned my hand to the most fearsome of tasks.

  Despite my longing for home, I grew slowly more accustomed to the pattern of life at Sevenwaters, and it became harder and harder to remember why I was here. The memory of Grandmother’s threats seemed almost like a fantasy of the mind. Distractions were many. At times I looked at the bustling domestic scene around me, and thought of the magnitude of the task I had been set, and said to myself, This cannot be true. These things cannot exist together in the same world. Maybe I am dreaming. Let me be dreaming.

  Aunt Aisling, busy as she was, had no intention of letting me disappear to do as I wished. I would help Muirrin with her healing work; I would assist Deirdre and Clodagh with their reading and writing, as it appeared I was very capable at both, and the girls’ education had been somewhat neglected recently, since everyone was so occupied. I could supervise the little ones at sewing, since I was apt at that too. I should learn to ride, properly, for one never knew when one might have to depart in a hurry. And I needed new clothes. I wondered what Aunt Aisling thought I would get up to if she did not organize every single moment of my day.

  Muirrin helped. Often, when I was dispatched to assist her in the stillroom or walk with her on some errand of mercy, she would look at me with her wide green eyes, and tell me I might as well sit in the garden and have some peace and quiet, while she got on with things. Then she would work at her mixing and blending, her drying and preserving, sometimes alone and sometimes assisted by small Sibeal, an earnest, silent child. And I would sit on the stone bench in the herb garden, wrapped in my everyday shawl, for I had folded Darragh’s gift neatly and laid it away in the very bottom of the wooden chest, safe from prying eyes and eager little hands. I would sit there alone in the chill of late autumn, and run the litany through my mind. I could almost hear my father’s voice.

  Whence came you?

  Front the Cauldron of Unknowing.

  So it unfolded, longer than the day, longer than the season, greater than the cycle of the year, as old as the pattern of all existences. And sometimes, as I let the familiar recital of lore unfold, I would play with things just a little, scarcely conscious of what I did. There might be a subtle change in the manner in which the moss grew over the ancient stones. There might be more bees clustering on the last blooms of the lavender, and somewhat fewer small birds perched on the bare branches of the lilac. Pebbles on the ground might roll into the shape of an ancient symbol. Ash; birch; oak; spindle. Nothing grand. Just enough to keep my hand in, so to speak.

  My daily life remained an effort, even when it grew more familiar. It was exhausting. I knew I would never get used to the people, the company, the need to speak the obvious and listen to the tedious, the need to participate. If you are brought up to solitude and silence, you never lose the craving for it. Sometimes I was tempted to pack a little bag and walk away, forest or no forest, Grandmother or no Grandmother. But such a venture was doomed to failure. The place was bristling with armed men, and the girls were forbidden to go past a certain point without an escort. In these times, Clodagh told me very seriously, one could not be too careful.

  The Council drew to a close. I had watched to see who the representative from Inis Eala might be, for I wished to learn more of Aunt Liadan and her husband, and the fabled Johnny. But I detected no new faces at supper, and saw no riders come into the yard on the day my uncle Sean spoke of it. In the end I asked Muirrin outright.

  “Are not the folk of Inis Eala represented at the Council?” I tried to sound casual. “And what about Harrowfield? If Johnny is the heir to Sevenwaters, why is not he or his father present? Do they play no role in this undertaking, whatever it is?”

  Muirrin glanced at me as she stirred a pot over her small fire. “Harrowfield is not part of this,” she said. “That estate has always remained outside the feud; they distance themselves from Northwoods, who is our true enemy, for all they share a border. That has not changed since Liadan and the Chief took control
there. For that reason, the Chief never comes to Sevenwaters. He walks a delicate path, though, for he still maintains a keen interest in the affairs of Inis Eala. And Inis Eala was most certainly represented at the Council. This venture cannot go ahead without them.”

  “The Chief?” I queried.

  “Aunt Liadan’s husband. Everyone calls him that. His real name is Bran, the raven.”

  “Who came from Inis Eala for the Council?” I asked. “I saw nobody arriving.”

  Now Muirrin wore a little frown. “Why does that interest you?” she queried.

  “I’m just trying to learn about the family. Johnny seems very important. And Aunt Liadan was my mother’s sister.”

  “Yes, it’s a pity she was not here to meet you,” said Muirrin, tasting a little of her mixture and making a face. “Oh dear, I’ll need honey, I think. Could you reach it down, Fainne? It’s no wonder you didn’t see the man they sent. The Chief’s folk are masters of invisibility.” She saw my expression, and laughed. “Oh, no magic involved, I assure you. It’s their trademark and great skill to come in and out unseen and to adopt what disguises they must, so they are not remembered. That’s another reason the Chief doesn’t come himself. You’d always remember him. A man came and left. That’s all.”

  “Why would you always remember the—the Chief?”

  “You’ll know if you ever meet him. But he would not come to a Council of this kind. As I said, he is at pains to appear neutral. Besides, he has too many enemies and even now is not fully trusted by all of Father’s allies.”

  “Really? Then why are his folk from Inis Eala involved? Isn’t that risky for him?”

  “Because of Johnny.” She did not speak this name in the awed tone her sisters used. But she was deeply serious. “Johnny’s a symbol. The son of the raven. He must lead this venture, and he cannot do so without his father’s support. Besides, the Chief’s unique skills and Johnny’s special forces are an essential part of the campaign. It can’t work without them. That’s what Father says.”