Dreamer's Pool (17 page)

‘Can we send a message south to wherever the travelling folk are likely to be now, letting them know they’re invited to the festivities? And yes, Eochu, I will most certainly consider the purchase of some horses, though you’d best take a look at what they have first and advise me.’

Eochu gave a nod, pleased to be asked.

‘We’ll get word to them one way or another,’ Niall said. ‘When they come is up to them, of course. The travellers keep their own time.’

The travellers were horse-traders, musicians, makers of fine craftwork, storytellers. In the summers they camped in the south while their young horses fattened and grew strong. They’d head for the horse fairs in autumn, and most years they’d come far enough north to spend time at Winterfalls. My stable owed its best horseflesh to the travelling folk. Though, of course, Eochu’s eye for a fine breeding animal also played its part.

‘My lord,’ said my head cook, Brid, ‘how is Lady Flidais? We’re very much hoping she’ll be well enough to come out for her meals soon, and perhaps make herself known to us in the kitchens. I want to be sure everything we provide for the visitors is to her taste.’

‘Thank you for the good wishes, Brid. My lady is improving, yes.’ Flidais’s responsibilities as my wife would include dealing with Brid and her helpers on matters of cookery and kitchen supplies. Brid would be wanting to get some idea of my lady’s tastes and her manner of dealing with the household folk, since Winterfalls had been managing itself capably without a mistress since before my father became king. I hesitated. ‘I had thought perhaps to delay the betrothal by a few days in view of her current indisposition. But I will not make that decision until tomorrow morning. We should be ready for everything to go ahead as planned. I know I can rely on you all.’

The letter to my mother lay on my writing table all day. I did not change the wording, and I did not despatch it. There was no further sign of Flidais. I told myself that since Aunt Sochla had not yet arrived to carry out the duties of chaperone, it was more seemly that my lady remained closeted away, uncomfortable though her absence made me.

With Donagan by my side I spent the rest of the day inspecting everything: the kitchen, the sleeping quarters we had arranged for our visitors and for their army of serving people, the stables where extra stalls had been prepared for the influx of additional mounts. I met the young men from the district who had come in to work as assistant grooms or gardeners, and the young women who would be helping out in the kitchen or around the house.

I had a word with the men who had ridden north as guards to Flidais’s party. Their situation was awkward. My father had a sizeable complement of men-at-arms at Cahercorcan, which was appropriate to the monarch’s court. As heir to the Dalriadan throne I was expected to maintain a substantial force of my own, but in practice I kept it to the minimum required. My guards were well trained and well led by Lochlan; there were enough of them to deal with most situations. I knew, as did my household, that if a major territorial dispute should arise, such as that currently faced by Flidais’s father, the arrangements would have to change.

I faced a difficulty now. The men of Flidais’s escort had expected to return to Cloud Hill when my lady no longer required their services. If Cadhan was under threat from Mathuin of Laois he probably needed every fighting man he could get. But I could not send such a small body of fighters straight back into what might, by the time they got there, have developed into a full-scale conflict. On the other hand, there was no real work for them at Winterfalls. Our region was peaceful; we had allies to the south and west, and the sea to the north and east. My father’s court with its established fighting force was only twenty miles away.

For now, I thanked the Cloud Hill men-at-arms once again for looking after my lady so well on the long journey north, and told them they should stay in Dalriada at least until the hand-fasting. After that they could make the choice to ride back to Cloud Hill or, if they wished, stay on over the winter in my household or my father’s and add their strength to that of our forces. I told them I was sure it would make Lady Flidais happy to have some familiar faces among those protecting her and her new household. They should consider themselves off duty until the betrothal took place. After that they could report to Lochlan, who would assign them responsibilities as he did for our regular guards.

The long day came to an end. Flidais did not appear at supper time. I sent a message with one of her women, wishing her good night and saying I had missed her. Then, with a heavy heart, I retired to my chamber, certain that my first task in the morning would be to postpone the betrothal.

I slept poorly; even with a tapestry hanging over the connecting door, I could hear Bramble barking in the women’s quarters, and at a certain point there came a sound that might have been weeping. And my body, my treacherous body, was stirred by memories of those fleeting touches, her arm slipped through mine, her hands resting against my heart. How could I wait two whole months for her, how could I bear these exquisite, painful feelings? How did other men manage? There was nobody I could talk to; Donagan, close as he was to me, would surely laugh if I confided my difficulty. I could wait. Of course I could wait. I was a prince. Let that not be Flidais weeping through there; let her not be regretting ever agreeing to marry me. Oh, if only I could tap on that door, and be admitted, and fold her in my arms with words of comfort, with soft kisses and tenderness. It would be so easy. I ached to do it. Instead I lay restless and wakeful, my manly parts in a shameful state of arousal, and waited for the dawn.

13

~BLACKTHORN~

I
t was odd, the way folk wanted to tell me all their troubles. It wasn’t as if I ever gave them the slightest encouragement. Mostly I answered with a grunt or an mm-hm. Sometimes, as with the lovesick lads and girls, I dispensed down-to-earth advice, not wanting to see them undone by their own foolishness. A girl –
Becca, her name was – came to me one day asking for a potion that would make a certain young man adore her to the exclusion of all others. It was a ridiculous idea, and I told her so. Explained how silly it was to believe that a spell, even a good one, could conjure the sort of love that would last a lifetime. Added that a young woman of fifteen or sixteen should be making something of herself before she even started to think about finding a man.

Becca had brought a friend with her. Many of the girls came in pairs, being a little scared of dealing with me alone. As I explained the differences between friendship, desire and love, I noticed the friend casting her eye over my supply of herbs and spices, my equipment for making distillations and decoctions, oils and salves, without saying a word. It was only when Becca had had enough of my lecture and expressed a wish to leave that the other girl, Emer, started asking questions, and good questions they were, about my methods and my materials and how a person might learn to become a healer. To my surprise, I found myself inviting her to come back some time – I did not say
without Becca
but she understood. Not that one sensible girl would make up for a whole village of silly ones, but it would be a start.

After that, Emer would drop in to the cottage every now and then, when her duties at the weaver’s workshop allowed it, and undertake such tasks as I had for her. She learned quickly and did not waste time in gossip, which suited me well. Indeed, sometimes she seemed a little too quiet, as if something might be preying on her mind. I did not ask what was wrong. Chances were that would lead to another request for help, and I’d had more than enough of those already.

Emer might be quiet by nature, but everyone else in these parts was the opposite. I’d never known such folk for talking. As the autumn drew on and the mornings became misty, as mushrooms sprang up under the oaks and the leaves began to fall, I could have kept Grim entertained for hours every night with what I learned about the residents of Winterfalls, though in fact I passed on only the most interesting snippets. In return he brought me his share of the local gossip, which wasn’t much, Grim being a man of few words and all of them carefully chosen. We understood each other’s need for silence. We knew that the tales we told served a purpose. They filled up the spaces in the mind that would otherwise be open to the bad things, the memories we wanted gone. But sometimes a body needed to sit quiet and simply listen to the wind and the rain and the birds.

The longer we stayed at Winterfalls, the harder it became to find those quiet times. A steady stream of folk visited the cottage for remedies or for treatment of one kind or another, and often enough I was called away, since some patients could not be brought to me. One day it was a heavily built farmer felled by a sprained ankle. Another day, a whole family afflicted by a vomiting and purging sickness. And, inevitably, I was called to bring new life into the world and see the old leave it.

I was summoned one afternoon to an old woman lying alone and helpless in her tiny dwelling. When I got to the house, to be ushered in by the neighbour who had sent for me, I found the old one lying on her pallet staring out the window, and I guessed she was hoping Black Crow would come soon and not drag things out. The crone was labouring to breathe, but she wanted to talk, and since there was little else I could do for her, I sat by her pallet and listened. She told me a story about a princess shut up in a tower by an evil mage. At least, that was how the story began, but it grew strange and complicated, and eventually she seemed to lose the thread of it, fixing me with her gaze and whispering, ‘We all take our own ways. We all make our own choices, for good or ill.’

No kinsfolk had come to this bedside – perhaps she had none, or maybe they were scattered far and did not know she had seen her last sunrise. No druid had spoken final blessings; no friend was present to hold her hand as she passed through the gateway. Only me, a stranger. And although this was a duty wise women often performed, I wondered if I’d lost any fitness I’d ever had for such a task.

‘I hope you are content with your choices,’ I said, thinking that if I lived so long – unlikely – I’d probably die just as lonely a death as hers, or maybe even lonelier, since at least she had me, even if I was a wretched thing eaten up by anger and bitterness.

The rheumy old eyes gazed into mine, and I wondered if what she saw there made her sad or shocked or merely tired. ‘Now you tell . . . story,’ she whispered.

I could hardly refuse, since this, too, was a duty wise women were expected to perform. As she struggled from one breath to the next, I felt the leaden weight of the past settle on my shoulders, and instead of a tale that would be comforting and uplifting, all I could think of was the story of a woman who was robbed of her treasure, the thing she loved more than life itself; a woman who’d once had some good in her, some gift for making folk’s lives better, but who’d been turned into a twisted, furious weapon of vengeance. Right now, a blunted, useless weapon, thanks to wretched Conmael. ‘I can’t,’ I told her. ‘The story that’s in me is too sad. Too angry. Wrong for now.’

The ghost of a chuckle came from the dry old lips, soon turning into a wheezing battle to catch her breath. I helped her into a sitting position, my arm supporting her back. She was a bag of bones with the foulest breath I’d ever smelled, though not the worst stink; that description was reserved for Mathuin’s hellhole.

‘Some use you are to the dying,’ the crone rasped. ‘Call yourself a wise woman, and you can’t even tell a story to send me on my way? Holly, now, she knew a whole forest of tales. A whole fishing net of them. A whole starry sky of them.’

‘There’s only one in my head right now,’ I said, ‘and it’s not fit for sharing.’ And then I thought, no, there was another, not the kind she wanted, probably, but a tale all the same. ‘Ah; I have one. It’s about a girl who was riding to her wedding and stopped for a swim in a spot where she shouldn’t have.’

The old woman settled against my arm, trapping me where I was and making me feel a bit like a mother telling her child a bedtime story. Which was wrong, all wrong.

‘Her name was Lady Flidais from Cloud Hill, and she was riding north to marry the prince of Dalriada.’

I embroidered the tale a bit, had to, since I knew very little about the personages involved in the true story. I made Flidais a less than kindly young woman, given to ordering her women about on a whim. I made the dead girl, Ciar, a simple soul, ready to obey the most ridiculous commands such as to strip off and join her mistress in the forest pool, even though they were almost at their destination after days and days of riding, and there was a crowd of men-at-arms with them, and . . . well, there were many reasons why this had not been the wisest of ideas. I told of the drowning and its aftermath; Flidais being tended to by the local wise woman, Ciar’s body being conveyed away for burial, at least I assumed so, and Prince Oran riding up and whisking everyone off to his stronghold – as a prince in a story is expected to do – leaving behind bags of largesse for the underlings. It wasn’t much of a story. It lacked the element of learning that exists in the most satisfying tales. And most likely it wasn’t finished yet. Who knew what the ending might be?

‘Pigs,’ the old woman said when at last I fell silent. ‘Something about pigs.’

‘What about them?’

‘Old story, Holly used to tell it. About that pool. Pigs.’

‘Who is Holly?’ It was a wise woman’s name.

‘Lived there once. Long time ago. Dead now. Dead and forgotten.’

I eased the old woman back onto her pillows, then moved so I could see her face. But she had closed her eyes now, and I could not read her expression. The skin was sunken on the bone, making her face a pattern of white and grey, and her breath rasped like a stick run along wattles. ‘Was Holly the wise woman at Dreamer’s Wood? Did she live in the cottage there?’

‘Wise . . .’ With a sighing exhalation she was gone. Whatever the story was about the pigs, I’d never hear it now.

I called the neighbour in, and between us we got the old woman laid out on the kitchen table of her meagre dwelling, washed, dried and wrapped ready for burial. I had sweet herbs in my healer’s bag, and a pair of flat stones to lay on her eyes, and the neighbour found cloth for the shroud.

I had thought this crone’s burial might be as lonely as her death. But once the word got around that she was gone, a couple of the local boys came by and offered to dig a grave in the field set aside for the purpose, and another neighbour dropped in to tell us a few of the local folk would gather while the old woman was put in it. I asked the neighbour if she’d heard of Holly, and she gave me a blank look.

A druid was coming to Winterfalls for the betrothal of Prince Oran and Lady Flidais. Grim had passed on this information. But the druid had not arrived yet, and this old woman could not wait long for burial. That left me responsible for conducting a graveside rite, complete with prayers and blessings. I did my best, part of me thinking of my promise to Conmael, the other half thinking it would be good to die precisely when you were ready for it, not before and not after. By the time the ritual was finished, it was nearing dusk and I was as weary as if I’d done a full day’s labour in the fields. The straggle of folk who’d been at the graveside thanked me; I nodded, gathered my cloak around me and headed for home.

I was almost there – close enough to see lamplight from the window, where Grim had left the shutters open – when I realised I was not walking alone. I slowed my pace; my unseen companion did the same. I stood still; the presence behind me also halted. If I’d been hearing footsteps, I’d have been worried about being attacked and robbed, not that I had anything worth stealing. A wise woman did not request payment for attending a deathbed, and even if I had, in this case there would have been nobody to provide it. But there were no footsteps, only a sensation of being followed.

‘What do you want, Conmael?’ I asked, not turning.

‘To see you safely home, Blackthorn.’ My fey benefactor came up beside me. ‘Why would you assume that I want anything more?’

‘Let’s just say I’m a natural doubter.’ I walked on, and he walked with me, a deeper shadow in the growing dusk. It was disturbing the way he moved without a sound. ‘Besides,’ I added, ‘I can see myself safely home. I’ve been doing so for years.’

‘In the past,’ Conmael said quietly, ‘there have been certain occasions when a protector might have been useful to you. That is not to deny your courage or your fighting spirit. But there is such a thing as too much independence.’

‘Bollocks,’ I said. ‘I don’t need a protector. I’m best left to get on with things alone.’ Even as I spoke, I knew that at least part of what he’d said was true. I’d never be able to confront Mathuin of Laois on my own. I’d tried, and look where it had got me. ‘For now, at least,’ I felt obliged to say.

‘Ah. But you’re not alone anymore, are you?’ Conmael’s gaze went toward the cottage window, a bright square of lamplight against the gathering dark.

I made no reply.

‘Planning to keep your guard dog long?’ he asked, off-hand.

‘What business is that of yours?’ I heard the snap in my voice; could not quite understand the sudden flare of anger. I had never intended Grim to stay, not even as long as he had. Every day I considered how I might put the suggestion to him that it was time he moved on. But it was not for Conmael to weigh in on the matter.

‘Your welfare is my business. You brought the big man with you to Dalriada, I imagine, because he asked for your help. He’s done a good enough job of making the cottage comfortable. But you don’t need him anymore. In time he might prove a liability. His story is unsavoury. If you heard it, you might have second thoughts.’

‘Stop right there.’ I halted and turned to look him in the eye. ‘It’s up to him and me what we tell about the past. I don’t want him knowing my story, and I surely don’t want to hear his from you. Grim always said the fey were meddlers, and I’m starting to believe him.’

‘He would stay, no doubt, even if he knew the whole truth about you. The dog-like devotion in his eyes makes that abundantly clear. You, on the other hand, might not be so quick to give him space in your house, indeed in your bedchamber, if you knew his background.’

‘There’s one thing I did not think the fey could be, Conmael,’ I said, ‘and that was petty. I don’t want to hear anything at all about Grim. If there’s any question I want you to answer, it’s why you decided to take an interest in my fortunes in the first place, since to the best of my knowledge you were a complete stranger to me. Your kind are not exactly known for doing favours to human folk, unless it’s to play some kind of trick. As for my sleeping arrangements, they’re nobody’s concern but my own.’

He lifted his brows. ‘Human memory is a strange thing,’ he observed. ‘How it comes and goes. How sometimes folk tuck the past away so deep they forget it’s there at all. The human mind is full of byways, dead ends, locked chambers. Strongboxes guarding matters too painful to be brought into the light; dusty corners where items considered too trivial are tossed away. You’ll remember one day. And if you do not, perhaps it is no matter.’

He spoke with nonchalance, lightly, but the look on his face did not match his tone.

If there was anything that irked me, it was folk playing games of this kind. I could see no reason for him to withhold the truth, whatever it might be. ‘Why not just tell me?’ I asked.

‘I –’ began Conmael.

Light flooded out from the cottage as Grim opened the door. Almost immediately the light was blocked by his large form standing there, arms folded and legs apart. The moment was lost.