Flame of Sevenwaters (17 page)

W ell, then,” said Rhian, looking about our new domain with evident satisfaction. Her hair was tied back under a kerchief, her sleeves were rolled to the elbows, and a voluminous apron wrapped her small form. “I think it’s nearly done. I’ll just wash the floor and then we can light the fire and make a brew. Why don’t you go and sit outside until I’m finished?”

It had been hard watching her work. At times like this I had to remind myself of the wisdom of
Do not waste time longing for what cannot be
, and
Do not feel guilt about what you cannot change
. Rhian could manage perfectly well without me; I knew that. She did not expect me to wield a duster with my toes or stack firewood with my forearms, though I was capable of doing both. She welcomed my awkward contributions while seldom asking for them. In my heart I knew the job of transforming the hut into a cozy residence would be done far more efficiently if I got out of her way.

I went out to sit on the front steps. It was late afternoon and shadow lay over the fields, for the autumn sun had sunk below the tree line. Soon, whichever novice druid currently had the job
would come to usher the chickens into their coop and tend to the other animals. These now included Swift, who was grazing in what had been the goat’s field. Among the domestic stock the yearling stood out like a lily in a bed of cabbages. The displaced goat was currently in our walled garden area, feasting on the weeds that had burgeoned there since the hut’s last tenants departed. Rhian planned to plant winter vegetables, provided Swift and Pearl—thus the druids had named their goat—learned to share a field. Having seen the look in Pearl’s eye when she was shifted out to make room for the horse, I thought it might be a long time before we dined on our own carrots and turnips.

There was no need to put food out for Pearl; the weeds were a veritable feast, and she would get our kitchen scraps as well. Rhian would cook for the two of us, with my help. I had overruled Mother’s suggestion that our meals be sent down from the Sevenwaters kitchen. That idea was ridiculous. The point was to put distance between myself and the keep, not create more work for the already busy serving folk.

It did make more work for Rhian. But she seemed happy to meet the challenge, and at least she did not need to dress me up for public appearances anymore, or fetch and carry up and down the stairs. We could walk to the keep for supplies when we needed them, and the druids had offered us fresh vegetables until our own garden was established. I did not tell Mother this last part, since it implied Rhian and I would be at the cottage for some time.

Pearl had paused in her foraging and was gazing at me over the wall, her eyes soulful. I went over to stroke her forehead and rub behind her ears, while speaking to her quietly of such matters as I imagined might interest a goat.

“In the sunniest area, cabbages and kale. Along that side, a strip with juicy carrots and beets…”

Pearl leaned in, the better to let me reach an awkward spot between her ears.

“It’s a pity men can’t be more like creatures,” I murmured. “My hands don’t seem to bother you at all.” The goat’s eyes were half-closed in pleasure as I attended to the troublesome spot, using my
knuckles. Since Ciarán had given his approval for us to move here, and since my parents had agreed to let me do it, I had worked hard to forget that conversation I had not been meant to hear. I had forbidden myself to see the scene it conjured of a wedding night gone hideously wrong. Now, fleetingly, I imagined myself touching a man with the same tenderness I used for Swift and Pearl. Using the soft backs of my hands, where I could still feel the subtlety of a caress; using my lips, perhaps, or my tongue. Such thoughts were perilous. They brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. They edged me close to self-pity, and that could not be allowed.

“Maybe I’m not as brave as I thought I was, Pearl,” I said. “Maybe I have more to learn than I imagined.”

Pearl lowered her head and butted me affectionately in the chest. As I stepped back I saw them again, the two dogs, in the shadows beneath the trees about a hundred paces behind the cottage. The leader was uncannily like Bounder, with a big sturdy body and a strong-muzzled compact head. The creature ran with swift purpose, keeping an eye out for danger. The other came behind, an animal with the same night-black coat and solid build, but a little smaller. This one moved awkwardly, as if sick or hurt. They were both thin. They looked as if they had been running wild for some time.

“So I didn’t imagine them,” I whispered to Pearl, keeping as still as I could. “They’re real dogs that have strayed from somewhere. Where, I wonder?”

“All done!”

At Rhian’s cheery call both dogs bolted, vanishing swiftly into the darkness of the forest.

They were on my mind as I went indoors, and as Rhian made a brew that we drank in celebration of the move into our new home. A temporary home, of course; I might entertain dreams that my family would allow me to stay on here when I no longer had Swift as an excuse, but I knew I would be battling to persuade them. There were so many arguments against it, arguments that made me long for the spiritual vocation that would allow me to stay at
the nemetons without folk thinking Father had lost his good judgment to allow such an eccentric arrangement. Not least of these arguments, I thought, was that people might believe I was here because my parents wanted me out of public view.

“I saw two stray dogs out the back,” I said some time later as Rhian chopped vegetables and I made an untidy effort to knead dough.

“Mm-hm.”

“I saw them the other day, too, when I was out with Finbar. Big dogs. They look as if they might be someone’s hunting animals gone wild.”

Rhian gave me a penetrating look. “They’d have had to stray a long way. It took us a long time to ride in here, and I gather the forest stretches out on all sides of the keep.” Her knife moved with practiced speed; an onion fell in pale shreds. “They’d be after the chickens, no doubt.” She glanced out the window, where the shutters still stood open. “It looks as if that young druid has already put them in the coop. We’d best warn him tomorrow.”

I worked the dough, punching with my knuckles, then clawing the mass over with my stiff fingers. A small struggle was going on inside me.
They’re hungry. You have food to spare. You don’t even need to see them, just put it out before you go to bed
. And on the other side,
Don’t even think of it. One step down that road and you’re setting yourself up for a broken heart. Besides, you’ve just moved in here—what are the druids going to think if you encourage chicken thieves?

We were both tired, Rhian with a great deal more justification than me. After supper, with the meal cleared away and the leftover pie set on a covered platter for tomorrow, we washed in a basin—Rhian had brought water from the well earlier—and put on our nightclothes with hardly a word spoken. Rhian performed the evening ritual of brushing and plaiting my hair. She had already bolted the door, which meant I could not go outside unless she opened it for me.

“Anything you need me to do before we put out the lamp?” she asked.

I wondered if the sound I heard from the forest outside was a
creature whimpering in pain, or only the cry of a bird in the dark trees.

“Maeve?”

I wondered if the subtle scratching I heard was made by the claws of an animal on the stone pathway outside our door, or merely branches brushing the wooden shutters.

In her night robe and shawl, Rhian went over to the shelf where she had set the platter of leftover food. “Yes or no?” she queried, brows raised. Sometimes she understood me better than I did myself.

“I’ll take it,” I said, “if you’ll open the door for me. And maybe you could bring the lamp so I don’t fall flat on my face.”

“What about Pearl?”

She did not mean that Pearl might want this treat for herself—though that was without a doubt true—but that my actions might be putting the goat in danger. “I’ll leave it well away from here.”

As we walked over to the trees, Rhian lighting the way, I following with the platter balanced on my forearms, the two parts of my mind were still arguing, and I knew quite well which of them I should be heeding. Sensible Maeve said,
It’s foolish to encourage wild dogs—those fields will be like a full larder to them. You’re asking for trouble, and for what? Because one of those creatures looks like the pet you lost as a child? What if something happens to Swift?
But Wild Maeve whispered,
They’re cold, they’re hungry, they need you. Would you let them starve because you refuse to let go of the past? What happened to living the life you have instead of regretting the life you lost? Besides, if you give them food they won’t need to eat the chickens.

I set the platter down on a flat stone at the edge of the forest. The pie was already in two pieces.

“Of course,” Rhian said as we headed back, “some other creature may eat it. Those dogs may be far away by now. They can’t know what a soft heart you have.”

“Soft heart?” I glanced across to see a smile on her face. “I don’t recall ever doing anything like this before. In fact, I keep thinking that moving out here must have made me slightly mad.”

“Mm-hm,” said Rhian.

It was good to lie on my pallet in the little cottage, with only the
embers of the fire for light, listening to the cries of owls from the forest, mournful and strange in the deep night stillness. I could hear Rhian’s soft, steady breathing from where she lay tucked in her own bed. I imagined Swift standing asleep in his field, his lovely coat silver under the moon. I thought of the chickens on their perch, a row of tidy round forms with heads under wings. I pictured Pearl in her makeshift lean-to, dozing peacefully on dry straw and dreaming goat dreams. My mind turned, inevitably, to the black dogs. Were they still padding through the forest, restless, hungry, driven by a fierce will to survive? Were they curled up somewhere in the bracken or in the shelter of a fallen tree, pressing close to each other in the chill autumn night, their bellies aching with hunger? Beyond the security of the nemetons, out in the wild woods where every shadow might conceal an enemy, did they dream of home?
Be safe
, I thought as sleep laid its soft blanket over me.
Wherever you are, be safe.

In the morning the platter had been licked clean, and there were canine footprints in the soft soil around it. Wolves could not have crept so close without chickens and goat raising an alarm. I was a light sleeper and would have heard that.

We had a rabbit hanging, thanks to the Sevenwaters kitchen. I suggested a stew for supper, since this would stretch the meat further. Rhian obliged without asking questions. During the day I walked back up to the keep and listened to my brother reading. He was remarkably competent for a boy of his age, which no doubt owed something to his tutor. I saw a group of men coming in from the search and another group heading out. From lad to grizzled elder, all of them were well armed and grim of expression. Back at the cottage, Rhian cooked a generous pot of rabbit stew with barley and vegetables, and a little before nightfall we went out to the trees to leave a portion for our nocturnal visitors.

“Sometimes it’s better not even to start,” Rhian commented, even as she fished a crust of bread out of her pocket, broke it in two and set it beside the bowl. “A creature gets used to being fed,
and then when you go away the animal can’t look after itself anymore, or it’s learned to trust and puts itself in danger.”

“This is only for a few days. I expect they’ll soon move on.”

“Not if they take a fancy to my cooking.”

“If you think this is a bad idea, why did you make extra stew?”

“Because I knew that was what you’d want. Maybe we’re both fools. If these dogs are as big and strong as you say, why can’t they hunt for their own food in the woods?”

There was no good answer to this question, save that perhaps the two of them had been someone’s household companions, without any need to hunt. Perhaps they had been as close to someone as Bounder had been to me. That gave me an uneasy feeling, as if an unknown hand was stirring the tide of affairs here, setting me up to make an utter fool of myself. Rhian had not actually seen the dogs yet. Neither Luachan nor Finbar had spotted them the first time. But if they were only a fantasy, what had made those footprints?

“One of them seemed hurt. Perhaps the other is too busy protecting its mate to go off and catch rabbits. As I said, this is only for a short time. To tide them over.”

“Until what?”

But I had no good answer. So, night by night we set out provisions for them, and morning by morning we went out to recover the empty platter and to see the marks of their paws printed in the earth. As the days passed, I began to place the offering a little closer to the cottage, and to set it out earlier, wondering if they would dare come out before night could cloak their presence.

Swift grew quieter and fatter in his field, soothed by the deep stillness of the nemetons. Every day I spent time with him, talking to him, bringing him treats, making sure he did not lose the trust that allowed me to approach and touch in perfect safety. Either Emrys or Donal had been coming down every second day to do some work with him—a turn or two around the field, wearing a soft halter, followed by a gentle rub-down. On the seventh day after Swift came to the nemetons, we put Pearl in the field with him. He danced about uneasily; she kicked up her heels and ran
to and fro as if to scare him away. Then they both put their heads down and got on with cropping the grass.

There were other visitors. Luachan came often with Finbar, and the two of them generally stayed for a meal and a chat. Sometimes they rode from the keep, sometimes they came on foot. Rhian was good for Finbar. She never gave him a chance to say he was too grown-up to make little figures out of bread dough, paint patterns on the front door with whitewash, or look for frogs in the stream. I guessed she had led her young brothers in and out of trouble for years.