The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) (59 page)

Nearly an hour later, Eleanor rushed in, still unraveling her cloak from her shoulders. Half-melted snowflakes showered to the floor. “Aye, and is it your time, then?” she cried. “Lie you down, mistress, and let’s bring you a baby.”

The pains were coming fast now, scarcely giving Morrigan a chance to breathe. She lay on the bed, clumping handfuls of the blanket in her fists.

“Well?” Curran asked.

“What are you doing here?” Eleanor replied. “You must leave. I’ll have no men underfoot.”

“But what of Morrigan?”

“I’m here now. Time to give way to what you cannot control.” Eleanor pushed him into the sitting room, chanting as she returned,

“‘
Bride, Bride, come in,

Thy welcome is truly made,

Give thou relief to the woman,

And the conception to the Trinity
.’”

She washed her hands in the basin. “The babe’s turned,” she said. “Don’t hold your breath. Breathe deep.”

“She— isn’t— breeched? That’s good— but— I’m only seven months!”

Eleanor nodded and frowned. “Aye, ’tis early, but don’t you fear, mistress. I’ll bring you through, both of you.”

Diorbhail came in. Morrigan beckoned to her and took her hands. “I’m afraid,” she said. “But you gave birth alone in a byre. Teach me how to be strong like you.”

Before Diorbhail could say anything, a horrific contraction splintered Morrigan from throat to knees, and shoved her body beneath the wheels of a roaring train. She opened her mouth and screamed.

* * * *

Curran froze. He heard Eleanor’s indistinct, reassuring voice. Tess ran past with hot water and a pile of cloths. Violet dallied by the door until Fionna ordered her sharply to be about her business.

Beatrice offered him a frown that seemed to say,
See what you’ve done?
His own wild imagining added
, Rutting goat!

Two months early. Two months. Few babies lived who came this early. Many women died as well when they went into labor so long before the proper time.

Had he caused this, tonight, when he, when they’d… no, no, it was too frightening to contemplate.

The sound of Morrigan groaning came out of the bedroom. He couldn’t take this, couldn’t stand here, doing nothing. It was his fault she was suffering. His alone.

He poured a large helping of whisky and drank it in one bitter gulp, then stiffened as the room around him grew hazy. A memory of the old dream returned, the one he’d had so many times, where he was carrying a bleeding child with enormous black eyes. He saw himself running into a large open space, calling for help. A crowd of hostile, shouting people tore the child from him.

The memory swirled away. He looked down. The empty glass had fallen from his numbed fingers, and was rolling on the carpet.

He heard Diorbhail sobbing. Eleanor spoke firmly, confidently.

“Give me the chance to protect you,” he said. “Live, Morrigan. Live.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SHE’S SO TINY.
How can she be alive?

Morrigan slipped in and out of consciousness, retaining no more than glimpses when she woke lucid and free of agony.

Fetch the minister. She must be baptized.

Our daughter is here, my darling. Will you wake up and see her?

Sweet Jesus, she’s no bigger than a carving knife. I can see her blood vessels.

She’s like a faery child. A toy.

Padraig has made a coffin.

Taigh gun chù, gun chat, gun leanabh beag; taigh gun ghean, gun ghàire
.

Morrigan opened her eyes in time to see Eleanor wearily place three drops of water on the newborn’s forehead and a spoonful of earth and whisky in her mouth as she spoke the necessary words.

She thought she remembered seeing Diorbhail and Eleanor hold a basket above a cluster of burning candles.
I’ll cover it with iron tongs,
Diorbhail promised, and Morrigan remembered her saying that would keep away mischief-inclined faeries.

She longed to hold her baby. She cried out for her, and was told she could not, not until the fever broke.

“Livvy.” She tried to say the babe’s name, though sometimes it seemed she lost the name and called her
Evie
, and sometimes fancied her newborn growing older, old enough to walk and talk— talk too much, sometimes.

It seemed as though Curran sat beside her and kissed her hand as he described all they would do when she was well. There was something about holding the grandest celebration Kilgarry had ever seen, and names she’d never heard before. Sir George Napier and his wife Mhairi, Oscar Colquhoun’s family from neighboring Knoydart, Hamish Macgregor, his wife Elspeth, and Curran’s partners, Marcus and Thomas. She would enjoy the Donaghues the most. His friendship with Richard Donaghue was long-standing, since his days at Edinburgh Academy. Richard had gone off to London after they’d graduated. There he’d met and married an English woman four years older than he, which would make her eleven years older than Morrigan, but that mustn’t frighten her. Curran was quite certain she and Lily would get on famously, for they had the same wildness of spirit.

When he saw she was listening, he recounted other stories and interesting news of the day, his tales often revolving around the sea and ships. He described the mysterious disappearance of every passenger aboard the
Mary Celeste
, a ship found empty and adrift last November. Since the tender was missing along with her people, many continued to hope they still lived, perhaps stranded on a hidden island, but so far, nothing had been found.

Where do you think they’ve gone?
he asked, and she wondered about the underwater castle, but wasn’t sure if she suggested it or not. Another name floated through her thoughts.

Inis Tearmann
.

She wanted to ask him if they might have gone there, but she didn’t know what Inis Tearmann was.

He went on trying to get her to talk.
Do you want to travel when you’re well? We can go wherever you wish. Paris? America? Where d’you want to go,
a ghràidh?

Later, she thought she might have said,
Mingulay
, but that could have been a dream.

She remembered thinking how awful he looked, exhausted, unshaven, his eyes red, the skin dark underneath like they were bruised. She felt sorry for him and tried to smile, then it seemed there was an interlude of cramping and screaming, of voices and faces she didn’t recognize, and someone talking again about
the coffin.

Other times there was nothing but drifting silence.

Once she woke to Eleanor, sitting on the bed next to her.
I’ll tell you what I saw now,
she said as she placed a wet cloth on Morrigan’s hot forehead.
When I chewed the mushroom, d’you mind? When you were vexed with us for doing it without you. That woman in the water, the one with the mark on her forehead? Her name is Themiste, and she has spoken to me many times. She told me that you are meant to live seven lives, and this is the sixth. Mistress, there is only one more for you after this one. If my visions are true, we’re almost at the end, and I vow I’ll be there, to help you however I can. Diorbhail too, she’ll always be with you, child. You’ll never be alone. But I don’t think now is the time for you to leave this life, this
‘
labyrinth,
’
Themiste called it. It doesn’t feel right. Please, m’lady, get well, so you can do whatever it is you’re here to do.

Morrigan wanted to say
I’m trying,
but she was never sure if she actually did. She pictured her baby lying in the crook of her arm, warm and content.
You need me, don’t you
, she imagined herself saying. Her daughter nodded and gripped her mother’s finger.
You’re the only one who’s ever needed me. I need you, too. I’ll protect you. No one will ever hurt you.

Nicky’s voice echoed.
I felt it in me, the violence. It strangled me sometimes. You fight it too, I know.

She remembered crying out her denials, her desperate vow to never harm her child as someone held her down and spoke soothing words.

Wasn’t that Rachel Urquhart in the rocking chair? She held an unbelievably small figure to her breast, a mewling being hardly bigger than a bird.

Even Fionna came and sat beside her, speaking gently as she urged the mistress to take a bite of Janet’s special gruel.
Truth is, mistress
, she said,
I’m concerned over your husband. Oh, he’s not sick, dear, don’t think that. I believe it’s more an illness of the spirit.

Fionna set aside the bowl and dabbed at Morrigan’s lips with a napkin.
I came upon him in the garden. He was in a rage. Smashing his fists against the wall. I tried to make him stop. I’ve never seen him so angry. He said this is what he always does. He makes things worse for you
.

After a frowning pause, she said,
I shouldn’t have repeated this. He’ll be fine if you’ll get well. Another bite, please? These are fine Scottish oats, madam, what’ll put a bloom in your cheeks. Poor Master Curran’s near out of his senses, and none of us have had a moment’s peace for worry over you.

Morrigan worried over Curran too, yet at the same time, part of her seemed to want him to suffer. It was like she wanted him to be punished for something, but she didn’t know what. It made no sense. He was the perfect husband, unrivaled in every way. He’d married her, though she was an innkeeper’s daughter with no rank or title, not a penny to her name, and never once had he thrown that in her face. She had a strange conviction that he had left her when she most needed him, and that’s why she was vexed… but he hadn’t done that. It was puzzling.

One good thing about dying. She wouldn’t have to think anymore.

She thought she saw Seaghan’s face once.
Come, get well,
he said.
Aodhàn and I want to take you out on the boat.

Then there was Diorbhail.

Morrigan couldn’t weep, Douglas had beaten that ability out of her long ago, but Diorbhail could. Diorbhail rested her cheek on Morrigan’s chest and wept the tears Morrigan could not shed. Diorbhail spoke the words Morrigan had always been too afraid to speak. Diorbhail called to the wild, inner Morrigan— called to her to come out and bring her witch-fire, for mistress needed its magic and heat to cauterize her wounds.

Morrigan felt the tumultuous lass rise up at Diorbhail’s call with an answering shout.
Selene! Oh, how I’ve missed you!

* * * *

Seaghan listened to the wind whistle against the casements. He cleaned the dishes, sat before the blue peat fire, and tried to prepare himself to say goodbye to the lass, lost for nineteen years, who might well be his daughter.

In the morning he woke, cramped and sore from restless sleep in the hard chair.

Aodhàn’s bed lay untouched, as it had every night since Morrigan went into labor.

He stirred the fire to life and stepped outside, scanning the surrounding hills. Though he saw no sign of Aodhàn, he did spot a black brougham barreling along the snow-packed track from the direction of Kilgarry, and recognized it as the one used by the physician Curran had brought from Fort William. Seaghan waved to the driver and stumbled through the snow to its side.

“Have you seen Lady Eilginn?”

“It’s a miracle,” the man said. “She’s awake and eating. Claims she’s starving. I believe she’ll recover after all.”

“This be f-fine news indeed, sir.” Not dead. Not the statement he’d braced himself to hear.

The driver whipped the horse. Seaghan stared as it bowled away.

He slogged to Kilgarry and was welcomed before he pulled the bell by an exuberant Fionna, who had spotted him through the window.

“Mistress is better!” she cried.

“Can I go up?”

She nodded and he tore up the staircase two steps at a time, bursting without preamble into her sitting room.

“Seaghan.” Curran welcomed him with a grin. From the bedroom came the sound of feminine laughter and chatter where before there had been nothing but feverish moaning or the silence of death.

“Let me see… her.” Seaghan pushed past, barely stopping himself from saying,
my daughter
.

Morrigan was trying on earrings and admiring them in a silver-edged hand mirror. Her hair, loose and freshly brushed, damp from washing, flowed onto the white coverlet like a shining waterfall of chocolate.

Ah, she was thin and pale, but those big doe eyes held newborn sparkles, and the smudges underneath were already fading.

Eleanor sat beside the bed, holding an open book. She looked up as Seaghan came in, and winked. The woman appeared as satisfied as a well-fed cat.

“Seaghan.” Morrigan smiled and held out her hand. “Tell me. What do you think of these earrings? They belonged to Curran’s mother.”

He gaped.

Curran slapped him between the shoulders. “He thinks his eyes are deceiving him. Yesterday he couldn’t get a word out of you.”

“I’m weary of being ill,” she said. “And no one—
no one
— will force me to stay in bed. I’ve had quite enough of that.”

“You’ll do what the doctor has advised,” said Eleanor with comfortable authority, “that’s what, m’lady.”

Morrigan shook her head; her hair rippled and her nostrils dilated, vividly reminiscent of her defiant Arab mare.

“Where’s the baby?” Seaghan asked.

“Diorbhail has her,” Morrigan said, scowling. “They all seem to think she’s tiring me.”

“Impatient chit.” Eleanor laughed. “Give yourself a moment to recover!”

Soon after, Eleanor intimated that her patient should not be overexcited, so Seaghan, after clasping the lass’s hand and drinking in the sight of her, obediently took his leave. He ground his cap down on his head and trudged through piled, crunching snow. Enormous flakes landed on his coat, each offering its own unique pattern of beautiful lace.

He gazed at the sea as it thundered, pewter and ice, leaden green. Sometimes he was amazed anything could survive in such harsh surroundings.

Smoke rose from the chimney. Aodhàn must’ve returned. He ran, throwing open the door to find his comrade sitting in the chair by the fire, his legs outstretched to the warmth and a cup of tea on his lap.