The Well of Shades (22 page)

Now Midwinter was well past, and the record of days stood at almost fifty. She made Saraid count them, then collect pebbles to match. As she heaved the wet sheets over the line, fearing rain would come before suppertime, she tried to make the learning into a game. “Ten white ones, ten black ones, ten gray, and ten brown. Then six more, Saraid, any colors you like. How many does that make?”

Saraid
was engrossed in selecting her stones; Sorry sat propped against the pole that held the washing line.

“Count them on your fingers. Ten, twenty…”

“Thirty, forty, and six more,” Saraid said, holding up a white stone. “Little moon.” She began to set her pebbles out in rows, the tip of her tongue between her teeth.

Eile’s back was aching. The sheets were heavy, and the prop that ensured the hems
did not drag in the dirt must be shifted across to hoist the line higher. She gritted her teeth and took hold of it with both hands.

Splat! A clod of mud landed in the center of a freshly washed sheet, clung a moment, then fell, leaving a dark loamy residue. Eile gasped with outrage and released the prop. The line sagged; the edges of both sheets dropped to the muddy ground. As she cursed, another
lump of mud sailed through the air to strike Saraid on the cheek, hard enough to knock the crouching child over. Saraid lay immobile a moment, hands to her face, then scrambled to her feet and bolted toward her mother. She made no sound, but Eile saw the look in her eyes and, all at once, muddy sheets were the least of her concerns.

She’d learned to be quick, over the years. A dive into the bushes
and she had Fionn by the right arm and his younger brother Fergus by the left.

“Let me go!” shrieked the scion of Blackthorn Rise, surely loud enough to bring an army of folk running. “How dare you touch me, you filthy slut! My mother will have you whipped! Let go at once!”

Eile hung on grimly.

“I didn’t do anything!” screamed Fergus. “It was him that did it! It’s not fair!”

Saraid had retreated
to the shelter of the bushes as the two boys struggled and kicked and shouted in Eile’s grip.

“Try that again and you’ll really be sorry!” Eile’s voice cut through both the children’s. “Now find something better to do with your time than picking on hardworking people and scaring little children!”

“Take your filthy hands off me!” shouted Fionn, hitting her arm with his free hand. “You’re a whore
and a killer, and she’s an idiot! She can’t even talk properly.” He made a ferocious face at Saraid.

Fergus was crying. Eile let him go, and he bolted. She grasped hold of Fionn’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length. “Maybe you think calling people names is funny,” she said. “Let me tell you something. I don’t care who your mother is. I don’t care how much of a little lord you think you are.
Lay a hand on my daughter again and I’ll thrash you. I mean it.”

The boy spat in her face. She felt the spittle running down her cheek, and a moment later she slapped him, hard enough to leave a red mark on his face. Folk would be coming; if the indignant Fergus didn’t fetch them, the noise surely would. “You only get one warning,” she hissed. “I’ll do it, believe me.” Then she let him go. Bolder
than his brother, or more sure of his ground, he stood there glaring, hands on hips.

Someone shouted. Not folk coming to investigate the hubbub; a voice from somewhere beyond the drying green, beyond the vegetable garden and washing area, over on the far side by the men’s quarters. Someone had called her name. She held her breath, straining to hear over a new sound of approaching footsteps from
the other direction, accompanied by Fergus’s dramatic sobs. If the man called again, she did not hear him. Had she imagined it? She didn’t think so, and her heart went cold. She could have sworn the voice was Faolan’s. The welcoming house, the safe haven had been built on a lie.

A high-pitched scream pierced her skull, and she whirled around. The boy had moved to the clothesline. He was bent
over with Sony’s woolen hair in one hand and her rudimentary feet pinned beneath his boot. His free hand held a knife; he was sawing at the doll’s neck. At Saraid’s shriek, Fionn gave a little cold smile; in the time it took Eile to stride over to him, he had severed the small head and dropped it in the mud. His boot heel ground down.

Somehow, Saraid was there before her mother, reaching, grasping,
small hands wrenching at the boy’s leg. Fionn kicked out; Saraid clung on grimly and used her
teeth. As the figures of two maidservants and a guard appeared, with the weeping Fergus between them, Fionn gave a yelp of pain and fell to his knees, clutching his thigh. Saraid grabbed her prize and, hiccupping in distress, buried her muddy face in her mother’s apron.

“She bit me!” Fionn’s finger pointed
accusingly at Saraid. “The little savage bit me! And the whore struck me in the face! Tell my mother! Have them punished! Shut up, Fergus, stop being such a baby!”

“He threw mud at my daughter and destroyed her doll. He spat at me. I don’t care whose son he is, he’s the one who deserves punishment—” But nobody was listening to Eile. Fionn, busily talking, was leading the guard away, righteous
purpose in every corner of his nine-year-old being.

“You’re a fool,” said one of the maidservants, eyeing Eile sideways. “You don’t cross Master Fionn, not unless you want a good beating. His mother’s convinced the sun shines out of him.”

“Best get those sheets back on the boil,” said the other. “I reckon you’ve got just enough time to wash them again before she hears the story and sends for
you. Watch that child of yours. Biting, eh? Little wild thing. I don’t know why the lady ever took the two of you in.”

The first maid whispered something and the two of them giggled. Then they were gone. Eile knelt down. “Saraid?”

The child was shaking with sobs; she would not take her face out of the apron.

“Saraid, listen to me. It will be all right. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”

Words between the sobs, the tone full of woe. “Sorry’s dead.”

Eile’s heart turned over. “No, she isn’t.” She wrapped her arms around the weeping child. “I can clean her up and stitch her back together. She won’t be exactly the same. She’ll have… honorable wounds. Saraid, you mustn’t bite people. It hurts them.” She wondered what
she would say if the child pointed out that Eile had hit Fionn, and
that hitting people hurt them, too. But Saraid put her head against Eile’s shoulder, pressed the two parts of the muddy plaything against her chest, and said nothing at all.

S
OME TIME LATER
, Eile stood before the Widow in her great room, with Maeve silent by her side. Saraid had cried herself to sleep and, reluctantly, Eile had left her in the bedchamber.

“My son
will be chieftain here one day,” the Widow was saying. “What he may or may not have said or done is immaterial. You struck him. Your child sank her teeth into his leg; I saw the mark she made. Such acts of violence against his person cannot be tolerated.”

Eile had given the most honest accounting of events she could, and the lady’s response startled her. She had expected better. What she had
done today was, in her view, entirely justified. “My lady,” she protested, “your son insulted me. He ruined my morning’s work. He destroyed something Saraid loved—”

“Enough.” There was not the slightest spark of compassion in the Widow’s eyes. “We spoke of power once, young woman. It’s plain to me that although you crave it, you do not understand its nature. Power bestows privilege. It bestows
the right to make decisions. I learned that lesson early; I was far younger than you. Tell me, does it not concern you that your child is acquiring bad habits from her mother? A bite one day, a knife in the heart the next?”

Eile was outraged. The fact that there was a grain of truth in this statement did not diminish its hurtfulness. “She retaliated; defended her own. That’s only natural.”

“Her own? Oh, you mean the doll.” The lady gave a mirthless laugh. “Your daughter’s better off without it. A filthy old rag, was the way my son described it.”

Eile clenched her fists. “Tell me,” she said, “does it not concern you that your son may be growing up just like his father?”

Maeve sucked in her breath. The Widow rose to her feet. Her features were as well governed as ever, but something
dangerous had stirred in her eyes.

“I had thought we might make something of you, Eile,” she said in ominously quiet tones. “I sheltered you out of a certain fellow feeling; your circumstances were pitiable, and your act of violence, while ill-considered, could be seen as self-defense or even as just vengeance for the wrong your uncle did you. But you’ve disappointed me today. You seem to imagine
I can allow an assault on the future chieftain of Blackthorn Rise to go unpunished. My power is absolute here. It remains thus because of the steps I take to maintain discipline within my household and within my territories. Maeve, the girl is to have a whipping. Ten strokes will suffice. And three for the child. I’ll expect your report in the morning.”

“No!”
Eile threw herself forward, not sure
what she intended but desperate to make this woman hear her. Maeve’s strong hands restrained her as the Widow departed the hall, back straight, head high, a somber figure in her elegant dark gown. “No!” Eile screamed again. “Not Saraid, you can’t—” The lady was gone, and her guards with her. “Let me go! Maeve, let go!” Eile fought, twisting and kicking.

“Shh!” Maeve’s voice was almost inaudible.
“Shh, now, lass. Stop fighting and listen to me, will you? We don’t have much time.”

Eile’s heart was pounding, her palms were sweaty, her skin crawled with terror. A whipping. Saraid. They couldn’t, they just couldn’t. She’d die before she let them touch her daughter.

“Eile! Listen!”

Through her terror, she registered Maeve’s expression; she felt the restraining grip on her wrists change to
a supporting arm around the shoulder.

“Pack up your things during supper,” the housekeeper whispered in her ear. “Don’t let anyone see you doing it. Bring the child to my quarters. Be angry; be afraid. Let everyone think I’m going to go through with this.”

“You… you won’t hurt her?”

Maeve’s jaw tightened. “I’ve disciplined a wayward maid or two in the past. The lady’s testing me; testing my
loyalty. Well, she’s got it wrong this time. That little wretch Fionn…”

“But she’ll know. Everyone will. You’ll get in trouble.”

“You’ll have to go away, lass. You’re right, she will know, and if you stay here she’ll get someone else to carry out her whipping. Once you’re outside the walls, you and Saraid, you’ll be on your own. I can get you out, give you a few coppers and a bite of food for
your journey, but that’s all. Go now,” in the face of Eile’s whispered thank-you. “Make it convincing. After supper I’ll show you a way out. Good thing the moon’s full. You’ll need to cover as much ground as you can before morning. She’ll send men after you. She doesn’t forget easily.”

“Maeve?”

“What?”

“Faolan. You know, the man who was with me. I thought I heard him today. Surely she can’t
still have him locked up, after all this time?”

“I’ve some advice for you. You’re in deep enough trouble already; don’t go out of your way to make it worse. That’s a dark story, him and her, and folk who know what’s good for them stay well out of it. Now go, before someone hears us.”

B
Y NIGHT
, E
ILE
stood inside an unobtrusive doorway cut in the stone wall, a bundle
on her back. Saraid, warmly cloaked, was clutching a little bag of her own, a receptacle Maeve had given her to hold the two parts of Sorry, for there had been scant opportunity for sewing.
The gray dog had gone out ahead of them and was sniffing about in the bushes. A mist hung low. It would obscure their way. At the same time it would help conceal their flight.

“You’re a good girl,” Maeve said
soberly. “If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t mind if you were her. Take care, now. Those fellows from Cloud Hill will be after you again once she tells them you’re gone.”

“But—”

“She never called in the brithem,” Maeve said. “Never did the formal process. That means once you’re out of her protection, you’re still accountable for the killing, under the law. You’d best run as far away as you can.”