The Well of Shades (42 page)

“Does Eile know?” Ana asked. “That you nearly killed yourself?”

Faolan’s lips curved in a sweet smile, an expression of
which she would not previously have believed him capable. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Most surely, she knows.”

M
UCH LATER, AFTER
a hearty supper of which neither Eile
nor Saraid ate much, and after Saraid had cried herself to sleep, inconsolable and incapable of explaining precisely why, Faolan sought Eile out, tapping on her door.

Don’t wake up
, Eile willed the child; it had been a distressing time and all she wanted was to climb under the covers herself and release the tears that had been building behind her eyes as she failed to comfort the child’s woe.

“It’s me,” came Faolan’s voice. “Is Saraid asleep? I need to talk to you.”

Eile opened the door a crack. “She’s only just gone to sleep. She was upset. She cried and cried. I need to stay here in case she wakes again.”

“All right, we’ll talk here. If you’ll let me in.”

“I don’t think so.”

He gave her a direct sort of look. “I thought I heard you say not so long ago that you half trusted me,”
he said. “It’s this or have our conversation out here in the hallway where it’s cold and anyone passing by can hear us.”

“There’s no need for a conversation. You’re going and we’re staying. That’s it. Good night.”

She made to close the door. Faolan’s foot was suddenly in the gap.

“You know that’s not it. Please, Eile. Let me in just for a moment. Surely you can’t think I…?”

“In fact, no. I
saw the look on your face when I made my ill-considered suggestion.”

“Please. This won’t take long.”

“If you wake her up I think I might hit you. She was so upset I nearly cried myself.” Eile opened the door and
retreated to sit on the bed, her hand on the huddled form of the child. Faolan came in to stand with his back against the stone wall. Eile noticed that he had left the door slightly
open. “That’s to protect your reputation, is it?” she queried with a grimace.

“No,” said Faolan. “It’s to stop you feeling trapped.”

She did not reply. Then, abruptly, words welled up that she could not stop. “This would be a whole lot easier to cope with if you weren’t so nice to us,” she said.

“Nice? Me? You’ve got the wrong man.”

“You understand things without being told. I was starting
to get used to that.”
And I can’t afford to do that, because sooner or later you’ll be gone forever
.

“It’s only for seven days.” Faolan’s voice sounded a little odd. “And I do have to go, Eile. I thought you understood that.”

“I do,” she said as a new misery settled over her. “This is what you are; what you do with your life. All the time. One mission and then another. Always going somewhere,
doing something important.”

After a moment he said, “What are you saying? That you think I’m running away?”

It jolted Eile’s heart. She had been thinking only of herself and of Saraid. She looked him in the eye, seeing the pain there. She reminded herself that Ana was in the house: Ana who was dear to him, Ana who was lost to him. “No,” she said. “Maybe you’ve done that in the past. But you
went back to Fiddler’s Crossing, didn’t you?”

“If it had been up to me, I’d have skipped that and headed for the north. The only reason I stopped running, the only reason I saw my family, was you. You and Saraid.”

“A lot of help we were. Got you locked up, then cost you all your money. Now we’ve delayed you on your important business. You’d better be on your way out of here in the morning or
I’ll really start feeling bad.”

His eyes warmed a little, but he said nothing.

“You look tired.” Eile scrutinized him closely.

“I don’t need much sleep.” The eyes went bleak again.

“Rubbish. You look washed out. Go on, go and get some rest.” He was upset; brooding over something. “I’m really sorry about Ana,” Eile added, making a guess. “She seems so nice. You must be worried about her.”

“Mm,” he said absently. “I planned to go early tomorrow. At first light. Will you tell Saraid I said good-bye, and that I’ll be at White Hill when you get there? Or should I delay setting off until she’s awake?”

Eile turned her head away so that he could not see the tears welling in her eyes. “I’ll tell her,” she said. “I’m hoping she’ll sleep late to make up for tonight. Will you go now, please?”

There was a silence. Then he said, “Don’t forget to talk to Drustan about your father. He’ll have much to tell. Better to ask him here than at White Hill. He’s ill at ease there; like you, he doesn’t care for crowds.”

“All right.”

“Don’t worry about the language, Eile. Deord spoke both Gaelic and the Priteni tongue ably. So will you in time. This will get easier. I’m sorry you are unhappy. On
the voyage over, in that wretched boat with its motley crew of clerics, I thought you were enjoying yourself. I saw a look on your face then that I’ve never seen again: confident and happy. I wish I could—”

“Please go, Faolan. I want to sleep.”

A pause. “Good night, Eile. I’ll see you in seven days.” His voice was very quiet.

“My father was a sailor.” She felt obliged to say this. “Maybe I’m
like him. The only thing is, I think voyages should end at home. That’s hard when you don’t know where home is.”

“You’re not the only one. Sleep well. Don’t forget to tell Saraid—”

“I’ll tell her. Good night, Faolan. Ride safely.”

Eile heard the door close softly. He was taking care not to wake the child. She found that, after all, she wasn’t going to cry. She wrapped her arms around her
daughter,
shut her eyes, and made an image of the house on the hill. There was the striped cat, there the rows of herbs and flowers fresh and bright in the sunlight. Someone was singing and there was a sound of Saraid’s laughter. In that place, it was always summer.

T
HE MEN AT
White Hill were all too old or too young, too plain or too stuffy. The tediousness of it was driving
Breda crazy. Keother hadn’t brought any of her favorite attendants here from the islands. It was as if her cousin had deliberately chosen to leave behind Breda’s comeliest groom, her most muscular bodyguard, her wittiest musician. What did he expect her to do, spend her time putting tiny stitches into useless bits of linen and practicing pretty table manners? Did he imagine there was any real satisfaction
to be had in that?

Perhaps, thought the princess of the Light Isles, resting her chin on her hands as she stood by the parapet wall atop White Hill and gazed northward, this visit so long promised as a treat by her cousin was in fact a punishment. Perhaps, that time when Keother’s busybody of a councillor had caught her in the stables with Evard, doing a little more than feeding the horses treats,
someone had gone running to the king with tales. Keother hadn’t said a word and neither had the councillor. All the same, Evard hadn’t come to White Hill, even though he was head groom. Her cousin’s choice of companions seemed weighted toward old men or ugly ones.

Gods, if this went on things were going to become quickly intolerable. There was absolutely nothing to do here. Her maids were out
of sorts and squabbling and she had nobody at all to talk to. If this was the thrilling life that Keother had promised her at the court of Fortriu, she didn’t think very much of it at all. These folk had no idea how to have fun.

Breda paced the walkway, lifting her skirts out of the
way of debris blown up there by Fortriu’s fierce winds, and making sure her ankles showed. The guards stationed
nearby kept their eyes grimly trained on the hillside below the walls. Someone had had a word to them. She blamed the queen, that odd woman with the pale skin and weird eyes. Not a woman, really; something else. As for the children, they were downright unsettling. There was an uncanny strangeness about the little boy that made Breda feel unsafe. The baby looked like something that should have been
drowned at birth. Something that had come out wrong didn’t deserve to live. Breda couldn’t understand how folk could tolerate such oddity. On a farm, if a lamb or a kid or a calf was born deformed you put it down. It was the only practical thing to do. Merciful, really. It eliminated later complications. The royal baby might be pretty in a bizarre kind of way, like its mother, but it looked just…
wrong.

Breda sighed. If nothing interesting happened here soon, she’d have to make it happen herself. There was Ana’s wedding, of course, but it was hard to get at all excited about that. She did remember her sister vaguely. They used to do things together: walking on the beach, singing songs, working on embroidery. The aunt who had raised them had never punished Ana; Ana had been the good sister.
Breda’s palms had been criss-crossed with welts; Ana’s had stayed soft and white. Aunt’s approach to punishment had been imaginative. The burning of favorite toys; periods shut up in the woodshed, where large beetles lurked in every corner. Beatings and scaldings. The withholding of nice things, the pretty ribbons and shoes that Breda so coveted. The banishment of certain playmates. Ana was
well behaved and quiet; she’d always been able to avoid Aunt’s cruelty. Then, at ten years old, Ana had gone to Fortriu and never come back. It sounded as if Ana had never grown out of sewing and music. This fellow she was marrying was sure to be another boring middle-aged chieftain like so
many of the men here at court. Where were the warriors? Where were the risk-takers? Where was even one fellow
who could prove himself a real man?

The king’s guard, the younger one, Dovran, was a good specimen; broad shoulders, long legs, abundant brown hair. Thus far Breda had barely got him to look at her, but she was working on it. The other one, Garth, was married with children. That in itself was no obstacle, but Garth was too old; pushing forty, Breda estimated. And those two lads, with their pathetic
eagerness to please, were much too young. They’d be good for novelty, a quick—probably all too quick—encounter. Bedo was the elder; that she’d seriously considered him even for a moment showed how desperate things were getting. But Bedo had disappointed her. Since the little episode with the baby, he seemed to have ceased pursuing her. In fact, she had found him several times in smiling conversation
with her attendant, Cella. Cella! Who’d look at her when Breda herself was in view? Cella was a nobody, plain, boring, utterly ordinary. Cella shouldn’t be flirting with a chieftain’s son, a boy whose mother had been a princess. It was completely inappropriate. The girl must be punished. Not in the usual way; something more entertaining was called for. It would be fun deciding exactly what.

Breda smiled. Court need not be so tedious. All that was needed was enterprise and a touch of imagination. And the raw materials. Those were all around her. She’d see what she could do with them.

S
EVEN DAYS HAD
sounded long when Eile had learned Faolan was going on without them. It passed all too quickly. Drustan and Ana were keen to give Eile her father’s story, and
there was a lot of it, far more than she’d expected. They spent long hours talking, first in Ana’s
bedroom, later before the fire in the hall, where they were left in privacy by Broichan’s servants, folk who had evidently been well trained in courtesy and discretion.