Uncertain Magic (37 page)

She took a breath, trying to slow the thump of her heart. "Good afternoon, Senach."

Her politeness was useless, all sham and humiliation; she knew that he saw through it to the loathing in her heart.
Go away
, her mind shouted.
Leave me be
.

"I've come," he said, "to show ye the way."

Roddy's arms tightened around MacLassar. The piglet shifted with a sighing grunt. "I'm just resting awhile. I wasn't going anywhere."

Senach's pale eyes found hers. She recoiled, refusing the challenge, jerking her face away to stare out to sea.
Don't. Don't look at me
,

"Your lad's father, he come here," Senach said. "He were a wee laddie thattime, and he come away up here to think."

Roddy looked down at her toes and fingered a tiny white flower that she had not noticed there before.

"Fionn's Kiss, he would call that wee blossom."

"It's pretty," she whispered.

"'Twill not last long. Away back then, in the olden times, the women would distill the wee petals and make a drink—no taste nor scent to it. 'Twould bring… sleep, of a kind. And other things, sometimes."

Roddy frowned at the gray and green spread before her, hoping that, if she showed no interest, Senach would go away.

He didn't. He went on, with a more certain rise and fall in his voice. A story he was telling, whether she would listen or not. "Aye, your laddie's father used to come here. He were a good lad, a stout strong lad, and smart as a whistle. But he were a dreamy fellow, do you know. Always looking for something, and it weren't there."

She found her eyes drawn to Senach's hands, resting like brown knots on the tall staff.

"The big men, the landowners, they sent their sons away," he said. "To the schools. For to be made into men. Most of 'em—ah, and many and many—they never come back. And if they do, they have forgotten. An' yer lad's father—Francis, that be his name—
his
father, he had to keep the land, do you know." Senach shook his head. "No blame in that, be God, no blame to him, though most say different. It's like a mountain, says I to yer laddie's father, an' the Catholics go up one side, an' the Protestants go up the other. But in them days, do you see, the big men, they had to be Protestant. They had to sign a paper, or say a few words renouncing their creed—apostatizing, they call that—they had to become Protestant, to hold the land."

Roddy stared at Senach's hands, caught up in the tale despite herself.

"And yer lad's father's father—he did so," Senach said. "He signed the paper, and he kept this land. He sent his son away for to be educated with the English. And not for a long while, a very long while, did he come back. We never thought to see him come back atall."

But he would
, Roddy thought.
If he were a dreamer, he'd come back to this place
.

"Aye." Senach smiled. "He did come back. He brung with him a wife—a quare lady, oh, she were that beautiful, with fine clothes and fine airs, as fine as we'd ne'er seen."

Roddy sat there with her muddy cape and her windblown hair, clutching a baby pig.
Not like me
.

The old man chuckled. "Och, but there's many a fine lady, and don't he never think of none."

He lifted his opaque eyes to hers, and Roddy felt the chill of blind sight like a shiver down her spine. She set her lower lip and turned away.

"But this fine lady," Senach went on, "she were the countess. She were the countess before you, do you see. She had this boy—this one boy, and that be your laddie away down there. And his father says to me, he says, 'I'll not be sendin' that wee laddie away. I'll be educatin' him meself. Ye and me, Senach,' he says. 'We'll be his masters.' Because Francis, he had pined away for this place all them years. He had pined away until he could not abide, and he come home. And he took up the old religion, the Catholic creed, in secret. At first it was secret. But then he began to be seein' that there wouldn't be no other son; that this son, this laddie of yours, he could hold the land all in one, from here to there, and get out of the law that way—not to divide it up amongst all his sons when he died because he were of the old faith."

Senach turned, twisting his hands around the staff, and looked down the hill. "I have to tell you that 'tis not so long ago that if a man were of the Catholic creed, and his wife or son did what they call apostatize, as I be sayin', then they didn't any longer answer to him. They were set against him by the law, and free of him, and the land all went to the son, and the father were no more than his tenant."

Roddy frowned uneasily. "What are you saying?"

"Och, I'm saying that the rebellious wife, the unnatural son—they had only to convert to seize the land. A wee laddie, ten years old, had only to say that he were of the Established Church, and he would be taken from his father and put in a Protestant's care, and as much of the estate as the magistrate deemed fit and proper would be given over, and the father made a tenant, like the dairymen down there."

"That can't be true," she said. "A child—"

"A child of ten. He had only to say so, and the law gave him the land."

"Do you tell me Faelan did that?"

Senach made no answer. A light wash of rain spat a few drops onto his wrinkled hands.

"He couldn't have done that," Roddy said sharply. "He hadn't had the land until now."

"I hear crying," Senach said. "Do ye hear it?"

"No." Her fingers moved nervously.

"Aye. Oh, aye. I hear it. And Francis dead and murdered."

"What are you telling me?" she cried. "Say it in plain words!"

Senach shook his head. "Dead now and gone. Do the wee pretty pig be crying?"

"
No
." The word was a sob. She felt unreasonable hot tears on her cheeks.

"Ye can help yer lad. 'Tis the truth ye be wanting."

Without meaning to, she looked down at the house. Through the sparkling blur, a single figure took shape, a fine, proud figure, black hair and white shirt against the browns and blues. He was working, rebuilding, and if she could not feel his drive and his weariness through her gift, she could guess it. She could remember every night for weeks, how he'd come in from working until midnight by torchlight, to eat and undress and take her in his arms and fall asleep as he buried his face in her hair.

Senach looked through her, and smiled. "He were a gallant lad, when he were childer. Aye. And then the dark come on him, and it has never left him from that day to this. 'Twere the day his father died, it was. The day the dark come on him."

She did not understand Senach. She was afraid to try.

"But you—" the old man said. "You be the flame. You be the light. Ye cannot go thinking of yourself only."

Roddy stared down at her knees. "I think of him," she whispered.

"Aye. Oh, aye. And when you think of him, ye fear."

No
, she thought. And,
Yes
. She drew her legs up and hid her face in her hands.

"A gift ye have. Or so you call it. And you think 'tis a curse instead."

"It is," she cried into her hands. "I hate it!"

He chuckled softly. "Ah. 'Tis a sad sight. Cryin' and pityin', and who is that for, I ask ye?"

"Don't tell him what's wrong with me." She could not keep the quiver from her voice. "Don't tell him."

Senach did not answer that.

"Please," Roddy whispered. "You know I can't—with him. You must know. There's nothing. Nothing! It wouldn't be fair. He'd think I—" She stumbled on the enormity of what Faelan would feel if he knew of her talent, if he thought that she read him the way Senach read her. The horror of it almost choked her. "Oh, God, it wouldn't be fair. I could never make him believe I can't. He'd send me away. He wouldn't have me here."

"The truth, now."

She scrambled to her feet, pushing MacLassar aside. "That is the truth! You know it's the truth. He'd send me away."

Senach's blind eyes followed her with uncanny accuracy. She tried to make herself believe that it was coincidence, or acute hearing—anything but what she feared. Impossible, that he should share her gift. Crazy, to talk to him as if he knew. She was alone in the world. She'd always been alone. A freak. Somehow that was easier to accept than the notion that Senach's words were anything more than the senile ramblings of an old, old man.

He leaned on the staff, his pale eyes turned toward her.
He's blind
, she assured herself.
Old and blind
.

And Senach began to laugh.

Her nerve broke at that. With a small cry she turned, abandoning even the nominal courtesy of a farewell. She began to run up the path, up the hill, with the rough furze dragging at her cloak and the rocks clattering beneath her shoes. She could hear nothing but that and the sound of her own harsh breath.

At the top of the hill she stopped and turned. MacLassar was struggling to follow, his small feet scrabbling for purchase on the wet, rocky slope. Senach was nowhere to be seen.

She stamped her foot, ridiculing the idea that no one of his age could have walked out of sight down the hill in that short time. There would be other ways, paths and hollows that she could not see—places an old man bent on terrorizing silly children would know.

MacLassar came panting up beside her. She picked him up and slung him over her shoulder, heading away from the mansion into the high hills and the mist.

She had no forethought about where she was going. She walked, because it seemed that she must put distance between herself and the insidious memory of Senach's words. The cold air stung her cheeks. Above her the black choughs followed and then wheeled away. The mists shifted, retreating and advancing, reaching out to envelop her.

Somewhere far back in her mind she was surprised that she did not stop. The path went on, though the world had gone to white and shadow. She followed it. Up and up, until her chest was heaving for air. MacLassar was strangely quiescent, bouncing along on her shoulder without complaint.

The path threading upward through furze and gorse had been easy to follow, but suddenly it leveled out and vanished in a stretch of rough grass and seemed to spread into infinity in the mist. Roddy paused. Around her, light shimmered through the atmosphere. She shifted MacLassar on her shoulder, and he gave a satisfied grunt.

There seemed to be some reason to go forward, and none to go back. She walked slowly into the open area. In front of her the paleness formed into shapes: flat stones set on end in a line that curved away like silent soldiers into the mist.

She walked forward. The only sound was the drag of her skirts on the dewy grass. As she moved past the line of rocks she could see that it curved back upon itself and made a circle, with a single group of odd-shaped boulders near the center. A few bushes grew among the spaces between, and a scattering of the tiny white flowers Senach had shown her, giving the group a softer, more welcoming look than the circle of brooding sentries.

She sat down on one of the rocks in the center. MacLassar wriggled until she set him on the ground, where he curled up at her feet and went to sleep.

Roddy went to sleep, too. At least, it seemed she must have, for when she looked back where she had come from the mist had thinned, and in a shaft of cool sunlight sat the woman who had danced with the militia captain on the night of the fairy ball.

Roddy recognized her instantly. She thought that she had even dreamed about her, so familiar did that face of winter beauty seem. The woman's hair was loose and long, a cascade of icy light. She sat with crossed legs amid a carpet of tiny, luminous white flowers, and looked at Roddy.

"How pretty you are," Roddy said.

The woman tilted her head and smiled.

"I'm Roderica," Roddy ventured again.

"I know," the woman said. She did not offer her own name.

"You helped us at the ball. I thank you for that."

The woman laughed, a sound that brought a pleased echo to Roddy's lips.

"Do you live nearby?" Roddy asked.

"Oh, yes. I do."

"We've only just come. My husband is rebuilding the old great house. Do you know it?"

The answer was a nod and another laugh. MacLassar lifted his head, and then came to his feet and ambled over to their visitor. He leaned against her, and Roddy felt his little shiver of pleasure as the woman touched his ears.

"Do you come here often?" Roddy asked.

"Often. To dance. Do you like to dance?"

"Yes." Roddy surprised herself a little with that answer. "I like it very much."

"Come back, then. Dance with me."

They both sat silent a moment, smiling at one another with the delight of discovery and new friendship.

The woman said, "I'll tell you stories."

"I'd like that."

"I'll sing for you. And you can sing for me."

Roddy nodded. "What's your name?"

"Fionn."

Bright and fair, that meant, though Roddy had no notion how she knew. "Like the flowers."

"Yes." The woman shook back her hair and rose fluidly. "You're called," she said. "I must go."

Roddy sat rooted to the boulder and watched as the slender figure was swallowed by the mists. MacLassar stumbled onto his short legs. With a happy, bucking leap, he shook himself out of sleep and ran to Roddy.

A moment later, she heard what Fionn must have: a voice shouting her name through the mist, hoarse with exhaustion and discouragement.

She stood up, and called out quickly in answer.

"
Roddy
." Faelan's outline appeared, a black shape, a rock that moved in the twilight atmosphere. He came through the circle with a determined stride, and only when he was very close could she see the strain in his face, the tight lines etched around his mouth and eyes. "Thank God!"

She thought for a moment he would pull her into his arms. But he stopped in front of her, his gaze sliding over her with a piercing urgency, as if to determine any hurt, and then he threw back his cloak and sat down hard on a rock. "I ought to beat you," he said fiercely. "God, I ought to beat you."

MacLassar trotted up and presented himself for an ear scratching.