“But Echen wasn’t quite finished. His men released the family when he bade them, standing by with weapons drawn as the women tended to the dying grandmother.
“‘Search the house,’ the Uí Néill chieftain said lightly, as if it were an afterthought. ‘Look for our missing knives and bows, and bring out anything else of interest, will you?’
“The family was frozen, silent. They waited. The grandmother’s blood drained out into the cloths they pressed to her chest. The grandfather held her hand against his cheek. In a little, Echen’s men came back, holding between them the third sister, the one who had gone to bed early that night … Aine, the youngest, a child in her long nightrobe, eyes dark and scared, hair tumbling down over her shoulders.
“‘Ah,’ Echen said, and his smile was cruel. ‘Hidden treasure. We’ll take her; I recall promising to spare all in this chamber, nothing about the rest of the house. A little pearl. How old is she, twelve? Fresh. Tantalizing. Fetch the poppet a cloak, Conor, we can’t have her catching cold. Farewell, brithem. I think your son here has a future, and it’s not as a musician.’ His expression as he glanced at the bard was of surprise, almost of admiration; it was clear the result of his experiment had not been the one he expected. He turned back to the father. ‘Don’t let me hear of you again. I’ll be less magnanimous next time.’
“As they left, dragging the girl along with them, the young man hurled himself across the chamber after them, desperate to make it right somehow, to save his sister at least, though the nightmare would indeed be with him forever. Echen laughed; I can hear it now. Then someone struck the lad a heavy blow on the head, and for a little there was the relief of unconsciousness.”
There was nothing Ana could say. She sat paralyzed a moment, then put her arm around him and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Faolan, that’s … it’s unthinkable. Nobody should ever have to … nobody …” And, a little later, “What happened afterward? What did you do?”
“I was possessed by hatred.” He had given up the pretense of telling someone else’s story. “When I came to, all that was in my mind was rescuing my sister, and plunging a knife into Echen’s heart. But that was not allowed me. I came out from the sleeping quarters to find my parents waiting. My mother had packed a little bundle with food and drink for the road. My father gave me a ring he had had from his grandfather, silver with a stone in it. My harp was ready in its bag. I was to go; to go away and not return. They didn’t say much. I saw on my mother’s face that, after what I had done, she did not want me in her house. My father was suddenly an old man. I protested; who would save Áine if not I? Father forbade me to try. He said the violence had to stop. He said it would already be too late for her. There was a distance in his tone that I had never heard before. My other sisters did not come out when I left. Before the sun had risen I had walked beyond the borders of Echen’s land. I gave my mother’s bread and cheese to a beggar by the wayside, and tied the cloth into a yew tree, though it was no offering to the gods; from that dark night on I would trust neither gods nor men. I traded my father’s ring for a passage to Fortriu. I left them all behind. I have heard nothing of them since. But they are never far away. When I play the harp I see my little sister in the hands of those men. I hear my mother’s scream. When I go to sleep at night, I feel Dubhán’s blood on my hands, and I hear my father speaking to me as if I were a stranger.”
“Oh, Faolan … I’m so, so sorry … I can’t think what to say …”
“There’s nothing to say. What I did was unforgivable. I made the wrong choice. I destroyed my family just as effectively as Echen Uí Néill would have done with his armed band.”
“Why didn’t you ever go back? Didn’t you want to make your peace with your folk? To find out what had happened to them?”
Faolan’s tone was bitter. “I worshipped Dubhán. He was my big brother. I obeyed him to the very last. And I obeyed my father when he told me to go away and not to come back. Since then I haven’t earned my keep by playing music, but by the two things I proved I could do that day: following orders and slitting throats.”
The self-hatred in his voice silenced Ana.
“I have been back,” Faolan said. “Not home, but back to Laigin. Echen’s henchmen tried to recruit me. He’d heard, perhaps, that the pretty boy had developed certain useful skills. I refused. Hence Breakstone. Men died of despair in that place. I lived. I was already beyond despair; I’d lost any capacity to feel. That made me a worse bard but a better killer. I didn’t work for Echen, but I did work for everyone else: the chieftains of the Ui Néill, both northern and southern, the princes of Ulaid, the king of Dalriada. And now, for Bridei.”
“You haven’t lost the capacity to feel,” Ana said. “Nor to awaken feelings in others. What about your music? Even Alpin’s huntsmen had tears in their eyes.”
“Until I met you,” he said quietly, “I had lost it. I won’t play again. It’s wrong for me to set my hands to music when they’re tainted with my own brother’s lifeblood.”
“What utter nonsense!” Ana snapped before she could stop herself. “You said before that you made the wrong choice, but, Faolan, there was no right choice. As a lawman, your father knew that. Whatever choice you made, it had to end in sorrow and death. You were very young. That man had no right to set such a terrible burden on you.”
“I should not have told you. Now you, too, will dream of this.”
“I have my own troubling dreams. I’m glad you told me, Faolan. It took courage to put this in words. You are the most courageous man I know.”
He made no reply to this.
“Faolan?”
A nod.
“You need to go back. You know that, don’t you? If you’re ever to come to terms with it at all, you need to make your peace with them.”
“It’s not a fairy tale.”
“I’m not saying the memories will disappear, or that all the hurts will be instantly mended. I understand it’s too complicated for that. What I do know is that they would want to see you: your father and mother, your sisters … A long time has passed since you left. The way you tell it, they sound like fine people, strong, just people. They will understand, by now, the impossible choice you faced, and why you did what you did. You were bound to it by love. You need to go back. Your long absence will have hurt them, your father especially.”
“I’ll never go back.”
“Then you are less courageous than I thought. The greatest courage is to go ahead and do what you must, even when the prospect of it turns your insides to jelly.”
“Was that how it felt when you pulled me out of the water at Breaking Ford?”
Ana shivered, remembering. “For a bit, yes; once I saw you, there didn’t seem to be any choice in the matter. I had to salvage the one thing left; the one good thing. If I were a crueler woman, I would say you owe it to me, as well as to Deord, to come to terms with the past. To give yourself a future.”
“I have a future. I am still Bridei’s man.”
“Without this, you will never be true to yourself.”
“When I told you my story, I wasn’t expecting instruction on how to live my life.” He edged away from her, releasing her hand.
“We’re friends, Faolan,” Ana said quietly. “True friends. I will never instruct you. But there is a path I want to see you take, so you will not be eaten up by self-loathing. I see the man beneath the armor of indifference. I want the world to see him, too. I want you to be fulfilled and happy.”
In the moonlight, she saw his twisted grimace of a smile. “You ask the impossible,” he said.
“I thought,” she whispered, “that you might be the kind of man for whom nothing is impossible. I’m hoping that, in time, you’ll prove me right.”
AT THE END of a third day’s searching, Alpin called off his hunting party and headed back home. There, he filled a pack with supplies for a man traveling alone a fair distance, and put the affairs of his household in the hands of the capable Orna.
He left certain instructions with Dregard, and others with Mordec, who headed his men-at-arms. He took his sword, his knives, and his crossbow, and he headed back into the forest alone at dawn next morning. Where a hunting party with dogs and horses could not easily go, a skilled man on foot might travel quickly and quietly, tracking another. The Gael and the royal bride might have slipped beyond his borders, and his brother vanished into the concealment of the wildwood. But Alpin was not yet defeated. He wanted Ana, soiled goods as she’d likely be by now. She was his; she’d been sent here to be his wife and he’d have her by whatever means it took. He owed it to himself to enact vengeance on that freak Drustan, and on the wretched turncoat Gael, and, ultimately, on the upstart king of Fortriu who had sparked this off with his ill-considered attempt to woo Briar Wood to his alliance.
Well, the alliance would keep, Alpin thought as he made a good pace along the treacherous tracks of the deep forest, retracing his own path to the place where Deord had died, observing with a certain amusement the care with which the fellow had been laid to rest, then picking up a new trail back toward the high tarn below the waterfall, a place his hunting party had dismissed as without any exit a woman might essay. He had them; he was onto them.
It would take time to track the fugitives down and to move in on them by stealth. No matter. He could afford to be absent from home for a while. There was no longer a need to mobilize his army, his fleet, his considerable forces; not yet. Perhaps not at all. The answer to that problem, he sensed, was not in an armed assault, but in his alternative plan, the one he’d put in place some time ago: the deployment of the secret weapon nobody knew about save himself and Dregard and his most trusted men-at-arms. And, of course, the son who had, against the odds, finally proven to be of some use to him.
It had become increasingly clear as first Ana, then Faolan had spoken of Bridei’s powerful presence, his leadership, his iconic status to his people, that the success of any Priteni venture against Dalriada depended heavily on this one man, this so-called Blade of Fortriu. Too heavily, in Alpin’s estimation. Remove Bridei and the whole thing would come tumbling down, he was sure of it.
So he’d sent the young king a little present; how convenient that the lad had already attached himself to Umbrig’s forces. Hargest had been only too willing to oblige; the boy was desperate for Alpin’s approval. He probably saw himself as the rightful heir to Briar Wood. The way things had worked out with Ana, at the moment he was the only heir. That would change soon enough, Alpin thought grimly. He’d have his royal bride and he’d keep her. She’d give him as many sons as he wanted, and through those sons he’d wield a power unrivaled in all the lands of the north.
15
“QUITE AN ENTOURAGE,” remarked Fola as Tuala’s party dismounted before the gates of Banmerren. The queen had brought not only a waxen-faced Broichan, but also the bodyguard Garth, his wife Elda and their twin sons, as well as a young maidservant. And, of course, Derelei, now being helped down from the cart that had conveyed nursemaid and children.”You’ve remembered, I hope, that druids are the only men permitted in our sanctum?”
Tuala smiled at her old teacher. “How could I forget?” she said, recalling a time when Bridei had scaled the wall on a rope in order to visit her. Was that really only five years ago? It seemed a world away: the two of them high above the ground, perched in the oak tree, and that first kiss … “I was thinking the rest of us might be lodged in Ferada’s domain. I’ll go and speak to her while Garth and Elda unload the baggage.” As she turned down the little path skirting the high stone wall, she saw Fola take Broichan’s arm and lead him through the gate to the wise women’s sanctuary.
Down the pathway the wall had been extended to shelter a new enclosure, where a long dwelling house stood within a fledgling garden. An iron gate set in the wall opened at Tuala’s push; across a grassy sward, an archway in the side wall opened through to the grounds of Fola’s school. Tuala walked quietly into the new garden. She was not alone there; Ferada was sitting on a bench with a little book open in her hands, and by the archway could be seen the brawny figure of the royal stone carver, Garvan, who was balanced on a wooden platform beside a huge slab of rock, doing something delicate with a chisel. A youth, apparently his assistant, was sorting tools on a bench. It was a fine day; the quiet, industrious scene was bathed in warm summer light. In the grass small flowers made bright points of pink and blue. Ferada’s feet were bare and she had one leg drawn up under her on the bench while the other foot dangled. Her hair was unbound, flowing down her back in a fiery stream. Garvan, a man whose features had something of the look of an untouched lump of stone themselves, was whistling under his breath as he worked.
“I’m sorry to disturb such a peaceful scene,” Tuala said, advancing across the grass with a smile. “I’m afraid you have visitors: four adults and three rather active small boys. We’ll try to keep them away from the tools.”
THERE WERE NO easy ways between Briar Wood and White Hill. Where there was not trackless forest, there were high fells and craggy peaks across which chill winds laid a constant scourge even in summer. Where there were not broad streams and rushing falls to get across, there were cliffs and ravines and crumbling escarpments. There were bogs. There were wild pigs. At night, there were wolves.
Once Faolan was confident that Alpin had lost their trail, he allowed a small fire at night. He had not long finished laying and lighting the first of these, while Ana used her knife to divide up a strip of the dried mutton that was their only food, when the hawk flew off a while, returning in the twilight with a fat rabbit dangling from its talons. Faolan wondered how much Drustan understood when he was in this form; whether he had a full comprehension of human speech, whether he formed opinions, felt joy or sorrow, planned and strategized and dreamed in the same way as a man. He wondered how much Drustan would remember when he changed back. Right now, he was more use to them in bird form, able to fly high and seek out tracks where a man could not, able to hunt with no weapons beyond beak and claws. When would Drustan decide the time had come to show himself to Ana? To reveal to her the full truth about himself? Was he really so frightened of her rejection that he would hold back all the way to White Hill? A lover who could not trust seemed to Faolan somewhat lacking. Still, it was an odd thing, a bizarre thing. There was no telling how she might react when she knew.
Ana did a competent job of cooking the rabbit on the fire. She left a portion raw, putting it on a fallen tree where the bird could take it easily. The hawk ate with precision, the haunch of rabbit held in one foot as the fearsome beak tore off the flesh a strip at a time. Hoodie and crossbill watched from a distance; for them, hunger did not seem to be an issue. Faolan imagined the slow pace of human feet gave the two of them plenty of opportunity to forage on the way.
Once or twice, as they went on and one day began to merge into the next, Faolan was tempted to catch the hawk on its own, to trust that it could understand and to suggest to Drustan that he tell Ana the truth and put her out of her misery. Once or twice, he got out the single glove Deord had carried in his pack and tried it on his right hand. But he took the idea no further. Why rush things? The longer Drustan left it, the likelier it was that Ana might see her feelings for him as infatuation rather than love; the impulsive generosity of a woman who finds it all too easy to pity the unjustly treated. The longer it took Drustan to reveal his secret to her—if he ever did—the more time Faolan had alone with her. And while his mind understood all too well that there could never be more than friendship between them, his heart cherished these precious days as a flower welcomes the sun’s warmth. Never mind that the two of them were filthy, cold, and exhausted; that home had never seemed so far away. For now, for this small span of time, he had her entirely to himself. He was warier now, not trusting himself to lie by her at night, but he could look at her, talk to her, store up every moment for a future in which, as surely as the sun set in the evening, their paths would go separate ways. He had opened the darke
st part of himself to her, the part that he had thought would remain locked away forever. She had accepted his offering; even knowing the terrible thing he had done, she had remained his loyal friend. If this fragile happiness must be shattered by Drustan’s return, let it be not yet.
Ana was doing well, keeping up, not complaining even when her feet hurt her. When she took off her boots and he saw the blisters, Faolan ordered a day’s rest. She protested; he insisted. It was clear to him that they would not be back at White Hill until summer was over. He hoped the bird knew what it was doing. Perhaps Drustan was playing a game of his own.
Bouts of rainy weather had slowed their progress and the season was passing swiftly. It did not help that their guide had a disconcerting habit of disappearing without warning, leaving them to wait for a day, two days, until he flew back and the journey recommenced.
They had been two nights in a derelict shepherd’s hut on a high corrie, waiting for the hawk’s return from one of these absences. Faolan had little idea of which path to follow, and the terrain was perilous. Nonetheless, he was close to losing patience completely and assuming the role of guide himself from this point on. Ana had been growing increasingly withdrawn, and he had noticed a hollowing of her features and a change in her eyes that disquieted him. She had become markedly thinner, unsurprising on the diet of one meal of meat a day. The hawk had left them a brace of hares before it vanished this time, as if it knew it would not be back for a while.