‘I wonder how she’ll do as queen of Dalriada,’ Blackthorn’s saying, talking to herself more than to me. ‘I can’t say I took to the girl. But I have some sympathy. Especially if Prince Oran is anything like Mathuin.’
‘He’s young.’
‘That doesn’t make him good.’
‘Doesn’t make him bad either,’ I say.
‘What would you know?’
‘Seemed all right, the day they stopped here. Him and his man.’
‘Didn’t they only pass by to find out who’d moved in here? You hardly had the chance to judge his character.’
‘True enough,’ I say. ‘But there they are, just over the fields, and we’re stuck with them. Maybe this Oran will be a good husband to the lady and maybe he won’t. That’s not our business.’
Blackthorn gives me a look. ‘It’s hard, sometimes, not to make things your business. Like with Mathuin. If I’d stayed quiet, let the bad things keep on happening, I wouldn’t have been locked up. If I’d kept quiet all my life I wouldn’t have been in Laois at all.’
I don’t say a thing. Blackthorn never talks about the time before, and nor do I. For us, the story starts when she was brought into that place and we were prisoners together. I know she fell foul of Mathuin because she spoke up about the wrongs he was doing, taking women against their will, getting them with child, nobody saying a word because of who he was. But before that, nothing at all. Until now.
‘That’s my problem,’ she says. ‘I never did learn to keep my mouth shut. And I can’t now, if the same thing happens here, Prince Oran doing the wrong thing by his folk, I mean. Conmael made me promise to use my abilities for good, not ill. That means speaking up if something isn’t right. A wise woman is supposed to be . . . wise.’
‘Might be wiser to keep quiet,’ I say. Wouldn’t take much to get us thrown out of here, on the road again, nowhere to go. Her with more and more years owing to Conmael; me just a burden to her. Or worse. We might find ourselves locked up again. ‘It’s a healer these folk need, not a . . .’ Can’t find the right word.
‘Conscience?’ Blackthorn smiles, but it’s not a happy sort of smile. ‘Don’t look so worried, Grim. Maybe Oran’s a paragon of virtue, a prince among princes. And maybe he’ll be so busy preparing for his wedding that he’ll forget all about us.’ She spots the purse they gave her, on the table where she’s left it. ‘They seemed keen to pay me for my efforts, though I couldn’t save the girl. Have a look.’
When I loosen the string and turn the bag upside down, what spills out onto the table is a shiny stream of silver pieces. I came home proud of the money I earned from Scannal today, but this puts my ten coppers in the shade. I whistle; Blackthorn mutters an oath.
‘Talk about upside down and back to front,’ she says. ‘A small fortune for failing to save a girl from drowning.’
‘Paying you for your kindness.’ Seems plain to me. ‘Helping his young lady. Cares about her.’
‘He’s probably never seen her in his life before,’ says Blackthorn, sweeping the coins back in the bag. ‘He won’t give a toss about her. All that’ll matter to him is her father’s connections. See if I’m not right.’
I’ve got a half-bag of flour, thanks to my day’s work for Scannal, and there’s a rabbit hanging, snared last night. I make a pie, throwing in the vegetables Blackthorn’s cut up. While I do it I’m going over the day, my day, not hers. A good day’s work, hard enough to keep out bad thoughts for a while. Scannal’s not much of a talker, which is the way I like things. Trusts me with his horses and the cart. Big strong horses, gentle as lambs the two of them. Sturdy and Storm, their names are. Handle the load of flour bags like a dream. That’s the best part, driving the load from the mill to this other settlement, place called Silverlake, over to the east. Back along the road Blackthorn and I came in on, then take a fork to the left, and a few miles on, there it is, lovely spot, scatter of houses by the water, few fishing boats out on the lake, sun shining, trees all red and gold. Birds everywhere, swans, ducks, others I don’t know the names of. Scannal’s said the baker’s place is a bit further on, and I stop in the settlement to ask the way. A woman tells me how to get there. She’s got two little boys, and they stare at Sturdy and Storm with big round eyes. I give them turns on Storm’s back, not moving along, just sitting.
The woman tells me a bit of a story. Scannal hasn’t supplied this baker before. Silverlake has its own mill, but no miller, because the fellow’s died in a nasty accident. Found one morning crushed under his own grindstone. She says even if there was someone in Silverlake or surrounds who knew how to do the job of milling flour, which there isn’t, they wouldn’t be wanting to take over. Everyone thinks the mill’s got a curse over it, or a ghost in it, or both. The woman points out where it is, up on a rise behind the settlement. Then she remembers what I’ve asked, and shows me the path to Branoc’s place, which can’t be seen from where we are. I have to drive the cart further along the lake shore.
‘Better be getting on,’ I say, making sure the children are out of the way of wheels and hooves.
‘We’ll be seeing you again, then,’ says the woman, giving me a look up and down that’s a surprise to me.
‘Maybe,’ I say. I climb up and take the reins.
‘Drop by on the way back and I’ll give you a bite to eat,’ she says. ‘Big man, big appetite, I bet. Branoc won’t feed you. Doesn’t care for visitors. All by himself in that old place and seems to like it that way. Mind you, he does bake fine cakes. Like something from the Otherworld, they are. A body could spend a lifetime trying to make cakes like them and not come anywhere close.’
I nod my head, not saying if I’ll drop in later or not, then I’m gone. Out of the settlement, along the lake shore, and up to a house that must be the baker’s, since this is the end of the track.
It’s an odd-looking place, sort of cobbled together, with a roof that needs re-thatching and a damp look to it. There’s a yard where I can turn the horses, and a barn with a big door. I’m guessing that’ll be where he wants the flour bags. Nobody about, so I back the cart up there and call Storm and Sturdy to stand fast. I hop down. Before I can make another move a man comes round the side of the barn with a pitchfork in his hand, all ready to run it through me. I don’t bother to tell him what a bad idea that would be. I make myself hold still.
‘Come from Scannal’s,’ I say. ‘Brought your flour. Where do you want it?’
Pitchfork man gives me a good look over, not the way the woman in the village did, but as if he doesn’t like what he sees but thinks it’s too big to tackle on his own. From what the woman was saying, Branoc lives alone, so this must be him. He’s long and gangly, dark-haired, with a look about him that says he wants me gone soon. ‘In there,’ he says, jerking his head toward the barn door. ‘Wait.’
The door’s got big bolts across it. Fellow must be scared someone’ll steal his bread-baking secrets. I go to help him with the bolts and he snaps, ‘Leave it!’
I back off. Bonehead, a voice says inside me. I wait. I’ve been planning to feed and water the horses while I’m here, but now I’m thinking I’ll take them back down to the shore first.
Door’s open. Not much to see in the barn. Seems it’s only for stores, and the baking’s done somewhere else. A couple of full sacks, some sickles and forks and spades, barrels of this and that. Buckets, ladles. There’s a sort of loft, too dim to see properly, and a ladder going up through a trapdoor. Steep.
‘Where do you want them?’ I ask, loading the first sack onto my back. ‘Up there?’ I hope the answer’s no, though if it was me, I’d be storing my flour upstairs out of the damp.
‘I will carry them up later,’ Branoc says, surprising me – who’d want to be clambering up and down that flimsy ladder with a weight over his shoulder, if he had someone to do the job for him? ‘Place them by the wall, there, and be sure to stack them nea
tly.’ He takes the ladder down and carries it outside. Helpful, since that’ll make it easier for me to get the full bags over to the spot where he wants them.
I’m used to being treated like I’m nothing, so I keep my mouth shut and get on with the job. Branoc – a foreigner, I’m guessing, not only from his name but from the way he talks – watches me for a while, not offering to help. After a bit he wanders off to do something across the yard, and I keep carrying one sack after another into the barn. It’s a lot of flour. With luck it’ll be a while before I need to come back.
I finish off, making sure the sacks are lined up straight, grabbing a broom to tidy up after myself. Don’t want any fuss about the payment, which I’m supposed to collect for Scannal. While I’m doing this I hear a few noises from upstairs, clunks and scrapes, and when Branoc comes back over I say, trying to be friendly, ‘Should bring you a cat next time.’
He gives me a narrow-eyed look. ‘A cat? Why would you do this?’
‘You got rats up there. Heard them running around. Big store of flour, you wouldn’t want it spoiled.’
‘Your work is finished, yes?’
‘Mm-hm.’ I get myself out of the barn. I’ve annoyed him, not sure why. But some men don’t need a reason to get angry. I know that better than most. ‘I’ll be on my way, then.’ I fiddle with the horses’ harness, waiting for him to give me the money. All he does is shut the barn door and shove the bolts across. ‘Scannal asked me to collect his payment,’ I say when he’s done it.
He stomps off to the house. I hope he’s fetching what’s due. While he’s away I get the horses and cart all ready to go. Hoping I won’t have to hammer on the fellow’s door and demand the money. Hoping I won’t get into a fight. Thinking about Blackthorn and the cottage and the garden, and knowing I can’t get angry or I might lose everything.
Turns out all right. Branoc comes striding back from the house and gives me a bag of coppers. The weight tells me it’s more or less the right amount, but I shake the coins out and count them anyway. Then I get up on the cart and head off, knowing he’s going to watch me all the way down the hill, making sure I’m gone. Though why I’d be wanting to hang around I can’t imagine.
Down on the shore I get out the bread and cheese I’ve brought and when Storm and Sturdy have had a drink I give them their oats. We eat. I look out over the lake. If I lived in such a pretty spot I wouldn’t be bad-tempered like this baker. I’d be getting on with my work and thinking how lucky I was.
Horses make light work of the trip back. I drop the cart at Scannal’s and give him the payment, and he gives me my share and the half-bag of flour.
‘This yours?’ he asks me as I’m heading off, and he’s got Blackthorn’s red kerchief in his hand, all floury from the back of the cart where he’s picked it up from a corner. Must’ve got tangled up with something in the wash and ended up in my pocket, though I don’t recall it being there. Must’ve dropped it when I was unloading the flour bags.
I take it and stick it back in the pocket. Needs a good wash before she can wear it again, not that she does wear it much. I bid Scannal good day and walk home.
All this is in my head now while I cook the pie. I want to tell Blackthorn about my day. But she’s gone outside. She’s sitting in the garden, still as a stone, staring ahead of her. Wanting to be on her own. Wanting quiet. Needing to be left alone. So I keep on cooking, and later when she comes in we eat the pie without saying much. She’s had enough of folk cluttering up the house, fine ladies especially. She’s tired of chattering voices. And upset that a girl drowned and she couldn’t save her. Not that she says so, but I know anyway. So we sit by the fire awhile, and outside it gets dark so we go to bed, and somehow my tale never gets told.
12
~ORAN~
‘Give her time,’ Donagan said. ‘She’s young, she’s far from home, the circumstances of her arrival were unfortunate. This is a girl of eighteen, Oran, not a seasoned traveller.’
Donagan was helping me get ready for bed. This was part of the regular duties of a body servant. Since I was an adult man and perfectly capable of taking off my clothes and putting on a nightshirt unassisted, we were doing what we usually did at this hour: sitting in my bedchamber sharing a jug of mead and talking. Or rather, I had been talking and my companion had been listening, until now.
‘But she won’t even see me,’ I said. I understood his argument; I had already made allowances for Flidais’s distress, her exhaustion, perhaps a sudden attack of homesickness. ‘She’s been shut up in her quarters since she first got here. Two whole days. I should be helping her recover, comforting her, reassuring her. We’re to be married, after all. She’s barely spoken to me.’
‘After what happened to her maidservant, you should be glad she did not say she wanted to go straight back home.’ Donagan was looking at Flidais’s portrait; her image gazed back at him, eyes full of love and sweetness. I had been startled, when I’d first seen her in the flesh, how like she was to that picture. It had all been there: the perfect heart shape of the face, the deep blue of the eyes, the delicate mouth and neat straight nose. It had all been there but the look of love. Instead, her face had worn a wary expression, as if she were trying to take my measure. Perhaps I did not live up to her expectations. Perhaps she thought me ugly or weak-looking, too tall, too short, too soft, too . . .
This was foolish. What had I been hoping for? I could not say, save that after our letters, I had not anticipated that she would be so . . . cool. Even allowing for the unfortunate circumstances, I had thought she might summon a smile, not the conventional smile of a formal greeting, but a special smile just for me. I had thought, when later I gave her the poem I had written for her arrival, that she would read it straight away, not pass it to one of her waiting women with scarcely a glance. I had not expected that she would shut herself away from me as if she were thinking better of her choice.
‘She’ll be fine by the betrothal ceremony,’ Donagan said. ‘I’m sure of it. Women have these ups and downs, Oran. They’re creatures of a hundred moods.’
‘But the letters. The confidences, the poetry . . .’ I made myself stop. Donagan had not read any of the letters, either mine to Flidais or hers to me, and I had no intention of sharing them with him or indeed anyone. They were private; secret; a precious bond between my sweetheart and me. I believed in the letters. I believed in true love, the kind from ancient tales. If I said this to Donagan, he would call me a child. ‘Perhaps she is hiding from me,’ I mused. ‘Perhaps she cannot bear to face the truth.’
Donagan gave me one of his looks. ‘What truth?’
I grimaced. ‘That she doesn’t love me after all? That she finds herself obliged to wed a man who disgusts her?’
‘Your thoughts are leading you into a maze that’s entirely of your own invention, my friend. I suggest you drink a lot of mead, then have a good night’s sleep. Who knows, the lady may be in quite a different mood tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the day after that.’ When I failed to reply, he went on, ‘You’re spending too much time fretting over this. If you want my advice, you’ll leave Lady Flidais and her women to their own devices and turn your attention elsewhere. Has it escaped you that your mother and father will be here in a few days? Winterfalls will be full to the brim with folk. Tomorrow might be a good day to call your household together and rally them with a few uplifting remarks. Afterwards you might make a personal tour of inspection: the accommodation for the king and queen, the sleeping quarters for their serving folk, the stables . . . If you wish, I can draw up an itinerary.’
‘I believe I might just manage to retain that in my mind.’ Hearing how this sounded, I added, ‘I’m sorry, Donagan. I am somewhat on edge, I admit it. Navigating uncharted waters.’
‘You will find your way even without a map,’ Donagan said with a smile. ‘Most men do.’
When he was gone I sat by lamplight with parchment, ink an
d pen before me and Flidais’s picture on the wall, looking down on me. I had thought to craft a new poem for my beloved, capturing my love for her, my uncertainty, my hope. But I could not write. The words that should have poured forth from my heart were silent. I was mute; the river of my imagination had turned dry as dust. I sat a long while, knowing that Donagan’s advice was wise and sensible, recognising that all I needed to do was give Flidais time.
In the end I did write, but not to my beloved.
To Eabha, Queen of Dalriada
Mother, greetings. Lady Flidais has arrived safely at Winterfalls and is recovering from her long journey. Indeed, I have seen very little of her since she came here, as she is still too exhausted to leave her private quarters. I have ensured that her party is being well looked after in every respect.
On the journey to Winterfalls, Flidais witnessed the accidental death of a member of her party. She was seriously distressed by this unfortunate event, and this has contributed to her current state of nervous collapse.
I write to advise you of this since, if Flidais is not fully restored to herself within the next few days, I believe it may be wise to delay the formal betrothal. I understand the difficulties this would present, and I hope it will not be necessary.
I will send a message immediately if the arrangements change. Otherwise I will expect you and Father and your party in seven days, as planned.
Your obedient son
Oran, Prince of Dalriada
I sealed the letter without reading it over. I imagined Mother opening it. I imagined her irritation when she saw that I had not done as a prince should and had a scribe write it for me. I thought of her displeasure at the inconvenience – and it would indeed be inconvenient, with my father’s responsibilities at Cahercorcan. Perhaps there would be no need to send it. Maybe by morning Flidais would be restored to health, and able to walk or ride out with me, so I could show her and Bramble the places I had described in my letters. If not that, she might at least be well enough to sit with me in my library. I could read to her. I could give her the betrothal gift I had chosen with such care.