Of course, I told her, but there was a cold, tight feeling in my chest. If news was what she wanted, why hadn’t she asked after a single one of our sisters? She’d questioned me over the northern chieftains, but she hadn’t so much as mentioned Muirrin or Sibeal or Eilis. This was Deirdre; Deirdre who to the best of my recollection had never in her life discussed strategic matters with me. Goodbye for now, Deirdre. I’ll tell the others you sent your love.
The moment she was gone from my head a wave of exhaustion hit me. I sank down onto the bench beside the little hearth, glad that the baby seemed to have fallen asleep again, for I did not think I could find the strength so much as to pick him up, let alone change his wrappings or carry him to my mother’s chamber to be fed. A tear dribbled down my cheek. What was wrong with me? I did not feel at all like a young woman whose mother had not so long ago thanked her for being competent. I fished for a handkerchief and wiped my eyes.
Someone tapped on the door. I cursed under my breath. Company was the last thing I needed right now. Still, it was probably only Sibeal come early for her turn with Finbar. She wouldn’t ask awkward questions if she found me in tears.
I opened the door and found myself face-to-face with the person I least wanted to see.
“You’re crying,” observed Cathal, brows up.
“Go away.” I began to close the door, but he stuck out his foot and stopped me.
“Clodagh. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“None of your business. What are you doing up here? I’m supposed to be looking after the baby.”
“You can look after him and talk to me. There’s no rule against that. It would be more civilized if you invited me in so we could sit down and talk in more comfort. These doorway trysts are so awkward.”
“Get your foot out of the door, Cathal.”
“Tell me what’s wrong and I will.”
“I told you, it’s none of your concern. What do you want, anyway?”
“Come out here and talk to me and then I’ll go away. I promise.”
“I doubt if your promises are worth much, Cathal.” How could I get rid of him without attracting attention? This hallway was a thoroughfare for serving people and family alike. “All right, I’ll talk, but only for a moment. I can’t leave Finbar.”
Cathal took a step back. I could have slammed the door in his face, but that did seem rather childish. I stepped out of the chamber to stand with one hand holding the door ajar, so I could still see the willow cradle with its small occupant drowsing in the firelight. “Why are you here?” I asked. Cathal was wearing his big cloak and his riding boots. I saw now that, despite his flippant manner, he looked pale and drawn. “What’s wrong?” I added despite myself. “You seem upset.”
He didn’t answer. He was leaning against the wall by the door now, shoulders hunched, eyes not on me but on a patch of flag-stoned floor.
“Cathal?”
“I might not see you for a while,” he said. “I don’t think it’s wise for me to be here.”
I had not expected this. “Is Johnny sending you north? Has there been news from Gareth?” The awkward conversation with Deirdre came sharply back, but I knew I was not going to discuss it with him. If it hadn’t been for his disturbing theory, I would have given my twin the family’s happy news and felt nothing but pleasure that Deirdre was prepared to talk to me again. It was entirely his fault that I was filled with wretched confusion. As for his leaving, I was not at all sure how I felt about that.
“Not exactly. But I don’t expect to be here much longer. I know you find my presence irksome and disruptive, Clodagh. All the same, I didn’t want to go without saying goodbye.”
His tone chilled me. I hated the lost look in those dark eyes, which held none of their usual mischief today. “What is this?” I asked him. “You sound like you’re going away forever. Isn’t Johnny staying here over the summer? Is Aidan leaving too?”
He attempted a smile; it was a sad wraith of a thing. “Not him, just me. I suppose you will be glad to see the back of me.”
I did not dismiss this as a bid for sympathy as I might once have done. “I have mixed views on the matter,” I said, wondering why I couldn’t put together the pieces of this and make sense of it. “Besides, you’ll come back, won’t you? Johnny’s here almost every year. I will see you again some time.”
The forlorn smile appeared once more. Willow’s Wolf-child story came sharply back to me and my heart twisted. What was this? I didn’t even like the man. Why did I feel the urge to give him a reassuring hug and tell him everything would be all right?
“Doubtful,” Cathal said. “Now you’d best get back to that baby. Good practice for when you have one or two of your own. Goodbye, Clodagh,” and he leaned across and kissed me. For a moment I was too taken aback to move, and for another I allowed myself to enjoy the pressure of his lips on mine, a sweet, intense feeling that made my whole body spring to life in an utterly surprising way. When his hand came up to touch my neck I had to force myself not to nestle closer and slip my arms around him. Instead I pushed him away, shocked at my response and appalled that I had allowed such familiarity here in the family quarters of the house. I shouldn’t even have let Cathal linger outside the door.
“Stop it!” I hissed. “This is madness! Just go, will you?”
Cathal’s eyes met mine, and there was not the least trace of mockery in them. He turned on his heel, his cloak swirling around him, and I saw a curious sight: across the lining of his garment were scattered many small items, sewn there in the manner of charms placed for protection, as with the rowan cross of the clurichaun story. There was a cross in Cathal’s cloak, certainly. There was also a feather, a snippet of bright silken cloth and something made of green glass. There were more tiny trinkets, but I had no time to identify them, for in a heartbeat he was gone, shadow swift and completely silent. I caught a movement further along the hallway. My mother’s maid, Eithne, was standing there staring at us, a pile of folded cloths in her arms. She met my gaze, then scurried into Mother’s chamber. I was in no doubt that she had seen the whole interchange, kiss and all.
Now I was really crying, with no good reason for it. I retreated into the nursery chamber and shut the door, then sat down on the floor by the hearth with my arms around my knees. There was some comfort in the small glow of the fire. By the time Sibeal came I would be calm again if I worked at it. Chances were I would go downstairs later and find that Cathal had simply been playing games again. I should put him right out of my mind; I should not let him upset me so. Why on earth had he come up to see me? And what had that kiss been all about, that tender, frightening, completely inappropriate kiss? How dare Cathal sneak under my defenses at the same time as saying, more or less, goodbye forever? The thought that he was going away gave me a strange hollow feeling inside, and that was completely wrong. I should, as he had pointed out, be glad to see the back of him.
I sat there staring into the flames, breathing the faint scent of the herbs I had strewn earlier and trying to make sense of the utterly inscrutable. Cathal, Deirdre, Johnny, Father . . . There was too much to think about, and it was all too easy to give in to feeling sorry for myself. I should be happy Cathal was going. I should be pleased Aidan was staying. I must get a grip on myself.
Finbar stirred, making his basket creak, and I realized I had been lost in my thoughts for some while. It must be well past time for the baby’s next feed. I must take him in to Mother and hope she did not notice my red eyes. What if Eithne was there and had already mentioned she’d seen me behaving as if I didn’t know what decorum was?
Finbar made a little sound. My whole body stiffened in alarm. His voice was different; wrong. It was not the cry of a healthy, hungry baby but a curious, painful rasp. No normal child made a sound like that. Finbar must be sick. He was choking, he couldn’t breathe . . . I sprang up and hastened to the basket, my heart racing. I looked down, an image of my baby brother still fresh in my mind—the delicate fingers, the soft ey
elids, the peachy skin and rosebud mouth. My heart gave a single wild thump and was still. Now I was cold all over. Finbar was gone. All that lay in his little bed was a curious jumble of sticks and stones, leaves and moss.
The baby couldn’t be far away. Breathe, I ordered myself, forcing down panic. He couldn’t even be out of the room, because he’d been in the basket, I’d seen him with my own eyes, and I’d never gone further than the doorway. I’d had Finbar in sight the whole time, even when I stepped outside the door. I’d made sure of it. Except . . . except for a moment or two, when my attention was on Cathal. Except for when he kissed me. Even then, nobody could have walked past me unseen—I’d been right by the doorway. My brother must be here. He must be.
I began a frantic hunt, knowing all the time that there was nowhere in the chamber that a baby could be successfully hidden for more than a moment. Under the pile of towels. Behind the bench. In the alcove. Nothing. My heart was pounding. My skin was clammy with terror. How could this be? How could he be gone? I’d hardly taken my eyes off him. This must be a bad dream. Let me wake up now, please, please. It was only after I had spent what seemed an age scrabbling about looking in every corner that I remembered the sound I had heard from the basket. Sticks and stones do not cry out. Maybe the whole thing had been a delusion. Perhaps the Fair Folk had sent me a malign vision of some kind. I made myself take two deep breaths, then approached the basket again.
The little pile of sticks and stones still lay there on the pale linen of the under-blanket. No vision, then. My heart dropped down, leaden again. Finbar was gone. I must call for help, I must tell them . . .
The sound began once more, a plaintive, scratchy crying like a mockery of a baby’s voice. And the sticks and stones were . . . They were . . . My gorge rose. I made myself go on looking, and saw mossy lids opening over pebble eyes, a little mouth shaped from twigs stretching to reveal brown, barky gums, a pair of hands with skinny sticks for fingers reaching up toward me as if begging for the comfort of my embrace. The thing was crying; it was hungry. It kicked the blankets away—my baby brother’s soft blankets—to show its form as that of a newborn infant, but bizarrely made of the debris of the forest, here a stick of rowan, there a brown leaf, here a crust of moss, there a polished stone in mottled black and white. Its head was covered, not with thick fine hair like Finbar’s, but with a random patching of what looked like the breast feathers of a crow. Its voice was crowlike, too, rasping a louder and louder demand for attention. I pinched myself on the arm, hard, but all that happened was an escalation of the squawking cries. I was awake, and it was true. Someone had taken my brother, the long-desired son of Sevenwaters, my mother’s gift from the gods, and in his place had left us the ugliest changeling in the world.
CHAPTER 6
I locked the little chamber behind me and ran downstairs. Father was in the hall with Johnny and Aidan. The moment they caught sight of me the three of them fell silent.
“Father, something terrible has happened. It’s Finbar. He’s . . . he’s been taken.” I saw him flinch as if struck. He got up, his face ashen. I made myself go on. “Switched. I don’t know how it happened, I was there the whole time, but—”
He was already racing up the stairs. I picked up my skirts and ran after him. “Father, wait! I need to tell you . . . Father, there’s a . . . a sort of changeling in the cradle . . .”
He wasn’t listening. We passed the closed doorway to Mother’s chamber. When we reached the nursery, my hands were shaking so hard that Father grabbed the keys from me and unlocked the door himself.
The signs of my futile, frantic search were everywhere, cloths strewn over the floor, stools upturned, vessels on their sides. Father strode to the cradle, lifted away the blanket, took one look at what lay there and turned to seize me by the shoulders, so hard it hurt. “What happened? Tell me quickly!”
By now Johnny was in the doorway with Aidan behind him. The scratchy sobs of the sticks-and-stones baby filled the chamber.
“I only took my eyes off him for a moment, Father, only a moment. I never went further than the doorway. But when I next looked at him, he was gone and the changeling was there in his place. I don’t know how it could have happened.”
“How long ago?” Father had clamped a mask of control over his features, but his voice was only marginally steadier than mine. His hands bit into my shoulders.
“Just now, Father, only a few moments ago. I looked everywhere in this chamber and then I came straight to fetch you.”
“Start a search,” Father said, letting me go abruptly and turning to Johnny. “One group inside, upstairs first, then through the whole house. A second group outside, fanning out toward the forest in all directions. Gods, why didn’t I consider the possibility of abduction?”
Johnny and Aidan were gone almost before he finished speaking. I heard my cousin issuing crisp orders as he descended the stairs. There was a sound of people running.
“Are you telling me someone removed the baby while you were here?” Father asked. “How could that be?”
“Father, I don’t think this is an abduction—I mean, not a political one. No ordinary person could have got in without my seeing them. I was only outside the door for a moment. It must be the work of uncanny folk. I mean, what about the—the little creature, the changeling—” The willow basket was creaking as its occupant thrashed about, screaming for attention. I could hardly hear my own voice above the din. My father stepped over to the cradle again, looking down at the thing that had taken his son’s place.
“A cruel travesty,” he said. “A superficial likeness of a child, but it’s no more than a bundle of sticks and stones, Clodagh.”
“But . . .” I stared at him, not understanding. The changeling was shrieking. It was waving its arms frantically, desperate for a response to its cries of woe. Surely I wasn’t the only one who could hear it?
“You stepped outside the door,” Father said flatly. “You left Finbar alone. Why?”
I wanted to curl up small and hide. I wanted to shrink down into a little ball and roll away into a corner where nobody could find me. My insides had turned into a quivering jelly. “I was just there, in the doorway,” I croaked. “Right there. Talking to Cathal. I came straight back in. Father, nobody could have walked past me. They’d have had to be invisible. Father, can’t you hear the child crying?”
“You can hear him? Finbar?” A sudden hope dawned on his face.
“No,” I said, confused and wretched, “the changeling, the sticks-and-stones baby—Father, I can see it moving, I can hear it screaming. Father, this must be the work of the Fair Folk, you remember what Willow said about them becoming different—”
He turned a certain gaze on me. It was the kind of look he might have used on a rival chieftain daring to challenge his authority. My father had never, ever looked at me that way before.
“You’re overwrought,” he said. “I hear nothing. That is no changeling. It is nothing but a cruel trick.”
“But—” The cries were ear-piercing. Why couldn’t he hear?
“I won’t hear any more of this, Clodagh. Take a few deep breaths and compose yourself.” Father’s tone was sufficient to silence further protests. “This chamber is to remain locked. You’ll keep the key on your person. Nobody’s to come in or out. I’ll call the household together later, when Johnny reports back. Are you sure”—his voice cracked—“are you quite sure you saw nobody else up here? No serving folk, no man-at-arms, nobody?”
“Eithne came out of Mother’s chamber while I was in the doorway, and Cathal was up here for a few moments, but there was nobody else.”
“Your mother must be told.” His voice was almost detached now, as if he were putting his own grief and shock away inside somewhere in order to act as a chieftain must. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in delaying it. Come, Clodagh.”
The changeling’s throaty cries lanced through me as I followed my father into the hallway. The sound made my chest hurt. Fa
ther waited while I locked the door on the creature. Then we went to break my mother’s heart.
Some time later, I stood before my father in the small council chamber, my stomach tying itself into knots of grief and anxiety. Finbar had not been found in the house, or in the courtyard or outbuildings, or anywhere nearby in the forest. There were no marks of feet or hooves or wheels; whoever had taken the baby had left no trail to follow. Johnny was organizing a wide search, using every man-at-arms who could be spared.
I should have been out there calming the children and making sure the ordinary business of the household continued despite the crisis. But my usual duties seemed to have been taken out of my hands as if, now that I had allowed my brother to be kidnapped, I could no longer be trusted with anything at all. To make matters worse, Father had Aidan in the chamber with us, presumably as a guard. What did he imagine, that his own daughter was somehow a danger to him now? His eyes, fixed on me, were bleak and distant. In his head, I thought, there must be endlessly playing the same sound that filled my own thoughts: my mother’s wrenching wail when we told her. Afterward, her face had seemed little and shrunken, like that of a dead creature.
I had told Father everything again, step by step: I had been in the chamber, Cathal had come to the door, I had spoken to him briefly but had kept an eye on the cradle. I had gone back in, sat down for a while, then when I had checked on Finbar, he was gone. I tried once more to explain why this could not be a political abduction, but my father, a tolerant, reasonable man, was completely deaf on this particular point. Worse than that, he seemed to construe my attempts to explain as meaning either that I had temporarily lost my wits, or that I was using the Fair Folk as an excuse for my own negligence. What possible reason could the Tuatha De have to abduct a newborn son of Sevenwaters, he asked. Our family had been custodians and protectors of the forest since ancient times; it was a refuge for the Fair Folk. Why would they wish us ill? Besides, it was clear the changeling existed only in my mind—neither Father himself, nor Johnny, nor Aidan had perceived it as more than a crude wooden manikin. When I protested again, he cut me off short, for I was wasting precious time. With every moment that passed, one of his political rivals was taking Finbar further from home.