“She what?” Eilis asked idly, cutting herself a slice of cheese.
“She can speak to Father from far away,” said Sibeal. “Silently, mind to mind. It’s an ability common to twins in our family. It means Aunt Liadan can share her news with Father, and hear ours, without waiting for letters to travel all the way between Harrowfield and Sevenwaters.” She was eyeing Cathal closely again. “Deirdre and Clodagh can do it, too,” she added.
I rose to my feet, scattering crumbs. “I’m going for a walk around the lake,” I said.
“Don’t wander off the path or the Fair Folk might get you.” Cathal was irrepressible. I must have been wrong, earlier, when I thought Sibeal’s words had troubled him.
“It’s no joking matter,” I said. “Don’t get up, Doran. Sibeal will come with me and we’ll stay in sight all the way.”
On the far side of the Pudding Bowl, my sister and I sat on the rocks by the water. We could see the others across the lake, Coll and Eilis fishing, Aidan helping them with hooks and bait, Doran stationed at a slight distance keeping watch. Cathal was sitting on the grass up near the horses, arms around his knees. It was not a relaxed pose. I thought his dark eyes were on Sibeal and me. But perhaps he was simply staring into space, brooding. For all the biting remarks, the quick retorts, the mischief and mockery, there seemed something sad about the man. I thought about his kindness to Aidan earlier. Then I thought about his peculiar disappearance and what it might mean. Cathal was a mystery. He was a puzzle.
Sibeal was gazing into the water, which was remarkably clear. Small spotted fish darted here and there over a green-brown patchwork of smooth stones, seeking the shelter of underwater ferns. My sister was not in a trance; I had come to recognize that state over the years, and her eyes had not lost their focus, nor was her body so preternaturally still as to suggest she had slipped into a different state of consciousness.
“I could scry here,” Sibeal said. “This water holds many visions. But I’m sure you asked me to come with you so we could talk.”
“Well, yes,” I said. This was awkward, even though she and I understood each other pretty well. As a seer, Sibeal had a window on the future that the rest of us could not open. She did not talk about her visions. Indeed, she usually kept her thoughts very much to herself. “We should talk about Mother and the baby, and what might happen.”
“I know she might die.” My sister’s voice was small and precise. “And the baby, too. Father told me. Or the baby might be a girl. Another disappointment, like me and Eilis. Like all of us, I suppose, except Muirrin, because the first one must be special.” She sounded eerily calm.
My heart bled for her. “She loves us all, Sibeal,” I said. “Don’t ever doubt that.” I hesitated. “Have you seen anything about this when you were scrying? Have your visions shown what’s going to happen?”
There was a silence. Over the lake, Eilis gave a shout of delight as a fish took her bait. Aidan helped her pull it in. Cathal had not stirred.
“You know I can’t talk about these things.” Sibeal’s voice had a tight sound to it, as if what was in her mind hurt her. “When I see the future, I can’t tell if it’s what will be, or only what might be. And visions are never clear anyway. They’re full of symbols and suggestions and clues—it’s up to the seer to interpret all that. Ciarán says when I’m older and better practiced I’ll be able to pass on some of what I see so people can use it to help them make decisions. But I’m not going to do it now, Clodagh.”
I felt cold. “You mean you have seen something about Mother and the baby? You’ve seen it and you won’t tell me?” It came to me suddenly how truly frightening it must be to have the Sight. Sibeal’s talent was as much curse as gift.
My sister gave a little nod. “If I can’t interpret it, then you probably can’t either,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t straightforward, Clodagh. I don’t know what will happen. But if you’re concerned that I may not realize how serious this is, don’t be. I do understand. The one to worry about is Eilis.”
In silence we looked across as, on the far side of the Pudding Bowl, Eilis landed her fish and Aidan helped her deal with it. It looked quite big; Eilis would be triumphant. I hoped she had remembered to say a prayer, expressing thanks for the sacrifice the creature had made so that human folk could be fed.
“Maybe Mother and the baby will both survive and Eilis need never know how close it was,” I said. “But then, if we don’t warn her and the worst happens, she won’t be properly prepared for it. That would be even crueller.”
“Clodagh,” said Sibeal.
I looked at her and she gazed solemnly back.
“You’re very scared, aren’t you?” she asked. “Frightened and upset and worrying about everything, not just the big life-and-death things, but the smaller things too, like keeping the household running while Mother’s so unwell and Father’s so distracted, and making sure all of us do our mending and eat our breakfast . . . You can’t do everything, Clodagh. Sometimes we simply have to wait and see what happens.”
“You’re far too wise for a twelve year old,” I told her. “Tell me, what do you think of Cathal?”
Sibeal gave me a penetrating look. “I thought Aidan was the one you liked.”
“I’m not asking because I like the man,” I retorted. “I just wondered if you think he’s . . . I don’t quite know how to say this. You saw what happened earlier, Sibeal. Cathal acts very oddly. There’s being eccentric, and there’s being downright suspicious. He did manage to get lost rather quickly. He had no good explanation for going off the path. And . . . well, he’s behaved strangely toward me a few times already. I don’t trust him.”
Sibeal looked owlish now as she gazed out across the lake, her eyes on the small group opposite. Doran and Aidan were making a fire; it seemed Eilis couldn’t wait to eat her fish. “Clodagh,” my sister said, “you just explained to Cathal about the paths, how they move about to trick unwary travelers. You can’t turn around now and say he’s suspicious because he lost his way.”
“But he was with us, and we’re the family.”
“He isn’t with us,” said Sibeal. “He isn’t with anyone.” And before I could ask her for an explanation, Eilis hailed us from the other side of the water, beckoning us back.
Since Aidan had been honest with me on the matter of Rathnait, I let him ride home alongside me. He seized the opportunity to tell me about his home in Connacht and his family. I learned that Aidan had first gone to Inis Eala seeking to acquire superior skills in war craft which he could bring home in order to help his father in a territorial dispute. But the problem had resolved itself by more peaceful means. Meanwhile, Aidan had liked what Inis Eala had to offer and had decided to stay on. He made sure I understood that he had put a length of two more years on this; after that time, his place with Johnny would be filled by someone else.
We said nothing more of Rathnait or of the betrothal. With the others riding so close by, such a sensitive topic could not be aired further. Besides, although I found myself happy that we were friends again, I knew I could not make plans for the future until my mother’s child was born. What occurred then would inevitably shape the path for us thereafter. I wanted to ask Aidan for more of his friend’s story, for I wondered how Cathal had become the difficult, odd man he was, and I thought the clue might be in his origins. A humble birth, the friendship of a chieftain’s son, an excess of pride . . . But now was not the time to ask.
We got home late in the day to find a party of men getting ready to ride out through the forest, Gareth, Mikka and Sigurd among them. With dusk approaching, this must mean urgent business. While Aidan and Cathal went over to speak to their fellow warriors, I headed inside to find Father, leaving Doran to help the girls down and deal with the horses.
Father and Johnny were in the small council chamber. The door was open, and I heard Johnny say, “Are you quite sure you don’t want me to go in person?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” I said, fee
ling I had done more than enough eavesdropping for one day. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“We’ve received word that Eoin of Lough Gall is back,” said Father. “I want a message to go to him without delay. Gareth’s taking it. And no, Johnny, I don’t want you to go.” He glanced at me, then back at my cousin. “We’re facing a challenging time; I’ll need you here at Sevenwaters. Gareth knows how to present this to Eoin tactfully. All your other men need to do is stand next to him as a reminder that I do have the forces of Inis Eala backing me, should anyone decide to make this grounds for conflict.”
“Are you inviting Eoin to a council?” I asked him.
“Gareth will extend that invitation to him, yes. When he’s seen Eoin, he’ll ride on to do the same for the other northern chieftains. I won’t commit to the exact timing while matters are so uncertain here. With Gareth’s party likely to be away for some time, we’d best send for some men-at-arms from Glencarnagh to bolster our numbers here, Johnny. You could see to that in the morning.” Glencarnagh was our other holding, to the southwest. It had belonged to my mother’s family.
“Is there anything I can do to help, Father?” I asked. “Do the men have adequate provisions for the journey?”
Father smiled, but I could see the anxiety in his eyes. “You might check on that in the kitchen,” he said. “There’s still time; we have to give Gareth some final instructions. Thank you, Clodagh.”
A restless unease lingered over Sevenwaters after the riders’ departure. When I went up to see Mother I found that she had been bleeding. I sat with her awhile, trying not to look worried, though her pallor shocked me. I explained what was happening downstairs, emphasizing how reliable Gareth was and telling her Eoin would surely be mollified by an invitation to a council. But my mother was not really listening. Her gaze was turned inward. It seemed to me that every bit of her energy was centered on the tiny life within her. Every scrap of her will was focused on helping that little heart to go on beating until it was strong enough to manage without her. After I left her chamber I had to stand alone outside the door until I was calm enough to go downstairs and face the rest of my family.
Father was unusually quiet at supper. With the question of Eoin hanging over him, not to speak of Mother’s doubtful health, I was sure he would want to dispense with any entertainment tonight and send the household off to bed early. But when Willow stood up after supper and walked over, leaning on her staff, to stand before the family table, I saw that she was expecting to tell the first of her stories now. She turned her shrewdly assessing gaze on each of our family in turn, and I wondered what she was seeing as she considered us. Could she tell that Sibeal was a mystic in whose small head tumbled visions of the strange and uncanny? Could she see Johnny’s inner goodness, Father’s stoical strength, or the irrepressible, joyous energy that was so much a part of Eilis’s being? Did she read the uncertainty beneath what I hoped was my air of calm competence? Perhaps it was all too clear to her that each of us walked under a cloud of dark possibilities.
“Lord Sean,” the crone said, “I thank you for the hospitality of this great house. I bring you the goodwill of the traveling folk and the respectful greetings of Dan Walker himself.”
Father nodded gravely. “Dan’s kin are always welcome here,” he said. “My daughter tells me you are a storyteller. We would welcome a tale to divert us tonight.”
“I will provide good entertainment, my lord. Afterward, perhaps the young musicians of the household will play for us. I like the harp.” She glanced in my direction, then allowed Aidan to place a stool for her and sat down a little stiffly, laying the staff on the floor beside her. The assembled household hushed. I saw Cathal standing near the main doorway, looking bored and supercilious. He met my eye and looked away again without the least flicker of acknowledgment.
“These are difficult times,” the old woman said, glancing around the circle of attentive faces. “Testing and taxing times. For tonight, I seek to lighten your spirits with a tale, not of the grand folk of the Tuatha De, nor of the follies and aspirations of human lords and ladies, but of smaller people altogether. This is a tale of warring clans that carried out their skirmishes and raids, their maneuvers and retaliations under the lakeside reeds, amongst the roots of oaks, within the tangles of thorn that hide the crumbling stones of ancient walls.”
“Clurichauns!” exclaimed Eilis, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
Willow smiled. “Yes indeed, young woman. There were two clans of them, and for want of better names they called themselves the Reds and the Greens. These names allowed the rival bands to distinguish themselves with bold little uniforms in one color or the other. The Reds made their jackets from robins’ breast feathers or the leaves of autumn oaks or bright threads filched from a lady’s sewing basket. The Greens made helmets from the discarded carapaces of beetles, cloaks of moss and boots of woven grasses. Both clans had weapons—sharpened slivers of elder, chestnuts to hurl, clubs spiked with the thorns of a wild rose. The clurichauns’ diminutive size did nothing to dampen their war-like spirit. Each band had its chief, its bard, its champion. Each tribe had its hideout, the Reds among rocks blanketed by a russet-leaved creeper, the Greens in a hollow down by the pond with a bullfrog for a sentinel. I have to tell you that their hatred for each other extended to the colors they wore. If you were a Green you couldn’t abide anything red in your life, and the same went the other way. Reds ate meat and rosy apples; Greens ate watercress and sour berries. Woe betide any Green baby born with a head of hair the color of Clodagh’s here—his mother would immediately be accused of lying with the enemy.
“And what was it these two rival clans were warring over? It was all to do with a small hill situated between their territories. By your standards and mine, this would be the merest bump on the ground, a protrusion a long-legged man might step over scarcely noticing it. To the clurichauns it was a sacred mountain, the birth-place of a great leader of their kind, Mochaomhóg the Ancestor. Whether Mochaomhóg had been a Red or a Green lay at the heart of the long dispute between these factions, for each clan claimed him as its own.”
Willow went on to tell of the long years of strife, the grief of the clurichaun women over their fallen fathers, husbands, brothers and sons, and the attempts of these women to protect their menfolk in battle. “For they used the same little tricks as we do ourselves—the sewing of a rowan cross into the garments of a warrior before he leaves home, the weaving of a triple plait into a man’s hair, the packets of protective herbs in the boot or pouch. And if fewer men fell because these charms were employed, so much the better.
“Now there was a certain time when the Greens were dominant. They had established a camp right on Mochaomhóg’s hill, in defiance of all the Reds thought proper, and they even made a wee fire there and sat around it, bold as brass. The Reds devised a cunning plan. Not usually known for their skills on water, they would surprise their enemy and approach by boat, slipping silently into a tiny cove below the hill, then making a covert way up through the nest of a water rat to attack from the rear. It was a good enough plan, though I expect our fine war leaders here would find flaws in it.” The old woman glanced at Johnny as she said this, and he gave her a smile.
“The Reds dressed in their full battle array. Every one had his cloak wrapped around him, for it was cold out on the water. With some difficulty they launched their barge and poled it across the pond toward Mochaomhóg’s hill, where the smoke from the Greens’ fire was rising in a plume, conveniently blocking the view. The sound of carousing masked the splash, splash of the little boat’s passage. They landed. Two warriors paused to secure the barge; the others advanced through the rat’s tunnel, the nest full of ratlings, the upper passages of the creature’s den. They went in single file, which was all the cramped space allowed. The two who had tied up the boat hastened to catch up with their fellows, but before they reached the exit a small form came falling back down, a dagger in his heart. A second fell on top, hi
s red uniform stained redder still. A third . . . a fourth . . . One by one, every warrior who had gone up in that first advance was thrust back down the tunnel dead or dying. ‘Retreat,’ whispered one of the two survivors to the other. They fled down the tunnel, threw themselves onto the barge and poled it frantically away. It came to one of them, at least, that someone must have told the enemy they were coming. Someone had prepared a welcome for them: a welcome in blood.
“Once the sorry tale was heard by the Red clan, folk began to eye one another with suspicion. Who was the traitor? One man accused another because his grandmother had once eaten a pod of beans. A third said a fourth must be the guilty man, since he had once admired the emerald eyes of a certain young lady. It was plain the matter would continue to cause bitter division until it was settled.
“The wise woman of the clan called everyone together. ‘Take off your cloaks,’ she said. ‘Lay them on the ground.’
“Nobody had any idea why the crone would ask such a thing, but they obeyed her as they always did, since she had never been proven wrong in many, many years of sorting out their disputes. Not only the two survivors of the rout but every other man there present laid his cloak down, till there was a blanket of many reds on the forest floor. The old woman paced, examining each cloak minutely. Most of the men had rowan crosses sewn inside their garments, for this is a potent charm against death in battle. It was these the crone seemed to be looking at. As she went through the cloaks, one of the two battle survivors began to look very uneasy. Once or twice he tried to pick up his cloak, pleading that he was cold after that passage over the pond, and the old woman stopped him. ‘I am not done yet,’ she said.”
Willow turned her head and looked straight at me, fixing me with her beady eyes. Startled, I sat bolt upright. Was she trying to tell me something? Was there a message in her tale that was not obvious, an inner meaning I was supposed to make sense of? If so, I had failed to grasp it. I smiled, feeling awkward, and she looked away, resuming the story.