Daughter Of The Forest (6 page)

“What do you mean?”

“The law does not allow the execution of a man for such an act; that is not acceptable if due process is followed. But Father couldn’t afford to let a traitor go free, to spread news abroad. The culprit would be sent into the forest and never seen again. Helped on his way, so to speak. Maybe they’d find his bones five, ten years hence. You know what they say about these woods.”

“You’re willing to take such a risk? For a boy you don’t even know?”

“If I do not act, I deny him a life,” Finbar said quietly. “For me, the choice is clear. It always has been. But you’re right, Sorcha. There could be very serious consequences, and perhaps it is unfair of me to involve you.”

“But you can’t do it unless I help?”

“Not without far greater risk.”

“You’d better go and get on with it, then,” I said in a voice that sounded like somebody else’s. My hands sought a sharp knife and began automatically to slice and chop the ingredients of my sleeping draft. Henbane. Witch’s bonnet. The small blue fungi some call devil spawn. Nightshade, not too much. “Go on, Finbar.”

“Thanks.” There was a flash of that smile, the generous smile that lit up his whole face. “We make a good team. A foolproof team. How can we fail?”

He hugged me for a moment, just long enough for me to feel the tension of his body, the rapid beat of his heart. Then he was gone, slipping away into the shadows as silent as a cat.

It was a long night. Awareness that the slightest error could make me a murderer kept me alert, and before daybreak the sleeping draft was ready, corked safely in a small stone bottle convenient to conceal in the palm of the hand, and the stillroom was immaculately clean, every trace of my activity gone. Finbar came for me as the sound of jingling harnesses and hurrying, booted feet increased out of doors.

“I think you’d better do this part as well,” he whispered. “They’ll be less likely to notice you.” I remembered, vaguely, that he was supposed to be joining the campaign this time—had not Father decreed that it would be so? Then I was too busy to think, slipping silently to the kitchens on my brother’s whispered instructions, edging behind and between servants and men-at-arms who were snatching a last bite to eat, preparing ration packs, filling wine and water bottles. Fat Janis, Finbar had said, go to where Fat Janis has her iron pot on the stove. If they’ve been working at night, she’ll take them mulled ale first thing in the morning. Her special brew. They say it has some interesting side effects. She carries it over to them herself; and maybe gets favors in return. What sort of favors? I’d asked him. Never mind, said Finbar. Just make sure she doesn’t see you.

There were a couple of things I was good at. One was potions and poisons, and another was being quiet and staying unseen when it suited me. It was no trouble adding the draft to the mulled ale; Janis turned her back for an instant, laughing at some wisecrack by the tallest man-at-arms as he crammed a last piece of sausage in his mouth and made for the door, buckling his sword belt as he went. I was finished and gone before she turned back, and she never saw me. Easy, I thought as I slipped toward the door. Must have been fifteen people there, and not one of them spotted me. I was nearly outside when something made me look back. Straight across the kitchen, meeting my startled eyes full on, was my brother Conor. He stood in the far corner of the room, half in shadow, a list of some sort in one hand and a quill poised in the other. His assistant, back turned, was packing stores into a saddlebag. I was frozen in shock: from where he stood, my brother must have seen everything. How could I not have noticed him before? Paralyzed between the instinct to bolt for cover and the anticipated call to account for myself, I hesitated on the threshold. And Conor dropped his gaze to his writing and continued his list as if I had been invisible. I was too relieved to worry about a possible explanation, and fled like a startled rabbit, trembling with nerves. Finbar was nowhere to be seen. I made for the safest bolthole I could think of, the ancient stable building where my youngest brother, Padriac, kept his menagerie of waifs and strays. There, I found a warm corner among the well-seasoned straw, and the elderly donkey who had prior claim shifted grudgingly, making room for me against her broad back. Hungry, cold, confused, and exhausted, I found escape, for the time being, in sleep.

Our story cannot be told without some mention of Father Brien. I said he was a hermit, and that he would exchange a little learning for a loaf or a bag of apples. That was true; but there was a lot more to Father Brien than met the eye. It was said he’d once been a fighting man, and had more than a few Viking skulls to his credit; it was said that he’d come from over the water, all the way from Armorica, to put his skills with pen and ink to work in the Christian house of prayer at Kells; but he’d been living alone a long time, and he was old, fifty at least, a small, spare, gray-haired man whose face had the calm acceptance of one whose spirit has remained whole through a lifetime of trials.

A trip to Father Brien’s was an adventure in itself. He lived up on the hillside south of the lake, and we took our time getting there, because that was part of the fun. There was the bit where you crossed the stream on a rope, swinging wildly between the great oaks. Cormack fell in once; fortunately, it was summer. There was the part where you had to scramble up a rock chimney, which took its toll on knees and elbows, not to speak of the holes it made in your clothing. There were elaborate games of hide-and-seek. In fact, you could get there in half the time on a cart track, but our way was better. Sometimes Father Brien was from home, his hearth cold, his floor swept bare and clean. According to Finbar, who somehow knew these things, the holy father would climb right to the top of Ogma’s Peak, a fair way for an old man, and stand there still as a stone, looking out eastward to the sea and beyond it, toward the land of the Britons; or away to the islands. You could not see the islands from this vantage point; but ask any man or woman where they were, and you would see their finger point with complete confidence to the east, and a little south. It was as if they had a map imprinted on their spirit, that neither time nor distance could erase.

When the hermit was at home, he was happy to talk to us in his quiet, measured way, and he bartered learning for the necessities of life. He knew many different tongues; his knowledge of herb lore was sound, too, and he could set bones with skill. From him I got many of the rudiments of my craft, but my obsession with the healing properties of plants drove me further, and I surpassed him soon enough in this.

There were times when we helped each other in tending to the sick; he had the strength to wrench a joint back into place, or strap a broken limb; I had the skill to brew a draft or prepare a lotion just right for its purpose. Between us we helped many, and people grew used to me, still a child, peering into their eyes or down their throats, and prescribing some nostrum. My remedies worked, and that was all people really cared about.

There’d been some who were hard to help. When the Fair Folk got to you, there wasn’t much hope. There was a girl once, who’d lost her lover to the queen under the hill. Out courting in the forest at night, silly things, and strayed into a toadstool ring while their thoughts were elsewhere. The queen took him, but not her. All she saw was the red plume of his cap disappearing into a crack in the rocks, and their high voices laughing. When the girl got to us, her mind was half gone, and neither Father Brien’s prayers nor my sleeping drafts gave her much peace. He did his best, treating spell-bound lover and mazed wanderer with the same commitment as he gave the cuts and burns of farmer and blacksmith. His hands were strong, his voice gentle, his manner entirely practical. He listened much and said little.

He made no attempt to impose his religion on us, though there was plenty of opportunity. He understood that our household followed the old ways, even if the observance of them had slipped somewhat since the death of our mother. From time to time I heard him discussing with Conor the ways in which the two faiths differed, and what common ground they might have, for he shared Conor’s love of debate. Sometimes I wondered if Father Brien’s tolerant views had been the cause of his departure from the house of prayer at Kells, for it was said that in other parts of Erin the spread of the Christian faith had been hastened with sword and fire, and that now the old beliefs were little more than a memory. Certainly, Father Brien never sought to convert us, but he did like to say a few prayers before each campaign departure, for whatever he thought of my father’s purpose, there could be no harm in sending the men on their way with a blessing.

The clank of metal awoke me. I got groggily to my feet, picking straw out of my hair. The donkey had her nose deep in the feed trough.

“You missed everything,” observed Padriac, busily forking fresh straw into the stall. “Finbar’s going to be in trouble again. Nowhere to be found, this morning. Father was highly displeased. Took Cormack instead. You should have seen the grin on his face. Cormack, that is, not Father. I’ll eat my hat if I ever see
him
crack a smile. Anyway, off they went, after the old man said his paternosters and his amens, and now we can get back to normal. Until next time. I wouldn’t want to be Finbar, when Father catches up with him.”

He put his fork away and moved to check on the owl, tethered on a perch in a dark corner of the barn. Her wing was close to mending and he hoped to release her into the wild soon. I admired his persistence and patience, even as I averted my eyes from the live mice he had ready for her meal.

Finbar had disappeared. But it was not unusual for him to go off into the forest, or down the lake, and nobody commented on his absence. I had no idea where he had gone, and did not raise the subject for fear of drawing attention to myself, or to him and our nocturnal activities. I was worried, too, about my poison, and it was with some relief that I saw the four guards emerge, that first afternoon, to sit in the courtyard clutching their heads, yawning widely, and generally looking sorry for themselves. By suppertime the word had got around that the prisoner had escaped, slipped away somehow between Colum’s departure and the change of guards, and there were many and varied theories as to how such an unthinkable thing could have happened. A man was despatched after Lord Colum, to give him the bad news.

“The Briton won’t get far,” said Donal sourly. “Not in the state he was in. Not in this forest. Hardly worth going after him.”

On the second day, Eilis and her retinue left for home, with their own six men and two of ours as escort. The weather was turning; gusts of cool wind whipped the skirts of the ladies and the cloaks of their men-at-arms, and scudding clouds raced across the sun. Conor, as the eldest son still home and therefore de facto master of the house, bid Eilis a formal farewell and invited her to return when things settled down. Eilis thanked him prettily for the hospitality, though in my eyes it had been somewhat lacking. I wondered how long she’d have to wait to see Liam again, and whether she minded very much. Then I forgot her, for Finbar appeared at supper the next night, as if he’d never been away. Padriac, absorbed in his own pursuits, had hardly noticed his brother’s absence; Conor made no comment. I stared at Finbar across the table, but his thoughts were concealed from me and his eyes were intent on his plate. His hands breaking bread, lifting a goblet, were steady and controlled. I waited restlessly until the meal was over, and Conor stood, signaling permission to leave. I followed Finbar outside, slipping behind him like a smaller shadow, and confronted him in the long walk under the willows.

“What happened? Where were you?”

“Where do you think?”

“Taking that boy somewhere, that’s what I think. But where?”

He was quiet for a bit, probably working out how little he could get away with telling me.

“Somewhere safe. It’s best if you don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I meant what I said before. From Father’s point of view, or Liam’s, what we have done is an act of base treachery, and should incur the harshest of penalties. It would matter little, in the end, that we are our father’s own children.”

“All we did was save someone from being hurt,” I said, knowing there was far more to it than that.

“In its simplest terms, maybe. But it is, at the same time, a betrayal. We have stabbed our own kin in the back; set free a spy. To them it’s all black and white, Sorcha.”

“Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“There are no sides, not really. It’s more a case of where you come from. Don’t the Britons come here to seize our lands, learn our secrets, destroy our way of life? To help them is to go against kinship and brotherhood and all that’s sacred. That’s the way most people see it. Maybe it’s the way we should see it.”

After a long time I said, “But life is sacred, isn’t it?”

Finbar chuckled. “You should have been a brithem, Sorcha. You always find the argument I can’t answer.”

I raised my brows at him. I, with my bare feet and straggly hair, a maker of judgments? I found it hard enough to tell the difference between right and wrong sometimes.

We both fell silent. Finbar leaned back against a tree, resting his head against the rough bark, his eyes closed. His dark figure blended into the shadows as if he were part of them.

“So why did you do it?” I asked after a while. He took some time to answer. It was getting cold, and an evening dampness was in the air. I shivered.

“Here,” said Finbar, opening his eyes and putting his old jacket around my shoulders. He was still wearing the same shirt he’d had on that night. Was it really only three days ago?

“It’s as if everything is part of a pattern,” he said eventually. “Almost as if I’d had no choice, as if it was all set out for me, on a sort of map of my life. I think Mother saw what was ahead for all of us, maybe not exactly, but she had an idea of where we were going.” He touched the amulet that hung always around his neck. “And yet, as well as that, it’s all about choices. Wouldn’t it be easier for me to be one of the boys, to earn Father’s love with my sword and bow—I could do it—take my place at his side and defend our lands and our honor? It would be good to have recognition, and fellowship, and some kind of pride. But I choose this path instead. Or it is chosen for me.”