Dreamer's Pool (12 page)

The horses sensed something, no doubt of it. I felt the tension in Snow’s shoulders as she went forward, though she was obedient to my directions, as ever. Donagan’s Star twitched her tail and turned her head one way, then the other.

‘Can’t say it would be my first choice of a spot to sit down and enjoy a bite to eat,’ my companion said.

‘It’s quiet,’ I said. ‘And we might run into the elusive Blackthorn. Didn’t our friend Grim say she was gathering herbs?’

‘If she’s anything like her minder, she won’t take kindly to being run into. You should have corrected that fellow’s manners, at the very least. If you let folk speak to you like that, you’re in danger of losing their respect.’

I glanced across at him. ‘With Grim, there was no respect to lose. If I learned anything about the man, apart from the obvious fact that he’s strong and able, it was that he doesn’t like being answerable to anyone. Did you see the way he was moving about on that roof? It made me wonder what he was before.’

‘Before what?’

‘Before he was this Blackthorn’s minder, or companion, or assistant.’

‘He’s surely hiding some kind of secret or he’d have been readier with his answers. His manner almost suggested he wanted you to turn the two of them out.’

We reached the pool and dismounted, looping our reins over a branch. The horses did not drop their heads to drink or to crop at the long grass. The two of them stood still and silent, side by side.

Donagan got the provisions out of his saddlebag and we sat down on the grassy bank to eat and drink. Deaman’s bread was very good; Iobhar’s mead washed it down well. Chewing with enjoyment, I noted the things I loved about this place, and imagined sitting here with Flidais by my side, sharing them with her. The stillness; the way Dreamer’s Pool had a kind of glow about it, not only the sunlight filtering down through the autumn canopy, but a light that seemed to come from within, from the water itself. The tiny insects that danced on the reflective surface of the pool. The neat curls of the ferns that fringed the water, the glinting droplets hanging there. The pebbles on the shore, smooth and shining, each different, each beautiful. The place was a poem in itself. She and I would come here with Bramble. We could pretend that this was our own private place where nobody could find us. Here, we could forget that one day I would be king of Dalriada, and that she would be queen. We could be no more than a pair of lovers enjoying each other’s company. My mind drifted further, and I drew it back sharply. I would not dishonour my sweetheart, even in my daydreams.

‘Let Aedan see this Blackthorn for you,’ Donagan offered. ‘It’s appropriate for your steward to deal with such matters. I’m taking it that all you want is to be sure she has the appropriate skills and experience, and that she and the fellow will look after the cottage. It sounds as if the people are happy with her.’

‘Donagan?’

‘Mm?’

‘Whom would a young lady like Flidais want to attend her, supposing we were fortunate enough to be blessed with an infant? A court physician, or a wise woman like this Blackthorn?’

Donagan gave me a sideways look. ‘Are you speaking of a confinement? You can hardly expect me to have any expertise in that. It’s a matter for women.’ After a moment he took pity on me and added, ‘I believe your mother would say you need not concern yourself with such things at this point, if at all. And she’d add that if you insisted your child be born at Winterfalls, and not at Cahercorcan, she would ensure the court physician took up residence here well in advance of the expected birth. As an alternative, you might engage your own physician, who would be permanently attached to your household.’

‘What do the women of the village do?’

‘Without the services of a midwife,’ Donagan said, ‘I imagine that they assist one another, and that some of them die. Their infants too. It’s unsurprising that they’ve embraced Blackthorn, unknown though she must have been to them.’

With a sudden chill I realised my attempts to be the friend of my people had been sorely lacking. How could I have overlooked something so important?

‘Don’t look so stricken,’ Donagan said, packing up the remnants of our meal. ‘This woman’s here now, and as for your future wife, you have plenty of time to put arrangements in place. You’ll be able to ask Lady Flidais in person what she’d prefer. Though I suggest you do not do so the moment you see her; she might take that to indicate you are over-eager for the marital bed.’ I felt a flush rise to my cheeks, and saw him grin. ‘A joke, Oran. Only a joke.’

‘It is no laughing matter.’ I rose to my feet, gazing across the still waters of the pool to the trees beyond. I had glimpsed that sudden spot of red again, perhaps a scarf, perhaps a head of vibrant hair among the haze of greys and greens, perhaps a bright bird passing. It was gone now. Maybe Blackthorn liked visitors even less than her henchman did. ‘We’d best be on our way. I can’t imagine how I overlooked this. I must set it to rights without delay.’

‘If taking action on the matter will stop you from stamping around in a state of constant anxiety, it can be only good,’ observed my friend. ‘Shall we ride?’

I would have written to my father as soon as we returned home. But a messenger had come during our absence, and there was a letter from Flidais. It had been carried north by a series of riders, and under the lady’s instructions it had been delivered not to court but directly to me. I left Donagan to help the groom with our horses and retreated to my bedchamber, wondering if a time might come when my sweetheart’s communications did not turn me into a shaking bundle of nerves, and considering whether that would be a good thing or a bad. I knew what my mother would say.

I broke the seal, which was not Cadhan’s, and unrolled the parchment.

To Oran, Prince of Dalriada

I write this in some haste to let you know that I and my attendants are now safely across the border of Ulaid. We are enjoying a few days’ rest in the household of the local chieftain, Muadan. I have never travelled so far from home before, Oran, and I admit I find it deeply disconcerting. I feel somewhat set adrift, though folk have been very kind and have gone out of their way to make me welcome. I am glad that my maidservant Ciar is travelling with me, along with several women from my parents’ household. That means I am bringing a little of home with me, though I am so far away.

I am anxious about the safety of my father and mother and of all our people. Riding away and leaving them felt wrong, though I know this was what my parents wanted.

When I feel sad I remind myself that when I reach Winterfalls you will be there, and I think of sharing poems and songs and long walks in the woods, and that brings the smile back to my face. I will be pleased when this endless journey is over.

Bramble is much disturbed; at night she burrows under her blankets and refuses to show so much as the tip of her nose. I think my little dog longs to reach Winterfalls as much as I do!

My host, Lord Muadan, has offered the services of his messenger to bring this letter to you, which is most kind of him. I will seal and send it now. I hope that I will not be far behind it, dear Oran. Flidais of Cloud Hill

My heart beat fast. She was in Ulaid! That meant only a matter of days before her party reached Winterfalls. Of course, she might decide to spend a while enjoying Muadan’s hospitality. The horses would need to be rested, or fresh mounts obtained. I recalled that Muadan loved to hunt, and kept a pack of wolfhounds for the purpose. Bramble would hardly be comfortable there.

I bade myself be calm. I was the head of my own household; I was the heir to the Dalriadan throne. Such a man did not greet his intended bride in a lather of nervous sweat, with trembling hands and a mind wiped clean of rational thought. I must not let love make me foolish.

I stood by the window looking out across my grazing fields, and made a list in my mind of what preparations still remained to be completed before my sweetheart’s arrival. The list was not very long – thanks in part to my enthusiasm, and in far greater part, I suspected, to the efficiency of my household, the place was all but ready. There was a riding horse to be brought down from Cahercorcan, a wedding gift to Flidais from my father. Some further improvements to the bathing arrangements were still to be made. And the matter of the wise woman. But Donagan was right, that was not truly urgent. This Blackthorn would present herself at my house in due course, as I’d requested, and I could have a word with her then.

10

~BLACKTHORN~

T
he day we’d moved into the cottage, I’d had to make a decision. The place had one main room with a hearth and a couple of shelf beds, and a falling-apart lean-to at the back. The only place for a healer to conduct her business was in that main room, and it was plain I’d be sleeping there as well. Which had left the question of Grim. I’d already told him, somewhat against my better judgement, that he could stay awhile and work on the repairs, since there was so much needing to be done on the place.

I hadn’t wanted him leaping to any conclusions about what that might mean. Not that he’d ever suggested we might become any more than travelling companions. But he was a man, and my experience of men suggested I’d better make it quite clear where we stood. So, right at the start, I’d told him he’d be sleeping in the outhouse. It was a low structure of stone, separated from the cottage by a weed-choked garden patch. In fact the outhouse had survived the years better than the cottage itself, with its earthen floor reasonably dry. It only needed the cobwebs brushed away and a new door and shutters fitted. A few boards, a supply of fresh straw, a couple of blankets – it would be more comfortable than many places we’d slept in during our journey. Compared with Mathuin’s lockup it was a palace.

At the time Grim had made no comment, simply taken his pack and his blankets out there and found some old sacking to hang across the doorway until he could get started on the work. The cottage had to come first. We’d found the place full of cold draughts. The chimney was blocked by the dried-out corpse of a blackbird, the roof leaked, the shutters were hanging broken or gone altogether, and the whole place stank of mould.

But that had changed quickly enough. Grim had put in long days on the repairs, making the place clean and comfortable. If he was not up a ladder or digging a hole or planting something, he was off bartering some of our small stock of coppers for tools or seeds or other supplies. The local folk started offering him work, helping to get a harvest in or dig a well. They paid him in coppers or food or other items we needed. But he never did more than a day or two for them; mostly he worked on the cottage. Grim wasn’t a man who gave much away, but as the place changed I saw him changing with it, walking straighter, holding his head higher, readier with a smile.

I thought it likely the little house was more of a home now than it had ever been in the days of the last wise woman. Grim had lime-washed the outside and adorned the newly thatched roof with a row of fanciful straw creatures. He’d mended the broken furniture. He’d dug the garden and planted seeds. I’d added roots of this and that, which I’d gathered in the woods. Conmael had chosen the spot well; there was a good supply of herbs in season if a body knew where to look for them.

Folk came to consult me, at first warily, then, as the word spread, with more confidence. People have a natural fear of a wise woman – the taint of magic hangs over my kind, a remnant of a time when we did more than prepare herbal remedies, strap up broken limbs and help women give birth. The need to see so many people and to stay courteous left me ill-tempered and weary at the end of the day. Grim was good at having a brew ready when I needed it.

But the sleeping arrangements soon became a problem. Me in the cottage, him in the outhouse – it had sounded all right to me, for as long as he hung around. We’d been there some while when I got up in the night, went out the back to relieve myself and fell over Grim, who was rolled up in a blanket, sleeping across the cottage doorway. He woke with a start, apologised and headed off to the outhouse before I could say a word.

The next morning he was up and working before I stirred. I didn’t ask him about the night before, and he didn’t mention it, but I knew him pretty well after our time locked up together, and I could tell something was bothering him. I could see the signs, though he was working hard not to show them. A clenching and unclenching of the fists; the pulse beating in his temple; his lips moving as if he were constantly having a conversation with himself. Signs I hadn’t seen for a long while. I didn’t want to think about what it meant. If he’d taken himself off after we escaped and gone his own way, I wouldn’t be needing to waste time worrying about him now. I had enough responsibilities with my promises to Conmael, my job to do and the effort of being pleasant to folk I cared nothing about. I didn’t need the big lump of a fellow weighing down my thoughts into the bargain.

But there he was. And I found out, after I’d taken the walk to the privy by night a couple more times, that while he was in the outhouse he wasn’t sleeping, he was curled up muttering to himself, same as in Mathuin’s lockup. I didn’t look in on him, because that would be breaking an unspoken rule about privacy. But I knew he’d be crouched down at the back, in a corner, trying to be invisible. Trying to shut out the bad things, to keep the shadows at bay. The nonsense words were like a spell or charm. An incantation. Fill his mind with them, and he need not hear Slammer crashing his stick on the bars or yelling insults. He need not hear Poxy or Dribbles or me screaming as we were beaten, or worse. Even here, long days and longer miles from that hellish place, Grim’s nights were full of those sounds and sights. He hadn’t slept at night in that place. He’d kept the darkness away with his relentless exercises, and when he hadn’t been doing those he’d been talking to me. When I’d been asleep, when everyone had been asleep, he’d probably kept on talking anyway, until morning came.

Once I’d worked this out, I wished I hadn’t, because it meant I had to find a solution, and I didn’t much like the only solution that presented itself, which was that I should invite Grim to sleep in the house. There were two parts of me arguing with each other and I couldn’t shut up their voices. One said,
He didn’t ask you for help this time, so you don’t need to do anything. He’s never complained about the outhouse.
The other said,
You were in that place too. It turned you upside down and inside out. He helped you escape and now he’s mending the house for you. You owe him.
And the first voice replied,
to my shame,
I never asked him to do either of those things.

It ate away at me until I had to do something. But I needed to go carefully or I’d only make matters worse.

We were sitting by the hearth – the fire burned well now he’d unblocked the chimney – as evening shadow spread itself over the wood, turning the green and brown quilt of daytime to a soft blanket of purple and grey. Grim had made rabbit stew with dumplings, one of the best meals I’d tasted for a long while, and I waited until we were finished eating before I asked him.

‘Grim?’

‘Mm?’

‘Must be cold in that outhouse.’

A pause, then, ‘Roof over my head,’ he said. ‘Not complaining.’

I drew a couple of long breaths. ‘You don’t sleep, though, do you?’ I asked, hoping this would not send him back into silence.

‘Never did sleep much. Once, maybe. Long time ago.’

‘Mm. You need your rest. Working so hard.’

A silence; Grim stared down at his clasped hands. ‘Keeping you awake, am I?’ he said eventually.

I found myself wishing he would shout at me, berate me for my selfishness, point out that with him slaving away on my behalf the least I should do was give him a proper place to sleep. His patience made me angry; it filled me with a guilt I had no room for. Wasn’t this hard enough already, when my own nights were haunted by Mathuin? ‘Might almost be better if you were,’ I found myself saying. ‘My dreams don’t make the best company.’

A grunt was all the response I got. But I was used to him, and I knew it was no dismissal, but an acknowledgement that he understood. Which annoyed me even more – I didn’t need understanding, I didn’t want folk making allowances for me, I just wanted them to go away and leave me alone so I could make quite sure I didn’t forget the only thing that really mattered: making Mathuin pay for his crimes. Getting through the seven years so I could ensure that happened. Not wasting my anger on the folk who came to my door seeking love potions and cures for the pox and poultices for boils in awkward places. Not wasting it on Grim. Saving it for the man who had destroyed my life, and who would keep on doing the same to other folk until I stopped him.

‘Thing is,’ said Grim, and his voice was just above a whisper, ‘I don’t do so well on my own. At night. Day’s all right, sun shining, work to do, and you’re in and out of the house.’

I said nothing. I heard how hard it was for him to admit this.

‘Loneliest place in the world, sometimes, that place of Mathuin’s,’ Grim said. ‘Even with the noise, the screaming, Frog Spawn going on and on with his list, and Slammer . . . A fellow could be in there, with all that around him, and feel like he was at the bottom of a well, in the deep of a pit, somewhere nobody would ever find him. Night time, worse. Even when Frog Spawn was quiet, even when the guards were off sleeping, I could hear it. See it. Everything. All the things, from the first day, they never went away. Not for a single heartbeat.’

I nodded, though Grim was not looking at me, but into the fire. I didn’t remind him that we were out now, and safe, and that those things were gone. ‘You could have killed Slammer or Tiny,’ I said. ‘Any time they had you out of your cell, you could have done it in a moment.’

A long silence, then he said, ‘Thought of it. A lot. Before you came I might have done it. They’d have made an end of me, after, and it would all have been over. Different when you came. If I’d done that, you would have been on your own.’

There was nothing to say to this. Nothing at all. I’d have survived without his hulking presence in the cell opposite. I’d have managed without his voice measuring out the hours of night. My anger would have kept me alive. But he had made a difference. The big ugly fellow who’d insisted on calling me Lady even when I was lower than the low had been . . . not a friend, because a person like me didn’t have friends, but . . .

‘Maybe it’ll go away one day,’ he said, lifting his head, looking over at me. ‘Do you think? When we’re old folk?’

Suddenly I wanted to cry, which was beyond ridiculous. ‘We’re old already, the two of us,’ I said. ‘Old inside. Old and tired.’

‘Thing is,’ said Grim, ‘when I did sleep, it was because you were there across the way. Knew I had a job to do, a reason not to string myself up and make an end of it. A reason not to attack Slammer and get myself killed. Still got a job to do, only . . .’

‘Only you can’t always remember that when you’re on your own at night?’

‘That’s about the size of it. Big soft fool, I am.’

Words came to my lips, words I knew would hurt him terribly, although they were the truth. Some part of me, a long unused part, stopped those words before I could say them. ‘Grim. We’ve seen so much, the two of us, we’ve been through so much, it’s stupid to concern ourselves with what folk might think if we both sleep here in the cottage. If being able to see me when you wake in the night will mean you get proper rest, then we’d better make sure you can, for now at least. There are two beds; we’ll use them. Only one request: you might make some kind of screen, so we don’t have to do that whole silly exercise of one holding up a blanket while the other gets dressed in the morning.’

‘You wouldn’t be wanting folk to think badly of you,’ Grim said, but I had seen the change in his eyes, the dawning hope. ‘Wise woman and all. Doesn’t seem quite right.’

‘They can think what they like. Why would I care? If they choose not to make use of my services because they think I’m a woman of easy virtue, that’s their problem.’

‘What about the prince? Oran of Dalriada? If what he said was right, about the cottage being his to let us live in or not, he might take it into his head to throw us out.’

‘I doubt a prince is going to take a personal interest in who shares the local healer’s sleeping quarters. He’ll surely have weightier matters on his mind.’

‘An idea,’ Grim said. ‘I could keep my bedroll out in the lean-to. It’s dry now I’ve mended the roof and put in the new door. Bring it in last thing at night, put it out first thing in the morning, before anyone’s here but the two of us.’

‘If that soothes your finer feelings, Grim, by all means do so.’
It’s not an invitation to creep into my bed in the middle of the night
, I thought of saying, but decided it was unnecessary. We were beyond weary, the two of us; worn out by what had befallen us, sickened by it. If anyone were to creep into anyone’s bed, it would not be because of the desire a man feels for a woman, or a woman for a man. It would more likely be the terror of an infant waking from a nightmare and reaching for the comforting familiar.

‘What?’ I said, sensing Grim’s eyes on me.

‘You were smiling.’

‘Don’t assume anything from that. Disturb my sleep and you’ll be straight back into the outhouse.’

He kept on at me about Oran, Prince of Dalriada, and the time the fellow had come riding by with his serving man and stopped to talk. That was the day I’d made sure I wasn’t home, since I’d had no desire for people of his kind to ask me for help with their aches and pains. How was I to know the fellow owned the cottage and the land around it, as far as the eye could see? When I’d watched them ride up, what I’d seen was wealth, privilege and power. I’d seen a man like Mathuin of Laois, and I’d slipped off into the woods before he could start asking awkward questions. Before he could impose his will on me or ask me for something I wasn’t prepared to give. I loathed his kind. They were all the same. Too much power made people arrogant and unfeeling. It turned them cruel. It blinded them to right and wrong.

Time passed and this prince didn’t favour us with another visit. Nor did he send one of his lackeys to ask why I hadn’t done as I was bid and come to report. Maybe he was impressed by the job Grim had done to the old dump of a place. Maybe word had got back to him that I did an adequate job of providing what folk needed when they were sick or hurt.

As for Conmael and his folk, there was neither sight nor sound of them, though I couldn’t walk far into Dreamer’s Wood without feeling the presence of the Other. Maybe the fey weren’t there right now, but something was; something old and strange and powerful. I was careful, gathering herbs or bark or mushrooms, to do it in the right way, with words of thanks. Each night I set a crust of bread and a cup of mead on a flat stone outside the back door. Grim never said a word about that. He went into the wood too, for fuel or other materials, but he came back out as quickly as he could. Perhaps he said his own words of thanks. I never asked.