Dreamer's Pool (39 page)

‘ “Riches,” croaked the dying salmon. “A sweetheart. Admiration. Nobility. Happiness. A new cottage for your old mother. How would I know what you might want? I’m a fish.”

‘Something odd came over the lad then. For the rest of his life, he was never able to explain it. He saw how the bright eyes were fading, and the shining scales losing their lustre, and the gasps becoming more desperate. Then he eased the hook gently from the creature’s mouth. “Don’t bother about the wish,” he said, and with a certain amount of difficulty, since it was a very big fish and he was only an ordinary-sized lad, he threw the salmon back in the water, where it swam with surprising speed into the shadows and out of sight. Then he ran home with his story. And if there hadn’t happened to be a fellow taking his pigs into the wood that day to forage, who’d looked down between the trees at precisely the right moment and seen the whole thing unfold, nobody would ever have believed a word of it.’

There was a ripple of appreciation from the audience. Prince Oran glanced at the druid. ‘That was the tale the old man told the wise woman. And though she’d heard the story of the giant salmon before, more than once, she was surprised. This was the first time the old man had said anything about a wish.’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ Master Oisin said. ‘You have given us not only a fine story, but the clue to solving the dilemma of the sad creature in the cave. For the wise woman knew that a wish once offered, and refused with kindness for the right reasons, is a wish still waiting to be granted. She regarded the old fellow, and he looked back at her with his rheumy eyes. “That thing in the cave down below,” she said. “It needs your help. You’ve got a wish. Why not use it?”

‘ “To put the creature out of its misery?” the old man asked. “Are you saying that I spared that fish’s life as a young man so I can kill now? You want me to go to my deathbed with the weight of that on me?” ’

Don’t call on me to solve this for you
, I willed the druid.

‘Lady Flidais,’ said Master Oisin, ‘how would you choose to end this tale?’

She started with some violence. Despite my dislike of the girl, for a moment I felt something akin to pity. ‘To tell you the truth, Master Oisin,’ she said, ‘I do not much care for the story; I do not really see the point of it. If you need so much help to tell it, why not choose another, one with which you are more familiar?’

Several people made to speak, the prince among them, but Master Oisin got in first. ‘Indeed, indeed, my lady.’ He sketched a little bow in Flidais’s direction and spread his hands out as if in apology. ‘Let me bring this tale swiftly to its conclusion.

“‘I am not sure exactly what you should do,” said the wise woman, “only that a wish is a chance, an opportunity, and now seems the right time to use it. Not to kill; a wish born out of a generous impulse should surely not be used in such a way. Use it to heal what is wounded. To mend what is broken.” And as she said this she looked not in the direction of the cave with its forlorn inhabitant but straight at the old man.

‘Worn and crooked and ill-tempered as he was, he was no fool. “Best on my own,” he growled. “Don’t need company. Can’t abide folk.”

‘ “Truly?” the wise woman asked. “For a solitary man, you tell a fine story. Shame if there’s nobody to listen. And it seems a waste for that lad who had the courage to go to the uncanny pool, and the patience to wait through the seasons, and the compassion to set the salmon free, to end up living on his own in a place like this, getting older and wearier every day, without even the will to scrub his own cook pot.”

‘ “Who cares about a cook pot?” the old man snarled, but the wise woman could see she’d got him thinking. “Anyway, that’s no selkie down there, to be turned into a beautiful girl as soon as a man makes a wish. It’s a grumly thing. A monster. And it can’t live on the land, not all the time. Nor in the sea.”

‘ “Men and women have it in them to be far more monstrous than this creature,” said the wise woman. “It’s lonely. Like you. As for the sea or the land, you’ll need to make your wish carefully. Now I’m off, since you don’t care for company. I’ll be back tomorrow with that hot dinner.”

‘But when she did come back, with a stew in a covered pot, she heard voices from inside the old man’s hut, so she left the pot on the doorstep and went away, not before noticing that there was a trail of watery slime stretching all the way from that very doorstep down to the cave, or as near as she could see. And there was a cloak dripping on the line outside the back door, a lovely thing that seemed fashioned of seaweed, in every shade of blue and green and brown a person could ever dream of and a few more besides.

‘There was no more moaning and crying from the cave. Not ever again. The folk of the settlement were wary for a while, knowing the old man had someone staying in his cottage with him, not sure exactly who or what that someone might be. But when, after quite a long time and a lot of dinners left on the doorstep, his guest allowed herself to be seen, she turned out to be nothing remarkable at all, only an old woman with raggedy white hair and steady eyes, who bade folk good day in a voice as soothing as the wash of wavelets on a summer shore. As for the old man, he stayed the same, bent and worn, crabbed and argumentative. Mostly. But he did open his door to some: the wise woman, the lad who used to bring fish, one or two others, and when supper was over he’d tell tales, and the old woman would sing songs, and those tales and those songs were the most wondrous and enchanting ever heard, from one end of Erin to the other. And that is the end of the story.’ The druid turned toward Lady Flidais. ‘As for the point of it, my lady, that’s likely to be different for every listener. But it is, in the end, both tale of magic and mystery and tale of transformation.’

Flidais seemed about to speak, but evidently thought better of it. She was looking pale and pinched, as if the headache had returned tenfold. Now, as various folk congratulated the druid and Prince Oran for the odd but satisfying story, the lady rose to her feet, swayed, then collapsed into a dead faint.

I reached her quickly and knelt by her side. Mhairi, on the other side, was rolling up a shawl to put under Flidais’s head, while Lady Sochla shooed people out of the way. And now Master Oisin was there, crouching down beside me, taking the lady’s wrist between his fingers.

‘She’ll be all right, it’s only a faint,’ I said. ‘Mhairi, did she take the draught I prepared for her? The one she sent Nuala to fetch?’

Mhairi scowled at me. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘You are her maidservant. You must know.’

‘Yes, then. She took it because she was told to take it. And look at all the good it’s done.’

With admirable speed, Aedan organised a pair of men with a stretcher to carry the lady to the women’s quarters. It was notable that Prince Oran was not among those clustered around his unconscious betrothed. He came over belatedly, as the bearers were about to take her away, and regarded her with an expression that told me he thought she was pretending.

‘No need for concern, my lord,’ I said, wishing I could warn him to dissemble better. ‘The heat from the fire, the crowd . . . Lady Flidais should be herself again by morning.’ Hah! I could have expressed that better. ‘A good rest, a sleeping draught, that should be all she needs.’

‘I concur,’ said Master Oisin. ‘The lady is exhausted. We should leave her to Mistress Blackthorn’s excellent care.’

‘Thank you, Mistress Blackthorn,’ said the prince. ‘I know you will tend her well.’

I followed the stretcher out of the hall, feeling the temptation, while Flidais lay unconscious, to work a little spell that would make her tell the truth when she woke. That should lead to quick answers for the prince, and we surely needed those. But magic was perilous. It had a habit of coming back and biting you, especially if the reason for using it was selfish, destructive or otherwise flawed. Besides, hadn’t I promised Conmael I’d use my gifts only for good? While saving Prince Oran from a loveless marriage might be viewed as beneficial, robbing Lady Flidais of her secure future was less admirable, and the two went hand in hand. The fact that I thought the prince a good man and Lady Flidais ill-mannered and ignorant made no difference to that.

So, no spellcraft. Chances were I’d lost the knack anyway. I’d try kindness instead, if the lady would let me. She’d been disturbed tonight, not only by the prince’s public reprimand at the table, but also, badly, by Master Oisin’s story. A tale about a pool, and magic, and a transformation. Everything pointed to that day at Dreamer’s Pool when they’d gone bathing. That, surely, was the time when the sweet, scholarly Flidais of the letters became the abrasive, unhappy creature who would soon be marrying the prince. Wasn’t Dreamer’s Pool exactly the kind of mysterious, fey spot – like that cave in the druid’s story – where transformations took place?

This couldn’t be a simple impersonation. This woman
was
Flidais. Or, at least, she was Flidais in the flesh. What had apparently changed was her character. Seeing someone close to her drown would have been shocking, distressing. But it would not have been enough to change her entirely. Could this really be a magical transformation? The notion was enough to make my head spin. A spell that somehow switched the two women’s bodies, leaving their spirits and their awareness behind? That would be a most powerful enchantment. I did not doubt that there still existed in Erin certain places of deep magic; wells, caverns, waterfalls, crags whose power sang in the bones and beat in the blood. Could Dreamer’s Pool be such a place? I had felt the strangeness there, and I knew Grim had too.

Or might what had befallen Flidais have a different cause? Conmael’s folk were in the wood, or so he had suggested. Conmael had come to Prince Oran’s council. Conmael had caused the roof of Mathuin’s lockup to cave in on a calm, sunny summer day. He had worked a spell to ensure my future took the course he wanted, not the one I would have chosen. He knew how angry that made me. Could he be meddling with these folk’s lives for the sole purpose of testing my resolve?

If this really was a magical transformation, hard though that was to believe, it was bad news for Prince Oran. If the woman now being carried into her bedchamber was the maid in her mistress’s body, it meant the true Flidais had drowned that day in Dreamer’s Pool. There was no reversing this; not even the fey could bring the dead back to life. And I could not think of a way this would extricate the prince from his betrothal. Most folk wouldn’t believe the story, not even if the maid confessed. How could it ever be proved?

I’d have to ask Conmael outright if this was his doing. And since Conmael was hardly going to come when I called him, like a well-trained dog, I’d have to go to Dreamer’s Wood and look for him. The prospect of a walk over there and a day spent in the quiet was pleasing, though time was short. The cottage was as close to being home as anything ever was, and Grim made undemanding company. I could try my theory out on him first, and find out if he’d discovered anything useful. I would go in the morning.

Flidais came out of her faint soon after we reached the bedchamber. Mhairi seemed uncomfortable with my presence. But her lady was unwell, and the prince had said he wished me to look after her, so the maidservant could hardly ask me to leave. She helped her mistress undress and put on a nightrobe. Flidais’s monthly courses had started, which went some way to explaining both her discomfort and the faint, so while Mhairi cleaned her up and fetched a supply of rags, I checked the level in the jug I had given Nuala earlier and judged that Flidais had taken at most half a cup of the headache draught before supper.

Now was not the time to bully her about that, or indeed about anything. She was as white as the linen of her pillows, with shadows under her eyes. Exhausted, in pain and, I thought, frightened. Whatever was going on, it had become too big for her and she seemed lost.

‘Mistress Blackthorn?’ Nuala was in the doorway with Deirdre behind her. ‘How can I help?’

‘Go to the kitchen and ask for warm milk with honey. That may help Lady Flidais sleep better.’ I should make up a sleeping draught. But that meant going to my stillroom, and I did not want to leave Flidais’s side. It was at times like this, when folk were at their lowest, that they were inclined to let slip their secrets.

Mhairi had gathered Flidais’s clothing and taken it away to be laundered. Nuala headed off to the kitchen, and Deirdre went with her. For now, Flidais and I were alone.

‘Where does it hurt?’ I asked. ‘Your head? Your belly? Both?’

Flidais put a hand on her stomach; tears welled in her eyes.

‘You have this pain every month? I can make up a simple remedy for you, a tea, not at all bad tasting if you add honey. I know you don’t trust me, my lady, but believe me, I do know my craft.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not that,’ she whispered. ‘It’s . . . never mind. I only have cramps the first day, then it passes.’

I sat down on the stool beside her bed. The chamber was beautiful; the walls were hung with embroidered scenes of women sitting in a garden, playing with a ball by a fountain, walking with small dogs, picking flowers. I suspected every ornately carved chair, every delicate little table, every fine detail had been chosen by Prince Oran especially for his sweetheart. And here she was, utterly miserable.

‘Something is troubling you, Lady Flidais,’ I said, deciding on a direct approach. ‘Not just a headache or a bellyache, but something worse. I do know my herb lore. I do know how to ease pain. And they say I am good at solving puzzles. If there’s anything I can do, please ask.’ I hesitated, glancing toward the open doorway. Soon the household would be settling for sleep. ‘I am very discreet,’ I added.

Flidais’s gaze went to the door again, and back to me. ‘Later,’ she said. ‘When Mhairi is here. I can’t – it’s difficult –’

‘Then lie quiet until she comes back.’ I put my hand to her brow; it did not feel unduly warm. Did she mean she would tell me the truth once her maid was by her side? Would I finally have the answer? This felt almost too easy.