Dreamer's Pool (9 page)

‘Interesting,’ my father said. ‘But you understand that we cannot send forces south to help Cadhan with whatever difficulty he’s in, whether it’s of Mathuin’s making or someone else’s. That could ignite full-scale war. We must limit ourselves to offering Lady Flidais sanctuary, which is all Cadhan has requested. Let’s not complicate matters, Oran.’

‘I’m not suggesting we take up arms in Cadhan’s support, Father. I know such an action would have far-reaching consequences, and might set you in conflict with your existing allies. But someone might have a word with the king of Laigin. Someone to whom any ruler would be prepared to listen.’

They had caught my drift now. ‘You’re not speaking of Lorcan,’ Father said, ‘but of his father-in-law, the High King. We might send a confidential message to Lorcan; he might then have a quiet word in the right quarter. And pressure might be put on Mathuin to cease and desist from whatever he is doing to Cadhan.’

‘A long bow to draw, perhaps. But it could be effective. Mathuin has some supporters among his fellow chieftains, but nobody really trusts the man. He’s viewed as autocratic and unpredictable. His overlord is considered weak.’

‘You’ve been studying hard, Prince Oran.’ Feabhal managed to make this sound like an insult, and this time my father noticed.

‘To good effect,’ he said. ‘I have heard something of the same criticism. I will consider your suggestion seriously, Oran, though there’s always a difficulty with these sensitive matters; it would be far better if I could speak to Lorcan in person.’

I seized the moment. ‘He will, of course, be invited to the hand-fasting. He’s a kinsman, isn’t he?’

My father favoured me with a smile, which was a rare occurrence. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘You show some perspicacity in this matter, Oran. I welcome that. When the opportunity arises I will have a word with Lorcan. As for the matter of where Lady Flidais should be accommodated, that decision must be made immediately. I should send a response to Lord Cadhan today by the swiftest messenger I can find. I don’t believe the issue needs further debate. If you want to house her at Winterfalls from the start, so be it. But speak to the queen, obtain her approval, and make sure you ask her about a suitable chaperone for the young lady.’

‘Of course, Father. I will do so straight away.’ I resisted the urge to leap up and do a little dance of triumph. Silently I thanked Donagan for helping me prepare my argument. It was true about the bards and druids, the scribes and scholars; but I had not thought of using them.

‘I’ll have my scribe draft the reply. Oran, I will need you again once it’s ready. The rest of you are dismissed.’

‘Yes, Father.’ I hesitated. ‘May I enclose a brief message for Lady Flidais?’

‘Go and talk to your mother first. If you’ve time to write a letter as well, do so. Be sure it really is brief.’

My dear Flidais,
I wrote
, I have just come from a difficult meeting with my mother. I will spare you the details. Mother only wants the best for us, but she is a formidable woman and somewhat inflexible in her opinions. However, her delight in our impending marriage has mellowed her. My love, I was horrified to learn of your father’s current difficulties. Please stay safe on your journey north. I will be counting the days until you reach Winterfalls. As my father has said in his letter to Lord Cadhan, your party is to come straight here, not to court. This makes your journey a little shorter, since my home is situated some twenty miles south of Cahercorcan, which is a grand fortified place built on a promontory overlooking the northern sea. I am making your new home ready for you, dear Flidais, and I dream of walking in the woods with you and Bramble, and sitting by the hearth reading poetry. My mother will be sending a small army of additional serving people to Winterfalls, though I have my own very capable folk here. She is including a rather fierce aunt as chaperone. I offer my apologies in advance – Aunt Sochla will find she has nothing to do, I believe. Dear Flidais, Father has asked me to keep this short, and I will. Please be safe on the road, and know that my heart travels with you.

Oran

7

~BLACKTHORN~

I
t turned out I could still patch people up pretty well. The beatings and abuse, the degradation and filth hadn’t been quite enough to drive out what I’d learned long ago in that life I didn’t want to think about. The part I couldn’t do, or not for long, was talk to folk, be courteous to them, take an interest in their little woes, accept their grovelling
thank-you
s with a smile.

It got me wondering how I’d ever managed to deal with my own kind before. I surely couldn’t now. All I wanted was to be left alone. If I couldn’t have vengeance, if I couldn’t bring Mathuin down, I wanted simply to exist, somewhere quiet, somewhere beyond the well-trodden paths, somewhere I wouldn’t need to think about anything except getting water from the stream, gathering mushrooms or berries, making a fire to keep myself alive through another night. Seven years I had to stay alive, or there was no purpose to any of it. Curse Conmael for setting this burden on me!

And as for Grim, why in the name of all that was holy hadn’t he stayed with those people at the farm? I’d seen the way they looked at him. How often did folk meet a man with the strength of a giant? He’d have been given work there, sure as sure, if only he’d asked them. Work, a home, money in his pockets. Wasn’t that what he wanted, a job, a purpose? I wasn’t offering either.

But he came on with me, a big lump dogging my footsteps, and I couldn’t send him away because I’d made my promise to wretched Conmael. Besides, it seemed Grim really did know the way to Dalriada
–
how, I couldn’t imagine and wasn’t planning to ask, since I’d learned long ago that his past was under the same sort of lock and key as mine. And while I could fend for myself perfectly well, there was no disputing that Grim could do some things a lot more quickly and easily than I could. Gathering firewood, for instance, or building a shelter. If we’d been attacked on the road or in our camp, I could have defended myself up to a point. But his presence meant nobody was even going to try. And he could pay his way, more or less. After that first time, with the cart, he found plenty more opportunities to earn a few coppers or a fat hen or a loaf of fresh bread.

It was more difficult for me. Often enough, we passed farms or settlements where a healer was needed. It might be a woman straining to give birth to a babe set awry in the womb, or an old man rattling and wheezing in his death throes. Conmael’s agreement had turned me into a coward. I feared to offer help, lest folk take advantage. I knew quite well how one request for aid could turn into many.
Oh, please help my child, he’s struggling to catch his breath.
So herbs were steamed in a pot, and a poultice was applied to the chest, and common-sense advice was given about keeping the little boy warm and clean and feeding him light, nourishing fare. Next thing it would be,
Couldn’t you stay one more day, just to be sure?
Or,
My neighbour’s little girl has the same sickness, you’ll look at her too, won’t you? And by the way, the old fellow down the road is poorly as well . . .
And so it would go on. If a person had promised never to say no to such requests, she might find herself trapped somewhere for life, unable to keep the rest of the bargain, which was to go to this place called Winterfalls.

Not that I was looking forward to getting there. The cottage had sounded all right, but once folk knew there was a wise woman in residence again, it would be visitors all day whether I liked it or not. If I did my job adequately, as it seemed I still could, they’d keep coming no matter how snappish and contrary I might be. Conmael had trapped me neatly. I couldn’t even regret saying yes to him, since if I hadn’t, I’d have been dead and forgotten by now. And even when things had been at their darkest, when anger had been like a rat gnawing at my vitals, when grief had shut down my heart, I’d known death was not the answer. There’d always been vengeance to keep me going. There still was, provided I could find enough patience to last me seven years.

I practised on Grim. There was the day he found a fair like the one he’d spoken of, and went off with his bag of coppers in his pouch while I stayed away, sitting under a tree keeping myself to myself and half-wishing he’d never come back. But he did, a bit the worse for wear, having drunk a fair quantity of ale, and he brought me the kerchief he seemed to think I wanted. I thanked him and made myself wear the thing, which I guessed was the most eye-catching he’d been able to find in the whole encampment: bright poppy-red with a border of blue flowers done in wool embroidery. Just the thing for crossing country unnoticed.

Despite the interruptions while one of us did some work and earned the pittance that was all most folk could afford to pay, we made reasonable progress. I judged it to be close to the festival of Lugnasad, harvest time, when we came up over a pass and looked north across the region of Ulaid. To the east I could see the grey expanse of the sea, under a sky of building clouds that promised rain by nightfall. That meant another miserable wet camp, unless we reached farmland and happened on a barn whose owner wasn’t going to wake us up and demand a day’s labour for the privilege of shelter. Ahead, over those hills and valleys, away off in the misty distance, lay the kingdom of Dalriada. Somewhere up there was Winterfalls and the end of my journey. Just how far we still had to walk I wasn’t sure, and nor was Grim, since he’d never heard of Winterfalls until I mentioned the name. He did know Dalriada was in the far north-east of Ulaid, so we still had a way to go. All the same, getting over the mountains felt like some kind of achievement. I found myself hoping Ulaid was full of folk who didn’t need help, or preferred not to ask for it. Found myself, stupidly, wondering if the cottage Conmael had mentioned might turn out to be a sort of gift. Hah! The complications of this whole thing, the offer, the obligation, the guilt, the choices in it were enough to make a person’s head spin. It was both gift and burden. Because nothing came for free, ever.

‘Better be moving on,’ said Grim. ‘Storm’s coming.’

It was coming fast. The clouds were a dark stir in the sky; the distant sea was a slaty sheet. The wind poked chill fingers through the warm clothing Conmael’s folk had given me. I had not seen my fey benefactor since that night. I wondered, sometimes, if he’d become bored by the whole thing, or forgotten me. I considered testing this theory by heading off on my own in whatever direction I chose. But the price of being wrong on this particular point was far too high to take chances. If I got to Winterfalls, and if the time stretched out to a year, two perhaps, with still no sign of Conmael, then maybe . . .

‘Woods down there,’ Grim observed, leaning on the staff he had cut from a fallen oak branch. ‘Best shelter we’ll get.’

By the time we reached the wooded lower slopes, it was raining steadily. A rumble of thunder, not so far away, sent us along a track into dense oak forest. Here the canopy kept off the worst of the rain. But our clothing was already soaked. The storm had turned day to dusk; there was no choice but to make camp somewhere in these woods.

It took longer than I liked to find a spot, near some rocks, with a busy stream gushing past not far away. There was a cave of sorts, a place where we’d be able to keep a fire burning. We had a routine now, as folk do who travel long paths together. I built a hearth from stones while Grim gathered fallen branches and sticks. I kindled the fire; Grim filled the water skins and got out the makings of a meal. Supplies were low. It was some time since we’d visited a settlement or farm, and we were down to a few dried-up mushrooms and the remains of a bag of oatmeal Grim had earned by helping move a particularly difficult bull from one farm to another without anyone being hurt. While he boiled the oatmeal in water over the fire, I foraged for wild onions near the stream; going further afield in such bad light would have been foolish.

Wet clothing was always a problem. No matter that we’d lived opposite each other in the lockup for a whole year, and seen such horrors that a naked body had no more power to shock either of us. The fact was, we weren’t in there now, and some things didn’t feel right. After that first night, when I’d called Grim up to the campfire and made him strip so he wouldn’t perish from cold, he’d never taken his clothes off in front of me. He’d always go and do it somewhere out of sight, and if there was nothing dry to put on he’d make sure he was well covered with blankets. As for me, if I had to change I’d simply ask him to turn his back. It was a small enough thing, and I wondered sometimes why we bothered, after everything. Shyness? Shame? Could have been a bit of both, or something else. It went along with not using those names for each other, Slut, Bonehead, when everyone else had. Back then, it had marked out a kind of alliance. It had said that even when you’d seen a person scorned and beaten and degraded, you could still show them courtesy.

I didn’t say any of this to Grim, of course. He understood it in his own way, without needing my words to complicate things. There was an enforced closeness about travelling together, one of the reasons I’d have rather been on my own. Courtesy and respect, and a bunch of other things, kept us on opposite sides of the fire even when we were shivering under our blankets. It stopped us from asking each other about the time before that place, and what had led us there. Family, friends, home: none of those. A lot of the time we said nothing at all.

We ate our meal hunched over the fire. The wettest items of clothing we draped over sticks and bushes. The rest we wore, along with the blankets. My joints ached. I longed for a hot bath. But, fey as he was, Conmael wasn’t the kind of being who could be summoned when you wanted him and asked for three wishes. More likely he’d be the one doing the summoning.

About the meal, the less said the better.

‘It’s hot,’ I said, curling my fingers around the cup. ‘That’s something.’

‘Mm-hm.’ Grim had almost finished his share. He was a big man, and always hungry. It made me wonder how he’d managed in that place, where we’d learned to be grateful for watery gruel. How he’d stayed so strong. Strong enough to get three of us out, and then himself.

‘Be good if we don’t need to stop too much from here on,’ I said. ‘We must have enough coppers now to buy our food if we can’t catch it along the way.’

‘Mm-hm.’ A silence. Then, ‘We’d be wanting to keep some set by,’ Grim said, staring into the fire.

This statement bothered me for several reasons. ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

‘We’ll be needing things when we get there. You’ll want healers’ supplies. And a lot more, if this cottage is in a bad state of repair. Enough to get us on our feet.’

That this made good sense didn’t make it any less troubling. It wasn’t just his easy use of ‘we’. It was the assumption that the two of us might have some kind of life together after we reached Winterfalls. The implication that, in some capacity, Grim would be staying. I thought of things I could say, brutally true things, and discarded them one by one. He’d asked me for help, that night in the woods. He’d said he had nowhere else to go. If I didn’t want seven years to become eight, I had to be careful.

‘That makes it all the more important to get on quickly,’ I said. ‘If Conmael thinks I can set up as a healer at Winterfalls, then I suppose I can, one way or another. Maybe this prince what’s-his-name will dispense some largesse. Though that’s doubtful. I imagine there’s a court physician for him and his nobles, and my job will be tending to the folk the prince’s healer thinks himself too good for.’

Grim gave me a look, but said nothing.

‘What?’ I snapped.

‘Got a low opinion of yourself.’

‘Did I say that?’

‘Didn’t have to.’ He drew breath. ‘You don’t want to start believing those things, you know. What they used to say, in that place. The names. The . . .’

I waited.

‘It’s all lies. You know that. But when they keep on saying it, over and over, when they make you say it yourself, when they . . . It’s hard not to believe it. It’s hard not to think you’re the lowest of the low. For some of us, maybe it wasn’t lies, maybe it was the truth. But it was never true for you.’

For a bit, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘Sorry,’ said Grim. ‘Shouldn’t have talked about it.’

‘You can’t know that,’ I said, setting down my cup and holding my hands out to the fire. Why was it so hard to get warm? ‘You know nothing about me. I might be all those things they said.’

‘I do know.’

At least he hadn’t invited me to share my life story. If there was anything he and I had in common, it was the understanding that we wouldn’t trespass on that forbidden ground. ‘Your faith in me is without any basis in fact,’ I said.

‘Faith’s faith,’ said Grim.

It was too dark and cold to do anything but sleep, so we slept, or I did anyway. Grim wasn’t much of a sleeper. Freedom hadn’t changed that. In that place, he’d catnapped during the day, when the guards were elsewhere, though he’d always woken when they were coming. His uncanny awareness had alerted him even when he was asleep. At night we’d talked, sometimes, and when we weren’t talking he’d gone through his routine. I’d fallen asleep to the sound of him breathing hard as he performed some impossible exercise, and when I’d woken, whether it was morning or still night, he’d always been awake before me. Sometimes standing at the bars, as if he was waiting for me. Sometimes lying on his pallet staring at the roof. But never sleeping.

We’d become used to waking fast in there. Mostly, at night, they left us to ourselves. But sometimes Slammer would take it into his head to come in and stir us up, and it didn’t pay to get caught off guard. Times like that, Grim would shout to warn us and we’d scramble up and get to the back of our cells.

Still, I wasn’t expecting to be shaken rudely awake now, out in the middle of nowhere in a thunderstorm. I jumped up, but my mind was still half-trapped in the dream I’d been having, a bad one involving Mathuin of Laois.

‘What?’ I growled, clutching the blanket around me. Danu save us, it was cold!