“Just storage rooms, my lady. A closed-off part of the house. And …”
“And Deord’s quarters. Just beneath us.” It must be so; even had her quick
estimates of distance not made this evident, she knew whose voice that had been, a voice she heard nightly in her dreams. The grilled roof of Drustan’s enclosure must lie below and to the west of them, concealed by the high parapet wall on that side of the courtyard. The sleeping quarters must be almost directly under them. Some quirk of construction made it possible to hear quite clearly, for all
the considerable difference in height. Ana’s heart was making a nuisance of itself, pounding as if she had run a race. She felt the flush in her cheeks. Common sense said quite clearly,
Pack up your work and go; do so in silence
. In her hands she still held the little square on which the form of the hoodie was half-stitched, its neat plumage glossy in her best silk thread. She stroked the bird
image with a finger that was not as steady as it should be.
“My lady!” hissed Ludha, jerking her head toward the steps. She had gone pale; fear was in her eyes.
“Not yet, Ludha,” Ana said. “We are safe here a little longer. Let us finish the song, at least, and reunite Linia with her warty sweetheart. Where were we?”
“So she went out on a fair spring morn …” Ludha sounded as if she were singing
through clenched teeth, but she had picked up her work again and begun to sew with grim determination.
“When birds flew swift from tree to tree …” Ana sang, wondering why there was a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes.
“And pricked her finger on a thorn …” came the hesitant voice from below, not a resonant, well-formed tone like Faolan’s, but that of a man who has almost forgotten how
to make music, so long has it been since he had either the inclination or opportunity.
“And shed her blood so all could see,” sang the three voices together, blending in a sweet sound that rang across the sunny court. The ballad went on to tell how Linia won back her lover by a little self-sacrifice and a smidgeon of well-directed hearth magic. As they worked their way through it, Ana pinpointed
the spot where the third voice could be most clearly heard, a crack between flagstones and inner wall, and when they were done she moved to kneel by this narrow aperture.
“Drustan?” she asked softly. Ludha was staring, either aghast or impressed, Ana could not tell which.
“Ana?” His tone was uneven. Perhaps he had believed she would run away; would never return, once she knew he was there.
“Where are you?”
A pause. “Where would I be but here?” he said.
“Where exactly? Is Deord there?”
“I am in the sleeping quarters. I heard you singing. And talking. I’m sorry if I have offended you …”
“Deord?”
“Fetching water. I will know when he returns. The gate creaks.”
Then, abruptly, Ana found herself lost for words. The only question in her mind was,
Did you do it, did you really kill
them
?
This could not be spoken, not thus baldly. Not at all.
“You are well?” Drustan whispered. “Deord told me Alpin was angry. That he would have hurt you.”
“Deord did a good job of stopping that,” she managed, “though not before your brother had struck my maid. Your guard is a very capable man. Alpin did have cause to be angry with me, though not with Ludha. I had disobeyed a rule. More than
one. He told me your story, Drustan.”
No reply at all to this. Glancing across at Ludha, Ana surprised an expression that was more fascination than terror. This was too far gone now; she would have to hope her maid could be trusted. “He told me something terrible. About what happened all those years ago.”
Silence again.
“Drustan, talk to me.”
“What can I say?” The tone was weary.
Tears pricked
Ana’s eyes again. The truth burst out despite her best efforts. “I suppose I’m hoping you will tell me it was a lie. That you didn’t do it. It is something I do not want to believe.”
After a little he said, “You are distressed. Better if you do not talk to me. That’s what Deord says.”
Ana felt anger stir. “It’s not up to Deord or to anyone but me to decide that. Unless, of course, you don’t
want to talk …”
“I do not wish to make you sad. I do not wish to frighten you. That was a dark day. It set a shadow over Briar Wood that will never be lifted.”
Ana’s heart was still racing. She made herself take a deep breath. “Will you talk about it? Tell me? Is it true, what Alpin said?”
“What did my brother tell you?”
Ana gritted her teeth; she did not want to utter the words aloud.
“Ana?
What did he say?”
“He told me you … you are subject to some kind of frenzy. That it grips you from time to time, and you act as if you were mad. He said you killed his wife. That you … drove her to her death.”
“A man does not lie about a matter so close to his heart.” The tone was flat now.
“Wh-what are you saying, Drustan?”
“I would give much to be able to tell you my brother is wrong. But
I cannot.”
Her heart was a leaden weight. She closed her eyes, unable to speak. Why this mattered so much, she could not imagine. She hardly knew the man. Yet it seemed the heaviest of blows. “Thank you for being honest,” she said when she found her voice again. “This grieves me. I did not believe it could be so; you do not seem to me like a … a …”
“Monster? Madman? They give me many names,
some far worse than those. My brother has treated me better than I deserve.”
Ana was gathering up her work, packing linen and needles into the willow basket. On the other bench Ludha did the same. The silence stretched out.
“Your singing gave me light,” came Drustan’s whisper. “Thank you. I had forgotten such fair sounds.”
Ana quashed the strong inclination to ask further questions. Something
within her was unwilling, still, to accept the truth about this captive, even now he had confessed to her in his own words that he was indeed a savage killer and unfit to walk abroad. She must not allow those thoughts to get the better of her common sense.
“We must leave now,” she told him. “It’s late, and it’s getting cold up here.”
“Will you come again?” There was a forlorn note in the question
that told Ana he knew the answer must be no.
“I—I don’t know,” Ana whispered, hating the weakness that would not allow her to grant him a firm response,
I cannot come.
“Say it.” Drustan’s voice had changed: this was a challenge. “Tell me the truth. You will not come because you despise me. Because you shrink from me. Say it!”
“That’s not true! I don’t despise you!” Sudden tears filled her eyes.
“Then will you come?”
“What about Deord?” Curse it, why couldn’t she shut her mouth and walk away as any sensible woman should?
“Sometimes he is here, sometimes out in the house; he must fetch what is needed. If you sing, I will know you are there. If I speak, you will know it is safe.”
Ana looked across at her maid. A great deal depended on Ludha’s loyalties. The girl gave a little nod.
“A friend advised me once,” Ana said to her unseen listener, “to rely on the intellect before the emotions. It was wise guidance. If I heeded it, I would tell you I cannot return here. Your brother has promised immediate and cruel punishment for any man who so much as looks at me in a way Alpin dislikes. I can imagine how he would view our meeting thus. To do this again would be foolish, risky, and
entirely inappropriate.”
Silence indicated Drustan was waiting for more.
“I’ll come if I can, Drustan.”
“I’ll wait for you,” Drustan said. “Farewell, Ana.”
THAT NIGHT ANA gave the crossbill its portrait in fine silks and received in her turn a gift of a small chip of stone on which, roughly scratched, was the outline of a heart. If she had refused to acknowledge to herself, before
this, that her interest in Drustan went beyond curiosity, compassion, and a need to see justice done, she was forced to do so in the moment when the bird laid this token on the small table in her bedchamber. Ludha had retired for the night; the creature had flown in the window from the darkness outside and waited at a safe distance from the candle, watching as Ana put the gift under her pillow.
When it was gone she lay on her bed thinking of Alpin, who had pressed her up against a wall after supper and given her a kiss that was unabashedly persistent. She had endured it, imagining all the while how it would be if another man held her, a man whose kiss would be as gentle as this was rough, as tender as this was brutal. Alpin’s embrace chilled and frightened her; she knew that the other
kiss would send a fiery warmth through her body, making her limbs weaken and her heart pound with excitement. It was a thing that was never going to happen: the stuff of foolish fancy. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything before.
The druid was taking a long time to come. As one turning of the moon stretched into two, Ana recognized the delay as a gift of sorts, and began a delicate
kind of dance, a dance with an invisible partner. Each step, each measure, each move was fraught with danger. Often the patterns of it were interrupted, for Ana could not disappear to the little courtyard every day without attracting undue notice, and when she did go there, often Drustan remained silent, which meant Deord was with him. Ana thought it likely Deord already had suspicions, for
if he had ever been within the sleeping quarters when folk sat conversing up above, he must surely know the building’s secret. But Alpin’s special guard went to and fro with his supper trays and kept his tranquil eyes discreetly away from his chieftain’s bride-to-be. In no way did Deord indicate anything was out of the ordinary, and Ana’s heart beat more calmly for it.
All the same, her days
formed themselves around those brief times, those brief, magical times when she could speak to Drustan, could whisper to his unseen ear and crouch by the wall to catch his soft replies. She finished the second little square and dispatched it with the hoodie when the bird came visiting. She planned a third but did not start on it, since she had not quite the right colors to render the smallest bird’s
plumage exactly. Besides, she had Alpin’s wedding clothes to finish, and now that Ludha had provided the design there was no excuse for not getting on with it. It was this piece of work she had with her the afternoon Ludha forgot to pack a particular length of ribbon in her work basket and had to go down to the sewing room to fetch it.
It was the first time Ana had been alone with Drustan. She
had been careful, thus far, in what she said to him. Not a word had been spoken of their encounter in the forest, or the fact that he and Deord had the means to escape their confinement. If Ludha had suspected anything unusual in Ana’s rapid befriending of her prospective brother-in-law, she had not spoken of it. Often they sang songs together, the three of them, and once or twice exchanged old
tales and childhood rhymes. On one occasion Ana asked Drustan about the birds, how they came to be so close to him, how it was they stayed safe in a house full of cats. He answered cryptically; it was hard to interpret his words. She told him a little about her childhood in the Light Isles, and about becoming a hostage, and how it had felt.
As time passed and spring warmed into summer, their
talk became easier. She asked him about his childhood, and learned of a boy who had been often alone, but never lonely. Creatures had been his companions; dreams had sustained him. He had lived at Briar Wood with his brother and sister until he was seven years old. Then he had gone away to the west, to his grandfather’s house, a house that had later belonged to Drustan himself, before he was shut
away.
“That place is called Dreaming Glen,” he told her with a shy pride. “It is full of soft light, a light not seen anywhere else in Caitt territories. It’s like a blessing from another world; I always thought the touch of the gods was on those sheltering hills, that still water. There are two lakes near my house; I had my own names for them, names I gave them when my grandfather first took
me back there with him.”
“What were the names?”
“The first lake, near the house, is fringed by trembling birches. It seems to give back a brightness beyond that of sun or moon, as if it made its own shining. I called it Cup of Sky. The other is a place where mist lies over the water even in the heat of day. Broad-leaved plants float on its surface, with white flowers in summer, and long-legged
birds move in and out of the vapor like visitors from another realm. That lake was Cup of Dew. A child’s names.”
“Those names paint a picture for me. I would love to see Dreaming Glen one day. Drustan, why were you sent there to live when you were so young?”
“There was no place for me here. I was a source of shame to my parents; my brother and sister shunned me. My grandfather made me a place.”
He asked her about the wedding and she gave guarded replies. She did not know if the tumult of feelings inside her, the longing to see him, the desire to touch him, an impossible, ridiculous thing, was evident in her voice. She thought she heard an echo of it in his, but Ana put it down to a craving for company to while away the endless days of incarceration.