None of them spoke, but there was a universal sigh, soft and sorrowful, and then they dispersed.They did not walk away or wink instantly out of sight, but faded gradually until their forms were no longer discernible against the dark trunks of the trees or the green of the foliage.
“You speak to them of hope?” Anluan sounded both astonished and displeased, and my heart sank.
“There’s always hope,” I said. “There’s always a reason for going on.” Once, when she was called to the door, Ita had left a carving knife unguarded on the table. I could have done it. I could have plunged the blade into my chest. My hand had itched to seize the weapon.To end the pain ... to set myself free ... But I had not done it. Even in that time of utter darkness, somewhere deep inside me the memory of love and goodness had stayed alive. “There is hope for everyone.”
“Doesn’t the presence of these beings on the hill convince you that for some, life is without hope and the place beyond death still darker?”
“You believe they are spirits of the unquiet dead?”
“Speak to Eichri or Rioghan.They are something of that kind, but their forms are more substantial than one would imagine ghosts or spirits to be. They do not eat; they do not sleep.Yet they can touch; they can laugh; they can plan and debate and trade insults—at least, those who dwell in the house can, and I suppose it is true for the rest as well.They can feel sorrow, guilt, regret. It seems all were once ordinary men or women who dwelled in these parts.”
“That’s ... astonishing.And sad.A hundred years of waiting in the forest for ... for what? Is there no way to release them?”
“Come, let’s walk back,”Anluan said.“Don’t be so swayed by sympathy that you convince yourself these folk are harmless.They can attack, as you have already seen; they can kill, maim, destroy. Some of them were good people, perhaps, when they were alive in the world. But they are subject to influences more evil than you could imagine. It takes all my strength, all my will, to combat that. The situation is beyond remedy, Caitrin. Even your persistent hope cannot stretch so far.”
After we had climbed in silence for a while, I said, “Rioghan and Eichri are good people. Funny, kind, clever. I cannot imagine either committing evil acts. And Muirne ... while she and I are not exactly friends, I’ve seen how she looks after you, cares for you.”
“They’ve made a choice to be part of the household, perhaps because of some particular strength of will. Rioghan and Eichri clutch at life with all they have. Muirne has a long history of tending to the chieftains of Whistling Tor; she is a kindly soul, if wary of outsiders. You should not make the error of thinking the rest of them are the same.”
We emerged from the forest just below the fortress wall. Anluan sank down on a stone, suddenly fighting to catch his breath.
“I shouldn’t have made you do it again so soon,” I said, crouching beside him. “Call them forth, I mean. It’s too much for you.”
“I hate this,” Anluan muttered. “This weakness, this ... Why can’t I ...”
I caught myself about to behave as I had seen Muirne do under similar circumstances, fussing over him, offering support and sympathy. I made myself step back and, instead, settled cross-legged on the ground nearby. I would wait quietly until he was ready to move on. And while I waited, I would think about the words I had just addressed to the host, and whether they had implied a promise I had no capacity to keep.
chapter six
I
t felt distinctly odd to face the assembled household at the supper table in the knowledge that three of them were, if not exactly dead, most certainly less alive than Anluan, Olcan and I were. All eyes turned on me as I came in, last to arrive after falling asleep in my chamber and barely waking in time to brush my hair and make my way down. Muirne’s neat features gave nothing away. Anluan looked exhausted but managed a nod of acknowledgment. Olcan smiled, genial as ever, and Fianchu got up to give me his usual slobbery greeting.The pallid faces of Eichri and Rioghan wore guarded expressions; it was clear they did not know how I would respond to the startling revelations of the day.
“Recovered, Caitrin?” asked Magnus, who was carving a joint of mutton. “That was quite an experience. I hope you got a rest.”
“I fell asleep. I’m sorry if I’m late.” I took my place beside Eichri without fuss.
“Anluan tells us you gave some kind of undertaking to the host today,” said Rioghan. “I wish I’d been there to hear it.”
“I didn’t promise anything,” I said. “I’m hardly in a position to do that. But Whistling Tor is such a sad place. I know how it feels to be sad. If I can help anyone here, I believe I should try my best to do so. If we could uncover the whole of Nechtan’s story, we might find that matters are not as hopeless as they seem.” I glanced at Anluan. “It’s possible the Latin documents may contain a . . . solution. Something that could end the suffering of those folk out in the forest.” I looked down at my hands, suddenly embarrassed. “And yours, I suppose. Put that way, it sounds arrogant.”
“You can’t imagine you will find a counterspell.” I heard in Muirne’s tone how unlikely this was. “There can be no such spell, Caitrin, or it would have been put to use long ago.”
I felt my cheeks flush with mortification. It was with precisely this in mind that I had made the host my foolish offer of help.
“Arrogant, no,” Magnus said. “Ambitious, yes. If the rest of you want my opinion, Caitrin’s arrival amongst us has marked a big change, and maybe a change we all need. Speaking of which, Caitrin, Anluan has asked if I’ll go down to the settlement again in the morning. I’ll make sure your unpleasant friends are right out of the district, and at the same time I’ll inquire about how they knew where to find you. We don’t take kindly to folk who betray friends. But we won’t leap to judge, either. I’ll talk to Tomas and Orna, find out what’s been going on.”
“Thank you, Magnus,” I said.“It would set my mind at rest if I could be sure Cillian is gone.As for the host and a counterspell, I know it’s an unlikely chance. But what we need could be there among the documents. Perhaps it’s hidden in some way. Encoded.” I was bursting to ask them what they were, how they felt, where they had come from. Seated at the table by lamplight, with Magnus calmly serving supper as if everything was just as it had been, I found I could not quite get the words out. Instead I asked, “Do you believe Nechtan used dark magic of some kind when he brought forth the host?”
“It’s what folk say.” Eichri shifted in his seat; there was a grating sound, bone on bone. “But until you find a record spelling out exactly what he did, nobody can be quite sure. Saint Criodan’s is full of stories about him, though any monk who had personal dealings with him is long gone, of course. He was generous towards the foundation; he paid for a new building to house the library and scriptorium. Quite the scholar.”
The vision from the obsidian mirror came back to me, complete with every detail, and I set my knife down, finding I was not hungry after all. “He paid for knowledge,” I said. “A secret book, kept under lock and key. It contained something he needed, perhaps a spell, though it seems unlikely that a monastic foundation would have grimoires. He didn’t bring the book back here, but he got the information he wanted—he must have made a quick copy or memorized it. It would almost certainly be in Latin. Even if that’s not amongst the documents, there may at least be a description of the ... procedure. I don’t know quite how to say this, but ... it seems you were ... called back, as those others in the woods must have been.What can you remember?”
“We were somewhere else, and then we were here,” Eichri said. “My earthly life, such as it was, remains vivid in my memory. The moment of my death ... One does not forget that. But the time between then and my return is blurred. I recall being somewhat taken aback not to find myself sizzling in the flames of hellfire or condemned to some other dire punishment. That still awaits me, perhaps. It is possible Nechtan’s ill-executed experiment bought all of us time to make amends.To win ourselves a better conclusion when it is time to go once more.”
“It may never be time to go,” said Rioghan gravely. “Muirne is right, Caitrin. If Nechtan had possessed a charm of reversal, a form of words to banish the unruly host—I do not use the term
unruly
for myself or Muirne, you understand, but only for my clerical friend here and that rabble out in the woods—he would surely have used it as soon as he realized he hadn’t got what he wanted. We’ve already been on the hill for twice the natural lifespan of a man.We might be here forever, performing a good deed a day and getting no benefit at all from it.”
“So you were in some kind of middle realm, between this one and the next?” I queried. “A waiting place?”
“Hell’s antechamber,” observed Olcan dryly.
“Or heaven’s,” I said. “If it is possible to call folk back, as it seems Nechtan did, then Eichri may be right. Perhaps this second sojourn in the world of the living offers a chance to win a passage, not to perpetual suffering, but to eternal rest.”
“For me there can be no such reprieve,” muttered Rioghan.“Nor for
him
, I think.” He gazed at Eichri. “His crime was too obscene for such a second chance to be possible. Besides, in all the years he’s been hanging about here, I’ve never observed the least sign of contrition.There’s no hope for you, Brother.”
“Hope of what?” Eichri’s lips stretched in a mirthless smile. “A place in heaven? I never expected that, even when I was a living man, Councillor. At least I had the honesty to acknowledge that I was bad to the core. Hence the surprise when, on falling to the ground with such a pain in my chest that I knew I would never rise again, I did not find myself roasting nicely in the Devil’s flames, but ... well, as I said, we are not sure of that part.Whatever came next, it was evidently not memorable.”
“Interesting idea,” said Magnus.“For folk who are neither sinful enough to go straight to perdition nor saintly enough to rise to God’s right hand, there’s a future of utter tedium.A soul might work extremely hard to escape such a fate. Not being a godly man myself, I can’t say if it’s plausible. What would you have to do, Eichri, to be washed clean of your wrongdoing?”
A rattling shiver passed through the ghostly monk. Then Anluan said, “I do not know if it is true that a man can be absolved of any sin if he atones for it in some way.What is your opinion, Caitrin? Are you a woman of religious faith?”
“I was once,” I told him. “When my father died, it was a blow. What unfolded from that day almost destroyed my belief in God. But I believe we all have an inner goodness; a little flame that stays alight through the worst of trials. So perhaps my faith is not altogether gone. As for whether good deeds can cancel out wicked ones, I cannot say.” I thought of Ita’s biting tongue and Cillian’s cruel hands. I remembered Nechtan’s heartless act of torture, which he had believed perfectly justified. “Perhaps there are some evils that can never be erased,” I said.“As for religious faith, a lack of it shouldn’t stop us from doing good deeds for their own sake.”
Anluan had set down his knife with his meal barely touched.“If a man takes his own life,” he said, “that, surely, can never be acquitted. It is the ultimate sin, don’t you think? Such a person must go straight to hellfire, that’s if one believes in such a phenomenon. Or to oblivion. Or to be born again as the lowliest of creatures, a slug or marsh fly, perhaps.”
The others had gone unnaturally still. They were waiting for my response with a degree of interest that was suddenly intense. I did not like the look on Anluan’s face. His mood had changed abruptly. He seemed strung so tight that he would snap if I gave him an answer he did not care for.
“Slugs and marsh flies have their places in the great web of existence,” I said.“How should I answer, Anluan? As a devout Christian would, or as a person whose faith is, at best, shaky?”
“Answer honestly.”
“Very well.” My supper companions were all staring at me. “I do not view suicide as wicked, just terribly sad. There is only one death, but it is like a stone cast into a pond—the ripples stretch far. Such an act must leave a burden of sorrow, guilt, shame and confusion on an entire family.A natural death, such as my father suffered, is hard enough to deal with.A decision to end one’s life must be still more devastating for those left behind. I cannot imagine the degree of hopelessness someone must feel to contemplate such an act. Even in the darkest time, even when God was utterly silent, I never ... there was always something in my life, something I can’t even define for you, that stopped me from taking that step.The thought of such utter despair chills me. I hope that is honest enough for you.”
“Excuse me.” Anluan was on his feet and out the door almost before I had time to blink. His faithful shadow rose from the table and hastened after him.
Dismay must have been written all over my face. Magnus poured a cup of ale and set it in front of me, while Eichri wrapped his bony fingers around mine.
“I’ll have Muirne’s supper,” said Olcan.“Pass it up, Rioghan, will you?”
“If he didn’t want an honest answer he shouldn’t have asked for one,” I said, furious with myself for upsetting Anluan again, when he had been so open with me earlier.
The silence that followed was like the first ice of the season, brittle and dangerous.
“Anluan won’t tell you this,” Rioghan said, “but Irial died by his own hand. He used poison; we never found out exactly what kind. It must have been easy for him to concoct, since he was so knowledgeable about plants and their uses. Sixteen years ago, that was, and as clear in our minds as the day it happened. He was still alive when we found him out in the garden. It was . . .” He shivered. “It was bad. I’ll never forget his skin, all blue-gray like one huge bruise. His eyes went cloudy. Whatever it was that he took, it affected the lungs. He found it harder and harder to catch his breath. It seemed to me there was something he wanted to tell us, but his voice was gone.”