Heir to Sevenwaters (24 page)

“You want this hunting party to set off immediately, I take it?”

“The longer you leave it, the colder the trail will be. Before you assemble your group, talk to Clodagh. Clodagh, tell him everything about that last conversation with Cathal, will you? Every detail you can remember. Something you believe insignificant could be a vital clue. Aidan, you haven’t answered me.”

“It seems I have no choice.”

“Your choice is to obey me or to take yourself off home to Whiteshore. If that sounds blunt, circumstances demand it. Give me your answer. I, too, must make a swift departure.”

“I’ll do it. You may say that’s a choice, but we both know I won’t go home and turn my back on him.” Aidan hesitated. “Johnny?”

“If you have questions, be quick with them.”

“I want to take part in the counterattack. I don’t want to be left here as a household guard. Lord Sean’s men can do that capably.”

“You know I don’t make bargains,” Johnny said. “Do what you’ve been asked to do and we’ll discuss it afterward. Believe me, I understand your difficulty. Dealing with these things is part of the discipline of being a warrior, Aidan. It is an opportunity to show what you are made of.”

Aidan stood in stony silence as my cousin left the hall. Then the two of us looked at each other.

“You’re a loyal friend,” I said, and my voice came out sounding choked.

“I don’t know how I can bring myself to do it,” said Aidan. “Self-discipline is supposed to be the key element of our training. At times like this, I have grave doubts as to my ability to summon it. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps I don’t belong at Inis Eala.”

I reached to take his hand. “Better if you’re the one to do this,” I told him, not quite sure if I believed it. “You can explain to Cathal. You can make sure he understands that Johnny is prepared to hear what he has to say.” I thought Cathal might be no more prepared to explain himself to Johnny than he had been to me. After all, he’d left without a word to anyone else. Even his best friend hadn’t been warned. Looking at Aidan’s white face, his stricken eyes, I saw how cruel that had been.

Aidan put both his hands around mine. “Since Johnny has laid this on me, I must do it,” he said. “And I must go quickly. What he said . . . about Cathal and his conversation with you . . .”

“There’s nothing more to tell. I went through it all before.” As I spoke I remembered reprimanding Cathal after that kiss, and the way he had turned, his cloak swirling out behind him. Another memory stirred, oddly: Willow and her clurichauns. The red and the green; the telltale color. “His cloak,” I said, an odd feeling coming over me. “Have you noticed all the little things he has sewn into the lining? I saw that for the first time and . . . well, it seemed strange.” Something made of green glass. Green: the mark of a traitor. I shivered.

“A source of ongoing amusement at Inis Eala,” Aidan said. “Another of my friend’s eccentricities. Most of the men do have a rowan cross sewn into their clothing, but Cathal carries a lifetime of memories in that well-worn garment. There’s a white pebble there from a time when the two of us were four or five and spent a memorable morning learning how to skip stones across a pond. A feather found on the shore one summer; a strip of leather from a dog’s collar. A length of wool from a garment Cathal wore as an infant. A trinket his mother gave him.”

This sounded harmless, if eccentric. Indeed, it cast a whole new light on Cathal. He had gathered up remnants of good times, of friendship, love, recognition. He had wrapped them around him to strengthen him in the times of loneliness, which had perhaps filled far more of his life than those rare moments of warmth or joy. I’d be foolish to leap to conclusions on the basis of a light-hearted story. On the other hand, Father did have good reason for suspicion; there was no getting past the fact that Cathal had outlined the attack on Glencarnagh to me in altogether too much detail for the thing to be coincidence.

“Clodagh, I must go,” Aidan said, still holding my hands. “I don’t like seeing you so sad and worried. I’m sorry this has caused trouble between you and your father. I wish things were different.”

“Me, too,” I said, thinking of Becan hidden upstairs and the decisions that lay before me. “You’re a good man, Aidan. This is very hard for you. Johnny’s right, you know. If Cathal is innocent, nothing bad will happen to him. My father may be distressed and angry right now, but he is a just man.”

Aidan said nothing more. I wanted to offer him a farewell embrace, a kiss on the cheek, something that would let him know I recognized the whirl of emotions he was feeling. But it seemed to me that he was fighting to keep control of himself, and that if I made such a gesture he might lose that control in a way he would find shaming. “Ride safely, Aidan,” I said, and withdrew my hands from his. I watched as he made his way out.

Beyond the door of the council chamber, all was silent. As the swan tapestry stirred in the draft, I thought of Deirdre. Would Father ask me to contact her? Would he want me to ask probing questions that might lead to a revelation that Illann was indeed involved in this? If he did, I would feel just as Aidan must be feeling right now. It didn’t bear thinking of. Someone must hate us powerfully. These terrible tricks were destroying our family from the inside out.

Somehow the rest of the day passed. I went back upstairs and when Becan awoke I fed him again. Now that his requirements were being met he made less noise, seeming content to snuggle into his makeshift bed between meals and drowse as a healthy baby should. I studied his grotesque little face, whose component pieces of bark, wood, moss and stone were held together in a manner that defied all logic. I touched his twiggy hand and felt the sharp fingers clutch onto one of mine, as if even in this deep sleep he sensed how very close he was to the peril of being left all alone. I thought of the Wolf-child story, and of Cathal’s wretched face as he’d listened to it. There had been obvious lessons in each of the tales. Truth will out. Be understanding of difference. Hold onto what matters to you. But maybe there was more than that. The clurichaun and the green thread; the three different endings for Wolf-child. Maybe, if I considered the tales more deeply, they would provide answers to the problem that faced me. For here in my arms was the changeling I had told Father was a mere figment of my imagination. Here, wrapped in a soft blanket, was the pile of debris I had agreed was inanimate, a mere manikin. And before me were many tomorrows to be faced, and a secret that could not be contained within this chamber, nor indeed within the stone walls of this keep. My heart quailed at the enormity of what I had done and what I must do.

With so many demands—the mission to the northern chieftains, the search for Finbar, the hunt for Cathal—most of our menfolk were away from home. The need for men-at-arms to accompany Johnny to Glencarnagh and for others to ride out with Aidan’s party meant grooms and serving people had set their duties aside to join those looking for the baby, and at suppertime the hall was almost empty. We ate in silence. Muirrin did not come down. Eithne took a tray upstairs; she looked as if she hadn’t slept for days.

Eilis and Coll did not appear for supper, and nor did Sibeal. I sat there in silence, unable to eat more than a mouthful or two. I felt like a stranger in my own home, and an unwelcome one at that.

In keeping with custom, the household waited for Father to rise before leaving the table. As soon as I could I fled upstairs, unwilling to be engaged in talk by anyone. Outside Mother’s door I hesitated, for there was a powerful need in me to see her, to tell her that I loved her and that I was sorry if what had happened was my fault. But I could not bring myself to knock. She wouldn’t want to see me. She wouldn’t want to confront the daughter who, through sheer negligence, had brought down this darkness on the household. Or so everyone seemed to believe.

I walked into my bedchamber and stopped short. Sibeal was seated on Deirdre’s bed, cross-legged, gazing down at the sleeping form of Becan where he lay rolled in his blanket behind the storage chest. She looked pensive.

I shut the door behind me, my heart thumping. The secret was a secret no longer. “How did you get up here?” I asked. In fact the answer was obvious; there were narrow steps at the other end of the passageway, leading up from a back entry used mostly by serving people. These made it possible to come upstairs unseen by folk in the hall.

“What do you see when you look at this?” Sibeal asked, ignoring my question as she continued to scrutinize Becan. “Muirrin said you were so upset that your mind was confused.”

“What do
you
see?” I responded, hoping beyond hope that this sister, known since she was tiny for her exceptional powers as a visionary, might share my conviction that Becan was more than a bundle of sticks and stones.

“You speak first, Clodagh. Then I’ll tell you.”

I did not argue. If she wanted to, Sibeal could run to Father right now with the news that I had rescued what he wanted locked away. She could tell him I’d been willfully disobedient. “I see a newborn baby made of all the stuff of the forest,” I told her. “He’s sleeping now, but I can see his chest going in and out and hear his breathing. When he’s hungry he cries. When he’s frightened he screams. He drinks honey water; he clutches onto my finger. He’s alive, Sibeal. He’s a changeling.”

There was a long, long pause while my sister studied the tiny, wrapped-up figure. Eventually I said, “You can’t see him. Even you think I’m imagining this.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” said Sibeal. “It’s true, I do see a bundle of sticks there, with a couple of pebbles where the eyes would be. It’s a figure of a baby, that much is plain, though how it holds together I can’t work out. But, Clodagh, that’s not all I’ve seen.”

“What?” I whispered, reminding myself to breathe. “What do you mean?”

“In visions,” she said, “I’ve seen this creature as a child, moving about, making noise, acting like any human baby. Always with you, Clodagh. Always in your arms, with you patting and singing and carrying him about. Not here in the house. In other places: hiding in the forest, crossing a river, going down a sort of underground passage. Sometimes alone, sometimes with someone else, but I couldn’t tell who it was. When I look at it—him—I see both at once. I see what Father and the others see, and I see the child of the visions: a changeling. Clodagh, you’re crying.”

“Sorry,” I said, sitting down suddenly on my bed and wiping my eyes. “You’re the only person who’s even half believed me. Father’s been so cold about it, cold and angry, not like himself at all. And I feel guilty. Father thinks it’s my fault that someone took Finbar, because . . .”

“Because you were kissing Cathal, yes, everyone knows that story now,” Sibeal said gravely. “That doesn’t matter, Clodagh. What matters is what you’re going to do about this.”

“I thought maybe you could help me. If you’ve seen visions that explain what Becan is, can’t you speak to Father or to Johnny? If they keep looking for Finbar in places where a human abductor might take him, they’ll never find him.” The baby was stirring; I got up and began to prepare a new batch of honey water. My sister regarded me solemnly.

“You can’t risk that,” she said. “I might tell them and they might dismiss it. Then your Becan—that’s a good name, by the way—could be taken from you and disposed of. Clodagh, I did once hear a story about someone getting a little girl back when she was taken by the Fair Folk.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“They went to fetch her,” said Sibeal, making my jaw drop. “They found the one who had taken her and negotiated an exchange.”

“Where?” I asked, as hope and dread fought a battle inside me. “You mean someone found a portal to the Otherworld? How?”

“I can’t remember that part. I do know that when the child came back she was . . . different.”

My imagination conjured up an infant who had sprouted wings like an owl, or whose legs had been transformed into a salmon’s tail. “Different in what way?” I asked as Becan came fully awake and began to squall. It was plain that Sibeal could not hear his cries.

“Just different. She looked the same. But I think if a person stays in the realm of the Fair Folk for any length of time, he or she becomes a little like them. That might be good or bad.”

My throat felt constricted. I made myself sit down again, the baby in my arms now, and forced my breathing to steady as I dipped the cloth, ready to feed him. “Do you know the way in?” I asked her. “I mean, the Lady of the Forest comes to talk to you sometimes, doesn’t she?”

Sibeal looked down at her hands, interlinked on her lap. “The Lady hasn’t come for a long time,” she said. “That old woman, Willow, was right. Something’s changed in the world of the Tuatha De. As for a way in . . . I don’t know. In the tales, people usually stumble on them by accident.”

Becan’s twiggy mouth stretched open. His lips fastened around the soaked cloth and he began to suck. I hummed under my breath. “Oo-roo,
little dove . . .”

Sibeal was looking at me strangely. After a bit, she said, “Ciarán might know.”

“Ciarán? Why?”

“Because his mother was one of
them
. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“We can’t ask him,” I said, dipping the cloth again. “The forest is full of men searching for Finbar or hunting for Cathal. There would be no way to get to the nemetons unseen. Conor’s coming, but he’ll probably share Father’s view.”

“Hunting for Cathal? Where’s he supposed to have gone?”

I explained what had happened.

My sister turned her big, clear eyes on me. “It does look as if you’ll have to do this, Clodagh,” she said. “You’ll have to take Becan back and try to swap him for Finbar. I don’t see any other way out of this. Maybe when you’re in the forest a doorway to the Otherworld will reveal itself to you. That’s if you’re the one who is meant to bring Finbar home.”

My heart did a flip in my chest. My mind shied away from a notion that seemed foolish, ridiculous, misguided in the extreme. And yet I knew she was right. My instincts had been telling me this since last night, when I had held Becan in my arms and felt his desperate need for love. But I was afraid.