Heir to Sevenwaters (33 page)

A shout from the cliff top. I craned my neck and made out a tiny figure in a pale shirt, standing between the screening bushes and the sudden sharp edge that I had not seen until I was over it and falling. My heart soared, defying logic. “Here!” I screamed. Perhaps Cathal could fetch help—a guard post, he’d mentioned a guard post—maybe someone would have a rope or something—No, I was being stupid. There was no guard post. There were no helpful folk here. The cliff was too high, too steep, impossible . . .

Cathal jumped. It was a bold, athletic move, controlled in every particular. He used his long limbs to ensure a particular path to his fall. In the few moments it took for him to come down, I saw that he was aiming precisely for the tree in which I sat perched. He landed beside me, his weight making the branches dip and shake with some violence. I clung to a limb with one hand and held onto Becan with the other. Then I drew a shuddering breath, the first I had taken since I saw him leap.

“You utter, utter fool,” I whispered.

“You’re all right, then,” said Cathal, his tone marginally less steady than usual.

“We’re not hurt. But there’s no way down from here. Why on earth did you do that?”

“Shall I climb back up and head off home? You prefer to be alone?”

I shook my head, trying to smile.

“Clodagh,” Cathal said, “you’re right, we do have very limited choices here.” He glanced down between the branches, then back at me.

I did not have to look to see the river winking up at me, a narrow, bright strand in the green. “Don’t tell me,” I said as my heart turned to ice. “We have to jump.”

“Correct,” he said, rising precariously to his feet. “There’s only one way out: straight down. And I think we should do it before we have time to think too much. You hold onto the child and I’ll hold onto you. If we aim for the water we have a good chance.”

Brighid save us. Perhaps he’d forgotten that I couldn’t swim. I stood, wobbling. I held Becan tightly with my right arm and put my left hand in Cathal’s. His grip was warm and strong.

“I’ll look after you,” Cathal said. “You’ll be fine and so will Becan. Shut your eyes if it helps.”

“No, I . . . Oh, gods, Cathal, I don’t think I can do this . . .”

“You can do it, Clodagh. Take a few deep breaths. It’ll be over before you know it.” He was as pale as linen. Perhaps, despite his apparent confidence, his stomach was roiling with terror just as mine was.

“You will keep hold, won’t you?” I might land safely, but if he let go of me I would drown and so would Becan.

“I will,” he said. “You know, there were a lot of logical reasons for staying up at the top. But logic doesn’t seem to be playing much of a part in my decisions any more. And just in case . . .” He bent his head and kissed me. It was like the last time, only not like it. The touch of his lips on mine thrilled through my body as it had then. The fact that we were perilously balanced and about to make a suicidal leap made no difference. But this kiss had a promise in it, and a farewell, and regret, and trust, and all manner of secrets that might be uncovered if only there were more time. We drew apart, and it seemed to me his breathing was as unsteady as mine, but his grip on my hand stayed firm.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yes,” I lied.

“On the count of three, then. One . . . two . . . three . . .”

And away down. Down, down. His hold on me the only anchor to reality. Becan’s screams snatched away by the speed of our flight, dissipating in the air as we hurtled through it. The cliff a blur of gray, brown, blue, black. A glimpse of Cathal’s face, ashen white, his eyes huge and shadowed, his dark hair flying up from his brow. His cloak, catching the wind, billowing out to reveal the treasury within. The green glass ring glinting, though there was no sun in the sky. My heart drumming in my breast, sounding a litany of regret.
If I die now, I’ll never get to know him properly. If I die now, I’ll never have children of my own. If I die now, I’ll have failed everyone . . .

I had just time to draw in one good breath before the water took us. We plunged deep, the chill of it shocking, and instantly I lost hold of Cathal’s hand. Becan, oh gods, Becan . . . Clutching the baby tightly, I kicked my way up to the surface, a long, long way up, to emerge with lungs bursting. I sucked in a panicky breath before the water closed over my head again. My gown and cloak were leaden, their folds dragging me down. I flailed with one arm, kicking wildly, desperate to stay afloat. There was a sharp pain in my chest. Becan, Becan . . . I couldn’t get my own head above the surface, let alone hold his little face clear. The current carried us along, the forested banks moving past swiftly as I struggled in the middle of the river. Get swept too far and I had no chance of finding Cathal again. Water went up my nose and down my throat. I couldn’t breathe.
Becan . . .
He was immobile in my arms, probably already drowned.

I slammed into something, painfully, and grabbed hold. A fallen tree lay halfway across the river, a mass of debris lodged in its dead branches. I held on like grim death, inching myself up until I was half in, half out of the water. Becan’s pebble eyes were glassy, his mouth sagged open. He looked no more than the lifeless manikin everyone at home had believed him to be. Terror gripped me. He couldn’t die, he mustn’t die, not so little and so helpless . . . “Cathal!” I shrieked, but my voice was drowned by the rushing of the river. “Cathal, help!” I turned my head one way, the other way, desperate for some sign of him, but there was nothing.

Somehow I managed to drag myself along the log until my feet touched the river bottom. I staggered up to the bank and laid the sodden, motionless Becan down on the sand, then turned aside to retch up the contents of my stomach. I looked along the river under the trees and out into the flow of the water. Empty; all empty. Cathal was gone. I blocked out the thought of him drowned or swept so far downstream he could not reach me. Right now I must save Becan. Dimly, I recalled an old rhyme for children about a dog that stopped breathing and a tiny magical woman who brought it to life by singing into its nostrils. If I could stop gasping and shaking I would try something similar, ridiculous as it sounded. I had nothing else. I bent over the baby’s still form. With every scrap of will I could summon, I steadied myself. I put my mouth over Becan’s and breathed for him. One, two; one, two. The forest shivered around me; the river passed on its way, the same as yesterday and the day before, oblivious to the small dramas of life and death that played themselves out on its banks. One, two; one, two. There was room in my mind for nothing more than this, the pattern of survival.

I knelt and breathed until my limbs ached with cramp and my eyes stung with tears. He was dead. There was no point in going on. I had lost him. I had stolen him away and now I had let him die before he had the chance to know anything of the world but loneliness, terror and flight . . . All the same, I kept breathing. I couldn’t bring myself to stop. And at last, twisting my heart within me, Becan coughed, choked, twitched, breathed. Cried. That woeful sobbing was the loveliest sound I had heard in my life. My hair, saturated from its immersion in the river, dripped cold water down my face to mingle with the warmth of my tears. Nothing to wrap him in. Nothing to feed him with. But he was alive. For a few moments all I felt was sheer joy, and then memory returned. Cathal. Where was Cathal?

“Clodagh!”

My heart leapt at his voice. I turned my head to see him much further downstream, dark hair dripping, cloak swirling around him as he ran along the riverbank toward us. There was a look on his face that stopped my heart: he was sheet white, terrified, his eyes full of ghosts. “Clodagh, oh gods, Clodagh, you’re alive!” He sprinted the last hundred paces, stumbling over debris as he came, and flung himself down beside me where I sat with the now screaming Becan hugged against my breast. “I couldn’t keep hold, and then I couldn’t find you, and I thought . . .” His voice cracked. A moment later his arms came around the two of us, and I turned my face against his chest, closing my eyes.

“I hate you,” I said indistinctly, slipping my free arm around him and pressing close. “How dare you make us do that? You’re crazy. Becan nearly drowned. I had to breathe for him, to bring him back . . . And then you were gone . . .” My heart was racing; my head was swimming. I held onto him as if he were a lifeline. It was impossible, now, to believe that we had actually done it; we really had performed that leap and lived to tell the tale.

“I’m sorry,” Cathal said against my hair. “Sorry I made you do it, sorry I couldn’t keep hold, and sorrier still that we have none of our supplies with us. I hope it’s not too much further. You’d best have my cloak, Clodagh, and carry the child protected by it. And we’ll be putting that water rule to the test today. The rest of our journey will be determined by streams and ponds, since we have no vessel in which to carry a supply.”

We disengaged ourselves and got to our feet. Suddenly, sharply, I became aware that I was soaked through and chill to the bone. Cathal was dripping, though his cloak had survived unscathed as usual, and when he draped it around me I felt the familiar sense of well-being the garment seemed to convey. A bruise was darkening on his cheek and his right hand was bleeding. While I fought my battle with the river, my companion had probably faced a similar struggle further down.

“You forgot to bring the bags,” I said, only half joking. Now that my elation over Becan’s survival was dying down, the reality of our situation began to weigh on me: no flint, no honey for the baby, no dry clothing, no food . . .

“An oversight for which Johnny would reprimand me, no doubt,” said Cathal quietly. It sounded as if his teeth were chattering.

“Why did you jump from the cliff top? That was an act of sheer lunacy, Cathal.” I was folding the baby in the cloak, rubbing his back, doing what I could to get him warm.

Cathal grimaced. “I assessed the situation and acted as I judged best. It seemed to me you might fall. The bags became unimportant.”

“All that in a heartbeat.” He had paused on the cliff’s edge for no longer than that. “You could have been killed.”

“When I couldn’t find you, I thought you had already fallen to your death. Then, when I saw you in the tree, I . . . Never mind that. So, now we’re in a predicament. I should be able to make fire without a flint. We’d best find a place of shelter first.”

We looked toward the forest, dense, dark, forbidding.

“I suppose there will be a path,” I said. “I was forced down here, more or less. The rocks started rolling, and all I could do was run. And fall. So I suppose this is the right way. I hope this is almost over, Cathal.”

But Cathal had nothing to say. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we set off together under the trees and into the darkness.

CHAPTER 11

W
e were in nofit state for a lengthy walk. Becan wept. I felt his misery in my heart and could do little to help him. Without the sling, I had to hold him in my arms, and perhaps my unease transferred itself to his small body. Cathal went ahead along a narrow, barely definable pathway we had found, and I followed, knowing it was entirely reasonable for me to wear his cloak, since I had Becan to think of, but wishing there were some way I could share it with him. He couldn’t be warm enough in just shirt, tunic and trousers, all three wet through. He looked wretched, his skin pallid, his features set in a fierce determination that forbade any expression of concern for his welfare. As for me, despite the remarkable fact that all three of us had survived, I was beginning to lose heart. The forest seemed full of menace, a realm of sudden darkness, thorny branches, evil-smelling pools and deceptive slopes. Fungi sprouted among the roots, slickly luminous. Pale, many-legged things crawled in the leaf litter. Becan’s cries lost themselves in the empty spaces between the trees. There was nobody here. We might walk on until we died a sad death from exhaustion, hunger and despair.

The little path followed the course of a stream. My boots squelched. I could feel more blisters forming. There would be no hope of getting anything dry in here, even supposing Cathal could really make fire without a flint. I had seen Johnny do that once; Deirdre had been most impressed. Oh, Deirdre . . . How I longed to talk to her, to tell her how I was feeling, to hear her going on about her hair or her gown or how fine Illann looked on horseback, just so I could remember there was another world out there, one where I need not be confused and afraid. How I longed to hug Sibeal and Eilis, and to tell my mother I was getting closer to finding Finbar. I wanted to ask Father to forgive me for everything I had got wrong, and to tell him I loved him even when he was cold to me . . .
I will not cry,
I told myself fiercely.
Cathal’s keeping going, and he hasn’t even got the cloak.

“Perhaps we should rest for a little.” He stopped walking and turned to wait for me. “You look exhausted. Sit down awhile, Clodagh. There’s a spot under that oak.” He took a knife from his belt.

“What are you doing?” I obeyed him, for now that I had stopped walking my legs did not want to hold me up a moment longer.