“You asked for what, Lady Rioghan?”
She looked away. “I asked for you.”
“What was that, my lady? I could not quite hear—”
Rioghan raised her chin and looked directly at him. “I asked for you.”
“Ah! I see.” He nodded his head, looking pleased. “I think I am beginning to understand now. You were not simply asking for any help. You were asking for
me.”
Rioghan let out her breath. “I believe I said that.”
“So you did. And I would ask you this: Of all the men who would be pleased to come to your defense, and the defense of this place, you chose me. Why would you do that?”
She was silent, knowing she was being baited, knowing she was being prodded, knowing he was enjoying every minute of it. “Why…I asked for you, Donaill, because I felt certain you would have no other task of any importance to occupy you, and that you would be free to come here at any time of the day or night.”
He did not answer, but she could see that he was grinning. “I can only tell you, Lady Rioghan, that no matter what I may have been doing, when your dogs appeared to me up on the wall of Cahir Cullen there was no task more important than coming here to you.”
“For that, all of us are most grateful.”
“For that, all of you are most welcome. But let me ask you this: What will you do the next time someone rides to Sion late one night and demands your gold?”
“I will do what I can—”
“It was not enough tonight.”
“The dogs—”
“Cannot withstand mounted foes who carry swords and spears and nets.”
She got to her feet and turned away from him. “Why do you care? Those were your own people who came here tonight! What does it matter to you what happens to a midwife who does not even live among men? Why do you not accept my thanks and leave it at that?”
He stood up and walked close behind her. “Rioghan…you too are a part of Cahir Cullen, whether you live within its walls or not. You have served it well and you deserve the protection of its king’s champion just as much as anyone else.”
“I do not need—”
“I ask you again: what will you do when they come back?”
With a little catch in her throat, Rioghan looked out over the silvery black branches of the trees, over the dark stones of the circle, over the little shadows that darted and leaped and danced about the clearings. “I cannot let harm come to any of this,” she whispered. “I cannot.”
“Then what will you do?”
“I will…ask you for your help, king’s champion Donaill.”
“And nothing would give me greater pleasure than to give you my help, Lady Rioghan of Sion.”
She closed her eyes.
“Now that the matter is settled, I will tell you something else. What I said is not quite true. The only thing that would give me greater pleasure would be a chance to know you better.”
She drew back and turned to glare at him. “I have already told you all there is to know about me.”
He smiled. “That is not what I meant. I would like…I want…”
“You would like what?” she asked, with all the innocence she could muster.
Donaill laughed. “Ah, I see that you can play the game as well as I. I too have always thought it best to hear the words directly, rather than simply guess at what someone might be thinking.” He took a step closer. “I would like very much to know you better—to talk with you, to ride through the forest with you, to walk in the moonlight and sit in this beautiful place with you. That is what I would like.”
It was Rioghan’s turn to laugh, although she felt a twinge on her heart at his words. A longing. “You have said yourself that you have never found a woman who was unworthy. Why, then, should your interest make me feel special?”
He cocked his head. “Well…I cannot apologize for finding something beautiful and good within every woman.”
“And I can well imagine what that something is,” she murmured.
He seemed not to have heard. “You, Rioghan, are indeed different from any other woman I have met. You are very beautiful, of course, with hair dark as the soft night sky and eyes green as new grass in spring…yet you are also solitary and mysterious, and seem to need no man at all. Surely you know that all of this makes you a great prize.”
She spun away, her long, heavy cloak swinging about her boots. “Do you think to honor me by calling me a prize? I see your interest in me not as flattery, but purely as arrogance.”
“Arrogance? I don’t—”
“Simply another conquest for the king’s champion. That is all I would be, Donaill. I am under no illusions about that.”
Again he moved close to her, this time taking her by one shoulder and gently turning her to face him. “Ah, but you are wrong. You are so different, Rioghan, so very special…” He reached down and took one of her hands in both of his own.
She could only shake her head. The forests and clearings were still and silent now, and a faint light had begun to appear in the east. “You are the last man I would want,” she whispered. “Always your status, your position, will be the most important thing to you, and there is nothing more important to the status of a man than the number of women he can draw to him. There will never be enough women for a man who is the king’s own champion. One could not even come close.”
“One might,” Donaill whispered, leaning down close to her. “One might come very close…”
Before Rioghan could move, before she could think, his lips were even with hers, and he kissed her, as lightly and as warmly as the dawn sun touches the earth. Then he stepped back and let go of her hand, and when at last she opened her eyes he was gone, leaving her alone atop Sion with her two dogs and the soft gray light of the dawn.
Chapter Six
A few evenings later, Rioghan drew back the black cowhide hanging at the entrance to her home and sat down on the edge of her hearth. She looked out into the clearing, holding and sipping a hot cup of honey-sweetened tea. The cave faced west, and so, sitting as she was, she could see the glow of the setting sun and knew it would not be long before the stars came out.
Each night she had sat here keeping watch, fearing that in spite of Donaill’s promises and bold words the others might come back. They still wanted the gold and treasure they had seen, she was sure, and would only laugh at Donaill’s claim that the Sidhe, or a midwife, had any right to it.
Rioghan had hardly slept at all these past few nights, certain that Beolagh and his men would return. But at the end of this day, as the sun set, Scath and Cogar—who always remained in the cave with her—lay dozing in the warmth of the fire. The other dogs outside in the clearing sniffed the air and yawned, or rolled in the grass and dry pine needles, or frisked about with each other. They were as calm and relaxed as Rioghan had ever seen them.
She took another sip of her hot sweet tea. She had spent a long day sorting and preparing her different medicines and poultices and infusions, and should be tired and ready for sleep; but instead she felt possessed by a restlessness that was new and strange to her.
She had prepared this calming tea for herself, one that usually helped her sleep after long days of work no matter how tense she may have become, but this time it seemed to have no effect. At last Rioghan set the cup aside and walked outside into the deep gray twilight, into the stand of forest toward the stone circle to the west. Scath and Cogar trotted at her heels.
The path would have been all but invisible to most anyone not of the Sidhe, but to Rioghan it was comfortable and familiar. She walked among the tall pine trees of the twilit woods with long, sure strides, breathing in the smell of the cold damp earth and fresh evergreens, happy to be outside after the long day of working in the confines of her home.
There was a rustling in the brush off to one side. Rioghan glanced toward it and smiled. “I merely walk,” she said. “I am not going anywhere.”
A little distance ahead, a small figure appeared from behind the black trunk of a pine. “That is a concern, my lady.”
She looked toward the figure, but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. She kept walking. “But I do not wish to go anywhere. Do you not want me to stay?”
Another rustling came from off to the side of the path, another soft voice. “We love you like no other,” it said.
“Yet you too must make a life for yourself.” This time the voice came from the trees on the other side.
“My life is here, as was my family’s life,” Rioghan said calmly, brushing aside the low, waving branch of a little pine seedling from the hem of her black wool gown. “Again, I would ask you: do you not wish me to stay with you at Sion?”
A shadow darted across her path. “We love you as one of our own,” she heard. “Yet you are alone. It is not right that a beautiful young woman should live without a mate.”
Rioghan stopped and turned to face the voice. “I am content with my life as it is. Are you so sure that I must bring a husband into it?”
“It is not the way of nature to live so. None should know this better than you, a healer and a midwife.”
She whirled to face this new speaker on the other side, but as soon as she turned there were only gently waving branches of pine to be seen. “Perhaps I have simply not found the man with whom I would wish to share my life.”
“Yet you believed you found him once before.”
She caught her breath, but made herself keep calm. “I did believe that. But I was wrong. He did not love me for myself. He was merely happy to let me care for him and take all I had to give, while he gathered as many other women around him as he could in order to take from them as well.
“This was his way, whenever he thought I was not there—and if I dared to ask, he would only tell me that I should not be distressed. I was the one he wanted for his wife, was I not? The others meant nothing. They were only friends and acquaintances from the fortress. He swore he could not understand how such a silly, harmless thing could cause me pain.”
“Yet it was not the mere presence of these women which caused you such pain,” Rioghan heard. “He chose to deceive you, so that you would not know and could not interfere. And when you did know, his concern was for them—and for himself—and not for you.”
Rioghan closed her eyes as bitter, painful memory swelled up within her. “He
did
deceive me,” she whispered. “He deceived me so that he could be with them whenever he wished. And he cared nothing for my pain when I finally got the truth. He could do naught but defend his actions, defend his lies, defend those other women.
“And oh, it did not suit him that I should be offended. This only angered him—and I became the target of his rage. Not the women who had helped him to poison what I thought we had together. His anger was turned on me, and not on them.
“Never would he say that it was wrong for him to do any of these things. Never, never, never would he tell me it was wrong.”
She looked into the soft twilight forest again and took a deep and calming breath. “But that is over now. He is free to be with all his many women, with no troublesome mate to interfere with his life and annoy him with her pain. And I am determined that such a thing will never happen to me again. I will be much more careful next time—if there should even be a ‘next time.’”
“Why not choose one of us?”
Rioghan smiled, and went on with her walk. “I love you all,” she said, “but not like that. As brothers and sisters, even as children. One does not marry within one’s own family.”
“Perhaps not,” said a voice from behind her. She raised her head, but kept on walking. “Perhaps it is true that you should look elsewhere.”
There came more rustling, first on one side of the path and then on the other, and then a shadow leaned out from the trees up ahead. “But not too far,” said the shadow, before it disappeared once again.
The woods were nearly dark now. The high quarter moon provided little light, and soft clouds covered most of the sky, yet Rioghan walked her familiar path with no difficulty. “I have already said that I could not look for a mate from among the Sidhe.”
“Then look to Cahir Cullen.”
“Then look to this man, Donaill.”
She stopped, her senses searching left and right, but there was only silence. Rioghan laughed a little, and walked on. “Now I know that you are playing a game with me.”
“We would not play about this.” The shadow walked alongside the path with her for a few steps before vanishing. “Donaill is a fair man. He has never done us ill. Indeed, he has guarded and helped you, and the Sidhe, all of his own accord.”
“And for a man, he is not unattractive,” added another rustling shadow.
Rioghan continued to walk, but shook her head emphatically at the same time. “Attractive or not, he is not a man who would ever be happy with just one woman. He is a great warrior and takes great pride in displaying his prowess. He is the king’s champion and makes sure that all who meet him know this. No doubt he aspires to be king himself one day; no doubt he will do just that. And what king could ever be content with just one woman in his life? It would hardly be fitting for a man of such great stature.”
She sighed. “Never, dear ones, never could I go with such a man, for I know that I alone would never be enough for him. No one woman would
ever
be enough.”