“You took Da’s cloch, Edana,” Enean shouted over the garda’s explanation, going up to Edana. Doyle started to interpose himself between the two, but Edana raised her hand to hold him back. “Tiarna O Riain says it’s mine and so I want it back.” Enean stamped his foot on the floor.
“Enean,” Edana said soothingly, as one might talk to an angry child even though the man towered over her by a head, his muscular arms corded where they emerged from his clóca. “Have I ever taken anything of yours? Have I ever hurt you before?”
Enean’s anger dissolved, his face melting into an uncertain frown. “No,” he admitted. “You haven’t.” Then he scowled again, his hands fisting at his sides. Doyle watched, ready to intervene. “But Tiarna Ó Riain said you took it from Da after he died and that Da said it was supposed to be mine.”
“If it had been yours, I would have given it to you,” Edana said quietly, brushing back the man’s long hair from his scarred and disfigured face. “I’m afraid Tiarna Ó Riain’s mistaken. Do you remember how Da sent me away for a few years to Lár Bhaile so I could study magic with Tiarna O Blaca?”
Enean glanced quickly over at Shay, then nodded grudgingly, his face still angry. “Aye. I didn’t like it because you weren’t here.”
“I know. I didn’t like being away from you either, Enean. But you see, Da knew that you were already strong and could protect yourself with your sword; he sent me to the Order because he wanted me to have his Cloch Mór—that would be
my
strength.”
Enean’s face went stern, but he no longer looked angry. “I’ll protect you, Edana.”
“I know you will, Enean.” She touched the cloch at her breast. “But this is in case you’re not there, or in case I might need to protect you.”
“Ah . . .” Enean blinked heavily and tears glittered in his eyes. “Da was smart. I miss him.”
“Aye, he knew what was best and I miss him, too. We all do, very much. Enean, where’s MacCamore? Why isn’t he with you?”
“Tiarna Ó Riain sent MacCamore away. He said ...” Enean grimaced, his eyes searching the ceiling as he concentrated. “He said that I should be doing things on my own now if I’m going to be Rí Ard.” The emotions flitted over his face like racing clouds. “Edana, do you think I’d be a good Rí Ard?”
Edana smiled up at him. Doyle glanced at Shay, shaking his head to make sure that the tiarna said nothing. “I think you would try your very best to do exactly that, Enean,” Edana said.
“I would,” he agreed proudly. “I really would.”
“I know.” Edana hugged him; when she released him, he was smiling distractedly, as if he’d already forgotten the confrontation a moment ago. “What are you thinking about, Enean?” she asked.
“Tiarna Ó Riain introduced me to a pretty woman, almost as pretty as my Sorcha was.” For a moment, Doyle saw the man’s face cloud with the memory of his murdered fiancée. Then the expression slid away. “She likes me, and I like her, too.”
Doyle caught Edana’s wary glance. “That’s wonderful, Enean,” he said. “And who is this beauty you’ve met?”
Enean’s forehead creased in concentration. “Bantiarna Toiréasa De Danaan. She’s a niece of the Rí Connachta’s, and she’s Tiarna Ó Riain’s cousin, too.”
Doyle didn’t need to look at Edana to know what she was thinking. They both knew the young woman—she’d been in Dún Laoghaire for the last few months; her father was one of the Rí Connachta’s representatives in the court. Once widowed, though childless, she was a few years older than Enean. “You’ve been introduced to Bantiarna De Danaan before, Enean,” Doyle said, “back when she first came to court. She didn’t seem to take any particular special interest in you then, as I remember. It’s strange how love can bloom all of a sudden, isn’t it?”
Edana raised an eyebrow warningly at Doyle, but Enean missed the irony and merely grinned. “Aye,” he said. “ ’Tis.” Then he frowned again. “But what about the cloch, Edana? Tiarna Ó Riain ...”
Edana raised her finger to his lips. “You can tell Tiarna Ó Riain that you’ve talked to me about it, and that you want me to keep it because you know it will help me stay safe. You want me to be safe, don’t you?” Edana hugged him once more. “And you should also take these two gardai, find old MacCamore and tell him that Tiarna Ó Riain was mistaken and that I wish him to stay with you at all times. I’ll tell Tiarna Ó Riain that myself as soon as I’m finished here. Can you do that, Enean?” The man nodded solemnly as Edana nodded to the gardai. “Good. Now, go on. I’ll come find you in a bit—I’d love to hear more about this bantiarna of yours . . .”
After Enean had left, Doyle let out a sigh. Shay stirred from his place by the window. “You—we—have a huge problem there,” O Blaca said.
“Ó Riain oversteps his bounds,” Edana hissed, the fury she’d been holding back seething undisguised. “I’ll see him strung up by his entrails before this is over. Using my brother this way . . .”
“We’ll be in worse trouble if Bantiarna De Danaan shows up big-bellied with child a few months from now,” Doyle said to her. “Enean’s mind is addled, but the body . . . I hate to say this, but we should play the same card, Edana.”
She grimaced. “That’s not right. To trick poor Enean that way ...”
“No, it’s not right, but Ó Riain’s already done it and we need to be careful. The right bantiarna, someone we know who will work with us . . .”
“Nuala Chathaigh,” O Blaca interjected. “She’s young, comely enough, and Riocha if not as well-connected as De Danaan, and her family has no love for the Connachtans. I know the family—they’re from the same area of Tuath Infochla as mine. Her parents would be pleased to be so closely bound to the O Liathain family. Nuala understands how the game is played and she has no better prospects. Her family sent her to the Order—I’ve been teaching her. She’s smart and fast to learn.”
“I don’t like it,” Edana repeated, sighing. “They’re using my brother as a pawn and it’s not right. We’d just be doing the same.”
Doyle took her hands in his own. He kissed her brow. “I know, love,” he told her. “But we should have expected this, now that your da’s gone. The Rí Ard would never declare Enean incompetent and so now he has to be considered as potentially much more than a pawn. Even if—when—I have Lámh Shábhála, Enean will still have a legitimate claim to be Rí Ard, and there will be those who would use that against us if they can. It would be best if
we’re
the ones who have the most control over Enean, whether we like doing that or not. Who’s going to keep Enean’s interests most in mind: you, or the Rí Connachta through his puppet Ó Riain?”
He saw the decision form behind her eyes. Her lips tightened as she nodded. “How soon can this Nuala Chathaigh be here?” she asked Shay.
Shay smiled grimly. “At this time of day, she’ll be in Tiarna O’Murchadha’s class ...” He closed his hand around the Cloch Mór around his neck. Doyle’s hair stood out on his arms as energy crackled around them. Tiny lightnings crawled over Shay’s figure; a moment later he vanished entirely with a faint thunderclap. They waited. After a few breaths, Doyle shrugged. “Perhaps she wasn’t in the class today . . .” he began, but then the air near the fireplace shimmered and a puff of a breeze washed over them, laden with the scent of pine trees: an odor Doyle knew well from Lár Bhaile.
Gasping in surprise, a young woman with brown-gold hair and a blue embroidered clóca stood where Shay O Blaca had been a moment ago, her eyes and mouth wide with surprise. She saw Edana and sank to one knee with a deep curtsy.
“Welcome to Dun Laoghaire, Bantiarna Chathaigh,” Edana said. “Tiarna Mac Ard and I have a proposal for you . . .”
27
Ballintubber and Inishduán
“W
E’RE MAKING for Ballintubber today,” Sevei ‘said.
Ballintubber
. . . That name woke echoes in Meriel. Her mam had told her the tales—on those far-too-rare nights when the mage-lights stayed hidden and no one else demanded her mam’s time, when Meriel would snuggle up against Jenna in the huge bed her mam slept in every night alone. Then Jenna would talk about her own childhood.
Ballintubber
. . . In Jenna’s stories, it was a place of laughter and friendship, a simpler place made for simpler times where life might have been poor but was yet full, where her days had been uncomplicated and far happier.
There, too, would sit the looming presence of Knobtop, the mountainside on which Lámh Shábhála had been found, and the dark, gloomy recesses of Doire Coill, which Meriel imagined now as a larger and even more tangled version of Foraois Coill where she’d first met the Taisteal. In Ballintubber, Meriel might find the charred remnants of the two-room stone cottage Jenna had lived in until the cloch had found her, and perhaps the burial mounds where the bones of the people Jenna had known back then rested as their children and grandchildren led the same lives that generation upon generation before them had experienced.
Ballintubber . . .
For the first time, Meriel found herself looking forward to their arrival in a village. And yet, when they did arrive . . .
Ballintubber looked no different than any of the other places she’d seen. In truth, it might have been the smallest of the villages through which they’d passed, a collection of poorly kept buildings strung out along a half mile of road, the village center defined by a grimy tavern at a dusty crossroads—
Tara’s,
the sign declared, and Meriel remembered that name also. Jenna had described Tara’s as a joyous inn where the stone walls gleamed with whitewash (the stones looked as if they’d last seen paint when Meriel was born and the thatch roof sagged badly at the crown), where golden light shone dancing in the windows (the shutters, which were hung all askew and didn’t match, were closed and there was nothing but darkness behind them), where the glad voices of the inhabitants could be heard talking and laughing and singing (Meriel heard nothing but the bleating of sheep in the fields, the lowing of a few cows in the stables behind the tavern, and the buzzing of flies on the excrement in the road).
The townspeople who came out to watch the Taisteal caravan arrive stared suspiciously at them with scowls on their dirty faces. And Knobtop . . . The glorious and magnificent peak inhabiting Meriel’s imagination was in reality nothing more than a bare-topped hill, far less imposing than any of the mountains at Dun Kiil and positively diminutive against the lofty spine of crags that ran along the center of Inish Thuaidh or clustered on the island’s western coastline.
Reality was a disappointment. Meriel knew it was unfair, but she wondered what else her mam’s memory might have altered.
Nico guided the clan to a field across the street from Tara’s Tavern, behind the tumble-down shell of a ruined house. The Ald of the village, an ancient, hunched-over graybeard with only one hand, caned his way over to the wagons as the clan started to climb down from the wagons. “You the Clannhri?” he barked at Nico.
“Aye, and you must be the Aldman of this fine town,” Nico answered. The Aldman snorted and wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his tunic. Meriel could smell the alcohol on the man’s breath.
“Bailey’s the name,” he said. “An’ don’ you be forgettin’ it. We don’t like Taisteal ’round here. Thieves and worse.” Bailey’s besotted gaze drifted over to Meriel. “She be the healer?”
“Ah, so you’ve heard of her,” Nico said, still smiling. “Aye, that’s Cailin, and she has the true gift.”
Baily snorted. “Can she be fixin’ this?” he asked, his scornful laugh showing pink, toothless gums. He lifted his handless arm; he waved the puckered stump nearly in Meriel’s face. “If she can, I’ll be first there.” Meriel took a step back as Sevei jumped down from the wagon alongside her, scowling at the Ald. Nico hurried in between them, smiling and clapping the Ald on the shoulder.
“Now then,” he said with a warning glance back at Sevei, “Cailin’s indeed a healer and a true wonder the likes of which Ballintubber will never see again, I promise, but even she can’t be bringing back what’s not there, I’m afraid. But I do know something that will help take away the pain for a time—a little liquid fire in the belly, eh? Keara, where’s that poteen of ours, woman? Wait ’till you taste this, Ald; made by an ancient, secret recipe known only to my clan.” He led the Ald away, still talking.
“What’s the matter?” Sevei asked Meriel.
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s wrong with you,” the woman answered. “I can see it. You’re looking around at this place like you’re searching for something, or more like you’re afraid to see what you’re expecting to see.”
Meriel hesitated, not knowing how much she should confide in the woman but remembering how she’d come after Meriel at the lough and the promises she’d made then.
Perhaps this is where I need to leave the clan, and if it is then I’ll need her help.
Sevei’s hand touched Meriel’s shoulder, jolting her from her reverie. “I won’t do anything to hurt you,” the woman said. “Remember that.”
Hesitantly, then, Meriel told Sevei about her mam and Ballintubber, and slowly Sevei’s eyebrows rose. “Here? The Banrion MacEagan was born
here?
” she said, whispering so that no one else could hear as the clan began setting up the camp around them.
“Aye,” Meriel answered. “But her surname was Aoire, then.”
Now it was Sevei who glanced around. “Stay,” she told Meriel. “Help the others set up our tent. I’ll be back soon.” With that, Sevei strode away. Meriel saw her go to Tara’s Tavern, open the door, and go in. Meriel stared after her for a few breaths, then when the door didn’t open again, turned to the wagon and started helping unload the tents and bedding. It might have been half a stripe later that she felt a tug on her sleeve; turning, she saw Sevei nod her head. “Come with me,” the woman said. “Don’t worry; the family will take care of the rest of the work. We have something to see.”
Sevei said little. She had unhitched one of the horses and placed riding livery on it. She pulled herself astride the animal and then reached down to help Meriel up. Meriel put her arms around Sevei’s waist as the woman twitched the reins and kicked once at the horse’s side. They rode south down the road for a bit in the lengthening shadows, then Sevei turned the horse into the opening of a lane that was nearly obscured by overgrown foliage. They ducked under overhanging tree limbs, the horse pushing through high, choking weeds. The lane was defined only by the top of what had once been a stone fence; there was nothing left of the ruts that must have once been there and the grass was as high here as elsewhere, with a few young trees growing up between. The fence curved, and then stopped. Sevei urged the horse forward, then pulled up on the reins. “There,” she said, pointing.