“There must be a new way of looking at this,” I said. “I refuse to believe there’s no solution.” But then, hadn’t Anluan accused me of having persistent hope, hope that saw possibilities where there were none? “Magnus, if Eichri and Rioghan can go beyond the hill without dire consequences, doesn’t that mean the others could do the same, given the right conditions? Eichri just offered to go to Criodan’s, which is quite a distance from Whistling Tor.”
“Eichri and Rioghan are different.”
“But they weren’t always different. If they could change, why can’t the rest of them change?”
Magnus looked bemused. “With enough time and the will to do it, I’m prepared to admit that might be possible. We have less than a turning of the moon.”
I glanced down at the child on her improvised bed. I thought of the look in Cathaír’s troubled eyes as he’d marched back to the forest with his head held high. “All Anluan needs is for them to stay on the Tor while he goes to the settlement for a meeting,” I said.
“And what would you have him do when he gets to this meeting? Threaten the Normans with a fighting force of twenty villagers wielding pitchforks?”
“It sounds foolish, I know. But maybe, if he took that first step, the people down there would think better of him. And it’s not as if Lord Stephen himself will be here at full moon, along with his fighting men. Mightn’t Anluan have time to rally support in the district?”
Before Magnus could comment, Fianchu came bounding into the bedchamber and went immediately to the child. He turned a few circles, somehow managing not to step on her, then lay down gently beside her. Her uncanny cold did not seem to disturb him, but then, just as she was no ordinary girl, he was no ordinary dog.
“I’ll leave you in peace,” Magnus said. It seemed our discussion was over.
“Good night, Magnus.”
“Good night, lass. In the morning, maybe we’ll see this with fresh eyes.”
A fine, persistent rain fell over the towers and gardens of Whistling Tor, pooling in corners, trickling down stone walls, making me shiver as I walked between living quarters and library.The heart’s blood plant had put up three flower stems; the oaks were clothed in tender green. I counted the days as they passed: twenty days until the Normans came; nineteen, fifteen ... Not only was that time looming, but so was the first day of autumn. I had been hired only until then.
The spinning of my mind was unbearable. I tried to keep it at bay with work, plunging into my task with a feverish energy. Anluan spent much of the time shut away in his quarters. I would see him occasionally in somber conversation with Magnus or Rioghan, but he hardly spared me a glance. He did not come to the library; he did not sit under the birch tree in Irial’s garden. Muirne took him his meals on a tray.
At night, when my troubled thoughts kept me awake, I went out onto the gallery and looked across the courtyard. In the dark of the moonless night, Rioghan paced up and down in his nightly ritual. Across the pond and beyond the pear tree, I could see the glow of Anluan’s lamp. I whispered to him. “Why won’t you talk to me? I thought we were friends.”
I missed him. I missed the little glances he would turn my way; I missed his awkward conversation; I missed his crooked smile. Even his bouts of ill temper would be better than this absence, this silence. It extended to the rest of the household as well; I deduced that Anluan had ordered them not to discuss the looming crisis with me. I wanted to help him, to talk to him, to be a listening ear. But on the rare occasions when I happened to meet him crossing the courtyard or pass him in a hallway, he looked so grim and distant that I could hardly bring myself to speak.
I needed more time. The documents might still reveal a way of banishing the host forever and freeing Anluan from the curse. If there were no host, he could build ties with his neighboring chieftains. If there were no host, he could become the leader he was born to be. Then maybe he would have a chance of standing up to the Normans. If only I could find a counterspell. Fifteen days left.
Morning after morning, I was in the library as soon as there was light enough to read by, and stayed there until almost suppertime. In the evenings I worked in my bedchamber, making an Irish version of Irial’s margin notes on vellum pages I had cut and sewn into a tiny book. I had pored over everything the library contained in Irial’s hand, but this record remained incomplete. If there had indeed been two years between Emer’s death and her husband’s, some of Irial’s writings must be missing. Or he had ceased to keep this record for a season or so before his own demise. He had become too sad to set pen to page, perhaps. His last note read:
Day five hundred and ninety-four. The leaves of the birch, spiralling down, down. A lark’s pure notes in the endless sky. Is there a sleep without dreams?
Reading this, I thought not of forlorn Irial but of his son, and I considered the nature of love. I had once watched Anluan in the garden and seen an enchanted prince trapped in a dark net of sorcery. But this was no prince of ancient story. Anluan was a flesh and blood man, with a man’s virtues and flaws. The wounds Magnus had once spoken of, the hurts left on him by the past, were as much part of him as the limping leg and uneven shoulders.They made him the man he was.
I imagined the warmth of his body pressed against me, his face close to mine as I leaned over him to guide the quill. I considered how much it hurt to be shut out; more than it should, bearing in mind that I was a scribe hired for a single summer. I knew that whatever happened, leaving this place was going to break my heart.
My translation of Nechtan’s documents now covered a sizable pile of parchment sheets. I stored them between polished oak boards that Olcan had prepared for me, with a leather strap to keep them together. Between the long days of work and my constant anxiety, I grew thinner. My gowns hung loose on me. On the rare occasions when I looked in a mirror—generally by accident—and it gave me back a true reflection, I did not see the rounded, rosy person whom Eichri had called a lovely lady from an old tale, but a pallid creature with dark smudges under her eyes, brow furrowed by a frown, hair scraped back under a practical head-cloth. I recalled Nechtan’s cruel assessment of his wife:
Soon, very soon, she’ll be a hag.
I wondered what had happened to poor, well-meaning Mella after her husband’s great experiment went so disastrously wrong.
I had not expected to be lonely, but I was. Most days the ghost child kept me company, sitting on the floor in the corner where Irial’s books were kept, playing mysterious games with Róise. Cathaír had taken it upon himself to guard the entrance to my bedchamber through the daylight hours, and Fianchu kept guard at night.
In the evenings the household still gathered, without its leader and his shadow. But suppertime was not what it had been.We were all despondent and troubled. Olcan and Magnus exchanged a word or two about the work they planned for the next day. Rioghan sat silent, without his usual sparring partner, for Anluan had at last given Eichri permission to visit Saint Criodan’s. My appetite was gone. I ate only because I knew I must.
Twelve days until full moon. I entered the library to find an ink pot on its side and a pool of black all over the completed pages I had left on my work table the night before. The transcription was ruined. As I mopped up the spillage, I tried and failed to convince myself that this was some kind of accident. I always corked my ink and put it away before I left the library.Who could have been here? Who would come in at night? With a creeping sense of dread, I recognized this as a warning. But from whom, and why? Was I coming close to the heart of my search? If Nechtan had been so powerful, perhaps he had set some kind of spell on his documents to protect his secrets from curious eyes. If he could make those fell mirrors, he could surely do that. I considered what might be next. It would be something worse than the destruction of a day’s hard work, I was sure.
The ghost child was watching me, Róise clutched in her hands. Her big eyes were fearful, as if she had seen into my thoughts.
“It’s all right,” I said.“Just a little spillage. But maybe you should go up and stay with Cathaír today. I’m sure he gets lonely all by himself.”
Ten days until full moon. Eichri came back with a supply of excellent vellum and the unfortunate news that one of Lord Stephen’s daughters was betrothed to a kinsman of Ruaridh Uí Conchubhair. There was no need to expand on this. It meant the high king would not intervene on Anluan’s behalf.
I broke my self-imposed rule about no lamps in the library, and worked through suppertime. I read until my lids were drooping and the patterns of Nechtan’s strong script were blurring and bobbing on the page before me. From time to time I sensed presences in the shadows beyond the warm circle of lamplight, shapes moving and shifting: the restless host. My progress was slow. Perhaps they were growing angry.
Eventually I gave up and went to bed. I fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep, and did not wake until dawn. It was raining outside. Fianchu was already gone, and the door stood slightly ajar.The blanket bed the dog shared with the ghost child lay rumpled on the floor. No sign of the little girl.
I felt it before I saw it: something wrong, something out of place, beyond these absences. A moving shadow. Something above me swinging to and fro, to and fro. I looked up.
Róise was dangling in midair, her limp form suspended by the neck. My heart jolted. I had thought ... for a moment I had thought ... but then, people cannot die twice, not even if their ghostly forms have more substance than one might expect. But a ghost can suffer. A ghost can be hurt. I had learned that from Rioghan’s anguished retelling of his past, and from Cathaír’s darting eyes, and from the way the little girl clung to this treasure that had once been mine and had now become hers. I wanted the doll down before she saw it. Now, right now; the sight made me shudder. I glanced at the open door. Perhaps she had already seen it.
Too high to reach. Who had done this? Who could do it brazenly, while I slept only three paces away? Who could get past Fianchu? Only one of the host. But why? They wanted me to succeed, they wanted me to find a way to send them back.These were acts of wanton mischief, serving no purpose at all.
I found the child out on the gallery, squeezed into a corner, weeping. There was nobody else in sight, either up here or down in the courtyard. I went over to the little girl and squatted down beside her. “Are you all right? I couldn’t find you.Where’s Fianchu?”
She was curled tightly on herself, her body shaking with sobs, her soft pale hair damp with the rain that blew in through the openings above the courtyard.
“Little one? Where is the dog? What happened in the bedchamber?”
“Baby,” she murmured on a sob, and allowed herself to be gathered onto my knee. “Baby’s gone.”
Perhaps she had not seen it. I rose to my feet, holding her.“Rioghan?” I called softly. “Are you down there? I need help.”
At that moment Fianchu came lolloping up the steps to the gallery, tail wagging, expression not in the least contrite. I could hardly blame him. He had probably just seized the opportunity to go out and relieve himself when whoever it was left the door open. Someone he trusted? A member of the household? It didn’t bear thinking about.
“Caitrin.” Rioghan was here; I had hardly needed to raise my voice to summon him. “What is it? You’re white as a sheet.”
“There’s something in my bedchamber that I would like—adjusted—before we go back in there,” I said, looking down at the child in my arms. “I woke to find there had been a visitor. Could you attend to it, please, Rioghan?”
He went into the chamber without another word, and I waited, rocking the little girl and murmuring to her. In not much time at all, Rioghan came back out. He was winding the wire into a coil. “It’s all right to take her back in,” he said.“You’ll need to do some mending, Caitrin.The object in question was almost torn in two.”
“Thank you.” For some reason, I was close to tears myself.
“You must tell Anluan about this,” Rioghan said.
“There wouldn’t be any point.” I could not keep my voice steady.“He won’t even talk to me these days.”
“There’s a reason for that, Caitrin.Your presence here gives him pause. It makes him weigh things up a little differently.”
“It shouldn’t stop him from listening when I have something worthwhile to contribute. Anluan knows I’m not stupid.Why can’t he trust me?”
“You’re upset.”
“Of course I’m upset! He might be about to lose everything, and he won’t let me help!”
“He has his reasons. If he wanted to tell you what they are, no doubt he would. Don’t think he’s shut up in his chamber brooding, Caitrin. He’s thinking, planning, working out whether he can take the risk he must take if he’s to save this place. Calculating, weighing up arguments. Hesitating, because that risk may simply be impossible for him to bear.What has occurred here this morning is likely to make him even less willing to involve you.”
“Involve ... you mean he’s leaving me out of this to protect me? But—”
“Baby,” whispered the child. “I want my baby.”
I got to my feet, keeping hold of her hand. “You’re sure it’s all right to go in there?”
“The doll is on the bed; the other evidence, I will remove. Caitrin, he should be told.”
“Don’t say anything, please. I’ll tell him if I get the chance. If he’s prepared to see me. And, Rioghan, thank you.”
“Glad to be of service, lovely lady. I know you have a guard up here by day. You might consider asking for another. Under present circumstances, it is possible some elements of the host may find the capacity for ... mischief. Believe me, that is the last thing anyone would want.”
I shivered. Could he mean that Anluan might be so upset by all this that he would start to lose the control he worked so hard all day, every day, to maintain?