Heir to Sevenwaters

by Juliet Marillier

  “I can’t tell you what to believe, Father.” It was becoming harder and harder to get the words out. He was looking at me as if he despised me. “I understand that you must find out who is responsible for the attack on Glencarnagh. Cathal’s actions do seem incriminating, though why he would be involved in that I can’t imagine. I have to tell you that I did speak to Deirdre not long before Finbar was taken. It was at Mother’s request, to tell her the good news of the baby’s safe arrival.” My throat was tight. “I mentioned that Gareth had been sent away on a mission, and Deirdre questioned me about it. I stopped answering after a bit, but I did let slip that it involved the northern chieftains. It is possible she might have thought that your sending a party north could leave Glencarnagh undermanned. But you know Deirdre. She’s never been interested in these things.”

  Father sat frozen. Into the silence, Johnny said, “Anything you told her, Clodagh, would have come far too late to influence what happened at Glencarnagh.”

  His kindness was almost my undoing. I met Aidan’s gaze for a moment, then looked hurriedly away before my tears spilled.

  “That may be true,” said Father. “It doesn’t alter the fact that if you had come to me as soon as Cathal gave you that first description of a hypothetical raid, we’d have been in time to stop it and lives would have been saved. Illann. Can that possibly be true? Why in the name of the gods would he do such a thing? Glencarnagh’s right on his border.”

  “Father,” I said, “I don’t believe Finbar’s abduction has anything to do with the raid and the fire. The way it was carried out, the figure in the cradle, the impossible timing—it must be the work of the Fair Folk. Nobody else could have got him out so quickly or so invisibly.”

  Another charged silence. “Clodagh,” said my father in that quiet tone that sent shivers down my spine, “I hope you were being honest with me earlier today when you admitted to being mistaken on this particular matter. I hope you are not about to tell me again that someone has left a living, breathing creature in my son’s place. You’ve already shocked and disappointed me today with your wayward disregard for common sense. Your negligence in the matter of Cathal has proven costly indeed.”

  “I’m sorry, Father.” I held myself rigidly straight, clenching my jaw tight, but my lips trembled and my voice shook. “I’m truly sorry if those men died at Glencarnagh because of me. I’ve tried to do the right thing. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do.”

  Father did not respond by so much as a nod. It seemed to me he was having as much difficulty holding himself together as I was. The old Clodagh, the girl I had been yesterday, would have put her arms around him and offered words of comfort. I stood very still, blinking back my tears. I would never be that girl again.

  “I think we might allow Clodagh to leave us, Sean,” Johnny said. “We can call her back if we need her. We have some decisions to make quickly.” He took my arm and walked me to the door, which he opened for me. He said nothing more, but as I stepped out he put his hand on my shoulder for a moment, and when I glanced at him, he gave a little smile. I turned away abruptly, the tears starting to stream down my face, and heard the door shut behind me.

  I waited in the hall, unwilling to retreat to my bedchamber in case Father called for me. If he sent someone to find me they’d almost certainly stumble on Becan. I paced nervously as serving people and men-at-arms came in and out on their various duties, their glances touching me, then sliding away. I made pleats in my skirt; I poked the fire and set on more wood; I fiddled with the empty ale cups on the little table. My whole body was on edge. Who could hate Father so much that they would burn the lovely house of Glencarnagh and kill so many men? Why would Cathal be involved in such an undertaking? Why would he warn me about the attack when to do so must suggest he was in some way implicated? For it seemed to me he could not have known the precise details without a link to the perpetrators. If he wasn’t spying for Johnny, then he must have been allied with the other side, whether they were Illann’s folk or someone else’s. Why? Why throw away his position with Johnny, the home and profession he had apparently longed for? It didn’t make any sense at all. My mind raced from one unlikely explanation to the next. All the while, my heart was sick with the memory of Father’s stern face, his cold voice as he interrogated me.

  I could hear raised voices in the council room, but not the words. A moment later the door slammed open and Aidan strode out, followed by Johnny.

  “I’m not going!” Aidan shouted. “He’s my friend! You can’t ask me to do this!”

  They had not seen me. Four paces into the hall, Johnny put a restraining hand on Aidan’s shoulder and the other man whipped around to face him, fists clenched. I shrank back into the shadows.

  “Are you refusing an order?” Johnny asked, his voice deadly quiet.

  “I can’t do it!”

  “Take a breath,” Johnny said. “Calm yourself. We are professionals; we do not allow personal loyalties to interfere with the missions we undertake. If you cannot respect that, you have no place among my men, Aidan.”

  “Maybe I don’t want one,” Aidan snarled, wrenching away from Johnny’s touch. “Not if it means hunting down my best friend and dragging him back to face an inquisition.”

  “Aidan.” I heard in Johnny’s voice that he was fighting for calm. “Believe me, if there were anyone else to whom I could entrust this, I would ask him in your stead. You are the only man I have left right now.”

  “Since you’re so ready to believe Cathal guilty,” Aidan growled,

  “go after him yourself. Have you no sense of loyalty, that you would ask me to do this?”

  Momentarily, Johnny closed his eyes, and I saw my father’s face in his, the face of a leader who must bear burden upon burden and remain strong. I was about to alert them to my presence, for this was certainly not for my ears, but Johnny spoke first. “I cannot go,” he said. “I must head straight to Glencarnagh and find out what party was responsible for that act of violence. We must be ready to retaliate without delay. And the search for Finbar must be maintained; Sean will continue to coordinate it from here, but his own men must undertake it without my assistance for now. We need Cathal found and apprehended. If there is a link between the two events, the abduction and the attack, he is the key to it. Select two or three of the Sevenwaters men and track him down with all the skill you have. Take the dogs. And don’t speak to me of loyalty, Aidan. When Cathal is brought in I’ll give him the opportunity to explain himself. I have not made an arbitrary decision as to his guilt or otherwise. The question remains: if he’s innocent of any involvement in this, why isn’t he here?”

  “You are ready to point to Cathal,” Aidan said grimly. “Have you considered that others may point to you?” He was keeping his voice down now, though the anger vibrated through every word.

  For a moment Johnny did not answer. When he spoke, it was with remarkable restraint. “I have considered it. Perhaps the perpetrator of these ills has acted with the sole purpose of casting suspicion on me, of setting a wedge between me and my uncle. Someone believes me capable of harming my infant cousin and of destabilizing Sean’s rule by destroying one of the jewels of his holding. They imagine I view Finbar as a threat. Or at least, they believe others will think that credible. My father was not well loved in these parts. There are folk who fear my influence on my uncle.” There was something new in his face; something deeply unsettling.

  I saw Aidan’s gaze flick toward the doorway of the council chamber and back to Johnny. A moment later, the door was quietly closed from the inside.

  “Surely he does not doubt you,” Aidan said, and the anger was gone from his voice.

  “I don’t know,” said Johnny. I had never before heard such a note of uncertainty in his tone, and it shocked me. “I wish Gareth was back. I wish I did not need to ask this of you, Aidan. But I must. The sooner Cathal is found, the sooner he can account for himself. If your faith in him is justified there’s nothing to fear. But we may ha
ve a major undertaking on our hands very soon and I need to be prepared for it.”

  I cleared my throat, and both men spun around to face me where I stood to one side of the hearth. “I’m sorry,” I said. “There was no good moment to interrupt. I was waiting in case Father needed me.”

  Johnny gave me a nod of acknowledgment. “Well?” he asked Aidan.

  “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.”