Warrior's Daughter

by Holly Bennett

  The angry flush that had appeared on Roisin’s cheeks at the first mention of the “boon” the brothers demanded of me spread as I talked, so that by the end of my tale she was red as a turkey wattle.

  “It all happened so fast,” I concluded, my throat suddenly thick with tears. “I don’t know what I did wrong.” If I had only been more experienced, more clever, surely I would have found a way to turn aside their wrath.

  “What you did wrong!” Roisin fair exploded. “The answer to that is easily told: Not one single thing!” The force of her indignation lifted her onto her feet where she stood, fists clenched, black eyes snapping. “It is those vicious, ill-begotten wolves who have done wrong, and not you!”

  Slowly the truth of Roisin’s words sank into my heart. I might be cursed, but I did not have to accept the blame for it.

  “The real question,” I said slowly, “is what to do now.” I felt like a trapped badger, shut into my room with all of Emain waiting to watch the show.

  The fire in her eyes faded to warm concern. “How do you feel now, Luaine? Are you well?”

  I considered. My cheek hurt unceasingly, but it grumbled rather than screamed now that the dressing was done. I did not feel ill or even particularly weak. On the heels of that realization came an image that filled me with longing: a long crescent of beach, a rolling green plain, a house that looked out over both. And I knew Roisin was seeing the same place.

  “Let’s go home.”

  We arrived near dusk under an overcast sky that promised rain after all. My cheek hurt fiercely—each thud of the horse’s hooves bringing a jolt of fresh pain—but I wasn’t thinking of that now. I was looking at Dun Dealgan—at what was left of Dun Dealgan—and wondering if it was even habitable.

  It had been torched. The whole south side was burned away, leaving a yawning hole and blackened timbers. Close to half the thatch had gone up. No doubt the house had been looted before they set the fire. Who had been caught there, I wondered, and fallen to Maeve’s men?

  We soon discovered that at least some remained, and that while the house had been abandoned, Dun Dealgan itself had not. We were in my room, in fact, relieved to find that the north of the house, though redolent with smoke, was undamaged, when a hesitant voice called out.

  “Lady Luaine?” It was the stableboy, who had recognized my horse in the yard and come looking for me. His awed manner made it plain the king’s message about our wedding had arrived. “I’ll see to your horses and fetch someone for you,” he blurted out and promptly disappeared.

  Roisin was busy making up my bed. The place had indeed been looted but apparently in a hurry, for they had taken only the jewelry chests and small valuables and not bothered with linens or clothing. “Well, at least we will eat tonight,” she said, shaking out the blankets with brisk precision. “But tomorrow, Luaine, we should go to my father’s home. My family will welcome you, and small though it is, it is cheerier than this place.”

  I did not say it, but I couldn’t see what need I had for cheer. I had, after all, come home to die. As if to remind me of that fact, my cheek flared once more, and I suddenly felt ill and shivery. It has started, I thought, and my hand flew to my face, searching for the first signs of the blemishes. It found none, but I discovered then that my skin radiated heat.

  By the time Berach hurried in, I had crawled under the covers and was content to let Roisin speak with him. And from him we learned a thing that both grieved and moved me.

  “Cuchulainn made it clear that we were to save the people, not the house,” he apologized. “It angered me to let them in while we had any men standing, but fighting to the last would not have changed the outcome. As it is, we were able to get almost everyone out and safely into the countryside.” All but two: Eirnin, who had died only the day before, worn out at last from illness and old age, and Tullia, who would not leave even at the point of a sword and had finally been carried bodily, cursing and struggling, from the grounds. “She snuck away that night and made her way back,” marveled Berach. “The next day Maeve’s army reached Dun Dealgan. We were putting up what resistance we could when I saw Tullia come flying out from the back kitchen, screaming like a madwoman, with a joint cleaver in each hand. And by my head she made a brave end, sinking one into the chest of a fellow who was like to twice her height before they cut her down.”

  Old Tullia. What had made her do such a thing, and her a slave?

  I had not been sure how to explain our sudden arrival. Berach seemed to assume I had simply come to check on my holdings, but could not fathom that we had traveled alone. “Where is the Lady Luaine’s retinue?” he asked Roisin. “Surely the Queen travels with an honor guard?” I made a sudden decision and sat up in the bed to reveal my hurt cheek. Berach’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.

  “The king is in Tara, Berach, and I have learned that I have enemies in Emain. I came here seeking protection, until...” Until Conchobor returns, I implied, but I did not imagine even the king could help me now. I blessed the stars that had put Berach in charge of Dun Dealgan. If there was loyalty to be had among my father’s men, it would be here.

  The arms master’s face grew grim and cold. If he had questions, he kept them to himself.

  “You will be safe here, my lady. I pledge my life on it.” The task before him now clear, Berach strode from the room without another word.

  I would not be safe. There was no place now that was safe for me. But I would at least be undisturbed.

  The night and then the day passed and still there were no blemishes. However, the cut on my cheek, far from improving, had become a swollen fiery torment, and the fever that gripped me was impossible to hide from Roisin. Nor could she hide her dismay from me.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. The wet cloth she laid on my head eased the pounding in my temples, but even that light pressure, where it lay on the swelling by my left eye, heightened the throb in my cheek. “A cut this size should not cause such pain.”

  I had come to my own conclusion about that. “I think this must be the curse, Roisin. Not three blemishes—only this one.”

  She rose to her feet. “Curse or not, you need better tending than I can give you. There must be someone here wise in healing. I’ll ask Berach.”

  It was Tullia who had treated my childhood scrapes and illnesses. But Roisin was right; there must be others. I didn’t give a wise woman’s herbals any odds at all against a poet’s curse, but Roisin felt she had to try, and it would do no harm.

  In fact it helped, a little. At least the willow tea brought the fever down a bit and helped me sleep. But the old woman’s poultice, which Roisin changed religiously three times that night, didn’t touch the infection that had taken hold. By morning I could smell that it had gone bad, and the tears that welled up in Roisin’s dark eyes as she held up the lamp to look only confirmed what I already knew.

  “Take the lamp away; it hurts my eyes,” I said. “There’s nothing more to be done, or said.” I closed my eyes, trying to ride out the pain that stabbed deep in my face when I spoke or moved my head. I drifted. I was beginning to be resigned to the thought of death, to see it, in fact, as a welcome relief from this waking nightmare. If death was inevitable, I thought, then let it come swiftly.

  “I only wish the king could know the truth about me, Roisin. That my good name could be protected.”

  “Will he be back yet, Luaine?” she asked.

  I tried to count the days. Fever and pain make it hard to think.

  “No, I don’t think so. But would he believe...” My eyes flew open.

  “Fintan. Roisin, get Fintan. He saw everything. He will find Cathbad and tell him the true tale.”

  I had tried to leave Fin at Emain Macha, knowing I would not be fit to care for him. But he would not stay, flapping his black wings all the way to Dun Dealgan beside us. Now he was offagain, bearing my message, and I had only to endure until the end. I thought with envy now of my mother’s quick death and guessed it would not be lo
ng before I sought out the kindness of the knife myself.

  CHAPTER 17

  CATHBAD’S SON

  Someone was groaning, a terrible sound, the voice thin like a child’s and jagged with despair. It frightened me, and I wished Roisin would see to whoever it was and quiet them.

  “Luaine, wake up.”

  I started, saw a monstrous outline before me, and realized at the same time that it was myself making that fearful noise. I clamped my teeth down hard, and the voice died in my throat.

  “Who is it?”

  The lamps flared up, and I saw it was no monster but a tall man who stood before me—a man with a raven on his shoulder.

  “Cathbad?”

  “No.” He eased his long legs down beside my low bed so I could see him better. A young man with fair hair pulled straight back rather than hanging down, a pleasant, bright face free of beard or mustache and eyes that seemed to look right into my soul. “I am Geanann, Cathbad’s son. He is unable to come to you, but has sent me in his stead. I am not so powerful a druid as he, of course,” and here he smiled, almost apologetically, “but my healing arts are stronger. I have come to see what might be done for you.” He leaned over me, and with one smooth gesture eased me onto my side so that my cheek lay exposed to his sight. I tensed—I could not bear, now, the least touch upon it—buthe did not try. For a long moment he just looked, not seeming to notice the smell of rot that must have assailed him.

  When he sighed and sat back on his heels, I dared a question. “What could you possibly do? I have been cursed.”

  “Cursed?” The snort that escaped him would have been a laugh, if it had not been so full of anger and derision. “If those two knew anything about real curses, they would not bandy them about so freely. Put curses out of your mind.” He rose to his feet and began to pace about the little room, suddenly agitated. “You have been poisoned. No ordinary wound could go septic and spread so quickly. If I knew what Abhartach used...”

  I heard a hiss of indrawn breath, and Roisin stepped forward, fumbling in her pouch. She pulled out a wrapped piece of linen and thrust it at Geanann. “I pulled that from her cheek. Could there be poison still on it?”

  Geanann unwrapped it gingerly, eyed the little shard of crockery under the lamplight, sniffed at it. He scratched at it with his blade. Then he wiped it on the linen, dripped a bit of water on it and examined the result closely. To my alarm, he once licked it—a quick touch of the tongue that I thought I must have imagined until I heard Roisin’s involuntary gasp.

  He stood then as if lost in thought, and as the minutes dragged on, the pain roared back into my face in a fierce wave and licked against the inside of my skull, and I fought to hold back that mewing groan that spoke to me of death.

  The choice he finally put to me was clear enough. He could, just possibly, save my life, but the pain of it would be greater than anything I would experience in the course of merely dying.Or, if I chose not to endure such an ordeal, his draughts could ease my passing to the next world, which would take place in a matter of days.

  “How much greater?” I asked, dreading his reply, but he shook his head.

  “It is not given us to measure the degrees of pain as we can measure the shadow’s length,” he said. “I will have to cut away the dead flesh and then cauterize the edges. After that, you will have a long slow battle as the poison drains and the wound heals. And at the end, a wide scar that will disfigure the left side of your face.”

  The revulsion and fear I felt as I tried to picture the surgery was paralyzing. The skin of my cheek was now so stretched with swelling it felt near to splitting open, and so exquisitely tender that even the accidental brush of cloth against it made me cry out. Marshaling any other thought was almost more than I could manage—yet deep in my fevered brain an uneasy question was fighting its way to the surface.

  I raised my hot eyes to his and saw that he was waiting.

  “Why do you offer me a choice?” I demanded. “If life is indeed within my grasp, however difficult the pathway, why should I choose death?”

  There was a silence while he studied me and seemed to search for words.

  “My father said you would need the whole truth, ill though you be. He says you have a mind that seeks understanding.”

  Suddenly the real question was plain to me.

  “Geanann, why has Conchobor not come? If he knows I kept faith with him, why does he not come to me?”

  He told it as gently as he could, but there are some truths that cannot really be softened.

  “When the king married you, Luaine, it was not your welfare he was thinking of, nor even your beauty, whatever he may have said.”

  I lay in my bed and closed my eyes against his kind face as he laid out what Cathbad had discovered. I understood now how it was possible to die of shame.

  The king did not want me.

  He had never wanted me, only my lands and the strength of my father’s men and our herds and riches. And there was none of Cuchulainn’s family left but myself to stand in the king’s way. He had hired Abhartach and his brother to get rid of me, and was even now riding in a supposed rage to their house to kill them, thus ensuring they would never be tempted to let slip his secret.

  “So you see,” Geanann concluded, “if it is life that you choose, it is not clear what life awaits you. The king expects that you will succumb to the ‘curse,’ and there is no telling how it will be if, instead, you recover and return to Emain Macha.”

  “I will never return to him,” I gritted. Tears welled up under my lids and scalded their way down to my pillow. I hadn’t the strength left to feel anger at Conchobor’s betrayal, but despair feeds on weakness and it washed over me now like the surf breaking over a rock. All I had to do was to let go, and let it take me...

  “Luaine.” Geanann’s hand rested on mine, long fingers wrapping about my wrist, the pressure of them calling me back to him. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes and was grateful to see in his neither pity nor contempt, but only compassion.

  “I cannot choose for you. But I will say that if it is life you decide to follow, Cathbad and I will help you to find a new path.”

  “Cathbad serves the king,” I said bitterly.

  “Cathbad serves Ulster,” he corrected. “And Conchobor’s king-ship, whatever his personal faults, has been strong. Ulster cannot afford to lose him now, Luaine. Not with your father gone. But neither will Cathbad leave you unaided.”

  I could not force my brain to work. The rack and chill of fever, the deep bite of my wound, the debilitating sense of shame—they pushed me toward the easy course. To let go and be at ease. But Geanann had offered me a different road, a harder road, and I owed it to him to at least consider it well.

  “I need Fintan and some time alone,” I said. I did not think Fin had anything new to show me, but I thought his white feather might help me find the thread of my thought.

  And so it did. The white feather blazed out in the dim room against deepest black. And my thoughts did indeed find something to grip onto there, a focus that gave me some distance from the pain. I fixed my eyes on Fintan’s white feather, and there swelled out of its small bright beacon a wheeling dance of memories.

  They were random, at first, fleeting scraps of my childhood. My father’s apple feat. My mother singing. Sunrise over the sea, the Cooley Hills still blue with night’s shadow. The time my father sneezed with a mouthful of ale and it shot out his nose, and I could not finish my meal for laughing. The little white asters that nestle into the grass around our house like fallen stars.

  But the memories all ended in death. I saw my brother, the eager young flame of his life stamped out in the service of another’s vengefulness. My mother, throwing herself into the grave without a thought for what was left behind. And then it was Deirdriu swimming out of Fin’s white light. Her sorrowful violet eyes glowed like jewels before me, charging me with some burden or message. And then they vanished in a rising tide of blood, and I remembered how when
she lay there, her head shattered and her soul finally free, Conchobor was not grieved but only angered. Cheated of his prize.

  And then at last the anger blazed within me, for Deirdriu and for myself too. Was I worth so little, then, that my life should be tossed aside for a man whose greed had swelled beyond bounds? My father had not been king of a great province, but he had shone brighter than Conchobor ever could, nor was he one to betray the memory of a friend.

  “Call them in, Fin. Geanann and Roisin both.”

  And when they had entered, and Geanann had knelt by my bed to hear me speak, I forced my words to rise above the pain they caused me and sound clear in the little room.

  “Cuchulainn’s line will not die out from Conchobor’s treachery. I swear by the gods we honor, I will defy him, king though he be. I will live.”

  CHAPTER 18

  FRIENDS AND HELPERS

  Two years it has been since Geanann gave me a draught that made me dreamy and limp, carried me out into the bright light of the noonday sun, wound straps across my arms and legs and set Berach to hold my head while two other stout men pinned down the rest of me. Two years and still my mind skitters away from the memory in blind refusal. There are some things that cannot be relived, nor recounted.

  Nor can they be forgotten, however we may wish to. Not without Cathbad’s draught of oblivion. Geanann offered it to me, you know—but I turned him down. I didn’t know what other memories might be lost along with the pain, and as you must realize by now, I am not one to turn my back on knowledge.Here is a memory I do not mind sharing: when at last Geanann was done and he laid his fiery blade aside, Berach loosed his hold on me with a groan that was clogged thick with tears. And I hovered on the edge of a blackness that might well have been death and yearned for it to blot out the world, for the agony was a live beast in me still and I shook with a violence that made my teeth clatter. But Geanann poured cool water from a pitcher onto clean linen, and bathed my eyes and spoke in a quiet murmur, and when nausea overcame me his strong arms held me firm as the sickness spattered on the ground, and he washed my mouth afterward as tenderly as a mother. And then he scooped me up and carried me back to bed. The blackness did close over me then, and I slept the sleep of utter exhaustion.