The Raven Queen

by Jules Watson

  “What?”

  “Sent to Alba, as a child. That is why I never came back. I know now it was a lie to keep me away, but I believed it. There was no news of you afterward. It was as if …” She could not finish that. The hollow place in her throbbed.

  Maeve watched the last stalk be swept away by the current.

  Surprising her, Finn snorted and caught her stallion’s reins, rubbing her chin on his pale shoulder. She had blanched to the same hue as his coat. “You heard wrong. I was almost betrothed, many times, but … men changed their minds when they found out who my mother was.”

  Maeve stared at her. “You are of royal blood.”

  Finn wound Nél’s creamy mane about her finger. “I suppose they were afraid I would be wild, cause trouble among the men … I do not know.”

  Maeve rose from her haunches, light-headed. “Are you telling me I actually saved you from being wed?”

  “If you would have it like that.”

  The corner of Maeve’s mouth lifted, and she covered it with her fingers. She had somehow won Finn the freedom she craved for herself.

  Finn’s fists balled up, her chin jutting. “Are you mocking me?”

  Maeve bent her head. “No, daughter, only myself.” The gods show me for a fool! In spite of all her scheming, they stirred the pot their own way. “I’ll tell you a secret: I mock myself heartily, but only on the inside. Do it aloud and you give people power over you.”

  Finn blinked, color rushing over her face. “I will … remember that.”

  Maeve tried to pull Meallán out of the stream. He yanked his head and stomped, drenching her in freezing water. She cursed.

  Finn stifled a smile. “He is not just heavy, but also badly behaved.”

  “Sometimes.” Maeve wiped her dripping face. “But I never wanted to crush his spirit.” She gently thumped her stallion’s shoulder.

  A strained silence fell. Finn turned, digging out a clutch of bannocks from her saddle-pack. Then she straightened, looking into the woods as if casting about for something to say. “Wind-flowers … already?” Beneath an ash tree, white blooms starred the dark loam. “They are early.” Avoiding Maeve’s eyes, Finn stuck out her arm, a bannock in her palm. Her hand shook.

  Maeve took the barley bun, peering at the flowers as she broke it. A spill of sunlight deeper into the trees picked out more wind-flowers and primroses.

  Maeve’s pulse skipped.

  The recent days had been unseasonably fine. The catkins on the hazels were already drooping fat lobes of pollen, as if about to burst. It had been a mild winter—and short.

  “The bluebells will follow soon.” Rocking on her toes, Finn betrayed the instinctive excitement that all people felt at first sign of leaf-bud. “I used to pretend to swim through them, to make my eyes bluer.” As soon as she blurted that out she stopped herself, tucking her chin on her shoulder.

  Maeve stared at that tremor in Finn’s jaw, the copper wisps of hair at her brow, still soft as a babe’s. Swallowing hard, Maeve crouched beside a butterfly that was flexing in the sun. “It was I who said your eyes would turn blue from the flowers.”

  Finn stopped chewing.

  “You were so tiny, only three or so …” Maeve rested her chin in her hand. “One of my stories.”

  “You told me stories?”

  “Yes. And they were all …” Maeve shook her head with a smile. “… very silly.” She coaxed the orange butterfly onto a twig. “I did not know if you would remember, but it was just as I left, and I hoped … you might.” She brought the twig to her face.

  They both peered at the insect as it fanned its spotted wings.

  Slowly, Finn lifted a hand toward Meallán. “Then tell me more of what I heard about him—how you beat off all the boys to be first to ride him. How you tamed him.”

  Maeve rested the butterfly on the ground. “I’ll tell you while we ride back.”

  They were barely at the huddle of crafters’ houses near the warrior hall when Garvan came flying out of the gate of the mound and raced across the grass to head them off. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he gasped.

  “Out of breath?” Maeve teased. “You should be fighting more and trailing after me less. See? Finn and I are perfectly safe.”

  Garvan’s eyes rose and held hers, no answering glint there at all.

  Maeve’s smile died. “You can speak before Finn.”

  Garvan grasped Meallán’s bridle, holding him steady. “Idath and Felim are gathering a war-band. They have been raising men in the south, Maeve. To attack you.”

  “But … the sacred peace …”

  “They have broken the peace! Ardal has joined with Felim and Idath. We gained the news from some of Ardal’s warriors, who are unhappy about the company their lord now keeps. Their war-band was waiting for the weather to turn. And now, damn it, it has. We’d have had more time if ice and snow trapped them in their duns.”

  Maeve had just been rejoicing that the long dark had broken early. She rubbed blood into her lips with the back of her hand. For all her fine words to Fraech about betrayal … and now his kin had actually dared …

  She hooked a leg over Meallán and slid to the ground. Her thighs buckled and she held to his flank.

  “It was Laigin, Maeve.” Garvan glanced at Finn from beneath knitted brows. “When you bought a Laigin king for Connacht, and a Laigin war-band, Felim and Idath began muttering that you’d betrayed Connacht—that you had broken the peace. They call you a traitor.”

  That hated word cleaved Maeve’s shock. Fury cleared her mind. “Who else knows of this?”

  “No one at Cruachan but me and Ardal’s man.”

  “Then come.” Maeve looked up at her daughter. The sunlit halo of Finn’s hair now blurred the fear in the girl’s stricken face. “Finn, take Meallán and stable him for me. Would you do that?”

  Finn nodded, searching her mother’s eyes.

  Maeve felt compelled to offer her something else, however small. “You are the only one who will handle him from now on—in fact, you are skilled enough to take over the care of all the royal horses.” With effort, she drew up the corners of her mouth. “That is one good gift that you get from me.”

  Finn returned a weak smile. “So you won’t condemn me to sew and spin at the fire after all?”

  Maeve blew out her breath. “I do not think there will be any spinning for some time.”

  Conor of the Ulaid called to him a group of young warriors who guarded his mother’s lands in the North. They were eager to please, hot for blood, and swift riders.

  And they were not Red Branch.

  He drove his chariot from Emain Macha on the heels of a rainstorm, alone but for two bodyguards on horses. He met the pack of youths in a glade of dripping branches and rotten leaf-litter. Down through the woods, the great lake of the Ulaid stretched to the horizon, its gray surface broken by white crests.

  Conor looked around at these young ones, wild-haired and bright-eyed, and smiled. They had never triumphed in the difficult battle-feats that would admit them into the Ulaid Red Branch. They had not risen to the ranks of those hallowed fighters, which meant their loyalty was given to him alone. They did not care about traitors such as Naisi and his brothers, or the sly manipulations of Fergus and his spawn. Right now, Conor did not trust his Red Branch to do what he commanded.

  The damp wind blew his ruff of foxtails over his chin and made his nose run. “I will arm you with swords as sharp as wolf teeth, and put the swiftest mounts beneath you. And then you will cross the border into Connacht.”

  The men’s eyes blazed in the dim light of that bleak day, their smiles glinting.

  The king paced before them, his head beginning to pound. “And you will find me Finnbennach, the great white bull, his hooves and ears painted red, and you will drive him and his herd back to me.”

  Then his lords would see he would not be defied by anyone, least of all the treacherous whore of Connacht. She had scorned him for the last time.<
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  He had just discovered that Connacht still had no ruler, and that bull held the very essence of its kingship, the blessings of the gods. Parading that potent beast before his men would prove he was still in his strength and that Connacht was faltering.

  Then would the Red Branch and his cattle-lords put their squabbling aside and rally behind him once more. And then they would take not just Connacht’s heart, but the entire kingdom.

  And all of Erin.

  Maeve paced around the hearth in Ailill’s guest-lodge, sumptuously hung now with woolen blankets and rugs, and gleaming with every variety of vessel that held mead, wine, and ale. Bronze, oiled wood, glass, and carved antler and bone cups and jugs were everywhere.

  She slept here when she could not avoid it, though it was clear that the older Ailill liked drink more than rutting, and on the rare nights he was sober, she found she could bear her wifely duties by retreating into a great many thoughts.

  In light of this news of Idath and Felim, she had now banished everyone else from the lodge but her husband and Garvan.

  “We can muster more men than Idath.” By the glow of the fire, Garvan clenched his fist as if it already hefted his sword. “Gods’ balls, Maeve, why won’t you let me give the order?”

  Maeve clutched her horn beaker, looking at the reflection of one eye in the mead. It was almost all black, the pupil stark. Inside, she was endlessly falling, as if she could find no solid ground.

  Memories of Ruán kept flashing through her: his hand over her breast, claiming her; his lips at her throat as she flung back her head. Most of all, the heat of him cradling her in the furs as the fire died. To stay there … to never have to face this betrayal … “There is more to think about.”

  “There’s no time for thinking!”

  “Watch yourself, mac Aed.” Ailill sprawled in a carved and cushioned chair he had brought from Laigin. His eyes were veined after another long night, and his thatch of brown hair was uncombed.

  “With respect, my lord …” Garvan chewed the courtesy with distaste, “you could be readying your own men. The Galeóin could be training the others—”

  “No.” Maeve set the cup upon a dresser and gripped the oak top, looking at her feet. She welcomed the constriction of the hide breastplate, the laces holding her tight. Armor made her remember there was no room for anything else. Not memory. Not him. “This rebellion of Idath’s has to be put down without any Laigin warriors at all.”

  Garvan halted his pacing. Ailill’s hand hovered with the ale jug.

  “I cannot give strength to the charge of Fraech’s kin. I cannot use Laigin warriors to subdue Connacht-men. The people will turn against me, see me as a tyrant who sacrifices her own warriors for power. Or, worse, a weakling who will let Laigin overrun Connacht.”

  “This is madness!” Garvan thrust a hand through his dark hair. “Many lords support your cause and will be enraged that Idath broke a sacred peace. It will take time to gather their men, though, and if we wait here—”

  “We won’t wait here,” Maeve said.

  “But if we march to confront Idath …”

  “Our war-band will be too small.” Maeve’s voice held the ice that was in her veins. They were coming to kill her. They would trap her here, as Innel sought to do.

  Fighting a mounting panic, she lifted her face to them both. “Still I must do this. If we take the warriors from Cruachan, we might reach Idath’s forces before they are ready. After all, they do not know that we know. We could at least hold them in the mountains until the other lords send for more men.”

  Garvan poked a finger at Ailill, forgetting himself. “How can you let her do this? You have hundreds of warriors with you!”

  His eyes bleary in the firelight, Ailill took another glug of ale. “My men did not come to die on Connacht swords.” He wiped his beard. “If her bid to rule fails, I return to Laigin with my bride-price and my men. She knows that.”

  Garvan glared at them both. He did not possess that princely skill of looking to his own needs above all else.

  Maeve turned so only Garvan could see her face, her eyes softening. “This alliance with Laigin was made to protect us against the Ulaid. I will not be blessed if I use it to subdue my own people.”

  “Blessed?” Garvan’s face cleared and his voice dropped. “You do not mean this dream of the sídhe? Maeve, they are tricksters; you cannot buy their favor. And that is druid business. You are a warrior.”

  “I have to be more than that; I have to be a queen.” She arched one eyebrow. “I have you to think like a warrior.”

  “Only to ignore me!”

  It came to Maeve then that the fierce surge on the hilltop that made her take the sword—all racing blood, no thought at all—had set in motion something that was now out of her control.

  Slowly, she touched her blade where it lay on the dresser. The stag on the hilt was poised to leap over streams and charge across hills. That was how it stayed ahead of the hunters, how it led its herd far away. “Some things are simple after all. The gods reward bravery and strength. This is all I can show them now.”

  “What … right before you die?” Garvan retorted.

  Ailill choked on his ale. “Enough! You forget yourself.”

  Garvan sucked his lips in, nostrils flaring.

  Maeve stepped up and clapped him on his solid shoulder. “Send messengers out for the muster. We leave at dawn in two days, no later. Turn out the stables. Every man must be mounted.”

  With a sigh, Garvan nodded.

  “And send a man to Lord Donagh.”

  Garvan checked, peering at her. “Donagh has many warriors …”

  “And holds sway over many lords. He’s been keeping men ready for me for a long time.”

  Garvan’s mouth quirked, and he touched his scarred brow with grudging respect. “Glad to see you’ve not completely lost your wits, spitfire.” He bounded down the stairs.

  “You shouldn’t let him be so cocky,” Ailill grumbled.

  Maeve’s legs were unsteady now, and she sank onto a thick sheepskin rug, huddling by the fire. Miu scooted from beneath a nearby bed and rubbed about her shins. Her hand fell upon the cat’s soft back. “I like straight talking.”

  “Yet you spun me a tale that was not entirely true, firebrand—about your hold over your people.” Ailill leaned his cup against his ruddy cheek, his eyes hard. “I could have waited to unpack my carts, eh?”

  Maeve pushed her wrists on her knees, drawing her back straight. “No,” she said. “Your bet is not lost yet.”

  Before that day ended, Maeve walked the dark paths to the little cluster of huts where the iron- and bronze-smiths lived, set by the rushing stream. There, in the darkened forge, she picked up her new war-helm, turning it in the glow of the coals.

  The iron dome was crested by a bronze raven with spread wings, the sign of the triple war goddesses Morrígan, Nemain … and Macha. She had asked Eithne’s husband to begin work on it after Idath and Felim scorned her in the temple. Now she would wear it before them.

  If only it did not hang so heavy in her hands.

  Maeve appeared to Ruán without warning, his senses for once not picking up the blaze of her spirit approaching over the marsh.

  He had been finding it hard to concentrate since their joining. This day he was endeavoring to net fish in a stream channel, unable to call them to his hands.

  “I came to say farewell,” she said.

  Ruán pulled the empty net out and leaped over the channel to solid ground. She stood in the shelter of a brake of thorns and alders, their mass of stems providing a barrier against the cold breeze. Where it was still, he caught the faint scent of may blossoms.

  Only then did he realize that Maeve’s wildfire was no more than a glimmer.

  He replied without thinking, his trews dripping over his bare feet. “I suppose you still have many lords to win to your cause.” A stray thought darted in, wondering only now how she had won the prince Ailill. The sinking feeling
was a surprise, as was his hollow voice, but it was hard to feel his own self clearly through his confusion.

  Was she here to demand his secrets again? Or was she the Maeve who wrapped him in fire and then wept in his arms?

  “I have … a problem to deal with. Something I cannot avoid. I might be gone for … sometime.”

  Ruán grew still. Instead of a blaze, she was a guttering flame. The tremor in her voice brought her alive in his mind: her shoulders in a huddle, one hand beneath her lowered chin. Did he see her?

  His fingers flexed, the softness of her skin still imprinted on them. His hand stirred toward her, then halted. With her sword, and bloody duels, and savage talk of Conor of the Ulaid, she summoned a world he no longer wanted to even imagine: the world of battle-lords that took his eyes.

  He wiped his wet palm down his trews, his voice low. “You do not have to struggle and fight, Maeve. You could choose not to.” He thought of her in the sídhe vision, heart beating fast behind the shield-line. And what was in her face when she looked beyond, away from death. The depths in her eyes that drew words from him now. “There is so much more—”

  “There is certainly less,” she snapped. “Like being ruled by warlords and their bloodlusts. I will do anything to be free of that.”

  Her fierceness was a blow to his chest, and it stopped Ruán’s tongue.

  Maeve expelled her breath, taking a faltering step toward him. “This is not about you. I came to thank you. I just … I had to come. To you.”

  Her light was wavering. So she feared his touch, in case it summoned more memories, and yet still drew closer to him. She was brave, that was certain, for he would not willingly expose his pain again. “Thank me for what?”

  He felt her searching his face. “For the pleasure we both enjoyed, of course.” Her laugh was strained. “It seems we did strike a bargain, druid.”

  Of all the things to pierce him, it was that catch in her voice—the swagger that was cracked beneath. He knew those cracks now, for he had felt them echo through his own flesh.