“You can’t trust,” I said, looking into his eyes. “Not me, not the others, not anyone. You feel as if you’re walking on shifting ground.” I saw it in his face. “Nothing certain, nothing sure, nothing to hold on to.” He bowed his head. “But you have Lagu with Ger. That means you can achieve a goal. It’s close to the result of my divination—it concerns a quest or mission, a matter coming full circle. Yes?”
He put down two rods but retained one. Is: literally, ice, which turns fluid to frozen solid, closing in, shutting down . . . The locking of life in stillness. As I hesitated, knowing I was on the brink of a discovery, Ardal held the Is rod against his heart.
“This refers to you, yourself?” I whispered. “Shut in? Shut out?”
He showed me the rune again, then lifted a hand to touch his brow. He moved his fingers to and fro before his eyes as if to indicate dizziness.
“Shut in; confused; unable to think clearly,” I said, letting my thoughts wander through the possibilities. “Beset by nightmares, dreams, visions . . . ”
He waited for me to work it out.
“I know you want to tell me something,” I said. “I might keep on guessing and guessing, and still not understand what it is. It seems to me that you can understand some Irish at least. Can’t you talk to me? It’s safe here; we are all friends. But you won’t even tell us your name.”
Ardal made a sound of frustration. His left hand formed a fist on the blankets. In the shadows, Gull stirred.
“Hush,” I said, “never mind. I’m upsetting you.” I reached to gather the rune rods. Perhaps I should wake Gull. There was a wildness in Ardal’s eyes, a shivering in his thin frame. In his right hand he clutched the rod carven with Is.
For a moment I considered that he might be out of his wits. Perhaps he had not understood anything at all, and my belief that he knew enough Irish to follow my stories and my conversation was born out of my desire that it should be so. Perhaps I had persuaded myself that I had reached him, simply because I could not bear to be a failure. I sighed and reached out for the last rod.
Ardal gave it to me. As he did so, he lifted his other hand and sketched out the same gestures as before, touching his brow, waving his fingers before his eyes. Oh, the look in those eyes! Think, Sibeal. He wants you to understand. He wants it as desperately as you want him to speak.
The rune: Is. The hand to the head: my mind, my thoughts. The fingers moving in ripples. Chaos? Dreams?
He pointed to me. “Sibeal.” He spoke my name in his rasping whisper. He pointed to himself, and then to the rune rod in my hand.
“Is represents you, shut off from the rest of us. I understand that part.”
“Sibeal,” he said again, pointing to me. Then pointed to himself and repeated the rippling gesture, as if to indicate a swirling confusion in his mind.
I realized, with a sudden chilling clarity, that this was the same exchange Muirrin, Gull and I had tried already—my name, your name. “Oh, gods,” I said, cold to the bone. “You can’t remember anything. You can’t even remember your name.”
CHAPTER 4
~Felix~
Day and night blur into one. Folk come and go, doors open and close. In the time between, my ears cannot escape a ghastly music: the crackling, wheezing, creaking variations of my breath. Sleep comes in snatches. My time is measured by the steady ritual of my keepers. Gull’s kind, ugly hands lifting me, turning me, keeping me clean. What lies in his past, that he bears such scars, yet gazes on the world with perfect serenity? Evan, calm and tall, tending to me with practiced care. His eyes assess me. I see him thinking: He will live another day. Capable, hardworking Muirrin. They all depend on her.
And Sibeal. Her gaze like a clear well, her words drops of rain on my parched ground. I have hardly seen her. Since the night when she showed me the runes, a fog has come down over me. They fought to keep me alive, I think. Time passed; days, perhaps many days. Once or twice I heard her: Evan, can I help? I could sit with him. And the answer: He’s so weak, he would not know you were there. If I had had the strength, I would have wept at that.
Without a past, I was adrift. Without a name, I was nothing. She gave me a name like a bright flame of courage. She believes in me. That is the ladder I will climb, to escape this pit of shadows.
I find it hard to speak. The words will not come out, though they are in my mind. I try. I manage Yes, No, That hurts. Something weighs on me, something heavy. I have carried a darkness out of this wreck. Sibeal, where are you?
I am one step further from the abyss. Gull and Evan examine my water, muttering together. I hear Gull say, holding his own. They must believe I can survive this, or Evan would not keep feeding me this endless broth. He has explained that it will make me better; it will help my body work the way it should. Where is the remedy for my mind?
He washes me, dries me, tucks me up as if I were a baby. I am so weak. Sleep, Ardal, he says. The dog jumps up and settles beside me. A good companion; a simple friend. Fang. I do not care for that name. They say she bites. I have not seen it.
Drifting, close to sleep, I think of my own little dog. That first day, I ran home from the farm with him in my arms, most precious, most thrilling of gifts. I will call him Noz. My father laughed. Night? That’s a grand name for such a scrap! But the name was perfect. Black as coal. Black as a raven. Black as dark of the moon. When Noz hid under the covers, all I could see were his bright eyes.
Visitors: three men in warrior garb. One is a man who came before. A rune around his neck on a rough strip of hide: Eolh.
“He’s too weak to see anyone,” Muirrin tells them. “We nearly lost him, three times over.”
“We’ll keep it brief,” says a fellow with wheaten fair hair. “Knut just wants to see how he’s doing, wish him well.”
“Then let Knut talk to him alone, and not for long. Explain that to Knut, Jouko.” Muirrin is severe.
Jouko translates for Knut. Another tongue; not my own, though I understand it well. Jouko and the third man wait by the door, talking quietly together, while Knut comes over to my pallet and sits down, his pose that of a comrade come to make kind enquiries. “I hope you are feeling better, my friend,” he says. His tone is amiable, but his smile chills me.
I want to close my eyes, to will him away, but his gaze holds me. A friend? I think not. There is death in this man’s eyes.
Knut’s voice drops to a murmur. “They say you’ve lost your memory. They say you can hardly put two words together. Maybe that’s true and maybe not. But understand this. Speak one word about what happened, one single word, and sshhhk—” He draws a finger across his throat in unmistakable illustration. He has his back to the others. “Just so we’re clear.”
I cannot remain silent in the face of this. “How dare you threaten me?” I say, using the same tongue. But what I intend as a defiant challenge comes out as a feeble whisper. The others go on talking; my protest has carried no further than Knut’s ears.
He laughs at me. He makes it the chuckle of a man seeking to lift a wounded comrade’s spirits. “Fool,” he murmurs. “You’ll hold your tongue if you set any value on your wretched life.” He rises to his feet. “I’m glad to see you looking so much brighter, comrade.” His tone is hearty now. “They’re looking after you well.”
Jouko translates this for Muirrin’s benefit.
“He tires easily,” she says. “The effects of long immersion in seawater, the cold, the shock of the whole thing—it’s taken a heavy toll. You’d best leave us now.”
I let my lids fall over my eyes. The door opens, shuts. Muirrin is busy with something over at her worktable. I lie still. It is a long time before my heart slows. I read a message in that man’s cold eyes. How unfortunate that you did not die.
I sleep and dream. A cart comes down the track by the farm. I’m picking berries. The basket is woven with a pattern of sunflowers. I’m not tall enough to reach the best fruit. As I stand on tiptoes, stretching up, I hear the carter’s shout and a s
trange, squealing noise cut off sharply. I run, but Noz is already dead. Dead in the road. Stupid dog, says the man. Went right under the wheels. You all right, lad? I wake with my face all tears, my fingers reaching to touch the little dog that breathes gently by my side. The little dog that is not black, but pure white.
~Sibeal~
Ardal took a turn for the worse, and the Inis Eala healers became very busy indeed, brewing drafts, applying poultices, trying to draw the poisons out with leeches. Walking into the infirmary, I heard the desperate rasp of his breathing and smelled the miasma of sickness and defeat. My own role included everything from sweeping the floor and washing bandages to holding Ardal’s hand by candlelight and willing him to take one more breath. I fell into bed so exhausted that I hardly knew whether I was awake or asleep. I dreamed of great waves, perilous rocks, men screaming in despair. In the mornings I woke with thumping heart and clammy skin, and murmured a prayer of thanks that the nightmare was not real. My first act on rising from my bed was to go through and check that Ardal was still breathing.
He no longer looked at me with recognition. When he could summon sufficient strength to open his eyes, he seemed to be gazing on fathomless dark. He did not speak, either in Norse or Irish. Muirrin looked shattered, Evan somber. Even Gull had stopped saying our patient might survive, though he remained calm and composed, attending to anything and everything with gentle hands and kindly words.
I did not go to the seer’s cave. I did not go anywhere much; the four walls of the infirmary were the boundaries of my world. I had saved Ardal’s life. The runes had shown a mission for him, a call to action I was coming to believe must be obeyed by the two of us. He couldn’t die.
It was hard to pray, hard to conduct a conversation, hard even to think straight. My stomach was knotted tight; my head was muzzy with unshed tears. Everything was awry. I had tended to the sick before, but that had been nothing like this. I felt, oddly, as if part of me were in that man lying on the pallet, fighting Morrigan’s will. If he died, part of me would die with him.
Eventually a day came when Muirrin ordered me out. “Go on, Sibeal. You must have a rest from this, even if it’s only for a morning. Go and see Clodagh. Or chat to Biddy, and let her feed you.”
“I can’t. What if he dies while I’m not here?”
Muirrin put her arm around me. “You can’t keep him alive by sheer force of will,” she said. “We’re doing the very best we can, Sibeal. You know that. But you won’t help Ardal, or us, if you get so exhausted you become sick as well. Go on, now. Get some fresh air, at least.”
Biddy was in the kitchen, gutting fish. She sat me down and put a bowl of porridge in front of me.
“Eat,” she ordered. “You look like a little ghost. Every mouthful, Sibeal. And drink this mead. I want to see some color in your cheeks.”
I ate, though the food tasted like ashes. I watched her awhile, realizing that while absorbed in Ardal’s struggle I had lost sight of others on the island who might have needed me.
“How is Svala?” I asked. “Is she better now that she and Knut are lodged on their own?” It was days since I had left the infirmary; so many days I had lost count.
“I haven’t seen much of her, Sibeal.” Biddy had her fair hair tied back in a scarf; her red-knuckled hands were wielding the knife with precision. “She comes to supper with Knut, but she doesn’t seem over-fond of my cooking. I’ve hardly seen her eat a morsel, and she’s a big woman. I took food down to the hut a couple of times. She didn’t invite me in. The place was a mess, from what I could see, bedding all over the floor, clothing thrown into corners. Either she’s not much of a housewife, or she’s still too overcome by her grief to bother with such things. As for the food, she took the dish from my hands, backed inside and shut the door in my face. I feel quite sorry for Knut. He’s a good man, always willing to set his hand to a task if there’s a need. And he’s got his own grief to deal with.”
“Svala seems ill at ease among us. As if she’s not used to having people around her. I wonder where they lived before.”
“Grief does strange things to a person,” Biddy said. “You maybe haven’t lived long enough to see it. When I lost my first husband I lost sight of hope for a bit. If it hadn’t been for the boys, Sam and Clem, I would have found it hard to go on. But when you’ve got little ones wanting their supper or climbing on your knee to give you a hug, you do go on, no matter how badly it hurts. I felt alone. That was the worst part of it. And then the fellows came, Snake and Gull, all the way to Britain, and fetched me and the boys back here. I had no intention of marrying again; the hurt was too raw. If anyone had told me I’d wed that wild-looking black man with feathers in his hair and less than his full complement of fingers, I’d have thought it was a bad joke.” She smiled, the knife stilling in her hand. “Every day I ask the gods to bless Bran for his goodness in sending them for me,” she said softly. “I’m the luckiest woman in the world, Sibeal, to have found two such men in one lifetime. My Evan was the kindest husband anyone could want. Gull is . . . well, he’s like no other. He and I, we’ve each been through our share of sorrow and loss. And we’ve had rare happiness together.” Abruptly, she turned a searching look on me. “You’ll miss that, with the future you’ve chosen for yourself. You’ll never know the joy and terror of loving someone the way I love Gull, or the way your sisters love their men.”
“But I hear the voices of the gods,” I said. “And the great silences. The joy of the spirit must surely surpass the joy of the flesh.”
Biddy smiled. “It’s not just the flesh, though that is certainly a good part of it. If it was up to me, which it never would be, I’d say a person should wed first and have a couple of little ones, and then decide whether the life of the spirit is better and finer than an ordinary sort of existence.”
“But then, if you decided it was, you’d have to leave your family to become a druid. That would be doing things the wrong way around.”
“I’d have thought a person could do both,” Biddy said. “I’d have thought being a wife and mother, or a husband and father, might make a person wiser and more thoughtful. And that might make them better at being a druid or a priest or whatever it was. But nobody’s asking me.”
I could have explained about the years and years it took to memorize the great body of lore a druid needed. I could have described the fasting, the solitude, the various tests of endurance. The need for silence; the long periods of prayer. But I was too tired and dispirited to summon the words.
“I hope I haven’t upset you,” Biddy said. “An honest opinion, that’s what it was. What happens if you make the decision, and take these vows or whatever they are, and then change your mind about it?”
“I won’t change my mind. And you haven’t upset me, Biddy. I like people to be honest.”
“About Svala,” she said. “Maybe she’s best left to herself. They may not stay long, anyway, her and Knut. Johnny will be wanting them off the island as soon as she’s fit to travel. I suppose they’ll go back where they came from. Poor things; a voyage to find a new home, such hopes, and ending the way it did.”
“Mm.”
It was sad indeed. For each of those who were drowned, there was a story like that of Knut and Svala, a tale of opportunities lost, of paths cut abruptly short, of folk left behind. Ardal’s must not end that way. It must not.
“Sibeal?” Biddy was watching me closely. “Why don’t you go out for a walk? It’s a lovely day. Gull told me you were working too hard, and I see it’s so. Finish that food first, and then go out and enjoy the sunshine. You won’t make things better by wearing yourself out, lass.”
“I should be there. With Ardal. It feels right.”
“Ardal wouldn’t want you getting sick on his behalf, not if he’s got any common sense at all.”
She was right, of course. Besides, if I went straight back to the infirmary, Muirrin would only shoo me out again.
I had not explored the eastern end of Inis E
ala, so I headed that way, skirting the women’s quarters. Down by the scattering of small huts that housed folk with children, a young woman I knew as Alba was playing with a mob of small boys and girls. Their game involved chasing, catching and making a range of animal noises. I lifted a hand in greeting. Alba, flushed and laughing, waved wildly back.
A group of men was working on an almost-complete cottage, two thatching the roof, others laying stones for a pathway. Tall, lanky Spider was supervising them, and I stopped to greet him.
“What do you think, Sibeal?” he asked, casting his eye over the humble but pleasing dwelling.
“You’ve done a fine job. Is this Clodagh’s and Cathal’s new house?”
“That’s right, and it’s a pleasure to build it for them. Should be finished well before that baby arrives; our extra worker has made all the difference.” Spider jerked his head in the direction of the men heaving slabs of stone into place, and I saw that one of them was Knut, stripped to the waist and dripping with sweat. He straightened as he saw me, and gave me a nod.
“That fellow does the work of two.” Spider grinned at the Norseman. “Don’t know how we managed without him.”
“You walking,” Knut called, addressing me in Irish. “All alone. Not safe.”
I was taken aback, and could not think what to say to him.
“Man go with you. Better.”
Spider’s grin widened. He made no attempt to speak for me.
“I’m used to walking on my own,” I said. What did Knut think I was, a pampered princess with no common sense at all? If this was his attitude, no wonder his wife’s tendency to wander barefoot on the shore troubled him. “I am a druid; I go under the protection of the gods.”
It was not possible to tell if Knut had understood me. He stood there studying me, arms folded. I had no idea what he was thinking.
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