by Erin O'Quinn
His lips were in my ear and he bit my ear and inserted his tongue. “Anois, now, now, Cat,” he breathed. And then he, too, erupted. His moan was long and low, almost guttural.
I turned to him, biting and sucking his lips. “Oh, oh, love, my love. That was so good.”
His answer was to wrap his arms around me and press me close. And that is how we slept, our bare bums exposed to one and all, but the front of our bodies very warm indeed.
* * * *
Shortly after midday on Wednesday, our caravan stopped in front of the church. I immediately dismounted and went to Nuala. I spoke to her through her granddaughters.
“Seanmháthair, let me speak to your son first. Let me be sure he is…ready to see anyone. Anyone at all. Wait, and I will return shortly.” She nodded, smiling, as Cara told her what I had said. Fifty or so feet way, Sweeney sat in Brother Galen’s teach, waiting, I imagined, for his long-shrouded past to be revealed.
Flanked by Liam and Brother Jericho, I walked to the door of the round-house and knocked on the door. Almost before I drew back my hand, the door opened, and I saw the gleam of Galen’s tonsured head. “Come in,” he said, and his face was so sorrowful that my breath caught in my throat.
We all three entered Father Patrick’s intended house, and Galen immediately shut the door behind us. All of us looked at him, speechless, waiting for him to bring Owen Sweeney forth from the shadows, or from behind the large fire pit.
“Brother Jericho…Me–me friends…The news is grave. Owen is gone.”
Chapter 24:
My Name is Sorrow
“Gone!” I heard my own voice shouting. “You mean Sweeney is dead?”
I found myself seizing the front of Galen’s robe, and Liam gently pried my fingers loose. “Cat. Let Galen speak.”
“No, colleen, not dead. Just—gone. Disappeared.”
“Tell us, O Brother,” said Jericho gravely.
“No—nothing to tell. Just—he was just gone.” Galen sat on the same bench where I had once sat, crying my heart out, and I saw huge tears sitting on his plump cheeks. Oh God, I thought, let this not become the bench of sorrow. I did not realize until a long time later that I was actually praying directly to the Lord for the first time instead of using Father Patrick as my intermediary.
“Start at the beginning,” said Jericho in measured tones. He knelt next to the bench where the monk sat and put his hand on Galen’s shoulder. “Remember, dear Brother, no one blames you. Just talk to us.”
Galen took a few moments to breathe slowly, in and out, in great explosive sounds. “Friday. You left Friday. That day, Owen taught Brigid’s Latin class. He seemed…satisfied, somehow. More mentally calm. We played chess later, and he actually laughed as he surrounded me hapless king. I was double dead, mated no matter what move I made. But his laughter was not derisive. I swear, it had a lilt to it that stirred hope in me chest that he was beginning to get better.
“The next morning, he asked to be set outside for a while, next to the teach, in the sun. It gladdened me heart, I tell ye, an’ I was only too happy to take him there. We both stayed outside until the cold shadows beckoned us to supper. We talked of his old home, an’ his mother, an’ the children he missed.
“Then the Sabbath came. He wanted to sit outside again, an’ I knew it was a risk. I would be preaching, an’ I could not spare anyone to watch over him. But I felt like a prison keep, latching the door outside as if he were a criminal. An’ so I told him, gently as I could, that we would go out together after church service. He actually smiled, an’ he told me he understood. So when I left, I admit, I did hesitate. I could have latched the heavy door. But—but—I did not.” His head fell to his chest, and we all waited for him to regain control of his emotions.
Finally, he lifted his head and regarded us. “I have been searching every hour from then until now. How far could a poor deformed man go in a flimsy cart, over trenches and rocks, all by himself? Had he thrown himself into the river at last? Had he lain under the tethered horses, waiting to be trampled to death? Ah, I thought every sad an’ sinister thought, until I am as you see me—impotent with self-reproach.” He let forth a heaving sigh, and the tears started again.
I, too, felt impotent. Sweeney had a three-day lead. He could be almost anywhere. I looked at Brother Jericho. “Could you—would you speak to Nuala? Comfort her, and settle her and her grandchildren into your teach?”
“Of course, Caylith,” he said, and his calm voice had a wonderful steadying influence on me.
I went to Liam. “A mo ghrá, would you help Jericho make beds for the ladies? I think Michael and Brigid will help, too.”
He smoothed my hair. “Ar ndóigh, a chuisle. What will ye do?”
“I need to visit Mama right away. And then I need to go home and make Sweeney’s potion. He will need it, now more than ever. For we will find him. I know we will find him. I will meet you at home, Liam. You and I will find him together.”
He enclosed me in a warm embrace and gently kissed my mouth. “Worry not, Cat. Do what ye need to do.”
We all three left together, and I could not even look as Jericho walked to the blanket throne of Mother Sweeney. I mounted Macha and dug in my heels, bidding her gallop at last after all the miles of plodding along. We rode straight to Mama’s teach.
* * * *
She hurried here and there, plumping up the animal skins, polishing the tables with a bit of wool. “Darling, I—did not expect—you are so soon back from your trip. Ah, are you sure you do not need to rest?”
I sat quietly, not moving, my hands folded in my lap as though I were five years old again and Mama and I were going to talk about my skipped lessons. Except that this time, she was the flustered one instead of I.
“Mama, please sit down. We need to talk.”
“Fine, darling. I am not sure what I can say to help you.” She sat in a large, high-backed bench about three feet from me, leaning back almost languidly, her silk toga glimmering in the light of a nearby candle.
Her hands were folded in her lap like my own, and for the thousandth time I inwardly flinched to see the gristle-white scars on her tiny wrists.
“You can tell me about Sweeney.”
She knew why I was here, and she did not pretend to be startled when I said his name.
“What is past is past, Caylith. We cannot go back and relive our mistakes and somehow right them.” Her voice sounded very distant.
“I am not here to condemn you or accuse you, dear Mama. But he has disappeared again, perhaps afraid to confront his own past. I think it is time to bring Owen Sweeney back to the land of the living.”
She turned her head as though studying a thread in a nearby tapestry, tracing its subtle journey over and under the weft.
“Please, Mama. He needs help right away. His inner pain has brought him to the verge of insanity, perhaps even death. His story has begun to emerge, but I fear he may be dead before he can be vindicated.”
She sat for a very long time, letting the lengthening shadows cast by open windows play across the polished floors. At last she sighed.
“I heard the tale once of a woman held in bondage, brought before her captor. Her eyes had not known tears for so long that she had forgotten how to cry. Her body had been ravaged by so many drunken savages that she willed it to become shriveled and old, and therefore passed over by predatory eyes.”
I waited. She was still regarding the tapestry, and I, too, began to trace the one bright gold thread that disappeared, then reemerged another place in the tapestry as if telling a story of flight and capture, or death and rebirth.
“Her captor did not mean to harm her. That was clear from the moment she was brought before him. She was told to sit on a low bench and to try to be comfortable. Except for one candle, the room was almost dark, but she could see his eyes glittering and his pale face moving slightly as he spoke.
“‘I bought you for three sacks of barley, madam,’ he said, ‘and four cumal. I d
o not deal in slavery, but the knave who held you would not have given you up for less. You are therefore part of my household, and your companions, too.’”
Mama’s head was thrown back now onto the supporting back of her bench, and her throat was very pale, very vulnerable. I could see that it was hard for her to swallow, and my deep love for her welled up into my own throat, watching her remember.
“You are hiding yourself, like a lily trodden into the roadside. And yet I see that you are beautiful,” he said. “So like…someone I once knew. Tell me your name.”
“My name is sorrow.”
“Tell me, Brón—for that is our name for sorrow—tell me your surname.”
“It is dread.”
“I am sorry for your sadness. And I pledge to you, you have no need to dread me. I want to set you free. But I must ask you to help me. There is—something I need from you. If you will do it, I will treat you and your fellow captives as my honored guests. I will feed you, and clothe you, and you will need for naught.”
“And what help do you need?”
“I need you to touch me, Brón.”
“Touch you—how?”
“In the way of a man with a maiden.”
“You could easily pay one of your servants to do that.”
“None of my servants can take the place of my treasured wife. None of them have small hands of ivory and lustrous eyes of deep brown. Not one of my servants has shining, auburn hair that she used to plait for me, for my deep enjoyment. And she would sing to me as she interwove all her long, bright hair.”
Even in the growing dark, the captive saw that great tears stood on his pale face.
“What if this—substitute wife were to touch you in the way you desire, but she asked not for special treatment? How many days or months would she have to stay with you before you set her free?”
“You would earn your freedom by satisfying my needs?”
“Yes. But I would not have my fellow captives, nor any soul on this earth, know our agreement. Three months. I bargain for three months. During that time, we will be your servants. We will live together as we have for several months, tied together by cruel bonds and by our mutual sorrow. I will visit you once every evening, as now. And then you will release us.”
“Very well, Brón.”
The captive walked to the invalid’s cart where he sat and proffered her hands, still bound in front of her. He reached out and carefully, almost tenderly, removed the ropes.
“Do you still have her comb?”
He wheeled out of the chamber, and when he returned, he silently handed her a comb of abalone shell, so finely wrought that the captive knew its former owner was…held very dear.
“Lay back,” she told him. “Let me remove the blanket that covers you.” He threw back his head, and he let her slowly draw the blanket down, off his legs. “Do not move,” she told him, “for I am going to sing for a while first.”
He lay there, suffused with some deep pain. She saw tears coursing down his ragged face. “Hush,” she said. She sat first near his head and combed his hair back from his face, all the while singing an old lullaby she thought she had long ago forgotten.
Wherever you are, my dear, my dear, So shall I be, so near, so near.
Open your heart and hear, and hear, My lullaby, no tear, no tear…
She saw that his—part of him had not been impaired by the accident that had crippled his legs. She reached out and touched him and smoothed him as gently as she had pulled his hair back from his face, and her song changed from a lullaby to another one she remembered from her girlhood. A song about summer meadows, and young lovers.
He never once spoke or cried out while she was with him that night. At last, she drew the blanket back up over his legs and held her hands out to him, her palms together. “Tie me again,” she said. “Return me to my friends.”
Mama’s head had been thrown back, and then she slowly righted it and looked at me for the first time since she had started her narrative.
“The night you arrived was the end of the three months. He brought me into his house for the last time and spoke quickly. He told me I was not to speak either for or against him if he were brought before the throne of judgment. I saw that he had already given up, and I told him I could not agree. I told him I would speak on his behalf. But he spoke almost harshly to me for the first time.
“‘You will say nothing,’ he said. ‘I would have set you free the second night except that by then I needed you too much to forego your touch. And now my time has run out. I honor you, Brón, for your name and mine are the same.’ And for the last time, he took the bonds from my wrists, and he pressed something into my hands. And then I left.”
Mama rose and went to a table near her bed, and when she returned she was carrying an object that reflected an iridescent glow even in the dimming light. She held it out for me to see. It was a comb fashioned of abalone, made perhaps by an enchanted mermaid in a grotto by the sea.
I stood next to her and embraced her closely, breathing in the smell somehow of lilacs and lavender. “Mama, dearest Mama. I am sorry.”
“Cry not, Caylith. Hush, hush, darling. What has happened has happened for a reason. Father Patrick has absolved me, and Glaedwine deeply understands. I will not speak of it—not ever again. You must leave now, for the hour grows late.”
I saddled Macha and rode for home. My mind was a whorl of thoughts and images. Mama’s story fit exactly into the one Nuala had told. I tried to understand her motives. Why would she trade her freedom for his fleeting satisfaction? And why would Sweeney let her go if she were willing to tend to his needs? The charged relationship between them was impossible to understand, and she would never talk about it again.
When I reached home, I saw that Liam had still not returned. Only Clíona stood tethered at the full hay haggard. Her coat was shining, her trough was full of water, and she had fodder within reach. I realized that Luke or Magpie, or both, had been taking care of her in our absence.
As I unsaddled and curried Macha, I let my mind play over the details I knew about Sweeney’s last days at Galen’s teach. From what the monk had said, it seemed as though he were lulling Galen into a sense of security, as though he had already formed a plan and meant to carry it out on the one day when few if any people would see him disappear—on Sunday, when everyone was at church.
That meant that Sweeney was not a victim. He had not been captured for a ransom, or by someone who meant to do him harm. Besides, I reasoned, anyone who wanted to take Sweeney against his will had best be armed heavily, for I thought the man with no legs could hold his own against a small army.
Once inside, I made our fire and started a cauldron of water for a soup. I brought vegetables from the garden, cleaned and cut them, and set them into the water to boil. While I was busy at the table, I spread out my cloth full of the plants I had gathered for Sweeney’s special gruit.
And still my mind puzzled over Sweeney as I worked. It was clear that he could not simply roll away to freedom. Galen was right—how could a crippled man in a flimsy cart make his way over the deep trenches and rubble of rocks that made up the landscape around the church and the school? He would need help. And he would need more than one person, for Sweeney was large and heavy.
Brother Jericho had once reasoned with me when I confessed my terror of the man. Who would befriend Sweeney? Who would help him escape? And we had both decided that he had no friends, nor was he likely to make any while he lived with Galen. Who did that leave? The weak, ignorant clansmen who had helped him capture Liam and the vile, conniving druids who seemed to have a stake in Sweeney’s regaining his holdings. If I had a choice between the two, I would wager on Loch and Lucet, the druid brothers who had once conspired to drug King Leary and seize power.
Something was nagging at my mind, and I sat on a bench for awhile, thinking. Someone had told me that Loch and Lucet had disappeared. Who had told me? It came to me suddenly. Luke! Luke had told me that the
sneaky druids had perhaps left Éire entirely, or were in hiding, embarrassed to have been banished by King Leary. I had no milk cows, but I would wager a sét that Loch and Lucet had come to Derry to take Sweeney, and Sweeney had willingly left with them. To what end, I knew not. In what direction, I knew not.
I began to crush and prepare the gruit ingredients, and as my hands worked so did my mind. Where would druids go? They could not go west, for a fact. No one could travel west, for the swift River Foyle was a natural, insurmountable barrier. They would not go east, for that was the very direction we had just come from, and nothing at all lay along that path except for gorse and undulating moors.
That left two destinations—north, back to Sweeney’s old holdings on the peninsula and south, or southeast, toward—what? Remembering the ford on the river Foyle, I decided swiftly that no, they had not gone north. How could they possibly cross the river, even at its most shallow, where our men were garrisoned? That left the area to the south or southeast of Derry. I was sure that either Sweeney or his companions were seeking something. If I found out what that was, I would find Sweeney.
I crushed the dried petals of the gorse blooms and crumbled them into a woven basket. The heather leaves, too, were curled and dried, and I crushed them and their now-flaky roots with the flat of my long knife and set them into another container. Last, I seized the thorny sprig of hawthorn branch and broke off a piece about six inches long. I began to grind it with the little flat stone I kept for just that purpose, until it was as much a powder as my faithful horsetail reed. Now I had three containers—four, if I counted my horsetail reed—the makings for a “Sweeney gruit,” a concoction blended just for him. I set aside all ingredients until it was time to brew the mix.
I looked outside and saw that Liam had returned. He was currying Angus, with NimbleFoot waiting to be combed next. I put my mantle back on and went outside to help.
