The Wakening Fire [The Dawn of Ireland 2]

by Erin O'Quinn

  At first I thought the red was the stain from some ghastly druid sacrifice. And then I realized that the stone itself on this side was a bit different from the rest. Instead of looking like thousands of bits of shiny dwarf dust, this side was rougher and darker. I thought the red might be the way the sun and the rain played upon its surface over the countless years it had stood here.

  From the moment I had seen it yesterday, I imagined it as a solitary, proud king. The several stones that stood or lay nearby were his sentries, his minions, watching over him as he stood on high ground and beheld his realm—the low, pretty valley where two rivers flowed together.

  I was drawn to it as though it were a lodestone and I a piece of iron. It was cool to the touch, and yet I imagined a heartbeat somewhere under the place my fingers touched. Ever since I had seen the immense standing stones on the desolate plains of Salisbury, the sacred stones had held a deep fascination for me. Was it my imagination every time, or did the ancient bones under the soil call to me? For I knew they were there—bones of the fathers of the fathers of the first men who lived in this beautiful land.

  Liam took my hand, interlacing my fingers with his own, and gently led me down to where our companions stood, ready to travel. Everyone had left except for us, Moc and Sweeney, Torin and Swallow. The Glaed Keepers had removed Loch and Lucet yesterday, and I had not even asked where they took him. The rest of our company had decided to make a much faster ride into Derry than the one we were contemplating, for we could not move fast with Sweeney.

  I, for one, did not want to move fast. I wanted Owen Sweeney to become more accustomed to us, his new family. I wanted him to feel the curative effects of the potion slowly, so that it did not feel like an alcoholic or narcotic dream state.

  Liam and Torin walked to the invalid’s cart, each seizing the top of a wheel. And then they began to walk with a measured pace while Moc stayed near him, and Swallow and I walked behind, leading the horses.

  After a few hours along the path back to Derry, Moc worked her way back to where Swallow and I were walking. “Owen would speak with you, Caylith,” she said. “I think he wants to hear his mother’s story.”

  “That is a story I want you both to hear, and Torin, too. I see nothing wrong with finding a pleasant place to stop while I tell everyone.”

  And so we did. Liam and Torin lifted Owen out of the cart and made him comfortable. We settled on blankets in a small clearing near the rutted path. At first I sat while I began Nuala’s story. Then, as the details became more dramatic I began to pace, caught up in Owen’s life as though I had lived it myself.

  I spoke for half an hour. When I was finished, I expected Owen to look upset or angry. But he surprised me. “Tell me again, Caylith, how my mother met Niall. She thought he had come from across the North Sea? And tell me again about his men and his horses. Did you mention Mother’s dowry? And how he looked?”

  I smiled and talked. For the first time in my troubled history with Sweeney, he looked serene and rested. Torin and Liam quietly put him back in the cart, and they silently grasped the wheels. Then we traveled at a steady pace while he slept, and Moc walked calmly at his side.

  Swallow and I were walking behind the others again. “Cay,” she ventured, “I think Brigid was right. My mother favors Owen. Very much.”

  “They are both extremely attractive and powerful people,” I observed to her. “I think it is a natural attraction.”

  “You know, Cay, I have never thought of my mother as attractive.”

  “But she is, Swallow—very much so. Hers is a beauty that wells from deep inside and ambushes other people. They are captured before they know what has happened. That is how she won Torin. She did it without even trying.”

  Swallow laughed. “What do you mean?”

  “On our way back home the same day he met her, Torin vowed to tell her the truth the next day no matter what, for he refused to deceive her in any way. In a sense, he already loved her, as well as her beautiful daughter. In a different way, of course. But he loved her nonetheless.”

  “You are very wise, Caylith. You see much more, and understand much more, than what you let others see.”

  “Nonsense,” I said casually. “I do not believe that for a moment, and you should not, either. Let us talk of the Terrible Trousers and yesterday’s stunning capture of the malevolent druids Loch and Lucet.”

  Both of us began to laugh, remembering the gangly druids huddled in abject fear, and the rest of our journey to Derry was filled with animated conversation and shouts of laughter.

  Chapter 27:

  Captivity

  At last the fair weather had come to Derry, and with it had come the rains. I adjusted my leather hat with one hand, feeling the downpour run off the leather and onto my neck, then down my bare back in spite of my new leather mantle, the one fashioned by Moc and her workers. I lightly held NimbleFoot’s reins with one hand, not needing to guide him. His feet knew even better than my own eyes the familiar turf between our teach and the church, and from there on to the Feather clan enclaves, where Sweeney was staying.

  The past two months had been sweet and happy for all of us. Owen Sweeney had never made it back to Brother Jericho’s clay house. Moc had insisted he be lowered into the dwarf enclaves by means of the soil-removing pulley used by the tunnel builders. “Whoever wants to visit Owen may descend the staircase like proper visitors,” she had said. Jay Feather, I remember, had stood silent and astonished as Sweeney was lowered slowly into the great room, into the place of a thousand thousand glittering lights.

  As I looked back on that day, and on the days following, I realized what a wonderful influence Mockingbird already was. She would brook no nonsense—no whining, no invectives, and no rancorous scowls. Each time I visited them during the last two months, I saw how Sweeney’s eyes had begun to clear, how more and more his jaw and mouth had softened, until his face had become actually handsome.

  Mockingbird’s own face, suffused with a deep radiance, had reformed into a new kind of beauty. And every morning without fail, I knew, she poured his comfort tea. A month ago I had sent Sweeney’s daughters back home to procure more ingredients, and his two younger sons had returned with the plants I needed. Now we had enough laid by to last for years, I thought with satisfaction. And now two of his three sons were reconciled with the father they had run from.

  The first time Nuala saw her long-lost son, I was there. The reunion took place two days after his return, when Owen was feeling well enough to see visitors. We had brought her to the enclaves on the two obedient mares, sitting on her blanket throne. Orla and Carla had guided her down the ornate spiral stairs. She stood in her intricate lace shawl, looking around, bewildered by the twinkling facets of dwarf dust that permeated the great room. I gravely took her arm and led her through the side door to Jay’s family cook room, and from there into the comfort room.

  Owen Sweeney sat not in his cart but on a hide-covered bench, looking quite as though he had just sat down and was resting for a moment. Nuala, her own face radiant with new health and hope, stood for a few heartbeats as if transfixed. Then she rushed into his arms, nestling her gleaming head in his great chest. And Sweeney smoothed her hair over and over. “A bheith sásta, mo mháthair. O Mother, Mother. Shush. We are reborn. Let us rejoice.”

  When Nuala pulled away, I saw that the tears had dried on her cheeks, and her eyes were clear and sparkling. I understood her Gaelige with no effort at all. “Owen, say hello to your pretty daughters.”

  He held his immense arms out like a great warm mantle. And when they came to him, he closed his arms and embraced them both at once. “Tell me,” he said. “Are you keeping up with your lessons in spite of married life? Or have you grown cheeky and lazy?”

  And now, riding in the spring rain, I saw the church, my halfway marker to the enclaves. Glimpsing the church yard, I laughed aloud suddenly, remembering Luke and his first words to pretty Quince, the dancer who, years earlier, had danced for the plea
sure of the King’s supper guests. Flaxen-haired and with skin almost translucent in its pale beauty, Quince had caught my friend’s eye in church. And she, apparently, had been gazing at his own dark, lustrous hair and good-looking face.

  On the Sunday following our return from Claudy, I sought Quince in the church yard, where she and her twin Persimmon were set to walk home. “Please, come with me,” I had exhorted. She sought approval from her slightly taller twin, who nodded in some puzzlement, and I led her to where Luke stood, fidgeting with his stiff church clothing.

  “Luke,” I had pronounced solemnly, “this is my friend Quince. She and her sister lack an escort back to their home this morning.”

  Immediately, Luke’s hand was ruffling his hair in the lovable gesture that made his dark locks stand up at odd angles.

  “Um,” he said intelligently. Luke seemed immediately to forget he had any vocabulary at all, and any social graces. Fortunately, she held her shapely hand out to him. He gripped it and stood looking at her, still speechless, until finally she smiled and said, “I have been thinking of learning Latin from you.”

  Oh!” he said glibly. Then, “Always—ah, always room for beautiful…um, for new students, ah—”

  And so began a new friendship.

  My thoughts naturally drifted from the church to Father Patrick, and then to his adversary, Sweeney’s half brother Leary. In a few days I would be boarding the Brigid, bound for Tara, and I actually welcomed the idea of the great, pitching boat and the three- or four-day pilgrimage from our harbor to the royal bally. I would be traveling with my dearest companions. There would be Liam, of course. Then Michael and Brigid, Torin and Swallow, Sweeney and Mockingbird. I thought fleetingly of Owen’s perverse, scowling son Murdoch, a man so like his father. Perhaps someday they would be reconciled, but it would not be on this trip.

  I had found out that the Brigid was due to sail from the Lough Foyle to Dún Laoghaire, or Dunleary, four days hence. Normally, the longship would not hold many passengers on its voyage to my old home, for few people wanted to leave a safe harbor for the unknown dangers of invasion-threatened Britannia. But it was different this time of year. Dunleary was near the site of the greatest annual celebration in all of Éire, the high king’s huge festival of Beltane, and people from the entire area would be clamoring to board the pilgrim’s ship. Once we landed, we would be only twenty or so miles from Tara. From there, the ship would continue its voyage back to a place now filled with peril, the harbor at Newport near Deva Victrix, and there it would welcome more emigrants.

  I thought back to my first trip to Éire—how I had been tossed and rolled on the small hide-covered currach, and how it had taken almost ten days to reach the coast of Éire. By contrast, the graceful Brigid would carry us from our lake to the harbor near Tara in a day and a night, and its final destination lay just three days away, across the Sea of Éire.

  I was eager for Owen and his kin to be redeemed by King Leary. But eager as I was for that great confrontation, I longed even more to see Father Patrick once again. I knew from Brother Jericho that the bishop even now was traveling with a great company toward Tara, to the nearby Hill of Sláine.

  The hill, over five hundred feet high, was Patrick’s proposed site of an immense paschal fire, designed to awe the people and gain converts to Christianity. It would be seen for many, many miles around. And Patrick was set determined make his fire more noteworthy than that of King Leary. Even while I was eager to greet and talk with the baby-cheeked priest, I feared for his safety. I reasoned that if I were in Tara, in the company of Leary, I might be able to stay his hand in any attempt to harm my friend. It would be a desperate wager on my part, for I knew it would be almost impossible to dissuade either man, each powerful and stubborn in his own way.

  For the first time, I sighed, even as I caught sight of the huge stone outside the portal of the Feather clan. Please, Lord, watch over Patrick, even as he prays to you to watch over others. I dismounted and tethered NimbleFoot at the great oak that guarded the portal. As if by enchantment, the stone moved, and Jay’s head popped out.

  “Dear Caylith! Come in, please, out of the driving rain.”

  Standing in the great room, I removed my leather gear and watched the water stream off its weather-resistant surface. “Torin has ridden with Swallow and my sister to the church,” he said, taking my gear.

  I was surprised, though I tried not to show it. I knew that lately they had showed great interest in Brother Galen’s instruction to Liam and Michael. Were they, too, learning the godspels? And if so, to what end? I hardly dared hope that they meant to convert, as both Liam and his cousin had declared their intention to do a few months ago.

  “Then I would see Sweeney, dear Jay. May I talk with him alone for a few minutes?”

  He smiled widely. “Of course, my friend. He is in Moc’s room. Come with me.”

  I had not been alone with Sweeney, I realized, since that awful day more than six months ago when I emerged from his foul escape tunnel and confronted him as he lay on his pitiful, matted cot.

  Now he lay back comfortably on a raised bed, covered with a bright woven coverlet. “Caylith. You see me in my private room—Moc’s private room. Are you shocked?” His eyes seemed to taunt me.

  “No, I—really, Owen, I am glad for you.” I hoped he could see the truth in my eyes. I was actually deeply pleased that he and Moc had grown close. Their closeness, I reckoned, was as good as a tonic, for both of them. “I, ah, I have come to tell you about the upcoming trip to Tara.”

  “You must tell me face to face? For shame, Caylith. You began with an honest statement. Now you lie.” His eyes glittered like faraway treasure at the back of a mine shaft, beckoning to me to enter a deep unknown.

  “Very well. I have felt for some time that there were unspoken words between us that needed to be said. There is still a chasm of distrust between us. I was hoping we could mend that rift somehow.”

  His somber eyes were leveled on me.

  “Very well. Let us speak about the unspeakable. Do you understand that I did not force your mother?”

  I was shocked at his directness, but I determined not to show it. “She told me. I am my mother’s daughter. I understand profoundly.”

  “You understand from her viewpoint. I need to tell you what I believe happened.”

  I did not answer him, but I did not take my eyes from his. They seemed to burn into me as he spoke. “Day after day, she would turn down the blanket. Sometimes she would comb her hair as I lay there. Other times, she would comb my hair back a little, just enough to make tears start in my eyes. But always, she knew just when to touch and when to stop. When to comb, when to sing.

  “She would braid all her long, brown hair, and I loved to watch her slender hands wind the hair in and out, likes ropes used to tie and bind me to her deep grief.

  “I felt her sorrow, but there was something else she was telling me, so soundlessly I could hardly hear it. But I did hear it. One day as she held her hands out to me, wordlessly bidding me to tie them again, I took one of them and put it in my mouth instead. I sucked her fingers one by one, gently. Very, very gently.”

  He threw his head back then, his brows knit, his throat jumping with emotion. “She let me do it. I tell you, that was the most blissful few minutes of my entire life. She allowed me to do it! I knew that she had suffered brutal treatment. She should have been repulsed to touch me from the beginning. But she did touch me. And now she allowed me to touch her in return.

  “The next day, she came to me as usual, reaching out her small ivory hands to be untied. And as always, I almost wept to see the scars on her wrists where months of vile treatment had bitten into her skin. And as always, I untied the loose bonds. But that day I kept her hands in my own. ‘Brón, sing to me.’ She sang as I held her tiny hands, and then I actually did weep.

  “When her song ended, I put her fingers in my mouth again. I watched her eyes, all the while I sucked each little finger. And at last
I saw something that stopped my tears. I drew her close to me, closer, until her mouth was almost on my own. She was silent, and she did not move. Our lips were very close, and then I enclosed her mouth in my own. Very lightly, almost not touching, then off again before she could pull away. But she did not move.

  “And then I felt a…something that I had not felt in many years. This beautiful woman was letting me kiss her! I captured her mouth again, and this time I kissed her as a lover, as though I were a whole man as before. I felt the surge of passion I had thought I would never feel again.

  “She understood. I cried out my need to her, and she answered me. She told me her own need, all without words. And I answered her.

  “That was the captivity. The captive was I, Owen Sweeney. She held me captive as though the ropes bit into my own skin, and I wanted never to be released.”

  He stopped speaking, and his head dropped to his chest. After a time he raised his head. Again, his eyes were fastened on me, as if to dare me lower my gaze. His voice was suddenly harsh and cold, the Sweeney I had once feared and reviled.

  “When the three months were almost over, I began to devise desperate ways to try to keep her. She would never let me talk to her, only to ask for a song, and so I knew it was useless to try. I knew she would leave as silently as she had come, and then I felt my mind slipping away. I began to rage and bellow to everyone, calming only when she came to me. You saw me at my worst…” His voice trailed off as if he were loath even to remember.

  “The night you shut yourself in my wife’s room, terrified, was the last night she was to visit me. You took away that pleasure, and I hated you for that for a very long time. It has taken me until recently to realize what was happening to me with your mother. I was beginning to become a man again—and then it all came to an end. After I was taken away in bondage, when I was thrown into the sea, I welcomed death. All the bitterness of my life was lifted for a short while by the woman named Brón, and then it all came crashing back like a drowning wave.”