Hearts Blood - Juliet Marillier

“All right,” I said. “If you can, I can.”

As we were finishing our belated breakfast there was a scratching on the door that led out to the yard. When Anluan went to open it Fianchu barreled into the chamber looking mightily pleased with himself. He came straight to me and stood with tongue lolling while I gave him a congratulatory scratch under the chin. On the step stood Olcan with his axe over his shoulder.

“All done,” he said.“They won’t be troubling you again, Caitrin.” Then, seeing my expression, he added, “Oh, we haven’t killed anyone. A bruise here, a scratch there, that’s the extent of it. I’m sorry you had a fright.”

“Thank you, Olcan,” said Anluan. “I must confess to experiencing a strong desire to kill, not so long ago. If that man ever crosses my path again, I may give a different set of orders.Where is Eichri?”

“Settling that uncanny steed of his, I expect. Caitrin, you’re still looking peaky.You should go up to your bedchamber and have a good rest.”

“I don’t think I could rest.” The prospect of being alone with my thoughts was not at all appealing, but I was in no fit state to work.

“There is something I should show you, Caitrin,”Anluan said, rising to his feet. “Can you manage a walk?”

I had not expected to find myself heading down the track through the forest again.The knowledge that I was walking in Cillian’s footsteps made me cold to the marrow. He and his friends couldn’t be far away. If they saw me out in the open, mightn’t they make another attempt to grab me, despite what had happened earlier? To speak of this was to admit how little courage I had. It was to seem to doubt Anluan’s capacity to protect me.

Hugging my shawl around me, I kept pace with my taller companion. Anluan was attempting to minimize his limp; I could see his effort in every step he took. I tried to concentrate on the warmth of the sun and the beauty of the trees in their raiment of myriad greens. I brought my wayward thoughts under control by considering how to make an ink the precise shade of beech leaves soon after their first unfurling.

“That pathway leads to caves,” said Anluan, pointing along a barely discernible track overgrown with brambles. “Some extend deep underground. The tale goes that Olcan’s kind once dwelt there. If you ask him, he will give you an answer that is neither yes nor no. There are no others like him here now, only those folk you saw before. They will not show themselves to you unless they choose to do so.”

“Or unless you summon them.”

“What happened this morning was unusual.When I saw you captive, it became necessary to call them.” He hesitated. “Do not imagine that I ever relish the exercise of such power.That I do not fully understand the nature of my control over them must be a peril in itself.Yet I must do it, Caitrin. Every day I impose my will on them, as I told you, so that they will not fall under the influence of the evil amongst them.As chieftain of Whistling Tor, I have no choice.”

We walked on. Above us, sunlight filtered down through the branches of willow and elder; a stream gurgled somewhere nearby. The warbling song of a thrush spilled through the air. “I don’t want to trouble you with too many questions,” I said. “But there’s one that seems important. When you spoke of this before, you implied that you cannot step outside the tight boundary of the fortress and its land or the host will escape your control. When your grandfather tried to lead them into battle the result was catastrophic. You spoke once of being trapped. Is that true? Is that the reason you can’t—” I fell silent.

Anluan kept walking. “The reason I cannot be a leader? The reason I must let my territory and my people fall prey to flood, fire and invaders? Come, we are almost at the foot of the hill: the margin between a safe place and a place of peril. I will show you.”

“But—” I could see the settlement across the open ground ahead, the view framed by a pair of sentinel oaks. Smoke was rising from hearth fires; men stood guard behind the fortifications.

“You believe your Cillian might still be there?” Anluan’s voice was calm.

“It’s the obvious place to run to. He must have been there this morning. They must have let him in and told him I was up here. Otherwise how could he have known where to find me?” I had halted on the path. My feet were refusing to carry me a step further. “I’m sorry,” I said as panic rose in me, threatening to blot out reason. My skin was clammy, my throat tight.“I don’t think I can go on. I’m—this is—Anluan, I can’t do it.”

“Come, Caitrin. One step at a time, as we agreed.” He reached out his hand. I took it and was drawn on down the path, towards the edge of the woods. If we stood in that gap we would be in full view of anyone who might pass between the forest and the settlement. I clung to his hand, my stomach churning.

“You may be right about your attackers,”Anluan went on.“Perhaps they went to speak to the innkeeper. Maybe he told them you’d been there and had headed up to the fortress. But it’s clear Tomas didn’t pass on the warning he’s so ready to give to other travelers: that these woods are dangerous; that few who attempt to reach my house alone arrive there unscathed. It seems to me the villagers do not want you hurt any more than I do.As they would see it, they were directing Cillian and his mob straight into the path of the host.” He halted abruptly between the marker oaks.“I cannot go beyond this point where we stand. Imagine a line encircling the hill at this level.The chieftain of Whistling Tor must not cross that line. Each of my forebears, from Nechtan forward, attempted to do so, and each time the result was disastrous. No wonder our own people revile us. When my father . . . when he . . .” There was a note in his voice that turned my heart cold. His hand had tightened on mine; he was hurting me.“It can’t be done,” he said flatly.

“This is the curse,” I breathed. “Not being able to leave; being forever tied to these beings. Giving up your whole life to them.That is . . .” I could not find a word for it. Terrible, cruel, tragic: none seemed sufficient.

“Unfortunate?”

“Unfortunate indeed,” I said, “if there really is no remedy for it.”

“Remedy?”The word burst out of him, scornful, furious. He dropped my hand as if it might burn him. “What remedy could exist for this?”

I said nothing. I had hoped that after what had just unfolded, he would spare me his sudden bursts of anger. It had been too much to expect.

“Hope is dangerous, Caitrin,” he said after a little, his voice calmer.“To allow hope into the heart is to open oneself to bitter disappointment.”

That shocked me into a response.“You don’t believe that,” I said.“You can’t.”

“The curse condemns the chieftains of Whistling Tor to lives of sorrow. If there were a way out of this, don’t you think my father, or his father, or Nechtan himself would have found it? If we could run this household as other chieftains do theirs, sending emissaries, receiving visitors, employing stewards and factors to help us fulfill our responsibilities, matters might be different. But you’ve seen how it is. Nobody stays. Since Nechtan’s time, fear and loathing have kept them away. I don’t need false hope from you, Caitrin, only neat script and accurate translation.You can’t understand this. Nobody from outside can.”

He was wrong, of course. I knew exactly how it felt to be hopeless and alone. I knew about sorrow and loss. But Anluan was in no state of mind to hear it, nor was I prepared to lay my heart bare before a man whose mood could turn so abruptly from sun to storm. “If you think your situation is beyond remedy,” I said quietly, “why bother with translating the Latin? Why trouble yourself, or me, with reading the documents at all?”

He made no answer, simply stood there gazing towards the settlement as if it were a far-off, unattainable land of legend.

“There might be a description of what Nechtan did,” I went on.“There could be a key to undoing it.You have your life ahead of you, Anluan.You mustn’t spend it as a slave to your ancestor’s ill deed.”

“Come,” he said, as if I had not spoken. “You’ll be tired. We should return to the house.”

We walked some way in silence, save for the songs of birds in the trees around us and the soft thud of our footfalls on the forest path.About halfway up the hill I stopped to catch my breath.

“It’s so quiet,” I said. “So peaceful. If I hadn’t seen the host with my own eyes, I’d find it hard to believe there was anything living in these woods beyond birds and a squirrel or two.”

“They are here.”

An idea came to me, perhaps a very foolish one. “Are you able to—to bring them out and talk to them? They came to my rescue. I should thank them.”

Anluan’s eyes narrowed. “Thank them?” he echoed. “It would be the first thanks they had ever received, I imagine. Curses and imprecations have been more common over the years. Besides, they acted at my bidding. Without my control the host might just as easily have set upon you.”

Very likely this was correct, but a stubborn part of me refused to accept it. If everyone at Whistling Tor, from its chieftain down, kept acting in accordance with the fears and restrictions built up over a hundred years, then Anluan’s gloomy predictions must come true and he would be the very last of his line. He would indeed be trapped, and his household with him. If there was any way to prevent that, we should surely do our best to find it.

“I’d like to try it, if you agree,” I said. “Can you make them come out again?”

Anluan gave me an odd look, mingling disbelief and admiration. He raised his left hand and clicked his fingers.

They did not flow forth in a mistlike mass this time, but appeared one by one, standing under the trees, as if they had been there all along if only I had known how to see them. When Anluan had brought them rushing to my aid they had screamed, wailed, assaulted the ears. Now they were utterly silent. Not creatures of ancient legend; not devils or demons. All the same, my skin prickled as I looked at them: here a woman carrying an injured child, there an old man with a heavy bag over his shoulder, his back bent, his limbs shaking; under an oak, a younger man whose fingers clutched feverishly onto an amulet strung around his neck. There were warriors and priests here, little girls and old women. The more I gazed at them, turning to look on all sides, the more of them appeared, until the forest was full of them. Ghosts? Spirits? Eichri and Rioghan could lift cups and platters, open doors, help around the house and farm. I had touched both of them, and Muirne, and found their forms solid, if unusually cold. This host was somewhere between flesh and spirit, I thought. Not specters, not living human folk, but ... something in between. Whatever had gone wrong when Nechtan performed his rite of summoning, this sad throng was the result.

My mind showed me Rioghan endlessly pacing the garden as he sought a way to atone for his terrible error. I looked on the forlorn faces, the stricken eyes, the damaged bodies, and a profound unease came over me. I sensed their sorrows, their burdens, their years of waiting for an end that never came. If they were ghosts, or something similar, they were unquiet ones, still on their journey to a place of peace.

The silence was broken by a rustling, a slight, restless movement. The host was waiting. I cleared my throat, not sure if I was afraid or not, only feeling the deep strangeness of it all. I glanced at Anluan. He was watching me intently, just as the others were.

“You’re safe with me,” he said, then lifted his voice to address the crowd. “This is Caitrin, daughter of Berach. She came to Whistling Tor as my scribe. She has something to say to you.”

An ancient man-at-arms put down his club and leaned on it. The woman with the hurt child sank to the ground and settled there, cradling it in her arms.A young warrior with a stain of red all across his shirt leaned against a willow, watching me with restless eyes.

I trusted to instinct and let the words form of themselves.“You helped me just now when I was in trouble,” I told the assembled host. “You did a good thing. I suppose each of you has a story, and I think some of them must be sad and terrible. I’m here at Whistling Tor to help Lord Anluan find out about his family’s past, and about what has happened here on the hill since”—something stopped me before I spoke Nechtan’s name—“since you first came here. I hope that a way can be found to help you. I hope that before the end of summer it will be possible to repay the good deed you did for me today.”

None of them spoke, but there was a universal sigh, soft and sorrowful, and then they dispersed.They did not walk away or wink instantly out of sight, but faded gradually until their forms were no longer discernible against the dark trunks of the trees or the green of the foliage.

“You speak to them of hope?” Anluan sounded both astonished and displeased, and my heart sank.

“There’s always hope,” I said. “There’s always a reason for going on.” Once, when she was called to the door, Ita had left a carving knife unguarded on the table. I could have done it. I could have plunged the blade into my chest. My hand had itched to seize the weapon.To end the pain ... to set myself free ... But I had not done it. Even in that time of utter darkness, somewhere deep inside me the memory of love and goodness had stayed alive. “There is hope for everyone.”

“Doesn’t the presence of these beings on the hill convince you that for some, life is without hope and the place beyond death still darker?”

“You believe they are spirits of the unquiet dead?”

“Speak to Eichri or Rioghan.They are something of that kind, but their forms are more substantial than one would imagine ghosts or spirits to be. They do not eat; they do not sleep.Yet they can touch; they can laugh; they can plan and debate and trade insults—at least, those who dwell in the house can, and I suppose it is true for the rest as well.They can feel sorrow, guilt, regret. It seems all were once ordinary men or women who dwelled in these parts.”

“That’s ... astonishing.And sad.A hundred years of waiting in the forest for ... for what? Is there no way to release them?”

“Come, let’s walk back,”Anluan said.“Don’t be so swayed by sympathy that you convince yourself these folk are harmless.They can attack, as you have already seen; they can kill, maim, destroy. Some of them were good people, perhaps, when they were alive in the world. But they are subject to influences more evil than you could imagine. It takes all my strength, all my will, to combat that. The situation is beyond remedy, Caitrin. Even your persistent hope cannot stretch so far.”

After we had climbed in silence for a while, I said, “Rioghan and Eichri are good people. Funny, kind, clever. I cannot imagine either committing evil acts. And Muirne ... while she and I are not exactly friends, I’ve seen how she looks after you, cares for you.”

“They’ve made a choice to be part of the household, perhaps because of some particular strength of will. Rioghan and Eichri clutch at life with all they have. Muirne has a long history of tending to the chieftains of Whistling Tor; she is a kindly soul, if wary of outsiders. You should not make the error of thinking the rest of them are the same.”