Hearts Blood - Juliet Marillier

“I always liked those,” Eichri said. “They were Emer’s.”

“Unsuitable for the rain. Besides, last time I wore Emer’s clothing, someone came into my chamber and slashed it. Perhaps I should leave her things here.”

There was an odd silence. I looked across at the monk. He was frowning. “Slashed? When was this?”

“A while ago. Other things have happened more recently.Warnings.At least, that’s what they seem to be.”

“You should have spoken to Anluan about this, Caitrin.”

“That’s what Rioghan said. I do have a guard.”

“One of the host.”

There were no boots in the large chest. I opened the smaller one and began to sort through its contents.

“Caitrin?”

“I trust Cathaír. As I trust you, Eichri.That brings me to my question. When I first saw the host surging out of the forest to terrify Cillian, you were leading the others. If I had not already known you to be a friend, I would have been frightened out of my wits. In life, were you some kind of warrior monk?”

He grinned disarmingly.“I grew up on a farm. I could ride by the time I was two years old.The other trappings are only for show.The overall effect does strike terror into the enemy.”

“So you wouldn’t actually have run anyone through? Made your horse rear up and strike a fatal blow with its hooves?”

“Run a man through?” He sounded deeply shocked. “Hardly. I can’t speak for the horse. I found the creature wandering in the forest some years ago and we took a fancy to each other.What he chooses to do is his business.”

“The host followed you.You led them into battle.”

“Anluan does occasionally call upon us, Rioghan and me, to act as leaders. Only on the hill, of course.”

“Have you ever tried it beyond the boundary?”

“Ah . . .” The monk lifted his hands, palms outward, and shook his head with a little smile.

“If that’s a forbidden question, how about this instead: couldn’t you and Rioghan keep the host under control while Anluan goes down to the settlement to talk to Lord Stephen’s emissaries? He’d only need to be off the hill for a short time. Magnus could go with him. Olcan and Fianchu would be here to help you.”

Eichri said nothing.

“Mightn’t there be others among the host who could assist as well? Cathaír for instance, and some of the other warriors, those older ones?” And when he still made no comment, I added, “If those monks can sing the name of God, they cannot be the devilish creatures folk make them out to be. The little girl who sleeps in my chamber is an innocent child. Cathaír is disturbed by dark memories, but he can still take pride in a day’s work.This could be done, Eichri.We could at least suggest it to Anluan. If he’d listen.”

“You don’t think this may have occurred to Anluan already, Caitrin?” Eichri’s tone was gentle.

“I don’t know what to think!” I said somewhat wildly.

“I wager at this moment he’s cursing the day he ever let you come up the hill.”

This jolted me. “Why?”

“Ah, now, don’t be upset. I meant he’s cursing the day you came here because you won’t let him give up.You’ve filled his mind with possibilities and he’s terrified he can’t make them real.”

I sorted through the second chest in silence, thinking of Anluan somewhere in the fortress brooding over the unwelcome change I had brought to his life. My folly seemed clear. I had taken on more than I had the capacity to deal with. I had lost sight of what was possible. I had meddled in what was beyond me, and brought nothing but trouble.

“The fact is,” said Eichri, “if you hadn’t come, Stephen de Courcy would still have wanted Whistling Tor. His emissaries would still be coming at full moon, and we still wouldn’t be ready for them.”

“Can you read minds?”

“I can read faces, gestures, glances.What you suggest is at least possible. But is it worth the risk if all it can achieve is a defiant statement from the chieftain of Whistling Tor that he won’t give up his land without a fight? There’s no point in that if Anluan can’t follow it up with an armed defense of his territory. He’s not going to use the host to wage war. And I don’t think he plans to give you the opportunity to present any ideas, even good ones. He doesn’t want you drawn into it.”

“I’m translating Nechtan’s documents,” I pointed out. “I’m in it already.”

“Caitrin, there’s more to this than you think. I may not be evil. Rioghan and your young guard and your little girl and most of those folk out on the hill may be no more devilish than any man or woman down in the settlement. But there’s a force among them with an ill intent: something that can turn the tide if Anluan is not there to counter it. I can’t tell you its nature, since I don’t know; none of us does.The fact is, if the host escapes the chieftain’s control, nobody’s spared. Nobody. It is this malign influence that tests Anluan’s strength day by day; it is this that exhausts and weakens him. I’ve felt the tug of this power on me. It’s strong. I fear it greatly. Oh, you’ve found some boots.”

I drew them out of the chest. They were of good leather and looked sturdy enough to cope with the wet and comfortable enough to wear indoors while I worked. I didn’t remember them from my last visit. As I sat on the closed chest to try them on, my eye caught the little mirror hanging on the wall.

“I have another question for you,” I said, “since you’ve been here since Nechtan’s time. Did he make every mirror in the house? Are they all bad?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Can an object like that be good or bad? Isn’t it more a matter of who’s using the thing and how he goes about it?”

Eichri’s words hung in the silence between us. They seemed important, as if there were a truth in them that went beyond their immediate meaning.

“There’s a mirror in the library so full of Nechtan’s sorcery that I can only think of it as evil,” I said slowly.“The ones in the great hall frightened me. I saw myself as an old woman, and ... there were other things, bad things. But that one on the wall there feels different. Once before, it gave me useful advice. I would be very surprised if Nechtan had made it.”

Eichri got to his feet and went over for a closer look.“The frame’s old oak,” he said. “Not much in the reflection; only blue sky. Advice, you say. The thing spoke to you?”

“Not aloud, but I could hear it. This chamber holds memories of the women who’ve lived at Whistling Tor, women whose lives had more than their share of ill fortune. Maybe the little mirror belonged to one of them.”

“This might be very, very old. Why don’t you take it downstairs and show it to Olcan? He’s been here longer than any of us.”

I considered this idea as I stood up and tried walking around in the boots.They were a perfectly good fit; perhaps they, too, had been Emer’s. I stopped in front of the little mirror and looked straight into it.

Lift me down carefully.And take some other things while you’re about it. Don’t you have a gown that needs mending? Choose with care. Remember them all.

“Did you hear that?” Despite what had happened last time, I had not expected the artifact to speak again.

“What?” asked Eichri.

“A voice.The mirror.”

“Perhaps it only speaks to females. Ah, you’re going to take it. Need a hand?”

It seemed appropriate to carry the mirror myself, but I gave Eichri a pile of other items to bear downstairs for me. Remember them all. As far as I knew there had only been three: Mella, Líoch and Emer. There was a girdle of dark gray wool that seemed to match Mella’s ancient gowns, and this I passed to Eichri. I took a skirt that had likely been Líoch’s—it was much too small for me—thinking I might combine the fabric with that of Emer’s ruined gown to make a wearable garment. I folded this and passed it to my companion. “That’s all,” I said, closing the two chests and picking up the mirror again.

“Women’s magic?” Eichri queried with a grin.

“I haven’t a magical bone in my body, Eichri.”

“You don’t know your own power,” he chuckled. “You’ve worked some changes here, Caitrin; changes we never thought to see in this lonely old place.”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you brought a little doll with you to Whistling Tor, a treasure that contains the love of your family. And since you fashioned this poppet’s clothing anew, it holds Anluan’s family as well.”

“You seem to know rather a lot.” I was sure this was not what he had meant when he spoke of changes.

“As I said once before, word gets around.”

“Whatever it is, magic or only instinct, this feels right. You spoke of dangerous powers within the host, a force with ill intent. I’ll use anything I can to counter that. Women have suffered here at Whistling Tor because of Nechtan’s wrongdoing. It’s time someone remembered their strength. If that’s women’s magic, then it’s long overdue an airing.”

“If I were not so burdened, I would applaud you, Caitrin. Let us hope you can work a miracle.”

“You might ask those brethren of yours to offer up a prayer or two for good measure,” I said as we left the tower room.“A miracle is what Anluan needs.”

chapter eight

Seven days until full moon. I was sorely tempted to march over to Anluan’s quarters in the south tower, bang on his door and insist that he come out and talk to me. Of course I did nothing of the kind. His difficulties went far beyond any in my own experience, and I would not help him by losing control myself.

The oak-framed mirror hung on my wall now. The child loved it, examining her reflection with eager interest, making faces at herself, even uttering a hesitant laugh at the unaccustomed sight. For her this mirror seemed to function in quite the ordinary way. As for the mirror voice, I had not heard it again, but the artifact felt like a companion, and I was glad I had brought it down to my chamber. It seemed to me that the lonely shades of the departed women were no longer prisoners in the tower, but shared my own space, as if we were sisters.

I encountered Muirne in the kitchen as I was returning from a trip to the privy.

“I hear you have taken a mirror from the tower room, Caitrin.”

“That’s right,” I said, keeping my manner polite. Would it be worth trying to enlist her help? She was closer to Anluan than anyone, though of recent times it seemed he was shutting her out as well; on the rare occasions when I had seen her, she had been drifting about the gardens alone. “I hope you have no objections.”

“You are not free to help yourself to anything you want. That runs perilously close to stealing.”

The look in her eye worried me. In the light of the current crisis, this seemed a trivial matter.“My boots were leaking,” I said.“I needed another pair. That was what took me up to the tower. And you did say nobody wanted those old things.”

“Boots were not all you brought away.” She looked me up and down. I had dressed for courage today, in the new skirt I’d made by combining Emer’s shredded gown with Líoch’s rose pink garment. It was not an outfit I could have worn in the streets of Market Cross, but I felt I was carrying the other women with me, and that seemed right.

“You’ll remember how badly damaged the violet gown was, Muirne. I think I’ve made good use of materials that would otherwise have moldered away in the tower. As for the mirror, a woman needs one in her chamber.”

“These are not ordinary mirrors. They are ...” She gestured vaguely, as if there were no words adequate to describe the power of Nechtan’s creations.

“I know that, but this one seems benign. It will be helpful in the mornings when I’m getting dressed.”

“Why would your appearance matter?” She lifted her brows.

“You take a certain pride in yours.” My gaze traveled over the neatly pressed gown, the perfectly folded veil.

“Yes, but ...” She gave a delicate shrug. Yes, but you are only a scribe.

“What I borrowed was taken in a spirit of respect,” I told her. “Those things in the tower are memories of the women of Whistling Tor. I don’t want those women to be forgotten.”

She looked baffled. “You are not one of the women of Whistling Tor, Caitrin.You’re going home at the end of the summer.”

“By the end of the summer we could all be gone,” I said.“Muirne, the Normans are coming in just a few days to talk to Anluan. I know you’re very close to him. Could you ask him if he’s prepared to listen to an idea I have?”

“An idea.What idea?”

“An idea for how he might handle this ... visit. A way it might be safe for him to go.”

“You think to tell Lord Anluan how he should conduct himself?”

I bit back my first response. “Of course not. He is the chieftain; he must make the decision. It’s a suggestion, that’s all. A good one, which he should listen to. Will you ask him, please? This threat is real, Muirne. It’s not going away.”

She seemed to shrink inside herself, her eyes narrowing, her lips tightening. Maybe she really did understand and was so afraid she denied the truth even to herself. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Push Anluan into this and you will bring down disaster on him and on all of us at Whistling Tor.”

“Muirne, I do know a little about the Normans, having lived in the outside world before I came here. Further east, they already rule wide stretches of territory.They’ve built strongholds and moved their own people in. And they have a different way of fighting, a way that is hard for our leaders to combat.They will come to Whistling Tor, and if Anluan doesn’t go down and speak to them, they’ll be back with an army. Then he really will lose everything.You can’t want that to happen.”

She looked me straight in the eye, and I knew I had miscalculated, for the expression I saw was the one that had frosted her features the very first time I met her, when she had tried to dismiss me before I was even hired. “You are not interested in these Normans, Caitrin. You care only about your own needs. Thanks to your interference, Anluan is exhausted, troubled, racked by doubt.Thanks to your foolish words of hope, he dreams of a future he cannot have.You have wrought untold damage here through sheer ignorance.You must not ask more of him. He has been wise to set himself apart, so he cannot be tempted by your voice, your foolish arguments, your ... Caitrin, I have lived here for a long time. I know Anluan. I know Whistling Tor. The chieftain must not step off the hill. That is the simple truth. As for your suggestions, he is better off without them, believe me. He bears sufficient burdens already.” She turned to go.

“Muirne, wait!”

“Yes, Caitrin?”

“I want the best for him,” I said quietly.“We all do. I don’t believe I’m being selfish.”

She smiled; her eyes remained cool.“Don’t let me keep you from your work,” she said, and walked away.

My work. Just as well she did not know the reason I had worn the motley garment made from women’s magic. Just as well she did not know what work awaited me in the library this morning. I needed answers, and time was short.Today I would use the obsidian mirror.