Hearts Blood - Juliet Marillier

“Ah!” His breath comes out in a rush of triumph. He takes the little dog from Aislinn and carries it over to the tabletop, close to the woman, so she can see. A warmth floods through his body, the anticipation of success. “Aislinn, you may go out if you wish.”

“I’ll stay and watch, Lord Nechtan.”

The creature in his hands is quite small. It is not yet frightened—it has recognized its mistress and is straining to get close enough to lick her face. “I think we may be ready to talk,” says the chieftain of Whistling Tor. And when the woman replies only with a moan of horror, he gets out his thin-bladed knife, weighing it casually in his free hand.“I’m an artist at this. Watch me and learn.”

When it is over, he disposes of the debris while Aislinn cleans. The crone was all too ready to gasp out the names of the ingredients once he began to work on her creature. Aislinn has written them down in her little book, precise by measure, each in its turn. There was just time to get the last. Now he and the girl are the only living beings in the subterranean chamber, save things that scuttle and crawl in the corners and rustle in the walls. Not many of those: Aislinn keeps it spotless.

He watches her now as she scrubs the table.What a difference a year or two can make. Aislinn was a child when she first came to his notice; he did not expect a serving girl to show such intense interest in the maps and charts spread out in the chamber whose floor she was sweeping. He did not expect the orphaned daughter of humble villagers to be such a quick learner, thirsty to master reading, writing and numbers, then move into more esoteric branches of study. His protégé has been clever, eager to please and a great deal more patient than he is, which makes her an invaluable assistant. Time has passed, and Aislinn is no longer a child. Her hair is a fall of liquid gold; her pert buttocks move to and fro as she swings the brush. He’s suddenly hard for her, desire thrumming in his blood. No doubt she would be as quick to learn the arts of the bedchamber as she’s been with sorcery, and what pleasure he would take in the teaching.

But no. He cannot allow himself this; there are priorities. He must obey to the letter the information he got from Saint Criodan’s: the vital knowledge that was so astonishingly expensive to acquire. Let me show you the woeful state of our roof, Lord Nechtan; it will be quite costly to repair. Who would have believed Brother Gearalt would hold out for such a generous donation to the monastic funds before opening the doors to that secret collection within the foundation’s library? Oh, a dark collection it was, full of intriguing surprises.The good brother didn’t let him take the book away. He was given only long enough to find and read the one form of words. It was enough. He knew what he wanted.

“How quickly can you make up the mixture?” he asks Aislinn.

“It might take a number of days, Lord Nechtan.” The girl pushes her hair back from her brow. He imagines the pale strands drifting across his bare body; he thinks of her under him, yielding. “Goldenwood has to be gathered in a particular way. And some of the ingredients need grinding thrice over.” After a moment she adds, “I can stay on and work late. I can sleep in the corner there.”

There’s a pallet each of them has used from time to time when an experiment needs watching; they take turns to rest. Now that she’s older, that no longer seems wise. But time is of the essence, for All Hallows is drawing close. The pieces must be ready to slot in place by then or there will be a whole year more of waiting. Another whole year of Maenach stealing his cattle as if he has every right to do so. Another whole year of being ostra cised because nobody understands the significance of his work. A year of slights and offenses, injustices and dismissals. It is unthinkable. “So close,” he muses. “Less than a turning of the moon and then, such power . . . Power such as none of them can possibly dream of, Aislinn, the capacity to dominate not only wretched Maenach and the rest of my neighboring chieftains, but the whole district, the whole of Connacht, the whole of Erin if I want it.Against my army, none will stand. It will be a force worthy of a great hero of mythology, such as Cu Chulainn himself. I can hardly believe it is within my grasp . . . We must not waste a moment. This must be precise in every detail.”

They go back to work. Aislinn mixes powders, grinds dried berries, measures liquids with meticulous attention. He pores over his notes, though he has long since committed the charm to memory. He knows it deep in the bone, a potent, living thing. It is his future. It is his raising up and the doom of his enemies. It is, purely and simply, power.

The light in the underground chamber dimmed. The image wavered and faded, and with a shudder I came back to myself. Here in the library the sun was streaming in the window to set a brightness on the parchment before me. It was glinting off the surface of the obsidian mirror, on whose border the little creatures were now huddled or curled into postures of sorrow or fear, heads under wings, hands over eyes, arms around one another, as if what had been revealed were too piteous to behold.

Oh God, oh God . . . Tears spilled from my eyes. Foul thoughts and obscene images crowded my head. I felt filthy, soiled, wretched. Bile rose in my throat, bitter and urgent. Out! Out of this cursed place! I blundered across the chamber, bruising my hip on the sharp corner of a table, and stumbled out into the garden, where I sank to my knees and retched out the contents of my stomach under a lavender bush. My gut heaved and heaved again. Between the spasms I fought for breath.

A hand on my shoulder. I started violently, Nechtan looming in my mind, and the hand was withdrawn.

“What is it? You are ill.” A man’s voice. I had forgotten Anluan, in the garden. “I’ll call for Magnus,” I heard him say.

“No!” Through the paroxysms of my gut and the dark visions in my head, I had enough awareness to know I did not want the all-too-busy steward called away from whatever he was doing to tend to me.“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t be in your garden. I’ll be all right in a moment—” As if to make me a liar, a new fit of choking and retching gripped me. My nose and eyes streamed.

Anluan crouched down beside me and, rather awkwardly, held out a handkerchief. “Muirne!” he called.

I looked up, mopping my face ineffectually, and saw that she was standing beyond the bench in the shadow of the birch tree. I had not seen her when I looked out before.

“Fetch water,” Anluan said. It was an order, and Muirne obeyed in silence, going out through the archway.

In time the spasms died down. I wiped my nose and eyes anew and rose shakily to my feet. Anluan got up too. He did not try to touch me again.

“I’m sorry,” I managed. “I’ll go now. I know you don’t like people to be in this garden . . .” I glanced over my shoulder towards the library door. There was no way in the world I was going back in with that thing lying uncovered on the table. I took a step or two along the path, thinking I would make my escape into the main part of the grounds where I could recover in private. Everything swirled and went hazy around me. “I need to sit down,” I said.

“Sit on the bench, here.” Then, after another awkward silence, “I do not know how to help you. Have you eaten something that disagrees with you?”

I looked at him properly then. It seemed quite the wrong question. “The mirror,” I said, shaking my head in a vain hope that the images might flee. “That mirror in the little chest, with the documents you were working on . . . How could you do that to me? How could you leave it there, knowing what power it had? It pulled me in; it made me feel . . .” That had been the worst part of it, the sensation that I actually was that evil man and was thinking those thoughts and doing those things myself, because I wanted to. Here in the garden birds were singing, plants were growing, the sun was shining. But a shadow had touched an inward part of me, and I did not think it would be easily banished. “It made me feel dirty,” I said in a whisper.

“What mirror?” asked Anluan. When I only gaped at him, he added, “This house is full of such artifacts. Magnus was supposed to warn you not to look in them.” He had seated himself on the other end of the bench, as far from me as he could manage, and was not meeting my eye but glaring across the garden at nothing in particular.There was neither sympathy nor apology in his expression. “You’ve been hired to read the documents,” he said, “not to meddle with what doesn’t concern you.”

His anger tied a new knot in my stomach. Be brave, Caitrin. Stand up for yourself. “The mirror was stored with the documents,” I said shakily. “I wasn’t meddling, simply being thorough. How could I possibly be prepared for what happened?”

He did not respond. I worked on my breathing, wondering how long it would take Muirne to bring the water.Then Anluan said coolly, “I need a scribe with fortitude. Perhaps you are not suited to Whistling Tor.”

A little flicker of anger awoke in me. “I have plenty of fortitude for reading, writing and translation, my lord. Magnus did warn me about the mirrors. But . . . perhaps he didn’t know about this one. It was . . .” I shuddered and put my hands over my face, but the sickening images still paraded before my eyes. “It showed me what was in the documents as if I were really there. It put someone else’s thoughts into my mind, as if he and I were the same . . . Lord Anluan, I’m not prepared to go back into the library while that mirror is there on the table. It would be unreasonable to expect that.What I saw was . . . disgusting. It was evil.”

After a silence, the chieftain of Whistling Tor said, “What are you telling me? That despite your claims of expertise, you do not wish to do this work after all? Hah!” It was a derisive bark, bitter and painful. “This is no surprise.You’re running away as everyone else has done. Nobody stays here.”

“Magnus stays,” I pointed out. Talking to Anluan was a little like reasoning with an angry child. “And I’m not running away. I didn’t say I was leaving.”

“If you will not enter the library, you cannot complete the task.” A silence. He glanced towards the archway, shifting restlessly on the bench.“I need the work done. There is nobody else to do it. Tell me what you saw in this mirror.What can be so horrifying that it turns a capable scribe—if that is indeed what you are—into a quivering, vomiting wretch?”

I swallowed the retort that sprang to my lips. “I’ve no wish to think about it, let alone talk about it. My lord,” I added belatedly, not wishing to provoke his anger further. “Could you arrange for the mirror to be removed before I continue with the work?”

“Ah. So you will go back into my library?”

An image of the future came to my mind. Say no, and I’d be on the road again with no money, no friends and pursuit getting closer every day. I would indeed be running away, for as long as it took Cillian to find me and drag me back to Market Cross. “I might consider it, under the right conditions,” I said.

“Tell me what you saw in this mirror,” Anluan said, and fixed his unusual blue eyes on me with some intensity. I returned his gaze, thinking that if there were not that lopsided quality to his face, he would be quite a fine-looking man, his features strong, his skin of the very fair kind that flushes easily. His mouth was well shaped, though more given to solemnity than smiles. But all was awry, as if frost had blighted him on one side only, leaving a creature who was two in one, strong and weak, sun and shadow. I was staring. Remembering what Magnus had said, I turned my eyes away.

“Did you really not know it was in the chest?” I asked him. “Magnus told me the transcription on the little table was yours.The documents you were working on were in that same box.”

“Would you accuse me of lying?” His tone was wintry. “Answer my question.What did the mirror show you?”

I forced myself to tell the tale of blood, death and vaunting ambition. Anluan listened in silence to my halting account, and when I was finished he said calmly, “You must continue the work. I will put this mirror away before tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I said, but I needed more than that. “What can you tell me about Nechtan? Magnus explained that his documents are the ones you want me to look at. It will be easier to pick them out if I know a little of his history. Magnus told me you are the only person here who can read, my lord. Otherwise I wouldn’t trouble you with my questions.”

“Nechtan was my great-grandfather. The oldest writings are his.You will find a few by my grandfather, Conan, and then there are my father’s notebooks.”

“What was your father’s name, my lord?”

“Irial.” His tone shut off further questions.“I will deal with the mirror now.You should take time to compose yourself. Start the work afresh tomorrow, and heed Magnus’s warnings in the future. Stick to the job you’ve been hired to do, and don’t interfere with what doesn’t concern you.You can’t expect to understand everything here at Whistling Tor, and there’s no need for you to do so. It’s a place unlike other places. Or so I’m told. I need you to stay. I need the work done.”

He rose and limped into the library, leaving me alone in the walled garden. Irial’s garden, Magnus had called it. My father’s notebooks. It seemed likely Irial had written those meticulous botanical notes I’d looked at earlier, and executed the tiny, exquisite drawings that accompanied them. I glanced at the little book Anluan had left on the seat, wondering if he had been reading his father’s work. It was bound in fine calf leather, tooled with a pattern of leaves, but when I lifted the cover to peep inside, the writing I saw crawling across the creamy parchment was not the spidery script of the gardener’s notebooks, but Anluan’s irregular, labored hand. Someone gave a little cough. I shut the book hastily, not wanting to be caught prying. Muirne was standing about four paces from me, a cup in her hand. She had a disturbing ability to move about with scarcely a sound.

“Thank you,” I said, getting up to take the water from her. Her fingers were cold. “I’m much better now.”

“You saw something that scared you.” It was a statement, not a question. “A mirror?” When I nodded, she said, “There are many stories here. Many memories.This is not an easy place.”

“I’m beginning to realize that,” I said, glad that she was taking the time to speak to me, even if her manner was a little odd.“I suppose I’d better go; I know this is Lord Anluan’s private garden.Will someone call me when it’s suppertime?” I took a sip, then set the cup down on the bench.

“I suppose someone will,” Muirne said.

“Thank you.” Should I add my lady? I had no idea where she belonged in this unusual household, only that if I did not make an effort with her, the summer was going to seem very long. I had thought she might be Anluan’s wife, but he had treated her like a servant. I smiled at her, then walked out under the archway with my mind full of unanswered questions.