Child of the Prophecy (29 page)

"I'll help you look for her," I said, the unsteadiness of my voice owing nothing at all to artifice. "Let me get my cloak. I'm sure she's

all right, Muirrin. By the time we're back downstairs they'll have found her, believe me." Brighid help me, why didn't I stop it in time? Why didn't I make it stop as soon as the flames began to lick at the walls? Why didn't I remember where the druids were sleeping?

If there was an answer to these questions, I did not have it. Instead, as we hastened down the stairs and outside into the yard, a very small voice spoke up inside me. It's the same again. The same as that other time, with the fish. You can't help yourself; it's in the blood . . .

I felt, that night, almost as if there were two of me. There was the Fainne who busied herself helping Muirrin, hunting for Maeve everywhere, through all the house, out in the garden with lantern in hand, down in the settlement where old folk and babes were now awake and fearful, and young folk all gone up to pump water and pass buckets and beat out flames. Stock were huddled together in the outer fields, boys and dogs doing their best to keep some order in the chaotic herd of terrified beasts. We asked everyone, but nobody had seen Maeve. And when we had made our way back up to the smoldering remains of the burnt outbuildings, we were just in time to see Sean bringing her out; his face was like an old man's in the torchlight, and Muirrin gave a wordless cry of anguish before she ran toward her father and the limp, doll-like figure he held in his arms.

And all the time the other Fainne looked on from inside me. Nobody could see her. Nobody could hear her little voice but me; the little voice that was my grandmother's voice. You did this. See how strong you can be. Tomorrow your father will breathe easier.

I put my hands over my ears, and I breathed deep, once, twice, three times. Then I forced myself to move forward and opened my mouth to ask a question whose answer I dreaded to hear. But there

was no need to ask.

"Right," Muirrin was saying briskly, though her face was tear-streaked and white. "Take her up to the chamber next to mine, and you'd best put the injured men in the room alongside. Carry her carefully. We'll need a great deal of clean linen, and folk to help us.

Hurry, now."

So, Maeve still lived. I cleared my throat.

"Wh-where's the dog?" I ventured. "She might want her dog,

when . . ."

"The dog's dead," Sean said heavily. "She's not allowed to have him sleep inside; he came down for warmth, and the druids gave him house room."

"She was looking for the dog?" I whispered as we walked in grim procession back to the keep. In the distance somewhere, a man was still crying out in pain. "In the fire?"

Sean gave a nod. "Somehow we missed her. She must have slipped in to try to fetch him out."

"What happened? Is she badly hurt?" I forced myself to ask him.

"It seems she tripped, and in seeking to break her fall, she has laid her hands on a length of iron which once bolted the door there, not knowing how it held the heat. Her hands are—they are damaged." My uncle's voice shook. "Her hair was in flames. We put them out. Face and hands will bear the marks of this, if she survives it. I cannot forgive myself. How could I let such a thing happen?"

Chalk-faced, Muirrin ordered everything with speed and efficiency. Linen, water, herbs. A clear space with pallets set out in rows. Folk to fetch and carry. There was a young druid with terrible burns on his legs and feet. For all the discipline, he could not still his screams, and the sound of it tore through me. As for the oldest, the pallet on which he lay was shrouded with white from head to foot. This wise one would not return to see midwinter under the bare oaks. Someone had placed a sprig of yew on the snowy linen that covered him. There were five men hurt; some with burns, others dizzy and gasping from the effects of the smoke. In the room where they laid them, Conor moved from one to the next, bending to murmur soft words, to hold a hand or touch a brow. They took Maeve into the adjoining chamber and I hovered in the doorway, helpless, as they laid her down. For once Aunt Aisling seemed at a complete loss. She knelt beside her daughter, staring blankly at the singed hair and the blistering face and hands, as the sound of the child's labored breathing rasped in the candlelit room.

Muirrin was lighting more lamps. I could see her hands shaking.

"Father," she said.

Sean looked at her.

"There are too many hurt for me to tend to here," she said quietly. "And this may be beyond my skill. We need Liadan."

My uncle nodded. "It is fortunate that she is at Inis Eala and not in Britain. At least she need not travel across the sea to reach us, and so will be here sooner. What can you do for Maeve?"

Muirrin hesitated. "I'll do my best, Father," she whispered. "Now you should go. I hear men calling for you. You too, Mother."

"I should stay with her." Aunt Aisling's voice was unrecognisable; thin and quavering and not at all like herself. It frightened me that things could change so quickly. "What if she wakes, and—"

"I'll call you straight away," said Muirrin with commendable firmness. "I promise. You're right, she will want you beside her. But I'm going to give her a draft for the pain; she won't wake for a while. Folk will need you downstairs, to tell them what to do, and to reassure them that all will be well. This will unsettle everyone."

"You're right, of course." Aisling rose to her feet, a small, slight figure in her neat gown. Without the veil, her hair was bright as marigolds in the light of the candles. "I must go down." I saw her square her shoulders and swallow her tears, and then somebody called her from the other room, and she was gone.

"Can I—is there anything I can do?"

Muirrin glanced at me. "Not really, Fainne. This is a job for skilled hands; and there are plenty of helpers to fetch water and cut herbs for me. But. . ." She was looking beyond me now, and through the doorway into the passage. I turned.

They stood there still and frozen as a row of little statues. Deirdre, Clodagh, Sibeal and small Eilis, in their nightgowns, barefoot on the stone floor. Eight big, fearful eyes were fixed on me for some sort of reassurance. On me. Behind me Muirrin spoke firmly.

"It's all right, girls." She had moved up close, blocking the view into the chamber. "There's been a fire, and Maeve's hurt herself. I'm looking after her. Now Fainne will take you back to bed, and tell you a story, and in the morning you'll hear about everything." She lowered her voice. "Fainne, please?" Her tone revealed the terrible fear beneath the calmly capable words.

"I want Mother," whined Eilis, rubbing her eyes.

"Can we see Maeve?" asked Deirdre, standing on tiptoes to try to get a look. "What's wrong with her?"

There was nothing for it but to do as I was told. "Come on," I said in an imitation of Muirrin's own style. "Your mother's busy, and so is Muirrin. I know a really good story about a man who caught a clurichaun, and another about a white pony. And you," glancing at the exhausted, tearful Eilis, "can have Riona in bed with you tonight. If you're good."

Behind us, the door closed gently. In the other chamber a man still sobbed in pain. I heard Conor's soft voice, measured and calm.

"Fainne," said Clodagh quietly as we moved away. "Who's that crying?"

"A man was hurt," I said, thinking there was no point at all in lies. "One of the druids. They're looking after him. He's very badly burned."

Then there was silence, which was an extremely rare thing for them. Not one of them said a word until we were all five in my own chamber, and I was sharing out blankets and finding places on beds and making up the small fire. It was good to fill the mind with practical and immediate things.

I told them the story of the clurichaun, and then the other one, and I tucked Riona in beside Eilis. Soon enough they were all asleep, all but Clodagh who still sat before the fire, holding my silken shawl between her hands, touching the small creatures with surprisingly careful fingers.

'This is so lovely," she said, softly so as not to wake the others. "Did your sweetheart give it to you?"

"I'm not the sort of girl who has a sweetheart," I said. "It was given me by a friend." And fortunate it was that he left me when he did. At least he could not see what I had done tonight.

"Fainne?"

"Mmm?"

"Is Maeve going to die?"

I shivered. It was as if I could see the child as she had sat, there in the window, plaiting Riona's yellow hair while her great dog lay snoring before the fire.

"I don't know," I said. "Muirrin is a skillful healer, they all say so. And my uncle said Liadan will come, though it could be a long time, to get a message there and bring her back to Sevenwaters."

Clodagh stared at me. "Oh no," she said. "Father talks to her. She'll be on her way already."

"Talks to her?"

"Like Deirdre and I do. Can't you do it? Talking without speaking, I mean. Father can tell Liadan things straight away, even when she's at Harrowfield, which is far away in Northumbria. She'll come here as fast as she can. Aunt Liadan can heal anyone."

"Well, then," I said grimly, "I suppose that means Maeve has a good chance of recovery. Now, we must get some sleep. You'll have to squeeze in here with me. I hope your feet are not too cold."

But while she slept at last, I lay open-eyed as the early light of dawn crept in the window, and the house began to stir again around us. I lay and stared at the stone walls, and I thought about my mother. I wondered if her unhappy spirit wandered here, somewhere, watching me, watching everything I did. What had Father said? There were times of content. . . your birth . . . she believed she had at last done something right. But in the end, she had not been able to believe it. Perhaps her final answer was the only one she had left.

That would be one way out. To slice the wrists, or leap from the roof, or cast oneself into the cold embrace of the lake. But I could not do as she had. That would destroy my father utterly. I must do my grandmother's bidding. I owed him everything, and I could not let her torture him. Yet how could I reconcile that with what I had done tonight? Twice, now, I had killed. And there was the terrible thing I had done to Maeve, and to that young druid. How high a price must be paid for my father's safety? Tonight's evil work surely had no bearing on the battle and the Fair Folk. Why had she made me do it?

She didn't make you do it, the unwanted voice within me whispered. You did it all by yourself. It's the blood you bear. You can't help yourself. Besides, this is no more than appropriate punishment, for what they did.

It is not appropriate that a child should be hurt, I told myself.

Wrong. It was apt. You have unsettled your uncle, and put doubt in the hearts of the people. You have weakened the druid. Three steps toward the long goal. It's as apt as can be.

I—I don't think I want to be who I am.

And what do you want to be? A tinker's wife with a child in your belly and three at your feet, and a life on the road? Think you've got a choice, do you? That's what your father thought. Look what happened to him. And you feel sympathy for these folk?

I willed this voice to stop tormenting me, but it would not. The voice was my own, and could not be silenced. The children slept quiet around me, and as the light of dawn filled the room with a golden brightness, it seemed to me shadows crept into my mind and my heart, and the sun itself was powerless to drive them away.

Chapter Six

Fire is a fearsome thing. It starts as the merest spark, the tiniest wisp of smoke. It grows and gains power and spreads, until it becomes a great conflagration consuming whatever it can find. Unchecked, it will take all. The destructive force of what I had unleashed terrified me. It was not just the work of the flames themselves, the ruined buildings, an old man snatching his last breath in a smoke-filled nightmare, young ones suffering as they clung to life. It was not just Maeve, who now hovered on the margin between this world and the next. It was the way they were all caught by it, the way the thing that had happened spread as the flames themselves do, to touch and wound every single person at Sevenwaters. If my grandmother wished me to unsettle the household and to sow the seed of doubt over their endeavor, she must have thought this a great success. I did not want to consider what my father would have thought. I tried to imagine him using the craft to do what I had just done, but I could not. There was the time they all spoke of, when he had driven the Finn-ghaill away from the cove. Men had been drowned because of what he did. But this was different.