Deception's Princess (Princesses of Myth) (9 page)

“Someday I’m going to give it to our son,” she told me, eyes shadowed by sorrow.

“When he’s born, I’ll make him a gift of forty cows, I promise.”

“My lady, it’s too generous, too much—”

“Not enough, Bláithín,” I said. How could it ever be enough to make up for the loss we two were bound to share?

The moon changed faces and the seasons danced, but when the time came, neither Bláithín nor her infant survived the birth. While the women of our house prepared the two of them for burial, I helped by gathering up the dead serving girl’s few belongings. She was already in the earth by the time I found the sword fragment tucked into the folds of her winter cloak so it couldn’t go into the ground with her. Rather than let it rust away on top of Bláithín’s grave, I decided to keep it in memory of Kelan and stored it safely in a small leather pouch. At Samhain, when the dead bring their grievances to the living, no angry spirit came to haunt me. That was how I knew I’d done the right thing.

Samhain and Beltane and all the other festivals turned the seasons around me until I was almost fifteen years old. All of my sisters were married women, queens in their own right, and I was the last tasty apple left hanging on the royal tree.

The older I got, the more frequently our household opened its gates to highborn visitors, always men. It had been four years since my last lesson on how to wield a sword, but I still found myself blocking and parrying all sorts of advances. I was always careful to discourage them without insulting them. I
didn’t want to give these men an excuse to pick a fight with Father. If I couldn’t fight beside him with a son’s weapons, at least I could fight for him with a daughter’s wits.

It was wearying work, keeping each suitor close enough to retain his support for the High King but distant enough so that he wouldn’t conclude he was assured of getting
this
hero’s portion. I knew I’d have to wed one of them at last, some unlucky day, but these ongoing games of yes-no-maybe made me think of marriage as surrender and defeat. The idea turned my stomach sour.

Sometimes, when I’d managed to sidestep a particularly relentless princeling, I wondered if the poor thing believed that winning my affection meant winning the High King’s consent. I wanted to take each one of my suitors, shake them awake, and tell them,
“Save your pretty words, your pleading looks, your silly gifts. My father loves me, but that doesn’t mean he
listens
to me. If you want to give me something I can use, make it a way to gain enough of his respect so that my life becomes my choice alone.”

The days between Beltane and Lughnasadh were my favorite time of year. They brought a respite from visitors. Few of the highborn could afford to leave their lands during that busy, fruitful season. On one such sweet summer day, I sat with Mother and her closest friend, Lady Íde, all of us spinning wool into thread for the loom.

“You’re getting better at that, Maeve,” Lady Íde said, casting a critical eye over my work. “The thread’s much smoother and more even.” She was tall and rawboned, with a handsome face, blue eyes, and golden hair that swung from the crown of her head in dozens upon dozens of tiny braids.

“Let me see.” Mother leaned closer and rolled the strand
lightly between her fingertips. “So it is! This will make a lovely blanket for the baby.”

“What wonderful news. I’m so happy for you, Lady Íde,” I said.

Mother and her friend laughed. They both sat up tall and pulled their tunics tight across their bellies. Lady Íde’s was flat.

I dropped my spindle. My eyes grew big as the moon.

Lady Íde nudged Mother with her elbow. “This was fun, but I still want to be there when you tell Eochu.”

Mother was going to have a child. The news flew across the land of Èriu. We were all swept away in a river of congratulations and Father was half buried by a landslide of earthy jokes from his men. There was no counting the number of offerings my parents made to the goddess Brigid in her role as blesser and helper of childbirth.

Once I got over the surprise, I was overjoyed to learn that I’d be a big sister when winter came. I could hardly wait. So far, nothing else in my life had seemed to have the magic needed to change me from being the “baby.” It didn’t even matter that I’d become able to have babies of my own
two full years
earlier than this.

I longed to share my elation with Derbriu and the others, but they all had lives of their own too distant from Connacht to undertake a visit until after the baby was born. They wouldn’t come any earlier than the birth festivities without good cause. The best I could do was climb the ringfort wall and pretend my thoughts could reach them.

My feet took me to those heights more and more often, especially in fine weather. On one such day I reached the top
and gasped at the beauty that met all of my senses. A sweet breeze blew from the east, fragrant with summer, and I spread my arms to embrace it. Thin white clouds made a lazy progress across a radiant sky. I turned my face to the sun and let its gentle fire burn away everything but my joy. I felt light enough for the wind to lift me up and send me flying. There was magic in that place, in that moment, an enchantment as powerful as any that the Fair Folk ever cast. My sensible side insisted such things could not happen, and yet I stood ready to believe that if I closed my eyes and wished with all my heart, I’d open them to see the tops of the tallest trees far below me. All I had to do was want it enough, and I did. Oh, how I did!

“Watch out there, milady. You’re near the edge.”

I opened my eyes, but not to anything I wanted to see. As always, a sentry patrolled the circular outer ramparts of Cruachan. This one was an older man, his hair streaked with gray, his right cheek lashed with a long white scar. I knew that face too well: Caílte, the one who’d killed my friend. The sight of him turned my mouth to a hard, small line and struck a black spark in my heart. I didn’t react to his warning with thanks, argument, or any word at all. Showing him my back, I began to descend the ringfort’s steep wall.

“This again?” Caílte flung his resentment at me like a spear. “How long will you carry a child’s grudge against me? It was a fair fight. I did what I had to do. There was no choice!”

I stopped and looked back at him coldly. I had not spoken to the man since the day I’d learned he was to blame for Kelan’s death. At first he wasn’t aware of how much I hated him. He was a warrior, and not one of those who kept trailing after me; when would the two of us need to speak with one another?
But as time passed and I continued to treat him with silent, icy loathing during our few encounters, he finally grasped how things stood between us. From there, it was a small step for him to realize why.

“No choice?” I echoed, lifting one eyebrow. My skeptical smile was the next best thing to telling Caílte outright that I thought he was a liar.

He got the message. I saw his fingers tighten on the shaft of his spear and knew he wanted to throw it at me but didn’t dare. I relished his frustration.

“You weren’t there,” he gritted. “You don’t know everything.”

“What don’t I know? You claimed you heard Kelan whisper that you didn’t deserve the hero’s portion of the roast boar. Did you ever imagine you might have
mis
heard? You could have asked him to repeat the insult, if there even was one.”

He looked away from me, color rising to his cheeks, making the livid scar stand out like lightning against a midnight sky. “I had to avenge my honor.”

“Honor?” The word tasted sour on my tongue. “Compared to you, he was an infant with a blade. There’s no honor in mowing down green grass!”

Caílte kept his face averted. “You are the High King’s beloved daughter,” he said dully. “Say whatever you like to me. His power protects you. If that weren’t so—”

“What, then?” I demanded. “Say what you wish. Do what you will. I won’t go running to my father. I swear it on my life.”

He remained unmoving and silent.

“Nothing?” My lip curled. “My father gave the hero’s portion to the wrong man after all.” I spun around to go, so blinded by anger that I failed to mind my steps.

My foot touched empty air. I flailed my arms, uselessly fighting to regain my balance, and half slid, half rolled down the flank of the ringfort’s outer wall. My head-over-heels tumble ended in the defensive ditch that encircled Cruachan. Before I could pull myself out, Caílte was there to offer me his hands. Like all of our best fighters, he was nimble as well as strong.

“Are you all right? Nothing broken? Can you stand?” His battle-hardened face was contorted with anxiety. This blooded warrior who’d taken countless enemy heads was fretting over me like a dog with her first litter of pups. It was so absurd I had to laugh, but it was very bitter laughter. I rejected his kindness—it only humiliated me—spurned his help getting out of the ditch, and marched back into the great hall with my rage and heartbreak like a heavy cloak wrapped tight around me.

I was walking past the hearth at the center of the hall when Mother saw me and let out a yelp of alarm.

“Maeve, you wild thing,
what
have you been up to this time?” She pointed an accusing finger at my dress. That poor garment had suffered worse than I from my fall into the ditch. It was so torn and filthy that even if the servants did get it clean again, I’d be a long time mending it.

I reached up to tuck my hair behind my ears and encountered a handful of debris from the ditch. Dead leaves, twigs, and a smelly, unidentifiable wad of
something
pattered to the floor. I put on an innocent smile. “I’ve been outside, Mother.”

“As if even you could get this filthy inside
my
house! Tell me what you were doing, girl.”

“Thinking.” I kept that guileless look on my face. It wasn’t
fooling her, but if I let it slip, I’d burst into either mindless giggles or furious sobs.

“Thinking! Not crawling into holes to wrestle with badgers?”

“Tsk, I’m caught,” I said with mock dejection. “And the worst part of it is, the badgers won.”

The next morning was the more beautiful sister to the one that had come before. I asked the name of that day’s watchman before leaving the house. When I heard it was not Caílte, I scrambled eagerly back to my perch atop the outer wall and recaptured the bliss of sun and wind and sky.

My happiness was not interrupted by any idle conversation. The sentry on the ramparts was no more than sixteen and painfully shy. He blushed when he saw me climb up to join him, mumbled a greeting, and spent the rest of our time together staying as far away from me as he could without actually leaving his post. That suited me perfectly.

I shaded my eyes and surveyed the world around me. The loveliness of fields and trees, roads and rivers soothed me. Looking up, I gave a small cry of joy: a kestrel was flying high in the glorious blue. Every time I saw one, I yearned to share its freedom. I opened my arms, closed my eyes, and for a few heartbeats I once again pretended I’d found enough magic in my life to give me wings. The bird’s cry snapped me out of my reverie. I shaded my gaze and peered hungrily after it as it made a lazy circle over the open land and then flew toward the woodland south of Cruachan.

Before the creature was hidden by trees, a fresh sight caught
my eye, banishing my daydreams of following it in flight. Four people emerged from the forest, heading toward us. I shouted to our sentry, but his eyes were as good as mine. He’d already seen them and was running to alert everyone within the ringfort.

The approaching figures didn’t look threatening. They came on foot, and if they were armed, they would only have four swords and daggers against the full might of Father’s men. Even at that distance I could see that they carried no spears. Two of them carried nothing at all, though their leader bore a blackthorn staff. As they came toward Cruachan, I saw that he also wore a magnificent cloak of six colors. It was thrown back over one shoulder on account of the heat, revealing a long, pale tunic, as speckled as a trout’s flank. A druid. Only kings and queens had the right to flaunt more colors in their clothing.

A smaller person walked a few steps behind the druid—a tall, black-haired boy.

What
is
that one wearing?
I wondered.
His cloak’s wrapped around him as if we were in the coldest days of winter. It’s even got a red fur collar that he’s pulled up tight under his chin! Is he crazy?

Crazy or sane, he was obviously a person of importance. He walked along unhindered by any burden, his hands empty. All of their traveling gear was carried for them by the pair of heavily laden men bringing up the rear of their short procession. These two wore long shirts of one color, yellow, marking them as slaves.

“Lady Maeve!” The sentry’s head popped up over the lip of the wall, interrupting my observations. “The queen says you’re to come inside at once. You must be ready to greet the visitors when they arrive.”

This time my descent from the ringfort’s heights was much
more dignified than when I’d ended up in the outer ditch. I found the great hall in turmoil, though it was a
controlled
confusion. Mother was at her best when she had little time and much to accomplish. Other women might throw their hands up and surrender to defeat and disaster, but she sent commands flying through the air like spears. Each of her ladies and servants had a specific task flung in her face, and the gods save them if they didn’t get it done.

My part in this whirl of desperate action was disappointingly minor: “Maeve, wash your face, comb your hair, and change into your best clothing. Wear the shoes with the gilded bronze clasps and your silver brooch. And for the love of all things,
wash your face
!”

“You already told me to do that once, Mother.”

“Well, it’s grubby enough to benefit from being scrubbed twice. Don’t stand there arguing with me.
Move!
”

I ducked into my sleeping chamber and found one of our oldest fosterling girls waiting for me. “What are you doing here, Guennola?”