Heart's Blood (7 page)

I had always valued order. The skilled exercise of calligraphy depends in large measure on neatness, accuracy, uniformity. In our workroom at Market Cross, the tools had been meticulously maintained and the materials stored with careful attention to safety and efficiency. It had been a haven of discipline and control.

Anluan’s library was the most chaotic place I’d ever had the ill luck to stumble into. It was a sizable chamber. Several big tables would have made useful work surfaces had they not been heaped high with documents, scrolls and loose leaves of parchment. This fragile material was strewn about apparently at random. Around the walls stood sundry chests and smaller tables, their tops as heavily laden as those of their larger counterparts. I suspected every receptacle would reveal, on opening, a welter of entangled materials.

I walked in, not saying a word. There were glazed windows all along the western side of the chamber. In the afternoons the light would be excellent for writing.

“The things you’ll need are in that oak chest,” said Magnus, pointing to the far end of the chamber. “Pens, powders for ink and so on. He said even if you’ve brought your own, they’ll run out quickly. There’s a good stock of parchment, enough for the job, he thinks. If you need more of anything we can get it, but to be honest I’d rather not have the trouble.”

I eyed the disorder around me, trying hard to view it not as an obstacle but as a challenge.“What exactly is it I’m supposed to do here? Is Lord Anluan going to explain it to me himself?” A family of scholars, Magnus had said. I thought of the very detailed instructions Father and I had received for our commissions, the minute attention some of our customers had paid to the niceties of execution. “Where is the material I have to transcribe?”

And when Magnus just looked at me, then cast his gaze around to take in the entire chamber, long scrolls, thick bound books, tiny fragments, loose bundles of parchment sheets, I felt hysterical laughter welling up in my throat.

“
All
of this?” I choked.“In a single summer? What does this man think I am, a miracle worker?”

Magnus lifted a scrap of vellum by a corner and blew on it, setting dust motes dancing in the light from the window. “Trained by the best, didn’t you say?”

“I was. But this ... this is crazy. How do I know where to start?”

“You don’t have to write everything down. It’s only the Latin parts he wants, seeing as he was never taught that tongue. It’s Nechtan’s records, the oldest ones. There’s some in Irish, and he’s read those, but he thinks some of the Latin documents are his great-grandfather’s as well. He needs you to find those and put them into Irish so he can read them for himself.They’re mixed up with all sorts of other things.” Magnus glanced at a row of small bound books that had been set by themselves on a shelf, and his expression softened a trace. “Pictures, recipes for cures and so on. Notes, thoughts. Each of the chieftains of Whistling Tor made his own records. But the library’s never been organized. The oldest pieces are crumbling away. If it was me doing the job—not that I’m a reading man, myself—I’d see some merit in making a list of what’s here as you go through it, so you’ll know where to find things later. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Perfect sense, Magnus. Thank you for the suggestion.” I took one of the little bound books from the shelf and opened it flat on a table, revealing a charming illustration of some kind of medicinal herb. Beside it, in spidery writing, were instructions for preparing a tincture suitable for the treatment of warts and carbuncles. “I wish someone had done that before now. Made a list, I mean.You said Lord Anluan and his family were scholars.”

Perhaps I had sounded too critical.“He did make a start himself.” Magnus’s tone was forbidding. “Or tried to.”

“Tried to.” If what Tomas and Orna had told me was true, this chieftain must have a lot of time on his hands. They’d implied that he did not perform any of the duties a local leader might be expected to undertake, such as riding forth to make sure his folk were well, checking on his fields and settlements, establishing defenses against possible attack. “This is a big task, Magnus. It looks as if I’ll have to sort out the entire contents of the library before I start on the translation. Is there anyone here who could help me?”

“Shall I go and tell him you can’t do the job?”

“No!” I found that I was clutching the plant book to my chest, and set it down. “No, please don’t. I will do my best.”

Magnus’s gaze was assessing. “Is it the law you’re running from, with your need for a locked door and your wish to take on a job nobody else would want?”

He was too perceptive by half. “If you don’t ask awkward questions, I won’t,” I said.

“Fair enough.”

“But I must ask just one. Why doesn’t Lord Anluan come and talk to me about this himself?”

“Anluan doesn’t see folk from outside.”

This flat statement sounded remarkably final. How could I do a good job without talking to the man who wanted it done? No awkward questions. That meant I could take this line of conversation no further.

Magnus had moved over to the window and was staring out. The library overlooked the herb garden in which I had encountered the reclu sive chieftain of Whistling Tor earlier. From here I could not see the clump of heart’s blood, only the profusion of honeysuckle and the riotous growth of more common herbs.

“You shouldn’t judge him,” the steward said quietly. “He’s got his reasons. You’re our first visitor in a long time, and the first ever to come without some coercion. And you’re a woman. It was a shock.”

“To me, too,” I said, deciding not to point out that if one advertised for a scribe, one should not be surprised to see one turn up on the doorstep, so to speak. I was learning that the rules of this household bore little resemblance to those of the outside world. I moved to a small table by the window, which stood out for being the one tidy place in the chamber.The oak surface had been wiped clean, and on it stood a jar fashioned of an unusual green stone with a swirling pattern, containing several inexpertly trimmed quills and a knife. Perhaps Muirne was responsible for this little island of order. Beside the jar lay two sheets of good parchment, covered in writing. I picked one up. “Whose hand is this?” I asked.

“Anluan’s,” said Magnus. “Nobody else here can write.”

One look told me why Anluan had done no more than make a start on the daunting task. True, he could write, and if I really put my mind to it I could read what he had written. It was the worst hand I’d seen in my life, so undisciplined that the letters seemed to be trying to crawl right off the page.

“Don’t look like that,” Magnus said. “You’re a scribe, and he’s a fellow who’s lost the use of his right hand.”There was no judgment in his voice, only sorrow.

“I’m sorry . . .” My voice faded as I began to read.

“I’ll leave you to it then. I’ve got things to do.”

I glanced up, one finger keeping my place on the page as I nodded to Magnus. He said something about supper, but his words faded into nothing as I was captured by the narrative before me.

I had reached the end of the second page. A dark and fascinating tale; I wanted more. But there was no more, not here at any rate. It couldn’t be Anluan’s account of his own experience, surely. He had not seemed at all the kind of man who would write thus, in an archaic and grandiose way, nor could I in my wildest imagination think of him commanding an army of any kind. This must be a partial transcription of some older document. To discover the rest of the story, I would have to hunt down Anluan’s source.

In the window embrasure beside the table where the chieftain had been working stood a little old chest. It was marginally less dust-coated than the others and seemed the obvious place to start looking. I reached out to see if it would open, then withdrew my hand.The box had a powerful aura, enticing and repellent at the same time. It made my skin prickle with unease and my heart race with anticipation.

The voice of reason told me there was no need to open it right now. There were small mountains of other documents to sort, not to speak of sweeping the floor, wiping away the dust that coated every surface, airing the room, establishing a storage system so I would know where to find things. I cleared a space on one of the bigger tables by the crude method of pushing everything else out of the way and got out the folding wax tablet I kept for making notes. It had seen good use over the years. I had learned my letters on it, my small hand wielding the stylus at first awkwardly, later with more control, as I formed the foundations of my craft. The tablet was shaped like a book, with a hinged wooden cover. A leather strap held it closed when not in use, and the stylus had its own pocket. The wax surfaces, protected thus, had remained clean and serviceable. I would use this to keep daily records of my work and to note down which documents were located where. Parchment and vellum were too costly to be squandered on such ephemeral writings. I opened the tablet, glanced around the library and sighed. I could feel that box calling to me.
Read
, it whispered.
Read and weep.

I wouldn’t be able to set my mind to any other work until I dealt with this. I moved to the window and opened the box. No demons sprang forth. Inside, an assortment of items was neatly stowed. For the most part the contents were leaves of parchment, rolled in bundles and tied with disintegrating cords. Herbs had been sprinkled between the bundles long ago. These had dwindled to dust, but a faint sweet scent lingered on the pages, which were starting to crumble away at the edges. I reached for a bundle, then froze, gripped by a sense that someone was watching me. My skin prickling, I straightened and looked about me.The door to the garden stood ajar, but if someone had been there, he had vanished between one breath and the next. A faint scent of herbs lingered, sage and rosemary. I glanced out the window, but could see nobody.
Get a grip on yourself, Caitrin. This place is odd enough without adding your own imaginings
. I bent again to my task, lifting out each bundle of documents in turn and setting them side by side on the table. At the very bottom of the box was something wrapped in black cloth. I hesitated, then picked this up and placed it before me, unfolding its shroud with hands that were not entirely steady.

Perhaps I should have known it would be a mirror. This one was of obsidian, and something about it made me uneasy. The enigmatic black surface showed little reflection. I had read of such a mirror somewhere, I was certain. A dark mirror, used for divination. The artifact was in a silver frame crawling with eldritch creatures, each no bigger than a joint of my little finger, their eyes set with miniature stones of red or green. I blinked and stared anew. Hadn’t that gnomelike homunculus been at the bottom of the mirror last time I looked? And what about that being that was part sprite, part lizard? It had been curled up on itself and now it was looking right at me ...

I shook my head to clear it of such fancies. I would begin to sort these loose sheets, starting with the ones in the worst state of repair. If Anluan had any sense, that would be where he had begun his own somewhat limited attempt to do the job, so I would perhaps find the next part of that intriguing narrative somewhere amongst these deteriorating pages. So he’d lost the use of his right hand. I pondered this, wondering whether, if I tried using my left, my writing would be even more wayward than his. I had heard that a person could learn to use the other hand just as well, given time. Perhaps Anluan had not had time. Or perhaps he had lacked the will. He’d given up trying to talk to me quickly enough.

All of the documents from the little chest seemed to be in the same writing, a bold, regular hand.The style of script was antique and the penmanship was that of a scholar. The pages were so brittle there seemed a danger they would fall apart before I could get the job done, and the ink had faded badly. Little life remained in these records.

I skimmed the pages. One or two were in Latin, but most were in Irish and dealt with nothing more nefarious than an account of the daily life of house and farm:

That jolted me. I had been beginning to warm to the writer, an ordinary man making a record of losses and gains on his farm—sheep, cattle, where had they been kept?—and debating issues with the local priest. But after that callous remark, I found I could not like him at all.
My area of study.
Likely the writer was one of the unusually scholarly chieftains of Whistling Tor.