Heir to Sevenwaters (39 page)

His grip had tightened. I edged closer until I was kneeling right beside him on the bank. His dark eyes were wide, his jaw grim. He was breathing hard. I made myself stare into the water.

A man was riding through the forest, a young man with brown hair and an open, handsome face. Aidan. He was on his own, though the two hunting dogs were running at his horse’s feet. He had his bow slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing the same clothing he’d had on when he pursued us to the river’s edge. He passed under monumental oaks, their great trunks dark and massive, the spaces between them wide and shadowy. I knew the place. It was within the forest of Sevenwaters, near the nemetons that housed Uncle Conor’s community of druids. Aidan kept glancing over his shoulder as if he thought someone was following him, but he also seemed to be searching for something. The dogs were keeping close; they made no forays off the path. The horse looked nervous and so did the rider.

Another path; another avenue of oaks. Aidan picked up the pace and the dogs stayed right by him. The horse cantered down a short slope and halted abruptly, obedient to its rider’s signal. Aidan dismounted and took three strides toward one of the big trees, then knelt suddenly. Our field of vision altered slightly, and now we were looking over his shoulder into the blank, open eyes of the man who lay there, an arrow through his neck, his blood congealing in a pool beneath. It was one of the two who had ridden out with Aidan in search of Cathal only two days ago. I swallowed an exclamation of horror; Cathal inhaled sharply. We saw Aidan reach to close his companion’s eyes, say something, perhaps a prayer, then rise slowly to his feet. The dogs waited by the horse, keeping their distance.

Aidan went suddenly still. His hand crept toward the dagger at his belt. And now I could see what he could, a figure emerging from cover twenty paces ahead of him with bow in hand and arrow already on the string. A figure in a gray hooded cloak similar to those all of Johnny’s men wore in the field, but subtly different in its style, a cloak with a certain shape and swirl that made it unusual. The wearer was tall, dark-haired, with a pale, intense face and thin lips. I couldn’t hold back a little sound of shock. Cathal, there in the vision? Cathal stalking Aidan in the forest of Sevenwaters when he was right here beside me? Could what we were seeing be in the past? No, that man lying dead there under the oaks had been alive and well when we set out across the river and Cathal had been with me ever since. Was this a vision of events yet to come?

The Cathal of the image took a step forward and said something. He appeared quite calm. Perhaps he was inviting Aidan to lay his arms aside and talk the matter through. Aidan had not completed the movement that would have put his knife in his hand. With the other man’s weapon trained on him, he had no choice but to capitulate. His face blazing with anger, he raised his hands, showing them open and empty—a gesture of parley. An instant later, sudden and brutal, the arrow took him in the chest and he crumpled to the ground.

Cathal went rigid, as if it were he who had taken the bolt. My head swam; my heart thumped in shock.
It’s not true, it can’t be, it’s only a vision,
babbled a voice inside me, the voice of a panicky child.
Just symbols, that’s all it is.
But Cathal had told me what he saw was always true. My hand clutched in his, I forced myself to go on looking, for if he was brave enough to follow this to its end, so must I be.

I had known when I saw Aidan fall that he could not recover from such a wound. He lay sprawled under the trees, close to the body of his dead comrade, and the figure that was almost Cathal but not quite—as he moved closer, I could see many subtle differences—walked over to the fallen man and, after a moment’s scrutiny, knelt to relieve him of his weapons. Aidan’s bow was trapped half under his inert body. The cloaked man rolled him over casually to retrieve it, then wiped his bloody hands on the grass. He removed a ring from Aidan’s finger. He stood, tall and lean in his sweeping cloak, then stalked over to the horse and set a hand on its neck. The hunting hounds had retreated into the ferns, tails down.

The man who looked like Cathal swung himself onto Aidan’s horse and rode off without a backward glance. Before they had gone ten paces, horse and rider merged into the shadows between the oaks. The vision blurred and dissipated. The surface of the pond showed our reflections: Cathal’s, white and wretched, and mine, contorted by an expression of horrified disbelief. It had been so . . . so casual.

I was used to waiting for Sibeal to take what time she needed when emerging from a trance. Cathal took no time. As soon as the images were gone he sprang to his feet. A wordless shout burst out of him, a sound of fury and anguish. He cupped his open hands before his face then swept them violently downward, and I knew exactly what was in his mind.
I should have been there. If I had been there, perhaps I could have saved him.
Then, before I could say a word, he strode away, hands clutched into his hair, his body plainly possessed by the urge to take action, to make this right again, and the absolute knowledge that it was too late to do anything at all. He reached the fire, seized a log from our wood pile and hurled it into the flames with such violence that embers scattered all around the campsite. A moment later he was at the hedge, gripping the trunk of a thornbush, beating his head against the wood as if to drive the images from it. Since that first cry he had uttered no sound, but now, as if summoned by the pain he was inflicting on himself, words began to spill forth.

“This is my doing, it’s my fault, all of it! If I hadn’t come to Sevenwaters, if I hadn’t let them persuade me . . . To die all alone, no kind hands to gather him up, nobody to speak words of comfort, no friend to bear him home . . . And he thought it was me! He died believing I had killed him! How dare they, how dare they do this?”

There were no right words to say. I could not embrace him; he was slamming his forehead against the tree, his body shaking with rage and grief. Touch him, and I would likely be cast off with violence. I walked over quietly and settled myself on the ground a few paces away from him. My cheeks were wet with tears. Aidan dead, lovely Aidan with his sweet smile and his music . . . He had not deserved such a sudden and brutal end. I could hardly believe that he was gone. If it was true.

I waited, not saying anything, and after a while the flow of furious words ceased and Cathal quieted, subsiding to a crouch at the foot of the hedge. The day had brightened; the deceptive sky gave a hint of sun behind clouds. High above us, a lark burst suddenly into jubilant song.

“Cathal,” I said quietly, “I’m sorry. I’m more sorry than I can say. I suppose this must be a true vision, a vision of present times, since you said the water never lies to you. Wherever Aidan is now, he knows you did not do this.”

His hands went over his face. “How could he know, when the murderer bore my face?” he whispered.

“He does know, because he knows you are a good man. He knows you better than anyone, didn’t you say so yourself?” I moved across to him, cautiously, for I could not be sure what he would do. “Give me your hands, Cathal. Please.” Kneeling before him, I took his hands in mine, drawing them gently away from his face. His shoulders were hunched, his knees drawn up, his jaw clenched tight. There was a violent trembling coursing through him. I leaned over and touched my lips to his brow, where the skin was torn and bloody. “You’ve hurt yourself, dear one,” I said. “Whatever you think you’ve done, he would forgive you. In your heart you know that.”

He drew a ragged breath, and then, suddenly, he was kneeling too, his head bowed onto my shoulder, and my arms went around him, and he was weeping, not silently, but with a full-throated and wrenching sorrow that rang across the clearing and vibrated through every part of me. I held him, and he wept, and a little breeze passed through the foliage of the oaks beyond the hedge, sounding a rustling counterpoint. Eventually, like an exhausted child, he sobbed himself into silence, but we stayed there awhile longer, arms around each other, unable to move beyond the unthinkable thing that had happened. It was Becan’s hungry wailing that broke the spell.

“Go,” said Cathal, releasing me and dashing a hand across his cheeks. “Go and tend to him, go on.”

I sat back on my heels, regarding him closely. “He can wait,” I said. “Cathal, come over to the fire with me.”

He rose to his feet and I did the same. My legs were numb with cramp; I had a good excuse to put my arm around him as we made our way back, gathering Becan up on the way. It helped that there were things to do; it is hard to ignore a screaming baby. Cathal tended to the fire. I fed the child. When he was finished, I took the pot of water Cathal had heated and added some of the precious supply of honey, then divided the brew between Cathal and me.

“Drink it,” I told him. “Honey’s a restorative. We need this.”

He drank in silence, seated cross-legged, staring into the fire. The look on his face frightened me. When he began to speak, I expected a statement of vengeance; perhaps a vow to hunt down whoever had killed his friend in cold blood. But he said, “I’m sorry. I forgot how you must be feeling. You and Aidan . . . You meant so much to him . . . He was always talking about you. And your father liked him. Approved of him. If I hadn’t allowed my friend to die, you and he would have . . . I’ve stolen your future, Clodagh. How can you forgive me?”

I looked at the wound on his brow, raw oozing flesh, a livid bruise coming up. The cup was shaking in his hands. I must choose my words carefully. “You didn’t do any of it,” I said, “unless you’ve developed the ability to be in two places at once. Someone else killed Aidan; someone who is able to change his appearance at will so he can resemble you closely, if not exactly. Why anyone would want to do that I can’t imagine. But you shouldn’t blame yourself for Aidan’s death, or for anything that might change because of it. You came to Sevenwaters because you work for Johnny. You’re here with me now because, for your own reasons, you decided to help me. If you and Aidan found yourselves on opposite sides of a dispute, that was purely ill luck. Perhaps that man with the bow was connected with whoever attacked Glencarnagh; perhaps what we saw was part of a bigger battle.”

“I don’t think so. Aidan stood back and let us cross the river, Clodagh, but probably only because you had positioned yourself to shield me. In the vision he was still out on the search for me. He had the hounds with him. He was looking for his companions. How they became separated I can only guess.”

I thought he was right, but I would not say so. The last thing Cathal needed was another reason to heap guilt on himself.

“You said you’d stolen my future.” I had to speak of this, difficult as it was. “Cathal, I’m sad that Aidan is gone, terribly sad. I’m shocked and upset. To be drawn into your vision and to see that . . . I wish with all my heart that you believed there was some doubt about its truth. But, Cathal, whatever Aidan may have thought he felt for me, I didn’t love him in that way. He was a suitable candidate for marriage, certainly, and for a while I saw that as a possibility. I liked him very much. I’m sad at the waste of a fine man. But I didn’t love him like a . . . a sweetheart. At a certain point it became clear to me that I would never marry him. It seems wrong to say that now; it feels almost like a betrayal. But he’s here somewhere, watching us, and he understands. I know it.” Wherever Aidan’s shade had wandered, he was no longer part of that limp body lying alone in the forest with only the dogs to keep him company. I thought of that little girl, Rathnait, back at Whiteshore waiting for a betrothed who would never come home. Would she grieve for him?

Cathal had set aside his cup and had spread his cloak over his knees with the lining outermost. He slipped a small knife from his belt and began to pick at the fabric with the point. “You believe death wipes away sorrow so instantly?” he asked. “That in the life beyond, all ills are forgiven, all guilt assuaged? I cannot share that faith. You think the shade of my mother watches this alongside Aidan, her heart full of forgiveness for that wretch who destroyed her life?”

He sounded so bitter, so angry. “Perhaps she is proud of the fine man you have become,” I said. “She might well forgive your father, since without him you would not have existed. Sad though her life became, with her lover she must have had moments, blissful moments, when she believed herself the most adored, the most beautiful woman in existence. Perhaps, from wherever she is now, she can look back on that life and see that there was happiness in it.”

Cathal glanced at me. “You’re a rare creature, Clodagh,” he said. “You’re brimful of hope and compassion and love. I didn’t see all that when I first met you. But I did feel a spark. I felt an affinity. And I felt desire. It trembled through me at every toss of that fiery mane. It kept me sleepless by night and restless by day. With every kind word and with every sharp one you drew me in further. That troubled me greatly. It was not only the thought that I might be my father all over again. I knew that the stronger those feelings grew, the more powerful a tool they became in my enemy’s hands. As you see, I failed completely in my attempt to put you at a distance. And I worked hard enough at that; my rudeness was quite effective initially, I think. It pained me to speak to you thus. I despised myself for doing it, even though it was for your protection. But I reckoned without your ability to . . . to wrap your cloak of acceptance even around a man who had gone out of his way to be unpleasant, a man with very few redeeming qualities. We’ve become close and I’ve endangered you, as I did Aidan. If he hadn’t been my friend he wouldn’t be lying there in his blood, all alone.” His voice was shaking. “Now that I have seen these people’s complete disregard for human life, the only thing that matters is keeping you safe until you get home. I want you to put these in your pack.” He cut a thread and lifted a scrap of bright cloth from the place where it had been sewn into the cloak’s lining. There was a cold purpose about his movements. “From what that dog-faced being said, it sounds as if you shouldn’t wear the cloak to this exchange, but only the embroidered gown and shawl. The thought that you may need to use your appearance to charm this fellow disturbs me. I want you to take these things with you. You must put them in your bag and carry it on your back.”