Son of the Shadows (39 page)

something; he'd be a fool to set so much as his little toe on my lord's land again. Death sentence, that'd be."

"Excuse me." I slipped between them out of the guard post and down the steps to the walkway.

"Sorry, my lady. Hope we didn't upset you. Men do talk plain, you understand."

"No, no, it's all right. Thank you for explaining."

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"Take care walking back, my lady. Stones are a bit uneven here and there. No place for a woman, this."

When I got back to the bedchamber, the door was closed. I gave it a push, but something was blocking it. I pushed harder, and the door opened halfway, dislodging a small chest that had been set behind to keep it shut. A large pan had been carried to the room, and water for bathing. Niamh heard me and grabbed for a cloth to cover herself, but it was too late for her to hide. I had seen. I stepped inside very quietly and closed the door behind me. I stood there staring at the bruises that covered every part of my sister's body. I saw how her once buxom, fair-skinned form had shrunk and faded, so that her ribs stuck out and her hip bones jutted beside her sunken stomach as if she were starving. I saw how the long, shimmering hair that had once cascaded down to clothe the curves of her womanhood was now hacked off crudely at the level of her chin, the ends ragged as if severed with an angry sawing of the knife. It was the first time I had seen her without her veil since she had come back from Tirconnell.

Without a word, I walked over and, taking the cloth from her shaking hands, placed it around her shoulders, shielding her poor, damaged body from the light. I took her hand and helped her from the bath, and sat her down on the bed as she began to weep, at first softly and then with great hiccuping sobs like a child. I did not try to hug her, she was not ready for that, not yet.

I found fresh smallclothes and a plain gown and got her into them. She was still weeping when we were finished, and I found my comb and began to draw it carefully through the tattered remnants of my sister's lovely hair.

After a while, the sobs subsided and her words became more coherent, and what she said was:

"Don't tell! Promise me, Liadan. You mustn't tell any of the family, not even Father or Mother.

Not Sean.

Especially not the uncles." She gripped me by the wrist, quite hard, so that I almost dropped the comb.

"Promise, Liadan!"

I looked directly into her big, blue eyes, which brimmed with tears. Her face was ashen; her expression full of fear.

"Did your husband do this, Niamh?" I asked quietly.

"Why would you think that?" she snapped immediately.

"Someone has done it. If not Fionn himself, then who? For surely your husband could protect you from such abuse."

Niamh drew a shuddering breath. "It's my fault," she whispered. "I've got everything wrong, everything.

It's a punishment."

I stared at her.

"But, Niamh—what cause could Fionn have to do such a thing? Why hurt you so terribly? Why cut off your hair, your beautiful hair? The man must be mad."

Niamh gave a shrug. She had become so thin, her shoulders were as bony and frail as our mother's under the soft blue wool of her gown. "I deserved it. I made one mistake after another.

I'm so—so clumsy and stupid. I am a disappointment to him, a failure. No wonder Ciaran—"

Her voice cracked. "No wonder

Ciaran went away and didn't come back for me. I was never any good."

This was such utter nonsense I was tempted to speak to her sharply, as I would once have done, to tell her to stop being silly and to count her blessings. But this time she really believed her own words; there were bruises and scars, not just on the tender flesh of the body, but deep in the spirit, and no quick words would heal those wounds.

"Why did he cut your hair?" I asked again.

She put her hand up to run it through the crudely shorn locks, as if she herself could not quite
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believe that weight of silken gold was gone.

"He didn't," she said. "I cut it."

I stared at her. "But why?" I asked, incredulous. Niamh had always looked after her hair, knowing without vanity that it was one of her chief beauties; and while she had sometimes railed at being made in the mold of her father, so clearly a Briton, she nonetheless liked the way her long tresses shone bright in the sun and flew out around her as she danced and caught the men's eyes. She had washed them in chamomile and tied them with flowers and silk ribbons.

"I don't think I can tell you," my sister said, in a very small voice.

"I want to help you," I told her. I was mindful of what I had been shown before, when her thoughts were revealed to me. Still, far better that she told me herself, willingly. Already, once, she had believed me a spy. "But I can't help if you won't tell me what this is all about. Did your husband find out about Ciaran?

Was that it? Was he angry that you had already lain with a man before your wedding night?"

She shook her head miserably.

"What, then? Niamh, a man cannot beat his wife thus and be left unpunished. Under the law you could seek to divorce him on such grounds. Liam would pursue this for you. Father would be outraged. We must tell them."

"No! They must not know!" She was shaking.

"This is crazy, Niamh. You must let your family help you."

"Why would they help me? They hate me. Even Father. You heard what he said to me. Sean hit me.

They sent me away."

After that, we sat there silent for a while. I waited. She twisted her thin fingers together, and picked at the fabric of her gown, and gnawed at her lips. When she did speak at last, her tone was flat and final.

"I'll tell you. But first you must promise not to tell Father or Liam or any of the family. Not Eamonn or

Aisling either. They are almost family. Promise, Liadan."

"How can I promise such a thing?"

"You must. Because it's all been wrong, all of it, and if you tell, it will wreck the alliance; and then I will have failed at that as well and disappointed them all again, and they will all despise me even more than they do now, and there will be no point at all in going on, no point. I might as well take the knife to my

wrists and finish it, and I will if you tell, I will, Liadan. Promise me. Swear it!"

She meant it.

As her words spilled out, there was a terror in her eyes that was real and chilling.

"I promise," I whispered, realizing this vow left me all alone, cut off from any help I might have sought.

"Tell me, Niamh. What has gone wrong?"

"I thought," she said, drawing an uneven breath, "I thought it would be all right in the end. Up to the last moment, somehow I still believed Ciaran would come back for me. It seemed impossible that he would not, that he would let me be wed and sent away, and not attempt to intervene. I was so sure. So sure he loved me as I loved him. But he didn't come. He never came back. So I thought—I thought—"

"Take your time," I said gently.

"Father was so angry with me," she said, in a thread of a voice. "Father, who never raises his voice to anyone. When I was little he was always there, you know, to pick me up when I fell, to keep us all safe and happy. When I Was upset, I always went to him for a hug or a kind word.

When things went wrong, he always made them better. Not this time. He was so cold, Liadan.

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He never even listened to me or to

Ciaran. He just said no, without any reason for it. He sent me away forever, as if he never wanted to see me again. How could he do that?"

"That's not quite fair," I said quietly. "He is very worried about you now, and so is Mother. If he seems angry, perhaps it is because he wants to protect her from these things. And you're wrong about not listening. They did listen to Ciaran at least. Conor said it was Ciaran's own choice to leave the forest. He said it was a—a journey to find his past."

Niamh sniffed. "What use is the past if you throw away the future?" she said bleakly.

"So you were hurt by what Father did, and then you went to Tirconnell. What next?"

"I—I just couldn't do it. I meant to get it right; I thought, too bad for Ciaran, if he didn't love me enough to come back for me; then I'll marry another man, and make a new life, and show him I don't care, show him I can manage without him. But I couldn't, Liadan."

I waited. And she told me, told me so clearly it was as if I could see them, Niamh and her husband, there in a bedchamber together. There had been many such scenes since she wed, since she found she could not pretend.

Fionn was naked, and he was watching my sister as she brushed out her long hair, stroke by careful stroke. I could feel her fear, feel the thudding of her heart, the chill that prickled her flesh.

She wore a sleeveless nightrobe of fine lawn, and the bruises on her body, new ones, old ones, were clearly visible.

Fionn stared at her, and he had his hand between his legs, fondling himself, and he said, "Make haste then! A man can't wait forever."

"I—" said Niamh, looking like some trapped animal, "I-I don't really want... I don't feel like—"

"Mmm." Fionn strode over to her, making no secret of the desire that hardened his body. He stood close behind her and took the fall of her red-gold hair in his hands. "Have to do something about that, won't we? A wife needs to feel like it, Niamh, at least some of the time. Be different if you were breeding, that might give you some excuse. But it seems you can't even do that for me. It's enough to make a man look elsewhere. And it's not as if there isn't plenty on offer. There's many a likely lass in this household has felt the length of me inside her before ever you came here, and been grateful for it. But you—" He pulled her hair tight so that her head was jerked back and she gasped with pain and fright. "You just don't seem to care, do you?

You just don't seem to warm to me." He tugged again, and she bit back a scream. Then he let go all of a sudden, and his hands were on her, pulling up the nightrobe roughly, pressing her body toward him, and he thrust into her from behind without further ado, and this time she could not hold back her cry of pain and outrage.

"Bad girl," Fionn said, taking his pleasure with grim efficiency. "What's a wife for but to satisfy her husband? Though you could hardly call this satisfaction. A bit like doing it to a corpse. A mere—outlet—for the—urges of the—body—aahhh," he said, withdrawing from her with a shudder, reaching for a cloth to dry himself. "Perhaps it's practice you need, my dear. I have a few friends who'd be happy to give you some—variety. Maybe teach you a trick or two. We might try that, one night. I

could watch."

Niamh stood with her back to him, staring ahead of her as if he were not even there.

"What, nothing to say to me?" He took hold of her hair again, gripping it at the nape of the neck, and wrenched her around to face him. "By God, if I'd known what a cold fish I was getting I'd never have agreed to this match, alliance or no! I should have taken that young sister of yours.

Scrawny little thing, but at least she'd some life in her. You, you haven't even enough spark to answer me back. Well, go on then, get your clothes on. Make yourself beautiful, if that's not asking the impossible. I have guests to supper, and you'd better at least pretend to be civil to
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them."

When he had gone, Niamh sat there alone for some time, staring at her reflection in the bronze mirror that hung on the wall, her eyes blank. Then her hands took up the comb again, and she drew it through her hair just once, from the crown of her head right down to where the red-gold strands ended level with her hips. She looked across the room to where her husband's cloak hung on a peg, and beside it a belt with a dagger on it, neat in leather scabbard. There was no decision, simply the will to rise and walk over, and to take the dagger and cut, handful by handful, pull and slash, pull and slash, all the way around until her beautiful, shining hair lay about her on the tiled floor like some strange harvest of autumn. She put the knife back neatly, and then she dressed, carefully in a high-necked gown with sleeves to the wrist, a gown that revealed not a single bruise. Over her shorn locks she placed a veil of fine wool, fitted close around temples and neck, so that her hair might have been any color, any length.

"I thought, you see, I thought there was no point anymore," Niamh said. "Everything must be for a reason, or I might as well be dead. Why would I be punished unless I deserved it? If he hurts me, it is because I am worthless. Why bother with the pretense? Why try to be beautiful?

Folk used to call me that once, but it was a lie. I love Ciaran more than anything in the world.

And he just turned his back and left me. My own family cast me out. I don't deserve happiness, Liadan. I never did."

My mind was full of rage. If I had had a knife in my hands, and Fionn Ui Neill had been in my sight, there was not a thing could have stopped me from plunging my weapon into his heart and giving it a good twist.

If I had had a mercenary or three handy, and a little bag of silver to pay them with, I would have felt a grim satisfaction in ordering his execution. But I was here at Sidhe Dubh, and Fionn was my brother's ally and Liam's. I was here with my sister, who now opened her eyes and turned to me a face so wretched, so helpless and frail, that I knew anger was of no use whatever, not at this moment. I wanted to take her by the shoulders and give her a good shake, and say, Why didn't you stand up for yourself? Why didn't you spit in his arrogant face and give him a well-aimed kick for good measure'? Or if you couldn't manage that, why not just walk away

? For I knew that if I had been in her place, I would never have stood for such treatment. I would sooner be a beggar woman scavenging by the roadway than let myself be debased thus. But somehow, in Niamh's mind, it had all been turned around. It had been neatly twisted so that she believed everything Fionn told her. Her husband said it was her fault, and so it must be. Now Niamh was all but swallowed up by the ugliness of what had been done to her. And we all bore the blame for it. The men of our household had sealed her fate when they sent her away from