The two of them halted on either side of me and I paused, looking ahead. A formidable barrier surrounded the modest settlement, a conglomeration of sharp-pointed stakes, iron bars, splintery old gates and other lethal bits and pieces. The mist shifted around it, revealing here a broken plough, there a great jagged stone that must have taken the efforts of eight or ten men to haul into place. As a fortification against the Normans the barrier probably wouldn’t last long, but it made a powerful deterrent to travelers. The place was set about with flaming torches on tall poles.
“It seems the folk of Whistling Tor don’t like visitors,” I said flatly. “Since I’m with you, I suppose it will be all right.”Within that wall I could see men moving about, but the mist made details obscure. I headed on down the hill towards the barrier, my two companions behind me.
I was about twelve paces from the wall when something hurtled over it towards me. I ducked, shielding my head.A sizable stone hit the ground not far away, followed by several smaller ones. Someone shouted from within the barrier, “Not a step further! Spawn of the devil, away with you!”
Blessed Brighid, what was this? Trembling, I peered out between my sheltering hands. Four or five men stood on the other side of the fortification, their faces uniformly ash white, their weapons at the ready: a pitchfork, a scythe, an iron bar, a club with spikes.“Away with you, scum!” yelled one, and another added, “Go back where you belong, into the pit of hell!”
Had the mist transformed me into a monster? Run, Caitrin, run! No; I must be brave. I cleared my throat. “I’m just a . . .” I faltered. A wandering scribe might be the truth, but nobody was going to believe it. “A traveler. On my way to visit kinsfolk. My name is Caitrin, daughter of Berach.” Curses, I’d done it again, used my real name. Pull yourself together, Caitrin. “I need shelter for the night. I mean no harm here.” I glanced over my shoulder, wondering why Rioghan and Brother Eichri had not spoken up on my behalf, but nobody was there. While the inhabitants of Whistling Tor village were hurling stones and insults, my two companions had made a silent departure.
All alone. No one to turn to but myself. That was nothing new; I had been all alone at Market Cross, in a house full of folk. Should I run? Where? Speak up, Caitrin. This couldn’t be what it seemed, surely. It was some kind of mistake, that was all. “It’s the truth!” I added. “Please let me in.” I remembered something. “Might I speak to Tomas?”
The men of the settlement stood close together, eyeing me. They looked both combative and terrified. This didn’t make sense. What did they think I was, a one-woman raiding party? I shivered, hugging my shawl around me, as they held a muttered consultation.
“Where did you say you were headed?”The man with the club asked the question without quite looking me in the eye.
“I didn’t,” I said.“But my mother’s kin live in these parts.”That was not quite a lie: my mother’s family had indeed lived in the far west of Connacht, but there were none of them left now, at least none I knew of.
“Fetch Tomas,” someone said. A lull, then; no more missiles thrown, but plenty of talk in low, agitated voices on that side of the barrier, while on this side I stood waiting as the last light faded. I wondered how much longer my legs would hold me up.
“What are you?”A new voice.Another man had joined the first group, an older man with a more capable manner. “Ordinary folk don’t come to Whistling Tor. Especially not after dark.”
“Are you Tomas?” I asked. “My name is Caitrin. I’ve been on the road all day. I just need somewhere to sleep. I can pay.”
“If you mean no harm, prove it,” someone called out.
“How?” I wondered if I would be subjected to a search or other indignities when I got through the defensive barrier.Well-born young women did not usually travel alone. It would be plain to everyone that I was in some kind of trouble. After today it was all too easy to believe men would interpret that as an invitation.
“Say a Christian prayer.” That was the man with the club, his voice still thick with unease.
I stared at him.Whatever these villagers were afraid of, it seemed it was not the Normans, for the most part a Christian people.“God in heaven,” I said, “guide and support me on my journey and bring me safely to shelter. Blessed Saint Patrick, shield me. Mother Mary, intercede for me. Amen.”
There was a pause; then the man with the club lowered his weapon, and the older one said, “Let her through, boys. Duald, make sure the barrier’s properly sealed afterwards.You can’t be too careful in this mist. Go on, let her in.”
“If you’re sure,Tomas.”
Various bars and logs and pieces of metal were moved apart, and I was admitted to the safe ground within. “This way,”Tomas said as I murmured thanks.
He walked by my side through the village. The houses were bristling with protective measures, the kind used by superstitious folk: triangles of iron nails, bowls of white stones set under steps, other charms to ward off evil. Doors and shutters were tightly closed. Many were barred with iron. What with the shifting light from the torches and the gathering mist, there was a nightmarish quality about the place. In the center of the settlement stood a bigger building, solidly built of mud and wattle and roofed with rain-darkened thatch.
“Whistling Tor Inn,” my companion said. “I’m the innkeeper; my name’s Tomas.We can give you a bed for the night.”
Tears pricked my eyes. I’d been beginning to think I had strayed into a different world, one where everything was awry. “Thank you,” I said.
The inn was locked up. A wary-looking woman opened the door at Tomas’s call, and I was ushered into a kitchen where a warm fire burned on the hearth. Once we were in, the woman set a heavy bar across the front door.
“My wife, Orna,” Tomas said. “Here.” He was pouring me a cup of ale. “Orna, is that soup still warm? This lass looks as if she could do with a meal.”
My heart sank. I made myself speak up. “I have only four coppers. I don’t suppose that’s enough to pay for soup as well as a bed. I can manage without food. I just need to get warm.”
The two of them turned searching looks on me. I could see questions coming, questions I wouldn’t want to answer.
“That’s all right, lass,” Orna said, shifting a pot onto the fire. “Where are you headed? We don’t get many visitors here.”
“I’m . . .” I hesitated, caught without a satisfactory answer. I could hardly tell them the truth: that I had left home with no plan other than to set as much distance between myself and Cillian as I could. But I did not feel comfortable lying. “I have kin in these parts,” I said. “A little further on.”
“You’ll likely not get another ride for a long while,” said the innkeeper.
“Is Whistling Tor so far off the main roads?” I asked.
“Not so far that a carter couldn’t bring a person down here quickly enough,” said Orna, stirring the pot. A savory smell arose, making my mouth water. “But they won’t do it. Folk skirt around us. Nobody comes here.This place is under a curse.”
“A curse?” This grew stranger and stranger.
“That’s right,” said Tomas. “Step outside that barrier at night and you put yourself in deadly danger from what’s up the hill there. Even by day, folk don’t pass the way you came if they can avoid it.”
“The name is unusual.Whistling Tor.The hill you mention is the tor, I suppose. But why whistling?”
Tomas poured ale for himself and his wife and settled on a bench. “I suppose it once was a bare hill, the kind you’d call a tor, but that would have been a long time ago.The forest has grown up all over it, and it’s full of presences. Things that lead you out of your way, then swallow you up and spit out the pieces.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
“Manifestations,” said Tomas weightily. “They’re everywhere; there’s no getting rid of them.They were called forth long ago; nigh on a hundred years they’ve plagued this place.”
“Nobody can say exactly what they are,” put in Orna.“All we know is, the hill’s swarming with them. All kinds, from little tiny ones that whisper in your ear to great slavering monsters of things. Here, get this into you.” She put a steaming bowl of soup in front of me, with a wedge of coarse bread beside it. Monsters or no monsters, I set to with enthusiasm as my hostess went on.“Whistling Tor, that’s fair enough.The wind does make an eerie sound in the trees on the hill. But Whispering Tor would be closer to the mark. Go too far up there and you’ll start to hear their little voices, and what they tell you won’t be pleasant.”
It was hard to know what question to ask. “How did they get there, these . . . presences?”
“They were called forth in the time of my great-grandmother, and they’ve been here ever since, them and the curse that came with them. It’s hung over us like a shadow for close on four generations.”
“So the barrier around this settlement, and the guards, are not to protect you against Norman attacks?”
“Folk say those poxy iron-shirts won’t come so far west.”Tomas took a mouthful of his ale, watching me as I ate. “Myself, I’m not so sure. I’ve heard that some of the chieftains are calling their men to arms, and one or two have brought in fighters from the isles, big brutes of gallóglaigh with heavy axes. If the Normans come to Whistling Tor, we’re done for.There’s nobody to protect us; no leader, no fighters, no funds to pay for help.”
“What about the high king? And don’t you have a chieftain of your own? Can’t he protect you?”
“Huh!” There was profound scorn in Tomas’s voice.“Ruaridh Uí Conchubhair isn’t interested in the likes of us. As for a chieftain, the one we’ve got makes a mockery of the title. He’s worse than useless. Stays holed up in his big fortress, on top of the Tor there,” he waved in the general direction of the woodland path I had taken to reach the settlement, “surrounded by his malevolent creatures. Sends his man down for supplies, pays a few measly coppers now and then to get a bit of work done, but take action? Make an effort to defend his people? Not likely.Takes his tributes in good grain and livestock, gives back nothing at all. Hasn’t set foot beyond the hill since I can remember, and that’s a good while.”
“That man’s warped and twisted like thread gone awry on the loom,” put in Orna.“The curse got him with a vengeance. But maybe we shouldn’t be speaking of this. I wouldn’t want to give you nightmares.”
I refrained from telling them that my own story provided more than enough material for night after night of bad dreams. Their fanciful tales were a welcome diversion from the problems that would face me tomorrow. For, after all, I could pay for only one night in the safety of this inn.“I did meet two men on my way here,” I said.“One was a monk.They guided me down to the settlement, but they left rather quickly when your friends out there started throwing stones.”
The effect of this was startling. Both Tomas and Orna formed the sign to ward off evil, each looking at the other. “A monk, was it?” Tomas sounded disturbed. “Thin sort of fellow, big teeth?”
“That’s right. His name was Brother Eichri. He seemed friendly.They both did.”
“Anluan’s cronies, the two of them,” said Tomas. “If that’s what Duald and the others spotted, it’s no wonder they were throwing things.”
“Anluan?”The conversation was proving hard work.
“Our chieftain. So-called chieftain. I can’t think of one good thing to say about the man, crooked, miserable parasite that he is.”
“More soup?”At Orna’s question her husband fell silent, but the anger in his words vibrated through the warm air of the kitchen.
“If you came here through the woods,” he said after a little, “it’s just as well you didn’t meet the dog.”
“I don’t mind dogs,” I offered cautiously.
There was a meaningful pause.“This is not so much a dog as a . . . Dog,” said Orna.
“A really big one?”
“Big.You could say that.The creature can take a fully grown ram in a single bite. In the morning, all that’s left is a few wisps of wool.”
Now they really were trying to scare me. If every hapless traveler who wandered into the settlement was regaled with such stories, it was little wonder the place had so few visitors.
“There’s a bed made up in the back room,” Orna said, seeing that I had finished my supper. “It’s nothing fancy, but you’ll be warm.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling very awkward. I was new to being utterly without resources; new to having no shelter beyond dawn tomorrow. New to being all alone. “I appreciate your kindness.”
“Fallen on hard times, have you?” asked Tomas.
Maybe he meant well. After the carter, I was not prepared to put it to the test. “A temporary setback,” I said, hearing how unconvincing it sounded.“I would like to sleep now. I need to be able to lock the door. Especially with those things about, the ones you mentioned.” I did not for a moment believe in tiny beings that whispered in one’s ear, or in monstrous dogs. But I had learned about the human monster, and I needed a bolted door before I could sleep.
“It’s the cold, creeping ones that are the worst,” said Orna. “They sing to you, lull you with their voices, and the next thing you find yourself wandering on a little path to nowhere. My own uncle fell prey to them. You can’t arm yourself against them. If they want you, they get you.”
I began to wonder if this whole episode was a crazy dream brought about by exhaustion and sorrow.“If Whistling Tor is so beset by these creatures,” I asked, “it seems strange to me that the village still exists.That’s if I understood you right, that these . . .manifestations . . .have been plaguing the region for almost four generations. I’d have thought people would have packed up and left long ago.”
“Leave Whistling Tor?” The innkeeper’s tone was full of amazement. It was plain that he had never considered such a prospect and found the idea unimaginable. “We couldn’t do that.Whistling Tor’s our place. It’s our home.”
“The sleeping quarters are through this way,” Orna said briskly, as if that topic was too painful to dwell on. “Brace the bar across the door and don’t open up until daylight.”
I did not dream of creeping presences and dogs that devoured sheep whole, but of Market Cross and of Ita. My kinswoman sought to rule me even in my sleep, her tongue a whip scourging me for my imperfections. You’re nothing, her dream voice reminded me. You’re nobody.Your father shouldn’t have filled your head with wild ideas and impossible aspirations.Women don’t earn a living at men’s crafts. Berach should have had you learn a housewife’s skills, not train you into a little copy of himself, just as if you were a boy. Be glad you have responsible kinsfolk to take care of you, Caitrin. It’s not as if you’ve demonstrated an ability to look after yourself since your father died. Be grateful Cillian is prepared to give you his name ...
