Juliet Marillier - Hearts Blood

The further we went, the less ready carters were to linger.When each reached his destination he dropped off his load, left me at the nearest inn, then headed straight back. The inns were full of talk, and it set a new fear in me. A force of Norman soldiers had been spotted heading west. Rumor had it that they’d been sent to seize the territory of a local chieftain and establish one of their own in his place. Nobody was quite sure where this was happening, but they thought it was near the holding of a chieftain named Brión. I asked how many soldiers and was told too many for any Irish lord to prevail over. I asked how long ago they had passed and was told ten days or more. Nobody had heard of Stephen de Courcy, but they had no other name to offer in its place. As the men-at-arms had gone by on their fine warhorses, with their chain-link garments and their carts loaded with supplies, folk had withdrawn silently into their houses and barred the doors.

Near the territory of Silverlake we saw something lying across the road ahead.The man who was transporting me along with three protesting pigs drew his cart to a halt. “I don’t much like the look of that,” he muttered. “Couple of fellows off to the side there, in the bushes. Could be anyone.” His hand went to his belt, where a worn leather sheath held some kind of weapon. There would be no turning around silently and retreating unobserved, not with pigs on board.

“Halt!” someone called out, and a man stepped onto the track beside the barrier. Peering through the rain that had accompanied us for some time now, I saw that the obstacle was a solid length of wood, the trunk of a small tree that had perhaps been brought down by a storm, then dragged across to bar the way. The man wore woollen breeches and tunic, both garments saturated. He did not look dangerous. “Where are you headed?”

“Three Trees Farm,” said the carter, both hands back on the reins. The fellow on the road was a Connacht man. “Five miles down this track, but how I’m to get the cart around that thing I don’t know. What’s the trouble?”

“Who’s your passenger?”There were two men on the track now, both of them giving me the once-over. My clothing and my general demeanor must have made it plain I was no carter’s wife.

“I have friends at Whistling Tor, near Whiteshore,” I said.“I’m going to visit them, and I’m in a hurry. Someone may be gravely ill.” Let that not be true.

“Whistling Tor? Isn’t that the place—” one said to the other.

“You’d best go no further,” said the second man.“There’s a fight brewing; anyone on these roads is asking for trouble.You should take this young lady back to the last inn, and the pigs with her.That’s my advice.”

The carter stared at him, and so did I, wondering if I could ask whose pay he was in, for it was obvious the barrier had been placed across the way, rather than falling there in an entirely convenient manner.The carter spoke before I could frame a question.

“Don’t know a lot about pigs, do you? What do you expect me to do, ask the innkeeper to put them up for the night in his best bedroom, with a pint of ale apiece thrown in? Move that thing for us, will you? If I don’t get them to Three Trees soon I won’t be home before nightfall.”

“The lady heading to Three Trees as well?”

“I told you,” I said,“I’m going to Whistling Tor.This man is taking me as far as Three Trees; then I’ll get another lift.Will you do as he asks and let us through, please? We have to get on.”

“You won’t get to Whistling Tor,” said the second man. “There’s an army of Normans camped all around the place, waiting to starve the local chieftain out.You wouldn’t even want to go near. Apart from Normans on the road, there are . . . things about.”

“Things?” I queried, my heart cold with the thought that I might be too late. How could I reach Anluan in the middle of a siege? How could I change the future if I couldn’t even let him know I was here?

“Strange things. Things that shouldn’t rightly exist. A horse all bones; a dog as big as an ox. Shadows and voices.You wouldn’t want to go any further than Three Trees.”

It seemed they’d decided to let us through. The carter got down to help the two men shift the log. When they had eased it far enough to let us slip by on the hard-packed earth of the road, I asked,“Who arranged for you to be here? One of the local chieftains?”

“You’re foolish if you expect an answer to that,” said the first man. “Be glad we were here or you’d have driven straight into trouble. Take my advice, lass, and go back where you came from as soon as this fellow’s dropped off his swine.” Seeing my expression, he added, “Maybe your friend got out before the Normans laid siege to the place.” His tone did not inspire confidence.

We drove on to Three Trees Farm, which lay within the border of Silverlake, southeast of Whistling Tor. In this region Maenach had once been chieftain, Maenach whom Nechtan had viewed as a bitter enemy. Pigs unloaded, the farmer offered us mead and oatcakes and a chance to warm ourselves before his fire. It was plain that the carter intended to start straight back as soon as the simple meal was over.

“I’m not going with you,” I told him. “I must get to Whistling Tor as soon as possible. If there’s nobody who can take me, I’ll walk.”

The farmer, his wife and the carter all turned their heads to the half-open door, beyond which the rain was falling steadily.

“You’re crazy,” the farmer said.

“We could give you a bed for the night.” His wife sounded dubious. “But you won’t find anyone to take you to Whistling Tor today, tomorrow or any time soon. It’s not just the Normans. Nobody goes to that place.You know what they say about it.”

“That the chieftain is a misshapen good-for-nothing and that the hill is swarming with monsters and giant dogs?” I said, fighting to stay calm. “Yes, I know that; I lived at Whistling Tor all summer. I must get there. Isn’t anyone using the roads?”

They looked at each other, and I thought there was something they were not saying, or had been forbidden to say.

“What? What is it?”

“Nothing,” said the farmer.“We know nothing, except that if you head for Whistling Tor, you take your life in your hands. Fair warning.You’re not really planning to walk all the way?”

“I have no choice. How long do you think it will take me?”

If they believed me out of my wits, it did not stop them from offering help, and I blessed them for that. I set out from the farm with a thick felt cloak on top of my damp clothing.They gave me a strip of leather to tie around my writing box so I could sling it over my shoulder along with my pack, leaving my hands free.They gave me a walking stick and a packet of food. Best gift of all was a crude map of the path I must take, with landmarks scrawled in charcoal on a piece of birch bark. I sheltered it under my cloak against the rain. The farmer advised me to stop at one of the farms along the way and go on in the morning, since I had no chance of reaching Whistling Tor by nightfall. The moon would be near full, but with heavy cloud covering the sky it would not light my path. I did not say that I had no intention of stopping before I reached my destination. Never mind if night fell; never mind if there was no moonlight. Somehow I would find the way. Anluan. His name was a talisman against the dark, against fear, against giving up. Anluan, I’m nearly home.Wait for me.

I walked through the afternoon and into the dusk. I walked on the road and, when I heard a body of horsemen approaching in the fading light, down beside it, under the cover of trees. I could not see the riders well, but as they passed I heard the jingle of metal and voices speaking a tongue unfamiliar to me. Reinforcements for the besieging army, perhaps. How could Anluan prevail against so many? I set my jaw and walked on. It grew dark. I followed the paler ribbon of the earth road; on either side, in the gloom, there might have been anything. Sudden steep rises; abrupt, perilous drops. Cattle, sheep, monsters. Old stories swirled in my mind, full of the menace of what lurked in the shadows beyond the light of hearth fires. I kept on walking. I would get there in time. I must get there in time.Why would the mirror show me what it had chosen to show, if only to draw me back to Whistling Tor after Anluan was dead?

When my feet ached and my back hurt, when the layers of damp clothing and the chill night air had begun to leach away my courage, when I could no longer pretend that I need not rest, I sank down in the shelter of a crumbling stone wall.The moment I stopped moving my knees began to shake. My head was dizzy. My fingers were so cramped I struggled to unfasten my bag. The clouds had thinned, and there was a suggestion of moonlight. I ate some bread and cheese from the package I’d been given and drank some water from my flask. It was too dark to tell if I was on the right track. It was too dark to read my birch-bark map.

I packed the remains of the food into the bag, my hands touching the edge of the mirror as I did so. “Now would be a good time to show me something useful,” I muttered.“A lamp, for instance, or a candle; something to light my way.” But I did not draw it out. That last vision was strong in my mind: Anluan’s gray face, his limp form; my bending, sorrowful figure holding him; and Muirne standing in the doorway with that odd, impassive look on her face. That look made my skin crawl. It was as if she had no understanding of right or wrong . . .

In a moment of insight it came to me. Aislinn. Aislinn in the obsidian mirror, watching as Nechtan performed his acts of torture. Aislinn who had learned so much from the man who had taken her under his wing: to help him in his work, to keep meticulous records, to gather and prepare the materials for ritual magic, to set aside the suffering of human and animal if that suffering could provide vital knowledge. Aislinn, whose face I had never seen, for those visions had shown her hands scrubbing, her form bending over the table, her fall of wheaten hair, but never the features that no doubt had gazed on her patron with nothing but admiration as he had taught her how to set aside her conscience.

My heart raced. Could it be? Could Aislinn have come back after death to join the host that she and Nechtan had unleashed with their flawed experiment? After that fateful All Hallows, the girl had vanished completely from Nechtan’s writings. I could not remember a single reference to her after the description of their preparations: the herbs, the wreath, the white gown, the incantation. Where had she gone? Had she perhaps thought better of the path down which Nechtan was leading her, and moved away from Whistling Tor? Or did she linger still? Muirne. Oh, God, Muirne who was as devoted to Anluan as Aislinn had been to Nechtan, Muirne who had been companion to each chieftain in turn . . . Images teased at me: Muirne adjusting cups on a shelf so they were perfectly aligned. Aislinn clearing away the debris of torture, fastidious, detached. Muirne’s veil, covering every strand of her hair—if she removed that covering, would a cascade of golden locks tumble over her shoulders and down her back? Aislinn and Muirne. It could be. And if it was, that meant Muirne had a talent nobody at Whistling Tor knew about. She could read.

The moon made a gradual appearance, revealing a landscape in many shades of gray, the path winding on, stony hillsides to either side, pale forms that might have been rocks or sheep. I must go on.The new blisters stinging my feet must wait for attention until I reached Whistling Tor. Anluan needed me. He might even now be lying sick, wounded, despairing. And if my suspicion about Muirne was right, I didn’t want her anywhere near him.

I came down a small hill and saw in the distance a bigger rise, dark on dark, with what might perhaps be a high wall at the top. Nearly there. And now, here was a side road. I took out my map and squinted at it in the moonlight.Yes, there was a grove of oaks nearby, and a single tall pine to the north. I must get off the main track here and go by this lesser way, still wide enough to accommodate a cart or a troop of mounted men-at-arms, but not well traveled. It was the way I had first come here, when I had been running so hard from my demons that I had ventured where no person in her right mind would go.When I reached the marker stone I would be following in my own footsteps.

Before I got close, the mist began to rise. In shreds and ribbons, in twisting tendrils that wrapped themselves around me as I passed, it crept up to obscure the way, turning a moonlit track into a deceptive tapestry of shifting patterns. Curse this place! Even the elements conspired to keep folk out.The memory of that day in the library returned: the blinding clouds of smoke, the panic, the struggle for breath. I willed it away. If I stayed on the edge of the track I could keep going, finding my way step by step.

Time passed; my progress was painfully slow. I held to the side where the marker stone for Whistling Tor had been and prayed that I had not gone past it unknowing. Sounds came to me through the curtains of mist, the call of an owl, something creaking, a shiver in the undergrowth as a small creature passed nearby. And then, not so very far off, I heard men’s voices, foreign voices, and a sliding, metallic noise, perhaps a weapon being stealthily drawn. Somewhere ahead of me I could see a glow, as of a cooking fire. I took two steps forward and blundered into the marker stone, cursing as I bruised my knees.A moment later, someone shouted what was unmistakably a challenge, and there came the sound of booted feet approaching.

Nowhere to hide; only the mist to conceal me. If I fled blindly off the path I would soon come to grief. If I stood here I’d be taken by the Normans. I slid the bag off my back, ripped open the fastening, grabbed the mirror. Help me. Help me now. I stared into the polished surface, seeking I knew not what. Quick!

Within the metal something stirred. Before I could see what it was, a tall form loomed up, a man clad in the garment of woven metal rings that was the Norman form of armor, with a helm on his head and a spear held ready to thrust. He shouted something, and two more warriors appeared through the mist behind him. I stood there immobile, writing box on my back, mirror in my hand, staring at them. Tossing his spear to one of the others, the first man stepped up and grabbed my arm, hard enough to bruise me.The mirror fell to the ground. Bile rose in my throat; my heart knocked in terror. I would not scream. The more attention I drew, the harder it would be to get away.

The three of them were having a conversation, the gist of which was clear: It’s only a woman. Should we let her go her own way? No, take her down there. This couldn’t happen. It mustn’t happen. Find out that I was connected to Anluan and these Normans could use me to force his capitulation. Let them do that and I’d be making a mockery of his sacrifice in sending me away. I’d be the one responsible for his downfall.

“Let me go!” I said sharply, trying to seize the initiative. “You can’t do this! Release me right now!”

The fellow responded by tightening his grip on me. One of the others had a look in his eye that made my stomach clench with unease.They might take me to their leader and interrogate me. Or they might decide they’d like a little quick entertainment with no questions asked. The mist would provide perfect concealment.