“Lady,” said Cadhla, “let me.”
“No,” said Meara, just that: “No.” So Cadhla stayed, and, looking down, pricked at ill-made stitches, flinching from the thunderclaps. The rain sluiced down the walls, a constant spatter and whisper, and the trees sighed down by the Caerbourne’s flood. Ever and again a gust whipped at the curtains and sent the lamps and candles flickering, but the child slept on. From the hall came a clattering of metal, but quiet fell again below, leaving only the rain.
“They do not come,” the lady Meara said again in the softest of voices, only for Cadhla’s ears. “But tomorrow if he has not come home again, then they will come upstairs.”
“Lady,” whispered Cadhla, “what shall we do?”
“Why, I go to the strongest,” the lady Meara said, “as I did before.” She looked down at her sleeping son. Her hand smoothed his dark cap of ham His small fist clenched the tighter on her sleeve. He was never a hearty child, Evald’s son, but small and quick to understand too much. “Hush, what can we do? What could we ever do? But if you can you must be away with him, you understand?”
“Aye,” said Cadhla softly, her blue eyes round. “I will.” But both of them understood the chances of it, Meara most of all. Gently she caressed her sleeping son, well knowing the men downstairs, that one of them would soon take ambition; and then there was no chance for the boy, no chance at all for any bearer of Evald’s blood to survive—perhaps not even past the dawn. There were Beorhthramm and the others, fell and bloody men, wild and bloody as her lord . . . and growing more drunken with every passing hour. The cups were filled again and again downstairs; and cowards gathered the courage they had lost in the woods.
But distant, from outside the window in the dark, from beneath the walls, came the hoofbeats of a running horse.
Meara lifted her head and listened through the thunder and the rush of wind and rain.
“Off the road,” whispered Cadhla. “It comes from under the walls, not the gate.”
It grew nearer still, seemed to rush beneath the window, and echoed off the stone, distinct in spite of the water’s rushing and the blowing of the leaves. A moment it lingered below, then seemed to move on again, and the thunder muttered.
“O lady,” Cadhla breathed, clutching the luckpiece at her throat, “it be faery, that”
“It would be my husband’s horse come home,” said Meara, and her eyes were far and cold. “But it could circle the hold all night and they will not unbar the gates to see, no, they are haunted men. Hush,” she said, for the boy stirred in his sleep, and she rocked him, hugged him. The hoofbeats came back again and lingered.
“Faery,” Cadhla insisted when the pacing went on and on. “O lady—”
But the hoofbeats passed away into the dark, and below, in the hall, no door was opened or closed: no one went out to see. So the sound died, and the hall grew quiet in the abating of the rain. There were not even footsteps below. The child slept exhausted in Meara’s arms, and Cadhla stopped her shivering. The curtain flapped; it had come undone in the wind which now had sunk away. Meara waved a hand toward it and with dread Cadhla got up and approached the dark window to tie it fast, then began to trim the lamps one by one, a homely act and peaceful in a hall that waited murder.
“You’ll sleep a bit,” Cadhla said when she had done. She offered her shawl. With a gesture Meara bade her spread it so, over the boy, and some peace they had after that. Cadhla fell asleep in the chair they had set against the door, her hands fallen in her lap, her head resting on her ample breast.
But Meara kept her watch, and listened to the rain which had mostly spent its fury. No tears fell from her eyes, not now. They are for yesterday, she thought to herself, and for tomorrow. Had the window been wide enough she would have thought of escape; of braiding together all the cloth they had and so letting themselves down. But it was far too narrow for any but her son. She thought desperately of waiting until those below were sunk in their cups and so trying to run with him, passing through that hall. But there was the watch below to pass, and they might be less drunken.
Perhaps, perhaps, she thought, she could win time for her son, only a little time; and wise Cadhla, faithful Cadhla might find a way for him and her, a country woman and not so lost as she. Or Cadhla might somehow get outside the gates and she might let down her son to Cadhla’s arms.
Or perhaps, after all, her lord would come home—he was safety, at least, from worse than himself. And this was the hope which turned her coward, for from the tower there was no way of escape but the hall below and the drunken men.
She might feign a mourning for her lord; but any of them who knew her would laugh at that; nor respect it even if it were true.
They might fight among themselves, that being the way of them when they had no one to stop them; and that was all the respite she could hope for, perhaps a day to save her son. But that contest only the bloodiest of them would win.
A door opened in the dark, far away and muffled. Meara heard, and shivered in the long cold, near the dawn, waking from almost-sleep with her son’s weight leaden in her arms. He comes home, she thought without thinking. He has come to the gates after all, bloody and angry.
But she doubted that. She doubted every hope of safety except Cadhla still sleeping against the door. She looked down at her son’s face. That wayward lock of hair had strayed again onto his cheek. She dared not move to brush it away, fearing to wake him. Let him sleep, she thought, o let him sleep. He will be less afraid if he can sleep.
She heard steps of more than one man coming up from the wardroom below, as one came into the hall. So, she thought with a chill up her back, it ishimself; he has come up with the gatekeeper, or waked someone below. We are safe, we are safe if only we stay still—for she knew in her heart of hearts that if the ruffians had left their lord horseless and alive in the forest, then there would be a grim reckoning for that.
Then came a ring of steel, and a cry—a clatter of metal and the dying screams of men.
“ Ah!” cried Meara and hugged her frightened son to her breast. “Hush, no, be still, be still.”
“It would be himself,” sobbed Cadhla, bolt upright, her hands before her lips. “Oh, he has come back!”
In a moment the cries and the blows and the screaming became loud. The boy shivered in Meara’s arms, and Cadhla ran to them and hugged them both and shivered along with them.
“It is not,” said Meara then, hearing the voices, and turned cold at the heart. Someone was coming up the stairs in haste. “O Cadhla, the door!”
The latch was down but that was never stout enough. Cadhla flung herself for that chair before the door to add her weight to it, but the door crashed open before her and flung the chair against the wall. Men red with blood stood there, with swords naked in their hands.
Cadhla stopped still between, making herself a barrier.
But one came last through the door, a long-faced man in a shepherd’s coat and carrying a sword, undistinguished by any badge or arms, but marked by a quiet uncommon in Caer Wiell. His hair was long and mostly grayed, his lean face seamed with scars. A grim, wide-shouldered man came in at his back, and last, a red-haired youth with a cut across his brow.
“Lady Meara,” the invader said. “Call off your defender.”
“Cadhla,” Meara said. Cadhla came aside and stood against the wall, her busy eyes traveling over all the men, her small mouth clamped tight. There was a dagger beneath her apron and her hand was not in sight.
But the tall stranger came as far as Meara’s feet and sank down on one knee, the bloody sword clasped in the crook of his arm.
“Cearbhallain,” Meara said half doubting, for the face was aged and changed.
“Meara Ceannard’s daughter. You are widowed, if that is any grief to you.”