“I do not know,” she said. Her heart was beating fast “You must tell me that.”
“This is my hold. My cousin is dead—and not at my hand, though I will not say as much for men of his below. Caer Wiell is in my hands.”
“So are we all,” she said. It was all before her, the hope of passing the gates in safety, the hopelessness of wandering after. “I may have kin in Ban.”
“Ban swings with every wind. And what then for you—the wolf’s widow? Seek shelter of An Beag? The wolf’s friends are not trustworthy. Caer Wiell is mine,I say; and I will hold it.” He put out his hand to the boy, whose fists were clenched tight in Meara’s sleeve, who flinched from the stranger’s touch. “Is he yours?”
Never yet the tears had fallen. Meara held them now, while this large and bloody hand stretched out toward her son, her babe. “He is mine,” she said. “Evald is his name. But he is mine.”
The hand lingered a moment and left him. “Evald’s heir has nothing from me; but I will treat him as a son and his mother—if she stays in Caer Wiell—will be safe while I can make her so.”
With that he rose and gave a sign to his men, only some of whom remained. “Guard this door,” he bade them. “Let no one trouble them. They are innocent.” He looked down again, a grim figure still, and holding the bloody sword still in his arm, for it could not be sheathed. “If my cousin should come home again he will have a bitter welcome. But I do not expect he will.”
“No,” said Meara, and shivered. For the first time the tears fell. “There would be no luck for him now.”
“There was no luck for him in Caer Wiell while he had it,” said Niall Cearbhallain. “But I will hold it, by my own.”
She bowed her head and wept, that being all there was to do. “Mother,” her son wailed; she held him close for comfort, and Cadhla came and held them too.
“I would not come down to the hall,” said Cearbhallain, “until we have cleansed it.” And he went away, never smiling, never once smiling. But Meara laughed, laughed as she had almost forgotten how.
“Free,” she said. “Free!—o Cadhla, he is Niall Cearbhallain, the King’s own champion! O cleansed the hall! That they have, they have. I knew him once—oh, years and years ago; and the morning has come and our night is over.”
A furtive hope had burst in Meara’s eyes, a shielded, suspecting hope, as every hope in Caer Wiell was long apt to be twisted and used for hurt. It forgot that the young harper Fionn was dead and lost; forgot an almost-love, for she was still young and the harper had touched her heart in her desolation. She forgot, forgot, and set all her future hopes on Cearbhallain. That was the nature of the niece of the former King, who had learned how to live in storms, that she knew how to find another staying place.
“Mother,” her son said—he said little always, did Evald’s son: he had learned his safety too, small that he was, which was silence, to clench his small fists on what help there was and never to let go. “Is he coming?”
“Never,” she said, “never again, little son. That man will keep us safe.”
“There was blood on him.”
“It was the blood of all the wicked in Caer Wiell. But he would never hurt us.”
So she rocked her son, and the strength left her of a sudden, so that Cadhla must catch them both. And still Meara laughed.
There was a marriage made in Caer Wiell, when the warmth of summer came. There were new faces in the hold, stark, grim men, but soft-spoken and courteous, and no few of them Meara had known in her youth, who smiled to see her, those of them who remembered to smile at all. Some folk remained from the Caer Wiell that was, but the worst had died or fled and the rest had mended what they were; and more and more came to the gates, even farmers who hoped for land—which they got as long as there was land fallow. There were some kinsmen of Niall’s, but few; there was a motley lot of folk met over the hills and in them, wild sorts and never to be crossed. There was Caoimhin, lame from the attack; and gangling Scaga; and grim, mad lord Dryw from the southern hills. But whatever the nature of them, there was law, and more, word spread abroad in what ill-luck the wolf had died, which kept the mutterings from An Beag and Caer Damh only mutterings: they had no desire to trifle with the wood and the power in it. They had felt the storm. So they were content to close the road and to pen Caer Wiell in its remoteness—as if there were anywhere to go.
So Meara wed, decked in flowers and quiet as she was always quiet, and became Niall’s lady in Caer Wiell.
And the boy Evald dogged Niall’s steps and Caoimhin’s and Scaga’s; and learned play and laughter.
“He is your son,” Niall would say to Meara, which he knew pleased her. “And my cousin, and the blood of the Kings is in him on your side.”
But at times he saw another thing, when the boy was crossed, when his temper rose. And then twice as resolutely Niall used patience with young Evald, for there were times when the boy could melt his heart, when he laughed or when, though tired, he tried to follow, matching a grown man’s steps. He would go everywhere with Niall, onto the walls, up the stairs and down, into the stables and storerooms. A word from Niall could light his eyes or cloud them, and there was no stopping such adoration.
So the boy grew, and if at times Scaga cuffed his ears when he needed it, Evald no more than frowned; it was only Niall could get tears from him. He had a pony to ride, a shaggy beast rescued from the mill, and it thrived and became a merry wicked kind of pony, jogging along by Banain on summer rides. Evald outgrew all his clothes by winter, and all his sleeves were let out, and his waists likewise, keeping Cadhla busy. And on winter nights he listened to the warriors’ tales.
But never to anything of Eald, for at any such tale Meara drew him to herself and shivered, so in this Niall forbore.
Meara bore a daughter for him, a fair blue-eyed child; and after her a sister, so he had no son, but this was, if a matter to him, still no real grief—for his luck had brought him two, Scaga, who went to broad-shouldered manhood, a dour young man who managed well the sometime defense against An Beag; who learned his soldiery of men who had fought the long hard war; and he had Evald, who grew to youth—his heir, for Scaga had no thought of ruling anything. As for Evald, Evald was innocent in his assumption that the hold was his . . . for he was fierce and prideful in his devotion—and learned to be gentle too, giving all his heart to those who gave to him—for so Niall had taught him.
So Niall had his daughters and loved them wholeheartedly, and they inherited Evald’s pony when he had outgrown it. To Evald he gave Banain’s latest foal instead.
Caoimhin died, the greatest grief that came to Niall in those happy years: it was a simple fall, his lame leg betraying him on the stairs. So Caoimhin slept in the heart of Caer Wiell, of a kind of death he had never looked to die, a peaceful one.
The trees grew again across the river. Snow fell and melted into spring, and Caer Wiell began a new tower—for, said Niall, one never knew what the times would bring. Mostly in his heart was the thought of the King, who was now toward his manhood, and that wars might come which he would never see—for age was coming on him. His hair had gone from grey to white, and one day he sent Banain away, for she was failing and he could no longer pretend the years away. He sent Scaga to lead her, and a troop of his armed men, as if the piebald mare had been some great chieftain under escort, for they had to pass the road that An Beag held: and so they did, with never a stirring from An Beag, which chose to watch more of late than act, having learned bitter lessons.
So Banain went, free up the dell.
“She ran,” Scaga reported later, his eyes alight. “She seemed doubtful a moment, and then she threw her head and lifted her tail and ran the way she could when she was young. I lost sight of her; the hills came between. But she knew the way. I do not doubt it.”