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.”
“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.