The Tree of Swords and Jewels

SIX Of Fences and Fugitives

Ciaran slept, past breakfast, and waked with the sun streaming in the windows and Branwyn's place vacant. He lay there a time, his hand finding the quiescent stone where it ought to be, his eyes shut on the day because the quiet was so good to him. But he gathered himself up at last and dressed and went out with a night's rest behind him and a brighter countenance to the days ahead.

He was quite deserted: the hold stirred about its day's business without him, but the maid went scurrying when she saw him in the hall, and Branwyn came in on the return, smelling of sunshine, with hope in her eyes and dust on her hands that she wiped upon her gown.

"Did you sleep soundly?" she asked, as if it were any morning of their lives, and kissed him by the mouth; he hugged her, finding the smell of her sunbathed hair the fairest thing about the morning he had met.

"Oh, aye, I did."

She drew back to look at him.

"My oath. I did." He smiled a weary small smile, not the false one he could use. "You see, there is peace of it. I knew it would come." He gathered her back to his heart. "The Sight was too quick and keen for a time; perhaps that it had gone unused so long, and knew me—but it has settled now. It has quite settled. There's no more pain."

There were other things she might have said. He waited for them, but she judged the peace still fragile, perhaps, for she only found that she had gotten dust on him and brushed at it and straightened his collar as if he were a child to be cared for. "Meadhbh and Ceallach are out weeding the garden; I thought they should have the sun. Muirne is with them. I will have cook send your breakfast. Cein was here: the notch-eared ewe dropped her lamb this morning and the children went to see it. Beorc is somewhere about: the horses took down the north fence last night and got into the turnip field; but they have got most of them in by now."

He frowned. "I will go," he said.

"You will have your breakfast first."

He smiled and kissed her on the brow, on his way out breakfast-less; he was vexed about the turnips, and halfway glad that there was something ordinary to set his hand to, that needed neither arms nor wit, except to reckon where the rowdier mares had gotten to, if they had not gone straight to bickering with the stallion in his stall: and if that had happened, there would be planks splintered and carpentry to do.

He had a gelding saddled from the stables and rode out from the gates, along the gardened north; and along that stout fence and hedgerow that kept the pasturage. He saw a rider on the horizon, close to the end of the row, and rode for him.

"All in but Whitenose," Beorc said. "I have lads combing the riverside."

"That mare was never a wanderer," Ciaran said. Of Slue he would have expected it, who was often leader of the trouble.

"Probably she became confused," Beorc judged, "having more conscience than the rest, and ran off."

"Where was the breach?"

Now Beorc frowned, pointing north. "Up by and trees yonder."

Ciaran frowned as well. Not by the new fields then, but facing open land. That was less like the mares. "Slue got the wanderlust again," he judged, "it being spring, and led the rest to mischief. Let us ride up there and see it."

So they went, the little way that remained, and there was nothing to be seen but some of the lads putting the fence to rights, stacking up the stones again and setting the rails. The ground was much trampled with the horses wandering this way and that.

Ciaran shook his head. There was no chance of tracking any single horse here. They rode back again, down along the road where it came near the river. "I think," he said, "that the watch might have seen them from the gate if any had wandered this way."

"I think that in the end we will find our Whitenose off by Gearr's steading," Beorc said, "if she went off north instead. Either the watch missed her in the dark or she went farther than the others. We might have a lad ride up that way. But the rough ground makes her hard to track."

Ciaran shut his eyes as they rode, a brief casting of his wishes: if I am gifted with the Sight, he thought, cannot I find one straying mare? But there was only mist as there had been; and suddenly a chill that made him draw in the gelding's reins sharply.

"Lord?" Beorc asked.

The horse had faced about under the pressure of his hand, backing still, it was curbed so hard: he felt its discomfort and yielded with a shiver. "Donnchadh," he said, for that darkness was back which he had felt the day before, when he had dreamed of his brother.

"My lord, is something there?"

Beorc's voice came to him through the mists, and trees faded which should not stand there, and the land he knew returned. He felt the sun again.

"Is it some ill?"

"Something ill," he said, and there was a presentiment on him still, so that the matter of the mare diminished in his mind and he recalled the dream that he had dreamed in the night, that was the hill near Caer Donn.

"I will get the men," said Beorc.

"No," he said suddenly, returning to himself, looking about at Beorc's ruddy face. "There is nothing to do for it. It does not con cern the mare."

He turned his horse again. They rode and searched along the riv erside, where the road ran, even leaving the road at times to come to the edge of the Caerbourne; and the boundaries of Eald whispered softly in the wind, and the water chuckled as it would among its reeds, mocking them with silences. He did not use the stone again. It was wrong to have used it so, in so small a matter; it was not given him for the finding of stray horses, but in trust, and he chided him self for his foolishness—as if it were some hammer or awl that he had borrowed, this thing that was precious to the Sidhe. Best, he thought, if he learned not even to think of it, if he numbed his heart so that it did not answer when the leaves whispered, so that he did not imagine liveliness in the waters or small things watching from the thickets.

The feeling was not good here. His horse and Beorc's fretted, and it seemed to him in that sense which came curling unbidden through the stone that no horse might love this place, that they wasted their time and their search, for Whitenose would never have come this way.

"Let us go back," he said finally. "Send over to Gearr's steading, see whether she might turn up there: that pony of his might speak to her."

"So I was thinking," said Beorc.

So they came back by early afternoon, and no sign of Whitenose, which put Ciaran in less cheer than he had been. It was a good mare, one of his finest, and he had had the breeding of her through two generations of Caer Wiell's fine horses.

"Maybe," said Domhnull, who had also been out searching and turned up at the stable as overheated and out of sorts as they, with Rhys, who looked no better, "maybe, lord, she strayed west."

Due westerly lay An Beag's lands, and that thought had grazed his mind, ready as any man of Caer Wiell was to blame ill on that neighbor. "I cannot think she would have so little grace," Ciaran muttered. "She was too well-mannered to think of An Beag. Rather she has gone off toward Gearr's, or somewhere about."

"There is the woods," said Rhys, who bore scratches on his face from searching amongst the trees, "and there she might come to mischance—but there is no natural cause for a horse to stray there."

Natural, Ciaran heard, and looked at Rhys's ever-grim face, and at suspicions. "If it was unnatural," he said, "and the small Sidhe had aught to do with it—well, grant she finds some farm when they are done."

The thought put him out of sorts even further, and he climbed the stairs. "It comes to me," he said to them as they went up, "that we might use the tower for the warding room, and that we might set the one we have to other use. Will you see to that?"

"Other use," Beorc echoed, somewhat out of breath.

"A table, a chair or two: a library; we should move the accounting here." The poison closed about him as they came from the wall to the room, among the dreadful iron; he bore it,, shuddering as he reached the second stairs.

"Aye, lord," Beorc said, "but the accounts are small—"

"So, well, but do it, Beorc, see to it this afternoon. Set some of the boys to doing it. Move everything to the tower hall. Move what is there here." He reached the top of the stair, the relief of his own hall, where the table waited, with ale and the morning's bread and some of Cook's fine cheese. "Ah," he said, better pleased in the day, finding he had appetite, and that was good. "My lady has been kind. — Sit with me, you three."

"Is it father?" a young voice called from up the stairs inside, and Meadhbh came running down with Ceallach in her wake; so Branwyn came down the stairs, and he swept Meadhbh up in his arms and spun her so, a flurry of skirts.

"Did you find Whitenose?" Ceallach asked.

"No," he admitted, setting his daughter on her feet. "Likely she went off to some steading; but we will find her."

"If the elves have not got her," said Meadhbh.

"You do not call them elves," Ciaran said soberly, catching her with his eyes. "There is only one of her kind, and you cannot see her stealing our mare, can you?"

"Only one?" Meadhbh asked, her face gone very still. "Only one?"

"In all the world. The others of the Daoine Sidhe all went away, very long ago, so long ago no man can remember it. There is only one, and you must not speak ill of her."

"No," said Meadhbh, "but why did they go away?"

"Hush," said Branwyn. "Hush, no such questions. Let your father alone. Can't you see he's been at riding and might like to sit down? Don't be so graceless."

Meadhbh's face fell, her eyes so very earnest. I am sorry, they seemed to say, but not a whit for questions.

"Come," he said, moving the bench aside, "sit with us and share the bread."

Their young faces glowed, to be asked thus to sit with Beorc and Rhys and Domhnull and himself, small companions to a men's gath ering. They scrambled to the benches, fresh and clean and scrubbed, while his company still reeked of horses, except for washing at the trough. But Branwyn took her place at table too, a waft of lilac and herbs, her fine hands laced before her.

"There was none lost but the one?" she asked.

"No, lady," said Beorc. Muirne had come, and took it on herself to be cutting the bread: she took the knife from Rhys and sliced the bread and cheese, while Domhnull poured the ale.

"A little for Meadhbh and Ceallach," Ciaran said. "Mind, a little. And no, we have set everything to rights we can, and the plants wanted thinning, I suppose. It was likeliest Slue that did it."

"From the far end," said Domhnull. "She has never gone that way before."

"We will have to stall that mare," Ciaran said. "I'll not be feeding her on turnips." It occurred to him strangely that he was given uncommon tolerance, that Branwyn said not a thing about the ale, that her eyes shone at him, that she was happy and that the children were. He gave a short pleased sigh, his mouth full of bread and cheese, his world at rights again, even if it turned out to be faery which had stolen the mare.

And then he thought of his dream, how they had sat at table like this in Donn, and for a moment he felt a deep distress from the stone.

"We have another lamb," said Ceallach. "It's a ewe lamb."

"A ewe," he said. "Well, good for that."

"And we pulled all the weeds," said Meadhbh, showing reddened hands.

"Hush," said Branwyn, "your father's men have no need for small chatter."

"Oh, well," said Ciaran, "but the weeds were well done, all the same." He smiled, and got a flicker of a smile from his daughter. "Better luck than ours, I should say." He ate his bread; his men wolfed it, having been hard at work since dawn. "Maybe we should test the fences all round."

"Aye," said Beorc. "I'll tell Cein to put some of his lads to it."

"I'll do that. You have your matter, with the warding room. —I've decided," he said to Branwyn, with a look that tried to tell her secrets, "to have the accounts moved there."

Today Branwyn would object to nothing. It had been the warding room all her life. "Well," she said quietly, and nothing more.

"Can we help?" asked Ceallach.

"Not in your fine clothes."

"We'll change again," said Ceallach.

"I think," said Branwyn, "you might find things to do that didn't get in the men's way. I'm sure I can find things other than that."

"Yes," said Meadhbh miserably, her hands folded before her.

"You might ask the scullery to send up some of the lads," Ciaran said. "There'll be cobwebs to clear."

"Yes," said Ceallach.

So the matter went, and there was scrubbing in the warding room, with a great deal of carrying of water and a smell of wet stone came up from it, and vinegar and burning pine, so that all Caer Wiell seemed dislodged.

And Branwyn went about ordering this and that with a preoccupied frown upon her brow and her hair flying loose from its braids in curling wisps from the abundance of water below.

Ciaran walked out along the wall, relieved, finding in the confu sion of the day some solace, as if things had wanted to be turned upside down. He changed a thing which had been the same since the Cearbhallain, and he changed few things in his lordship, but this one was for his comfort.

They must bear with me, he thought, and realized that none of them had questioned him in his strange request, no, not even Beorc.

But they knew what iron was to faery. They knew. And silently they went about this change for his sake.

Only the rider came back from Gearr's steading and reported no sign of Whitenose there, though the farmer would be watching for her. The youth looked crestfallen and unhappy. "Well," said Ciaran, "but she may have gotten frightened and it may take her time to stray toward some farmstead; but any man who finds her would know where she came from." He felt a need to console the youth, who looked thoroughly downcast, for the lad was one who worked closely with the horses.

"She has never been one to run," the youth said, as if the mare's character were in question.

"Well, she may come home," he said, and sent the lad off, sorrier for the boy than for the mare: he had many horses, and little could touch him on this day, that he had mastered the ill which had settled on him and gained peace in the house again.

He watched the lad walk away, leading his weary horse toward the stables inside the gates, and then went upstairs, into warmth and light and the newly cleaned room that would hold no iron hereafter, but only accounts, still smelling of water and burned pine.

He went farther, up into the hall, where Branwyn waited, and had his supper in good peace, with the children, with Beorc and Rhys and Domhnull, Siodhachan and Ruadhan and Muirne and Ruadhan's Seamaire, and had Leannan to play them songs, so that it was more merriment than loss after so disarranged a day.

But Muirne who had gone down the stairs to the kitchens after a pitcher came back and never poured, but went direct to Branwyn, ignoring all courtesy of precedence. She leaned and whispered straightway in Branwyn's ear, and Ciaran saw Branwyn's eyes, the startled dart aside, the fixing on thin air.

"What is it?" Ciaran asked, and frowned at Muirne, so the harp ing died, ringing softly into silence.

"Coille," said Branwyn softly. "Coille has not been seen."

"How, not seen?" He ignored the quick and ugly thoughts, searched further afield. "How long not seen?"

"Please you, lord," said Muirne, whose voice was always soft and now hard to hear even in the silence, "Cook thought he had gone to laze about again, that he would say this morning he had been at the fence-mending; or this afternoon at the moving of the hall, and so some thought he was—but neither—where, at nothing, so they say down in the yard."

"Coille," said Beorc in a low and rumbling tone.

"Aye, Coille," Ciaran said. An anger came on him, so for a mo ment it was hard to breathe, then he thought of it. He clenched his fists upon the arms of his chair and felt the heat go into his face. "So this is my reward of charity—a good horse and gods know what else. I believed that hangdog scoundrel; I took him in. And straightway he goes home again to his masters at An Beag, with gods know what tale—Oh, this is beyond my tolerance."

"Lord," said Rhys, with all his dark fierceness, "send a few of us that way."

"Aye," said Beorc, "we'll have some An Beag cattle for it. And Coille's head for it, if we spy him."

"No," said Branwyn sharply, "no, there is no good in it."

"Branwyn," said Ciaran, "I will not abide this thing."

"Then do not abide it; but do not break the peace. You know how it sits with the King; and where your enemies are: give them no such help. Gods know they need none."

"I know where my enemies are. At the King's ear. And in my hold, that I sheltered. Mind me of this, mind me of this, when I grow soft-hearted. They are laughing tonight in An Beag."

"They will be pleased if you break the peace," Siodhachan said.

"We cannot bear this thing." He brought his hand down on the table. "We have farmers on the borders who will bear worse if we do nothing. If we let this thief, this scoundrel of An Beag get away with what he's done, then who is safe, anywhere?"

"No," said Branwyn. "Who is safe if the King's forces ride against us as peace-breakers?"

"Laochailan King would not have the courage," said Rhys, which treason brought a deeper silence in the room.

"Children," said Branwyn suddenly, "go to bed. Now."

"Mother," whispered Meadhbh.

"Hush," said Ciaran without looking, and then looked all about the room, at all the anxious faces, at folk he trusted, men and women, all. "Friend's son," he said to Rhys, "friend to me—I wouldn't venture to say what the King would and would not do. But he has bad counsel. An Beag and Caer Damn have his ear, more than we. I don't say what the King might do; but what he would permit to others.—Well, Branwyn has the right of it: we have not been wise. The dale might rule the east, and he knows it—oh, he is wise in plots, is Laochailan. And what I say, I say to friends, to those I trust We have one true ally: your father, Rhys, and how I have valued him through the years—that is beyond telling. But he has had the burden to stand by us more often than we have been able to stand by him."

"Not so," said Rhys, "since he knows full well how this King would rule if not for fear of the dale."

"Perhaps we've guarded each other's shoulder," Ciaran said. "But we have been warned of troubles." The stone lay cold on his breast, like a second, aching heart, and he forebore with difficulty to touch it. "It seems to me that someone other than An Beag might have sent this man among us. That the King himself might have wanted to know what passes here, and poor Whitenose might have a longer run ahead of her than we think."

There was dread silence. "Then he would have a great tale to tell," said Beorc.

"Aye," said Ciaran, "well he might: how Caer Wiell's lord has gone mad, how he is feyer than they had thought; that magics are raised here that are gossipped in the halls—they are, are they not?"

"Aye," whispered Seamaire. "Too freely, everywhere in Caer Wiell's lands."

"That man then can do us great harm. He has been witness to— gods know what he has seen, or how we may be reported."

"The Sidhe spoke of war," Beorc said.

"Of war of a kind," Ciaran said. "And I cannot sit idle and let us be meshed in it."

"You cannot be riding against An Beag," said Branwyn. "There is no gain in that."

"No. No gain. Especially if this Coille is not An Beag's at all. Far less than gain. But we must find us allies."

"Who, pray? Caer Damh? The Bradhaeth? The lords across the hills? Husband, we are not their friends. We could never be."

'There is Donn."

The company stirred as if some wind had blown, and Branwyn made an outcry.

"Donn! Donn is the heart of our troubles. Who speaks loudest against you to the King?"

"Who can be more bitter than a brother? But he is still my brother. It came to me," he said very softly, and glanced once at Meadhbh and Ceallach who sat crouched small at Leannan's knee, "it came to me that this silence was more of my making than his. I offended my father's hopes; I know why. And somehow when Donnchadh sat in his place, well, perhaps he had tales told him how it sat with me, and perhaps there was some bitterness in it."

"You sent three times to your father, and each time your messen gers were sent away."

"The last was at his death. I had hoped, then. But to Donnchadh, after, I never sent, and perhaps Donnchadh would have answered me. He is in danger. I know that he is. The Sidhe said as much and I have felt it—" His hand went at last to the stone, unstoppable. "Here. I have felt traps meshed about us. We are none of us safe. And if things have gotten to such a pass that we have to fear spies and theft and treacheries—A shadow, the Sidhe said, a thing stretch ing out all round us; and I have seen something of it. You wonder that I don't sleep. The King is in danger. Danger surrounds us. And perhaps, if anything would forestall this—if I could gain my brother's ear and through him reach the King and stop this mad ness—"

"Donnchadh is your bitter enemy," said Branwyn.

"He is fey as I. And Sighted. It's in our blood, only like my father he has no peace with it. —He is my elder brother." He said this for Meadhbh and Ceallach, reluctant, for he had never spoken much about Donnchadh, but he felt it necessary now that they understand. "We met last in this room, when he had come to Caer Wiell; but he saw me—with the Sidhe's presence about me, and it was too much for him. I think he must not have slept well after that. He went away, he and my father, and I thought they would have fallen from the King's favor after that, but they spoke against me and grew closer to him for putting me aside. Perhaps the King thought there was some luck in them that would outweigh mine. Perhaps he still thinks so. But if I could speak with Donnchadh—"

"It's dangerous," said Branwyn, "and might do more harm than good."

"Ah, Branwyn, not dangerous; to my pride, perhaps. But I had a dream about my pride. One asked me could I give it up for Caer Wiell. And I think there was some foreboding in that dream."

"You are not thinking of going to him."

"That was in my mind."

"Lord, no," said Beorc. "Not yourself."

"What can messengers do, where messengers have failed? But per haps it would heal the wound if I were to come myself."

"No," said Branwyn violently. "No, no, and no."

"I would go," said Domhnull. "Lord, if you think there's some use in this, send me."

Ciaran was silent, gazing at Branwyn, reading there adamancy.

"I would go myself," said Beorc. "Your brother knows me, at least by sight."

"That calls back the war years," said Ciaran, "and the King's councils, and maybe those are days best forgot."

"There is myself," said Domhnull again.

"I would go," said Rhys, "but I fear your brother and my folk are not close."

"I think it madness," said Branwyn, "and a danger to whatever man you send. Cousin, don't offer. He should not be encouraged in this."

"Lord, I offer," said Domhnull. His fair face flushed, young that he was and several times passed by. "If I name myself Beorc's cousin and your man, your brother will know it's no small thing that you send me; and as for the war, I never saw it, so he cannot fault me in that either."

"We will talk about this," Branwyn said. "My lord, if you please, we will talk about this thing."

Ciaran sat still a moment. Branwyn gazed straight at him.

"We will talk," he said, and glanced toward Domhnull. "Domhnull, I will think on this."

But as for his mind, it was already set, and he was already framing the message in his mind, what he would send and say after so many years.