Dreamer's Pool (35 page)

‘That is indeed so,’ said Fíona, after a nervous glance at Lady Flidais. ‘I’ve heard nothing but praise for your efforts in the district, Mistress Blackthorn. Folk are very pleased you’ve come to settle at Winterfalls.’

‘Thank you. That is most kind. And while we’re speaking of efforts, I have a visit to make this morning to an old man with a wheezy chest. So I will excuse myself, Lady Sochla, Lady Flidais.’ I capped my ink pot, wiped my pen, closed my book. As I left the chamber, I thought that if matters progressed at this snail-like pace, I had no chance at all of solving the prince’s mystery before he was wed. Maybe Grim was having better luck.

28

~GRIM~

I
sn’t so bad when I can put in a good day’s work on the house. Easier to get through supper and the time after. I can think, job well done, things moving along all right. Doesn’t help much with the nights. One thing I know, Prince Oran won’t be wanting me in his men’s quarters babbling away half the night and keeping them all awake.

Season doesn’t help. Rain, wind, sometimes snow. Have to grab the bits in between, when it’s dryish. Need to work in a hurry. Not the way I like doing things. Plenty of helpers, but it’s hard to get them when I need them. The other jobs, the ones for Scannal or Deaman or one of the farmers, mostly need doing in dry weather too. Doesn’t leave much time for spying. By the time I’m sitting with the fellows of an evening, I’m not at my best.

There’s sleeping quarters with pallets against the walls, and there’s another place with a long table and benches, where they go after supper. Guards clean their weapons, fletch arrows, sharpen knives and so on. The fellows from the house talk, sit around, drink ale. Grooms and farmhands have got their own quarters out near the barn. Sometimes they drop in for a drink with this lot. Don’t see much of Donagan. He’ll come and sit with us for a bit, then he’s off to bed. Odd that he sleeps in here. Would’ve thought he’d have a bedchamber of his own. Not something I can ask about.

First few days I’m trying to sort them all out. Who knew Lady Flidais before she came here, who didn’t. Who’s likely to talk to me and who isn’t. It’s not like the village in here, not at all. Folk that belong in the house are friendly enough. Grooms aren’t bad either. But the men-at-arms . . . something wrong there, can’t quite put my finger on it. Even when they’re all drinking and laughing, nobody’s at ease.

Doesn’t help that I’m awake all night. Wishing I’d never agreed to this, knowing I have to do it, for Blackthorn. Be easier if there was a light in the sleeping quarters, a lamp that could burn till dawn. But no. Aedan comes around, same time every night, and puts the lamps out, then goes off with his candle. He’s married, got private quarters. And once he’s left, it’s pitch dark.

First few nights I get through all right. But each night it’s harder. Comes a time when it’s too much. I hold the blanket over my mouth and whisper the words into it. I make myself hold still though I’ve got aches and pains all over. But the whisper’s building up, getting louder and louder. I have to move. I have to get outside before it grows into a scream. I stand up, quiet as I can, and head for the door. Or where I guess the door is. Blunder into one or two things on the way. Fellows grumble and swear. I manage to slip the bolt and go out into the yard, and it’s not black dark anymore. There are lights by the main entry.

It’s raining. I’ll soon be soaked through. But I’m not going back in there, not before dawn. I find a spot behind some barrels and hunker down. Should’ve brought a blanket. Though that would get wet soon enough. I put my head on my knees and start the words again. No Slammer here, no prison walls. But I still need the words. Seems like I’ve brought Mathuin’s lockup all the way to Winterfalls with me, in my head. Not only that, the old stuff, the hidden-away stuff, is still in there. Just waiting for the dark. And no Blackthorn to keep me brave.

Didn’t want to disturb anyone, hoped they’d drop off again once I was out. But not long after I’ve settled in my damp corner, someone comes out after me. He’s got a cloak on with the hood up. Comes over and squats down beside me.

‘Grim?’

Donagan. A pox on it. Sure to report to the prince in the morning, tell him I’m too crazy to be allowed here. I’ve ruined Blackthorn’s mission already.

‘Grim? Are you ill?’

‘Can’t sleep, that’s all. Go back in, no need for you to get wet.’

‘You’re soaked through. Come with me, let’s find you some dry clothes –’

‘I said leave it!’ This bursts out of me.

He goes quiet. But he doesn’t get up and head off. The rain keeps on falling, and the two of us get wetter.

‘Didn’t mean to snap,’ I say after a bit. ‘Can’t sleep in there. Don’t want to keep the rest of them awake. Best out here.’

‘Soaked through and shivering? Nonsense. If you’re worried about waking the men up, we can go in through the kitchen. The night guard will open up for us.’

I want to explain, but I can’t. The thing’s too big, too dark, and in his eyes too stupid. I shake my head. Wish I could shake all the bad stuff out and have it gone forever.

Donagan sits down on the ground next to me with his back against the wall. ‘Sleepless nights, that’s not so good,’ he says. ‘Is something troubling you? Or is it only the need to share the quarters with so many others?’

I wish he would go away and leave me alone. But I want him to stay, too. Since he came out the bad stuff’s faded a bit and I don’t need to keep saying the words. ‘Sleep better in our own place,’ I say. ‘Be all right when we can move back in.’

‘Didn’t Prince Oran offer you and Blackthorn the empty cottage here? That would give you some privacy.’

‘No!’ I say, too sharply by half. ‘That is, he did, but we said no. Need to be here, with the others.’ Now I’ve said too much. A pox on night, and the dark things, and the way they mix up my head.

Donagan keeps quiet for a while. Then he says, ‘Why don’t the two of us go in and sit by the kitchen fire awhile? We could share some mead. You’re right, the fellows won’t appreciate being woken. If you want to sleep, you can roll up in a blanket on one of the benches there. If you want company, I’ll stay with you until morning. Brid’s usually in pretty early, and no doubt she’ll sweep the two of us out the door.’ And when I don’t say anything, because I’m wondering why he’d bother doing this, he goes on, ‘You’ve got a job to do, haven’t you? Spend the night out here, and you’ll be too sick to do it.’

I’m shocked. He knows about the spying job? The prince said he hadn’t told anyone.

‘Your house, I mean,’ Donagan says. ‘You want to be back in as soon as you can, don’t you?’

I let out my breath in a rush. ‘Fair point,’ I say. ‘But why should you miss your sleep?’

The torch light’s not the best, but I see the flash of Donagan’s teeth; he’s smiling. ‘Never mind that,’ he says, and I wonder if, after all, he does know the real reason we’re here. I wonder if he’s giving me a good excuse for bolting out of the sleeping quarters in the middle of the night. Because if he’s with me, the prince’s right-hand man and all, nobody’s going to ask awkward questions. Could be Prince Oran summons Donagan whenever he likes. Could be there was some reason he needed me to go with him. ‘Are you coming, or are you set on dying of cold?’ he says.

I don’t answer, but I get up, and we head for the kitchen. Fact is, the company will be welcome. Never thought, that day when I was thatching and Donagan came riding by our place with the prince, that I’d sitting up at night drinking mead with the fellow. And feeling like he’d saved me from something.

The fire’s warm, the mead’s good and the company suits me. Donagan’s not asking questions and nor am I. He finds me a blanket, I hang my wet shirt and trousers up to dry. Might look a bit odd if anyone walked in, but they don’t.

We sit there for a while, then I say, because I know I should, ‘You don’t have to wait up. You must need your sleep. Calls you pretty early, doesn’t he? Prince Oran, I mean.’

He smiles, and this time it’s a sad sort of smile. ‘I won’t sleep now. Don’t let it concern you. After the next council, I suppose I’ll have time to sleep all I want.’

No idea what the fellow’s talking about. ‘Mm-hm?’ I say. Then I remember that the prince is heading to Cahercorcan to be hand-fasted right after the next council. ‘Be busy, won’t you? Wedding and all?’ Wouldn’t that be the sort of time a nobleman needed his body servant most?

He waits so long I think he’s not going to answer. Then he says, quiet-like, ‘I won’t be there for the wedding. I’m planning to move on.’

From the way he speaks, I know he’s sad about this. Which makes two of them, him and the prince both. Sad old place. ‘That’s a change,’ I say. Hasn’t he been with Prince Oran since the two of them were lads? Where would a fellow like him go? Only done the one job all his life, and you wouldn’t think there’d be much call for body servants. But what would I know? ‘Got plans?’

Seems to me night time and firelight bring out things folk wouldn’t be sharing in the day. In here, with the rest of the house asleep, could be we’re the only two people in the world. ‘In fact, no,’ Donagan says, stretching out his legs and folding his arms. ‘Just an empty road ahead, Grim. But it happens sometimes. When you least expect it, everything changes.’

They’ve had a falling-out, that’s plain as the eyes on his face. But it wasn’t Donagan the prince asked us to spy on. ‘Learned that early,’ I say. ‘Soon as you think everything’s going right, soon as you get content, something happens to take it all away.’

Donagan stares at me in the firelight. ‘That’s very bleak,’ he says.

I shrug. ‘Story of my life.’

‘You mean the cottage burning? That must have been a hard loss after all the work you put into it.’

‘Can’t say I was happy to see it go up. Though if Branoc hadn’t come back to do his dirty work, we wouldn’t have caught the bastard. And a house can be mended easy enough. There’s some things you can’t mend.’ And some things buried too deep to share, even in the quiet of night time by the fire.

‘Mm,’ murmurs Donagan. After a while he says, out of the blue, ‘Did he ask you to question me?’

That wakes me up quick smart. ‘What?’

‘Oran. Did he ask you to talk to me?’

Stick to the story. ‘Don’t know what you mean. We’re here, Blackthorn and me, because our house burned down and the prince was kind enough to offer us room. You know that.’

‘I know it’s the official story, yes.’

So he’s not being friendly after all. He’s done this because he’s suspicious. Gives me a bad feeling in my gut, one I should be used to by now. Could be disappointment. ‘What other story would there be?’ I ask.

‘You tell me, Grim.’

I just look at him.

‘He asked me to fetch you that day. If all he was planning to do was offer you accommodation here in the house, why did he tell me to bring you in the back way, so folk wouldn’t see you? Why not speak to you in the council chamber, or have Aedan do it?’

Time for some straight talking. ‘Tell me something,’ I say. ‘You’re the prince’s man. Have been for years, from what I understand. If he told you to keep something secret, would you go blurting it out to the first person to ask you?’

He flinches as if I’ve struck him. Then he says, in a tight sort of voice, ‘If you’d asked me that last spring, I’d have said no, never.’

‘What about now?’ Don’t like to press it. What I’ve said has hit the man hard. Didn’t expect that. But I want an answer. Isn’t that what this is all about, getting answers?

‘I would do what was best for him,’ Donagan says, looking wretched.

What in Black Crow’s name is going on with those one-time friends? I know nothing about this kind of folk, but I know a man in pain when I see one. ‘Thing is,’ I say, ‘you want me to tell you what the prince said to me and Blackthorn that day up on the hill. But if it was private, it was private.’

‘Fair enough,’ Donagan says. ‘But if he’s asked you to help him . . . to find answers to something he sees as a puzzle . . . I have to warn you that you’re probably wasting your time. There’s no puzzle there, just a . . . a mistake, an error. Look for answers all you want, but you won’t find any.’

This feels like wandering into a swamp with a blindfold on. Take a step the wrong way and you’re in over your head. Is Donagan guessing? Or does he know all about the prince’s problem? Could be Oran wants it kept from everyone, even this trusted friend. That’s what he said, more or less. I keep my trap shut. Seems safest.

‘If I could help him,’ says the prince’s man after a long, long time, ‘I would. Believe me.’

I’m remembering, then, something Prince Oran said to Blackthorn, after he’d told us the story. He said if he told anyone they’d say it was a fancy.
Only in my mind
, that was what he said. And I’m doing some guessing myself. He’s told his friend, and his friend doesn’t like what he hears, and now that friend has decided to take himself off after years and years of loyal service. Can’t be just the prince getting married; everyone must have known that would happen someday. What could be big enough to turn them cold toward each other? Could Donagan be one of those fellows that likes other men? Is he jealous of Lady Flidais?

I’m staring at him with my mouth open like a half-wit. I turn it into a yawn.

‘Do you have bad dreams every night?’ Donagan asks.

‘Been restless, have I? Sorry. Don’t want to disturb anyone.’ It’s not dreams. Doubt if I’ve dropped off more than a moment or two at a time, these last three nights.

‘You do thrash around and talk in your sleep.’

Thought I’d been doing a good job of keeping the words in. And lying as still as I could. Seems not. Have I been falling asleep without knowing? Maybe I can’t tell the difference anymore, sleep, wake, in between. Morrigan’s curse. Don’t know what to say to him.

‘I could arrange for you to sleep somewhere else,’ he goes on. ‘If you prefer. Close by, but not in with all of them.’

Yes
fights to get out. I shove it back. ‘I need to be with the others.’

Donagan gives me a sharp look. ‘Not by night, surely.’

He knows why we’re here. Must do. ‘Well, no, but . . .’ How can I say I need Blackthorn, or at least a lamp or a fire? How can I tell him I’d be better out of doors than in the men’s quarters, even when it’s pouring wet and cold enough to freeze a man’s bollocks off? ‘More used to life on the road,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’

‘No need for apologies. And certainly not to me. Let me think about this, talk to a couple of people. I might have an answer for you before tomorrow night.’

This bothers me. Any sort of special treatment’s going to get folk talking, and that’s just what Blackthorn doesn’t want. ‘Might be best to leave it,’ I say, hearing the growl in my voice that’s not for Donagan, only for stupid Bonehead who can’t keep himself under control.