The Well of Shades (80 page)

The day wore on. In the early afternoon, when it became apparent both Eile and Saraid were chafing at the restriction of staying indoors, Fola allowed them to go out and sit in the queen’s private garden. With Dovran on guard it was deemed safe.

“But don’t venture any farther,” the wise woman warned. “I’m under orders to
keep you more or less in sight. If you need anything we’ll send someone to fetch it. And don’t talk to anyone except Dovran.”

Out by the long pond, Eile watched Saraid running along the path, then stopping to show Sorry something she had found. Her daughter’s hair was glossy, her skin rosy; she looked neat and pretty in her gray gown with a little embroidered cape over it, a gift from Elda.

Dovran hovered close by; he seemed keen to talk. “How are you feeling? You looked so limp and white last night. And your head… That’s a nasty injury.”

“I’m well enough. Don’t waste your time worrying about me.”

“I do worry,” Dovran said, the words rushing out. “I care about you. If I could—”

“Dovran,” said Eile, “tell me what folk are saying about what happened to me. What stories are they telling?”

“It might be better if you disregard that.” Dovran stood leaning on his spear, brown eyes troubled in his handsome, open face. “Folk talk a lot of rubbish.”

“I want to know. I expect my friends to be honest with me.”

“Can you really not remember what happened?”

“Nothing. What have you heard?”

“The talk should have died down now you’ve been
found; now it’s clear you were trapped in that place
and too weak to call for help. But I heard the men talking this morning; I rearranged one fellow’s face for him.” Dovran eyed his right fist. “He was suggesting you didn’t fall down the well at all, just waited there to give your accomplice time to get away undetected with the child. That it was an elaborate cover for a kidnapping. He hadn’t seen your hands, or your head. You should be resting,
Eile.”

Eile folded her arms tightly, pushing her bandaged hands out of sight. “What about Faolan? Did anyone say anything about Faolan?”

Dovran gave a grim smile. “Faolan’s more than capable of looking after himself. A person would be a prize fool to get on his wrong side.” Then, at her look, he added, “There’s been a rumor or two. A Gael at the court of Fortriu, a regular traveler; it’s inevitable.
How
did
you two meet?”

He saved me from the worst place in the world. He came for me: a wondrous friend in the guise of an unprepossessing stranger
. “On the road,” Eile said.

“You sound sad. Eile, you know how I feel about you. I want you to be safe; I want to help—”

“You’ve been kind to me,” Eile said. “I value your friendship, Dovran.” She saw in his face that he had understood the unspoken
message,
but we will never be more than friends
. She could not find any words to make him feel better. He was a nice man; he would meet someone else soon enough.

Saraid was sitting by the pond, refastening a ribbon around Sorry’s head. It was an unusual color, a delicate lavender. Someone must have given it to Saraid; it was new. Eile felt an odd sensation, a prickling at the back of her neck,
somewhere between memory and premonition. “Saraid?” she called. “Who gave Sorry the ribbon? Was it Elda?”

Saraid shook her head, small face solemn.

“Who was it, Squirrel?”

“Lady.”

“What lady, Saraid? Ferada? Red-haired lady?”

But Saraid was hugging the doll tightly now and had closed in on herself; her pose told Eile there would be no more said on this subject today. Her stance reminded Eile,
uncomfortably, of the old days at Cloud Hill, Saraid sitting hunched and silent on the front step while, in the hut, things happened that were no fit sight for a child. “You’d best be off, I suppose,” she told Dovran.

“I can watch the garden and talk to you at the same time.”

“We should be going in.”

“Oh. Very well, then. I don’t suppose I will see you at supper tonight.”

“No, I don’t imagine
I will be there. Farewell, Dovran.”

“Farewell, Eile. Bye, Saraid.”

“Bye.” It was wistful. Nobody had offered games today.

T
HE SEARCH PARTY
returned to White Hill well before the light began to fade. The men were tired and dispirited. They had not found Derelei. Faolan and Garth had made the judgment that the child could not have gone outside the broad area already covered unless someone had spirited him quickly away. Either the king’s son had been conveyed beyond the
reach of an ordinary search or he was already dead.

Faolan reported this to the king. Bridei took it calmly,
but the look in his eyes was desperate. “Go,” he said. “You’ll be wanting to see Eile. I will not give up hope, Faolan. There is still Tuala.”

Faolan refrained from mentioning that the search parties had seen no more sign of the queen than they had of her son. He supposed it was possible
they had in fact seen her in the form of beetle, bird, or vole, and passed her by unthinking. Strange indeed. “I should stay with you,” he said to Bridei. “But I am concerned for Eile, it’s true. Have you learned any more about what happened?”

Bridei shook his head. “Keother says Breda is distraught. He believes she has nothing more to tell. We may never learn the truth.”

“It will come out,”
said Faolan grimly. “I’ll make sure of that.”

“Doubts and theories do not make up a convincing case. It does seem Breda has played a dark part in the matter of the hunt and her handmaid’s death. Where the issue of my son is concerned, and indeed that of Eile, there is no real evidence against her. I know what you’re thinking. You must cool your anger. One cannot accuse a person of Breda’s status
without being sure of the facts. I know it’s difficult. Go on, now. Go and see your sweetheart. I’ll do well enough.”

Privately, Faolan doubted this. Bridei was linen pale and had all the signs of one of his monumental headaches. Here in the small private meeting room, the king had been sitting alone without so much as a candle to illuminate the gloom. His usual supports were gone, Tuala on her
perilous journey into the forest, Broichan who knew where. And now he, next closest to the king, was walking off to tend to his own business. “You need someone with you—” he began.

“And Eile needs you. Go on. I’ll seek out Aniel or Tharan if I decide I must have company.”

Faolan made his way down to the apartments he had already begun to think of as
theirs:
the three of them,
himself, Eile,
and Saraid. He tapped lightly on the door of the smaller chamber and went in.

Saraid was on the bed, sorting out the contents of a little box, with Sorry beside her. Eile was sitting on the floor with her back to him. She, too, was sorting. There was a neat pile of garments beside her; he spotted the blue gown his sister had given her and a carved comb that had once been his.
This is what I’ll
be taking.
Spread over the storage chest was an old tunic and skirt, the things she’d worn at Blackthorn Rise as a servant, and by them the boots in which she’d journeyed by his side, all the way over the sea and up the Great Glen.
This is what I’ll be wearing.
In another heap, over by the wall, were her best clothes, the ones she’d been given here at White Hill. The green gown; the soft slippers;
the little cape Elda had made for Saraid.
And this is what I’ll be leaving behind.
He stood just inside the door, calming his breathing, as Eile turned her head to look at him. He could not read her expression.

“What are you doing?” he asked, willing his voice calm.

“It’s all right,” Eile said, her bandaged hands continuing, awkwardly, their task of folding. “We’re just… going over things. Don’t
look like that. We wouldn’t go away; not without giving you the choice. But you do need to think about it, Faolan. You need to be sure this is all right, me and Saraid, I mean, here at White Hill with you, depending on you, perhaps being a burden you don’t really want or need.”

He moved swiftly to kneel beside her, to take her hands in his. His voice came out ragged and harsh despite his best
efforts. “What has prompted this? I thought you trusted me, Eile. I thought you knew…”

“I do.” Her voice was tight, constrained with some emotion he could not identify. “But you need to know what folk are saying: that I betrayed the king’s and queen’s trust. That I’m a spy. And they’re saying vicious, horrible lies about you. That you were in collusion with me all along, that we arranged a kidnapping
together. I
won’t have them saying those things. It’s so wrong. As if you would ever act against King Bridei…”

“I see.” He got to his feet. Watching his face, she had stilled her hands. “And you think going away would make it better?”

A tear trickled down her cheek; she mopped it with a swathed hand. “I’m trouble for you, Faolan. You know how difficult things will be for you if I stay. I need
to be sure you are prepared to face that; that you think it’s worth it. I don’t want you to keep us here just because of duty. Or worse still, from pity.”

Saraid had lain down on the bed, her head buried in the pillow. Half under her, Sorry was barely visible.

“Eile,” Faolan said, his heart hammering, “please believe what I tell you. If you were to go away, I would follow you to the ends of
the earth. I’d leave White Hill and Bridei in an instant rather than lose you. I can’t do without you and Saraid. It’s as simple as that. As for the rumors and gossip, we’ll find a way to deal with them.”

For a little she simply stared at him, green eyes assessing. Then she whispered, “Good, that’s all right, then,” and he saw her shoulders begin to shake and tears begin to spill in earnest.
He knelt by her again, putting his arms around her. “It’s the truth,
mo cridhe,”
he murmured. “The desperate truth. I would not lie to you. Where you go, I go. If you left this place, I would come after you without a second thought. Saraid, come down here and give your mama a hug.” And, after the child had settled by him and he had done his best to enfold the whole of his small family within his
embrace, “I think I’ve discovered something. I’m home at last. You, me, Saraid… this is it. This is home. Don’t go away.”

“Feeler go away?” He could feel Saraid’s small hand clutching his shirt up by the shoulder, and the damp warmth of her tears soaking through the fabric over his heart.

Eile drew a shuddering breath. “No, Squirrel,” she whispered. “Nobody’s going anywhere. Oh gods, I can’t
stop crying, this is ridiculous. You really do mean it, don’t you? You really do mean you’ll stay with us, no matter what?”

He stroked her hair, his fingers close to the place where the ugly wound disfigured her temple: the imprint of a regular pattern resembling the links of an iron chain. “Forever and always,” he said. “As long as I breathe.”

She sighed. He felt her arms come around him. “I
want to tell you something,” she said.

Faolan waited.

“You said you learned where home is. I’ve learned something, too. I’ve learned why my father did what he did. Why he left us; why he walked away and never came back. And I’ve learned that I’m not going to repeat what he did. I can’t do that to the people I love best in the world. It might be bad for you if I stay. But it would hurt you far
more if I went away, and it would hurt Saraid, too. And I can’t make you leave White Hill, the work you love, the folk who depend on you. Faolan, I think I’ve forgiven him. My father. His choice was far harder than mine.”

His heartbeat was quick but steady. He did not ask Eile to clarify what she had said about love. It was enough, for now, to hold those words close; to feel them sink within
him, a force of profound strength. “Come,” he said, “you’re still an invalid and my knees are feeling the effects of a day’s riding. We’d best get up off the floor, rekindle our fire, and dry our tears. Squirrel, will you go next door and see if there’s kindling in the basket?”

“Faolan,” Eile said as he helped her up, “there’s still the question of gossip and mistrust; the vicious tongues that
keep so busy. I won’t have you subject to that. If you stay with me, I’ll attract those tales to you.”

“Come through here and sit down, Eile. I need to see you drink something; that’s better. I do have a solution to the problem. You won’t like it. It presents a challenge every bit as taxing as scaling the sheer side of a well.”

Eile sipped the water he had given her, as he knelt with flint and
tinder to make the fire anew. Saraid, all sign of tears gone, was busily sorting out the wood.

“What?” Eile asked.

“The rumors are based on how we met, how long we’ve known each other, who might have recruited us,” he said, wondering if he was being a prize fool for even suggesting this, yet seeing a curious Tightness in it, as if their tale was making a neat full circle. “So we tell them the
truth. We tell them our story. All of it.”

“All
of it? You mean Cloud Hill and… and Dalach… and what happened afterward?”

“And Blackthorn Rise. And Fiddler’s Crossing.”

“I can’t… how can I… Faolan, what are you saying? That we should get up in front of
everyone
and talk about those things? I’d be so ashamed I wouldn’t be able to get a word out.” The cup shook in her hand, spilling droplets
on her skirt.