Tower of Thorns (12 page)

Blackthorn

T
he landscape passed me by unseen. The voices of my fellow travelers might have been the babble of a brook or the sighing of the wind. I held my tongue. The secret within me, the perilous secret Flannan had shared with me, was so huge that I feared it would burst out and ruin everything. One wrong word might betray me. One wrong word—
Mathuin
or
south
or
plot
—might alert Grim or Geiléis or even Conmael, if the man really could appear wherever he liked. And once they had an inkling of what had made me change my mind, they would start asking questions, and then stop me. And that would be wrong this time, because what Flannan had told me meant I wouldn't be on my own confronting Mathuin; I would be part of a much wider strategy, a plan that had been years in the making, a plan involving many folk. With so many voices raised, the chieftains would surely listen this time. Mathuin would face justice for his wrongdoing. At last we would make it happen.

When Flannan had first told me, I'd refused to believe him. False hope was a cruel thing, and this had reeked of it. We'd tried, hadn't we? We'd tried, and my husband and child and a whole lot of other folk had been killed. I'd tried again, years later, and where had I ended up? Incarcerated in Mathuin's cesspit. Powerless. Hopeless. Silenced as
effectively as if I too had died. The plot Flannan spoke of sounded just like that first one, only weaker, because Flannan himself had not gone back to Laois and spoken in person to his fellow conspirators there. He'd relied on messages carried by pigeons from one monastery to another, messages that could then be passed on to other trusted allies. Why would I break my word to Lady Flidais and my promise to Conmael and rush off south on the strength of that?

Flannan had come to find me in the stillroom while Grim was off watching combat practice. Even so, with just the two of us behind a closed door, Flannan had dropped his voice to a whisper as he'd told me. This was not like the old plot, he'd said. There were sympathetic folk, folk who knew the secret, strategically placed in every chieftain's stronghold and in every Christian monastery in Laigin and the south of Mide. There was a network of reliable informants; a growing number of stalwart supporters. All were ready to stand up and be counted. Their number included folk of considerable authority—councilors and nobles. It had taken Flannan and his loose fellowship years to set it all in place. The birds were vital to the enterprise; every monastery had its pigeon loft. Monks could write in Latin, or use coded messages only decipherable by scholars.

“Stand up and be counted when?” I'd asked, fighting back the urge to say yes. “Where?”

“At the council.”

“The High King's council? Is the plan that you and I sprout wings and fly to Tara? Even if we could be there in time, the moment any of Mathuin's cronies recognized me, whether as the wife of the traitor scribe from years ago or the troublesome woman who wouldn't stop talking about his misdemeanors, I'd be silenced. Permanently silenced. Either killed or thrown back in that hellhole and left to rot.” I'd made myself unclench my hands; forced myself to take a few deep breaths. “Why have you waited so long to tell me this?”

“You'd made it pretty clear you weren't interested in taking risks anymore,” he said flatly. “I didn't think it was worth asking.”

It had been like a slap in the face. Had I really changed so much? Had I truly become the coward he'd called me? “Well, you've asked now,” I'd snapped. “So explain how we're supposed to get to Tara before the council.”

“I don't mean this autumn's council,” Flannan had said. “Not only would you and I lack the time to travel so far south, but others, too, could not be assembled by then. The plan is that we—all of us—make our ways separately to Mide, to the court of King Lorcan or its environs, or to one of several monasteries that lie close by. We would make our move at Lorcan's next spring council. The High King should be in attendance. They are kinsmen, as you probably know. At least two of Lorcan's councilors are sympathetic to our cause. It's been suggested, indirectly, that the king of Mide would not be averse to seeing Mathuin removed from his position of authority, since he stirs up constant trouble on the border.”

It had taken me a while to find words; my thoughts had been conducting a minor battle among themselves. “Make our move,” I'd said eventually. “What move?”

“Stand up at the council. Make a statement of Mathuin's crimes, supported by evidence, including the accounts of witnesses. Request that he be formally charged. In the presence of both the High King and King Lorcan, Mathuin will not be able to do what he did last time. At the very least, he'll need to answer to the accusations.”

“Witnesses. You must be out of your mind.” But my heart had been racing, my thoughts leaping ahead. “What witness would be prepared to come forward? Everyone knows that would amount to suicide. Or worse.”

“It's the weakest part of the plan, I would be the first to agree.” Flannan had reached out to take my hands in his. “But you could help. What I thought was that you might find some of those women you told
me of, the ones whose cases you tried to draw to Mathuin's attention. You could talk to them, persuade them to speak out.”

“You're crazy. Why would those women risk everything, after what happened to them? Not only were they assaulted, they were then publicly shamed and ridiculed. Some of them have got Mathuin's little bastards to raise. Some of them were thrown out by their families—they may be destitute. And you're asking me to drag them all the way to Mide so they can stand up and perhaps face another dose of the same? I can't do it. I won't do it. I've made promises to folk here in Dalriada, Flannan. Promises I mean to keep, one of which is that I won't try this again.” I'd refrained from telling him what I thought about his expecting me to walk back into Laois as if I had no fear of what Mathuin might do to me. I'd held back my opinion on Flannan's expectation that I would do this when he wasn't prepared to go back there himself.

He'd turned a very direct look on me. I'd waited for another accusation of cowardice; waited for him to say I was no longer the woman he'd known and admired before my life turned to ashes. But what he'd said was, “I won't ask who extracted that promise from you. As far as I'm aware there's only one man in these parts who knows your story, and he's got a vested interest in keeping you in the north.”

For a moment I'd thought he meant Conmael, though there was no way Flannan could know about the bond that held me in Dalriada. Then I'd realized he was speaking of Grim. “It makes no difference who it was,” I'd snapped.

“Shh. Keep your voice down.” Flannan had glanced toward the closed door of the stillroom.

“Flannan, I have to be honest. The way you set it out, my part in this sounds ill-conceived. I'm assuming you dreamed this up once you found I was still alive. It's hard to believe you would ask it of me.”

“I ask it because you're brave,” he'd said. “You've always been brave. I can't promise the plot will succeed this time; nobody can. But it gives us the best chance we're likely to get of seeing justice done. Yes,
your part in it would be risky. I wouldn't insult you by pretending otherwise. But I believe you can do it.”

“What happens if this plot fails as the last one did?” I'd whispered, tempted despite all my reservations. Knowing that if I acted sensibly and said no, I would always regret the missed opportunity. “What if all the conspirators make their way to Mide, or to Laois to gather witnesses, and Mathuin's henchmen find out what's being planned before this council of Lorcan's gets a chance to happen? It only takes one person to get scared and whisper in the wrong ear. It only takes one careless word, one misstep, and the whole thing comes tumbling down, and us with it. You know that.” One shaky breath. “And don't you dare tell me this is what Cass would want me to do, or I swear I'll hit you.”

Flannan had been silent after that, leaning against the wall and looking at me with that same expression, the one that told me he knew how much I wanted to say yes, and how hard I was wrestling with my demons. Not a word about Cass; not a word about being brave or standing up to be counted. He'd simply waited.

The words had been all ready.
I won't be part of this. Not under any circumstances.
But what had come out was, “I can't go anywhere without Grim. And I can't tell him about this.”

Still Flannan had stayed quiet. His brows had lifted a little in question.

“If I did go south, I'd have to slip away, not tell Lady Flidais, not tell anyone.”

A nod from Flannan.

“Only there's no slipping away from Grim. Where I go, he follows. And I wouldn't want him drawn into this. He has as much to fear from Mathuin as I do. Besides . . .” Grim was the only one prepared to tell me, honestly, if I was making an error of judgment. The only one who could make me listen when a certain mood came over me.

“Besides what?”

I'd found myself suddenly reluctant to give Flannan further
explanations. “I'm just saying that even if we went covertly, he would come after us. And if we went openly we'd invite the possibility of someone alerting Mathuin. He sent men after us, after Grim and me, when we . . . when we got out of the lockup.”

“Ah.” Flannan had moved to sit down on the bench. “I have a plan, though I confess I had not thought to include Grim. We would not head south straightaway, but would leave court on the pretext of aiding Lady Geiléis with her monster in the tower. Or rather, you would; I would offer to ride with you in order to pay a perfectly plausible visit to the monastic foundation at St. Olcan's. To make our movements still more convincing, you might actually assist Lady Geiléis with her problem. While you did so, I could spend time studying a certain manuscript I've heard they have in that collection. We could move on from Bann after midsummer—that would still allow sufficient time for what must be done. I could make use of the messenger pigeons at St. Olcan's to check on the progress of our fellow conspirators. And we could head south by a different path, bypassing Cahercorcan entirely.”

“We could? What path?”

“Farther west into Tirconnell, then down through the pass from the north. That's provided we can get across Lady Geiléis's ensorcelled ford. Don't look like that, Saorla. There are friends all the way. I have learned to be careful, I promise you. The fact that I am still alive and my own man proves it.”

“You call me by that forbidden name and say you're careful? This sounds . . . It sounds fragile, Flannan. Like a rope woven too thin, that would snap under the least strain.”

“The rope is woven from courage, comradeship and hope. It is strong enough to bind an evildoer and bring him to justice. I promise.”

No denying it had sounded good; inspirational, almost. Enough to make a woman turn her back on her other allegiances and march forward with the flag of justice held high, disregarding common sense entirely. Enough to make offending Lady Flidais and deceiving Grim
unimportant. But something in the detail had troubled me, even so. “Flannan?”

“Yes?”

“When Grim and I met you on the road, were you really on one of your usual trips between monasteries? Did you encounter us purely by chance?”

“How could it have been otherwise, since I didn't know you'd survived? If I had known, I'd have gone looking for you in the south, not here. When I saw you down on the shore . . . When I realized who it was . . .” I'd seen a look in Flannan's eyes then that startled me. Had my survival truly been such a miracle for him? “Finding you again—it was a gift, pure and simple.”

For a while I'd fallen silent, for his eloquence had made it hard to go on arguing. “All very well to talk of being brave,” I'd said eventually. “But I suspect you haven't thought this out properly. I was only in the lockup a year.”
Only
. Hah! It had been the longest year of my life. “What about before? Yes, I went south after Cass died. Stayed away years. But I came back. I told you before, I was in Laois for months, talking to the folk Mathuin had wronged, gathering what evidence I could, until eventually I confronted the man in public and got myself incarcerated. Why did nobody tell you about that? Even if they didn't know we'd been friends before, I made enough of a stir to have folk talking. Or I thought I did. Surely someone in your network must have known about it.”