Chapter Seven
A rdahl, adrift in spirit and shut into the small confines of Mistress MacAert’s hut, wondered how much farther he could fall. Just two days ago he’d been upon a height. Secure in his world, among the best of Chief Fearghal’s warriors, and working hard to secure the place of foremost. At liberty to spend time with his best friend, to laugh, and train, and drink. To look after his mam.
He had never dreamed, nay, never dreamed how things could change.
He stood just inside the door of Mistress MacAert’s hut, struggling to force his mind into acceptance of his fate. He had been here before, to be sure, more times than he could count. When they were young, he had followed Conall home for meals as often as Conall had followed him. He’d even slept here a few times.
Now he must sleep here for good. No going home. The way the druids had explained it, by dictate of Brehon law he must become Conall in every way. Be son to his mother, brother to his sisters. Take up his duties. His place. Fulfill his destiny.
He, as Ardahl MacCormac, existed no more.
Despair churned in his gut as he stood there surveying the small, gloomy room. Just a roundhouse it was, with a central hearth fire and a few partitioned areas around the outer walls. Similar as could be to his own home.
Where Mam would now be alone. Och, she had friends who might help her, unless they did not want the stain of disgrace to transfer upon them.
He had failed her. He had failed his mam, even though after Da’s death he’d sworn to protect her in all things. The dearest vow he could give.
His da had been a charioteer, and his father before him. He had died when his chariot overturned on stony ground during a battle. Flung far from the cart. An enemy warrior had taken his head.
Ardahl remembered his mam’s face that day when Da was brought home. Bone white and seared by grief.
Much the way she’d looked parting from him today.
Aye, so, the druids’ decree had been given and here he stood—unwelcome. He could feel the hostility filling the tiny hut.
Conall’s mam still wept. She wept as she breathed, and the younger of Conall’s sisters sat by the fire hiding her face in her hands. Weeping also?
Liadan—when had she grown up into a young woman? Ardahl must have missed it while battling his way through his days. A young woman she surely was now, and a bonny one. But he could feel the antagonism filling her. Hate directed straight at him. She had a wall up, but behind it she stored enough hate to flay him alive.
How was he to endure this? And what to do with his own grief, the pit of emptiness at the center of his chest?
He wanted Conall to walk in behind him and give one of his laughs, make one of his quips. Declare that all this had been a wild, misguided prank. Make the world come right.
It did not happen. To be sure, not. Conall lay up in the ground under the cold stones. Had he himself not watched him go in?
Mistress MacAert took herself off into what had been Conall’s sleeping place, directly back from the hearth. Wee Flanna still sat as if frozen.
Liadan turned to him.
“You had best come in.”
He already was in, but he knew what she meant. Closer to the fire. Into the bosom of her family. The one place she did not want him.
“Mistress Liadan.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I but wish to say, I did not mean to harm Conall. I would never have harmed—”
“Do not speak his name.” Mistress MacAert flew from Conall’s sleeping place and across at Ardahl, nearly setting her skirts aflame from the embers of the fire. “Ye be not worthy to speak his name.”
She slapped Ardahl in the face, all the force of her grief behind the blow. He, who had withstood far worse in battle, turned aside from the pain of it.
The woman collapsed into sobs and wails. Both her daughters helped her up.
“Come, Mam, awa’ to your bed,” Liadan crooned to her.
“Nay. I will not. How can I rest when my boy is lost?”
“Come lie upon Conall’s bed, then. The healer has left a draught. I will mix it for ye.”
Both lasses led their mother away to the inner chamber, where Liadan drew the curtain. Ardahl stood where he was.
Aching.
A thought occurred to him. It would indeed have been easier had they just taken his life.
*
“Mam cannot abide having ye here.” Mistress Liadan stood in front of Ardahl like a living barrier. Her eyes, as blue as Conall’s, made two bright shields raised against him. She jerked her head at the sleeping place behind her. “I have managed to quiet her now wi’ the help of a draught. When she wakes and sees ye still here—”
“I am not allowed to leave.” He said it with sorrow. His entire being wanted to flee this place. Wanted to return to his mam.
Emotions chased one another across Liadan’s face. Like Conall again, those emotions seemed easy to glean. Ardahl had always been able to tell what his friend was thinking.
Except these past few weeks.
Now he saw dismay, regret, raw pain, and a level of frustration that matched his own.
“I fear what may happen if she wakes to see ye again.”
Ardahl repeated with patience he did not feel, “I am no’ allowed to leave.”
Iron entered her eyes. “’Tis unbearable, this. By the gods, I cannot imagine what the druids were thinking.”
Ardahl said nothing. The lass Flanna had disappeared into Conall’s sleeping cubby. With their mother incapacitated, it seemed he and Liadan must find a path through this dreadful situation.
Not until she began to turn away from him did he say, “What d’ye wish me to do?”
“Go away.” She bit out the words in a fierce whisper, turning to face him again. “Far away where I have to see ye nevermore. Go back to your mam. Or better yet, take yoursel’ off and forever wander the face o’ the world.”
“I would if I could.”
Her lips turned down. For an instant Ardahl thought she would weep. Too strong, perhaps. How old was she now? He tried to calculate it in his head. She’d been a mere toddler when he and Conall started playing together. A slim girl by the time they’d taken the field for the first time. A pest, sometimes, whom he had ignored.
Since he had a score and three winters, she must herself be approaching a full score. How was it that a young woman so lovely as this had not been taken to wife by anyone?
“Then”—she waved a hand wildly—“take yoursel’ and sit outside the door. I do no’ want her seeing ye first thing if she wakes.”
“Outside the door. Like a hound?”
Conall had a hound once. It had, to be sure, lain either outside or inside the door depending on the weather, unless it could sneak into Conall’s sleeping place to lie with him.
He fished for the name. “Like Blooney?”
She gave a stiff nod. “Till we can come to grips wi’ this.”
Outside the door. Where he would be prey to the gaze of every passerby. Stares of condemnation. Sympathy. Scorn. There, he would be beneath contempt.
He might have said he was meant to take Conall’s place, and that was not outside the door. Instead he gazed into Liadan’s eyes and said nothing.
He was meant to claim Conall’s sword as well. If he were to guard the door, he needed a weapon. Instead he had nothing except his empty hands, still rimmed with his best friend’s blood.
He nodded and slipped outside. The afternoon had just begun to fade, its brightness seeping away over the hills to the west. He stood and breathed deep, unthinkingly taking in the scents of this place he loved. Wood smoke and animals at a distance, and food cooking.
His stomach rumbled. How could he be hungry? Surely he felt far too sick inside to contemplate food. Yet he could scarce remember the last time he had taken anything to eat.
One mercy—Conall’s hut lay at the far side of the settlement, away from the chief’s hall and the training field. Not many were about. The few who did pass stared at him as if he had six arms and three heads.
No one spoke to him.
But he—and his sentence—would be the talk of the tribe for weeks. Aye, the druids—whom, he had to admit, he had mostly disregarded in the past save for their prayers ahead of a battle—did deal in reparation. Seldom did they impose such a sentence as this.
He walked around the side of the hut where most folk kept a wash pan, bucket, and pot of soap. Conall’s family being no exception, he found what he needed and availed himself of it.
He scrubbed till his skin was raw, till the last of Conall’s blood came away and only new trickles, from abraded skin, were his own.
Then he returned to the front door, hunkered down on his heels beside it, and waited.