I missed him. I missed the little glances he would turn my way; I missed his awkward conversation; I missed his crooked smile. Even his bouts of ill temper would be better than this absence, this silence. It extended to the rest of the household as well; I deduced that Anluan had ordered them not to discuss the looming crisis with me. I wanted to help him, to talk to him, to be a listening ear. But on the rare occasions when I happened to meet him crossing the courtyard or pass him in a hallway, he looked so grim and distant that I could hardly bring myself to speak.
I needed more time. The documents might still reveal a way of banishing the host forever and freeing Anluan from the curse. If there were no host, he could build ties with his neighboring chieftains. If there were no host, he could become the leader he was born to be. Then maybe he would have a chance of standing up to the Normans. If only I could find a counterspell. Fifteen days left.
Morning after morning, I was in the library as soon as there was light enough to read by, and stayed there until almost suppertime. In the evenings I worked in my bedchamber, making an Irish version of Irial’s margin notes on vellum pages I had cut and sewn into a tiny book. I had pored over everything the library contained in Irial’s hand, but this record remained incomplete. If there had indeed been two years between Emer’s death and her husband’s, some of Irial’s writings must be missing. Or he had ceased to keep this record for a season or so before his own demise. He had become too sad to set pen to page, perhaps. His last note read:
Day five hundred and ninety-four. The leaves of the birch, spiralling down, down. A lark’s pure notes in the endless sky. Is there a sleep without dreams?
Reading this, I thought not of forlorn Irial but of his son, and I considered the nature of love. I had once watched Anluan in the garden and seen an enchanted prince trapped in a dark net of sorcery. But this was no prince of ancient story. Anluan was a flesh and blood man, with a man’s virtues and flaws. The wounds Magnus had once spoken of, the hurts left on him by the past, were as much part of him as the limping leg and uneven shoulders.They made him the man he was.
I imagined the warmth of his body pressed against me, his face close to mine as I leaned over him to guide the quill. I considered how much it hurt to be shut out; more than it should, bearing in mind that I was a scribe hired for a single summer. I knew that whatever happened, leaving this place was going to break my heart.
My translation of Nechtan’s documents now covered a sizable pile of parchment sheets. I stored them between polished oak boards that Olcan had prepared for me, with a leather strap to keep them together. Between the long days of work and my constant anxiety, I grew thinner. My gowns hung loose on me. On the rare occasions when I looked in a mirror—generally by accident—and it gave me back a true reflection, I did not see the rounded, rosy person whom Eichri had called a lovely lady from an old tale, but a pallid creature with dark smudges under her eyes, brow furrowed by a frown, hair scraped back under a practical head-cloth. I recalled Nechtan’s cruel assessment of his wife:
I had not expected to be lonely, but I was. Most days the ghost child kept me company, sitting on the floor in the corner where Irial’s books were kept, playing mysterious games with Róise. Cathaír had taken it upon himself to guard the entrance to my bedchamber through the daylight hours, and Fianchu kept guard at night.
In the evenings the household still gathered, without its leader and his shadow. But suppertime was not what it had been.We were all despondent and troubled. Olcan and Magnus exchanged a word or two about the work they planned for the next day. Rioghan sat silent, without his usual sparring partner, for Anluan had at last given Eichri permission to visit Saint Criodan’s. My appetite was gone. I ate only because I knew I must.
