Peter Tremayne - The Leper's bell

Eadulf made to move forward towards the figure but the white skeleton hand suddenly drew a small bell out of the folds of the robe and shook it with a warning note.

‘ Salach! Salach! Unclean!’ came the high-pitched voice. Eadulf halted abruptly. ‘A little distance, if you please, Brother Saxon.’ Uaman’s voice was more controlled now. ‘I suffer the affliction which decays and putrefies the flesh.’

‘A leper?’ gasped Eadulf. Until this moment he had not fully appreciated the enormity of the curse under which Uaman suffered.

The bent figure gave his spine-tingling laugh. Then the leper hobbled forward and Eadulf noticed that he was dragging one foot as if it were useless. Uaman entered a tiny doorway in the wall and climbed a stone-flagged stairway which rose to another level which, Eadulf judged, was at the height of the windows he had seen. The stairway gave on to a walkway that was, indeed, on a level with the windows. Eadulf suddenly realised that there were several dark-clad warriors lurking in the shadows by the windows, obviously keeping a watch. He glimpsed ugly and scarred faces, one man lacking an eye.

The leper began to lead him confidently round the walkway, following the great walls.

‘Do not bother to count the windows, Brother Saxon. There are twenty-seven, that I might look out on the star clusters from which knowledge and power are gained.’

Eadulf frowned. He recalled that this was some pagan doctrine and wasn’t sure what it implied.

‘Are you not of the Faith?’ he queried.

The leper chuckled. ‘Is there only one Faith then, my friend? Faith in the singular means that we must disbelieve all other faiths.’

‘Faith is Truth,’ countered Eadulf.

‘Ah, when reality and hope are dead, then Faith is born. Believe in all things, Brother Saxon, and you will not be disappointed.’

Uaman halted before a door and opened it, beckoning Eadulf to follow him through a corridor into an inner chamber. It was a well-appointed apartment, the walls lined with polished red yew and hung with tapestries of sumptuous colours. The leper pointed to a couch.

‘Be seated, Brother Saxon, and tell me the purpose of your coming hither. What is this quest of which you speak?’

Uaman seated himself across the room by the open hearth in which logs glowed hotly. He kept his cowl on and Eadulf could not discern his features. All he was aware of was the dead white flesh of the single claw-like hand that remained uncovered.

‘I have come in search of my child, Uaman. I am here in search of Alchú.’

‘Why do you think I can help in that matter?’

Eadulf leant forward. ‘The baby was left at Cashel in the charge of a nurse named Sárait. She was murdered. She, or some other, had left the baby by itself and a wandering herbalist and his wife found the child and thought it was abandoned. They took it and brought it with them to this country where you fell in with them. And you paid them money for it. I accept that you could not know the identity of the child and your desire was simply to help it. Where is Alchú? I will recompense you for what you paid the herbalist but I must take the infant back to Cashel.’

The leper’s shoulders moved. At first Eadulf thought the man was having a fit, but then a high-pitched sound came from beneath the cowl. He realised that Uaman was laughing again.

‘So far as you are concerned, Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham, the baby is dead,’ Uaman finally said in a flat tone. ‘Dead to you and your Eóghanacht whore.’

Eadulf made to rise from his seat but became aware of sharp, cold steel at his neck. One of Uaman’s guards must have entered unseen behind him and now stood with knife or sword at his throat.

‘What does this mean?’ he asked through clenched teeth. He realised that the question was a silly one for now his suspicions were tumbling into certainties. Deep within him he knew that he had been taking a naive approach to Uaman the Leper.

‘It means that the fates have been kind to me, Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham. In the last two years you and your Eóghanacht whore have gained quite a reputation in the five kingdoms. It was a bad day when you were taken from that Gaulish ship and made to work in the mines of Beara as our prisoner, before our intended rising against Colgú.’

Eadulf cursed himself for a fool. So Uaman had known about even that.

‘Have we met before?’ he asked.

‘You knew Torean of the Uí Fidgente.’

‘He tried to kill me but he was slain by Adnár, the local chieftain, who was loyal to Cashel.’

‘Torean was my brother,’ Uaman replied icily.

Eadulf blinked rapidly. He should have worked that out before. Torean was also a son of Eoganán.

‘Exactly,’ Uaman said as he watched the realisation dawn in the other’s eyes. ‘A son of Eoganán who was slaughtered at Cnoc Áine by Colgú.’

Eadulf grimaced. ‘If truth is to be served, it was Eoganán, your father, who raised his clan in rebellion against Colgú and met the fate of one who unlawfully rebels. He who draws his sword against a prince might as well throw away the scabbard.’

‘A Saxon axiom?’ sneered Uaman.

‘How could you have known the baby with the herbalist and his wife was the child of Fidelma and me? Even I was not entirely sure they had taken him until I followed them to the abbey of Coimán.’

‘News travels swiftly in this land. The Uí Fidgente still have loyal followers. Minds that are obviously quicker than that of the great dálaigh , your wife. Someone close to Cashel told one of my messengers that the child was missing and likely to be in the possession of the itinerant herbalist and his wife.’

Eadulf look amazed. ‘A traitor? In Cashel?’

‘No, my Saxon friend, not a traitor but an Uí Fidgente patriot,’ Uaman said in satisfaction.

‘Where is my son?’ Eadulf demanded harshly.

‘You mean the son of the Eóghanacht whore who thwarted our plan to take power? Well, he will never grow up to become an Eóghanacht prince.’

Eadulf started forward but the sharp steel at his throat kept him in the chair.

‘You swine! You have killed him!’ he cried helplessly.

Again Uaman chuckled in his high-pitched tone.

‘Oh no, my poor friend. He is not killed. Far worse.’

Eadulf looked at him in bewilderment and the leper chuckled again.

‘He will live, be sure. But he will grow up never knowing his father and mother, or the bloodline to which he is heir. He will, if he lives so long, become a simple shepherd, herding his sheep on the mountains haunted by the daughter of Dáire Donn. And your son will bear a name that will symbolise my revenge against his people. That is his fate. Already he is being nursed by peasant folk who do not know his origin but think of him as my gift to fill the void in their pointless, childless lives.’

‘You decaying son of a…’ Eadulf snarled and this time the blade drew blood from his neck.

Uaman seemed even more amused.

‘Indeed, I am iobaid , one who decays and rots because of this evil sickness that has been laid on me. It was not always so. I was my father’s right hand, his adviser, while my brother Torean was his tanist, his heir apparent. Many blows were struck at Cnoc Aine. I fled the field after my father’s death and soon the sores began to show on my body. I realised then that the ancients had cursed me for my failure and that only cold vengeance would remove the curse.’

Eadulf gasped. ‘That’s nonsense!’

‘First, Cashel will suffer. I will make it suffer. The suffering has already begun.’

‘So you arranged the murder of Sárait?’

To Eadulf’s surprise Uaman shook his head.

‘That was purely fortuitous. I heard the news of her death and the disappearance of Fidelma’s child. But it was purely by chance that one who was sympathetic worked out that the herbalist and his wife had found the child. He sent me a message to that effect and I could not believe my luck. Nor could I believe their greed. They did not even question me when I offered money for the baby. Ah, human frailty. That is my faith, my Saxon friend. I believe in the frailty of human beings.’