Peter Tremayne - The Spider's Web

Fidelma clenched her jaw for a moment.

‘Brother Eadulf will never stand in need of your blessing, Gormán of Cill Uird,’ Fidelma replied in a quiet voice. ‘He will not die yet.’

‘Are you God to decide such things?’ sneered the priest.

‘No.’ Fidelma shook her head. ‘But my will is as strong as Adam’s!’

Father Gormán looked as if he were about to argue further but then he turned, mouth compressed, and stormed back to his chapel.

Crón looked from the banging door of the chapel back to Fidelma in bemusement.

‘Let me know if there is anything I can do …’ she said, before she turned into the hall of assembly.

Fidelma began to return to the guests’ hostel.

‘Sister! Sister!’

Fidelma saw the little servant girl, Grella, running towards her. She could see from the girl’s face that something was amiss and her heart skipped a beat.

‘Is it Brother Eadulf?’

‘Come quickly,’ cried the girl but Fidelma had already increased her pace in the direction of the guests’ hostel.

‘I had only just gone in, as you instructed me to,’ gasped the girl, trying to keep up with her. She did not finish for Fidelma was already entering the hostel. Grella followed on her heels.

Eadulf was lying in his cubicle, sprawled across his palliasse on his back. He seemed to be shivering, the body twitching but his eyes were closed and beads of perspiration stood out on his face.

Fidelma dropped to her knees and reached for Eadulf’s hand. It was hot and sweaty. She felt for his pulse; it throbbed with a jerky motion.

‘How long has he been like this?’ she demanded of Grella, who hovered behind her.

‘I came in here only a moment ago, as you requested, and found him so,’ the girl repeated.

‘Get Gadra the Hermit quickly!’ When the girl hesitated she snapped: ‘At the house of Teafa. Quickly now!’

She turned back to Eadulf. It was clear that he had entered afever and was no longer conscious of what was going on around him.

She stood up and hurried to the main room where a pitcher of water stood on the stable. Seizing this and a piece of cloth used for drying the hands after washing, she dampened it and returned to Eadulf and started to wipe the sweat from his flushed face.

A moment later, the old man entered followed by Grella. He gently drew Fidelma to one side. He felt Eadulf’s forehead and the pulse and stood back.

‘There is little we can do now. He has succumbed to a fever which he must either pass through or depart with.’

Fidelma found her hands clenching spasmodically.

‘Is there nothing else we can do?’

‘The poison must have its way. It is to be hoped that he cleansed himself of as much of it as might be life threatening and this is but the result of a small residue which will trouble him for a few hours. The temperature of his body is rising. If it breaks, then we will win. If it does not …’

He shrugged eloquently.

‘When will be know?’

‘Not for a few hours yet. We can do nothing.’

Fidelma felt an unreasonable rage as she gazed at the yellowing sunken face of Eadulf. She realised how bleak her life would become if anything happened to him. She recalled how troubled she had been after she had left Eadulf in Rome to return to Ireland and the months of loneliness which followed. She had remembered how she had returned to Ireland with the curious, almost unfathomable emotion of loneliness and homesickness. It had taken a while to resolve those emotions.

For Fidelma it was hard to admit to an emotional attachment. She had fallen in love with a young warrior named Cian when she had been seventeen. He had been in the elite bodyguard of the High King at Tara. At the time she had been studying law under the great Brehon Morann. She was young and carefree andvery much in love. But Cian had eventually deserted her for another. His rejection of her had left her disillusioned with life. She felt bitter, although the years had tempered her attitude. But she had never forgotten her experience nor really recovered from it. Perhaps she had never allowed herself to do so.

Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham had been the only man of her own age in whose company she had felt really at ease and able to express herself. She had challenged him at first and those intellectual challenges became the basis of their good-natured, easy relationship for their debates over theology and cultural attitudes, contrasting their conflicting opinions and philosophies, would be a way of teasing each other. And while their arguments would rage, there was no enmity between them.

Fidelma had felt loneliness for a year and had scarcely been able to conceal her exhilaration when she had discovered that Brother Eadulf had been sent as an emissary from the newly appointed archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore, who was now the Holy Father’s representative to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. That Eadulf was now at the court of her brother, Colgú of Cashel, was as if Fate had ordained a path in her life.

Could Fate be so cruel as to take Eadulf away; away so finally and irrevocably?

‘There is nothing that you can do here, Fidelma,’ Gadra was repeating. ‘Let me look after the poor brother while you do your best to find who is responsible for this outrage. I will send word to you as soon as there is any change.’

Reluctantly, Fidelma looked down at the ailing features of her friend and nodded slowly. She tried to control the slight twitching at the corners of her mouth. Her face had hardened unnaturally.

‘Thank you, Gadra,’ she said. ‘Grella here will help you, won’t you, Grella?’

Grella was standing wringing her hands. ‘Oh, sister, shall I be punished for this?’

‘Why should you be punished?’ she asked absently.

‘It was I who brought the food to you and the brother,’ the girl reminded her.

Fidelma realised the anguish the young girl was going through and shook her head with a sad smile.

‘You will not be punished. But I must go to find Dignait and discover who is responsible for placing the poisonous fungi on the plates. Gadra here will require your help. Will you help him?’

‘I will,’ agreed the young girl, mournfully.

Fidelma cast one final glance at Eadulf’s shivering, unconscious form, and turned to leave the hostel. It was only when she had gone several yards that she realised, for the first time in her life, she was walking without a purpose. She paused, undecided what to do.

Fidelma dismounted outside the single-storey cabin which was built entirely of wood. She had left the rath with only a vague idea in her mind. Her mind was turning over the idea which had occurred to her with the mention of Crítán. It was a line from Virgil; from the Aeneid. Dux femina facti! She was not sure why she kept thinking of this line until she passed along the road to the valley of the Black Marsh and saw the small cabin in the bend of the river.

A woman stood outside the door, where she had apparently been tending plants in a small patch of garden. She watched Fidelma’s arrival with curiosity. She was a well-proportioned woman; a woman past her youthful years. She was a short, fleshy, blonde with pronounced cheekbones. Her taste in clothes was garish, their clash of colours denied their suitability.

Fidelma tied the reins of her horse to a hitching pole.

‘Good day to you, sister,’ greeted the woman. ‘You are welcome here but I should warn you — do you know what place this is?’

Fidelma smiled briefly.

‘I am told that it is the house of Clídna. Have I been misinformed?’

The fair-haired woman shook her head.

‘I am Clídna but this place is a meirdrech loc .’