Juliet Marillier - Heart's Blood

“I’ll take this door, my lady. Broc’s on the other, with the dog. Let me open up for you.” He pushed the library door and it swung open; the inner bolt had not been fastened. “Where do you want this light?”

“On the shelf, here in the corner. If Muirne comes into the garden, call me straightaway. She has the answer, I’m certain of it.”

“Muirne?” Cathaír sounded less dubious than Eichri. “She did come in here a lot, while you were gone. Dusted shelves. Moved things about. Looked at the books.”

My heart was as cold as the grave. I swept an armful of Irial’s notebooks from their shelf and set them on a nearby table. Fumbling in my haste, I began to turn pages, not taking time to read anything fully, for there was no time— stay alive, please, please —but scanning them for words that might jump out at me: sudden onset, breathing, speech, gray-blue, poison, antidote . . .

One book, two books, three . . . There were poisons here, but not the one I wanted. There was blue-gray, but that was only the description of a leaf. My hands were sweating with fear; my body was clammy. My heart was knocking about in my breast. My stomach had tied itself in knots. Irial’s spidery writing blurred before my eyes. Five books, seven, nine . . .

“Any good?” Cathaír had stepped inside the door.When I glanced up, pain lanced through my neck. I had barely moved for . . . how long? Too long.

“I can’t find it!” My voice cracked. “I can’t find anything! And it’s not just finding it, it’s making the cure and giving it to him, and I’m running out of time!” I seized another book, started to flick through the pages, knew I was close to losing the ability to understand the words before me.

“My lady,” Cathaír said, his tone diffident, “they’re saying you think Muirne did this. Gave Lord Anluan the poison.”

“That’s what I think, yes.That she can read.That she knows plants and their uses.That she gave it to him, and that she’s hiding so I can’t make her tell me the antidote before he dies.” Herb of grace; comfrey; wormwood. Meadowsweet, mugwort, thyme. This was useless, useless. I should go back and hold him, cradle him. At least I would be there to say goodbye.

“It’s just that . . .” Cathaír hesitated.

“Go on.”

“If it’s her, Muirne, you might want to look in the stillroom—you know, that little place next to the garden wall. That’s where she goes at night. Irial used to do his work in there, his brewing and concoction. Since he died, nobody’s gone in; nobody but her.And she loves those little books, the ones you have there.Those are the ones she looks at when she comes to the library. Holds them against her heart as if they were children.”

I was out in Irial’s garden before he had finished speaking.The door to the low stone outbuilding was bolted, as always.That would be no barrier to Muirne. She could probably walk through walls. “I need you to open this for me,” I said. “Quickly. And I need you to help me search. It’ll be a small book like those others.” Irial’s sad margin notes had been numbered up to five hundred and ninety-four. But he had outlived his wife by two years, and that was more than seven hundred days. Unless he had stopped writing them, unless he had lost the will to write at all, somewhere there was another journal.

Cathaír set his boot to the stillroom door. The timbers parted, the chain fell loose, the bolt came tumbling out of the stone wall. I peered into the dim interior.“Hold up the lantern,” I said, stepping inside.There was a wrong feeling about the place, something I could not quite identify. I had expected old, musty things, tools stored and forgotten or the crumbling remnants of Irial’s long-ago botanical work. But the stillroom was perfectly tidy. A millet broom stood in a corner; a duster hung on a wall. Candles were ranked on a shelf. There was a workbench with crucibles and jars, some holding objects I could not identify.A mortar and pestle stood beside a rack of knives and other implements that gleamed darkly in the lantern light. Bunches of herbs hung from the roof. At one end of the immaculate room was a pallet, and on it lay a small lidded box.

No books in sight. “She must have it here somewhere,” I muttered. “Look everywhere, Cathaír. It’s here, I know it. Here but hidden.” I grabbed the blanket that lay bunched at the end of the pallet, the only untidy note in the whole room. I shook it out; nothing there. I reached down the back of the bed. Nothing at all. I crouched to look underneath, while Cathaír worked his way along the shelves, picking things up and setting them down. A bundle of rags lay on the floor, under the bed; I drew them out. Familiar somehow, but what were they?

“Baby!” The little voice spoke from the doorway, and a moment later the ghost girl was crouched beside me, gathering up the pathetic heap, trying to hold the pieces together, pieces that were white, like Róise’s face, and violet, like the little veil I had made to cover the doll’s ruined hair, and brown, like the skirt that had been shredded and destroyed in the quiet of my bedchamber. Threads of woollen hair; tattered fragments of a smiling mouth embroidered with love.The child stood clutching her violated treasure to her breast. “All right now, baby,” she whispered.

Cathaír squatted down beside the girl, and while his eyes were as wild and shifting as always, there was something gentle in his manner. “Little sister,” he said, “have you come in here before?”

“Mm,” she murmured, but did not look at him. Her head was bent over her ruined baby.

“Is there a book here?” the young warrior asked.“Does the lady in the veil have a special book hidden away?”

A silence.

“Please,” I said, trying to keep my voice as calm and kindly as Cathaír’s, though a scream was welling up in me. “If you know where it is, please show us.”

A little hand rose; a finger pointed to the box on the bed. It was much too small to hold a book, even a tiny one, and my heart sank anew, but I lifted it and unfastened the catch. I opened the lid to see my mother’s embroidered kerchief, folded precisely. Under this was a strange assortment of little items: a strip of bright weaving in shades of violet and purple; a decorative buckle from a lady’s shoe; a striking cloak-fastener of silver and amber. She’s kept a trophy from each of us , I thought. From each of those she hated and thought to kill. From each who took a beloved chieftain from her.

“What’s that at the bottom?” Cathaír asked.

“It’s a key.” A thin thread of hope at last. “What does this open?”

The child shrank into herself, perhaps frightened by my desperation.

“Please,” I said more quietly.“Please help me. Lord Anluan is very sick; we have to save him. Do you know what the key is for?” I lifted the embroidered kerchief and spread it out on the bed. “You can put the baby in this and wrap her up safely.”

The child placed her pile of scraps in the middle of the kerchief and watched while I tied the corners together, two and two, making a neat bundle. “The mirror,” she murmured.

“Mirror?” There was an odd note in Cathaír’s voice, and when I looked up I saw him put a hand to his brow as if in pain. “What mirror?”

Abruptly, the girl began to cry. “My head hurts,” she whispered, picking up the kerchief bundle and holding it against her breast.

Not this; not now, oh please . . . “ Hold fast, Cathaír,” I said. “I need you. We must find this book.” From outside, in the garden, came sounds of folk cursing, wailing, shouting.

The young warrior staggered, thrust out a hand, gripped the bench and straightened. He pursed his lips and whistled a few desperate notes: Stand up and fight . . . men of the hill . . .