Daughter of the Forest

His words were strange; his tone chilled me. I knew he spoke the truth.

‘I will hear no more of this!’ thundered Father, rising to his feet. ‘You speak like a fool, of matters you cannot comprehend. I shudder to think a son of mine could be so ill-informed, and so presumptuous. Liam!’

‘Yes, Father?’

‘I want this brother of yours equipped to ride with us when next we travel north. See to it. He expresses a wish to understand the enemy. Perhaps he will do so when he witnesses the shedding of blood at first hand.’

‘Yes, Father.’ Liam’s expression and tone were well-schooled to neutrality. His glance at Finbar, though, was sympathetic. He simply made sure Father wasn’t looking.

‘And now, where is my daughter?’

Stepping forward reluctantly, I passed Finbar and brushed his hand with mine. His eyes were fierce in a face bleached of colour. I stood before Father, torn with feelings I hardly understood. Wasn’t a father meant to love his children? Didn’t he know how much courage it had taken, for Finbar to speak out this way? Finbar saw things in a way the rest of us never could. Father should have known that, for people said our mother had possessed the same gift. If he’d bothered to take the time, he would have known. Finbar could see ahead, and offer warnings that were ignored at your own peril. It was a rare skill, dangerous and burdensome. Some called it the Sight.

‘Come forward, Sorcha.’

I was angry with Father. And yet, I wanted him to recognise me. I wanted his praise. Despite everything, I could not shut off the wish deep inside me. My brothers loved me. Why couldn’t Father? That was what I was thinking as I looked up at him. From his viewpoint I must have been a pathetic little figure, skinny and untidy, my curls falling over my eyes in disarray.

‘Where are your shoes, child?’ asked Father wearily. He was getting restless.

‘I need no shoes, Father,’ I said, hardly thinking. ‘My feet are tough, look,’ and I raised one narrow, grubby foot to show him. ‘No need for some creature to die so I can be shod.’ This argument had been used on my brothers till they tired of it and let me run barefoot if it suited me.

‘Which servant has charge of this child?’ snapped Father testily. ‘She is no longer of an age to be let loose like some – some tinker’s urchin. How old are you, Sorcha – nine, ten?’

How could he not know? Didn’t my birth coincide with his loss of all he held most dear in the world? For my mother had died on midwinter day, when I was not yet a day old, and folk said it was lucky for me Fat Janis, our kitchen woman, had a babe at the breast and milk enough for two, or I’d likely have died as well. It was a measure of Father’s success in closing off that former life, perhaps, that he no longer counted every lonely night, every empty day, since she died.

‘I’ll be thirteen on midwinter eve, Father,’ I said, standing up as tall as I could. Perhaps if he thought me grown-up enough, he would start to talk to me properly, the way he did to Liam and Diarmid. Or to look at me with that hint of a smile he sometimes turned on Padriac, who was closest to me in age. For an instant, his dark, deepset eyes met mine, and I stared back with a wide green gaze that, had I but known it, was the image of my mother’s.

‘Enough,’ he said abruptly, and his tone was dismissive. ‘Get these children out of here, there’s work to be done.’

Turning his back on us, he was quickly engrossed in some great map they were rolling out on the oak table. Only Liam and Diarmid could expect to stay; they were men now, and privy to my father’s strategies. For the rest of us, it was over. I stepped back out of the light.

Why do I remember this so well? Perhaps his displeasure with what we were becoming made Father take the choice he did, and so bring about a series of events more terrible than any of us could have imagined. Certainly, he used our wellbeing as one of his excuses for bringing her to Sevenwaters. That there was no logic in this was beside the point – he must have known in his heart that Finbar and I were made of strong stuff, already shaped in mind and spirit, if not quite grown, and that expecting us to bend to another will was like trying to alter the course of the tide, or to stop the forest from growing. But he was influenced by forces he was unable to understand. My mother would have recognised them. I often wondered, later, how much she knew of our future. The Sight does not always show what a person wants to see, but I think she must have known, as she bade us farewell, what a strange and crooked path her children’s feet would follow.

As soon as Father dismissed us from the hall, Finbar was gone, a shadow disappearing up the stone steps to the tower. As I turned to follow, Liam winked at me. Fledgling warrior he might be, but he was my brother. And I got a grin from Diarmid, but he wiped his face clean of all expressions but respect as he turned back towards Father.

Padriac would be away off outdoors; he had an injured owl in the stables that he was nursing back to health. It was amazing, he said, how much this task had taught him about the principles of flight. Conor was working with my father’s scribe, helping with some calculations; we wouldn’t be seeing much of him for a while. Cormack would be off to practise with the sword or the staff. I was alone when I padded up the stone steps on my bare feet and into the tower room. From here you could climb up further, onto a stretch of slate roof with a low battlement around it, probably not sufficient to arrest a good fall, but that never stopped us from going up there. It was a place for stories, for secrets; for being alone together in silence.

He was, as I’d expected, sitting on the most precarious slope of the roof, knees drawn up, arms around them, his expression unreadable as he gazed out over the stone-walled pastures, the barns and byres and cottages, to the smoke grey and soft green and misty blue of the forest. Not so far away the waters of the lake glinted silver. The breeze was quite chill, catching at my skirts as I came up the slates and settled myself down next to him. Finbar was utterly still. I did not need to look at him to read his mood, for I was tuned to this brother’s mind like the bow to the string.

We were quiet for a long time, as the wind tangled our hair, and a flock of gulls passed overhead, calling amongst themselves. Voices drifted up from time to time, and metal clashed on metal: Father’s men at combat in the yard, and Cormack was amongst them. Father would be pleased with him.

Slowly Finbar came back from the far reaches of the mind. His long fingers moved to wind themselves around a strand of his hair.

‘What do you know of the lands beyond the water, Sorcha?’ he asked quite calmly.

‘Not much,’ I said, puzzled. ‘Liam says the maps don’t show everything; there are places even he knows little about. Father says the Britons are to be feared.’

‘He fears what he does not understand,’ said Finbar. ‘What about Father Brien and his kind? They came out of the east, by sea, and showed great courage in doing so. In time they were accepted here, and gave us much. Father does not seek to know his foes, or to make sense of what they want. He sees only the threat, the insult, and so he spends his whole life pursuing them, killing and maiming without question. And for what?’

I thought about this for a while.

‘But you don’t know them either,’ I ventured, logically enough. ‘And it’s not just Father that thinks they’re a danger. Liam said if the campaigns didn’t go right up to the north, and to the very shore of the eastern sea, we’d be overrun one day and lose everything we have. Maybe not just the Islands, but Sevenwaters as well. Then the old ways would be gone forever. That’s what he says.’

‘In a way that’s true,’ said Finbar, surprising me. ‘But there are two sides to every fight. It starts from something small, a chance remark, a gesture made lightly. It grows from there. Both sides can be unjust. Both can be cruel.’

‘How do you know?’

Finbar did not reply. His mind was closely shuttered from mine; not for now the meeting of thoughts, the silent exchange of images that passed so often between us, far easier than speech. I thought for a while, but I could think of nothing to say. Finbar chewed the end of his hair, which he wore tied at the nape of the neck, and long. His dark curls, like mine, had a will of their own.

‘I think our mother left us something,’ he said eventually. ‘She left a small part of herself in each of us. It’s just as well for them, for Liam and Diarmid, that they have that. It stops them from growing like him.’

I knew what he meant, without fully understanding his words.

‘Liam’s a leader,’ Finbar went on, ‘like Father, but not quite like. Liam has balance. He knows how to weigh up a problem evenly. Men would die for him. One day they probably will. Diarmid’s different. People would follow him to the ends of the earth, just for the fun of it.’

I thought about this; pictured Liam standing up for me against Father, Diarmid teaching me how to catch frogs, and to let them go.

‘Cormack’s a warrior,’ I ventured. ‘But generous. Kind.’ There was the dog, after all. One of the wolfhounds had had a misalliance, and given birth to cross-bred pups; Father would have had them all drowned, but Cormack rescued one and kept her, a skinny brindled thing he called Linn. His kindness was rewarded by the deep, unquestioning devotion only a faithful dog can give. ‘And then there’s Padriac.’

Finbar leaned back against the slates and closed his eyes.

‘Padriac will go far,’ he said. ‘He’ll go farther than any of us.’

‘Conor’s different,’ I observed, but I was unable to put that difference into words. There was something elusive about it.

‘Conor’s a scholar,’ said Finbar. ‘We all love stories, but he treasures learning. Mother had some wonderful old tales, and riddles, and strange notions that she’d laugh over, so you never knew if she was serious or not. Conor got his love of ideas from her. Conor is – he is himself.’

‘How can you remember all this?’ I said, not sure if he was making it up for my benefit. ‘You were only three years old when she died. A baby.’

‘I remember,’ said Finbar, and turned his head away. I wanted him to go on, for I was fascinated by talk of our mother, whom I had never known. But he had fallen silent again. It was getting late in the day; long tree shadows stretched their points across the grass far below us.

The silence drew out again, so long I thought he might be asleep. I wriggled my toes; it was getting cold. Maybe I did need shoes.

‘What about you, Finbar?’ I hardly needed to ask. He was different. He was different from all of us. ‘What did she give you?’

He turned and smiled at me, the curve of his wide mouth transforming his face completely.

‘Faith in myself,’ he said simply. ‘To do what’s right, and not falter, no matter how hard it gets.’

‘It was hard enough today,’ I said, thinking of Father’s cold eyes, and the way they’d made Finbar look.

It will be much harder in time. I could not tell if this thought came from my own mind, or my brother’s. It sent a chill up my spine.

Then he said aloud, ‘I want you to remember, Sorcha. Remember that I’ll always be there for you, no matter what happens. It’s important. Now come on, it’s time we went back down.’

When I remember the years of our growing up, the most important thing is the tree. We went there often, the seven of us, southward through the forest above the lake shore. When I was a baby, Liam or Diarmid would carry me on his back; once I could walk, two brothers would take my hands and hurry me along, sometimes swinging me between them with a one, two, three, as the others ran on ahead towards the lake. When we came closer, we all became quiet. The bank where the birch tree grew was a place of deep magic, and our voices were hushed as we gathered on the sward around it.

We all accepted that this land was a gate to that other world, the realm of spirits and dreams and the Fair Folk, without any question. The place we grew up in was so full of magic that it was almost a part of everyday life – not to say you’d meet one of them every time you went out to pick berries, or draw water from your well, but everyone we knew had a friend of a friend who’d strayed too far into the forest, and disappeared; or ventured inside a ring of mushrooms, and gone away for a while, and come back subtly changed. Strange things could happen in those places. Gone for maybe fifty years you could be, and come back still a young girl; or away for no more than an instant by mortal reckoning, and return wrinkled and bent with age. These tales fascinated us, but failed to make us careful. If it was going to happen to you, it would happen, whether you liked it or not.

The birch tree, though, was a different matter. It held her spirit, our mother’s, having been planted by the boys on the day of her death, at her own request. Once she had told them what to do, Liam and Diarmid, six and five years old, took their spades down to the place she had described, dug out the soft turf and planted the seed there on the flat grassy bank above the lake. With small, grubby hands the younger ones helped level the soil and carried water. Later, when they were allowed to take me out of the house, we all went there together. That was the first time for me; and after that, twice a year at midsummer and midwinter we’d gather there.

Grazing animals might have taken this little tree, or the cold autumn winds snapped its slender stem, but it was charmed; and within a few years it began to shoot up, graceful both in its bare winter austerity and in its silvery, rustling summer beauty. I can see the place now, clear in my mind, and the seven of us seated cross-legged on the turf around the birch tree, not touching, but as surely linked as if our hands were tightly clasped. We were older then, but children still. I would have been five, perhaps, Finbar eight. Liam had waited until we were big enough to understand, before telling us this story.

… now there was something frightening about the room. It smelled different, strange. Our new little sister had been taken away, and there was blood, and people with frightened faces running in and out. Mother’s face was so pale as she lay there with her dark hair spread around her. But she gave us the seed, and she said to us, to Diarmid and me, ‘I want you to take this, and plant it by the lake, and in the moment of my passing the seed will start to grow with new life. And then, my sons, I will always be there with you, and when you are in that place you will know that you are part of the one great magic that binds us all together. Our strength comes from that magic, from the earth and the sky, from the fire and the water. Fly high, swim deep, give back to the earth what she gives you …’

She grew tired, she was losing her life blood, but she had a smile for the two of us and we tried to smile back through our tears, hardly understanding what she told us, but knowing it was important. ‘Diarmid,’ she said, ‘look after your little brothers. Share your laughter with them.’ Her voice grew fainter. ‘Liam, son. I fear it will be hard for you, for a while. You’ll be their leader, and their guide, and you are young to carry such a burden.’

‘I can do it,’ I said, choking back my tears. People were moving about the room, a physician muttering to himself and shaking his head, women taking away the bloody cloths and bringing fresh ones, and now somebody tried to make us leave. But Mother said no, not yet, and she made them all go out, just for a little. Then she gathered us around her bed, to say goodbye. Father was outside. He kept his grief to himself, even then.

So she spoke softly to each of us, her voice growing quieter all the while. The twins were on either side of her, leaning in, each the mirror image of the other, eyes grey as the winter sky, hair deep brown and glossy as a ripe chestnut.

‘Conor, dear heart,’ she said. ‘Do you remember the verse about the deer, and the eagle?’ Conor nodded, his small features very serious. ‘Tell me then,’ she whispered.

‘My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest,’ said Conor, frowning with concentration. ‘My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread on eagle’s wings, and fly forth. This is the way of truth.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Remember, and teach it to your sister, when she is older. Can you do that?’

Another solemn nod.

‘It’s not fair!’ Cormack burst out, angry tears overwhelming him. He put his arms around her neck and held on tight. ‘You can’t die! I don’t want you to die!’

She stroked his hair, and soothed him with gentle words, and Conor moved around to take his twin’s hand in his own, and Cormack grew quiet. Then Diarmid held Padriac up so Mother’s arm could encircle the two of them for a moment. Finbar, standing next to her pillow, was so still you could have missed him entirely, watching silently as she let her sons go, one by one. She turned to him last of us boys, and she didn’t say anything this time, but motioned to him to take the carved piece of stone she wore around her neck, and to put it on his own. He wasn’t much more than an infant – the cord came down below his waist. He closed a small fist around the amulet. With him she had no need for words.

‘My daughter,’ she whispered at last. ‘Where’s my Sorcha?’ I went out and asked, and Fat Janis came in and put the newborn baby in our mother’s arms, by now almost too weak to curl around the little bundle of woollen wrappings. Finbar moved closer, his small hands helping to support the fragile burden. ‘My daughter will be strong,’ Mother said. ‘The magic is powerful in her, and so in all of you. Be true to yourselves, and to each other, my children.’ She lay back then, eyes closed, and we went softly out, and so we did not witness the moment of her passing. We put the seed in the ground and the tree took form within it and began to grow. She is gone, but the tree lives, and through this she gives us her strength, which is the strength of all living things.

My father had allies as well as enemies. The whole of the northern land was patchworked with túaths like his, some larger, most a great deal smaller, each held by its lord in an uneasy truce with a few neighbours. Far south at Tara dwelt the High King and his consort, but in the isolation of Sevenwaters we were not touched by their authority, nor they, it seemed, by our local feuds. Alliances were made at the council table, reinforced by marriages, broken frequently by disputes over cattle or borders. There were forays and campaigns enough, but not against our neighbours, who held my father in considerable respect. So there was a loose agreement between them to unite against Briton, Pict and Norseman alike, since all threatened our shores with their strange tongues and barbarian ways. But especially against the Britons, who had done the unthinkable and got away with it.

I could hardly be unaware that prisoners were sometimes taken, but they were closely housed and guarded with grim efficiency, and none of my brothers would talk about it. Not even Finbar. This was odd, for mostly he kept his mind open to me, and my own thoughts were never shut away from him. I knew his fears and his joys; I felt with him the sunlit spaces and the dark mystic depths of our forest, the heartbeat of the goddess in its dappled paths and spring freshness. But there was, even then, one part of himself that he kept hidden. Perhaps, even so early, he was trying to protect me. So, the prisoners were a mystery to me. Ours was a household of tall armoured figures, curt exchanges, hasty arrivals and departures. Even when my father was away, as for the best part of the year he was, he left a strong garrison behind, with his master at arms, Donal, in iron-fisted control.

That was one side of the household; the other, the more domestic, was secondary. What servants we had went about their tasks efficiently enough, and the folk of the settlement did their share, for there were stone walls to be maintained, and thatching to be done, and the work of mill and dairy. The herds must be driven to high ground in summer, to take advantage of what grazing there was, pig-boys must do their best to track their wayward charges in the woods, and the women had spinning and weaving to do. Our steward took sick with an ague, and died; and after that Conor took charge of the purse, and the accounts, while Father was away. Subtly he began to assume authority in the household; even at sixteen he had a shrewd sobriety that belied his years and appeared to inspire trust even in the hardbitten soldiers. It became plain to all that Conor was no mere scribe. In Father’s absence, small changes occurred unobtrusively: an orderly provision of dry turf to the cottagers in good time for winter, a stillroom set up for my use, with a woman to help me and take draughts and potions to the sick. When the little folk got to Madge Smallfoot’s husband, and he drowned himself in a long drop from rocks into the lake (which is how Smallfoot’s Leap got its name) it was Conor who made arrangements for Madge to come and work for us, rolling pastry and plucking chickens in our kitchens. These things were little enough, maybe, but a start.

Finbar did not go on the autumn campaign that year. Despite Father’s orders, it was Liam and Diarmid and, to his delight, young Cormack who departed abruptly one bright crisp morning. The call to arms was early, and unexpected. Unusually, we were entertaining guests: our nearest neighbour, Seamus Redbeard of Glencarnagh, and several of his household. Seamus was one of the trusted ones, my father’s closest ally. But even he had not entered the forest without an escort of my father’s men, who met him on his own border and saw him safe to the keep of Sevenwaters.

Seamus had brought his daughter, who was fifteen years old and had a mane of hair the same startling hue as her father’s. Her locks may have been fiery, but Eilis was a quiet girl, plump and rosy-cheeked; in fact, I found her rather boring compared with my brothers. Our guests had been with us for ten days or so, and because Eilis never wanted to climb trees, or swim in the lake, or even help me with brewing and preserving, I soon tired of her company and left her to her own devices. I was amazed that the boys took so much interest in her, for her conversation, when she spoke at all, ran mostly to the immediate and superficial. This could surely be of little interest to them. Yet in turn Liam, Diarmid and Cormack could be seen patiently escorting her around the keep and the gardens, bending with apparent fascination to catch every word she said, taking her hand to help her down steps I could have traversed with a few neatly executed jumps.

It was odd, and grew odder – though the strangest thing was that it took me so long to realise what was happening. After the first few days, she showed her allegiance, attaching herself firmly to Liam. He, whom I would have thought the busiest, always seemed to have time for Eilis. I detected something new in his face, now grown to the long-boned hardness of manhood. It was a warning to his brothers to keep off; and they heeded it. Eilis went walking in the woods with Liam, when she would not go with me. Eilis, most demure at table, could sense when Liam’s dark eyes were fixed on her from across the noisy hall; she looked up shyly, met his gaze for an instant, and blushed becomingly, before her long lashes shielded the blue eyes again. Still I was ignorant, until the night my father rapped the board for silence.

‘My friends! My good neighbours!’

There was a hush amongst the assembled guests; goblets paused half way to waiting lips, and I sensed an air of expectancy, as if everyone knew what Father was going to say, except me.

‘It is good, in these times of trouble, to make merry together, to drink and laugh and share the fruits of our pastures. Soon enough, at full moon, we must venture forward again, this time perhaps to make our shores safe once and for all.’

A few whistles and shouts of acclaim here, but they were clearly waiting for something more. ‘Meanwhile, you are welcome in my hall. It is a long time since such a feast was held here.’