I had picked a single blossom from the small spirea bush and held it between my fingers. Pretending the cluster of tiny flowers was the boss of my magic ring, I walked solemnly round the garden.
‘Everything I point this ring at will grow especially well.’ I picked up a broken twig and continued on my way. ‘Everything I touch with this wand of willow will turn into whatever I want it to turn into and any one who’s ill whom I touch with my hands will immediately get better.’
I looked up at the magnificent spirea towering above me and laughed to myself. Would a child in the 1980s entertain such imaginings? Or was it only that their fantasy moved in different directions, into space or time travelling?
I had no answer, but all through the day as I tucked self-sown seedlings into spaces I made for them and stroked their leaves as I firmed in the soil around them – the way my father always did – I was acutely aware of what an imaginative child I must have been and how rudely my fantasy world was shattered when I lost my father’s sheltering presence.
For my mother had no time at all for imagination. Indeed, she was actively hostile to even the mildest flights of fancy. I could even remember her objecting to an essay I’d been given for homework: ‘A Day in the Life of a Penny.’ I hadn’t been much enamoured of it myself, but she had been quite virulent. Wasting time on such nonsense. That wasn’t what she’d sent us to the High School for.
So what on earth would she make of the experience I’d had yesterday, when this girl called Deara came and healed my migraine, and then by some means I still couldn’t even guess at, had begun to share her life with me through the images that came to me unbidden, asleep and awake?
As I worked my way round the garden, once more my mind filled with the images I’d had both sitting under the hawthorns and later while I slept. I found I could call them back so easily and as I went over them again and again I found I was asking questions of them, trying to fit together the fragments that had come to me. Who was this woman, Merdaine, for instance, of whom Deara seemed to be so fond? Clearly not her mother. So what had happened to her mother? And what about brothers and sisters? She seemed a solitary person and yet someone who could be very loving.
It was on my third afternoon in the garden that I started dropping things. I knocked the bloom off a plant I was tying carefully to a stake and was furious with myself. The more I tried to calm down, the more anxious and restless I became. Increasingly, I felt as if there was something terribly important I hadn’t done. Something awful would happen if I didn’t pay attention and do it right away.
I told myself to stop being silly. Things had been going well; the estate agent had come, spent two hours measuring and taking photographs and made a special note about the well-stocked garden. He’d even complimented me on how well the rockeries were looking. The house was immaculately tidy, the woodwork pristine and the only smell was a hint of lavender polish and the varied perfumes of jugs and vases of blossom and flowers.
In the end I put down my tools and walked straight across the lawn to the hawthorns. The moment I sat down on my stone under their shade, the agitation ceased. ‘It’s Deara,’ I said to myself. ‘She needs me. She’s in some kind of trouble and I must try to help her.’
Without giving any thought to what I was doing, I propped myself against the trunk of the largest hawthorn, shut my eyes and tried to bring her to mind.
Immediately, there she was, leaving the hut where I had first seen her with the old woman, Merdaine. She walked slowly uphill towards a much larger building near the top of the great mound. I could tell by the way she walked that she was uneasy, reluctant and fearful. At the same time it was clear to me she was determined to do whatever it was she had to do.
I leaned back and concentrated all my attention on the slim figure walking slowly away from me.
It was three days after Merdaine’s burial before the King held Council again. Although it was the custom to observe such a period of mourning on the death of a close relative, it was also Morrough’s custom to disregard any observance which was not to his liking. So although Merdaine had been mother’s sister to him, many were surprised that he made no attempt to go to the Hall of Council.
It was not only Morrough who acknowledged Merdaine’s passing. An unfamiliar hush lay over the whole encampment. Deara noticed it as she took up her usual tasks again, waiting as best she might to see what her future would be. There was turbulence, foreboding almost, which made her think of those days when the thunderclouds mass and the Gods vent their wrath upon human kind.
Yet on the surface there was no visible change in the pattern of daily life. The weather continued warm and fine, the cattle grew fat on the lush pastures and the cooking pots were full every day. Women span in the sunshine and ground barley out of doors, their shifts or tunics drawn high in their kirtles to benefit from the sun. But their chatter seemed less noisy, their glances less direct. Many of them feared Merdaine, for she had a sharp tongue and tolerated little foolishness; nevertheless, she was part of their life, stable and secure. Her going left a space which few of them had the slightest idea how to fill.
For Deara, the days passed with incredible slowness. From first light till sundown seemed an eternity of time. She found it hard to sleep in the empty hut and lay wide-eyed in the darkness, seeing again the days of her childhood, her meeting with Merdaine, and all the hours she had spent by her side learning the herblore, making infusions, grinding willow bark, blending spices, repeating and repeating all the recipes, mixtures, prescriptions and laws which Merdaine herself knew. Often her head had ached and the words tangled till she thought she would never understand anything. But it had come. Like the welcome to Nodons, the words had finally stood still. They were hers for ever. As were the parting words Merdaine had spoken to her. She had repeated them to herself as often as any poem or prayer.
The words would stay with her. She would have need of them and of all Merdaine’s wisdom, for on the third day after the burial fires she must go to the Hall of Council bearing Merdaine’s brooch to Morrough, the King.
Deara had never before entered the Hall of Council for it was not a place where women might go, unless, of course, they had a petition to make, or were party to a dispute. Today, as she joined the groups of people making their way between the King’s Hall and the storehouses, she felt full of dread. However much she had tried to master her feelings, she knew she was afraid. Lying awake in the short summer night, part of her wanted to run away, to slip out of the well-gate which was never guarded these days, and disappear into the Long Wood. Another part of her argued that it would be no use. There was nowhere to run to, no neighbouring encampment to shelter her. And besides, although she bore no slave mark, for Merdaine had refused to permit it, her situation would be obvious. A slave was a slave and the law tracts were quite specific as to how they were to be treated. No, there was no escape that way.
‘Cumail, where do you think you are going?’
Deara stopped short by the doorway of the hall and turned to face the man who had spoken. It was Conor. Only he would call her ‘slave’ instead of using the name the woman who had nursed her had given her, or even the commonly used word, ‘handmaiden’.
She looked him full in the face. ‘I go to petition the King.’
‘Oh ho, and by what right does a female cumail enter the Hall of Council?’
‘By the right of pledge and token given. I act as the Lady Merdaine instructed me.’
‘Pledge? Token?’
Conor’s face grew red and he spluttered in fury. These days everyone was challenging
