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.’
Eadulf sat glowering at him.
‘You are telling me that you had no hand in Sárait’s murder? That you did not intend this…’ he made an encompassing gesture with his hand, ‘from the start?’
The leper’s shoulders were moving again in the indication of his mirth.
‘You may dwell on all these things in the time that is left to you, Brother Eadulf of Seaxmund’s Ham,’ he said. ‘And that, alas, is not very long. You have until high tide and then your earthly span is ended.’
The white claw-like hand gestured in dismissal and Eadulf found powerful fingers gripping his arms. He was dragged from his seat and realised that there were two men behind him. It was useless to struggle. He was dragged through a side door and along the dark grey corridors, his mind whirling as he tried to understand what he had been told. Once more he found himself being half pushed, half dragged round the circular walkway in the outer wall of the rounded fortress. Then he was propelled through another straight corridor that seemed to jut out at an angle from the rest into a square structure that stood apart from the tower. He was being pushed down a circular flight of stone steps to where a flagstone was raised. A wooden ladder led into the dark aperture. One of the warriors pushed him towards it.
‘Get down there, Saxon,’ he said, indicating the aperture with his sword.
A smell of sea and dankness rose up. It reminded Eadulf of the odour of sea caves.
‘You might as well kill me here,’ he told them defiantly. ‘I can see nothing below that ladder, so if you want me to go into some subterranean cave full of water I should tell you that I prefer the sword to drowning.’
The guard laughed uproariously.
‘Didn’t Uaman tell you that you had until the high tide? He wants you to dwell on your fate for a while. So we must not kill you yet, my friend.’
His companion grinned eagerly.
‘I’ll tell you what… we’ll give you this oil lamp. The light should last you until the high tide. Don’t worry. See how solicitous we are about your needs?’ He shoved a lighted oil lamp at Eadulf.
‘Now get down the ladder or we might reconsider,’ snapped the guard with the drawn sword.
Eadulf hesitated only a moment. At least he had light and he had freedom of movement. While he had those, he had hope. The alternative was dying from a sword wound at once.
He turned and began to climb down the ladder.
As he descended he found that he was moving into a chamber whose sandy floor was four metres from the stone aperture in the ceiling above. It was square in shape, some two metres by two. It was chill and had an overpowering smell of sea about it. Yet he saw that the walls were not those of a cave but made of great blocks of stone even though the floor consisted of wet sand.