" 'Her,' my lady said," Domhnull answered. "And 'not with her,' my lord answered back."
"How far did you ride?" asked Rhys of Beorc. "Myself, as far as the old wood, and then up the road and back; and I did not like the feel."
"Farther," said Beorc, and frowned for memory of the dark thick ets, the haunted silences. "It was not An Beag I feared. Not in this."
"So thought I," Domhnull murmured. "And so I think it was. They simply strayed."
"They are fey," said Rhys. "How should they not be? And I did not like the feel."
"Hist," said Beorc, "say no such thing, ap Dryw. Say no such thing of them."
"No," said Rhys, "but 'tis true—Mark you, Skaga's-son, this is true. And those two will find their way to it, to the Sidhe, being whose get they are—O Man, do not you bridle at me; I am their mother's cousin and their own, and friend, and his, no less than you. Fey father, fey offspring; and I didn't like the feel of it today, not so far as I rode."
"I feared them lost for good," Beorc said hollowly, the cup be tween his knees. "When the recall sounded, I feared the worst. There was a day I would not have—It was all a childish prank, then."
"Our lord was close about it," said Domhnull frowning. "And I don't think he feared An Beag either. He—"
"Hist!" Rhys straightened suddenly, his hand on his knife, and strode to the stairway. "Up here! You!"
A head appeared down below where a shadow had flitted, round the corner of the landing of the stairs, a balding pate and hangdog look and a general slouching of the whole man round the corner.
"Coille!" Domhnull muttered in disgust. "Who else?"
"Out," Rhys ordered, "—skulk."
Coille held out a pail. "Bringing water up, lord Rhys, only bring ing water, they told me to."
"Out!" Beorc shouted at him fit to wake echoes from the stairwell, and Coille fled, sloshing the steps as he went.
"Cursed gossip," Domhnull said.
"Bide here," said Rhys. "I'll put the fear in him."
"Stay," said Beorc. "Stay,"—for the southron was a fell man and wild. "Keep that knife of yours in sheath."
"Did I say I would mark him? Not I."
"No, but make much ado over his hearing and we'll not need Coille to gossip it. There's talk enough flying as it is."
"And will be," Rhys muttered. "Will be. That's the nature of you folk, to bandy everything about in market. You've no instinct for secrets, you valley-dwellers."
"There's nothing will make them love lord Ciaran less," said Domhnull. "Fey he may be, but tell them that in the steadings or gossip it in the barracks and they'll ask you fresher news." He laughed and settled the more easily, one foot on the windowledge. "Myself, I confess to have walked in the woods now and again. Wishful thinking, mine. I'd give a great deal for the sight of one of the fair folk; and if there's harm in that, why, Beorc, your own mother and mine would put out saucers of milk at evening. And you who were in the war—"
"You are too innocent," Beorc said.
"You never will speak of it," Domhnull said, frowning now. He seldom pounced on this, but did so with greatest concentration in this moment. "It's nature to tell tales, isn't it? Like Coille, chattering everything he hears, sparrow-like. It's nature that when wars have been people talk about them, and make songs of them—like the old songs. Even the Aescford has its song, with the King dying, and the Cearbhallain—But no one sings songs now. Those that fought there are getting old, and we that weren't there can't make them, and even the harper won't sing any—because no one who was there will talk."
"The harper was there," Beorc recalled shortly.
"But you won't say. The Sidhe was there. Wasn't it so? Everyone who was out there must have seen—and no one says. I was in the forest today. Across the river. I felt nothing ill."
'Then you are numb and deaf and blind," said Beorc, "cousin."
"Perhaps I am." Domhnull looked at Rhys and sighed after things unseen. "But you see things."
"My grandsire had the Sight," the southron said wryly, "but alas, you valley-dwellers called him mad."
"Do they talk about the war there?" asked Domhnull. "Or are they all like Beorc, gone dumb?"
"No whit more," said Rhys with a sober stare, "and I was at the keeping of our borders, so I saw nothing. But things of the fair folk fade and take strange shapes, and there is luck on this land. Why question? If we were all Coilles we would have no peace of chatter."
"You make less sense than usual," Domhnull said. "And maybe where the young ones hid has faded, quite, and all of it was moon beams. So they say the Sidhe rode inside Caer Wiell. Myself, I would only like to see one."
"Well, I have seen," said Beorc in a faint, difficult voice.
"What was it?" asked Domhnull.
"A light," Beorc said. "Like light." He shrugged and remembered his ale and drank it. "But that is why Caer Wiell sits so much to itself, young cousin, that others saw it too. And no one sings songs, because I for one wouldn't know how to make one; and maybe it's not a thing to gossip, because, well, there was nothing to liken it to, like sun, like moon, but not. It was more a feeling, was what it was. A man doesn't forget that. I know I won't. It wasn't the same today. It was darker-like. It wasn't good. —They're all right, are they? Did they seem—afraid?"
"They looked pert enough," said Rhys. "No, by the looks in their faces. There was no fear."
"I think you make too much of it," Domhnull said. "They strayed into the woods, is all; and maybe they did see something, but they hadn't any effect of it. I think you and this Sighted southron make too much of shadows."
"You see," said Beorc, "why no one who was on that field will speak of it? There is too much unbelief nowadays. You set out sau cers, aye, your mother does, each and every night. I know. But what I saw would take no such offering, no."
"What did you see?" asked Domhnull, not for the first time that he had brought Beorc this close. Beorc, not for the first time, shook his head and refused to say.
But there began to be a coming and going, late as it was, and Muirne rushing outside the walls by twilight, her arms laden with branches. (My lady will have fresh boughs, she said, making nothing of the fact that no guest was expected, nor had been since lord Dryw had called with his retinue a year and more ago.) And there was a stir in the kitchen, a coming and going of chatty pages who could no more keep secrets than they could walk on errands and not run. (For my lord's table, they said; and for those who searched, a fine good meal—which lifted hearts and expectations all through Caer Wiell, and set mouths to watering and stomachs to longing, for the smells went out from the kitchen of bread baked fresh, even at evening time, and there was honey called for and good butter, and cakes and no few of the best hams and sausages, and a side of venison that had served my lord's table went into roasts and pastries. And there were casks of ale and cider. Faces went blissful contemplating it.)
But amid all this Beorc took himself upstairs and Domhnull and Rhys with him, for Ciaran's word to them all was the same, that they should come up to speak to him in hall; and if there was little now in their minds but supper, and if they eyed the great table in hall with some longing, thinking of the greater tables set in the yard of the keep, they did not look that way with unseemly attention, but assem bled there with great sobriety, well-scrubbed and combed and in their best, before their lord and lady in the hall, with the children abed or at least nowhere to be seen.
But there was nothing but anxiousness on Ciaran's face.
"My friends," he said, "my dear friends—there will be a guest tonight and you must serve in hall. No others would I trust. Would you do me this service?"
"Aye," said Beorc, but he knit his brows in puzzlement, and from anticipation settled his mind at once to business, setting his hands within his belt. It was quite mad, of course, but strange things had happened within these walls. It was not his to ask, though his mind was racing, whether some messenger was expected from the King, to deserve such a plethora of lights and fresh boughs and such a feast as that prepared both below and here above; or whether there was to be any guest at all. This might be some odd figure of speech, or pretense, or something Ciaran had made up for some purpose, perhaps —perhaps, Beorc thought, that he would have his small household to table together to celebrate the children's safe return, and ask his trusted men to serve them in lieu of pages, which would be strange, but no more reasonable thing could he think.