And as for helping her mother prepare for the journey the four of them were to make as Niall had asked, Fiona had ignored that task, as she had so many others.
Yet the cost would be high if someone did notspeak to the bewildered woman soon. Their flight from Daire was still inevitable despite Niall's efforts toward his family. Necessity could drive them from the castle at any moment What would happen to Aniera once the poor woman discovered that she was losing the home her husband had loved?
Caitlin winced, imagining the gentle woman's confusion and grief with a vividness that tore at her. For the time spent with Aniera gathering rushes and flowers had made Caitlin understand that leaving this place would break what little had remained whole in Niall's mother.
Color now blushed Aniera's once ashen cheeks. A twinkle glinted in her eye. Most wondrous of all, Caitlin could sense a reaching out in the woman, as if Aniera were trying to grope her way through the hazy barrier between the real world and her own to take her first stumbling steps across the void.
Yet part of Caitlin wanted to warn the woman to turn back into the mist that had protected her for so long. What would Aniera find when she awakened from her dreams? Her husband's betrayal and dishonorable death? Her rebellious daughter grown up wild and hardened and hating the brother who had deserted them both? Andworst of all, to any mother's heart, would she find the real Niall and finally realize what he had suffered?
Caitlin swiped a strand of hair from her sweat-damp forehead and scattered the last of the heather in the farthest corner, wondering if she was making things worse with her efforts to make the castle seem more like a home.
The door crashed in with a deafening bang, and Caitlin dropped her basket as Fiona came bolting into the castle, her cheeks flushed, her eyes over-bright.
"Caitlin, there is a man not far behind me!" she cried, breathless, as she slammed the door shut behind her. "You must not tell him I was gone last night."
Caitlin straightened and cast a nervous glance at the door. "I cannot tell him anything at all. Niall insisted I keep myself hidden away, lest someone tell Conn's men they have seen me."
A fist hammered so loudly at the portal it seemed the very stones trembled. "Open this door, you little thief!" a hoarse masculine voice roared. Caitlin glanced at Fiona, and a chill ran down her spine.
"Fiona, what have you done?"
The girl tossed red curls. "It is no one's affair but my own!"
The fist slammed on the door again. "Do not make me kick this in, girl! What the devil have you done with my cow?"
Caitlin could have shaken Fiona until her teeth chattered when the girl flashed her a weak smile.
"Fiona..." Caitlin breathed. "Tell me you did not steal—"
"Aye. And I would do it again in a heartbeat! You need not worry. I will be rid of this pest in an instant."
Pausing to scoop up a few sprigs of heather, Fiona stuck them strategically in her hair. She grabbed the empty basket then sauntered to the door. Heart pounding, Caitlin dodged into a shadowy corner, hiding behind the great mass of a wooden chest.
"Is that you making me deaf, Gormley?" Fiona demanded as she opened the heavy wood panel.
A coarse-looking man stood framed in the doorway, filthy and crude, with eyes as deep-set as the boar Caitlin had run afoul of. Bristly straw-colored hair crinkled all over his forehead. His eyebrows ran together in one thick line.
"Deaf? Girl, I will see you lose your hand forthievery. My cow! The one that bears only twin calves. It has disappeared!"
Caitlin's stomach lurched at the accusation, but Fiona merely slid the basket to the floor, wiping the back of her hand across her brow as if she had been slaving in the hall for an eternity. "I heard tales that the beast was fairy-cursed. Perhapsthe Tuatha de Danaanfinally decided to spirit the beast back to the Land of the Ever Young."
Gormley's face screwed up even tighter. "And did the fairies leave footprints in the muck just the size o' yours? And did me own wife not see you wandering about just before the animal disappeared?"
Caitlin shivered at the brutality in the man's face, the arrogance of someone larger and stronger confronting an unprotected woman.
"Do you think these rushes cut and scattered themselves, old man?" Fiona demanded, betraying not so much as a flicker of unease. "Your wife's eyes must be failing her. Of course, if I had to look at that sour face of yours every day, I might think the loss of sight was a blessing."
"Do not dare mock me, girl! There are plenty hereabouts who remember your father and what he did.
They would be happy to see such vile bloodlines ended forever."
Caitlin glimpsed the slightest tightening at the corner of Fiona's lips, prayed Gormley could not see it and realize what a raw place his words had struck.
"There may be those who hate my family," Fiona said with a toss of her red curls, "but you would have to prove me guilty of a crime, Gormley, and that you will never do."
Caitlin could see the girl's narrow shoulders square, and she wondered how many times in the past the child had faced down people more powerful and more ruthless than she was, armed with nothing but her wits.
Empathy and admiration formed a lump in Caitlin's throat as she imagined a succession of Fionas, from childhood to now, marching out to do battle, to preserve her mother and Castle Daire by whatever means came into her small hands.
