Daughter Of The Forest by Juliet Marillier Read Free Book Online Page B

Janis, Finbar had said, go to where Fat Janis has her iron pot on the stove. If they’ve been working at night, she’ll take them mulled ale first thing in the morning. Her special brew. They say it has some interesting side effects. She carries it over to them herself; and maybe gets favors in return. What sort of favors? I’d asked him. Never mind, said Finbar. Just make sure she doesn’t see you.
    There were a couple of things I was good at. One was potions and poisons, and another was being quiet and staying unseen when it suited me. It was no trouble adding the draft to the mulled ale; Janis turned her back for an instant, laughing at some wisecrack by the tallest man-at-arms as he crammed a last piece of sausage in his mouth and made for the door, buckling his sword belt as he went. I was finished and gone before she turned back, and she never saw me. Easy, I thought as I slipped toward the door. Must have been fifteen people there, and not one of them spotted me. I was nearly outside when something made me look back. Straight across the kitchen, meeting my startled eyes full on, was my brother Conor. He stood in the far corner of the room, half in shadow, a list of some sort in one hand and a quill poised in the other. His assistant, back turned, was packing stores into a saddlebag. I was frozen in shock: from where he stood, my brother must have seen everything. How could I not have noticed him before? Paralyzed between the instinct to bolt for cover and the anticipated call to account for myself, I hesitated on the threshold. And Conor dropped his gaze to his writing and continued his list as if I had been invisible. I was too relieved to worry about a possible explanation, and fled like a startled rabbit, trembling with nerves. Finbar was nowhere to be seen. I made for the safest bolthole I could think of, the ancient stable building where my youngest brother, Padriac, kept his menagerie of waifs and strays. There, I found a warm corner among the well-seasoned straw, and the elderly donkey who had prior claim shifted grudgingly, making room for me against her broad back. Hungry, cold, confused, and exhausted, I found escape, for the time being, in sleep.

Chapter Two
    Our story cannot be told without some mention of Father Brien. I said he was a hermit, and that he would exchange a little learning for a loaf or a bag of apples. That was true; but there was a lot more to Father Brien than met the eye. It was said he’d once been a fighting man, and had more than a few Viking skulls to his credit; it was said that he’d come from over the water, all the way from Armorica, to put his skills with pen and ink to work in the Christian house of prayer at Kells; but he’d been living alone a long time, and he was old, fifty at least, a small, spare, gray-haired man whose face had the calm acceptance of one whose spirit has remained whole through a lifetime of trials.
    A trip to Father Brien’s was an adventure in itself. He lived up on the hillside south of the lake, and we took our time getting there, because that was part of the fun. There was the bit where you crossed the stream on a rope, swinging wildly between the great oaks. Cormack fell in once; fortunately, it was summer. There was the part where you had to scramble up a rock chimney, which took its toll on knees and elbows, not to speak of the holes it made in your clothing. There were elaborate games of hide-and-seek. In fact, you could get there in half the time on a cart track, but our way was better. Sometimes Father Brien was from home, his hearth cold, his floor swept bare and clean. According to Finbar, who somehow knew these things, the holy father would climb right to the top of Ogma’s Peak, a fair way for an old man, and stand there still as a stone, looking out eastward to the sea and beyond it, toward the land of the Britons; or away to the islands. You could not see the islands from this vantage point; but ask any man or woman where they