Chapter 47: Oisin's Boat

We went through the rogues at dawn.

There is no brave way to say it. We went down the glen in the grey light with Padraig in front and me under Ronan's arm and Elara behind, and the rogues were camped on the path where it crossed the second ford, and there were five of them and they were awake.

Padraig walked up to them with his hands out and said something I could not hear. There was a lot of talking and one of them pointed at Ronan and Padraig said something else and then there was a long silence.

Then the biggest of the five stepped aside and jerked his head at the path.

"Go on then," he said. "Before I change my mind."

We went.

I looked back once at the top of the next rise and the five of them were still standing at the ford watching us, and one of them raised a hand. I raised one back. I do not know why.

The north cove is a narrow cut in the cliffs with a shingle beach at the bottom of it and a track down that only a goat would choose. We got down it in the middle of the morning and there was a boat pulled up on the shingle with a man sitting on the gunwale mending a net.

Oisin stood up when he saw us.

"You look terrible," he said to me.

"I have been walking in the mountains all night."

"That is not what I mean." He looked past me at Ronan. "He is not going to make the crossing."

"He is going to make the crossing because I am going to be on the boat with him and I have kept him alive for a month." I got Ronan down the last of the track and sat him on the shingle. "How fast is this boat?"

"Fast enough if the wind holds." Oisin dropped the net. "Where are we going?"

"North along the coast to the next bay past the headland. There is a bothy there and the Council does not know it exists."

"There is a bothy there and half the Council's guard is on the water this morning. I saw them at first light, two boats out of the harbour with lanterns." Oisin looked at me. "They are hunting you, Fiadh. Not the pack. You."

"Then we had better not be on the water in daylight."

We got Ronan into the boat and I got in beside him and Padraig and Elara got in at the back, and Oisin pushed off and took the oars and rowed us out of the cove with the sail down and his back bent to it, and we went along the base of the cliffs with the sea slapping at the hull.

It took four hours.

Ronan slept for most of it with his head in my lap and his hand in mine, and I sat with my back against the thwart and watched the cliffs go by and did not think about anything at all. Padraig slept too. Elara sat at the back with her knees up and her eyes open and did not say a word to anyone.

Oisin rowed and watched the water and around the third hour he said, without turning round, "Your mother had a boat like this one."

I lifted my head.

"Did she?"

"She had a little thing with a green sail. She kept it at a cove up the north coast and she used to take it out when she needed to think." He pulled on the oars. "She took me out in it once. I was eighteen and I had just got into trouble with a pack up the coast and she hid me in that cove for a week and fed me on bread and fish and told me to stop being a fool."

"You never told me that."

"You never asked."

I sat with that for a while.

"Oisin," I said. "You said you came south when Eithne sent word that a healer with golden hair had come to the Blackthorn house. How did Eithne know to send for you?"

Oisin did not answer straight away.

"Your mother wrote to her," he said. "Before she died. She wrote to Eithne and told her that if a girl with golden hair and a pestle ever came to this coast, Eithne was to send for me."

"Why?"

"Because your mother was not a fool and she knew what she was leaving behind." He pulled on the oars. "Ask me the rest of it when we are on dry land, Fiadh. There is a thing I have been putting off telling you and I would rather do it with my feet on the shingle."

We came into the next bay in the late afternoon. It was a small bay with a bothy above it and a stream coming down and no boats and no lanterns and nothing on the water.

We got Ronan up to the bothy. It was in better repair than the last one and it had a hearth and a stack of peat and a bed of planks along one wall, and I got him onto it and got his shirt off and looked at the mark and did not say anything out loud.

It had reached his throat.

Oisin came in with an armful of peat.

"Fiadh," he said. "Come outside."

I went out. The sun was going down over the water and the whole bay was gold.

"Your mother paid me," Oisin said. "Twenty two years ago. She came to me in the north and she gave me a purse and she told me that if she ever stopped writing, I was to find her daughter and watch over her and not let the Council get her." He looked at me. "I took the purse. I have been watching over you for twenty two years, Fiadh, and you never once saw me, and I have followed you from Galway to the north and back again and I have kept the Council off your trail three times without you knowing it."

I stood there in the gold light with my hands at my sides.

"You took her money," I said.

"I took her money."

"And you let me think I was alone for twenty two years."

"You were never alone. That is the point." Oisin's voice was quiet. "You were never alone and you did not know it and that was the way your mother wanted it, and I have been carrying that purse and that promise for half my life and I am telling you now because you are standing in a bothy with a dying Alpha and a Council boat on the water and you deserve to know that there was somebody in this world looking out for you."

I did not say anything.

Behind us, in the bothy, Ronan started to cough, and the cough did not stop.

I turned and ran.