Chapter 80: The Healer's Last Hope

The grey thread did not come off my hands.

I washed them twice in the basin by the window and it was still there, wound round my wrists and my fingers, thin and grey and cold. It did not hurt. It sat on my skin like a cobweb and it went up my arms and into my chest and it was tied to something at the bottom of me that moved when I breathed.

I did not have time to think about it.

Ronan's heart was going wrong. I put my hand on his chest and I could feel it, a hard fast beat and then a stumble and then a hard fast beat again, and there was nothing steady in it.

"Padraig," I said. "Where is Padraig?"

"Gone to the mill." Nessa was at the door with the blankets. "He has gone for the bags."

"How long?"

"Five minutes. He took Oisin's arm."

Five minutes was a long time.

I got Ronan's shirt open and put my hand flat on his chest and I said the old words, the ones my mother had taught me for a heart that will not settle. I said them slowly and I put the beat of them into my hand and I tried to make his heart keep time with mine.

It worked for a little while.

Then it stopped working.

"Fiadh," Ronan said. His voice was a scrape. "It is all right."

"It is not all right."

"It is all right. The bond is out. That is what we came here for." His hand came up and found my wrist. "If I go now I go with the bond out and a true mark on my chest and a pack that stood up in a Council chamber for me. That is more than I had in April."

"You are not going anywhere." I put my hand on his face. "You promised me you would stand up in that chamber and you did and now you are going to lie in this bed and let me work and you are not going to talk about going anywhere."

He laughed, and it turned into a cough, and the cough went on too long.

Padraig came in with the bags.

He came in and put them down on the table and opened them and took out the tins and the small brown bottle and the honey and the clean linen and set them out in the order I like them.

"Right," he said. "What do you need?"

"Willow bark and valerian and the honey and the small brown bottle. And the thing in the green tin."

"The green tin is for a fever."

"He has not got a fever. He has a heart that will not keep time and a chest full of a false bond that came out of him two hours ago and a body that has been dying since April." I looked at him. "The green tin is for shock. My mother used it for shock."

Padraig looked at me.

"Your mother used it for shock," he said. "You have not used it since she died."

"I know. I have been afraid of it. It is a strong thing and I have never had a wolf I could not save with the other tins." I held out my hand. "Give it to me."

He gave it to me.

I made the draught with the green tin and the honey and a little of the brown bottle and I got Ronan sat up and I held the cup to his mouth and made him drink all of it.

Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my hand on his chest and waited.

It took a long time.

The fire burned down and Nessa put more peat on it. Padraig sat in the chair by the window with his stick across his knees and did not sleep. Oisin was in the corridor with his knife and Maeve came up at some point in the night and stood in the doorway and looked at us and went away again.

Around two in the morning the heart settled.

I felt it happen. The hard fast beat slowed and the stumble went out of it and it came into a rhythm, and I sat on the edge of the bed with my hand on his chest and cried for about a minute and then stopped.

"He is sleeping," Padraig said.

"He is sleeping."

"His heart is steady."

"It is steady." I wiped my face on my sleeve. "For now. It will not stay steady on its own. The bond took something out of him that he is not going to get back by sleeping."

Padraig was quiet for a moment.

"Healer," he said. "There is a thing I have to tell you and I have been putting it off since the mill."

I looked up.

"What is it?"

He got up out of his chair and came and sat down on the other side of the bed.

"Your mother," he said. "I have told you what I did and I have told you why I did it. But I have not told you the whole of it." He looked at his old hands. "There was a third thing. When she came to my cottage with you in her arms she did not only ask me to put the wolf to sleep. She asked me to write a letter."

"What letter?"

"A letter to the Council. She dictated it and I wrote it and she signed it and I sent it." He looked up. "It said that the child of Siobhan had died of the fever in the night and was buried in the glen. It said that the founder's blood was ended and that the Council could close the file."

The fire cracked.

"You told the Council I was dead," I said.

"I told the Council you were dead. And it worked. The file was closed and the matter was held and for twenty two years the Council did not look for you." Padraig wiped his mouth. "And then in the spring a debt appeared in Galway and a contract was written and a healer with golden hair was sent to a dying Alpha's house, and somebody in that Council opened the file again."

I sat on the edge of the bed with my hand on Ronan's chest.

"Somebody knew," I said. "Somebody knew I was alive and knew where I was and wrote a contract and sent me to the Blackthorn coast on purpose."

"Somebody knew."

"Who?"

Padraig looked at me.

"There is only one wolf in that Council who was there twenty two years ago and who is still there now," he said. "And he is sitting in a chair at the bottom of those stairs."

The door of the room opened and Ilsa came in.

She was old and she was tired and she had a shawl round her shoulders and a lamp in her hand.

"Healer," she said. "There is a thing you should know before the morning. The elder Soren has left the Council house. He went out through the back door an hour ago with a bag and a driver and he did not tell anyone where he was going."