give up the beads he had made for her when he still pined for her and his distant home. Even after you had to thrust his love-child in her face! Eggs – she threw them at him, all of them – and they were rotten too! I forget nothing!” said Fearn with a terrible matter-of-factness.
Grizzel had seized the broom. Niav had finished scrabbling around for her scattered clothes. “Get out, you bastard’s bastard. You leave now, not tomorrow!”
“Yes, perfect timing, into the setting sun!”
They harried him down the cluttered compound, tripping up on hay-rakes and buckets and panicked livestock, past the weaving-hut and the herb garden and stumbling through the clutch of hives. The last they saw of him, he was running, screaming, towards the river, followed by a cloud of bees.
Grizzel dusted off her palms and walked sedately back towards the well. She undid her jet necklace, held it for a moment catching the sunlight and then, pushing the well cover aside, she dropped it clattering down the shaft.
***
Aunty Grizzel sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. Niav suddenly remembered how tired she must be – she had been called out at crack of dawn on a blisteringly hot day.
“Was the birth all right in the end?”
“Yes, she should be fine – but she has lost a lot of blood.”
“And the baby?”
“Two boys!”
“Well, you thought it might be twins. Now you lie down. I will get you a nice camomile tea and then start the meal – at least I will know how many to cook for this time!”
At this, astonishingly, Aunty Grizzel burst into tears. Niav had never known her to cry real gulping tears, not in her whole life – she was more used to Grizzel comforting hers.
“I should not have done that,” said Aunty Grizzel shakily. “That was a beautiful thing and I should have given it to you long since – my stupid temper, why must I do these things!”
“Your necklace? Why on earth to me? Maybe it should have been buried with Fearn’s mum, and anyway, didn’t you help to make it?”
“I only helped Artin to string it and, we were making it for Orchil, Artin’s much-loved wife – he planned to take it to her when he sailed away, but of course that never happened. I have never had any right to it. It should have been yours because poor Orchil wanted you to have it. Don’t you have any memories of my going out the night she was dying? Artin came back to fetch me.
“When Artin came down to see us at the weaving-hut, it was to get medicine for her as much as the necklace, but most importantly she had wanted him to bring the pair of us back with him to the bothy.
“But the fool failed to handle it right. For all his magic, Artin can be bad at asking for favours that he really cares about – he ended up picking a quarrel with me. That is why the poor woman threw the eggs at him in desperation (and they were fine, by the way – Fearn remembered that wrong). She knew that she was dying. She was afraid Fearn would be put to work in the copper mines and she wanted him taken somewhere where that wouldn’t happen to a child, and he could be safe till he was old enough to travel round with Artin.”
“Couldn’t they take him to all those relatives up in the mountains Artin carved?”
“That is a very long journey – she didn’t think there was time, and she was right. Believe me Niav, Orchil was every bit as wonderful as Artin had always told me that she was, and she could not have been kinder. She said Artin trusted me, and neither of them mentioned my brother Diarma at all. Being asked by her to care for Fearn was an honour. She didn’t begrudge your existence in the least. She felt you could be the daughter she would never be able to have, and she wanted the necklace to go down to you.”
“Then why all the wretched secrecy?” said Niav in a tired voice.
Grizzel studied her for a moment. “Didn’t I explain clear enough just now? Your parents were respected as healers. My brother Diarma was a great man – your mother and I would not have had him shamed, even after death. I could not bear the thought of Lurgan’s gloating if he had known of my