Chapter 13

Nimue and I looked up. Sarah and Morgana were on their feet, and the door opened. It was Lief. I had only to look at his face to know. I remember the sound as a single cry was torn from deep within me and it echoed as my heart shattered and everything that I'd been holding together so desperately for so long flew apart into a million tiny pieces. I clung to my baby with my arms, holding on and clutched inwardly at shards that cut me and hurt as I grabbed, trying to hold on to some semblance of myself. I wasn't crying, but tears poured down my face and I shook. I looked down at my baby then up into Leif's tortured face. “Tell me,” I said, and if a sound could bleed the sound of my voice did, and Leif winced with the pain of it, but he nodded and then came to the side of my bed and knelt. He looked down at the baby in my arms. Rowan's child. I thought he might break then, but he didn't.

“We won,” he said, but the words came from some dark hollow place. “Your uncle is dead. His army is dead, surrendered or scattered. You're . . .” he blinked and swallowed, “safe.”

Leif knelt there silent and unmoving for a time before he started to speak again and then he told me everything. “Rowan . . .” Leif's voice cracked and he swallowed as he wiped tears with a gore crusted hand across his gore crusted cheek, then continued. “He ordered Liam and I not to tell you what he was going to do and we couldn't talk him out of it. No one else knew,” he balled his fist up in frustration and hit his leg with it. “The plan worked perfectly. Seamus' Army appeared exactly where Rowan said they would and Lugh had a large contingent of water fay waiting under the surface to cut Seamus' men down as we forced them into the sea. It all happened according to plan. Rowan knew that Seamus, being the narcissistic, self preserving bastard he was, would run as soon as he realized he'd been had, so Rowan was ready. He didn't go alone. He took Bonnie and Aledwen with him as well as those two mean Glaistig twins. He took soldiers who would fight dirty if they had to and who wouldn't be afraid to use every Fay trick they knew to take Seamus down. I watched them follow Seamus away . . . tracking him into the forest where they should have been able to . . .” Leif stopped again and I could see him working inwardly trying to hold himself together. He let out a sound that was half cry half snarl like a hurt angry lion. The sound made the baby in my arms stir for a moment but I shushed her and waited for Leif to continue. He breathed heavily for a moment then forced onward. “I watched all through the battle, I waited to see him striding out of the woods free and confident like he was supposed to,” Lief said the words angrily. “But he didn't. I followed him in as soon as the war was won. As soon as I could get away. I found Bonnie first, shot, bullet in her forehead, then the twins, bits of them anyway. I think Aledwen must have lasted a good while. She had nine arrows in her and about four bullet wounds. She must have got close because it was a dagger in her heart that killed her.” Leif was silent again.

“Leif, just tell me about Rowan,” I told him, not wanting to hear it but needing to.

“He shouldn'a done it! Everyone always said he was unbeatable but that wasn't quite true! He should of just let Seamus go but he's so bloody stubborn and he said he couldn't live knowing that he'd promised you that he'd never let your daughter be harmed. He said Seamus would just keep trying!” Leif yelled.

“Just tell me please Leif . . . I need to know,” I begged as tears flooded my eyes, my cheeks, my life.

Leif pressed his lips together, closed his eyes and nodded. “He was holding on by a thread when I found him. He was hurt badly Rhiannon. I asked him if I could take him to the healers but he said that he was too far gone, that he would only die faster if I moved him and that he wasn't quite ready to go.” Leif stopped again, breathing hard. “Rowan looked up at me and smiled. Looked around with his eyes and said, 'It's beautiful the way the sun shines through the leaves isn't it?' I didn't know what to say to him Rhiannon. He's my brother but I didn't know what to say to him.” Leif wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

Leif was suffering, tortured. I didn't know then, the words that had passed between Rowan and Leif ten months earlier, in the armoury at Fiannasmere. Those strange, almost prophetic words.

Leif continued in a sudden odd calm, “Rowan said then, he said, 'I did it. It's over. I killed him, and now I never have to do it again.' And then tears poured down his face all of a sudden and he started talking about you.” Leif looked at me, meeting my eyes for a brief moment and then looking down once more. “He said, he said that he was sorry. He cried. He said you made him feel like his heart was free. He wanted me to tell you, he was really insistent, I had to repeat the message, his words were, 'I was with you in the dream, I saw, I wish it could be forever.' He asked me over and over, 'Tell Rhiannon I love her. Tell Rhiannon I love her.' It was as if he had a million things to say to you and the thought of only being able to choose a few was tying his tongue. He said, 'Tell my daughter, tell Rhiannon to tell her that . . . I love her. Make sure she always knows that I love her.' Then he looked at me and said, 'Leif there's so much more but I haven't got time. I'm sorry about the things that went unsaid.' He took my hand. He squeezed it and then he was in too much pain to say more. He looked at me and whispered, 'I'm going now,' and . . . that was it. That was the end.” Leif let out a sound of strange animal grief and then fell silent.

I looked down at my baby . . . At Rowan's baby, and wondered if they had even been in the world together for more than a few minutes or had Rowan died just as I was pushing her out? I think that Leif must have been thinking something along the same lines because he rose suddenly, went to the window and yelled so loudly and so long. It was a roar of anger and helplessness that went on and on and woke my wee babe who mewled for comfort. I pulled her to my breast, concentrating on caring for her, and let Leif's angry wounded cry count for me too. When he stopped and fell to his knees in the window casing I looked out over his head at the perfect azure sky then back down at the bundle in my arms. “Sulamith,” I said out loud. “Rowan . . . wanted me to call her Sulamith.”

I didn't know it then. I wouldn't find out until six months later when Sheila would look at me and say, “Did you know the meaning of the name Sulamith when you gave it to her?”

I would shake my head and say, “No. It was my mother's name. I never even considered its meaning.”

She would look at me and say, “It means 'Peace'.”

And Sulamith was my peace. She was a refuge. A place where my broken heart could be free.