Lochan knocked softly on the hardwood door.

“Come in”, he heard a voice cry cheerfully from within.

He opened the door to the sight of Cindra holding her little son aloft, his legs kicking excitedly.

She was wearing a simple dress that hung softly around the curves of her body. He preferred it to the flamboyant dresses she usually wore at court. In this she seemed more approachable, more real to him and he could remember the days she had shunned tight-fitting dresses the better to run through the forest with him.

He could not help noticing her swollen breasts peeking out the top of her dress and he found the sight somehow intimidating. How things had changed, the passing of the years turning his little cousin into a woman, into a mother.

“Hello Lochan”, she said to him and then to the baby, “look dear, it’s you Uncle Lochan here to play with you”.

She brought the baby close to her face, their button noses almost touching. He reached out his tiny hands and gently patted at her cheeks.

She squealed in delight, rubbing her nose against his and kissing his plump little cheeks.

“Isn’t he just delicious?!”, she exclaimed then proceeded to kiss the baby’s stomach noisily, “I have half a mind to devour you my tasty little morsel”.

She lowered him and turned to Lochan, “Come in you silly man and stop skulking in the doorway”.

“As you wish my lady”, he replied with a faint smile and walked into the room.

“Oh and would you close the door behind you please”, she asked, turning her attention back to the baby.

He thought it was a strange request, given what the servants might think but he did so anyway.

“I see Atholt has noticed your chubby little cheeks then my dear”, he said, raising his hand, his finger and thumb prepared.

She giggled breathlessly, “Oh no not that again. I thought you had forgotten”.

He reached forward gently pinching her cheek. He had not been so gentle when they were children, sometimes forgetting he was bigger than her and pinching her cheeks till she would cry and then letting her pull great fistfuls of his hair with her pudgy hands to avenge her suffering.

“You don’t know about the pinching do you little Atholt, but seeing as you have unfortunately inherited your mother’s lovely cheeks you are going to have to get used to it”.

He leant down and pinched Atholt’s chubby cheek carefully as the baby snuffled and squirmed in his mother’s arms, unsure what to think of this strange new person who had taken such an interest in his face.

“Would you like to hold him?”, she asked, smiling proudly.

Would he? He didn’t know. As the weeks went by and Isaura’s belly got bigger, he had dared to begin to hope. She had never gotten so far, and there were only a few months to go now. He had thought to banish these thoughts from his head after last time, but had found that the mind is not so easy to train. And so with the passing weeks a faint glimmer of hope that this time it would be different had peeked its sunny face through the clouds, a tiny ray of light shining directly onto his heart.

So he would hold the baby, for soon perhaps, godwilling he might be holding his own.

He held Atholt tentatively in his arms, as the baby squirmed towards his mother.

“He doesn’t like it like that you big ninnny!”, she said, directing him with her hands, “he wants to be up on your shoulder, here. He likes to be up high”.

He raised the baby onto his shoulder, were it wriggled for a moment and then went still, resting its warm face against his chest.

“See, that’s better. You’re happy up there aren’t you my angel?”, she smiled fondly at the two of them.

“He’s so warm”, he said, unsure of what else to say.

“Yes he is and so is his poor mother, I am surely suffocating in here. It looks like this summer will be hot if early spring is any indication. Of course there’s no windows or air in this stupid ship. I will be glad when they finish the castle”, she blew a curl that had come loose from her face, then tucked it behind her ear with an expression of annoyance.

“Did you really call me here to talk about the weather Cindra?”, Lochan asked, wondering what exactly was her reason for asking that he visit in her room.

Her face fell the cheerful expression sliding off like a mask at the end of the masquerade, revealing the true face of the wearer.

“No… that’s not why I wanted to see you”, she replied sheepishly, “I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me something?”.

“What sort of something?”, he asked not sure what she was about to say, unable to imagine what sort of something would require a closed door.

“Who is Isabelle?”, her voice was hushed but it did not disguise the significance of the words.

He felt a chill sinking in his stomach, displacing the warmth of an unpleasant memory that rose buoyantly from its resting place and lodged in his throat.

“What dear? What do you mean?”, he managed to croak.

“See! I knew you would know”, she almost screeched startling the baby who looked at her with wide eyes, “You have to tell me Lochan! You have to, I can’t live like this anymore. Now that he has stopped drinking he doesn’t sleep and I know she is there with him in his dreams”.

Lochan felt fear lapping at his heart like the rough tongue of a rabid dog. What had Garrick told her? Cindra wasn’t supposed to know, they never spoke of it and they had all nearly forgotten. It had been so very long ago.

Then he looked up at her face and he saw the desperation in her wide haunted eyes and he knew he must tell her.

“Alright dear, I will tell you. Just let me put this little one to bed, it is not a tale for small people’s ears”.

He gently laid the drowsy baby in his crib, pausing for a moment to marvel at the perfection of his tiny limbs as they relaxed into sleep, stroking with wonder the soft skin on his head. He was so fragile, his life depending on the delicate housing of his body. It would be so easy to lose him.

Then he turned back to Cindra, “Let us sit, it will not be a short telling”.

He lowered himself heavily into the chair and Cindra perched opposite him on the bed. He noticed with irritation that her troubling bosom was now at eyelevel and he had to make a concerted effort to keep his eyes firmly on her face.

“Please tell me Lochan… you have to. Who is Isabelle?” she repeated the question of before her voice pleading and he could suddenly detect the exhaustion underlying it.

At the mention of that name again, he felt his heart creaking in grief, the rusty hinges of a long forgotten box being forced open once more. He knew now that he would never forget the pain, no matter how many years would pass.

He began as calmly as he could manage, “Cindra, Isabelle was Garrick’s twin sister”.

Her hand flew unknowingly to her breast and once again he found himself forced to drag his eyes away from the area and up to her face. He remembered the high collared dresses her pious mother used to wear and he began to wish she would follow suit, as becoming as she did look clothed like this.

“Garrick… he has a sister? Why didn’t he ever tell me? He never mentioned her. Where is she now? Why wouldn’t he tell me?” she babbled in distress.

He suddenly wondered if he had made a mistake in telling her. He had assumed that Garrick had spoken to her of Isabelle, but now he realised that perhaps she had only heard the name when he was ill and was jealous of this other woman. But then, she did not seem jealous, only frightened and tired.

He waited till she calmed down to say the dreadful words, “Cindra dear, Isabelle is dead”.

She sat silently for a moment and then whispered what he had hoped she would not ask, but knew in his heart she would.

“How did she die?”

He took a deep breath and began, “We had been hunting boar, Garrick, Eallair and I. I remember the day well for it was the first time Eallair was allowed to come out with us. Isabelle had been angry that we left her behind. She always wanted to do everything us boys did, to go with us even if it were forbidden by her parents. Garrick would usually let her come along anyway, hiding the fact from his father, even letting her ride like a boy. He loved her so he did. We all did”.

“She was my betrothed”, he stopped for a moment, contemplating how different his life would have been if he had married that fiery young woman, instead of his beloved Isaura. If he hadn’t been given the choice would he have loved as much?

“But this day he told her she could not come because he knew young Eallair, spoilt brat that he was in those days, would not keep silent about it and once Garrick’s father heard he would surely beat Garrick soundly and most likely Isabelle too. So he quarrelled with Isabelle and told her she must stay home. She was so angry with him, she swore she would never forgive him for treating her like just another girl”.

“We had been following a boar for almost an hour through the forest. We came to a clearing finally and saw faint movements in the undergrowth and Garrick, growing impatient of the endless chase notched an arrow in his bow and sent it flying towards the movements. A scream of agony erupted from the bushes and we realised in horror it was not the squealing of a pig, but the cry of young woman”.

He paused his face contorting in pain, remembering that terrible moment.

“We rushed towards the sound, Garrick arriving there first, all of us sobbing in terror. He found her there, it was Isabelle, she had followed us. The arrow had pierced straight through her heart. She died in his arms”.

“Garrick never forgave himself”, he said with a shuddering breath, “He asked that we never speak of it again and so slowly everyone forgot poor Isabelle. Everyone that is, except Garrick”.

He finally looked up at Cindra who was staring at him, her face grief-stricken and contorted in fear.

“He never told me”, she whispered hoarsely.

“Oh God… he never told me. So why is she in my dreams every night, her face so like his”.

“What?” he breathed, “What do you mean?”

Cindra replied, her voice trembling, “She comes to me in my dreams, since Garrick started drinking. At first I never saw her, I would always catch a glimpse but then I would wake up. But the night Atholt was born I saw her, I looked her in the face. And God Lochan, they burned her alive!”

“I… I don’t understand. You are seeing Isabelle in your dreams Cindra? But why?”

He looked up at her trying to keep the shivering that was rampaging through his body from his hands so she would not see.

“I don’t know Lochan… I can’t sleep without dreaming of her. And if I do then Garrick wakes me in the night crying her name. And always… always in the dream… the banner of their family. Oh”.

Her mouth curved into an overdrawn smile, her eyes filling with tears that threatened to burst their dams and spill over her plump cheeks. He knew that face, it was the face of a little girl with a skinned knee, a little girl who had lost her favourite toy, a little girl who was crying because he had pinched her cheeks too hard.

The dams cracked and tears suddenly flooded over the contours of her face, pouring into her upturned hands.

“Oh… oh Lochan… he never told me”, she sobbed into her tiny hands, “he never even told me”.

In an instant he was on his feet his hands gently rubbing her arms through the thin lace that covered them, his face against her hair. If there was one thing he had never been able to bear it was watching her cry.

“There now… don’t you be worrying yourself. You probably just remembered her somewhere in the back of your mind even though you were little and now you are dreaming of her because of Garrick”, he spoke reassuringly with a confidence he did not feel. He did not know what to think, his mind dulled by churning emotions.

She brought her flushed face to rest against his chest as she had done when they were children, her soft curls tickling his face as she cried.

Murchadh, Tadhgar