Seven Brothers Blessed [ Lore of Penrua: Book IV ]

[ 29 ]

As he drew to a stop outside of his mother's chamber door, Diarmán could hear somebody being violently sick within. His stomach turned with worry. He had suspected at breakfast that his mother had taken too much of her tea, and this seemed to prove it.

"Mother?" He tried the door, but found it locked. There was a beat of silence and then another awful retch. With a grimace, Diarmán knocked. "Mother."

There was another, weaker retch, and then a spell of silence.

"Yes," called Lady Moigré at last—it must have been her, but she spoke in a wafer-thin shade of her usual voice. She sounded so exhausted as to be a shadow of her shadow-self. "What is it?"

"Are you alright? It sounds as if—"

"Yes."

"You're sick."

"I'm fine."

Diarmán frowned at the door, waiting. He expected more. An invitation. She might be ashamed, of course; she did not flaunt her vice, although of course the household knew of her dependency on dream-tea and on wine. It would hardly surprise him to know she'd overindulged.

Maybe she hadn't, though. Maybe it was simple illness.

There was, of course, another reason a woman might be sick—a reason that could not apply to his mother, who was certainly beyond her childbearing years. Besides, she had no partner, for his father had sworn that he would leave her free. Yet what if—

"Mother? We need to talk!" Diarmán called, his voice sharp. Panic allowed him no time to temper his tongue. "Please, let me in."

There was a stirring inside the room. When her voice came again, it was close on the other side of the door. "One moment. Just one moment."

Diarmán stepped back, waiting as the lock turned and the door swung open. There was Moigré, her hair loose over her shoulders and disheveled. She was not yet dressed, and her nightgown was damp with sweat. "Gods below," he whispered. "What illness has taken you?"

"It's nothing," Moigré said. "What do you need, sweetheart?"

"I only came to speak with you. Shall I call for Aerte? She—"

"It's nothing."

"Mother." Diarmán reached for her hand. How could he ask her what had happened? "Is it drink? Or have you eaten something off?"

"Diarmán." There was a firmness in Moigré's tone that was very seldom heard. That note of finality took Diarmán right back to his father's cottage in Eldran's Wood, when Moigré, beset on all sides by her energetic sons and out of patience, would put an end to some quarrel.

"I am no child. I'll know the reason for your suffering, or I'll enlist Leán to lead the questioning. Or Gaerte."

With a sigh, Moigré stepped back. "Come in."

He did. The room was cool; the heat shining on Moigré's brow must have been from a fever. The scent of sweat and vomit hung in the air. Diarmán glimpsed a dish underneath the bed. He breathed through his mouth, steeling his will—he had always been the sort to get sick at the sight of sickness. "Have you water?" he asked. "Soup? Shall we set you a fire? I can—"

She raised a hand to stop him. And then, surprising Diarmán completely, she stepped into his arms and put her forehead on his shoulder, sinking against him.

He wrapped his arms immediately around her. She was so frail, and her body trembled under his touch. For a moment, he feared she had fainted, but she was standing under her own power. This was an embrace.