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figures in front of her shifted in and out of focus. She tried to say something more but she couldn’t. There was an odd smell in the room and a deadly faintness seemed to be paralysing her. The last thing that she heard was a shrill, high-pitched shriek from Siobhan.
    ‘I don’t care what you say, you lie there and think of nothing. You can see that Cormac is getting on fine. There is nothing at all for you to worry about. God is up there in His heaven keeping everything going; no need for you to be bearing the world on your own shoulders.’
    ‘The boys?’ queried Mara. Cormac was tucked into bed beside her and yes, he did look a little less fragile. She herself was feeling better. The haemorrhaging had stopped thanks to Nuala and her skill. And the alarming fits of faintness had not occurred for the past few hours. The fever that had followed them had now subsided and her head was clear. How long had she lain there, drifting in and out of consciousness? It must have been days.
    ‘Everything is fine,’ scolded Brigid. ‘And I’ve told you that six times already. That young man, Master MacClancy, he’s in there with them now.’
    ‘How is he getting on?’ asked Mara anxiously. Her mind went to her six scholars. Would this young Boetius MacClancy make allowances for Fachtnan and his memory problems; be tactful with the brilliant but opinionated Enda; understanding with the adolescent humour of the two fifteen-year-olds, Moylan and Aidan; patient with twelve-year-old Hugh who was finding the work of the law school difficult, and then there was eleven-year-old Shane, clever and needing new challenges to avoid boredom – how would the young man cope with her scholars?
    ‘He’s getting on all right.’ Brigid’s sniff always spoke volumes. Mara waited; more would come, she knew that.
    ‘He’s too familiar with them,’ said Brigid eventually, with a toss of her head. ‘Larking around with that Aidan.’
    ‘Oh, is that all?’ Mara felt relieved. This was a young man and young men are exuberant and fun-loving – perhaps he had only appeared pompous and self-satisfied in the presence of his elderly cousin.
    ‘I don’t like him.’ Nuala had been silent up to now. She had hardly left the bedchamber for the past two days, sleeping in the bedroom on a truckle bed, busying herself around Mara, checking that everything was in order and that there was no recurrence of the drastic bleeding. Between Sorcha, Nuala and Brigid, Mara was beginning to feel stifled. Her suggestion that she should get up from her bed seemed unpopular with them all, so she lay back of the pillows and busied herself in examining her son’s tiny fingernails. She would not enquire any more about Boetius, but make up her own mind.
    ‘Any word from Turlough?’ she asked, and again a quick glance passed between the three nurses.
    ‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Brigid heartily. ‘We haven’t sent a messenger, as you ordered, so there is no reason for him to send a messenger here. You know what King Turlough is like, God bless him, he’ll ride up here one morning or one evening and give us all a surprise.’
    There is news, and it’s not good, thought Mara. However, she had long decided that what she could not influence, she would try not to worry about, and she turned her attention back to her child.
    ‘Nuala, is there any chance, at this stage, that I will be able to feed Cormac myself?’ It seemed strange to be asking a girl still two months from her fifteenth birthday a question like that, but Nuala had kept mother and son alive during the long and difficult labour, and during the last days had probably once again saved Mara’s life. In fact, for the last year she had been tending competently to the people of the Burren. One of the reasons why Malachy had been so angry with his daughter had been jealousy over the fact that so many people preferred her ministrations to his.
    ‘I would say that it is unlikely at this stage.’ Nuala