The Seventh Trumpet Read Online Free PDF

and made his choice. What did he want in life? He wanted to nurture and support the woman he had fallen in love with. He wanted to protect and raise the son they had given birth to. He wanted to use what talents he had for the good of the people around him, those people who had taken him in, a stranger in a strange land, and been kind to him. When reason combined with emotion, there had been no choice for him to make. He supported Fidelma, but not by always giving in to her. He knew that she had a strong will, but he was sensitive enough to realise that it was borne of her insecurity, having lost both her parents when she was a baby.
    The case in point was the recent meeting of the Council of Brehons, the judges of the kingdom. Their decision to elect Brehon Áedo as the Chief Brehon instead of her had hit Fidelma hard, although she did not show it in public. Not that she ever said anything, even to Eadulf. When he ventured on to the subject, she would merely say that the council had made the logical choice. Áedo was older and wiser than she was, she would say. But he saw the bleak expression; indeed, the disappointment and hurt in her eyes. It had cast a deepening gloom over their lives for the last week or so. Eadulf realised that his wife needed his steadfastness, his quiet support and his optimism. She needed the emotional stability that only he could give her.
    Seeing her entering the chamber with an animated expression, for the first time in weeks, was a relief to Eadulf. Here was the distraction that she most needed; a distraction which would call on the use of her talent and capabilities so that she did not have time to be bored, nor to brood.
    ‘You say that this ford, where the farmer found the body, is at Cluain Mór?’ he asked as he made a final check through the contents of his saddle-bag.
    ‘It is only a short distance from here,’ confirmed Fidelma, giving the specific measurement in her own language. He spent a moment trying to work out a translation of 1,000 forrach and realised it was just a few kilometres. Fidelma had already packed her bag and was now waiting for him.
    ‘Then at least it is not a long ride,’ he said thankfully. Eadulf was not a brilliant horseman and disliked long journeys, although, during his lifetime, he had probably travelled further than most of his contemporaries would ever imagine might be accomplished. He had twice travelled to Rome itself and once to the Council of Autun in Burgundia.
    The second bag that he was taking was called a lés , a bag filled with some physician’s instruments and apothecary’s potions. Eadulf had first come to the land of the Five Kingdoms of Éireann many years ago to study at Tuaim Brecain, the premier school of medicine in the land of Ulaidh, the Northern Kingdom. There he had learned enough of the medical skills to assist in many of Fidelma’s investigations. That was after he had been converted to the New Faith. He had grown to manhood in his native Seaxmund’s Ham, in the Land of the South Folk, part of the Kingdom of the East Angles, where he had been an hereditary gerefa or magistrate. An Irish missionary named Fursa had turned him away from the worship of Woden and the other gods and goddesses of his people.
    ‘I am just going to give some final instruction to Muirgen,’ Fidelma said, jumping to her feet. She always found it difficult to sit still, doing nothing, while waiting for him. If necessary, she could induce the meditation exercise called the dercad , but now was not the time. So she left Eadulf to finish packing his bag and went in search of the nurse.
    She was hurrying across an interior courtyard when she became aware of two figures blocking her path.
    ‘You look absorbed with some weighty matter, lady.’ The speaker was the smaller of the two, a man who spoke in a thin, hesitant voice as though he had some speech impediment.
    She noted his pale skin and close-cropped, untidy grey hair. He gave the impression of being