Read Online Valley of the Shadow by Peter Tremayne - Free Book Online Page B

their gaze on Fidelma and Eadulf with undisguised interest. Orla made no attempt to explain who they were. A young girl came running forward.
    ‘What brings you back so early, Mother?’ she demanded. ‘Who are these strangers?’
    Fidelma could see the likeness between Orla and the girl immediately. The girl was about fourteen, not much more. Her manner of dress and jewellery showed that she was past the age of choice in that she was regarded as an adult. She had her mother’s dark, abundantly curly hair and flashing eyes. In spite of her youth she was attractive and aware of her allure for she carried herself with a coquettish self-aware attitude.
    Orla greeted her daughter with absent-minded distance.
    ‘Who are these Christians, Mother?’ insisted the girl, obviously recognising their manner of dress. ‘Are they prisoners?’
    Orla frowned slightly and shook her head.
    ‘They are emissaries from Cashel, Esnad. Guests of your uncle. Now be off with you. Plenty of time to greet them later.’
    The young girl, Esnad, turned an openly speculative gaze on Eadulf.
    ‘That one is foreign but quite handsome for a foreigner,’ she ventured with a flirtatious expression.
    Fidelma tried to hide her amusement while Eadulf blushed furiously.
    ‘Esnad!’ snapped her mother in irritation. ‘Be off!’
    The girl turned with a backward smile at Eadulf and walked slowly across the courtyard, her hips swaying slightly suggestively. Orla heaved a sigh of exasperation.
    ‘Your daughter is at the age of choice?’ observed Fidelma.
    Orla nodded.
    ‘It is hard to find a husband for her. I fear that she has her own ideas. She is a trial, that one.’
    She continued on, leading them to a large two-storey building set against one of the outer walls of the ráth. Orla opened the door and stood aside.
    ‘I will send the hostel keeper to you and, when you are refreshed, she will bring you to Laisre’s chamber.’
    She inclined her head briefly to Fidelma and then left them to their own devices.
    In the security of the main room of the guests’ hostel, a room where the guests obviously ate and where meals were prepared, Fidelma threw her saddle bags on to the table and sank into the nearest chair, giving a deep sigh of exhaustion.

    ‘I have spent too long on horseback, Eadulf,’ she remarked. ‘I have forgotten what it is to relax in a chair.’
    Eadulf glanced around at the accommodation. It was a comfortably decorated room with a fire already lit above which a cooking pot was steaming and emitting pleasant aromas.
    ‘At least Laisre’s guests seem well provided for,’ he muttered. The room stretched the entire length of the building and there was a long table with benches on either side and a couple of more elaborate wooden chairs. This was obviously the dining area. At the far end, by the fire, were all the accoutrements for cooking. There were four doors leading to other rooms on the lower level. Eadulf put down his saddle bags and crossed to them, taking a quick look inside.
    ‘Two bathing rooms,’ he announced. He opened the other doors, grunted in disgust and crossed himself. ‘The others are the fialtech. ’ The Irish term came easily to him for the ‘veil house’ was a colloquialism for a privy and had been picked up from the Roman concept. Many religious believed that the Devil dwelt within the privy and it had become the custom to make the sign of the cross before entering it.
    A wooden staircase led to the upper level. Here Eadulf found there were four small rooms, cell-like affairs. He peered into each one in turn, noticing the wooden cots already laid out with their straw mattresses, woollen blankets and linen sheets. After a moment or so he retraced his steps downstairs to where Fidelma was still stretched in her chair.
    ‘There seems to be two other guests,’ he observed. ‘Rich guests by the look of their baggage in the cubicles. And one is obviously a cleric.’
    Fidelma looked up in surprise.
    ‘I