“My lord!” She fanned herself with her hand, feigning exhaustion. “So solemn, so serious! Here, let me cheer you up! It is too fine a day for such portentous looks!” She stood on tiptoe, both small hands grasping the front of his tunic, and kissed him full on the lips. Liam’s moment was lost forever. My father’s arm went around his wife possessively, and she clung to him like a vine to its tree as they turned back toward the house. I watched as Diarmid followed them, crestfallen and confused. I watched as Liam scooped up a handful of stones from the path and hurled them, hard, back to the ground. I saw him stride off toward the stables, his frustration written clear on his face. Then, only then, I crept out of my hiding place.

It took a moment or two, after I went through the house and into the stillroom, to realize something was wrong. When a place is so familiar, so much your own, you just take it for granted, scarcely seeing the colors and shapes around you save as an extension of yourself. So, it was a moment or two. I took off my cloak and hung it on the peg. I turned to put my basket on the table. Then I saw. The shelves were bare, the hanging herbs, the plaits of onion and garlic, the drying plants were gone. Every jar and bottle, every knife and bowl was missing. My spices, my ointments and tinctures, my cloths and basins and bundles, all the tools of my trade had been taken away. There was a scattering of dried lavender on the flagstones, and the outside door was ajar. Heart pounding, I walked out into the garden.

Right down the bottom, by the wall, a small fire burned, and its fragrant smoke cast a gentle haze over the devastation before me. On either side of the central path, every bed had been dug up, every plant uprooted, and a confusion of broken stems, pale exposed roots, and shattered paving covered the whole area. I stumbled forward in a daze. Lavender, wormwood, tansy, and chamomile. Mallow and rosemary. I walked across their tumbled remains, and the sweet smell from their bruised leaves drifted up in farewell. Larger branches were strewn on the ground or piled up for burning. My lilac tree had been cut down. Never cut live wood, Conor had said, unless you must. And never without a warning for the spirit that lives within. Do not destroy her home without good reason. Still I was silent, shaking, wandering blindly from one victim to the next. The early bulbs whose secret life lay hidden deep within their protective coverings; the crocuses I had bedded down so carefully against the chill of winter. Shredded, crushed, exposed on the ravaged soil. My tender creeper, ripped from the wall and chopped into a thousand pieces; it would never open its tiny white star-flowers to welcome the spring sun again. I walked on. The little oak tree, most cherished of all, barely shoulder-high, gentled and guarded since I was eight years old; I had expected to watch it grow, year by year, to shade and protect my domain. It was snapped off at the base, and would never bud again with new season’s life. I fell to my knees, scrabbling wildly in the soil in a vain effort to save something, anything; but I could not cry. This went beyond tears, beyond thought. In my heart, I gave a great wordless scream of anguish.