Because Mother was so frail, the baby did not stay in her chamber but was housed in the one next door, under the care of a nursemaid. Sibeal and I took turns watching him when the girl was eating or having her time off. It was not exactly hard work, as Finbar slept most of the time. It was hard to believe this was the same child who had kicked so vigorously against the confines of his mother’s belly. I liked sitting with him in the quiet of the nursery chamber. I liked his shadowy eyelids and his fine little fingers. When he did wake, I saw that his eyes would be the same as Sibeal’s, such a light gray-blue as to be almost colorless, and I thought the name Father had given him might be all too apt. “I don’t think it’s a very happy life, being a seer,” I whispered to my baby brother. “I wonder if it’s too late to change your mind?”

The drama of Finbar’s arrival, followed by the continuing unease of Mother’s illness, had crowded everything else out of my thoughts. Suppers were conducted in a somber hush; nobody wanted entertainment. When Finbar was five days old, the haunted look in Muirrin’s eyes began to fade and I heard her say, cautiously, that Mother was doing better than expected.

That evening Willow stepped forward after supper and addressed herself to my father. “Lord Sean, I offer the congratulations of the traveling people on the birth of your son,” the old woman said. “May he grow as strong in wisdom and as clear in vision as his namesake.” Finbar had been named after a beloved kinsman, one of Conor’s brothers, who had lived much of his life in lonely exile and had died in an act of noble self-sacrifice. Someone in our household must have told Willow this story. No doubt it would be grist to her mill, the stuff of future tales. “I must move on in the morning,” Willow added, “and I have yet one tale to tell. I would not walk away from this hospitable home in debt.”

“By all means tell us your tale tonight,” Father said. “We will welcome it.”