"When there's nothing else to do, yes. You can watch."

"What about Padraig? Will you tell him that I can?"

"Of course, Emer. You're the perfect choice for that anyway. He's too busy with your father."

"Good," she whimpered, and stayed curled in her mother's lap, nuzzling.

Certainly there was trouble to come. Situated halfway between two princ.i.p.al towns, one of which was Cromwell's present target, their small corner of the world would soon be crawling with soldiers, looters, and worse.

"Emer?"

"Yes?"

"Do you want to know what your name means?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I think you're old enough to know why your father and I named you Emer. We had good reasons, you know."

"Does Padraig know what his name means?"

"I think so."

"Then I should know what my name means too." She looked attentively at her mother.

"You've heard me speak of Cuchulain before, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, Cuchulain was a great Irish hero. He was the son of a G.o.d and more beautiful than any man has ever been since. For fear he would steal the hearts of their wives and daughters, people searched Ireland for a suitable wife for him. But Cuchulain would have no one but the most beautiful. And that was Emer." Mairead raised her voice a little to capture Emer's fleeting attention.

"Wasn't Cuchulain a warrior? Didn't he fight in a war?"

"Yes. The War of the Brown Bull."

"Didn't he fight on a pole?"

"Yes, but that's not what I'm talking about."

"What sort of pole?"

"No mind what sort of pole. I'm getting to the bit where Emer joins the story."

"But how could he fight tied to a pole?"

"Well, actually he died on that pole. But that doesn't matter because many years before the War of the Brown Bull, he met Emer."

"I knew he couldn't fight tied to a pole."

Mairead smiled. "So, it was known across the land that Emer possessed the six gifts of womanhood. With these traits and some untold others, she had her pick of a great many suitors. It seemed, though, that once Cuchulain had it in his mind to marry Emer, all the other suitors were too afraid to take her. And Emer, though she loved Cuchulain, refused to marry him until he proved, through his deeds, his honor. This made her father angry, because he didn't like Cuchulain. He tried many times to trick the warrior and sell Emer to various other suitors, but in the end, Cuchulain stormed her house and took her away to marry."

"So I was named after the wife of a hero?" Emer sounded disappointed.

"She was more than just a wife. She was a very good woman to have around for a feared, half-G.o.d hero like her husband. For if everyone feared him, how would they get things done? If no one dared cross him, where could they go without challenges and troubles to follow? You see, Emer had the gift of sweet speech and wisdom. She could raise her voice up high, and gain whatever they needed by simply asking. Her beauty was unsurpa.s.sable and ravishing. This was a great strength, as beauty can often cut through the hearts of the heartless. Most importantly, she was modest and chaste and-"

"What does that mean?"

"Chaste? It means she was pure and honest. Like you tonight when I told you that lie. Like Emer, you made me tell you the truth."

"Oh."

"It was a combination of all these gifts, and the way Emer used them to get what she and Cuchulain needed, that made her a hero as well. And there was one other thing, which is very important. Emer was a master with a needle. With her skilled hands, she could sew most anything and decorate it with the finest of needlework. Like you, she had a talent for making plain things beautiful."

"But she didn't become king or anything, did she?"

"No. Of course not."

"And she didn't fight in battles?"

"I don't know. There is a part in the story where another woman falls in love with Cuchulain and Emer ventures out to kill her, but instead, after much talk and thought, they find a solution in which none of them need die. After that, she and Cuchulain were never meddled with again."

Emer sat and thought about the story. Was this some sort of lesson her mother was trying to teach her so she'd stop fighting with Padraig? Was she serious at all? "Does anyone else know about Emer?" she asked.

"The story of Cuchulain has lasted many centuries, pet. I am sure many know when they look at you why you are also named Emer."

"Because I'm so beautiful?"

"Yes. And the rest."

"Will you and Daddy sell me off to some man like her father did?"

"No. But you have to understand that girls have a different reason for living than boys do. Girls can have babies and can cook and sew and keep the stock and the yard and the house. Girls can do far more things than boys can. But it doesn't make us better than them, it just makes us a better pair."

"A better pair?"

"Like shoes." Mairead took the worn cowhide slipper from her foot. "If you wear one shoe, it wouldn't really work, would it?"

"No."

"Well, a man without a woman is like wearing one shoe."

"What about Miss Mary? She's a woman and she doesn't have a man."

"Her husband died a long time ago, Emer. She once had a perfect match like I do, and the rest of the mothers here do. The most important thing to remember is that Emer didn't allow her father to marry her off to a man she didn't love, and she didn't marry Cuchulain, either, until he proved his honor. She had a mind of her own and could wield it as sharply as any sword."

"So girls fight different than boys."

"That's right."

That night, when Emer closed her eyelids to sleep, she imagined her embroidered cape, just as she had every night since she'd vowed to st.i.tch it. It was thick with flaxen threads woven into the most colorful design anyone had ever seen, and she was inside it, wielding her wisdom and beauty to fend off the thousand suitors lined up and down the valley wishing for her hand.

Emer could hear loud cannons firing as she tried to sleep. Padraig shifted about beside her, sometimes jumping a bit when the noise echoed between the church and their small cottage next to the castle. They stayed silent for some time before Emer sat up and said, "That one sounded close."

"No, it didn't. They'd be a lot louder than that."

"Are you sure?"

Padraig swallowed. "Yes, I'm sure."

"I can't sleep, anyway. Do you want to play a game or something?"

"No. Try to sleep. We'll need our rest."

Emer lay back down, listening to the little man that her brother had become. How did he grow so serious so fast? Only a few months before, he'd been chasing her around and teasing her like a proper ten-year-old. Now he said things like that. We'll need our rest We'll need our rest. Try to sleep Try to sleep. It was as if the cannons miles away were pounding the childhood right out of him.

She waited a minute and then replied, "We'll need our rest for what?"

"Just try to sleep."

"What will we need it for?"

"Emer, just be quiet."

"But I'm scared."

He reached out and held her tiny hand. "Don't be scared. Nothing bad will happen to us."

"But Mammy and Daddy?"

"Emer, just go to sleep and think of something happy."

"Okay, Padraig. Good night."

Every time she pictured Oliver's soldiers, she thought horrible thoughts and heard terrible screams. Since the young man on the horse came, she'd had such bad dreams that Padraig often had to wake her and caress her back to sleep, repeating the same advice: think of something happy think of something happy.

She curled up and thought of the happiest thing she could: what she would look like as a full-grown lady wearing her hand-embroidered cape.

The next morning, she woke to the same loud reports. They had been hearing them for over a week now, and for the past fortnight, twenty-four hours a day (even in the drenching rain), someone manned the tower, looking out.

All anyone saw from up there was smoke-lots of smoke. In three directions. It rose in different colors-black, gray, and white-and sent a rank smell across the frosty valley, curling noses and making thoughts wander. Secretly, some were claiming that they could smell the burning flesh of animals, people, babies. Grown-ups walked with far-away looks, barely watching where they stepped.

So far, in each town that Cromwell took, he tried his very best to cleanse every Catholic-even the children. Some escaped death, and were moving west to a designated place for Catholics. Many had pa.s.sed through their parish since Christmas, headed for the Shannon River and what lay beyond it, warning that no village would be spared.

It took a bit of life from everybody. Emer noticed that grown-ups never smiled anymore, her mother most of all. Most days she had to help Mairead in the yard with the stock. Several hens weren't well, and Emer minded them along with two orphaned ewe lambs. She was still allowed to look out from the tower, but it had proved less fun with adults around. She wasn't trusted to watch on her own anymore, and in a way, she didn't want to see what was coming. Every day, after one look at the smoke, she retreated down the staircase to her animals.

Her father was on duty at the Carabine Bridge a mile away, and when she climbed the tower that morning she waved to him and he waved back. He gave an additional hand signal to the man in the tower and went back to standing his watch. There were a few other men with him. They would hear far in advance if the soldiers were coming, because there also were men on horses posted on every road that led to their parish.

It was a special day. Though the usual Candlemas celebration was cancelled, Emer knew that her father would come home early and they would have a small celebration themselves, because it was also her birthday. She nursed her sick chickens and fed the lambs and returned to the empty house to see what else she could do to help her mother. Padraig's maturity had rubbed off in a way, and Emer felt a lot older than six, which was the age she would turn that day.

After tidying the fireplace and the dinner table, she set to work on her secret project. She pulled out her half-made emergency bag, a project she'd started to keep her worried mind busy. In her daydreams about the dragon coming, she always had this bag over her shoulder, filled with food to tide her over and an extra pair of stockings.

In ten short minutes, she finished the seam, tied a knot, and bit it with her teeth. Turning it right-side-out and smoothing it, she leaned back and squinted. "It's perfect," she said to herself, and pulled out a long, thick plait from her pocket. She began to sew it on as a strap, but heard someone coming and hid the whole lot under her thin tick mattress.

"Emer?" Mairead called.

"Yes?" Emer answered, smoothing the mattress back to its position on the bed frame.

"Where are you?"

"I'm here," she said, and walked into the kitchen.

"Happy birthday!" her mother said. "How does it feel to be six?"

"It feels old."

Mairead laughed. "It only gets worse, Emer, the older you get." She picked her daughter up and squeezed her. "Have you fed the lambs yet?"

"Aye."

"Well then, we're off to get your gift from Mrs. Tobin."

"Mrs. Tobin?" Emer wondered why a decrepit, gnarled-up lady like mean old Mrs. Tobin would have anything to do with her birthday.

"You'll see, Emer. Just get ready. I want you to wear your other dress, the longer one. Do you know where it is?"

Emer nodded.

"Good girl. Hurry now."

Emer was ready in a very short time, still wondering about her gift and not thinking about the lookout or Oliver and his dragon for the first time in weeks.

They walked past the church to the cross in the road and continued down toward the mill, where Mrs. Tobin lived with her son and his wife, Katherine. The day was damp and cold and Emer found it difficult to breathe through her nose without sniffling and snorting. It wasn't raining, which was a relief after three weeks of solid downpour, but it wasn't sunny either. A gray mist seemed to swallow the valley from the sky down, and Emer felt it touch her toes inside the thin leather. In the distance, the hedgerows were painted just dark enough to make out the taller trees that grew within them. There wasn't a bird in the sky, Emer noticed, not even a rook.

They met several men who were on their way to relieve other men on watch, like her father, who had been working since an hour before daybreak. The road had been filled with traffic of this sort every day since the cannons arrived-armed men heading this way or that way.

By the time they reached the old thatched mill house, Emer was tired.

"Come in Mairead, come in," Katherine said from the door. Old Mrs. Tobin sat by the blazing fire, twisting her hands into each other, warming herself.

"And h.e.l.lo Emer! Happy birthday!"

"Thank you, Mrs. Tobin."