A Hope for Rauri Ch. 01

When he wasn't just barking.

He'd only discovered the scarred wound on his shoulder a month later, but by then, he'd already had to fight down the strangest sort of hunger to kill something -- anything -- if it had annoyed him just a little.

The day before Glen Trool, there had been a raid on their camp, just as the evening gloom deepened, not far away on the eastern shores of the Clatteringshaws Loch. Wesley had been posted as one of the pickets out in the woods and a little far from the others. They were spread that thinly. All that he'd been told had been to stay sharp, listen, and watch for any wandering Scots who might be searching for them.

But something else took the nervous young man that night in those dark woods. It also tore the lives of three others out of them in the blink of an eye each time. Not one of them had been given even the time to cry out or scream.

Wesley hadn't had that luxury either. He'd heard a faint rustle in the leaves and as he'd turned his head to look, something large and dark had him. He'd never even gotten the briefest look, so he never knew just what had happened.

Less than an hour later, the Scots attacked and the group of English soldiers were badly beaten, though many got away in the darkness and the net effect was that the English were alerted to the presence in the area of their opponents.

But by then, Wesley had already forgotten why he was there in the first place. He was all alone in the pitch black forest around him, the only living man there by then. And he was already sick and on his face in the damp leaves on the forest floor, writhing slowly in agony and fear. Whatever had attacked him was nowhere around.

Wesley had followed the English camp and caught up to it not long before things at Loudon Hill got underway. No one knew him. Any who might have remembered him were elsewhere in the English host preparing to walk into the fight that everyone knew was about to begin.

After Loudon Hill, the English forces withdrew. Wes slipped away and stayed in the area, living on sheep for the most part and being very careful about which ones and how many that he took. He only knew that something in him had changed.

He also remembered the small farm under the trees and the young woman who lived there. She was a little tall and her hair was a deep auburn color.

And she had startlingly clear and bright green eyes that gave him the most trouble to hold in his gaze on as he'd asked her for some food one day.

She knew from his voice that he wasn't from anywhere near there. It didn't seem to matter to her very much anymore.

He remembered the way that she'd asked him if he'd seen a young man in his wandering and he'd listened to her describe her husband. He'd answered honestly that her description could fit many men that he'd seen there, alive and dead.

She'd nodded in a vacant way and showed him her small root cellar and told him to take what he wanted. Then she'd walked away out into the open land at the edge of the trees which hid the little place from sight.

Wesley remembered standing there in amazement as she'd just walked away, beginning to sob softly. His hunger drove him to gather up a few things before he looked back in time to see her drift over the small rise out there, walking slowly. Just then, one of the turnips had fallen from his grasp and he'd bent to pick it up again.

When he looked once more, she was gone over the rise. He'd looked around carefully and seeing no one, he'd run after her, wanting to ask more, wanting to know about her, and needing to see those eyes again.

But she wasn't there when he'd crested the rise himself and he stood there, looking out over acres of grasslands and a few sheep. The turnip fell from his hand again.

He stayed in the area for the next seven years.

He'd only seen her a few times after that day, and though he'd tried to seek her out, he barely got a little close and she didn't appear to hear him as he called out carefully for her to please stop a moment.

The last time that he saw her was at another tiny farm a distance away on the other side of the volcanic plug which was the tip of Loudon Hill and she'd walked into the little house there.

He'd spent the next two days waiting for her, but he never did see her leave and when at last he couldn't wait any longer; he'd gone over to the door and pulled it open.

The place was deserted and he saw no sign that anyone had been there in what had to have been a month, to judge by the life form that he saw growing in the uneaten stew in the pot over the long-cold hearth.

He hardly ever spoke to anyone, fearful over the way that his speech gave him away. But he did hear of it when the news reached the area that Edward I, king of England was dead, and he also heard of it a few years later that the English were returning, as though Edward II had suddenly remembered that he had enemies to the north of him.

After thinking about it just a little, Wes had decided that on a personal level, he didn't much care who won this mess, but he knew that he stood a far better chance to get fed and maybe paid in the service of the invaders, so he began to travel.

It all led him to be at the battle of Bannockburn - another ill-advised scheme which produced even worse results for his side than Loudon Hill. In that one, between five or six hundred Scots had been able to send off an army of three thousand.

At Bannockburn, similar tactics in preparing had been used and it allowed two to three thousand mounted and up to sixteen thousand foot soldiers to be humbled by a far smaller Scottish force.

Once the rout began, Wes had run along with everyone else and finding himself in the midst of the throngs around the Earl of Hertford, he'd walked along with the rest in through the gates of Bothwell Castle.

He remembered being no one of importance and having to spend the night in the open prepared to defend not the stoneworks of the place, but the wooden palisade out beyond it. When the slaughter began, he came to his senses and leapt over the palisade and escaped.

He gently interrupted the woman's no-doubt thrilling blow-by-blow, account of Bannockburn. "Hey, ... uh, ..."

"Cleena," she said, "Cleena Danann."

"Yeah, thanks, Cleena," he smiled uncomfortably, "Where's this connection to me?"

"We're not really very certain at all, but we have come to think that you must be a descendant of Roger de Valence. He was not accounted for in amongst the dead at Bothwell, though it's likely that few if any there even knew him well at all. We've tried, but we can't seem to find all that much of your ancestry by working backward, either, I'm afraid."

Wes smiled a little, though it was rather thin, "Well, please don't try too hard or I might refuse to work for you just out of principal. Somebody like me and what I do can sometimes make an enemy here or there and I'd like to keep my living relations healthy, ok?

Tell me about this ghost."

She shook her head, "It's not a ghost, Mr. -- "

"Call me Wes, please," he said with the little smile again, "Go on."

"Have you ever heard of anything called a sidhe, Wesley?"

He shook his head and she began to tell him of things which completed the appraisal of her which he'd already begin to come to -- the one where he was coming to think of her as a nut, but she called the bartender over and paid him for more whisky, demanding that he leave the bottle there on the bar in front of them.

She turned her head to look at him a little seriously, "Take what remains of this bottle to your room after we are done here. I can see that you are beginning to think that I am an idiot, so I wanted to show you that I am, at the very least, a rather wealthy one. Now please listen as I continue, if I may."

Wes nodded, seeing that she'd just dropped over six hundred dollars on buying his ear.

----------------------

"So," she smiled, "How soon can you begin? I have a retainer here for you in a bank draft of fifty thousand American dollars. I would hope that it would be enough for a start."

Wesley stretched and nodded a little as he sat and he smiled, "For fifty large, I'd be all yours about one and one-half seconds after I know that it's cleared the bank."

He raised his hand without another word to her and when the bartender stepped over, he said, "Please bring another bottle and leave it here as well. For the price of this stuff, I'd never forgive myself if I let this fine woman sit only nursing the one glassful."

The bartender nodded and walked away. Wes smiled at Cleena, "You get to take one home too."

--------------------------

He sat in his room afterwards, pushing the last swab soaked with cleaner through the barrel of his rifle. He was more than a little surprised to be honest.

With the last of it done, he packed it all up once more and walked to the little desk in the room with his notepad PC. As soon as it finished booting, he accessed the wi-fi in the hotel and pulled out his bank card.

He closed the notebook seven minutes later and poured himself another drink.

There had been a deposit made in his business account of fifty thousand dollars within twenty-seven minutes of the time that she'd walked out of the place.

For even someone as old as Wes was on the inside, there was a phrase and he uttered it then as he stared into space.

"Holy ... "

He opened the notebook again and began to glean all that he could on the apparently many forms of Sidhe that she'd mentioned knowing of. As he did, he recalled a little of their conversation.

"A what? You want me to find a ...

How do you say that again?"

"The spelling depends on the locality," Cleena said, "though it is pronounced in much the same way. Overall, this is Gaelic, but there are several flavors. Where we need you to search, it's Scotland and there, what you're to find is called a Bean Sìth," she said, emphasizing the different spelling as she sounded it.

"So that's a banshee, right? That's what it sounded like to me."

She nodded. "Now, you also ought to know that the Scottish 'Sith' is their word for the Irish 'Sidhe'. Overall, it means 'woman of the sidhe', understand?"

He'd nodded, "Annnd, so then, one of these, ... women wails and weeps to foretell of a death, have I got that right?"

She shook her head a little apologetically, "It's a little complicated, Wesley. For the most part, you're correct except for a few things. The legend goes that the previous inhabitants of Ireland were defeated by the Milesians and went to live underground in mounds called sidhe, which is where they get their name."

He'd stopped her there, "But, I thought that fairies and -- "

She said nothing though she nodded with a sort of smile before she went on.

"Try to forget the romantic notion that all fairies have wings. Most of them by far do not.

The Irish Bean Sidhe or Bean Si is attached in a way to noble Gaelic families and will keen and wail for only them or their descendants -- those which begin with 'O', such as the O'Gradys, the O'Neills, the Ó Longs, the Ó Briains, the Ó Conchobhairs, though the Caomhánachs are included as well.

In Scotland, it's families with 'Mac' and both the Irish and Scottish ones will include Norman-Irish or Norman-Scottish families like the ones whose names include 'fitz'."

"Clear as, uh, mud, I'd say," he smiled, "So who am I supposed to be looking for?"

She'd sighed then, and she was silent for a moment before she said, "The one that you're to find breaks the rule. So far, we know that she's cried for Scots and even Irish-Scots and not only of those families. She only seems to draw the line there and does not appear for anyone else, not that I'd think that they'd mind being excluded.

This legend is very old, Wesley. As more and more time goes by, fewer and fewer know of it and the effects are a little disturbing, as you might imagine. Things have changed with the times. Where once, a banshee might have stood wailing at a lonely crossroads late at night, those crossroads are now roadways. She has almost caused several road accidents over the years as drivers swerve in horror around such an apparition.

We need you to seek her if you can and learn what you can, if anything.

We don't know if she's real or only some sort of phantom. If that's the case, she won't even know that you're there if you were to stand in her presence.

There are a few other, slightly troubling aspects, however.

Very closely related to the Bean Sith is the Bean Nighe, which is another type of, ... fairy, you might say. The name translates to 'washer woman' and she's sometimes seen as a woman who weeps while trying desperately to wash blood from an article of clothing which resembles something worn by the doomed person in a river or stream. They may actually be the same thing.

As well, there is the Leannan Sìth, one which is rather more dangerous to men, though I'd prefer to speak of that one to you once you're on the ground in Scotland. Now, here is where we'll meet, you and I, ...."

As the memory of the conversation faded in his mind, Wes read on about the sidhe for a while and then got ready to go to bed. He had a few things to do the next day, like drive home and pack.

--------------------------------

In a rental van out at the edge of the next town, someone else sat reflecting on the day. She was pleased overall at the way that it had gone. She was only a little uncertain of one thing, not that it was a very large issue to her. Midsummer's Eve was coming up in a few weeks and if she could have her way, this might be finished by then.

If she had her way, none of this would be happening at all. But as it was, she thought that as unconventional as it might appear to anyone, hiring Wesley could provide her with the solution to an old problem, which was what -- specifically - to do about the 'Bean Sith of the Awful Hand'.

She knew that many wouldn't necessarily approve of her methods here, not that it mattered to her in the least.

And it had gone so well, Wesley being so inured to being in the presence of people that he hadn't even noticed, ... well, ... that she wasn't one.

But she knew very well who she'd been sitting with in that hotel bar, and it didn't matter at all what he said.

She knew that she'd spent a large part of her afternoon today with Roger Wesley de Valence.

THE Roger Wesley de Valence. The same one who'd escaped the massacre at Bothwell in 1314, and the same one who'd survived being spiked right through that day at Loudon Hill in 1307.

He was only seven hundred and twenty-eight years old now and out of the countless many human lives which had swirled around them both today, she was the only one who knew why he'd lived this long, though she herself was far older than only that.

She'd known it the instant that she'd seen him walking away from the rifle range, a tall, muscular man with dark hair over a lean face with gray eyes. Over seven hundred years old and looking not a day over twenty-eight.

Only he hadn't looked that way to her then and she'd only seen that if she wanted to.

What she'd been speaking with that afternoon was an even taller and more powerful-looking werewolf.

The thought caused her to smile to herself for a moment.

Well, she might be ages old, but she certainly wasn't dead, at least not yet.

For what he was under the human skin that he liked to show to the world, Wesley was a very fine-looking male, if you only looked to see it, no matter which way you looked.

She opened the door a moment later and walked into the dark hills on a moonless night. She'd never been on this side of the Atlantic before since she'd never had a need before now.

She thought she might as well take a look around in these woods.

There were a few shouts and rather Gaelic-sounding curses in the trees a few minutes later as Cleena got to know firsthand why most people and other animals avoided the small black nocturnal ones who walked about with two white stripes running front to back in their fur with their fluffy tails in the air.

She'd wondered why it hadn't seemed nervous about her at all.

Now she knew something about a creature which had no European counterpart and she didn't like it.

-----------------------

Wes was almost asleep when it hit him.

There was something odd about her name -- besides that it was an odd name.

He'd likely never have known the difference, but he recalled reading something like that as he'd done his own reading about the sidhe.

He sat up a moment later and got out of bed to step to the table and start his notebook up again before he ambled off to the john for a pee.

Back online two minutes later, he tried to think of where he'd read it.

Danann.

Danann.

He was looking at a web page with his answer a few minutes later. What he saw caused him to wonder even more.

The supposed and legendary, mythical previous inhabitants of Ireland were known as the Tuatha Dé Danann, or 'People of the Goddess Danu', who defeated the prior Fir Bolg people. He sighed as he read. The place sure seemed to have had it's share of landlords.

He read a little further and saw that to many back in the day, the fairies and other assorted legendary beasties of that place were the literary versions of the ones who'd gone before.

He sat back for a moment.

Alright, he thought, but that first name, ... He retrieved her card and sat looking at it, seeing that there was only her name and email on it now for some reason.

He had his answer even quicker for that one. 'Cleena' was an anglicised version of 'Clídna', 'Clionadh', 'Clíodna' and even, 'Clíona'. And all of them were other versions of the original.

Clíodhna.

He read on and sat back again, though this time, his mouth hung open.

And who was the original?

Why, the Queen of the Banshees of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who else?

He sat staring at the screen for a few moments more and then he reached for the remnants of his bottle of Glenlivet.

Well if THIS little discovery didn't call for a drink ...

He pulled out his phone and looked at it, thinking about calling the only friend that he had in the world who knew his secret.