A week later, Caitlyn was down with a bad chill. Shed been confined to the house for two days, sneezing and coughing and in general feeling awful. It had been raining without stop for all of that time, so the younger d'Arcys thought and said that she had taken the illness just to get out of her outdoor work. Caitlyn, miserable at being kept indoors with only Mrs. McFee for company, could have told them that she would have traded places in an instant. But arguing took energy, which she didn't have. So she just sniffled and retired to her room, letting them say what they liked.
When she awoke it was past midnight, she judged, and her bedroom was as black as the inside of a cave. The night was moonless, and the rain made the dark seem twice as impenetrable. The steady pattering on the roof just above her head had seemed companionable when she had gone to sleep earlier. But with the discomforts of her illness, she was not sleeping well, and now she had awakened in the middle of the pitch-black night. Thoughts of banshees and ghosdes ran through her mind, along with a vivid memory of the ghostly horsemen who haunted the Casde. Shivering, Caitlyn thought that they were likely to be abroad again on a night such as this. She was glad she was not in the Castle to see them.
Such thoughts made the darkness intolerable. Shivering, she reached for the candle on her bedside. The flint and steel she usually kept there were missing, and of course the fire in the small grate had gone out, probably sizzled to death by raindrops coursing down the chimney, so she could not light it. Remaining alone and awake in the dark was too unpleasant, she decided. She would make her way to the kitchen, where Mrs. McFee kept the fire smoored, or banked, so that it would not be going out overnight. From that she would light her candle and her fire.
Since she slept in her shift, she pulled her quilt over that for protection against the night air. She did not possess such a thing as a wrapper, but the quilt served her well, although modesty was a secondary consideration to warmth at the moment. The d'Arcys all slept like the dead, with Cormac in particular rattling the rooftop with his snores, so she was unlikely to encounter one of them on her journey. But it was too cold in the house to go without some sort of covering, even if she had been alone.
Feeling her way in the pitch-darkness, Caitlyn made it down the stairs to the kitchen, lit her candle, and was on the second-floor landing again when it struck her: she couldn't hear Cormac's snores. She couldn't hear anything at all, besides the rain. A sudden conviction seized her that she was the only living being in the house. The notion was chilling. She would never sleep unless she knew for sure that the d'Arcys were where they were supposed to be.
Carefully cupping her hand around the candle, she moved toward the door to Connor's chamber. They couldn't be outside on such a wild, stormy night… Uniting the knob carefully so as not to waken him if he should be sleeping within, she pushed open the door and lifted her candle so that light spilled over the bed. It was empty, had not even been slept in. Feeling equal parts indignant and alarmed, she checked the three other rooms in rapid succession. None of the d'Arcys were in their beds. They were not even in the house. What possible explanation could there be for all four of them being absent at the same time? On such a night?
Caitlyn stood pondering for a moment. A suspicion occurred to her-it was on just such a night that she had seen the ghosdy riders at the Casde. But those riders had dis- appeared before her very eyes. They could not have been flesh-and-blood men. They had been banshees, or figments of her imagination, she had decided long since. On the other hand, Connor and Cormac had come to find her, at the Castle, the very next morning, knowing precisely where to look despite the fact that they had been searching for her for three days previously without success. The more she thought about that, the more damning it was. But how had they disappeared? Only banshees could vanish into the air at will…
Making up her mind suddenly, Caitlyn entered Cormac's room. When she emerged, she was dressed as a lad down to die cloak around her shoulders. She would go to the barn first, to see if any horses were missing. If they were-and she expected that-she would mount Belinda and ride out in search of tracks.
By the time she reached the bam, her head and cloak were thoroughly wet. A wetting on top of the chill was not a good idea, but she was too intent on discovering the d'Arcys' whereabouts to give it much thought.
Luckily she had had the forethought to bring a lantern with her. As soon as she threw open the door of the stable, she was able to determine that Fharannain was missing. Making a quick inventory, she discovered that Thunderer was missing as well, as was Balladeer, Rory's horse, and Kildare, Cormac's horse. Aristedes' stall was empty too, and for a moment Caitlyn was puzzled. Sticking her head into the litle room at the back of the stable that Mickeen occupied, she had her answer: Mickeen was on Aristedes. But where could they have gone?
Caitlyn remembered that Mickeen had said the devil drove Connor, and she remembered too his tale of the volunteers that had attacked the Castle and killed the old Earl. Was it possible that Connor and his brothers, and Mickeen as well, had joined a rival gang, the Straw Boys, perhaps, or some such? Obviously whatever they were doing was done in the greatest secrecy. No one was supposed to know, and except for herself she assumed no one did. And she wouldn't have known if she had not awakened in the middle of the night with the miserable chill and then failed to hear Cormac's snores. She could have lived at Donoughmore for years and never guessed.
She was still standing in the little room that was Mickeen's when she heard a great rumbling noise. For a moment she thought it was thunder, but then the stone floor began to shake. Eyes wide, Caitlyn stared at the floor. She had no idea what was happening, but she did know that the stable was no place to be. Running, she stopped short just outside Mickeen's room and gaped. At the opposite end of the stable, where the straw had been swept clean, a large square hole was opening in the floor. Even as Caitlyn blinked at it, disbelieving her own eyes, the rumbling ceased. From somewhere came the presence of mind to blow out the lantern she held in her hand. The stable did not go dark; light was shining from the hole. Seconds later, with a clatter of hooves, five horses burst from the earth with their riders. Connor on Fharannain was in the lead.