As the carriage returned to the city, night was falling.
They slipped into Dunmore just before the gates were shut for the evening.
Having won over Captain Cormac and the others, Aisling felt the weight on her heart ease a little.
Even if she was to be married into Dunmara, loyal soldiers at her side would give her more security and make things easier.
What she had said today was not only meant to bind them to her; it was sincere.
If they were unwilling to go north with her, she would not force them, nor would she hold it against them.
In the distant, desolate lands beyond the southern borders, she needed people she could trust absolutely.
Once they had agreed to go north together, Aisling promptly wrote to her grandfather in Ardmore, explaining the situation of Captain Cormac and the others and asking him to look after their families.
She also had the soldiers write letters home to be sent along with hers, since none of them knew when they might return to the south.
On top of that, she took some coin from her private funds and shared it out among the men to send to their families.
After this, every one of them felt deeply in her debt, and would gladly have repaid her with their lives.
By the time they reached Devlin House, night had fully settled.
In the deep blue sky a thin crescent moon shone faintly, ringed by countless stars.
Dunmore is a city on the ground, and the Earth is a star in the sky.
The whole of Dunmore lay silent under the boundless night, with only the towers along the walls and a few great houses still dotted with candlelight.
Aisling’s room was lit with several candles, bright as day.
After a long day on the road, she ate a little porridge and some oatcakes as soon as she got back, but she did not go to rest.
Instead she asked Aunt Bríd to bring out a chest of account books, and sat down cross legged on the bed, leafing through them one by one.
In public her manners were impeccable, but in private she was far more at ease.
After all, kneeling in the formal posture for long stretches was punishing.
In her childhood her health had been poor, and her grandfather had never pressed her on strict etiquette, wishing only that she would grow up happy and well.
It was only later, when she had to move in society, that she learned proper manners in earnest from Aunt Bríd.
Aunt Bríd’s heart was much like the Lord of Ardmore’s: as long as the young lady was happy, she was content.
So in private she never held Aisling back, which only made the girl more carefree.
By candlelight, Aisling studied the account books in her hands, which recorded her earnings over the past few years.
Part of it came from the original estates of Devlin House, which had prospered under her management: the farms in the countryside and several town houses.
The rest came from other ventures she had reshaped, such as Gleann Cellars and today’s Halloran’s Silversmiths, along with a few apothecaries and inns.
These ventures were not only for profit.
Alcohol’s power to disinfect and sterilize was highly effective against infection in battlefield wounds.
But given the limits of the age, even with the theory in her head, mass production was difficult.
If cost were no object, repeated distillation could yield high strength spirit, but the price was far too high: it swallowed manpower and resources for meagre returns, and made little difference in practice.
She could only explore slowly and improve efficiency within the limits she had.
Even so, when the Lord of Ardmore discovered that the spirit she distilled worked wonders against infected and festering wounds, he was overjoyed and praised her endlessly.
As for the silversmith’s, she had originally meant to use it to research iron smelting, but had later realized how naive that was.
Iron smelting was then in transition from the puddling method to the casting method.
Puddling could produce excellent steel, but the process was intricate and demanded highly skilled smiths, so it could not be scaled up to arm the rank and file soldiers.
Casting could raise the quality of the steel while greatly simplifying the work.
If it succeeded, it could lift the whole realm’s productivity.
But although she had the silversmith’s, it was a long way from a smelting works.
The engineering and equipment required were far beyond what a small silversmith’s could manage.
And experiments in Ardmore?
Ha!
Ardmore was crawling with King Cathal’s spies.
If he learned that the Delaney family was researching iron smelting, he would probably send troops to Ardmore the very next day on charges of rebellion.
So the matter was left hanging, and Aisling could only verify her theories in small workshops and run small scale trials.
When the time was right, perhaps it could be scaled up, but even then she would have to be extremely careful.
Medicine, on the other hand, was not restricted, which comforted her somewhat.
In this age, physicians were still of low standing and often confused with sorcery.
When they fell ill, many common folk could not tell a witch doctor from a physician, and resorted to drinking charmed water and performing rites to drive away evil spirits and cure their ailments.
Aisling’s health was poor, and the Delaney family had sought out famous physicians for her, eventually bringing in Donal Kearney.
The moment she heard his name, Aisling knew Donal Kearney would never leave Ardmore.
Historically, Donal Kearney had been a renowned physician, especially skilled in internal medicine.
It was said he descended from Dian Cécht, the Healer of legend.
Dian Cécht was credited with the “Treatise on Fevers and Wasting Ills,” in which the principle of reading the signs and treating each illness by its own kind is the foundation of clinical practice and the soul of traditional medicine.
The Delaneys had invited him to Ardmore specifically to treat Aisling, having heard of his reputation.
After examining her and prescribing medicine, Donal Kearney wished to leave Ardmore and carry on his travels as a physician.
But the Delaneys persuaded him to stay, offering gold and silver, rare medicines, and even suggesting that fate itself had brought them together, until they wore him down.
She told him of modern medicine, of human anatomy, and of molecular biology, all wholly new to him.
Anatomy had its precedents, but theories at the molecular level sounded to him like fairy tales.
At first Donal Kearney could hardly believe it.
Only after checking each detail did he realize that medicine held such marvels.
He was struck dumb with amazement, feeling the world had turned upside down.
Of course, Aisling was only pulling his leg.
Although she had spent many years in hospital because of illness, teaching herself some medicine and overhearing others discuss conditions, she had never practised it.
She had not even run an animal trial, so how could she claim real expertise?
That did not stop her from using her half baked theory to astonish this man of a thousand years ago.
Later she had a magnifying glass made from clear crystal.
He was utterly captivated by it, and that was how Aisling managed to keep him in Ardmore.
She had not kept him to treat her own illness, but to test whether she could push modern medicine forward.
Often the birth of a new theory matters more than its later refinement.
Once the seed is planted, it will in time grow into a great tree, thick with branches and leaves.
Some years on, the land grew ever more turbulent.
However strong Ardmore’s soldiers and sturdy its horses, it was in the end only one province.
After the fall of Kilmore, Ardmore stood isolated and unsupported, like a lone boat on a vast sea, finally swallowed by the surging waves.
All 361 members of the Delaney family perished.
Those few plain words were the tragic ending the chronicles recorded for the Delaneys.
Aisling was deeply afraid that she could not change history, and that Ardmore would in the end be engulfed by war.
All she could do was keep striving, using her limited knowledge to add a brick or a tile to Ardmore, so that when the great flood came, something would remain standing to give people shelter.
Donal Kearney stayed on in Ardmore, testing medical theories again and again and compiling some of them into practical guidelines for the Ardmore army.
He had two sons, the elder Fionn and the younger Conall, both of whom inherited his skills.
Fionn was especially drawn to the modern medicine Aisling spoke of.
Two years ago he had followed her to the capital and settled in one of her apothecaries, and over the past year or two she had visited him often to talk medicine.
This time, she wanted to take him with her.
“Aunt, tomorrow send word to Fionn and ask whether he is willing to go north with me.
Only ask; there’s no need to press him,” Aisling said.
Fionn was quite unlike Captain Cormac and the others: he was not one of the Ardmore family’s soldiers.
Then Aisling turned to the last portion of her holdings, the ones kept in the shadows.