Deirdre (16 page)

“Deirdre? Deirdre!” Alric shook her face from side to side as he faded from her view. “What is wrong with you?”

Gradually he came into focus—the man, not the animal. “I …” Deirdre hesitated, adrift in a fog of recollection. He thought she’d meant to kill him. His brow rose in impatience, his eyes dark with distrust.

“On the cross, I swear I meant no harm, I did think about it,” she admitted, “but … but God wants me here.” What else could it be? Emotion welled in her voice as well as her eyes. “I just don’t know
why
.”

She stared into Alric’s face, as if the answer might lie behind his guarded gaze. Something incredible was happening to her and it frightened her. Had she inadvertently tempted a Saxon demon? How else could she suddenly understand this heathen tongue?

Father God, save—

Alric dipped down, catching a renegade tear with a kiss so tender her prayer stalled.

“Don’t cry sweetling. I swear by
all
the gods, I will not dishonor you.” His deep-pitched croon was velvet enough to make the marble nymph of the fountain outside swoon in his arms. “On my mother’s grave, I promise I will make you my wife before your God and His priest.”

Priest. The very mention kindled hope. Yes, she needed a priest. “I want to see Father Scanlan. I—” He caught yet another tear, this one dangerously close to her lips. The thought of Alric, particularly this gentle Alric, staking claim on them warmed her body like a wildfire, despite the cold floor beneath her. Her heightened senses could almost discern the perspiration forcing its way through each pore, making her tremble with anticipation. Though of what, she had no idea. All she knew was that the demon inside her wanted it.

“You need not fear for your soul,” he whispered against her lips, “for I shall respect your faith.”

Her soul. She had to think of her soul. The heady nuzzle of Alric’s cheek, rough and manly against her face, combined with his long, relentless kiss would only lead to its destruction. If she gave in, the hands that wormed their way behind her would weave chains she could never break away from, for the demon hacked away at her control, one heartbeat at a time.

“Jesus save me, for I cannot save myself.” Even as she prayed, she clasped Alric’s face between her folded hands. Lucifer himself was the most beautiful of all the angels. If she gave herself to Alric—“Deliver me, Lord, else I am lost. Take away this demon, I beg you—”

“Demon!” Alric pulled away looking at her as though she’d driven his scramasax through his chest. “Is that what you see in me?” He held her by the shoulders at arm’s length.

Alric’s wounded gray gaze faded from view as the medallion he wore swung back and forth between them. The eyes of the wolf’s head mounted on the wooden disc glowed with unnatural fire. Deirdre turned her head, but there was no escaping as its snarl gave way to gaping jaws that opened wider with each pass until all she could see was a pair of red eyes in the blackness. And when they closed, not even the scream propelled from the last thread of her consciousness could find a way out.

“She’s burning up with fever!” Doda cast a reproving look at Alric as she tucked Deirdre in. “This poor girl has been through so much, it’s no wonder her constitution has weakened.”

Alric stopped pacing beside the bed. Try as he might, he could not shake Deirdre back into consciousness. Perhaps if he’d seen what had struck such stark terror on her ashen face, he might be able to explain.

“So what is it?” he demanded as Doda poured water from a pitcher into a bathing pan. “The plague? Some female malady? What?”

“A protected princess and likely a virgin.” Doda snorted. “Maybe it was the sight of a hot-blooded man who scared her witless with his—”

Alric held up his hand. “You know me better than that. I did no more than subdue her when she tried to turn my sword on me.”

“That is not my business.” The housemistress turned to soak a clean towel in the water.

“No, it is not.” All the same, he’d done nothing to frighten Deirdre except defend himself. As for his kisses …

Alric plowed his hands through his hair. She’d been warmed by his attentions until she panicked. “If I’d an inkling of the ill wind waiting on that cursed ship of hers, I’d have retreated in the opposite direction as fast I could make sail. She’s been near the death of me.” Was his destiny to never have peace of mind again?

“Looks to me, it’s the other way around. It’s sure you look hale and hearty as the day you came squalling from your sainted mother’s womb.”

Alric groaned inwardly. When old crones started running on about
knowing him since the day of his birth, a stern lecture was in the making. “Doda, I have heard all I will hear on this. Whatever is wrong with that woman, it’s not of my making.”

She looked up at him, her brow raised. “Did I say it was?”

Frig’s mercy. “I’m going to find the priest she asked for.” He turned to the wall where his sword belt still hung.

“She asked for a priest, and you refused her?”

Alric swung the belt around his waist, patience exhausted. “Of course I did! But only after I ravaged her until she fainted.”

Doda swelled like a toad, not even deigning to look Alric’s way as she switched the towels on Deirdre’s forehead. “Utter nonsense! Don’t think that I don’t know my princeling better than that,” she muttered as he rolled his eyes and stalked out of the room.

Alric fetched Tor from the chain Belrap used to restrain the dog when he became unmanageable. The animal jumped up on Alric, lavishing him without censure. That was the good thing about a dog. It never judged, just gave unconditional affection and, at times, concern when it sensed something was amiss with its owner. Or maybe it was wishful thinking that suggested such affinity.

“Come along, friend. We’ve some hunting to do,” he told the hound, shoving him down as he tried to jump at him. “Now,
stand guard
!”

Obediently Tor dropped behind Alric and sat down, waiting with a puppylike wriggle for him to move on. Grinning, Alric petted the coarse ruff of Tor’s neck, working his fingers under the leather collar to the dog’s ecstasy “Good dog. Good dog.”

Since the rest of Alric’s world had been turned upside down by Deirdre’s entry into his life, he’d wondered if Tor had been affected as well. He took a short leash and tucked it under his belt, in the event that it was needed. Perhaps that was what he needed, Alric thought, flushing with the memory of kissing Deirdre. When she was in his arms, the discipline he prided himself on was as elusive as the reason for such loss of control.

Tor’s impatient bark tore Alric from his quandary. With a lopsided
grin, he nodded. “You are absolutely right, my friend. What we need is action. Let’s go to the
Wulfshead
.”

Tor vaulted ahead of Alric at the word go, but in midgait, he seemed to recall his training and dropped to heel again. With a comical yelp that seemed to say “oops,” he showed Alric his teeth. To someone who didn’t know the animal, it might have appeared a threat, but Alric knew it as a grin and returned it halfheartedly. At least someone still remembered who he really was and loved him for it.

A demon. The cursed woman thought him a demon!

Struck with an overwhelming urge, Alric kneeled down and gathered the eager wolfhound in his arms, hugging it to him tightly. Not since he was a callow youth at his mother’s knee had the need for understanding and acceptance weighed so heavily upon his heart.

D
eirdre struggled to open her eyes, her mind as blurred as her vision until she made out Father Scanlan sitting on a bench at her bedside, where he’d nodded off against the wall. It took a moment for her to piece together where she was. A lamp burned on the table at the far side of the mattress and the day waned beyond the open window. Frowning, she raised her arm to wipe the dampness from her forehead and was shocked by its weight, more like stone than flesh, as if she’d been bled of strength, although she saw no sign of a leech’s pan. Was she dying?

Deirdre closed her eyes, trying to remember. As she searched through the mire of recollections, it was difficult to separate what was real and what was illusion. She saw herself tiptoeing past a sleeping Alric—how boyishly handsome he looked in slumber, despite the golden shadow of manhood upon his cheek. But it was his scramasax that called to her. No, not the blade. It was the belt buckle, with the red-eyed wolf, mocking her with its glowing gaze. Even as she’d reached for it, she felt foolish to think its demonic glow was anything more than morning sun lending its fire to the stones, then—

Deirdre shot up with a gasp, clutching her chest.

Beside her, Father Scanlan started. “Oh … you’re awake.”

Yes, she was awake, but the fright Alric had given her, grabbing her and wrestling her to the floor managed even now to wedge her heart in her throat. Deirdre hardly noticed the priest as a steady flood of memories swept into her mind. Alric had lunged at her throat with bared teeth … then the wolf’s head swinging between them ever closer to her, its eyes—

“Lady Deirdre?” Scanlan watched as she clutched her neck. It was damp but without wound.

Nay, it was an illusion. She saw it clearly now, a cross, not a wolf’s head. Alric had wanted her cross, wanted her to swear upon it that she
had not thought to cut his throat with his own weapon. The recollection drained the stiffness from her shoulders as tears of humiliation and relief stung Deirdre’s cheeks. Still, she heard again Alric ordering Belrap to take Tor away, the syllables of his pagan words as harsh to the ear as the wolfhound’s bark. The thunderous prince had wanted to be left alone with her …

She’d understood his baffling language! So how could she swear that she hadn’t seen the garnet eyes of the graven wolf’s head open and close?

Deirdre grabbed the golden cross between fingers of flesh as invisible ones cold as the grave raked up her spine. “Holy Father,” she whispered, trembling.

“You’re safe, milady” Scanlan’s voice seemed as far away as God, beyond the black fear congealing about her.

“I’m lost,” she protested with a wail. “Possessed to be sure.” At the touch of Scanlan’s hands upon her shoulders, Deirdre threw herself at him, clinging to him to keep the gaping, snarling demon from taking her over completely.

“You’ve a fever, child, nothing more.”

“It was real. Father, a demon gave me the Saxon tongue. I heard it and I understood it.”

“Feverish babbling, Deirdre. Perhaps the same malady that sickened Orna on the journey over.”

“
It was real, as God is my witness.”
Deirdre clamped her hand over her mouth, but she could not take back the sharp-edged foreign syllables she spat at the priest. Horror clutched at her throat.
“God save me, it still possesses me!”

Scanlan backed away from Deirdre, crossing himself. “Father of Holies, Son of man, Spirit of the flesh, be with us.” He might as well have wrenched Deirdre’s heart from her chest, that not even a priest dared touch her. Clearly he was shaken by what he’d heard.

It had to be the work of a demon. “I’m lost, aren’t I?”

Scanlan shook his head, gathering himself from the initial shock. “No one is lost who cries for the Christ.”

A change came over the man. What Deirdre had always thought a
soft cherubic cheek squared with the fierce set of a warrior. She’d always seen Scanlan as meek, the sort who would inherit the earth, not take it with a sword of fire. Yet his eyes blazed as though forging a weapon for battle beyond the scope of mortal sensibilities. As he approached Deirdre and folded her hands in his, the power of his presence encompassed her.

“Pray to Saint Michael, the Victorious, with me. Thou, Michael the Victorious …” Awkward at first, he proceeded in the language he’d studied in order to save the lost of Albion.

“I make my circuit under thy shield,” Deirdre chimed in. Could they pray the demon out in its own tongue? “Conqueror of the dragon, be at my back … ranger of the heavens … thou warrior of the King of all …” Though one of her favorites, how foreign the ancient hymn sounded to her ear now. “Though I should travel ocean and the hard globe of the world, no harm can e’er befall me near the shelter of thy shield …”

“Believe it, Deirdre,” Scanlan interjected, drawing her head to his chest. His cross of wood and bone burned cool against her flushed cheek.

“Be the sacred Three of glory aye at peace with me …”

Peace.
The word cleared the knot that throttled the previous lines.
“In every thing on high or low.”
The age-old melody to which she’d sung the hymn many times found its way
into
her voice, lifting it and the darkness with hands that, though unseen, bore the marks of driven nails. “Every furnishing and flock, belong to the holy Triune of Glory …”

“As do you, child,” Scanlan said.

He raised his hand. “I invoke the Trinity, that you may rise from your bed, Deirdre of Gleannmara.” The priest threw aside the coverlet and backed away.

A prick of panic assailed Deirdre, for she recalled how leaden her limbs were.

Scanlan saw it and his smile was reassuring. “Sing, milady Take neither your eyes nor your heart from the Almighty.”

Or she’d sink back into despair, just like Saint Peter into the water.
Although her legs protested, she swung them off the bed and finished the hymn.

“And to Michael …”

She stood, wavering with uncertainty as her gown fell around her ankles. The early evening air rushed to her skin, as if to scour the damp remains of her weakness with its cool breath. Eyes widening, Deirdre felt she might float above the floor, as though she were weightless in body and spirit.

“… the victorious!”

“By virture of the Christ’s birth and baptism …”

“By virture of the Christ’s birth and baptism …” So why did she still speak in this vile tongue as though weened on it?

“Crucifixion, burial, and resurrection …”

Her entire body felt lighter than the arm she’d lifted only moments ago, making it impossible to dwell on the doubt, had she wanted to. Which she didn’t. “Crucifixion, burial, and resurrection …”