Deirdre (44 page)

Kyras O’Dubhda, champion of Gleannmara and second cousin to the lost crown prince, was a natural choice. His fighting and leadership skills and his blood tie to the royal line made him so. Still, the news that Cairell had been so readily replaced shook the young prince to the core. He’d come prepared to mourn his father, not have the throne passed by him with so little decorum.

What spun Deirdre’s head was that Dealla, her father’s grieving young widow, was to marry the strapping king-elect following Kyras’s crowning.

Not that there would be one, Deirdre thought as the royal party made its way toward the towering whitewashed gates, where the blue and gold of Gleannmara waved boldly against the sky in welcome. To her right, Alric, much recovered after a night’s rest, rode on one of the
borrowed steeds from the village. Cairell rode to her left.

Neither man seemed himself. Pain from his arm gave Cairell cause to wince if he moved it the wrong way, but he was determined to ride in as a king, not as an invalid in the wagon that trailed them with men. In case Alric’s instinct that the news of Cairell’s survival might not be well received, the women and children remained behind. The wagon was borrowed to expedite their journey to avoid embarrassment for all concerned.

“Stay close to me when we get inside,” Alric told Deirdre as they approached the gates. Already trumpets heralded their arrival, but their identity was yet to be revealed.

Deirdre studied her husband. “Have you seen something?”

“I exercise precaution before what is surely to be a terrible upset for some.”

Aside from the “I love you more than life itself that Alric whispered in her ear at the first stir of morning, this was all he’d had to say during the journey. Each glance she stole at him found him lost in thought.

“I agree with the need for caution,” Cairell said, his attention fixed ahead of them. “If I hadn’t been so excited just to get home alive, I’d have thought of it myself. The prospect of power can make men do things they wouldn’t ordinarily think of. Kyras undoubtedly will be disappointed and he does have a temper.”

Without a close look, no one would recognize Deirdre’s brother in his tattered clothing. Or her for that matter. If Helewis could see her wedding dress now. Deirdre smiled, recalling how radiant her friend had been, waving from the dock beside her new husband.
Father, You have been so good and faithful. Surely You pave the way for us now.

“Halt, there. Only them by invitation are to enter the rath this day, by order of the queen.” One of the guards gathered at the base of the tower gate strutted, adorned in his best tunic, toward them. Cairell stopped him still in his tracks with his ringing words.

“Lew LongLegs, are you telling me I need an invitation to my own home?”

The man halted, staring, mouth agape, eyes bugging as though to spring from his head.

“He’s no ghost, Lew, and neither am I,” Deirdre hastily assured the stricken man. Lew had guarded the main gate for as long as she could remember. Now he was a senior member of the staff, one who reported for duty only on special occasions—like the crowning of a new king.

Coming to life, the older gentleman made short the distance between them with the stride for which he’d been named. “God be praised, what I wouldn’t give for your
athair
to be seein’ what I see! I’m pure tired of mournin’, milady, pure tired,” he reiterated, “but how—?”

His thick, gray-white brow knitted over a beak of a nose. She’d giggled once as a child at the impressive volume of his sneeze, only to have Lew declare that his loud snout made him the perfect sentry. He needed no trumpet.

“God works in strange ways, Lew.” Cairell waved his arm toward Alric. “This good Saxon prince and his men have brought us home, and just in time I hear.”

Lew’s pale blue gaze widened even more. With an oath of excitement, he waved at his fellow guards. “Let them through. ’Tis Cairell, and the lady Deirdre, back from the dead!”

Word spread like ripples across a pond, preceding them as they proceeded. Lew LongLegs led the bedraggled party himself. Familiar faces flocked to both sides of them, mirroring images of shock, then thawing to joy as Cairell and Deirdre rode through the buildings and stalls that had outgrown the original rath. By the time they reached the great hall, where the crowning of the new king was about to take place, the clamor of welcome had reached a roar.

A company of Kyras’s personal guards burst out of the round stone tower Deirdre’s grandfather had built to replace the old one of wattle and wood. Weapons brandished, they charged down the earthen ramp to the common, slowing upon seeing a single rider break from the group to meet them. Cairell sat straight and proud, one arm in a sling and the other resting on the jeweled hilt of a sword worth more than all the steeds among his followers.

“Make way for the rightful king of Gleannmara!” At Lew’s glad shout and upon recognizing Cairell, the soldiers parted in ones and twos. Weapons at rest, they knelt as Cairell led his ragged procession
into the hall itself. When Cairell reached the great stone hearth in the center, he circled to the left and Deirdre to the right, their eyes fixed on the dais. Two-hundred-year-old columns carved by Gleannmara’s first king held up the velvet canopy over the throne. At the throne’s base, a tall, brown-haired warrior in rich robes rose from his knees before the bishops, who’d come from the most prestigious sees in all Erin.

Kyras blanched at the sight of Cairell, as though he’d truly seen a ghost. Aside from the clip-clop of Deirdre’s steed coming to Cairell’s side, not a sound broke the breathless hush of the room. The scene might have been a painting but for the bishop of Armagh conceding to wipe the perspiration from his brow. Standing above them was Dealla, the grieving queen. Was the grief in the tear-ravaged eyes that met Deirdre’s real, or was the woman a consummate actress?

“God’s timing is most remarkable and never without blessing.” The queen spoke with an admirable composure.

Descending in a float of dark violet robes, walking past the landing where the holy men were about to ordain Kyras as Gleannmara’s new king, she came before Cairell and knelt. “Gleannmara welcomes her king and his sister home.”

As though pinched into action, not unlike a recalcitrant child in chapel, Kyras hurried forth to join her. “Indeed, I echo our queen’s welcome most fervently ’Tis truly a miracle.”

“It’s good to be home,” Cairell declared. “And yes, good champion, it is more miracle than the imagination can conjure.”

Deirdre joined the collective sigh of relief when he motioned the two to their feet. She wasn’t certain what she expected to happen. Alric had been so insistent that they be prepared for trouble … but then, he was accustomed to the backstabbing of Galstead. This was Gleannmara of the just, enemy to greed and ambition.

“Help me off this steed, friend,” Cairell said to the man, who, but for a few moments, would have worn the royal torque the bishop of Kildare held in his hands.

Before Kyras could reach her brother, Alric was between them, a fierce apparition that had not been there a heartbeat before. “You extend your trust too freely, Irish.” His voice fairly growled his emotions—warning
for Cairell, derision for Kyras.

Cairell wrestled his startled horse into submission with his one hand, but Alric stood like an immovable wall, oblivious to the danger of the steed’s pawing hooves. His withering gaze would not leave Gleannmara’s champion.

“Alric, what
are
you doing?” Deirdre gripped her own steed’s reins. Her husband had not been himself since they’d found him on the beach. Something had changed in him, more than the silvered hair at his temples. She slid off her horse.

He didn’t spare so much as a glance in her direction. “Stand back, wife!”

Dealla fell away with a gasp, following the orders intended for Deirdre. “Who is this madman? What does he mean
wife
?”

“My guards will skewer you, if you do not stand down now,” Kyras threatened.

True enough; Gleannmara’s finest spear throwers stood ready round the dais. Only Kyras’s proximity made them hesitate.

“No!” Deirdre rushed to Alric despite his warning. “Hold your weapons. My husband is not well,” she explained to Dealla and Kyras.

“You
married
this man?”

“Aye,” Deirdre answered her stepmother. “And he gave up everything to save Cairell and me. But we were shipwrecked, and he was struck on the head—”

“I am clearer of mind than I have ever been, milady,” Alric informed her calmly “And of eye.” Still, his steady burning gaze had not wavered from the face of Kyras O’Dubhda.

“Then you can see that you are no match for the armed men who surround you,” Gleannmara’s champion pointed out.

“No, I am not. But the God of truth is, and it is He who protects me. The deceiver and those he deceives cannot see His heavenly ranger.”

Deirdre shot a panicked look at Cairell, who approached Alric from the other side.

“Alric,” he ventured hesitantly.
“Brother …”

It was the first time she’d heard Cairell call Alric brother. She
thought she saw the cold set of her husband’s features flicker with something other than the pure contempt he had for a man he’d never seen until today.

“If you do indeed consider me your brother, Cairell of Gleannmara,” Alric interrupted, “then hear my story that you may see this cur for who he really is.”

U
nintimidated by his doubt-ridden audience, Alric gave a short account of the merchant who’d boasted in a Dublin tavern that a king’s ransom sailed on the
Mell
, bound for Scotia Minor. If what Alric suggested was true, that the merchant was indeed Kyras O’Dubhda, then black treachery was afoot.

“You lie, Saxon!” Where shock blanched Kyras O’Dubhda’s face before, purple rage mottled it now.

“I have committed many sins, but lying is not among them.” Alric’s reply was soft, but well Deirdre knew the beast was far more dangerous when it was quiet. And when he smiled, the blood of his prey broke into shards of ice … if the prey possessed any will to live.

The conflict appeared unsolvable without violence, even death. Kyras was the type who would not afford himself the luxury of fearing death. Deirdre’s blood was shot with dread as her dark-haired cousin turned to Cairell.

“You will believe this thieving, murdering pirate over me? Cairell, we fought shoulder to shoulder when the Ulstermen tried to enforce unfair tribute.”

Rallying behind their champion, the clan chiefs of Gleannmara, as well as their attending allies, began to stomp on the slate floor of the keep. As the support grew louder, the Saxons rushed to stand with Alric. King’s law prohibiting weapons on such occasions—and God’s grace holding tempers in check—was all that kept violence at bay.

Not unaware of the irony, Deirdre protested the brand she had once laid on Alric herself. “He’s no thief nor pirate.”

Too late to put the lid back on the tinderbox, she was drowned out. Such a charge should have been settled in a formal hearing, but then who could possibly have foreseen this? Royal guards formed a barrier around the crown prince’s party shoulder to shoulder, weapons out. In an attempt to restore order, Cairell signaled the heralds to their trumpets.

“I remind you all of the king’s law,” he shouted when the blast shocked the protests into relative silence. “The first to raise a violent hand will have it cut off, is that understood?”

He paused, until the clamor of the additional soldiers that rushed into the room to reinforce their comrades abated. The quick restoration of order was a tribute to Deirdre’s father’s rule.

Marching up the steps of the dais to where the bishops stood, Cairell turned and faced the crowd. “First things first. Gleannmara needs a king. Is there any man among you who has cause to challenge me for the crown? If so, say ye so now.”

Deirdre was not surprised when no one offered protest. The late king had already named Cairell as aiccid, his heir apparent. It had been done with unanimous support at the time. Even the sun seemed to cast its approval of the bold young man standing before his father’s empty seat, streaming through the solar balcony on the second floor and catching on the jeweled scabbard of Kieran’s sword and casting brilliant colors on the stone and richly tapestried walls below.

“Then, holy fathers, I ask your
speedy
blessing and authority.” Though it must have pained him immensely, Cairell managed to unsheathe the sword and handed it over to the bishop from the see of Glendalough. With a solemn grimace, he knelt before the three holy men for the ceremony.

Well aware of the need for urgency the bishop of Kildare placed the solid gold torque around Cairell’s neck with a blessing so hurried that, for all her laurels in Latin, Deirdre could not make it out. Glendalough took up Kieran’s sword and touched it upon the prince’s shoulders, proclaiming Gleannmara’s motto in a loud voice, “Home to the Just, Enemy to the Ambitious and the Greedy.” Finally Armagh took the weapon from his holy brother and presented it to Cairell.

“By commission of the holy Triune of the heavens and the high king of Ireland, I bid you, Cairell, son of Fergal, rise and take up the sacred sword dedicated by your forefather Kieran to God and Gleannmara. Long live King Cairell!”

Surely never had there been such a crowning. Bedecked in rags and gold, the new king faced his court, the great sword raised in one hand,
his other still ensconced in a sling. Recalling how it had taken all the strength of both her hands to brandish the weapon, Deirdre marveled at what seemed a miracle. And if ever there was a need for one, it was now. Her brother would need God’s own hand to settle this matter fairly without dividing his court.

The crowd took up the cry “Long live King Cairell.”

Instead of filling the rafters until the wee hours of the following morning as had happened at Fergal’s coronation, the cheers faded abruptly at the heralds’ sharp signal.

“You have honored my father this day, and now you honor me,” Cairell said in a prelude to his first speech as king. Although he was not dressed in royal robes, he carried his mean attire like one born to lead. He somehow looked bigger standing on the dais—and older.