Erinsong (23 page)

Her gut twisted in knots as she fingered the
tender bruise. His skin was still cool under her touch.

“O God, I didn’t mean to hit him that hard,”
she prayed. “Lord of Heaven, be merciful and forgive me.

“Maybe you should be more concerned about me
forgiving you.” One blue eye squinted up at her. Jorand struggled
to sit up, then groaned and fell back on their bedding. His hand
flew to his temple.

Brenna released the breath she hadn’t
realized she was holding.

“Ah! Ye’re alive and in your right mind! God
be praised.” She leaned down and peppered his face with kisses. “
‘Tis sorry I am, but ye see that I had to do it.”

“Why?” He pushed her away and dragged in a
deep breath.

“Why indeed.” She sat back on her heels,
hands fisted at her waist. “For one thing, there were too many of
them and only one of ye, in case ye hadn’t noticed.”

“You think me so powerless?”

“I think ye dim-witted to
barge into danger against
such odds and to
no purpose.”

“No purpose, she says,” Jorand grumbled.
“Don’t you want to see him dead?”

“Aye, of course I do.” She
softened her tone and
leaned down to
caress his stiff jawline. “I’ve wished
the
man dead every day since I first clapped eyes on
him, but I had rather see ye living.”

“I told you I’d be back,”
he said, refusing to be
mollified. “My
word is my oath, I’m not in the habit
of
making promises I don’t intend to deliver.”

“And I’m not in the habit of standing by,
wringing me hands, while someone I care for heads for
disaster.”

He glared up at her. “Interfere again and the
disaster will be my hand on your backside.”

She flinched, but anger
flared to life in her. She was
prepared to
argue more when she noticed how pale
he
was. She really had struck him a blow.

“ ‘Tis sorry I am. Ye know
I trust your word.”
Brenna read
frustration in his clenched jaw.

“I recognized them, Brenna.
Somehow, those men
are a part of my past
and I needed to know how. Can
you not
understand that the key to my memory might be with those
men?”

“Did ye not tell me just
last night if ye never re
membered ‘twould
be no bad thing?”

“Don’t twist my words. I
only meant—” Jorand
tried again to sit up.
This time he had to grab his head
with
both hands. “Thor’s hammer, woman. What have you done to
me?”

***

The pain was more intense
than anything he’d ever endured. White-hot waves rolled over him
accompanied by a pounding drumbeat matching his heart stroke for
stroke. The agony blinded him for a moment. Then colors poured back
into his brain,
swirling in a maelstrom of
blood red against the backs of his eyes. Voices assaulted him from
all sides, muf
fled at first and then
distinct and crisp, but so nu
merous, he
couldn’t make out what any of them were
saying.

A flood of smells engulfed him, warm bread
and exotic spices mixed with steaming piles of dung. One after
another and jumbled together, the scents swarmed over him, both
pleasing and repulsive, all equally unreal.

Every nerve in his body
screamed in unison and he
rolled into a
tight ball, still clutching his head.

Then just as suddenly,
everything came clear again
and he was
aware of the sweet grass under him. He felt Brenna’s arms around
him, rocking him gently.
She whispered a
furious repetitive prayer.

“Brenna.” His voice was hoarse and raw.
Jorand realized he must have cried out in the throes of the
fit.

“Aye, I’m here, husband,”
she answered. “Rest ye
now. All will be
well. Ye’ll see. All will be well.”

He let her continue to rock him, but he knew
the truth. All would not be well.

He remembered. He remembered everything.

Brenna stood in the stern of the boat, gazing
intently down the wide ribbon of water.

“According to the map, we should be there.
Does anything look familiar to you yet?” Jorand bent forward and
gave the oars another long-armed pull. They were traveling against
the current and the wind that favored them up to this point had all
but died.

“Nothing,” Brenna admitted. “I don’t
recognize a thing.” She plopped back down on her seat and adjusted
the steering oar to keep them as close to the center of the river
as possible. She’d left Clonmacnoise less than a year ago, but
she’d tried to force the ugliness that had occurred there from her
mind. She found it difficult to call the place back now. “Maybe
that hillock yonder, but I cannot be sure. Ye must understand we
were not encouraged to go a-wandering beyond the walls of the
abbey. ‘Tis me sorrow that I did.”

“Why did you ever leave your father’s keep,
Brenna?”

“Many reasons,” she said. “For one, I didn’t
want to be forced into a marriage.”

“Sorry about that,” he said, pulling a face
at her.

She swatted at him
playfully. “Ye know ye’re not in
the
least.”

Jorand’s lovemaking had a
furious, urgent quality since she’d kept him from chasing those
raiders by
striking him down. He showed no
ill effects from the
blow, save for that
initial massive headache. His interest in joining his powerful
body with hers wasn’t abated one whit. He seemed more taken with
her
than ever, and yet he’d not spoken any
words of love
to her. Not once. It might
have troubled her more, ex
cept for the
tender expression on his face when she caught him looking at
her.

“And I’m not sorry, either.
Ye have the makings of a
fine husband,
Jorand,” she said impishly. “Once ye’re properly trained, of
course.”

“Hmph!” He threw himself into rowing with
renewed vigor.

“The threat of an arranged
marriage wasn’t the only thing that drove me from Donegal,”
Brenna
continued. “The main reason I went
to Clonmacnoise
was for the
library.”

Her voice caught as she
remembered the shelves of
precious volumes
lining the walls. “Ever so many books and parchments. ‘Twould take
a lifetime to read them all and I fully intended to do it.” She
sighed. “ ‘Tis a grand place. I’ve never asked ye before. Can ye
read?”

“A little,” he said. “I
know some of the runes. There’s a trick to them, you see.
Sometimes, they
stand for a sound and
sometimes for a whole word or
idea. A
person has to study hard to decipher a rune stone.”

“That does sound needlessly
complicated.” Brenna
watched in
fascination as the muscles across his strong shoulders bunched and
flattened under his smooth skin. He’d tied his hair back with a
leather
thong and her gaze was drawn to
the spot behind his ear she loved to kiss. His hairline glistened
with per
spiration. Brenna ran her tongue
over her lips, almost
tasting the
saltiness of his skin.

“I could teach ye to read,”
she offered, trying to ig
nore the way her
lips tingled with the urge to kiss his neck. If they stopped to
dally every time she yearned
for him,
they’d never reach the abbey. “Ye have taught
me a great many things in a short time. Turn and turn
about, I say. Mayhap I’ll return the
favor.”

“And very pleasant lessons those have been,”
he said, his voice a low rumbling purr.

Her secret place clenched
and she forced herself to look
away.
Marriage was turning her into a terrible wan
ton, she decided with a small smile. Father Michael
had always preached subjugation of all appetites
of the flesh, but her craving for this Northman didn’t lend itself
to modest consumption.

Oh, devil take what Father
Michael says!
She leaned
down to plant a kiss on that tender spot and
stayed to
nip playfully at his
earlobe.

The oars were left trailing
in the river Shannon, as
Jorand let them
fall slack in the oar ports. He turned
and
gathered her onto his lap, returning her kisses with fiery ones of
his own.

When he finally released
her mouth, he sat still,
searching her
face for a moment. She was unable to
decipher the meaning of his intense look. It was as if
he were trying to burn her image into his memory.
Surely he’d have no trouble remembering her now, she reasoned. A
lazy smile creased his face and she
dismissed the niggling twinge of worry.

“Not that I’m complaining,
but what brought this on?” His hands roved over her, sending
flutters of
longing dancing along the
surface of her skin.

“Are ye displeased?”

“Of course not,” he said
before nuzzling her ear. “I
only want to
know what I did so I can be sure to do it
again.”

“ ‘Tis just ye. The look of
ye, the smell, the feel, even the growling sound of your voice.”
Brenna sighed and snuggled into his chest. “Whenever I’m
near ye, I’m like a child with a sweet tooth and
ye are
a tray of honeyed
fruit.”

He kissed her again, long and deep.

“Do ye have any idea how
fine ye are?” She trailed
her fingertips
along his jaw down to his collarbone.
“I’m
the most blessed woman in the world to be hav
ing ye for a husband.”

“Brenna—”

“Not another word till I
finish, or I may not be able
to.” She drew
in a ragged breath. “After what happened at Clonmacnoise, I never
hoped to feel this way for any man. I’d go anywhere with ye. I
don’t even mind ye are dragging me to that den of Northmen called
Dublin—”

He clamped a hand over her mouth to stop her
in mid-thought. “Let’s not go.”

“What?”

“I don’t need to go to Dublin. We’ll see
about the child at the abbey, and once we have him, we’ll sail
north, back to Donegal.”

“But ye were so set on going to see if ye’ve
kin there.”

The odd expression passed
over his face again so
quickly Brenna
thought she might have imagined it.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he
said with a smile that
seemed
forced.

“So be it,” she said,
hardly daring to believe her good fortune. She’d embraced traveling
to Dublin with the same enthusiasm the early Christian
mar
tyrs must have felt about their visit
to the Roman li
ons. “I’ll be more than
pleased to be heading home.
But ye haven’t
let me finish what I needed to tell ye.
‘Tis how I care for ye. Do ye not know that
I
...”
She
drew a deep
breath.

Smoke.

The acrid odor invaded her
nostrils and sent a tin
gling premonition
down her spine. It was far too strong to be a crofter’s cooking
fire. “Do ye smell that?”

She slid off his lap and
looked upriver, hand raised
to shield her
eyes. The glare of late afternoon sun turned the river to molten
gold. A tall gray plume rose in the distance, beyond the next bend
in the waterway.

“Whatever’s ablaze, it’s
big,” Jorand said solemnly
as he returned
to the oars.

Brenna’s heart hammered a warning. A large
flat granite boulder next to a trio of shuddering aspens caught her
eye as they glided by. A stab of recognition coursed through
her.

“ ‘Tis the abbey,” Brenna
said flatly. “Someone has
sacked
Clonmacnoise.”

They broke free of the
trees and in the barren land
of Offaly,
the cloister came into view on the bank of
the wide river. Light ash fell in the air around them. The
gray stone walls seemed intact, but the heavy
oak portal had been smashed to kindling, its remains
swinging drunkenly on one iron hinge.
Clonmac
noise was a double monastery, home
to a community
of monks and nuns who lived
in separate enclaves but worked and worshipped in the same place.
Inside the walls the compound was dotted with little
beehive-shaped cells, the homely houses of the monks who tended the
grounds. Most of them were made of stone, but the ones that were
wattle-and-daub sent spires of smoke flying.

The fine chapel’s thatch
roof was gone, leaving
only a blackened
skeleton of charred beams. Of the
little
church built by St. Ciaran himself, there was no
trace. The stone tower that overshadowed
Clonmac
noise belched out dark fumes.
Brenna heard the
crackle and hiss of
flames before she saw them danc
ing at the
far end of the compound.

“The library,” she
whispered, not daring to trust
her voice
further. It would burn for days. The exquisite volume of Saint
Augustine’s
Confessions
bound in
Spanish
leather, the ancient Greek Septuagint, the
fabulous jewel-encrusted Skellig Michael codex, all
the treasures of art, wisdom, and devotion
hidden
between the bindings in the library
of Clonmacnoise
Abbey were reduced to
smoldering ash. The loss was
unimaginable.
She swayed a little and was grateful when Jorand caught her in his
arms.