Maire (10 page)

With the vigor of her youth, Maire rose to her feet and shook out the tangled mane of hair cascading down her back. The salt breeze tossed it with gentle fingers, teasing the shorter locks about her face. Queen Maire. For all that had come about in the last cycle of the sun, it was still hard to believe.

“Did you sleep well, Queen Maire?”

Still hampered by the clutches of sleep, Maire turned to see her youngest foster brother holding out a noggin of wine. By its color, she could see it had been diluted.

“Too well.” She took the cup with a grateful grin.

“Your mother would have been proud.”

Declan picked up his brat and threw it carelessly over a sun-bronzed shoulder. His long, golden hair was a brilliant contrast to the reds, blues, and greens the women of the tribe had crosswoven into the fabric’s pattern. He resembled a proud, young sun god, Maire admitted, reluctantly agreeing
with the opinion of many of Gleannmara’s maids. But he knew it, and she never was a girl to feed a man’s vanity. She kept her observation to herself.

“Thank you for covering me.”

“Maire, please think this through.”

Their words came out together. Both smiled, embarrassed.

“All you need do is marry,” Declan said, recovering first. “We’ve grown up together, trained together. We know each other better than we know ourselves.”

“Are you saying I should marry you?”

“That’s the thrust of it, aye.” The young man drew himself up to his full height, one that Maire almost met equally. “It will solve your problem with Morlach.”

“And create others.”

Maire jumped slightly at the words. Brude had a way of fading into the background when he chose, so that people forgot his presence. His hard gaze challenged Maire to think.

Eochan, the elder of the brothers, held much favor among her tribesmen. Should Maire be killed in battle, there would be no heirs of Maeve’s direct lineage. Maire was the last. But her foster family was
ainfine,
kin descended from a common ancestor—a clan chief generations back. His male descendants were eligible to be elected. Morlach would likely become overlord, as the king’s promise to Maeve had been fulfilled. Still, a chieftain would be elected from the clans of Gleannmara, and Eochan stood the better chance of such an honor than his younger, more impetuous brother. For all his roar, the bear had a keen wit, an even temper, and a gentle heart.

“It’s unfair to ask me to choose you over Eochan, who knows me just as well as you, brother. I love you both. Such a decision would be impossible.”

“But I asked first.”

Brude spoke up, his tone mild yet firm. “The queen must be true to her word. The choice was pledged in a battle of honor. It follows the pattern.”

“Patterns!” Declan spat in rebellion. “Sometimes I think you druids conjure patterns to suit your own purpose.”

Maire gasped in horror. “Declan!” Surely the young man had lost his senses, challenging Brude. She’d heard of men driven to destroy themselves after crossing words with a druid. A satire, a toss of straw, and uncontrollable madness was unleashed within them.

“And what purpose might that be, my young cockerel?”

Declan did not back down from the older man’s challenge. Nor could he come up with an answer. No one argued with a druid, save another of his kind.

“I have seen the sword that will save Gleannmara, and it is not yours.”

“What do druids know of swords?”

“What do warriors know of the future?” Brude responded in a dismissing tone. “I have read the entrails of the sacrifice.”

Aware that they had attracted the attention of those working the ship as well as those awakened by the rise of voices, Declan gave way. “Forgive me, sir. My devotion to our queen has made me reckless.”

“Valor and humility are good mates.”

With the same hand that might have cast a spell of death, Brude blessed the warrior, saving his face in the public eye. The tension coiling in Maire gave way to relief. There were times she could strangle Declan with her bare hands for his brashness, but never in truth would she wish him harm.

As the reckless warrior stomped toward the bow of the ship, Maire moved closer to Brude. “This vision of the sword, Brude. Was it Maeve’s?”

“No. Now we must prepare for your marriage.” The druid guided Maire with his hand toward the ancient chest containing all of his belongings, the subject of swords clearly at a discouraging finish.

So she was not to save Gleannmara with her mother’s sword. That could only mean one thing.

Her gaze found Rowan ap Emrys as if by command. His—the weapon of a stranger—was the champion sword of Gleannmara. Even as their gazes met, Maire felt a disconcerting charge of awareness sweep through her—strange, yet familiar; chilling, yet warm; alarming, yet soothing. His face revealed no more thought or emotion than hers, yet her senses reeled, one against another.

Marriage? Maire fought a swell of panic as the ship beneath her battled with that of the tide, barely mastering it. There had been hardly enough time for her to accept that she was now a queen. At least she’d been trained for the leadership of her tuatha. There was no one to prepare her to become a bride… no one but the druid.

“What must I do, Brude?” Her voice croaked like that of a boy breaching manhood.

“You must trust the Spirit of all spirits. Our lives, like our surroundings, are a series of patterns, and you, my queen, are but a half-finished part of a great masterpiece.”

Maire wanted to pull the druid away from the chest containing the white folded linen he thoughtfully fingered and demand to know in plain terms what he meant, but she feared his answer. Instead, she studied the curious marks of ogham on the timeworn wood as she waited for whatever voice had gained his attention to release him back to her. She’d always thought there to be magic in the druid’s chest. Brude had allowed her to search for it when she was a child missing as many teeth as he, but all she’d found were clothes and a few meager personal items. It amazed her, considering the kingly gifts the druid received in his position. He was always passing them on to others, claiming his search for the truth of life required few worldly goods. Such things impaired the spirit. A druid’s mind was as much a mystery as his magic.

As the old man straightened, a flash of gold and silver, fired by the sun’s rays, surprised her. It was a girdle, finely crafted, like nothing she’d ever seen in the druid’s trunk.

“This was made from Maeve’s jewelry. Wear it with the gift from Emrys’s mother. Both are fit for a queen.”

“Won’t it hang on my breastplate?”

“You will be a bride today, not a warrior. Save your armor for the days that follow.”

Although there was no hint of humor on Brude’s lips, it fairly danced with glee in his gaze. It was the same look he’d given her years ago when she’d announced in grand disappointment that there was no magic to be found in his chest.

Maire’s heart took a grudging plunge. There was no way she would inquire now as to the secrets shared between man and wife, once she and Emrys were declared so. What if he changed his mind about their agreement regarding intimacy? From her observations of men with females, their word didn’t mean a whole lot in the scheme of things. There would be no real defense against that—no legal one anyway.

And if that came to pass, Maire knew as well as Emrys what she was supposed to do. The tactics were not the question, but the execution. Would it be like her first battle, where the anticipation and flush of excitement would catch her up and carry her through? Once she’d started the fight on Emrys’s soil, there’d been no time to think about what she was doing. She’d had to do and survive because if she dwelt upon it—

“Emrys will wear this.”

One battle at a time.
Maire retreated from her thoughts with an involuntary shudder. Brude held her father’s torque in his hand; the same princely one he’d worn when taken hostage by his conquering queen. The gold with silver inlay of his native tribe’s design had been polished to a sheen. She remembered tracing the small concentric circles with her fingers as he held her in his arms. Part of her protested as she nodded in agreement. It was only fitting.

“Brude.” She placed a hand on the druid’s leathery forearm. Despite the shrinkage of many winters, the muscle beneath was as strong and pliant as the wires on his harp. She lowered her
voice. “What exactly did you see last night, in the entrails of the calf?” She had to know.

“Nothing but entrails.”

Maire’s heart sank. “But…”

“’Twas later, in my sleep, that I saw the triumph of light over darkness.”

Relief flooded through her veins. She hated it when her mentor druid baited her with nibbles at the fruit of knowledge instead of biting through to its core. “Then the spirits are with us and against Morlach?”

“The spirits of light have many faces. That of the dark is only one. Anything else is shadowy illusion.”

“Is it Emrys’s sword you saw?”

“I saw light triumph. When there is more to tell, you shall be the first to hear, my queen.”

He saw light, so they were going to triumph over Morlach. If only she knew how, Maire thought, resigned to Brude’s final word. Trust did not come easily to her. Yet she had no choice. And so, with the beautifully wrought belt over her arm, she turned to face her destiny.

As his protégé walked away, head high, shoulders squared, grace in every step, the aging druid blinked his eyes. They filled with the mist of nostalgia. She looked like Maeve, he mused. The little princess had grown into a woman, and now the welfare of her people depended on her. Brude wished he could tell her more, but the fact was, he did not understand the signs himself. Light and darkness had swirled in his mind—a quagmire of energy, power against power.

As his spirit was drawn into the fray, he’d been blinded by the overwhelming brilliance of triumph. It consumed him so that he knew no fear when he could not see the enemy’s black fist. Instead, he’d felt an unprecedented peace. It permeated his very essence as the sun warms the freshly turned earth of a
field. There were no more patterns for him to decipher, for they were all blended into one. In that instant, while his human mind groped for understanding, he knew the spirit that survives the body from this world to the next had at last seen the truth his ancestors had sought from time’s beginning. And the sun was but a small star in its glow.

Even the wind held its breath as the gathering of warriors stood solemnly around the altar at the stern of the ship. No part of the wooden deck was sheltered from the high sun burning unchallenged in a cloudless sky. The victory fire, renewed with faggots of oak and rowan, licked at them with hungry forked tongues. Brude waved his arms over it as he had many times, his skin unscathed, and turned toward the couple standing at the fore of the crowd.

Maire resisted the urge to wipe a bead of sweat from her brow, trying to recall any time in the past when she’d seen the tribe’s chief druid perspire. She couldn’t.

For all the water on her brow, her mouth was as dry as ground bone. She shifted from one foot to the other. The hem of the silken dress from Delwyn ap Emrys brushed against her calves and stuck. A proper wedding costume would skim her ankles, but this was hardly a planned affair. She’d pledge, he’d pledge, and it would be done. It could be undone just as quickly before a court of the Brehons after Morlach’s threat was disposed of. It was the in-between that plagued her.

“Do you both understand the significance of this union?”

“I understand.” Rowan ap Emrys’s voice rang deep and clear as the thickest of harp strings beside her.

Maire stared at the altar, unable to bring herself to look at the man she was marrying. Having stolen a glance from behind the leather-curtained enclosure where she’d dressed, she knew exactly what he looked like: a cleric with a warrior’s collar, except his hair had not been shaven at the crown but grew
thick and raven black. ’Twould be a glorious mane were he disposed to let it grow past his shoulders in the Scotti fashion.

At least the gods had given his skull a comely shape that needed no particular cover. It was nobly proportioned, set upon a strong sinewy neck now adorned with her late father’s torque. But then, all of him seemed well proportioned.

“My queen?”

It was to be in name only, she told herself. “I understand.”

“May the guardian spirits bless you with communication of the heart, mind, and body from the east; warmth of heart and home from the south; the deep commitment, excitement, and cleansing of the waters of the west; and the fertility of the north; that you and your fields may multiply.”

“May we so be blessed.”

“Yes…blessed,” Maire mumbled simultaneously with the man at her side, her voice a mere whisper above the thunderous pillage of inner panic. She was queen. She was the ruler. The marriage was in name only. Anxiety stirred the wine and bread she’d consumed on rising. Even her stomach resisted this course.

“Rowan, will you cause her pain, burden, or anger?”

“I may,” she heard him answer shortly.

“Is that your purpose?”

“No.”

“Maire, will you cause him pain, burden, or anger?”

“Aye, very likely.” The thought became words before she could call them back. Her eyes widened in dismay beneath Brude’s stern gaze.

“And will that be your intention?”

For the first time, Maire cast a sideways look at Rowan. By her mother’s gods, he was all but laughing at her. One side of his mouth was pulled like that of a fish hooked good and proper. A flush of indignation steadied her voice. “Not unless he oversteps himself.”

A tide of amusement rippled through the assembly. Chin
jutting in defiance, Maire slashed a satisfied smile at her groom and turned back to Brude expectantly. Her satisfaction withered under the druid’s silent reproach.

“Nay, then,” she conceded.

“Rowan, will you share Maire’s laughter, her dreams, and honor her?”

“In as much as I am not required to offend or abandon the Lord, my God.”

“Will you share our queen’s laughter and dreams and honor her?” Brude’s impatience was like an explosion of thunder on a clear summer’s day.