Riona (20 page)

“Welcome, good travelers,” the man called out to them. “The master’s lodge is full tonight, but ye’re welcome to his table and to set up camp within the walls of the rath. Sure, all of Erin is bound for the high king’s convention.”

Riona’s heart sank. The thought of a dry pallet in a lodge with a roof had heightened her anticipation of the day’s end. But camping within civilized walls was still better than fending without against wolves and human predators.

“We thank you, sir. And does your master have need of entertainers this night?” Dallan asked him.

“We’ve princes and clergy, soldiers and merchants, but no entertainment save the master’s own gray-bearded bard.” The servant cast an appreciative eye at Riona and Finella. “And surely he can’t compare to the beauty of your company.”

Clergy and soldiers?
Riona felt the blood drain from her face. She supposed she should expect as much, now that they were less than two day’s from the synod. Travelers from all over Ireland were converging on the few roads leading to Drumceatt. Reason stayed the panic welling in her chest. Barring some unexpected delay, Senan and Maille
were surely a day ahead of them.
Dear Father, don’t let them be here
.

Marcus ran into a somersault, coming up before the astonished servant with theatrical finesse. “I pray your lord is a generous one?”

“He pays as good as he gets,” the servant said flatly.

“Then have him bring out his large purse, good man,” Dallan warned him, “for he and his guests shall be entertained in highest fashion tonight.”

The servant’s eyes grew round at the sweep of Dallan’s hand. “
All
of you?”

“I feel I’m coming down with a touch of the same ague that has our friend indisposed,” Riona spoke up. “So not
all
of us will participate.”

Fynn started to protest, but Riona silenced him with a warning lift of her chin. “We’ll discuss it once we walk out the stiffness of our journey.”

“Ye sure it’s just the ague?” Lifting the lantern off its hook, the servant started toward the travois where Kieran slept.

“He’s not yellow, if that’s what you mean,” Riona responded sharply. Faith, she didn’t want to start a panic. “But he’s coughed himself into a stupor.”

The man hesitated and rehung the light. “Then it’s just as well you keep to the outer rath. I seen half a village drop dead from what they thought was the ague, till they turned yeller and died. Just follow me.”

Dallan helped Finella out of the cart, while Marcus cautiously approached Gray Macha.

“If it would please his lordship, Gray Macha.” He bowed lowly before the animal and motioned toward the inside of the rath.

Leila laughed and nudged the stallion forward after the servant. The rest of the troupe followed.

“ ’Tis a fine horse for such as yourselves. I can’t make out ’is color.”

“Gray,” Fynn said.

“Dappled.” Riona blurted out at the same time, not wanting Macha’s true nature to raise suspicion as to their identities. “He’s splotched. We came upon him easily because his hind hoof grazes his other leg in a run, ruining him for racing or battle. Since we’ve no need for a fast steed, he suited our purposes.”

Thankfully the children did not contradict her. As for Dallan and his company, they were as good off-stage as on. They acted as if she told a story they’d heard many times before.

Riona couldn’t explain why she felt compelled to lie about Gray Macha when it contradicted her nature and belief. Yet, the deceit was out, as if she’d rehearsed it. That being the case, she could only conclude one thing. The caution had been planted by Providence, for God could see beyond their present circumstance.

Her lips thinned. They shouldn’t have come into the rath. Danger surely waited.

T
he hosteler sent out a servant with food for the troupe—boiled beef, parsnips, and bread, along with a small cask of honeyed beer. Thanks to the supplies Dallan and company carried in their wagon, Riona was able to heat water for a blood-bracing tea from Finella’s dried herbs. Liex’s warming stones, still in the little sack the child wore at his waist, and Fynn’s cup had been a godsend the night before, but this way Riona could make enough for them all. The children had been exposed to dampness and fatigue enough to tax their health. A little chamomile to calm them, rosemary for a brewing sniffle, and the last of Leila’s mint were just the thing to fortify them.

Yet with the excitement of watching the gleemen prepare for their night of entertainment, Riona feared it would take more than chamomile to calm the children. Leila followed Finella around, playing the whistle and fingering the silken material of her multicolored dress. Liex watched Marcus as if he juggled stars rather than hoops and balls. Fynn worried her most.

“If only I had my darts and knives, I could join you,” he fretted, while Dallan practiced snapping off the heads of dandelions with the tip of his whip. “Mother stood with an apple on her head and one in each hand—”

“You must have been good then,” Dallan observed, inventorying the various instruments he’d mastered.

Besides the harp there were three other stringed instruments, as well as pipes and horns. According to Finella, Dallan was master of all of them and had tutored both her and his brother to accompany him. She played bells and tabor, while the bagpipe, flute, and pipe were Marcus’s accomplishments. When their skill as musicians wasn’t needed among the nobility, they resorted to appealing to the peasantry with their acrobatic and juggling skills and Finella’s herbal remedies.

“I’ve a set of knives and a board in the wagon. Let’s see what you can do.”

“No.”

The gleeman and boy looked at Riona in sharp surprise. Riona could imagine what Dallan was thinking, and he was wrong. She did not look down on his profession.

“Why?” Fynn asked. “I’m very good.”

What if someone recognized you?
Riona wanted to say, but couldn’t in front of Dallan. “I think that, given our situation, you need to rest with us. You’re my son now and don’t need to perform for your livelihood.”

“It’s a good life, milady,” Dallan told her in a miffed voice. “One to which the lad was raised.”

“I meant to imply nothing else, sir,” Riona answered quickly. “But Fynn has chosen to live with me, and I would rather he not …” Heavens, what good reason could she give? Intuition, heightened by an ominous sense of danger, told her it could be foolish to admit to being fugitives to strangers, no matter how kindly they seemed.

Fynn was insistent. “After we leave Drumceatt and I’m properly adopted, I won’t use the knives, so tonight may be my last chance to perform.”

She wanted to grab the boy’s ear and twist it, but he was so set on accompanying the troupe to the lodge that Riona gave in. Senan would know Fynn, but the bishop was a day ahead of them. At least she prayed so.

“Then do what you must,” she relented, unable to make her case against it.

Liex was put out that he couldn’t go with his older brother, but Riona’s promise of a story eased his disappointment. The twins were so tired that they nearly fell asleep before she finished telling the story of how David was betrayed and fled to the wilderness. Riona knew how he felt. This miscarriage of justice against Kieran was a betrayal of the worst sort, orchestrated by one of God’s own priests in the church to which she’d intended to pledge her life. How could she expect the children to respect the church and become God-fearing warriors of Christ when they saw such—

Was not Christ betrayed by His own church?

“You look as if you’ve seen a pooka.”

Riona turned, startled to see Kieran watching her through half-lidded eyes.

“No, but I have discovered something most wonderful.”

She hadn’t been betrayed by the church any more than Christ had been. They’d been betrayed by people who professed to be one with God’s will but by design or ignorance were not. Nay, she could not hold the church itself responsible for her plight any more than she could condemn an entire harvest over one rotten piece of fruit.

Seeing Kieran’s intention to sit up, Riona broke from her contemplation and hastened to help him. He was stronger, for it was not nearly the struggle she’d had that morning to sit him upright.

He leaned against the wheel of the gleemen’s cart. “Then share it, for I’ve had my stomach full of disaster.”

And the bite was returning to his cynicism.

“Where are our light-fingered
deliverers?”
He fingered the torque at his neck to make certain it was still there.

“They entertain in the hosteler’s lodge. Fynn is with them.” She took a flat of bread with boiled beef and parsnips from a cloth and handed it to him. “The lodge is full of travelers bound for the synod, including soldiers.”

Kieran stiffened. Riona saw the same concern she’d initially felt play upon his face. “Maille is a day ahead of us,” he concluded aloud.

He pinched off a piece of the tender meat and popped it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. The amber warmth of his gaze suspended with wariness as he took in their surroundings—the closed gate with its lantern singling it out in the dark, the rise of the earthen-work enclosure, which had been allowed to grow over with brush except along swale that had been dug for drainage.

“Where is my sword?” Clearly, the warrior in him was returning.

“In the wagon.” Riona fought becoming infected by his increasing apprehension. Had she leaned too heavily on faith and not enough on caution?

“Get it.”

At least her foster brother was returning to his old self. Sooner than argue, she fetched the blade and lay it by his side, hidden beneath his blanket. Still, she couldn’t resist saying something. “As long as you can fight sitting down, you’ll do well, but if you have to stand … well, I’d try leaning a little more on prayer and less on the weapon.”

“Hmm. Give me something I can hold in my hand, not something with the substance of air.”

“Substance has nothing to do with power. Air provides substance for your next breath.”

Kieran smirked. “Faith, ’tis like arguing with your cousin.”

Riona poured a portion of honeyed beer into Fynn’s cup for Kieran to chase down the food with. “You can’t argue with truth. You may not like it, but you can’t argue with it.” She cocked her head as if listening for something, but the message came from within. “Take our situation, for instance. That was what I marveled over a moment ago.”

One golden eyebrow shot up in a skeptical arch. “Then by all means, enlighten me, milady, for I am sore pressed to see what there is to marvel at aside from one malady heaped upon another.”

“For which day, milord?” Riona countered, brightening by the moment as blessing after blessing came to her. They’d not been caught. Help came when they needed it most. No, the past few days had not been to her liking, but had they not survived thus far? The voice at the holy well near Dublin rang clear in her mind and on her lips.

“ ‘I am the Lord, the God of all Flesh;
is
anything too hard for Me?’ ”
Riona grabbed Kieran’s arm in the thrill of her realization. Another time the maid in her would have noticed the bulge of a bicep so impressive that both her hands could not span it. For now, it was just a means of getting Kieran’s attention. “We’ve been so busy, I’ve scarce had time to think of it until now.”

“Methinks you’ve had more than your share of this beer. Am I not laid low by a pitchfork scratch and forced to rely on a would-be nun, three ragmullions, and now three more grown ones?” He grunted in dismay. “Faith, by traveling with them we have no more rights than they. We’re naught but vagabonds with no country, no people, no family.”

Riona touched the side of his face, caressing it until their gazes
locked. “When we are laid low, God is strongest. When we are unmolested, we take His love for granted.”

Something kindled in her foster brother’s gaze. Had she reached Kieran or was it the reflection of the dancing campfire? Could anything melt the rath of ice he’d erected around his soul?

“That’s like saying the physician makes people ill so that he can heal them.”

“God doesn’t cause our distress, Kieran. Sin does.”

Her words seemed as futile as a gnat’s charge of an oaken door, at least at that moment. But then seeds did not sprout right away.

“Heber was no sinner. My parents were no sinners. They were godly, all of them.” Kieran slung the rest of his food away in the grass. “Where was God when they died?” His bitterness was enough to sour the sweet brew he swilled straight down.

“Crying.” A blade of grief cracked her voice. Riona closed her eyes, picturing an anguished Father looking down from heaven. How many times had that same picture consoled her these recent years? She knew in her heart the heavenly Father wept for Heber even now. “Just as He cried when His own Son died.”

“He could have stopped that, too,
if
He really cared or if He even exists for that matter.”

“Aye, He could have. But out of love He suffered from the choice of sin-prone man, rather than take the easier way and leave mankind lost and hopeless ever after.”

It was a prospect Riona had discussed at length on those wintry nights by Abbot Fintan’s fire. “Why,” she’d asked, “didn’t He send the angels to save Jesus?”

In her mind’s eye, Riona saw Fintan’s aged face crinkle with an understanding smile.

“But that would have forced His will on the men who crucified Christ. Our God is one who would have man do what is right out of love for Him and righteousness, not out of fear or bondage to Him. Satan would have us follow him as slaves, bound to his will alone. Don’t you see the difference?”

Moved by wisdom of the late abbot’s words, she repeated them for
Kieran, praying that somehow they’d offer him comfort and insight—that he might feel the all-encompassing love of God that she felt at that moment.

When Riona of Dromin looked at a man that way, Kieran thought, he’d agree to anything. And if there were angels, one even now placed her hand upon his arm and looked imploringly into his eyes, bewitching him. Maybe it was the herbs in that fiendish concoction the glee-woman had given him, but the fire silhouetted Riona in an almost mystical aura. Her eyes had never been more alive, as if the same flame that burned without glowed within.