Riona (44 page)

Kieran’s frustration and despair turned to outrage. “Who’d dare poison you?”

Heavenly Father, it isn’t fair! It should have been me
. Riona clutched Leila to her, rocking back and forth in woeful apology until it dawned on her that the child was no longer convulsing. She was too weak. Riona pressed her lips to Leila’s neck. There was a pulse, but it was as faint as her breath.

Nothing Riona had been through had prepared her for this. Nothing. She’d always known the hedge of God’s mercy and grace, but where was it now? She refused to accept that it wasn’t there. Misery distorted her spiritual vision, as tears did the physical.
God is here!
she told herself sternly.
He is holding this child because He said He’d never leave us
. Another memory surfaced, spreading like a balm upon the black sea that threatened to engulf them.
And He
promised
to heal Leila
. She could read Columcille’s message to her as though it were spread before her very eyes.

“Go get Father Cromyn,” she whispered, wiping tears from her face.

Kieran, who held Liex in his arms, put the boy down, not out of intent but from weakness dealt by the impact of her words. “Is
that
necessary?”

“We are going to pray her through this,” Riona vowed resolutely. She reached for Liex’s hand and then glanced about in bewilderment. “Where is Fynn?”

“I seen him looking around with the others after he emptied his own gut, poor lad,” Ina informed her. “Few menfolk can handle such as this.”

“I’ll find him,” Kieran promised. The uncertainty on his face made Riona hurt for him. At that moment he looked, for all his manly size and presence, as lost and frightened as Liex.

“It’s going to be all right, Kieran,” Riona said. “God told me.”

Colga leaned against the corner of the privy behind the hall, oblivious to all the activity, much less the time. His noble-hearted cousin Bran slept cradled in Gleannmara’s royal chair like a newborn babe in its mother’s arms, but there was no relief for the guilty. Indeed, his traitorous
stomach had turned catapult, rejecting the drink he’d sought to drown his conscience in. The dull ache in his head cleared as he threw it back and stared up at the stars.

Some were bold, steady in their light. Others flickered, as if trying to hold out against the darkness for daybreak and the sun’s reinforcement. He wondered bitterly which would stand firm for the sunrise and which would fade away into nothingness, despite their best efforts to survive after their one moment of glory.

Like him.

He was chief of the Dromin, yet his light was fading fast, consumed by the dark deed that had provided him the chance at leadership. Even that deed required him to do nothing, just walk away under the pretense that he suspected the enemy’s approach. Without the warning Colga should have sounded, the conspirators who’d come to kill the Scots’ new king had been upon Heber’s rear guard before Heber knew what was coming. The mist spewed out the murderers, seemingly with as much distaste as Colga’s stomach had ejected his overindulgence of Gleannmara’s imported wine. Colga hadn’t seen the bloodbath, but he’d heard it and seen the aftermath—every day and night since it had happened.

He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the summer night air. He could bear it no longer. He had to purge this guilt before it ate him alive from within. He had to speak to his uncle Cromyn, for Colga was too ashamed to speak directly to God. Heber was surely one of God’s favored. Colga had seen Heber’s face as he met death. ’Twas no banshee his cousin saw, given the peace that blanketed him body and soul. Heber saw God. Perhaps he even watched Colga’s cruel punishment of a guilt-ridden life from one of the many stars dotting the sky.

Bracing himself with courage gained from liquor and desperation, Colga set his course toward the chapel, where Cromyn had retired for the night. It was to be his uncle’s lodge until a proper dwelling was built. Blindly, he passed some of the rath’s people scurrying here and there. Part of him wondered at their presence given the wee hour, but he was too intent on facing his own demons to give it a second thought.

A dim light leaked out around the perimeter of the plank door.

Good. Cromyn was still awake. Not that Colga would hesitate to awaken the man. As the new mother had been ready for her babe to see the light of day, so he was ready to give up this dark secret. He’d carried it and labored with it too long. It too deserved light—the light of confession whatever the consequence. Clammy with perspiration from his drunken weakness, Colga leaned against the thick door frame to catch his wind and overheard a familiar voice inside, as threatening and insidious as it had been the last time it afflicted his ear.

“Curse you, you sniveling little thief. Have you any idea the trouble you’ve caused?”

Maille?
If ever there was a demon to be faced, the Ulster lord was one, but what was he doing here at Gleannmara? Hair raised on the back of Colga’s neck. How had the devil gotten past the guard at the gates? “Where was it, Mebh?”

Mebh
. What was that woman doing here? Colga recalled what he’d been told about the happenings at the abbey with the child slavers and later as Riona and Kieran traveled to Drumceatt. And now the slaver’s wife was here with Maille? Sure, this new wind bode ill for Kieran and Riona.

“Hung round ’is scrawny neck and hid by his shirt.”

“You poisoned my sister, you blackguard!”

The voice belonged to a boy, an older one given its adolescent break. Fynn?
Great God in heaven
, Colga prayed, forgetting his own shame. Flashes of Leila’s smiling face, the sweet little kisses she gave so freely, the innocent trust Colga so envied, drove him further in his plea, closer to God than he’d ever venture for himself.
Not that precious little girl. Father, tell me it isn’t so
.

“I poisoned no one—”

Colga didn’t hear the rest of the woman’s reply, for a voice sounded behind him.

“Colga, is that you?”

Grabbing blindly for the dining dagger at his waist, Colga fell against the stone-corbeled structure, as ready as his dulled senses would allow. But on recognizing Gleannmara’s king in the moonlight, he put his finger to his lips with a liquor-scented
shush
and jerked his head toward the chapel.

If Maille’s presence was not enough to sober Colga, the whiff he caught of his own breath was. How could something that went down so sweetly turn so foul upon him? No more had the thought taken root than Colga thought of his rise to Dromin chief. The intoxication of winning it lasted not nearly as long as the aftermath of festering guilt.

“You what?” Maille exclaimed beyond the door, jerking Colga back to the present danger as the Ulster chief swore fiercely. “I told you to keep low and look for the vial, nothing more.”

“Gleannmara killed my Tadgh,” the woman whined. “I wanted him to spend the rest of his life alone, without the one he loves. How was I to know the little girl would take the tea instead?” The whine came back. “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“I don’t give a whit about the child, woman. ’Tis the disturbance I’ve no use for.”

Beside him, Kieran caught his breath and fell back a step, as though the black fist of this ill wind had struck him squarely in the chest, offering no quarter.

Kieran stood, struggling to breathe. It took all his will to resist the desire that swept him … the desire to plunge through the doorway and put an end to Maille’s miserable, foul existence.

Words from a conversation between the children and Father Cromyn came back to him.
Sins of the father … revisited upon his children …

Faith, the words twisted his gut with relentless fists. Kieran was hard pressed not to tear at them with his fingers, like a madman seeking relief from his lunacy. Would Leila pay the price for Kieran’s mistakes? Would she die because of the vengeance he’d stirred in another’s soul?

Drawing a breath, he knew he could not give in to this agonizing remorse and undermining panic. He needed to listen with the ear of a warrior—and the soul of a saint—that God might help him form a plan.

He closed his eyes, and a fervent prayer leaped from his heart.
Father, grant me a cool head and a whole body … just one more time
.

A
s Kieran listened—not only with his ears, but with his spirit as well—the clearer and more damning the situation became. The image of the new servant, Nis—his shaven head, crevassed and scarred … those burning coals of his eyes peering from beneath a pronounced brow—gave way to Mebh’s face. He saw again her stringy, strawlike hair hiding all but her ugly fury and her determination to impale him with a hay fork.

Nis and Mebh … they were one and the same, vicious and bitter. She must have been the one to smuggle Maille into the rath.

Colga seized his arm, only now catching on to the treachery.

Kieran whispered, “ ’Twas no man that soaked you in wine earlier, ’twas Mebh.”

Kieran shoved it away, trapped in his own agonizing revelation. Now he knew what had been wrong earlier that evening, why he hadn’t felt quite as at home and at peace as he’d wanted. Even his burning wound had tried to warn him of the presence of the one who’d dealt it, but he’d been too distracted with Bran and his company to take issue with a servant’s harsh glare.

Sins of the father … visited upon his children
.

The haunting words impaled his heart to his soul with nails as cruel as those that had pierced Christ’s own hands. Except Kieran was not the innocent Christ had been. Cold perspiration seeped through Kieran’s pores till he trembled with it.
God, forgive me. God, help me
.

“He has the eldest of your boys, I think.”

Fynn. Kieran’s hand went instinctively to his waist where he usually carried at least a dining knife. Only then did he realize he wore nothing but his leine. He’d even left his sword by Leila’s bed, where he’d knelt to pray.

Colga drew his own blade. A second, more deadly one he pulled from the top laces of his sandal and handed it to Kieran. “What’ll we do?”

Kieran took it with a grateful nod, a plan forming in his mind even as he spoke. “Have you heard anything from your uncle?”

Colga shook his head. “I was coming to see him when …”

Maille spoke again inside, silencing them both. “What’s this? Bring me that lamp, woman.”

“If I bring ye the lamp—” Mebh’s tone was testy—“I’ll have to let the lad go—” She gave a small shriek. It cut through Kieran’s disgust, straight to his heart with its infectious terror. He had to do something, but charging into a blind situation was a poor tactic. Perhaps by listening he might judge the whereabouts of the players in this macabre play.

“Saints be with us, it looks like blood!”

Something crashed to the stone floor.

His plan still coming together in bits and pieces from a fog of alarm, Kieran drew back to charge the door if he so much as heard a whimper out of Fynn. Instead, it was Maille who spoke.

“What manner of trickery
is
this, lad?” the man demanded.

Maille, Mebh, and Fynn—theirs were the only voices Kieran had heard, which meant Cromyn was either bound and gagged or dead.
Heavenly Father, spare us that!
As hastily as the soulful prayer shot from his preoccupied mind, Kieran’s hard-hewn warrior discipline resumed. He poised, sense and soul shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to receive the sign to go into action.

“If we have to charge in blind, I’ll go first. You cover my back,” Kieran whispered to his companion.

Colga nodded.

“Where are my jewels?” The Ulster lord’s voice rose to a feverish pitch inside.
“Where
, curse your thieving hide?”

Kieran scowled, glancing at Colga in bewilderment.

“What jewels?” Fynn answered, echoing Kieran’s thoughts, in fierce rebellion. “I thought the bloomin’ vial was filled with holy water. I took it for good luck.”

The vial again … and the lad
had
had it.

“From a dead man’s possessions?” Maille’s cryptic remark only accentuated Kieran’s disappointment. “A lad after my own heart.”

“You have no heart,” Fynn protested. “I knew I’d done wrong and tried to put it back but couldn’t get the chance.”

“After
you took my diamonds, you impudent little thief. What is this, cow’s blood?”

“ ’Tis blood money turned ta blood,” Mebh wailed at a spine-raking pitch. “God’s vengeance, God’s vengeance!”

Kieran couldn’t help the shiver that raced up his back.
Blood money turned to blood?
Beside him, Colga crossed himself. Could Mebh be some kind of witch?

Heavenly Father, give me a signal
.
An ill-timed assault, be it early or late, could jeopardize Fynn’s safety
.
And guide me straight and true, Father, for I’ve no concept of what I am about to charge into
.

“I know nothing of diamonds or blood, I swear!” Fynn shouted above Mebh’s hysteria.

“Shut up, woman, and hold him still.” Something fell over, a table perhaps, landing with a hollow thud against the stone floor. “I
will
have my reward, be it in jewels or the blood of those who took them from me.”

This was it. Kieran motioned his companion clear and kicked in the door, bellowing like the northern thunder god incarnate. In the blink of a trained eye, he assessed the situation. Straight ahead of him on the altar table, a polished, golden cross amplified the fragile flame of a small candle struggling against the night draft. A sinister figure, black against the glow, poised on one knee beside a bench, which he’d obviously knocked over. Maille. And in his frozen hand was a dagger. Beyond him, bound on a cot against the wall, was Father Cromyn.

Kieran made straight for the female in man’s clothing. Snarling like a vengeful beast, he knocked her to the floor and away from Fynn. Leaving her in Colga’s custody, he charged like a fury that could not be stopped toward the perpetrator of all the evil that had vexed him these last weeks.

Having had a second more warning than his cohort, Maille leapt away from the table to where a wide-eyed Cromyn lay. From the folds
of his cloak, he brandished a short sword in the hand opposite the dagger. With the smaller blade pressed to Cromyn’s throat, he held the other ready for Kieran.