Sing Me Home (20 page)

“The MacEgan,” Colin said loudly, “does not bow to his heir.”

And with a rush Colin remembered when he had come charging back from Emain Macha with a harp of horsehair and thongs, his head roiling with poems. He’d played a song of war to the elders. He’d been like a torch to dry tinder, starting a conflagration that would swallow everything—everything but this ragged band of clansmen clinging to life in the barren slopes of a place not even the English bothered to conquer.

Now he felt a hot rush of emotion as he turned to meet the eyes of those watching him, seeing how dirty his people were, how worn, how thin. The years under the eye of William Caddell had taken their toll: His people had forgotten who they were. They’d lost their pride.

That much, a bard could change.

“There will be time enough to choose a new king,” Colin said, “when William Caddell is dead.”

Colin swung Fingar’s harp off his back. With the old poem singing in his ears, he set his fingers to the strings.

Chapter Sixteen

T
he Caddell household ran on a schedule as rigid as the bells of the convent of Killoughy. Precisely at Sext, Maura pattered across the rushes of the main hall in the donjon to take her customary place next to Lord Richard—her twin brother. In the weeks that she’d been here, she’d long discovered that to be late for the midday meal was a sin almost as egregious as that of helping harvest carrots with the kitchen servants in the castle garden.

She heard the whispering as she crossed the hall. Wherever she walked, whatever she did, that buzzing always followed her.
Look at the way she swings her hips. Look at her, dressed up in Lady Elizabeth’s tunics, fit to split them at the seams. Look at her walking around as though she’s queen of the place, as proud as a cock—and she has had enough of them, I wager.

Her cheeks burned by the time she sidled into her place. Fortunately, Lord William strode in through the front door and put an end to the muttering. A knight of advanced years walked by his side. She recognized Sir Maurice, one of Lord William’s vassals, who was introduced to her in the earlier days. Lord William gestured Sir Maurice to the place beside him, then he seated himself in the high-backed chair at the head of the table. He nodded to his son, his daughters, and his vassals and they all sat down too.

Lord William’s gaze rested upon her a moment longer, as it always did, as he eyed every detail of her hair and dress. She could tell by the slight incline of his head that he approved of the blue tunic she’d labored over these past days, though she thought she caught a hint of a frown when his gaze settled upon the embroidery stitched around the neckline. For in the solitude of her room, with Nutmeg dozing on her shoulder, she had found herself stitching with fine golden thread the swirls and whirls of ancient Celtic patterns, the rounds of Celtic crosses, as if by needling the designs into her clothing she could somehow convince herself she was still Irish-born.

Rebellion spurted through her. She’d spent a lifetime as a kitchen maid in a convent more Irish than English. She couldn’t instantly turn into one of his other daughters, with their lisping speech and wasteful ways and idle days, who flirted with the castle vassals with a skill that would put Matilda and the twins to shame. She’d approached those half-sisters several times, yearning to get to know them better, but they’d glared at her, mute, as if she were still wearing minstrel bells and painting her cheeks red.

For the hundredth time, she wondered what had happened to the troupe. The very morning after the revelation, she’d slipped off to the stables to seek Colin, Arnaud, Matilda—anyone—but found the place deserted but for Nutmeg’s basket, hanging on a post, and her quivering pet hiding in the rafters. Maura couldn’t have been in the stables more than a few minutes before a flustered servant girl barreled in, breathless. Maura asked the girl what had happened to the minstrels, and the girl told her they’d left during the night. When Maura asked her
where, how, why
, the servant shut her mouth so tight that a blacksmith with pliers couldn’t pull the truth from her.

Not for the first time, she wondered with a pang if the twins were dancing down some road again while Padraig piped their way to yet another fair.

Her reverie was interrupted when a fleet of servants flooded in with the first course. They slipped on the table a flock of roasted partridges and quails seasoned with rosemary, and a school of carp swimming in a sauce tart with a spice she’d never tasted before. She picked at the sauce-drenched meat upon the trencher bread she shared with Richard. She lifted a morsel to her lips and the thickness of the sauce clung to her teeth, her tongue, her throat. It was all too rich, but she didn’t dare say anything. The last time she mentioned that the cook of this house had a heavy hand with the spices—an expensive habit, she knew, having once been in charge of the same—she’d received nothing but a frown of disapproval from Lord William, along with the high-pitched giggling of her younger half-siblings.

Now she contented herself dreaming of wild rabbit roasting over an open fire under the bright blue sky.

“You’re not eating enough, dear sister.”

She glanced up at Richard with a start. He hadn’t spoken a word to her since that night she’d been discovered. Her so-called twin spent every meal sitting ramrod-straight by her side, grinding his jaw.

She said, “I’m not used to such rich fare.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Richard nudged a piece of partridge breast to her side of the trencher bread. “Still, you should eat while you can. Riches like this may disappear as quickly as they came.”

Maura took the meat but not the bait. He, like his siblings, held no faith in Lord William’s story of her birth. The more she looked at the young man who was her twin, the more she doubted as well. In coloring, she supposed there was a resemblance. They were both fair-skinned and had light brown hair. But Richard’s eyes were a muddy brown, like a churned-up springtime river, and his face far more angular than her own.

“Eat, Maura.” He did something strange with her name, rolling over the ‘r’ in a way that hinted of insolence. “I beseech you.”

She glanced down at the trencher bread and saw that he poked with the end of his knife a dead beetle. His lips curled in a cat’s smile as he pointedly lifted their shared wineglass to his lips and drank it to the dregs.

“Richard, you surprise me,” she said, keeping her voice neutral so as not to attract any attention. “A man grown, and yet you’re still playing with beetles. What shall I find next? A frog in my stockings? Mice set loose upon my bed?”

“I wager your bed is crowded enough without the mice.”

“And yours as barren and empty as last year’s wine barrel,” she countered. “Why is that, Richard? Are you too busy playing with your stick-boats upon the moat?”

Richard’s fair face flushed. “My bed is full enough, and with better women than you.”

“Kitchen maids and laundresses, I hear.”

“Better kitchen maids and laundresses,” he said, with a hiss in his voice, “than a common whore plucked from the road.”

“Shall I tell our father what you just called me?” She ignored the fury tightening her throat. “Here, with so many ears listening?”

“You can tell
my
father,” he said, “whatever you’d like. Tonight, when he fucks you again.”

She went very still. A ringing began in her ears. She stared at Richard through a thickening red haze, and in the back of her mind she began to piece together some of the things she had noticed. Her stepmother Lady Isabelle’s coolness, for one. The lady refused to even look at Maura when she passed her in the hall. Then she remembered the whispers in the garden about Lord William’s mistress, a mistress that she just began to realize everyone in this room believed was
her.

She spoke without thinking. “Do you want to know what the kitchen girls say about you, dear Richard? They say,
quick, quick, Richard is quick, lean right over and you hardly feel the prick—”

“Quiet your filthy tongue!”

Richard shot up out of his seat. She leaned away and summoned false tears with such ease that she found herself ruing her decision not to join Maguire and Matilda in the minstrel plays.

“Richard?” Lord William said into the tense silence. “Is something amiss?”

Maura pressed her hand against her chest and watched the shift of Richard’s jaw as he debated whether to say anything. Whatever Richard said, she was sure she would feel the full of Lord William’s irritation when he came to her room to list her failings anew. But for the moment, seeing Richard squirm in indecision was worth her act of petty vengeance.

The Mudman would have been so proud.

“Forgive me, Father.” Richard flexed white-knuckled hands as he settled back on the bench. “Nothing of import, just a bit of a … sibling argument.”

“As my eldest son,” Lord William said, “I would think your attention would be on this side of the table, where there
is
a discussion of import.”

“Yes, Father.”

“We will be sending some men into Lord Maurice’s lands. He is having trouble again with the MacEgans.”

She tightened her grip on the silver knife so it wouldn’t fall from her hand and clatter upon the table.

“There’s an Irishman recently arrived in the area,” Sir Maurice said, as he hiked an elbow upon the table. “He claims he’s the son of Fergus MacEgan.”

The world receded but for the echo of that name in her mind.

“He’s the youngest son.” Lord William chewed and swallowed a hunk of quail. “We assumed he’d gone into hiding because we haven’t seen him in a decade. I remember that he spent most of his youth training to be one of those Irish bards.”

“You mean an Irish spy.” Sir Maurice raised hairy brows so upswept Maura was sure he’d combed them that way. “Well, this son looks for all the devil like his father, I’ve been told. All the scattered MacEgans have rallied under his banner.”

“Ah, my dear friend.” Lord William thudded his knife down and grasped the metal of his wine cup. “When I received your message, I feared that there was more to this visit than a renewal of an old friendship.”

“I meant not to salt your meat with such bad spice, nor spoil good company with the ghost of troubles past.” Maurice glanced down the table, his gaze settling for a moment upon hers. “Let us talk of other things.”

“You tell us of the death of kings then wish to talk about horse-breeding.” Lord William’s face crinkled in grim humor. “It’s good to see that years away from war have not changed you.”

Vaguely, Maura was aware of the shuffle of servants around the table, the removal of the platters for the next course. Some part of her mind registered the gamey scent of venison and the sharpness of new cheese, but her attention was elsewhere.

“Frankly, Lord William,” Maurice said, as he sliced himself a sliver of the hard cheese, “if I thought this man—Colin—was no more than another MacEgan determined to lift my cattle, then I’d have seen to the MacEgans as I always have. But this man is different, as I’ve seen to my detriment in the latest skirmish.”

Skirmish?

Richard glanced at her and she realized she had gasped aloud. She dropped her gaze to the mutilated trencher bread and the hunk of cheese ridged with the arc of Richard’s first bite. She must be wary. Her sharp interest in such affairs would take too much explaining, and now her thoughts whirled too wildly for lies.

Maurice continued. “He has rallied more MacEgans than I knew existed in those dreary mountains. And now he’s sunk his teeth into the castle at Fahy.”

Fahy
.

Maura remembered the name, remembered Colin talking about it upon the hill outside of Kilcolgan. He was heading in that direction, so he said. There, in Fahy, was the old castle-keep of the MacEgans. She remembered the cow-path that led off the road a mile or so before Shrule, the path in the woods into which Colin disappeared before the minstrel troupe trudged onward to Lord William’s castle.

“That castle at Fahy,” Lord William said, settling back in his chair, “was well defended?”