Sing Me Home (21 page)

“It was not as well-defended as it has been in the past, and that blame is on my part,” Lord Maurice said. “But this man took it by sending his warriors out of the darkness like animals, screaming war cries, and pouring over the walls.”

She suddenly had a vision of Colin fighting the blacksmith in the square at Tuam, charging across the cobblestones while blood dripped into his eyes.

“Will it ever end, Maurice?” Lord William clanked his wine chalice back upon the table. “I don’t have the vinegar of those terrible years, when I inherited the barony from my cousin. Nor the same blind foolishness.”

“Father,” Richard said, leaning across the table. “Let me lead the men to defeat these Irishmen.”

Lord William’s gaze drifted sadly over his son’s visage. “See what all this talk of war does? It gets a young man’s blood pumping for adventure, and he not even knowing the wherewithal of it.”

“Father, I am knight enough—”

“Who will become the baron if you fall in battle?” Lord William tilted his head toward his daughters. “This war started because my uncle died with only female heirs. Back then, the MacEgans nearly succeeded in capturing this castle, until I returned from abroad and brought the war against them.”

Maurice added grimly, “If this son of Fergus is anything like Brendan he will fight until the last drop of MacEgan blood has sunk into the earth.”

Lord William cut the meat and lifted a small bite to his lips. “They are still to the north, yes?”

“Yes. A small contingent holds the castle, while the rest are spread across the Partry Mountains.”

“Then we shall ride tomorrow.”

***

Sneaking out of Lord William’s castle was easier than Maura had expected.

She strode across the open courtyard. The summer sun blazed upon her linen coif. She eyed the open gate, and its swarm of guardsmen and traders, tripping an excuse easily upon her tongue.
I’m just setting off for a walk in the countryside to gather some acorns for Nutmeg.
The lump of her gathered belongings banged her thighs where she’d tied the pack beneath her tunic. Nutmeg’s basket thumped against her back. She could only hope that some curious, sharp-eyed guardsmen didn’t dare to question the daughter of the lord of the place.

She passed through the gate, but she was not yet free. Clusters of tradesmen lived amid the narrow streets, and many might stop her, asking for alms, wondering where Caddell’s daughter traveled alone, unguarded. She held her head high, looking neither left nor right, passing through as if she had a place to be and a time to be there. So she made her way until the town gave way to a stretch of cleared pasture, dotted with cattle.

Nutmeg whirled within his basket, popping up now and again to whisker the air in excitement, daring to skitter onto her shoulder as they left the confines of the city. Still she kept walking until she found the cow-path where she’d last seen Colin. Plunging into the woods, she noted by the moss growing on the oaks the direction in which she set her foot. She knew that Lough Corrib gleamed a two hours’ brisk walk to the west of here. If she followed the shore northwards, she would come to the hills between it and Lough Mask, to the entrance of the Partry Mountains. From there, she suspected there had to be some kind of clear way to the castle in the mountains around Fahy.

With each step deeper into the woods came an excitement, and anticipation, a lightening of body and mind, a surety that what she was doing was right. She started to run, racing through the spindly saplings, racing away from the hateful whispers of the Caddells, from those prison walls of stone, away from the English—even if they were her family. She’d never felt like one of them, certainly hadn’t been welcomed like one of them, and as day after day passed in shame under strangers’ disapproval, she’d come to the inescapable conclusion that even twenty more years of living among the Caddells wouldn’t make their hearts any warmer.

She didn’t want to be Maura Caddell any more than she’d wanted to take the veil, or be the butcher’s wife. She wanted to be her own woman and make her own decisions. Thus she raced like a kestrel set free of the mews, soaring across the earth with only one destination in mind.

Hours later, as she shared bilberries with Nutmeg and worked her way around the banks of Lough Corrib, a man dropped down from the trees with a whoosh and a thud.

Nutmeg screeched and dove into his basket. The skirt of her tunic slipped out of her hands. Bilberries scattered across the forest floor.

“Look what I found, lads.” His lips tightened into a grin beneath his mustache. “A nice bit o’ hind wandering alone in the woods.”

Coarse laughter echoed from the trees. Maura noticed the toe of a boot dangling from a branch.

“You’re far from home and hearth, lass.”

Maura looked at him hard. He didn’t have the look of a common vagabond. This man had painted his face with woad, and the leather stretched across his chest looked tough and hard-boiled. His quiver bristled with arrows.

“You came from an English hearth, by the look of you.” He spoke a thick and unwieldy English. “Have you no tongue? Or will you be having me look for it and use it the way it was meant to be used?”

“You do me harm,” she snapped in Irish, “and The MacEgan himself will see you punished.”

“Will he now?” She could see his teeth now, crooked and well worn. “And what do you know of The MacEgan?”

“He is close, I know he is.”

“And why do you think Brendan MacEgan would give a damn about a lost English wench?”

“I don’t know Brendan.” Her heart tripped in her chest. “It’s Colin I speak of. The minstrel turned warrior.”

The man’s eyes narrowed behind the caking of the woad, and the tenor of his attention shifted.

“I’ve come to see him. I am Maura—” She hesitated, wondering what these men would do if they thought her a Caddell. “I am Maura of Killeigh.”

“Colin,” the man said warily, “knows many women.”

“Be that as it may,” she said, “he won’t take kindly to see me maltreated.”

“You speak an easy Irish for an English wench.”

“I’m not English.”

A lass could choose, couldn’t she? Then she thought of something else. Sweeping open her cloak, she fumbled with the sack tied about her waist.

A sliver of steel chilled her throat.

“Move slowly, lass.” His breath brushed her cheek. “I’ve no liking to be nicked by the slice of a lass’s knife, and even if you were to draw blood, there’s a dozen healthy lads in the trees above who would see you’d regret the act.”

“It’s clear enough to me,” she said, her breath short in her throat, “that I wouldn't get through that thick hide of yours with the sharpest of daggers. If you’d let me be, I’ll give you proof that I know The MacEgan.”

The man backed off, but not so far that she didn’t smell the fumes of him rising up to choke her. She fumbled in her pack until she found what she looked for—a small package wrapped in linen. She unwrapped it to show the circular brooch winking with bits of colored gems.

The man lowered his knife. Someone called from above, and, another man dropped from the trees to come and stare at the brooch winking in her hand.

“Malachy—you keep watch in the pass.” The leader adjusted his bow across his chest. “The MacEgan has a visitor.”

He turned and headed into the brush without another word. Maura shoved the brooch into her sack and hurtled through the woods to keep up with the leader’s swift stride. He strode a wandering path around rock and hill, through the thickest of gorse, taking no mind of any marker she could see. She had to run to keep up with the man. She cursed her lack of forethought for not wearing her own sturdier boots instead of the filmy bits of leather slipper that she’d taken a liking to, slippers used to no more rough handling than the dried bits of reeds spread across the castle floor. But after a while she set her mind on Colin, and then the man couldn’t walk fast enough for her.

As the shadows stretched long across the hillside, they came to a copse of wood. Shouts rang from the trees and a stir began in the midst of it. Men emerged from behind every rock and bush. The jangle and clank of sword and dirk against metal boss rang in the air as the crowd swelled.

Maura’s heart began to skitter. There were so many warriors camped in this site in the mountains. The height had a good view of the valley below where a slate gray elbow of Lough Corrib gleamed. She felt the men’s eyes upon her as she approached the stone rampart on a rise, her legs wobbly, and not from the climb. Colin was near, somewhere amid the bustle of these warriors, somewhere within those walls. Soon, she’d lay eyes upon his face, feel his arms around her, and maybe even the pleasure of his kiss.

She trembled with anticipation.

Her guide strode through the wooden gates and across a courtyard bustling with horses and men. She heard the ding-ding of a blacksmith and smelled stewing meat. Her escort pushed open the wooden door to a squat building in the middle of the courtyard. She blinked in the sudden darkness until she noticed several men seated around a trestle table. At the call of her guide, all the men glanced up. Then one man rose to his feet, dragging a coif of chain mail off his head so the links collapsed in a jangle upon his shoulders.

One man, taller than all the others, his eyes as blue as the summer sky.

She stuttered to a stop. The air buzzed around her ears. A sword hung from his belt, banging against his mail-covered shins as he approached, weighted easily on him as if he’d worn it all his life. A snatch of memory came to her, of the story of Cú Chulainn, the famous Ulster warrior who during the heat of battle was seized by a bloodlust so fierce and so blinding that he paid no mind to the path of his sword, to whether he killed kith or kin.

This man wearing chain mail, this man with the bristled cheek and stony gaze … he was Colin.

But she did not know this man at all.

Chapter Seventeen

“
W
here did you find her?”

He barked the question at Aedh while staring at
her
, the blue silk tunic, the flush of her cheeks, the two plaits bound back in the English way, thinking of the last time they’d touched, making love against a wall in the shadows of Caddell’s castle.

“We found her wandering up the pass—”

“Alone?”

“Aye, alone.” Aedh frowned. “She claims she knows you. She has your father’s brooch to prove it.”

“Send ten more men to the pass.” His mind raced. Caddell was crafty, unpredictable, and the news of the capture of this castle had no doubt reached the Englishman by now. “Double the watch on the ramparts,” he ordered. “Eoin, fetch your sharp-eyed boy to climb to the ledge and report on what he sees to the north.”

Men bustled about the room, running to his orders. He planted his hands on his hips and tried to make sense of seeing Maura standing there, blinking up with him with that dangerous innocence in her eyes. He wanted to shake her for wandering these war-torn woods alone. He couldn’t take his eyes off her face. How pale she looked. It was a delicate, aristocratic pallor—the May-milk skin he remembered from before their weeks on the road, when the summer sun had burnished it gold. He wanted to capture that moist, pink lower lip. He pressed his knuckles against his chain mail to crush the itch he had to drag her into his arms.

It would be just like Caddell to send her as a secret weapon to distract him from vigilance while the bastard amassed fighters to attack.

He barked, “Did Caddell send you?”

“Of course not.” She sounded startled. “I escaped the castle on my own.”

His heart stopped, a painful thump. He ran his gaze over her body, looking for bruises, scratches, injuries. He wouldn’t put it past Caddell to torture her for information. Nor would he put it past Caddell to use her as a pawn—willingly or not.

He said, “You’re a spy then.”

She flinched, and the motion sent a dart of guilt through him that he crushed instantly. He knew she expected jokes and gentleness, but in the heat of war, acting slow and gentle meant eager boys could be slain.

“You’ve come here,” he pressed, “thinking I would let you go and then you could report back on my whereabouts.”