The Emerald Isle (17 page)

Murchadh went pale at this unexpected comment, then a deep, bright red washed up from his throat and into his face. Cahira walked away, grinning.

Philip had arranged for the contests to be held in a pasture south of the fortified compound, and benches lined both sides of the field to afford every spectator a decent view. After Cahira greeted her kinsman and his family, Philip’s wife invited her to view the contests by her side. Cahira smiled and replied that Murchadh would fall into a fierce temper if she did not remain within his sight at all times. A tournament so populated with Normans, she pointed out, greatly troubled his mind.

The lady lifted her brows at this explanation but did not protest, so Cahira slipped away from her host and hostess and went to look
for Sorcha. She found the girl at the well beside the kitchen building. Though occasionally servants would run in from the fields to fill their water buckets, now the area was deserted. Not a Norman was in sight, but Murchadh stood in the empty courtyard, his hands on his hips.

Cahira and Sorcha moved to the far side of the stone kitchen, away from any prying eyes. Philip’s servants had been roasting and baking for nearly two days, and the succulent scents of roasting lamb and pork made Cahira’s stomach growl. She shoved all thoughts of hunger from her mind, though, and focused on her task. Lifting her eyes to meet Sorcha’s, she pressed her lips together and put out her hand.

“Saints preserve us!” Sorcha whispered, a glint of wonder in her eyes. “Are you still intending to go through with it?” “I am.”

“Then God be with you.” Sorcha pulled the bundle of men’s clothing from the sack she carried and handed it to Cahira, who spread the garments on the low wall of the cistern. While Sorcha helplessly hovered nearby, Cahira pulled her gown over her head, then unrolled the bundle of clothing she had taken from the trunk.

“Truth to tell, I prayed all night that you’d change your mind about this crazy thing,” Sorcha whimpered, wringing her hands as she swayed on her feet. “We could have a lovely time with Philip and his wife, sitting on the benches and just watching the men.”

“I’m not changing my mind.” Cahira tossed her gown to Sorcha, then slipped the short tunic over her chemise. At least four inches of white linen hung beneath the tunic’s hem, but Cahira gathered up the excess fabric and caught it in the belt at her waist.

“You
are
only going for the archery, aren’t you?” Sorcha worried aloud. “I can’t see you lifting a sword against those other fellows. And I’ll run screaming to Philip if you’re thinking of riding with a lance.”

“I’m not going to lift a sword or an ax or mount a horse.” Cahira pulled one of the knitted stockings over her white legs and tied it above her knee with a garter. “I’m no fool, Sorcha.”

“Y’are sometimes.” The girl’s eyes filled with water. “A darling eejit, to be sure, but an eejit all the same. What if they recognize you? What if they find out I knew? Your father will beat the life out of me, and he’ll never trust Murchadh again.”

“My father has never beaten a servant before, and I can’t believe he’ll be starting now.” Cahira finished tying the other garter, then slipped her feet into her leather pampooties. Her legs looked strangely thin beneath the short edge of the tunic—almost insubstantial. How would they look when she walked onto the field and a hundred eyes compared her to those mail-clad
monsters?

“Well then.” Cahira wiped her damp palms on her tunic. “That settles it, but for the hat I took from the barn. Help me wind my hair beneath this cap, Sorcha.”

The maid tried her best, but after a moment it became clear that the length of Cahira’s braid simply would not fit into the snug hat. “It’s a boy’s cap, and no doubt.” Sorcha folded her arms as she stepped back to survey the impossible situation. “So it cannot be done. Let’s get you properly dressed again, and we will join Philip and his wife—”

“I’m not giving up.” Cahira reached back and pulled the heavy braid over her shoulder, then stared at it. She had never considered cutting her hair, not even when that strange white streak appeared above her left temple shortly after her father became king. Her mother had been horrified by its appearance, seeing it as an evil omen, but her father only laughed and said God had set Cahira aside for some special purpose. An invisible saint’s kiss had painted the hair white, he suggested, or an angel had bent down and touched her with the blessing of hair as rich as rubies cooled by the breath of snow.

Blessing or not, the hair was now a liability. Without another thought, Cahira pulled her little dagger from her belt and began to hack at the braid.

Sorcha’s eyes bulged. “Saints preserve us, you’ve gone truly mad.”

“A wee bit, perhaps.” Cahira kept cutting. “But hair will grow. And opportunities like this do not present themselves every day.”

Sorcha closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her chest. “I’ll be wanting to die when I see your mother again. She’ll want to know why I let you destroy your one true beauty, and what answer can I be giving her? ’Twas bad enough when you decided to play at this charade, and unthinkable that Murchadh would come down with the same lunacy. But you could have done it quiet like, without speaking of it, but now she’ll know for certain that you were up to mischief. There’ll be no hiding this.”

Cahira tilted her head, tugging at the braid with one hand while she sliced with the other. “I’ll take the blame,” she muttered between her clenched teeth. “When I beat the Normans, Father will be so proud that my foolish hair won’t matter one whit.”

The braid now hung by a wisp. Sorcha covered her face and moaned until Cahira’s knife bit through the last strands. When the braid fell away, Cahira offered it to Sorcha.

“Save this for my mother. She’s always liked it more than I have.”

Peeping through the splayed fingers of one hand, Sorcha gingerly accepted the shorn braid, handling it as if it were a dead mouse. Laughing, Cahira ran her fingers through the shorn edges of her hair, marveling at the cool breath of the wind upon her neck. “I should have done this years ago,” she said, picking up the stable boy’s cap. It slid easily over her head.

“Now,” Cahira fixed her maid in a stern gaze, “hide all these things in some safe place while I go with Murchadh to fetch my bow and quiver.”

Sorcha pressed her lips together in a sign of disapproval, but she gathered Cahira’s castoff clothes into her arms and turned away to do as she was told.

A
fter unseating Oswald and two other challengers in a jousting competition, Colton slurped from a dipper at a water station, then sniffed in appreciation as the aroma of roasted pork wafted over the area where the merchants had set up their booths. The carefree atmosphere pervading the tournament grounds reminded him of the fairs he had known as a child in Normandy. Merchants from all over France traveled to his province to set up booths and hawk their wares, while the common people from miles around came to visit neighbors, greet kinfolk, and be awed by the great variety of goods available from lands across the sea.

He dropped the dipper back into the bucket and wiped his sweaty brow with a kerchief. He’d been so young in those days—and so innocent. But the innocence vanished when the fever took his father, leaving his penniless mother with no choice but to offer ten-year-old Colton to the first passing knight who could find use for a squire. Fortunately—for Colton later learned that not all young boys escaped childhood as unscarred as he—the traveling English baron who accepted Colton was a truly honorable man. Lord William Archbold had vowed to spend his life honoring God, his king, and the chivalric ideals of loyalty, honor, and obedience. Before he had spent five years in England, Colton had passed the tests of knighthood, and that knowledge brought a smile to his dying patron’s lips.

Lord William had been felled by an accident—or a curse, depending
upon how an observer interpreted the simple wound that crusted and bled and sent red streaks shooting up the aristocrat’s arm. After a fever set in, Lord William’s affected limb swelled to twice its normal size. Despite the physician’s attempts to purge the poisonous evil from his body, the kindly baron died, leaving Colton free to take an oath of fealty to Lord William’s nearest relative, Lord Hubert de Burgo.

Attending his new master, Colton spent some months in the English courts where the boy king Henry III pretended to rule. Courtly duties bored him (and the king as well, it must be noted), and it was Colton’s turn to pretend when Lord Hubert regretfully announced that he was sending all his newly acquired men to Ireland. Like the others, Colton frowned and made a great show of being reluctant to depart, but every man’s heart lightened when their ship set sail. Their new master was Hubert’s nephew, Lord Richard de Burgo, who was seeking to raise an army in order to claim lands he had lawfully won.

Colton enjoyed his months at Richard’s castle on the River Shannon, but his mind immediately focused on the proposed cavalcade into Connacht. Expecting to see armed camps upon every hilltop, his nerves were strung as tight as a bow as they rode into the disputed territory. But in the six weeks he had traveled in Athlone and the surrounding areas, he met only peaceful people, pleasant folk who were quick to smile at him once he assured them that he meant to harm.

Why did Richard need an army?

It wouldn’t take much to overwhelm the Irish, Colton thought, watching the people as he walked through the merchant booths. The people of this so-called Emerald Isle were not adventurers by nature. They tended to remain home caring for kith and kin while the Vikings, the Normans, and the English plundered and settled their shorelines. The Norse Vikings, invaders of generations past, had entrenched themselves into the southern seaports and now seemed as Irish as the Gaels themselves, while many of the Normans in the southland evidenced the same disposition.

“Excuse me, sir. Would you like some ale?” A pretty Irish maid stopped before Colton and timidly offered up a gourd. Colton gave her an indulgent smile, then slipped his hand around the gourd and drank deeply. When he finished, he noticed that the girl’s flush had deepened to crimson.

So, it was like that. Many of the Irish girls had been bedazzled by the sight of his men. Colton tried not to encourage them, for he and his knights were in the country to serve Lord Richard, not Lady Love.

“Thank you, lass,” he said, pressing the gourd back into her hand. “Now shouldn’t you be getting back to your mother?”

The girl gave him a quick, jerky nod, then spun on her heel and moved away through the crowd. Colton locked his hands behind his back and continued his walk, his mind racing with a thousand thoughts.

Once he asked his master the reason for their advance into Connacht, and for an answer received only a peevish look. When Colton persisted, reminding his master that they had come a great distance and remained over a month in Athlone without once spying an enemy, Richard finally grunted out a reply. “The enemy are the O’Connors, and they are all around you, Sir Knight.” His eyes flashed a warning. “We are here to fight not with swords, but with strength. They will see our power, and they will know we are superior. When the time is right, we will force them to realize they cannot resist us.”

Colton halted as Richard approached now, with one arm draped loosely over Philip’s shoulder and a cup of ale in the other. He had ingratiated himself with this kinsman o’ the Connors, promising friendship and benefits in return for Philip’s influence with Felim O’Connor. Richard wanted an audience with the king of Connacht in which he could press his claim, but thus far neither Philip’s entreaties nor the excitement of a tournament had worked to entice the king out of his fortress.

Colton bowed deeply to both men, then straightened himself as they and their retinue passed by. The Irish king must be as wily as a fox, he thought, moving through the crowd again. In truth, he would
not like to raise his sword against any of these charming people. In a brief time, he had learned that the Gaels were easygoing to a fault, most of them, unless you toyed with their crops, their cattle, or their daughters.