The Falcon's Bride (6 page)

The old sleigh, rickety for lack of use since it snowed so seldom, was hitched for stealth without bells to two fine horses that were speeding downriver toward Newgrange before the first light of day.

“I hope you know what we’re doing,” James said as they neared the menhirs on the verge of the mound. “It doesn’t
look as though anyone else shares your passion for trudging out here to watch dawn light the chamber in such weather.”

Thea didn’t reply. James reined the horses in before the entrance, which bore a design of three large concentric circles. Beyond, the gaping mouth of the tomb loomed black against the lightening sky. James climbed out of the sleigh and lifted Thea down.

Suddenly, a soaring falcon swooped low and perched upon one of the menhirs. Thea’s quick intake of breath caught her brother’s attention, and he turned.

“Bloody hell!” he seethed, searching the ground for something to hurl at the bird, but the snow had covered any rocks that might have sufficed.

Thea grabbed his arm. “Don’t you dare!” she cried when he unhooked the sleigh lantern and started to heft it. “I told you not to hurt it. It looks half frozen, poor creature. Put that down, James! If you harm that falcon, I shall never forgive you!”

James set the lantern back in its bracket and heaved a sigh. “There, first light,” he said, pointing. “Let’s have this done and return to the castle before we’re missed.”

“Come on, then,” she agreed, holding out her hand.

“Oh no, little sister,” he said. “This is your adventure, none of mine.” He scowled at the perched bird. “I will wait with the sleigh.”

Thea frowned. She didn’t want to leave him anywhere near the falcon while he was in this humor, but there was nothing for it; light was filtering through the roof box, and so she stepped inside the tomb’s inky mouth and waited.

Slowly, it began to lighten inside, revealing a passageway not quite sixty feet long that led into a chamber with three side recesses roofed by a corbelled vault. Standing stones were strategically placed as supports. The recess to the right was the largest, and most ornately decorated with
neolithic art. On the floor stood two large stone basins, one nesting inside the other. They were deeply stained with something that resembled rust. Could they have once been used for sacrifice? Thea shuddered to wonder.

As the sun rose higher, the narrow beam of light filtering down through the roof box grew wider, slowly reaching the rear of the passageway until the whole chamber was illuminated with a ghostly shaft of light beaming to the very place where she stood. In awe of the phenomenon, Thea gasped, examining the carved artwork that had suddenly become clear on the roof, the walls and the standing stone supports.

She lost all track of time. The seventeen minutes of the experience seemed nearly up before they’d begun. Though it was cold inside the tomb, Thea didn’t feel the chill. Her footsteps sounded back hollow in her ears, and she spoke her name aloud and listened to the echo of her voice, like ripples in a pond, spread out all around her.

All too soon the light began to fade, and she stepped into the other recesses, trying to catch it there, but it dimmed inside those also. Then there came another sound that ran her through like a knife blade; the screech of a falcon close by. Her heart leapt. Could James have gone back on his word? Had he lobbed something at the creature in spite of her pleas?

All at once the light failed, and as she ran back to the entrance the falcon screeched again.
Thank the stars he hasn’t killed it
! she thought. Reaching the opening just as darkness overtook her, she stepped out into the frosty morning glare only to pull up short, her eyes flitting in all directions.

“James?” she called. “James! Where are you? This is no time for having me on. James!”

But there was no answer. Her brother was gone. Where was the sleigh? Where were the marks in the snow left by the runners, and by the horses’ plodding hooves? A blanket
of snow stretched out before her, pure white and unblemished. But how could that be, when no fresh snow had fallen?

She whipped around and looked toward the mound behind her, but that was all it was—a solid white mound of snow ringed by menhirs crowned with caps of white. Where was the entrance, with its elaborately carved tri-circles? Was there more than one? Had she come out a different way? Where were the kerbstones—all
ninety-seven
of them—holding up the massive cairn? Gone—all gone! All but the falcon, circling above, had vanished with the light in the passage tomb.

Panicked now, Thea cupped her hands around her mouth. “James!” she shrilled at the top of her voice. “James! Stop this. What’s happening? Where are you?”

But it wasn’t her brother who laid hands on her from behind and threw something cold and damp over her head that smelled of horse. Someone had hold of her—more than one set of hands jostled her about and hoisted her into the air. She came down hard across a broad shoulder that she would have beat upon if her hands weren’t tethered beneath the foul-smelling blanket.

The last thing she heard before something hard struck her head was the sound of a rough voice saying, “Wait till he sees what we’ve bagged—and right under our noses, too.”

Thea’s first waking sensation was of teeth-chattering cold. Her chinchilla pelerine had been removed, and so had her Moroccan leather ankle boots. Her feet were freezing. So was her body in its thin wool crepe traveling costume, which gapped open in front. Instinctively, she tried to close it, but her hands were tethered above her head, and her feet weren’t touching the floor. All at once, she realized she couldn’t have closed it even if her hands were
free. It opened in back. The frock had been torn apart in front nearly all the way down to the hem.

A dull ache at the back of her head wrenched a moan from her dry throat. Where was she? Not at Cashel Cosgrove, surely. Why couldn’t she see clearly? She wasn’t alone. Several men and a woman were speaking in hushed whispers in the shadows. Paralyzed with panic, Thea strained her eyes, trying to lift their images from the waves of dizziness that came and went like a pulse beat.

All at once, rough hands spread her frock and reached inside, stroking her breasts, belly and thighs. She tried to scream but couldn’t. Something stretched across her mouth was pushing her tongue back down her throat, a gag, and all that came out was a muffled whimper. Her feet were untethered, and she used them, kicking wildly at a shadowy moving target, her head swimming with vertigo. But that only spread her frock wider, and the rough hand parted her legs, cruelly exploring the soft, silken hair between her thighs.

The veins in Thea’s neck bulged with the frantic scream she couldn’t release. Between the cold and sheer terror of what she feared was about to happen, her whole body began to shake with involuntary spasms.

Suddenly the hand was yanked away so sharply that Thea spun where she hung, dangling from a frayed rope attached to an iron ring in the ceiling of what seemed to be a cave. Albeit blurred, her vision was returning. A chorus of muffled cries, accompanied by the hasty shuffling of feet erupted in a racket of displaced objects and raucous shouts all around her.

“We didn’t mean no harm,” a husky voice said. A hollow sound followed, and then more shuffling and objects clashing outside of her line of vision. “No . . . have done! I . . .
we was just havin’ a bit o’ fun with her while we was waitin’ for you. We wouldn’t have done nothin’—
No . . . !
”

Thea strained to see her captors, but the position of her arms stretched over her head and the fabric of her gaping frock blocked her vision. She only had a clear view of what was directly in front of her, and these men were off to the side.

“She’s no good to us spoiled,” said a booming baritone voice. It reverberated in her very bones. Their leader? It must be. Her breath was coming in heaving spasms, and relief thrilled through her. He had spared her from what surely would have been the loss of her innocence. But her euphoria came too soon. From the periphery a figure emerged and stood before her—a towering giant of a man observing her, his hard stare boring into her like tarnished green fire.

Even though her feet didn’t reach the floor as she hung suspended, she had to look up to meet those gold-flecked green eyes. In the flickering torchlight, she could see her reflection in them. Recognition paralyzed her. She would know those wolflike eyes anywhere. They slid the length of her from the hair that had come down and hung loose about her shoulders, to the tips of her bare toes. It was a slow, sweeping appraisal. If a woman could be raped by a look, she was being raped now. This was no specter—he was
real
. She had come face-to-face with Ros Drumcondra.

It’s happening,
she thought, amazed.
The legend is true. He has come back just as they said, out of the tomb on the winter solstice to reclaim Cashel Cosgrove for the Drumcondras.
But where was she, and how could that be? This was not the dashing Gypsy renegade of her dreams, her delicious fantasy. This was a ruthless flesh-and-blood warrior, and he was dangerous.

Reaching out with one bronzed finger, he lifted away the left side of her torn frock from her body and took the measure of what lay beneath. His hooded gaze followed the swell of her breasts to the taut nipples puckered with cold, to the curve of her waist, hips and thighs. They lingered familiarly upon the thatch of raven-colored hair between them. For a heart-stopping moment, Thea thought he was going to touch her there, as the other man had, but no. Another figure sidled into view—a woman with long hair the color of chestnuts and eyes as black as coal. She was wearing Thea’s chinchilla pelerine, stroking the dense fur seductively—flaunting it as she undulated against Drumcondra, her long arms wound around his neck and broad chest like snakes. So that’s where the pelerine had gone!

With a flick of his finger, Drumcondra dismissed Thea’s torn frock and looked long and hard at the woman who had twined herself around him. Putting her from him with painstaking control, he stripped off the pelerine in one motion, ignoring her protests, and drew a long-handled dirk from his belt.

All at once there came a flapping sound close by, like the wings of a large bird moving the still, foul air. The falcon? If it was, Thea couldn’t see it, though she felt the effects of the breeze its flailing wings stirred.

Just for a moment, she caught a glimpse of something moving in the shadows across the way. A hunched old woman, her long gray hair straggling out from beneath a woolen head scarf was staring at her, a triumphant knowing look on her wrinkled face. The old Gypsy? It was. Only then did Thea see the great bird perched upon the woman’s bony hand, its tethers dangling down, tether bells jingling, a plumed leather hood sheathing its head. The woman paused there for just a moment, her black eyes riveting, before melting into the labyrinth of passageways to
disappear—bird and all—into the darkness, the falcon beating the musty air with its magnificent wings.

She got only that fleeting glimpse before the torchlight flashed off the dirk in Ros Drumcondra’s white-knuckled fist and commanded her attention. Thea gasped and screwed her eyes shut tight, certain her next breath would be her last as he hefted the pelerine over his shoulder and came at her with the blade. But it wasn’t the attack she feared imminent. Instead, he began hacking at the ropes tethering her wrists with the weapon.

The rope being weak, the blade razor sharp, and his strength greater than anything Thea had ever known or imagined, her bonds gave way in a trice, and she fell into his strong arms outstretched to receive her. It wasn’t the most graceful return to earth by any means, as her half-naked body was forced against his stiff leather jerkin decorated with hobnails. The tactile experience of her soft flesh against cold studded leather was a shock to her system, as was the crush of her thighs, and the soft mound of her feminitity against the arousal challenging the seam of his skintight leggings. He eased her over it in painfully slow increments, his enormous hand planted firmly on her buttocks while setting her on her feet.

Thea wobbled at first, come so suddenly to firm ground again. Drumcondra made no move to steady her, but instead stripped the rest of her torn garments away in one sweep of his hand, and tugged the chinchilla pelerine around her. Thea squealed in fright through her gag at the first motion, then groaned in relief when the fur warmed her shivering body. Drumcondra wasn’t moved by either exclamation, as he watched her struggle into the sumptuous fur wrap. He re-bound her wrists, gave pause over the gag in her mouth for a moment before evidently dismissing the notion of removing it, and shoved her down on a pelt
rug in the corner. Then, without a backward glance, he stalked away.

Thea’s eyes flashed about her surroundings. It was definitely some sort of cave—a well appointed cave, at that. There was something vaguely familiar. Could it be the stone basins? There were several set about, like the ones she’d seen at Newgrange. Drumcondra had seated her near a makeshift brazier heaped with peat over live coals. Fragrant smoke drifted lazily upward to escape through a hole in the roof. There were chests and sleeping pallets along the walls. Niches hacked out of the rock held torches made of rushes soaked in some anonymous rendered fat. There was a rancid odor about it, trailing acrid smoke that fogged the oppressive air. The stench flared her nostrils and made her grimace until she became accustomed. This seemed to be some kind of common room, but passageways fanning out in more than one direction suggested a much larger compound with several more rooms farther in.

It was into one of these that Drumcondra steered the irate Gypsy wench, none-too-gently, their voices raised in a Celtic dialect unfamiliar to Thea. The others had scattered, all but a wizened old woman stirring something in a kettle on a tripod over the brazier. It smelled rich and earthy—some sort of venison stew, Thea supposed. She hadn’t taken breakfast before they set out, and only then did she realize how terribly hungry she was. Nothing was being offered, however, so she drew her knees up under the warm pelerine and turned on her side, content to be ignored for the moment.