by Erin O'Quinn
To Liam, a bata meant his burnished shillelagh. But to me, it would always mean my husband’s secondary—yet far more powerful—weapon. “Yes, darling. Yes, you are. King of bata.”
I bade him roll over onto his stomach while I lifted the pouch of healing powder from the bedside table. Straddling his lean buttocks, I leaned over and gently licked the places where my nails had left welts and scratches, some swelling with traces of bright blood. I dusted a small amount of the powder where I had moistened, and I watched while it bubbled and frothed for a few seconds. And yet still I straddled him, thoroughly enjoying the play of his long muscles and the crease of his bum where I knew the skin was soft and pliant.
I leaned forward and licked him again, this time starting at the top of his crease and running my tongue the whole length, until I felt the soft pouch of his testicles. At once his buttocks rose and fell, and his moan set a fire to licking again at my groin. Just as he had stalked me earlier among the animal pelts, so I sought his flashing, rearing buttocks.
“Pog mé, pog mé,” he demanded, and I did, until he rolled onto his back, and I seized him with both hands and my mouth, too. Oh, I thought I would never have enough of his body, so delicious, so hard and soft at the same time. I moved my body up and down while sucking, I rode him as I would ride a wild pony, until he gasped and held my head hard against his groin. “Ye think to wear me out,” he said at last. “But ye be wrong, devil woman.”
“Shush, Liam. It is time to visit Torin and Swallow. And to say good-bye to your uncle Owen.”
I rolled out of bed, and his questing hand was far too slow to hold me back.
Chapter 3:
Larger than Life
“Liam, have you talked with your uncle Owen since Tara?”
He knew what I meant—since his father, King Leary, had rescinded Sweeney’s death sentence and rewarded his newly discovered half brother with vast areas of our own former lands. That was on the occasion of Beltane, the great May Day Festival, only a month ago. Even before that, Owen had been persuaded to stay a while with Mockingbird in the underground enclaves of the Feather clan.
I had asked, all the while knowing the answer.
“I have not, a ghrá. I think he…does not much like me.”
I remembered when Sweeney, bound to his invalid’s cart, had spat on Liam and reviled him for a foolish Samaritan, all the while Liam-—not yet my husband—patiently cleaned and dressed his wounds where the restraining ropes had deeply cut into his wrists and arms.
“No,” I said, thinking hard. “I think he loves you.”
Liam looked over at me from the vantage of Angus. We were cantering side by side, riding north to the enclaves as the sun began to settle into the pines and birches along the Foyle. I could sense his denial even as I guided Clíona’s insecure steps through the ravine we were crossing. A pox on taking the shortest route!
“Our cenél love each other always, Cat. But Uncail Eóghan shows it not. B’fhéidir he remembers…pain of capture. My capture, his capture. What think ye?”
It was not so long ago—half a year, a little more—when Sweeney, verging on madness, had hired men to seize Liam and hold him as hostage in exchange for reclaiming his old holdings. He had admitted to me later, in private, that his plan had been both risky and foolish and was designed with two purposes in mind—to hurt me, and to ensure his own capture and punishment. His inner pain and turmoil had been so great that he had seized on a plan doomed to failure. It was his demented way of begging, in a sense, for the release of death.
“Owen is very…complicated. Not easy to understand. But I think what he has done is the result of being in deep pain.”
“Ye have healed his pain, Cat, have ye not?”
“A little, I think. The physical pain is eased.” The gruit, the special herbal mix I had concocted, was slowly doing its work, administered each day by Mockingbird. “The mental pain—that will take years to heal. We must be patient, Liam. And loving.”
He grinned suddenly, his eyes crinkling at the edges, his whole face radiant. “Me love is strong. B’fhéidir…maybe he feels it too much.”
I stopped Clíona with a pull of the reins, and Liam stopped Angus, too. I reached my hand out into the distance between us as if to touch his dear face. The setting sun behind his right shoulder had lit up his golden-brown hair like a crown. “We can never feel too much love, dearest Liam. Never stop giving.”
He brought Angus so close to my mare that her flanks shuddered somewhat, but she stood still. He grasped my hand and held it for a few moments. “Cat. The love…it grows every day. Too late. No turning back.”
I squeezed his hand, returning his sentiment with my eyes. “Then let us ride, love. Straight to the arms of your soft, sentimental Uncle Owen.”
Both laughing, we urged our horses forward a bit faster and arrived at the enclaves in time to see the pines and oaks afire from a dying sunset.
Once inside the dwarf enclaves, we immediately lost touch with ordinary life as the special reality of a netherworld took command of our senses. The dwarves, unashamedly “little people” and often reviled or shunned by others, had dug underground homes and had filled their special world with a kind of shimmering, shifting, dust-like substance that reflected back the light from wall candles. The result was breath catching and, from past experience, almost magical.
There was something about the dwarf dust that healed both the body and the mind, even as it lit the way throughout the underground network. I thought that a great part of Owen’s recovery could be attributed to the dust, not to my clumsily prepared gruit. I remembered back to the time before I ever touched the soil of Éire, when my friend Andreas lay at death’s door, on the dust-filled floor of Crowe Feather’s tavern. He and his brother Jay had urged me to sift the dust around Andreas while I administered a healing potion. Somewhere between the potion and the dust, Andreas recovered. How much of which “remedy” had cured him? I would never know.
Liam and I followed our guide, the lovely Swallow Feather, to the home she shared with her mother Mockingbird and now with her mother’s lover Owen Sweeney. We walked past the great tree roots that plunged from overhead and kept sinking into the shining floor to end somewhere deep below. The tree roots were an integral part of all enclaves. The earth all around had been removed, leaving the sinuous roots to continue into the earth below to find their deep nourishment while the various mosses and lichens found purchase on their surface. Fresh air, arising somehow from the roots and the mosses, filled the underground dwellings with its sweetness.
Swallow turned to us as she led us through Mockingbird’s large cook room. “Mother says not to linger here. She and I are preparing supper tonight while our guests find a level of comfort.” The light from the huge fire pit and from the dancing dust played off Swallow’s gold-and-brown hair, making her somehow even more beautiful. I had long ago forgotten my envy at the perfection of her appearance. Now I could only marvel, as always, at how any human being could seem so like an angel.
Then I could not help a small giggle, remembering Swallow standing in the shillelagh circle with the rest of the Terrible Triús, daring an opponent to get within three feet. An angel with a cudgel—that was my Swallow Feather.
We entered the comfort room. That was my own name for any large common room designed to delight and nurture its occupants. Mockingbird’s comfort room was much like her brother Jay’s. It was filled with comfortable, high-backed benches, the wooden seats cushioned with soft animal pelts. Wool-and-linen weavings hung from the walls wherever graceful wall sconces with their candles would afford space. Several low tables were scattered around the room, many holding remnants of whatever pastime one of the occupants was involved in—a game of chess, a scrap of parchment with illuminated letters, a set of Hogs Knuckles, a roll of new-spun yarn.
As soon as Liam and I entered the room, his brother Torin and his cousin Michael both stood. I saw right away that Michael’s darling wife Brigid, one of my bes
t friends, was sitting near him. So this evening was to be, in a sense, the gathering of the clans—the coming together of the only family that Owen had in Derry.
Michael took my hand and bowed his head ever so slightly, kissing it with humor and affection. Torin waited his turn and did the same. “Go raibh maith agat—thank ye, Cate. Me invitation was a bit late. Swallow almost bit me sword in two, grinding her teeth at me sluggish ways.”
Swallow raised her head to the tall, handsome clansman, and I watched their eyes making love to each other. I sighed inwardly, thinking back to the time when Liam and I had done the same—back when my promise to Father Patrick had kept us from serious love play.
Brigid, too, was watching her Michael, the way his humorous blue eyes caught the sparkle of dwarf dust, the crooked grin shared by all the cenéls—Liam’s extended family. Anyone could read the love and respect she felt for him even across a room or across an ocean. But that was another story.
In the bustle of our entrance, we had almost ignored the looming presence of a broad-chested, mighty-armed man sitting quietly on a bench, his lap covered with a fine-spun woolen cloth. After greeting Michael and Torin, I walked to him, Liam behind me.
“Owen,” I said simply, and I smiled up at him. Even seated, he was taller than I. When I extended my hand, a bit tentatively, he took it readily.
“How are you, young Caylith?” he asked. It was more than a polite question. I felt that somehow he could look behind the veneer of my social face and see into my very soul. That was one of the disconcerting traits of Owen Sweeney that had once frightened me beyond measure. Now I still felt timid in his presence, but I also felt a growing affection—even love—for the man who had been cut in half by fate but who was still much larger than anyone in this room.
“Um, fine.” My answer was almost shy. Then I gathered more confidence. “I will sorely miss you, for a fact.”
Still holding my hand, he looked at me, and his eyes seemed to pierce my own like the blade of a long knife, seeking the truth or falseness of my statement.
Then, hardly raising his eyes, he looked at Liam standing next to me. “Tráthnóna,” he said, a brusque way of saying “Good evening.”
“Uncle Owen, I am…much taken to see ye. Looking well. Ah…” He held his hand out to his uncle, who finally dropped mine and seized Liam’s.
The two men stayed close together for a moment, their hands clasped. And then the clasp went from their hands to their forearms, a clear signal of comradeship. Without realizing I had been holding my breath, I let out a slow sough of air, like a wave receding from shore.
As if Liam’s and Owen’s firm arm clasp was a signal, Michael and Torin rose and strode to the bench where Sweeney was seated.
Turning from the men, I went to the bench where Brigid sat. I had never seen her dressed in any color other than some shade of blue, and tonight was no exception. The flax-flower blue of her gown intensified the luminous blue of her eyes and played up the blondeness of her hair.
I leaned over and hugged her close for a moment. “Dear Bree. You look wonderful.”
“And you, Caylith, you know not your own beauty. I have often wondered how many hearts you broke before your eyes settled on Liam.”
I felt an instant heat in my cheeks, but I managed to laugh. “Only a few, Bree. And each one for a good reason. Move over a bit.”
I settled down next to her. “Where is our hostess?”
“Moc has disappeared into her inner chamber. She said something about changing her apron for a gown.”
“And speaking of changing clothing—will you be coming to our Triús meeting this week?”
“Yes. I am sorry I missed it last week, Cay. Michael does not feel ill very often, but last Thursday he actually stayed home from the building site for the first time ever. Perhaps all he needed was a day in bed.” She did not even blush as she said it. That was Brigid’s nature. She was fresh and direct as a breeze blowing off a shimmering lake.
“Well, Bree, last week Mama decided to sit and watch us a while. She is still scandalized by our wearing men’s trousers. But ever since the incident with the druids, she has somehow decided that we are doing more than playing with dangerous cudgels.”
We both took that same moment to savor the incident of the twin druids and the improbable rescue—not capture—of Owen Sweeney. “Oh, that was an adventure I will not soon forget! I am glad you diverted me just a bit from my Latin scrolls. Wielding a shillelagh is great fun. I think we took down Loch and Lucet by their sheer astonishment at us, not by any warrior might on my part, at least.”
Five ladies, none of us even average in height, had formed a group we called the Terrible Trousers. Each of us wore a version of the men’s triús that many in Éire—especially the hard-riding cattle drovers—wore to protect their inner thighs from the rigors of life in the saddle.
Liam, Michael, Brigid, and I had just discovered the secret that his mother had kept from Sweeney his whole life—the secret that revealed his true identity as the half brother of the high king, uncle to Liam and Michael. But we were in Limavady, and he was back in Derry, under the charitable eye of Brother Galen. By the time we arrived in Derry, he had fled with the help of the despicable brother druids Loch and Lucet. Hoping to gain some advantage from him, they had taken him to the curative waters of Claudy, not far from Derry, where we tracked him rather easily. The Terrible Triús and I surrounded the cowardly brothers while I cackled and screeched like a raven, imitating the warrior goddess Macha descending like the black bird of death on her enemies.
“Yes, Bree, I will never forget, either. I still feel the satisfaction of cowing and trussing those despicable half men who were holding Owen—a man in a cripple’s cart but ten times the man they are.”
I looked around the room and saw that Swallow had left, probably to the cook room to finish the preparations for supper. All three of Owen’s nephews were clustered around his bench, and I heard a chorus of laughter. I could tell from the looks on their faces that one of them had uttered a blasphemy or a bawdy jest. Normally, I would be a bit put off by such behavior, but tonight I welcomed it as a sign of family closeness. That was something that Owen had sorely missed for years, since his grown children had fled from him in fear.
Owen Sweeney had sired three sons and three daughters. Yet not even one of them could look him in the eye after falsely swearing against him in a moot that he had murdered their mother and held slaves in vile debauchery. Only recently had they reunited, and past wrongs had been rectified. His oldest son Murdoch—the very image of his dark, brooding father—had been the last to seek forgiveness and offer his father a small measure of love.
Somehow smitten with me, he had offered me also a measure of love. I was drawn to him—but not as a lover. I welcomed him as a friend, an intellectual combatant, almost a brother. And he had accepted those restrictions as terms of surrender before leaving for his old homeland, the unsettled stretches of the northern promontory now called Inis-Eóghan, or Inishowen, after Owen himself.
Murdoch wanted to start work on a new home for his father and his family in the same place he had grown up, along the shore of the long, sinuous Bay of Trawbreaga. That same desolate stretch was the place where my companions and I had captured him months ago, before we knew his tortured history.
“…feeling lately, my friend?”
“Oh! Sorry, Bree. My mind was far away—on the Bay of Trawbreaga. What were you saying?”
“I was wondering if you were still feeling the, ah, queasy stomach.”
I knew she was referring to the sickness I had felt at the early stages of my pregnancy. It was Bree who whispered to me that she thought I was carrying a child, and it was still a secret that Liam and I shared only with her.
“No. That did not last long. I think my own comfort tea cured me—and your own caregiving.”
“And what is at the Bay of Trawbreaga to draw your thoughts, my friend?”
Her unexpected question mad
e me uncomfortable. “Owen’s old-new home. I think he and Moc will be traveling there soon.”
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “To join Murdoch. I wonder what draws his son to that lonely place?”
“Thoughts of childhood,” I answered promptly, thinking of my own loss. “The joy of what is now gone, what can never be recaptured.”
“And yet he hopes to find it again somehow. Yes, that makes sense, Cay. I hope someday he will find the joy and love he seeks.”
“May it start with rediscovering his own father. And may his father return the love.”
“Amen,” my friend said. We were both silent for a while, looking across the room at the gathering of the mighty cenél that had sprung from the loins of Niáll of the Nine Hostages, most famous of all the high kings of Éire.
I thought that if Owen were to feel the joys of fatherhood and the love of his estranged family, it would begin with the wisdom and love of one powerful little woman-—the sister of Jay and Raven, the indomitable Mockingbird Feather.
Moc had known Owen less than a day before she began to walk alongside his invalid’s wheeled vehicle on the ox-cart path from Claudy to Derry. In the space of six miles, a day of walking, she had been drawn to Owen strongly enough to bid him stay at the dwarf enclaves instead of continuing on into Derry. And the inscrutable, moody Owen had been drawn to her strongly enough to accept.
We had lowered Owen into the enclaves by means of the pulley arrangement that workers used to bring earth up from underground. I would never forget the look on Jay Feather’s face as he watched the man who was once my implacable enemy being lowered, bit by bit, into his private, sparkling world.
And now, four months later, two dark-haired, intense, intellectual people were inseparable. I could only surmise what had attracted each to the other. They were physically different, and yet now they seemed one commanding presence. A tiny woman and a barrel-chested half man spoke, even softly, and a roar sounded.