"But…"
"Eech, the pair of you chatter like squirrels. It's tired I be of answerin' your questions." It was a measure of the fury that Mickeen had worked himself up to in the telling that the snarl he sent Caitlyn's way was not meant for her. The expression of sheer hatred on his weathered face was directed at the anonymous Volunteers, the secret organization of Anglo bloodmongers who rode out at night, hooded and cloaked, in huge gangs to wreak bloody havoc upon the Irish Catholics. The Irish in turn had their own Straw Boys, so called because, since they were poorer, their disguises from hoods to cloaks were made of straw and they resembled nothing so much as walking haystacks. Caitlyn had seen an assembly of them just once, when they had marched on Dublin Castle. She had been no more than a wee bairn, but they had left an indelible impression on her. Like the city, the countryside was rife with violence, it seemed, as sectarian gangs warred on one another and the innocent.
Mickeen's rebuke left Caitlyn and Willie silenced. As the cart slogged through the mud, taking a meandering path that led finally around the Castle's outer wall, Caitlyn saw that the structure was indeed no more than a burned- out shell. Sheep grazed in the overgrown bawn, the keep inside what was left of the fortifications. As she watched, one of the flock outside leaped baa-ing through a hole in the tumbledown wail to join its brethren feasting within. Three of the round towers were intact, but the fourth was crumbling, leaving a gaping wound in its side. Caitlyn stared at the high-set windows, shivering as she wondered which one was the Fuinneog an Mhurdair. Black streaks scorched into the gray stone gave mute testimony to the conflagration that had once raged within. The cart rounded the far side of the Castie, and Caitlyn saw that dozens of timber shacks leaned against its charred masonry. Living quarters for the peasants who worked the farm, she deduced from the presence of the women who sat in open doorways watching their young children playing nearby. Sheep grazed apparently at will on the green velvet slope leading to the Boyne. Rough-clothed peasants, both male and female, walked among the sheep. On the other side of the stone wall that bisected the grassy meadow, a group of peasants labored together with the scythe and slane, cutting turf.
"Is this the farm, then?" Willie's question was subdued. Mickeen's harsh recital and the devastation they had just passed had obviously shaken him as they had Caitlyn.
Mickeen snorted, bitterness twisting his face as he stared at what lay before them. "Aye. The farm. Connor d'Arcy, descendant of the first king of Ireland, true son of Tara, Lord Earl of Iveagh, a sheep farmer! His da would spin in his grave did he know. But as they say, needs must when the devil drives. And the devil drives his lordship for certain sure."
Caitlyn shivered upon hearing that, remembering those devil's eyes. Sure, and if his lordship were possessed of the devil she and Willie were in the soup, and no mistake. They'd likely escaped the hangman only to fall prey to Hellfire. With a sideways look at her companions, who were paying her no mind, she crossed herself and prayed that as protection that would suffice.
A magnificent view of the Boyne lay before them. It slashed like a silver whip deep into the valley separating the d'Arcy family holdings from the woodlands across the way. The hiss of the water as it rushed past rocky banks formed a muted background to the plaintive bleating of the sheep and the rhythmic thud of falling scythes. As the cart creaked downward toward the river, Caitlyn became aware of the manor house nestled in a grove of mighty oaks. Compared with the Casde, the house was small and poor, but as they approached she saw that, taken on its own, it was a neat residence, two story and solid, made of stone with a corbeled roof. Behind the house lay two bams and a smaller shed. Chickens scratched in the yards of both barns. A calico cat washed herself on the front steps of the house, while what appeared to be a very old dog sunned itself in a side yard. There was a well-cared- for air about the place that Caitiyn immediately liked.
As the cart approached, the dog got stiffly to its feet and began to bark, tail wagging. The cat looked up and then disappeared into the bushes at the side of the porch. Two men standing in a walled patch of fresh-tilled land midway between the house and the first barn looked up, squinting. With an air of disgust one threw down the staff with which he had been prodding an unresponsive sheep and headed toward them. The other shook his head and, abandoning the straggler, waded in among a tight-bunched group, flapping his arms in an attempt to herd them as they milled about, clearly paying his antics no mind. A dozen or so of the baa-ing creatures had apparenUy wandered into what was almost certainly the kitchen garden, and the men had been trying to get them out with what appeared to be little success. As the first man strode to- ward the cart, Caitlyn got the impression that he was glad for an interruption to their task.
"Mickeen, thank the lord you're back! Mayhap you can get the blatherin' sheep out of the bloody garden! Rory and I are havin' no luck at all, and Connor's sure to come out of the stable any minute and chew the hide off the pair of us. You know he thinks we're all natural-bom sheep fanners, as he is, if we'd just try a little harder."
"And right he probably is too. I ain't noticed either you nor your brothers givin' tending sheep the care it deserves. If sheep farmin' is good enough for his lordship, it should sure be good enough for the likes of you, Cormac d'Arcy.''
Given Mickeen's recent comments on the awfulness of an Earl of Iveagh's having sunk so low as to become a sheep farmer, Caitlyn could not repress a grin at this lecture. The young man who had greeted them so frenziedly turned his attention to her and Willie as Mickeen stepped laboriously down from the cart.
"And what have we here?" He was taller than Mickeen by half a head. His loose linen shirt and breeches could not conceal that he was gangly in the way of lads who have not yet achieved their full growth. His black curly hair, carelessly tied, dubbed him unmistakably as one of his lordship's brothers. But the narrow, even-featured face was not so striking, and as Caitlyn pondered the difference she realized it lay in the eyes. Those devil's eyes of his lordship's were dominating, unfoigettable. This lad's eyes were a laughing hazel.
Mickeen looked back at them, his expression as sour as Caitlyn was coming to believe was habitual to him.
"I know not their names. Your brother took pity on 'em in Dublin, and here they be. Runnin' a bloody orphanage, we are, it seems."
"I'm Willie Laha." Willie jumped down from the cart, his freckled face apprehensive as he looked up at Cormac d'Arcy. "We're to be farmhands, his lordship said."
Caitlyn climbed down more slowly, giving Willie a censorious look as she did so. He was practically slavering his gratitude already. She didn't trust these people, any of them, his lordship included, despite Mickeen's sad tale.
They were strangers, with no reason to feel kindly toward Willie or herself. After all, why should these d'Arcys and their hangers-on share even a meager part of what was theirs with anyone else? In her experience, a body hung on to what he had. In their place, that's what she would do.
"What's your name, then?" Cormac turned his measuring gaze from Willie to Caitlyn. A grin lurked around the corners of his mouth, and his eyes looked as if he were always laughing. Caitlyn estimated his age at perhaps two years more than her own, which would make him around seventeen. She stood mute, contemplating him with a scowl. Such open friendliness made her warier than ever.
"He's O'Malley. A bit of a temper he has, but a good lad." Willie poked her in the ribs with his elbow as he spoke. Caitlyn shot Willie a look that should have silenced his tongue forevermore.
"I can speak for meself," she said, her eyes meeting Cormac's with more than a trace of belligerence. He lifted his eyebrows at her expression and whistled comically. She scowled at him.
"His lordship must have been all about in his head, is all I can tell ya. This one's a real hothead," Mickeen muttered, spitting. Then, to Cormac, "Let's go get them sheep out o' the garden afore his lordship sees where you've let them get." He moved off with Cormac following, adding over his shoulder to Willie and Caitlyn, "You may as well c
ome along and make yourselves useful. No point in just hangin' about."
Willie loped off after them. Caitlyn followed more slowly. With all of her other worries, another had just lifted its ugly head. She had a sneaking suspicion that she was not going to like sheep…
By the time she reached the walled garden, the others had managed to get the sheep rounded up into a tight little group and were herding them toward the open back gate, which led to the velvety meadow where sheep were apparently intended to be. A renegade cut and ran as Willie, following Cormac's example, flapped his arms at it. Baaing wildly, it headed straight for Caitlyn, who had just stepped through the front gate, its sharp little hooves churning the manure-rich, rain-wet furrows into thick black mud as it went.
"You! O'Malley! Stop 'em! Tim 'em!" They were all shouting at her as three other sheep whirled and pounded after the ringleader. Sure enough, the stupid creature in the lead was still heading at a gallop straight toward where Caitlyn stood transfixed just inside the whitewashed pickets of the closed front gate. But this was not a fleecy little white lambkin. It looked enormous, and furious, and it had horns.
Enough was enough. She was not risking life and limb to herd some murderous sheep. As it bore down on her, head lowered and baa-ing louder than Gabriel's horn, she scrambled to get out of the way. Her foot slipped in the mud where the sheep had already apparently churned up the moist earth, and she slid face first into thick ooze. The shock of it as she lay facedown in muck took her breath for a moment. Then what felt like a thousand-ton weight slammed into her left shoulder, and she realized that the bloody stupid sheep had run right over her. Her mouth opened at the pain of it. Black mud immediately filled her mouth.
When she surfaced, spitting mud, it was to find the four would-be sheepherders bent double with laughter. She glared, feeling fury start to heat in her toes before boiling up toward her head. They were laughing at her, Caitlyn O'Malley. Even the bloody sheep, bunched now with its three followers in the bloody corner, seemed to be laughing as it shook its horned head at her.
"So you think to make sport of me, do you?" She got to her feet, shaking her hands to send mud flinging from them, wiping her fingers down her face with no more success than to spread the mud around. From head to toe she was covered with malodorous black ooze. Inside, her temper was raging. She was filled with a desire to kill the guffawing foursome on the other side of the garden plot. Roaring inarticulately, she charged, fists clenched and murder in her eyes.
"l-ook out! Beware!" Still laughing, they scattered be- fore her assault, the one whom Cormac had called Rory leaping straight up to balance on top of the gray stone wall. Making sounds of inarticulate rage, Caitlyn chatted after Cormac, who was laughing the loudest. He ran, zag- ging this way and that as laughter shook him. Launching herself off the ground, she tackled him, catching him around the waist and knocking him on his side in the ooze. Laughing so that he was almost helpless, he rolled onto his belly, lifting both arms to shield his head as she straddled him, battering his head and back and whatever else of him she could reach with her fists.
"Here now, O'Malley, stop!" Cormac managed to get out between gusts of laughter. Lean as he was, he was still far bigger than she. But the laughter he could not seem to control weakened him, and Caitlyn's years on the street had made her tough. Add to that the fact that she was ragingly angry, and the blows she landed were damaging. Still, all he did to defend himself was block the blows aimed at his head, and laugh. Which only fueled her fury to greater heights.
Mickeen was scurrying toward them, stick in hand. "You there! O'Malley! Stop! Stop now, do you ken?"
Caitlyn knew she was in for a thrashing when he reached her, but she didn't care. The urge to kill burned strong inside her. From his place up on the wall, Rory was laughing even harder at his brother's comeuppance, while Willie, in the far corner of the garden across from the sheep, looked suddenly scared. His eyes went wide.
"What in the name of all the Saints is going on here?" The roar made even Caitlyn start and look around. There, on the other side of the gate which Caitlyn had recently abandoned to escape the charging sheep, stood Connor d'Arcy, Earl of Iveagh, giving off anger like a peat fire gives off heat.
VI
You!" he bellowed, pointing at Caitlyn. "Get off my numbskull brother. And you… and you…" He pointed at Cormac, who was no longer laughing but merely grinning as he lay under Caitlyn, his arms still shielding his head even as he looked at his older brother; and at Rory, who was already jumping down from the fence. "Get over here and explain to me how you've come to make such a bloody mess of a garden that was just planted a week since!"
"Get off, you little monkey!" Cormac hissed, bucking Caitlyn off his back into the mud again as he got to his feet. He was as muddy as she, and wiped himself down with as much success as she'd had as he approached his brother. Rory, black-haired and thin like Cormac but a year or so older, squished through the mud at the same time, reaching the gate just before Cormac. Caitlyn, struggling to her feet, watched the three d'Arcys with hate- filled eyes.
"Well?"
The two younger d'Arcys attempted to explain, until Connor silenced them with a growl.
"I don't want to hear it. I want the garden replanted by tomorrow. Tonight we've got supplies to get in, but that'll have to wait until the gang of you has a bath. You smell like sheep dung, and I can tell you now Mrs. McFee won't have it brought in the house. You can use the horse trough to bathe. If you want to eat, you'll move fast."
"But, Connor, we-"
"Move!" he roared. "And take those two bairns with you!"
Connor turned on his heel and strode toward the house. Cormac and Rory turned back to the trio in the garden, their expressions wry.
"We'd best get this muck off," Rory said. "Conn's right. Mrs. McFee won't let us in the house like this."
Mickeen looked at the pair of them gloomily as they came toward where he stood with Caitlyn and Willie, the one fuming and coveied with mud, the other white and scared-looking. "His lordship's proper fashed with the lot of us, and no mistake."
"He'll be over it by the time supper's on the table," Rory said philosophically. "You know Connor."
"We never wanted to be sheep farmers anyhow," Cormac added. "I hate bloody sheep. But there's no talking to Connor about it. He says impoverished Irish nobility should be glad to have sheep to tend to."
"Farming's a good, respectable occupation," both brothers chimed together as if repeating something they'd heard many times, and grinned. Caitlyn scowled at them. Though they appeared to have put the contretemps from their minds, she was not quite so willing to let bygones be bygones. But with Connor still within probable hearing range, she was loath to take up where she and Cormac had left off. There'd be time and more to get back at him.
"That's enough sass out of the two of you. His lord- ship'll be wroth indeed if you're late for the meal on top of this." Mickeen urged them in the direction of the bam. Gesturing to Caitlyn and Willie to fall in, he trudged after Rory and Cormac. Once they were out of the garden, the ground was firm beneath their feet, but they squished anyway. They even had mud in their shoes.
Rory stopped in front of a wide wooden watering trough, climbed in, and sat down, clothes and all. Though he was not near as filthy as his brother or Caitlyn, still he was liberally spattered with mud. Like Cormac, he was dressed in a loose shirt and breeches, with wool stockings and sturdy buckled shoes. He didn't even bother to remove the shoes.
"Hey, brother, who said you could go first? You'll get the water dirty!" Cormac jumped in after him, and a good- natured wrestling match sloshed most of the water out of the trough. What was left was brown with mud.
"They're a pair, they are," Mickeen grunted to no one in particular, though Caitlyn and Willie listened avidly. Even Caitlyn, grudgingly, was beginning to find the d'Arcys fascinating. Never in her life had she met anyone like them. She didn't know what to make of them, and she guessed Willie did not either. "Always sportin' a
round and plaguing his lordship. It's a wonder he don't knock their heads together sometimes. But he's real patient."
"Conn, patient?" Cormac hooted, overhearing this remark as Rory briefly released his head from under the water. "Go on with you, Mickeen!"
"More patient than you deserve, idiot. Seed's expensive, and so's the time spent putting in a garden. Though if you and Rory are to replant it, we'll save on that, at least. Your time sure won't be missed with the sheep." A voice behind them made Caitlyn look around. The young man who stood there was auburn-haired, blue-eyed, and perhaps twenty years old. Unlike the two in the trough, he looked as if he were serious-natured. But there was something about his tall, rangy build and narrow face that made Caitlyn think he might be the remaining d'Arcy. The whoops with which the two in the water greeted the newcomer confirmed her guess.
"Hey, Liam! Look what Conn brought home! Some help for us!" Barely checked hilarity was in Cormac's voice as he climbed dripping wet from the trough. A wide grin split his face as he indicated Caitlyn and Willie, who looked very small, very young, and very bedraggled as they stood beside Mickeen awaiting their turn in the trough. Liam turned to look at them, disapproval and resignation mixed on his face.
"A fine pair of shepherds, I see. Soaking wet they might weigh four stone between them. Connor thinks he can save the world," Liam said as if the two he discussed were deaf and dumb. Caitlyn bristled. Like the other d'Arcys, this one was too arrogant by half. Then, to Caitlyn, he added, "Come on, get in and wash the mud off. Supper's nigh on the table, and there's chores to do before it gets dark."
Dark of the Moon Page 4