Captive Heart

by Erin O'Quinn

  “Of course, my friends. Horseback riding is not as alluring as it looks. Fraught with cares and calluses.”

  “Amen,” said Persimmon with a wry smile.

  “Not to sound like a blubber baby, but do you know when we will encamp for the evening?” asked Quince.

  I looked at the sky, noting that the sun was almost four hours past the meridian. The windswept sky, free of clouds, seemed more intensely blue here than even in Derry. So far north, the sun would take its time setting. “I think in about an hour, Quince. I will speak with Liam and make sure he and a few companions ride ahead to find us a likely spot to spend the night.”

  When I spoke with Liam, he looked at me with an expression of humor and undisguised lust. “Ride wi’ me, Cat. We…find a good spot.”

  We rode to the vanguard and told Thom where we were going. “Look for us in perhaps half an hour,” I told him, and Brindl caught my eye. I could see that she was amused, and a tiny hand signal told me, “Stay out of trouble.”

  Finally able to let our horses ride free and swiftly, Liam and I galloped from the rolling hills and wind-buffeted moors until we could no longer see our caravan behind us. After perhaps ten minutes, keeping close as possible to the shores of the Swilly, we found a remarkably green and fragrant glen overgrown with loosestrife and heather. Bounded on three sides by beeches and rowans, we saw that a small creek ran though the glen, perfect for taking care of our horses.

  Liam jumped from Fintan and walked to me. Grasping me around the waist, he brought me off Macha in one graceful movement and pressed me close to his leather-clad thighs. “Thought about ye every mile,” he said in my ear. “An’ your little cat, too.”

  I raised my head and he caught my mouth with his, running his tongue over my lips, prying them open with his darting tongue. His hot mouth worked its magic, and soon I was biting his ear, asking for naughty things. He buried his head in the loose folds of my red-deer tunic, and I was surprised that my breasts began to clamor for his mouth. I had drunk a hearty cup of gruit this morning, and now I no longer felt the tenderness in my breasts that had made me lately cringe away from being touched.

  “Suck me, Liam.” I crooned and moaned, pushing first one, then the other breast into his mouth. He seemed to relish my swollen nipples and full breasts, and I could feel his groin like a cudgel straining against my thighs.

  We sank to our knees together, Liam never lifting his mouth from my breasts. “Let me take ye right here,” he said gruffly, and he pushed me onto my back. He was playing at being rough, for I noticed that he made sure my back was cushioned and my stomach free of his weight.

  He impatiently pulled his britches down, and in no time at all my own brístí were around my ankles. “Mmmn, love this new dress,” he said, and I laughed softly. Liam would love any article of my clothing that was easy for him to remove or ignore. Propping himself up on his elbows, he looked down at me, his eyes seeming to devour me. “Need you. Need you now.” His groin, very hot and very hard, thrust into me.

  The suddenness of his entry, the wildness of the setting, his mouth on mine—all combined to bring a bright fire to crackling inside me, all up between my legs, and I arched my back to take him more fully. “Say it, say it, Cat,” he moaned, and I told him what to do, how hard to do it. We climaxed together the way we loved it best, and our hearts pounded on top of each other for several minutes while birds wheeled over our heads.

  “Need to get back,” I whispered.

  “Hmmn?” he asked.

  “This is precisely the way we made our baby,” I told him, fondly stroking his silken beard, thinking about our rampant lovemaking in a stand of hollies on the road back from Limavady.

  “Call him ‘green grass.’ Or ‘calling bird,’” he said, and I burst out laughing.

  “Help me up, O warrior. Let us join our companions.”

  We rode back not quite so quickly as we had come.

  Chapter 21:

  The Clans of Niáll

  As soon as we had unsaddled and curried our horses, I left the glen and sought a nearby rise to build my signal fire. Last evening we had been too close to home to send a signal. I knelt, interlacing the stack of loose branches and tucking flammable leaves and brush around the bits of wood. This fire would not be one to nurture but only to build for a short-term purpose—to send a message to any friendly eyes, any clansmen who might be nearby, letting them know that we belonged to the great cenél, the extended family, of Niáll, he who held the nine hostages.

  I rose to find a tinderbox, and I saw that Coinín had joined me. She was holding a tinderbox even more compact than Liam’s. “Let me help you, Cate,” she said, smiling, and her sudden deep dimples immediately put me at ease. She was also holding a fire blanket.

  “Go raibh maith agat,” I said in my unmusical Gaelic. “I see you are also a believer in long-distance talking.”

  “It saved my life once. I always reach out to friends and family.”

  She knelt and started the fire, using the flint and steel easily, quite unlike my own clumsy-handed technique. Soon the fire was just the height I needed. “Now all I need is a bit of damp moss or—”

  “I thought of that.” She unrolled the blanket, and inside I saw bunches of floss grass that she had already soaked in the little creek. “Make your smoke, my friend,” she said with a small, crooked smile, and she stepped back to watch me.

  I began to toss bunches of damp grass into the fire, and the smoke, at first pallid, immediately became thick and black. I held my breath and stepped close, seizing the small, heavy blanket at the narrow ends. With a few practiced swipes, I caused now one, then another ball of smoke to rise from the fire. I released my breath and stepped back.

  Coinín looked at me with renewed interest. “That is my own signal,” she said. “My cenél and yours are the same.”

  “Well, not my direct family,” I said, grinning with pleasure. “Only by marriage.”

  “Do you know of the MacCools?” she asked me.

  “Certainly. Liam’s cousins Michael and Fergus have the name MacCool.”

  “Well, ‘Coyle’ is simply a variant of that name. I think we are cousins in marriage, Cate. Welcome to my family.”

  We spontaneously embraced each other, laughing in disbelief. “You have lived in Derry all this time? And I knew it not?” I asked her.

  “No, Cate. I came to Derry right after the Beltane festival, not quite two months ago. I guess I should have lit my own signal fire, so I could have found you and your family sooner.”

  “Come, cousin. Let us find Liam and tell him he has acquired a new kinswoman.”

  As we walked back to our camp, we talked about the Hinterland. I told her how two years ago I had made one last visit to that dangerous place. I had found the boundaries becoming more and more narrowed by a kind of crawling, many-fingered substance that ate everything in its path.

  “I admit, I ran in fear from the deadly contagion,” I told her. “It had caught me twice, and each time I was fortunate to escape alive. Tell me what is happening back there now.”

  “Now everyone has fled. The old borders are gone, the people are gone, the forest denizens themselves are gone. A few of us came to Éire. Most of us are back in Woodcamp, or Deva, or Newport.”

  “So you know Fletcher. And the twins Todd and Donn.”

  “Of course.”

  “My dear old friends! How are they, Coinín?”

  “Fine, Cate, the last I saw them…”

  By now we were walking toward the central fire, where Liam was squatting with a group of marines, Glaed Keepers, and Forest Wardens. Coinín and I knelt, one on each side of my husband. He looked first at me, then at the Forest Warden.

  “Tráthnóna,” he said with a sideways grin.

  “Good evening—tráthnóna, a chol ceathrar.”

  “Me cousin? How is it possible?”

  “Do you not know the name ‘Coyle,’ a Liam? My father Collin Cumhail is the cousin of Michael’s unc
le Éachu Mac Cumhail.”

  “Ye lost me at Collin,” my husband said with a grin. “But let me kiss ye for a kinsman.”

  He planted a big kiss on each of her cheeks. “Coinín? I shall call ye ‘Bunny.’ Little rabbit, from the woods.”

  “Eeww,” she said. “I was hoping no one would know what my name means.”

  Liam quirked his head, looking confused. “But never mind,” she grinned. “Bunny it is, then.”

  I went back to the fire to send another signal. When I returned, I saw that several Glaed Keepers and three of the Forest Wardens had materialized from the trees, each bearing some kind of wild game. In addition to the one central fire, two other fires were blazing by now. I want to the spot near Macha’s saddle and blanket and retrieved my store of gruit ingredients.

  A gruit, or mixture of herbs, was a time-honored method for making individualized potions as well as a kind of recipe for beer making where no hops plants were available. My own most recent gruit, I had discovered only today, kept my pendulous breasts from aching and even made me forget the unaccustomed strain on my back that one tiny baby had created. I had made it, I remembered, from a mixture of larch needles, willow bark, and my old standby horsetail reed. A thumb’s-nail worth of one, a shake of the other, a healthy dose of the third, and I was set to put my small cauldron over the flames. I eyed the floss grass that grew between the trees where sunlight and loose soil had given them purchase in the crumbly, loose bogland near the creek. I decided to add a pinch or two of the attractive seed heads.

  I knelt at one of the small fires, stirring the ingredients, and soon I was joined by Mari and Akantha.

  “Tell me about your potion,” said Mari, gazing with interest at the brownish fluid that had just begun to steam.

  “It is no more than a simple ache chaser,” I told her. “For my breasts and back.”

  “Ah, yes, the baby,” said Akantha. “Nuisances, one and all, even before they are born.”

  “Can you really believe that?” I asked her before I saw the ironic glint in her dark brown eyes.

  “Never had one, thank God. Same as having a husband. Slow me down.”

  “I will admit that,” I said ruefully. “Of course, I mean the part about slowing me down, not having a husband. I wonder how long I will still be able to mount my own horse.” Liam had indeed made me a small collapsible ladder for mounting, but I was almost ashamed to use it. I secretly called it my “grandmother steps,” and it rarely left its place behind my saddle.

  “Your potion making reminds me of someone I used to know,” Mari remarked. “Back in Woodcamp.”

  “I know who that is. My uncle Matthew.”

  “Really?” Mari’s eyes were wide with amazement. “Your uncle is the great Healer of Woodcamp?”

  “Perhaps my great-uncle,” I admitted. “He told me the family connection once—something to do with my late grandfather.”

  “I am sure the genius for healing is strong in you also,” she said with admiration. ‘I should not have worried so much about the captive women.”

  “I will worry until I see them home and happy.” The mention of the women had made me suddenly fretful and moody.

  “Home? That may be as far away as Constantinople,” remarked Akantha drily. “Or any land where the cunning currachs can sail.”

  “Well, I hope they will settle in Derry,” I told her earnestly. “If only we had a place for them to live. As soon as I return, I think I will have a large care center or a kind of many-roomed house built for them and for others without a real home.”

  “Why,” said Akantha, “I have never thought about such a thing. By Apollo’s balls, Caylith, that is a marvelous idea. I would gladly lend my own strong arm to the building of it.”

  Just then Coinín—the irrepressible Bunny—squatted next to us. “The man who gave me that idea is Coinín’s own cousin Michael and my own cousin in marriage.”

  “Um, let me get this straight, Caylith,” said Mari. “You are related to Matthew and Coinín, too?”

  “You are right.” I smiled. “This trip has been rewarding, and not just for the sudden acquisition of a new family member.” I hugged Coinín’s shoulders. “But also for the sudden new friends.” I eyed the three women, hoping they would see the admiration in my eyes and not the sadness that clenched my gut. The sooner those captive women were released, the sooner I could release my own deep fears at last.

  I carefully poured my gruit into a metal cup. After a few minutes I was able to begin sipping. And a few minutes after that, my mind began to seem very free, my pains nonexistent. “Ladies, excuse me for a while. I want to join my husband.”

  I did not realize it at first, but the more I sipped my gruit, the more aroused I felt, until being next to Liam was not just a fleeting need but a desperate longing. The last thing I needed, I told myself, was a love potion. Ah, but it felt so good that I welcomed it wholeheartedly.

  Liam, using his knowledge of the Glad Keeper’s language, was trying to use three languages at once to converse with a few of the long-mustached Saxons. “Mise Liam,” he said, pointing to himself. “Und sein Name ist—”

  “Ja, ich bin der Klaus,” the man said, grinning widely—at least I thought I could see a mouth under all that facial hair. “Hier is meine Freundin Konrad.” He looked at a man I would have sworn was his brother, so alike did they seem. Both were as brawny chested as Murdoch—no, even more barrel-like than he—and both men had sky-blue eyes and long, flaxen hair that hung well below their shoulders.

  “Um, wilkommen,” said Liam, “welcome to be here.” They understood him well enough, and they raised their wineskins high. Klaus took a long draught and offered his wineskin to Liam.

  We ate together, smiling often, and I listened to the talk around the fire more than I participated myself. As we sat, my hand stole onto Liam’s thigh, then, masked by darkness, to his lap. His own hand settled onto mine, and he pressed it into his rising groin. He lowered his head to so that his lips touched my ear.

  “Cat, let us find our blanket.”

  I turned my head only slightly, finding his lips, and I began to search his mouth with my tongue. “Yes, love. Oh, yes.”

  We found a spot far from the fires and close to our horses’ gear. Liam spread our heavy blanket, and I removed my tunic without even a twinge of modesty. I lay down, flat on my back, waiting for him to settle next to me. When he began to kiss me, I responded with such depth and passion that he drew back a bit. “A Cháit, mo chuisle, ye set me on fire.”

  “Tell me what you want most,” I whispered in his ear. “Anything, anything. Let me love you all the way.” My tongue was exploring his ear, and I began to bite his earlobe, all the while pressing myself as close to him as I could. My nipples began to call out, and the slickness between my legs waited for him with an urgency I could not believe.

  “Ah, God, I want your mouth. Your nipples. I want your little cat.” He spoke as he kissed my mouth, then my throat, and then my ready breasts. His sucking on my nipples brought me to the very edge of a climax, and so I reluctantly pulled away, leaning into his chest. I began to bite and nibble on his nipples. Licking and moaning, I found his swollen groin and attached my mouth hungrily, needing to suck and eat my fill.

  Liam rolled and twisted, moaning his undiluted pleasure. I put my hands on his hips and turned him, exploring his marvelous buttocks with my hands and mouth. His bum rose and fell, and his voice was almost inarticulate with desire. “I need to enter ye, Cat, let me inside.”

  I stopped, and he rolled back over. He spread me wide with both hands, and I guided him between my legs to where the heat had built into a fire. “”Put it in. Hard, hard, never stop.”

  The pleasure that erupted was as sudden and gratifying as I had ever felt, and I had to bury my mouth in his shoulder to cry out my need and my joy. When at last we lay close, feeling each other’s pounding hearts, he whispered, “I love ye.”

  “And I love you, a mo chroí,” I answered, my
eyes already full of sleep. I barely felt the second, light blanket settle over my nakedness before I drifted into dreams.

  For the third morning in a row, I woke as I had months ago on the road—to the sound of birds heralding the dawn, to the incessant rustling of leaves caught by a sighing summer wind. I saw that Liam’s part of the blanket had slipped aside, revealing his glorious butt, and I drew it back over him, my eyes lingering in spite of the early hour and last night’s total satisfaction. Why was it that my mouth began to ache for just a small bite of his smooth bum? I quickly pulled my underpants over my big stomach, and then I let my doe-soft deer tunic settle over my body.

  As I drew my long boot leggings up over my thighs and tied them, I saw that our fires still glowed a bit through the semidarkness. As I had last night, I selected the ingredients for my gruit—except for the floss grass, which I thought had stirred my latent desire for Liam into an aching frenzy. Not that I would never use the innocent-looking seed heads again…but I had other matters to think about right now. I filled my cauldron with water from the creek and set it among the embers of the smallest fire, and then I added the gruit herbs.

  From the larger fire, which I stirred back to life, I took a long, thin branch. Its end, still glowing, would serve instead of a tinderbox, I thought, and I carried it carefully to the small rise where I had built my signal fire last night. As I knelt at the little pile of sticks and branches, I heard the whinny of a horse and looked up. There, silhouetted on the hill, I saw a lone rider, his horse standing rock still.

  I rose slowly, still clutching my glowing stick. My martial training took over without my willing it, and I sank right away into a warrior’s stance, my knees slightly bent, my feet apart to balance myself and to render myself immovable as a rock. I cursed my oversight in not bringing a weapon, but I held my head proudly as though I needed no weapon beyond a kindling stick to defend myself against an assailant twice my size, sitting astride a large, dark stallion.