Rebel

by Linda Windsor

  It wasn’t until Kella spied the rod in her hand, too thin for a staff, that she realized the priestess was blind. That shock had barely registered when Mairead threw back her hood to reveal a full head of wild flaxen hair that hadn’t seen a brush in … Kella couldn’t imagine how long. Gwenhyfar had told her that the brush and mirror—any items of vanity—were left behind when a priestess served in the temple. But it was this woman’s face that left Kella speechless. It couldn’t be.

  Alyn leapt to his feet in disbelief, for there before them stood the first wife of his brother Caden. But that witch was dead. Twice dead. Still, there before them, clad in evergreen shift of a Grail priestess stood the image of—

  “Rhianon!” Alyn exclaimed.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Nay, sir, I am Mairead, one of the few Grail priestesses left in all of Albion. This sacred mountain is our abbey.”

  Alyn instinctively brandished his staff as if to protect himself and the others. Mairead never flinched, but the innkeeper and his servant hastened to put themselves between him and their friend.

  Instantly, Alyn felt foolish. One didn’t fight the likes of Rhianon with a staff.

  “She fools you,” he charged. “This is the witch who nearly destroyed my brother and my family. My father’s death was by the manipulation of her hand.”

  “Father Alyn, I swear it isn’t so,” the innkeeper replied. “I have known this woman since she was brought to the sisters of Seion as an infant. She has never left this mountain.”

  “Her family abandoned the wee bairn to nature’s teeth,” his wife put in. “From the valley of the Solway as I recall, though I canna say for sure.”

  “Tell me about this witch you speak of.” Mairead tapped her way to a bench a distance away from Alyn and sat. Her demeanor exuded naught but an infectious calm. “Fiona?”

  “Aye, milady,” the goodwife answered her from behind the tavern grate. “I’ll fetch your tea anon.”

  The priestess’s answering smile was a light unto the room itself. Innocence looked out from beautiful blue eyes, much like Kella’s. Still, Alyn had been taken in by them, had a boyish infatuation with the conniving woman who was a master at manipulating men.

  “Rhianon was … is …” At this point he didn’t know. “My brother’s wife, from Gwynedd. She practiced witchcraft along with her nurse.”

  The beautiful smile faded. “’Twas as I feared, though I’d no cause for despair until now. I have lived in seclusion for so long, but God has been good to me.”

  Could it be she told the truth? The likeness was incredible. Alyn handed the staff over to the innkeeper. Women like Rhianon were fought with faith, not weapons. Yet, as he joined the lady at the table, he suspected—before she spoke—the story she’d tell.

  For no reason other than ignorance, otherwise good Christians killed the second-born of twins, fearing it had been spawned by the Devil. It was especially prevalent in noble families, where inheritance could be in question. But rather than soiling their own hands with blood, they abandoned the newborn to the wild.

  In this case, Mairead’s parents had discarded the wrong twin. And the priestesses of the Grail had taken her in and sent her to where it was unlikely the two would ever meet—Mons Seion.

  Darkness had finally claimed the sky outside when Mairead, Alyn, and Kella left the others, including Egan, to the inn’s exceptional hospitality. The mission begun in Carmelide was almost complete. Still coming to grips with the events of the last several weeks, Kella’s father agreed not to rush off vengeance-bound … at least until he had “further words” with Alyn.

  Further words. Alyn knew that phrase too well. There was no doubt in his mind that Egan had put together that Alyn and Kella had been wed only a week or two, yet they expected their first child. A fool could discern the timing was all wrong, and Egan was no fool. The Irishman’s blue gaze had sharpened all the more since his daughter’s exceedingly passionate reaction to Lorne.

  Ahead, Kella tripped over a thick vine growing across the almost-hidden path but caught herself before falling or dropping the box containing the volume of genealogies she carried. “How can you possibly go so fast?” she exclaimed to Mairead. The priestess seemed to glide without effort up the mountainside.

  “I know this path by heart,” Mairead replied. “An infection took my eyesight when I was an infant, so I’ve memorized all the passages in and around the mountain.”

  The lantern the priestess carried for their sake intrigued Alyn as much as she, for it produced the light of four candles from its one. Had it a unique element like the plaster at the inn—one that magnified the light? Alyn did his best to catch glimpses of it as he lugged the other two boxed volumes at the end of the procession.

  As curiosity piqued, his earlier skepticism about the reverence for Seion waned. If the Culdees had been here, like their Essene counterparts in the Holy Land, they’d preserved all manner of knowledge, both holy and the sciencia of God’s creation. Still, he couldn’t help the astonished drop of his jaw when Mairead placed her hand upon a stone that would take a horse to move, and it rolled away as if of its own accord. As he passed over the threshold into a cave, he spied the track on which it moved.

  “Amazing.”

  As was the room they entered. It reminded Alyn of the cave in which his sister-in-law Brenna had once lived. Furnished for comfort, with a hearth carved into a wall that vented somehow, for there was no smoke in the room to indicate otherwise.

  “You will stay here tonight,” Mairead said, indicating a bed with a thick, suspended mattress near the hearth. “There is water for tea by the fire. Cheese and fruit bread on the table—and heather ale.”

  By the time she finished speaking, a tapestry slid aside on the far wall, revealing a narrow entrance into a lighted passage from which three women emerged. Like Mairead, they were clad in simple shifts dyed green, though some were more faded than others.

  “My sisters will take the Grail records from here,” she told them. “They will be safe here from Rome and those who would use them for their own purposes.”

  Like Arthur … or Modred? Alyn kept his thoughts to himself as he handed over the boxes he and Kella had protected with their lives. “The church should rest easier.” His cryptic tone revealed a heart jaded by disillusionment.

  Mairead stared at him—except that was impossible. “This is the chamber of music. Our gift to those who have journeyed long to serve the church.”

  “Chamber of music?” Kella asked, peeking out from behind the tapestry. Unlike Alyn, she’d boldly followed the other priestesses to see how it worked.

  “Following God isn’t always easy,” Mairead told them. “I sense from Father Alyn that it has been a difficult task. Sometimes we wonder if our sacrifices are worth it. Sometimes we question the very nature of a God who sees the sparrow fall and does not catch the helpless bird. Sometimes we question ourselves.” Again, she looked at Alyn. “Are we up to the tasks that God has prepared us for?”

  Hair pricked at the back of Alyn’s neck. It was as if this blind woman looked into his mind. “And this chamber puts all those anxieties to rest, does it?” Did she see the murder in his heart as well?

  Mairead shook her head. “Nay, weary traveler. Only God can do that.”

  “God lives here, as well as the fairies and other gods?” he quipped wryly. A gifted people had been here, to be sure. Those with the most knowledge had always been thought of as gods.

  “Father Alyn.” Mairead’s disappointment carried the same sting that his mother’s had, reducing Alyn to a chastened child. “You of all men should know God lives everywhere … wherever His children are.”

  That much, Alyn believed.

  Father, he prayed as Mairead bade them good night. I do not doubt You. Only the claims people make in Your name.

  The priestess left by the same passage as her sisters.

  “Did you see the exquisite embroidery and knotwork on her dress?” Kella asked as a wooden d
oor closed behind Mairead and the tapestry covered it once more. “’Twas so simply made, yet the skill … Are you listening?”

  Lost in the churn of mind and soul, Alyn picked up the lamp Mairead left behind. There was nothing remarkable or visible to the naked eye that would multiply the light shining through it, yet—

  “Alyn!”

  “How I would love to explore this place. Chamber by chamber.” He strode over to the entrance, where an intricate series of pulleys and gears moved the stone along a well-greased track. Just the touch of a hand—

  Nothing happened when he touched the stone. It remained in place. He felt the wall and frame around it, searching in vain for the trigger. Sweat broke out on Alyn’s brow upon the realization that he was sealed in. Not that he minded the stone in place. Only that he couldn’t control it.

  “Alyn, what is it?”

  “Wait.”

  Alyn hurried to the tapestry. The wooden door behind it was also fixed in place, refusing to move aside as it had for the priestesses. He could perhaps breach that if he had to. He glanced at the hearth where an iron poker rested, but compared to the thick oak planking, it was paltry. And his sword, even his staff, was in the wagon stored in the barn behind the inn.

  “We’re not guests, Kella. We’re prisoners.”

  But this was a spacious room, he consoled himself. Filled with amenities for their comfort. And there was light. It wasn’t at all like the chest that had nearly suffocated him as a child.

  His pounding heart didn’t seem to care.

  “Nonsense,” Kella argued. “Mairead said if we needed anything, to pull the cord by the bed.”

  Kella poured a cup of heather ale from the jug on the table. “Drink this, and calm yourself. Enjoy the comforts—”

  A thin strain of harp music drifted into the chamber as if through invisible cracks. Perhaps like the one that vented the fire. Harmonious chords, sweet notes that plucked at the heart. Then a voice, like that of an angel, joined in. With a psalm, he thought.

  “If we are trapped, husband, ’tis in the luxury of kings.…” Kella handed him the cup. “Our heads are sore with all that has happened this day, and I know not what to think or feel.” She wrapped her arms about his waist in a hug. “But I know in my heart and soul that God sent you to me to show me what love truly is. Now,” she said, pulling away, “you may sit and stew or join me in that delicious bed. I prefer the latter.”

  The quirk of her lips, the saucy dip of her lashes, her white shoulders …

  Sweet Solomon! If Alyn were to be trapped, let it be in Kella’s arms. Alyn’s voice grew husky with a more potent intoxication. “We need no ale this night.” He poured it out. All of it, for he still did not know what to make of Mairead.

  “What—”

  “Let her kiss me with the kisses of her mouth: for her love is better than wine.” He murmured the words from Solomon’s song.

  Even if the wine was the best the world had to offer, Alyn meant every word.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Alyn was missing from the comfortable rope-slung bed when Kella awoke the following morning.

  Yet only last night he’d spoken as if their mission was over. He talked about returning to Glenarden, perhaps opening a school in conjunction with Bishop Martin’s monastery.

  “Let them kill each other if they must.” He’d been very disillusioned by Arthur, Modred, and the church as they talked about his and Kella’s future into the wee hours of the morning. “You and the baby are all I care about now.”

  So where had Alyn gone? Had his insuppressible sense of obligation caused him to change his mind?

  Kella hastened to dress. Alyn was not going to Fortingall without her. Though she couldn’t blame him if he did, after she’d nearly called down Lorne’s soldiers on them.

  To her astonishment, her traveling clothes had been removed, replaced by her dress and shift. Someone had taken pains to smooth it with a slickstone. The heated stone had even formed pleats so the gussets didn’t bunch her skirts around her hips.

  Though this was a cave in a remote mountainside, Kella could easily grow accustomed to such luxury. The music alone had helped her sleep without waking during the night, as she had done since leaving Carmelide. Well, the music, and Alyn’s husbandly attentions had also helped. How beautiful was love fulfilled as God intended. No shame. Glory, ’twas pure joy.

  Almost the moment Kella tied the gussets of her dress, Mairead knocked on the door of the chamber and entered at Kella’s invitation.

  “Your husband was most eager to leave us this morning,” she said. At Kella’s gasp of dismay, she added, “He waits for you at the inn. I came to show you the way.”

  Every bird in Scotland seemed to sing them down the mountainside. Branches of all manner of trees covering the path quivered with life. Nature danced, Kella mused. Danced to its own music, like that of the cave still echoing in her mind.

  “I am most impressed that Father Alyn discovered the release for the stone without help,” Mairead remarked. “The masters who engineered such a wonder are long gone.”

  “He is a man of sciencia. Mysteries intrigue him.”

  “He is a troubled man as well. The sisters and I prayed through the night that God would put his concerns to rest, that he might fulfill the purpose for which he is sent.”

  Kella stepped over a vine, likely the one that had almost tripped her the night before. “And what might that be?” Aside from saving her and her child and showing her what love is.

  “Your husband is a merlin, a man capable of building a bridge from creation to Creator, and a peaceweaver who can speak with kings,” Mairead responded. “He will need your support to fulfill God’s role for him.”

  Kella scowled. “I thought women were peaceweavers, like Queen Heilyn. Born for arranged marriages to ensure peace.”

  “And to bring forth the church as Grail princesses. ’Tis why she sent for a priest. Drust is pagan. But your husband,” Mairead explained, “is gifted with the voice of reason, a heart for love, and a soul for the Word.”

  A bridge between believer and nonbeliever. Idwyr and Brisen came to Kella’s mind. But Merlin Emrys bridged even more. He found common ground for enemies. Made peace treaties. Advised kings.

  “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

  “Is he going to Fortingall?” Kella asked. It would be dangerous enough with Lorne and Elkmar there, but if Alyn tried to speak against Modred and for Cassian …

  Mairead didn’t answer.

  But Kella knew. Knew before she saw her husband dressed in priestly attire. Glenarden’s princely red, black, and gray had been put aside for an unbleached robe that fell from broad, straight shoulders and was belted at a waist devoid of excess flesh with the worn belt that once belonged to Merlin Emrys.

  When he turned on sandaled feet from where he spoke privately to Egan O’Toole under a nearby tree, a simple silver cross glimmered upon his chest and—

  Kella breathed a sigh of relief.

  He had not shaved his forehead in the Celtic tonsure. If God had given him such a thick mane of raven-hued hair, ’twould be a sacrilege to shave it. Father Alyn was as beautiful as … as an angel. One who smiled as she hurried to him.

  Heart quickening, she went into his extended arms and, oh, the sweetness of his kiss. Was it wrong to lust after a priest if he was her husband?

  “Good morning, wife,” he said almost smugly as he delved into her gaze with the blue fire of his own.

  He knew, the devil. “Everyone is ready,” he told her, “so I hope you won’t mind breaking the fast while on the way.”

  “Nobody’s goin’ anywhere till I’ve congratulated ye both properly, now that me mind is back,” Egan exclaimed.

  Before Kella realized what her da was about, the Irishman gathered her and Alyn into a bear hug, lifting them off the ground. “’Tis the answer to me prayers all these years.”

  Kella tensed until her father p
ut her down gently and gave her a wink twinkling with love. “And a grandchild on the way already. Miracles never cease.”

  Da knew, and he loved her anyway.

  Confound it, she was going to cry … again.

  But her eyes were dry by the time Mairead, the innkeeper, and his wife waved good-bye as the odd mix of companions set off on the narrow road leading downhill toward Fortingall. Idwyr and his Miathi took the lead, while Brisen and Egan chatted privately behind the wagon.

  Kella finished off her breakfast of fresh-baked scones and honey and licked the sticky residue off her fingers while the wagon lurched this way and that, depending on the disbursement of the rocks along the way.

  “So what made you change your mind?” she asked. “About leaving for Glenarden today?”

  Such a lovely life they’d planned the night before. Not riding into Alba’s conflicts. Not that Kella was against this mission. She realized that, even in Glenarden, those conflicts would eventually catch them.

  “I can’t explain it, Kella, though I would if I could.” The set of her husband’s shaved jaw underscored his reluctance to talk. “Suffice it to say that God spoke to me last night, and now I know what I must do.”

  “In a dream?” For she’d heard naught but the harp and women singing like angels.

  “Yes …” He frowned. “I think. ’Twas no hallucination, for I poured out the ale in case Mairead had altered its integrity in any way.”

  Had this come from someone other than Alyn, Kella would be skeptical. But one thing Alyn was not given to was fancy. He took no word at its value save God’s Word. “What did God tell you?”

  “I must try to resolve these conflicts. They are not so different from those God’s prophets addressed in the past,” he observed. “I must speak to Drust and the Pictish kings against going to war with the Britons or sitting by idly while the Saxons defeat their island brethren. And I must convince Modred and Cassian of the error of their ways and bring Cassian back to Strighlagh.”

  But hadn’t Alyn once said that not even Jesus could reason with Albion’s kings? And Kella knew what had been done to Jesus for telling the truth to the powers that be.