by Erin O'Quinn
I hated to think of those wretched days when Liam lay at the mercy of a murderer. And yet his capture served to remind all of us that our people and our holdings would never be secure as long as warring clans coveted our territory. Liam himself left every morning to work on a deep defensive trench around our bally. Even after more than a year, the trench was far from completed, for it was lined with river rocks and its sides sloped outward, giving no purchase to a swimmer or horse that tried to cross it. And yet, conforming to my own vision, it was being constructed to channel the currents of the Foyle and made to look like a swift, pretty stream, banked with grass and wildflowers.
A sudden tug on my line riveted my focus back to the task at hand. Whatever fish had decided to snap up the bait, it was not overly large, probably no more than five or six pounds, to judge by the force of the pull. I let it play out for a while until the movement of my line told me the fish was almost spent. Slowly, carefully, I pulled it up. A flash of silver and brass told me it was a brown trout, about six pounds of quivering, speckled iridescence.
I removed my prize carefully from the bait, and I tied the line around it several times to hold it while I clambered down from my perch. Once safely on the bank, I unwrapped the line and wound river reeds around the trout. I carried it to where Liam and I had built a fish tether, a secure way to keep our fish cold yet free from hungry predators. It was the same place I liked to tie the rare wineskin full of beer that made its way to our home.
Back inside our teach, I removed first my mantle and then the kerchief, shaking my long, tangled hair free. Strangely, being back inside had made me realize how cold I was, and I put more water in the cauldron and set it on the fire grate for tea. Waiting for it to boil, I fell back into my morning daydream, all the while shaking and fluffing the wild animal pelts and furs that covered our bed. I had seen each one captured and skinned by the huntsman Liam as we sought our meals between the mighty lakes of Neagh and Foyle.
Our love play this morning had not ended right away, for Liam still had to be repaid for teasing me, delaying my pleasure, making me beg for him. I played it back in my mind as I arranged the soft pelts back on our grand bed.
Both of us were panting, Liam lying almost on top of me, sparing me only by raising up a bit on his elbows. I playfully pushed him to the side. “Healing powder,” I said simply. He grinned and lay facedown. We kept the pouch of healing powder close to the bed now, for the times when our passion got a bit too wild.
I had put several deep scratches in his hips and buttocks. I rolled to the table and seized my pouch of ground horsetail reed. Then I rolled back to him and knelt, straddling the back of his thighs. Before I shook the powder on his wounds, I could not help admiring, then stroking, his long-muscled buttocks. He moaned slightly and raised his bum just a bit. I leaned down and licked him wherever I had hurt him, and then I lightly dusted the marks with healing powder.
He raised his bum again. “Póg mé,” he said, not a bit modestly, bidding me kiss his glorious backside, in the passionate way of a lover.
“Shush, Liam,” I said, teasing, punishing him for his willful holding back a while ago. I kept stroking him, and then my finger ran up and down his cleavage. At first the touch of my finger was light as a bird’s wing. Then I put it in my mouth and moistened it and stroked again, a bit harder. Then, when the rhythm was enough to arouse him, I bent close and spread his cheeks, pushing in my tongue. Then I inserted my finger, taking turns with my tongue, until he was moaning softly.
“Oh, now, a Cháit,” he said, “anois, anois.” His response to me was so urgent and passionate that I caught fire and let him roll over, still straddling him, and I seized his groin. I pushed it inside me, bit by bit as he had done to me earlier, until he was crying out and moving his hips up and down. This time, with me on top, the motion was more measured. I rose up, using my legs, then sat back down so that he came almost all the way out before I enveloped him again. I played the delay game until he seized my hips and almost angrily growled. “Want you now!” He brought my whole body up, then down, again and again, setting his own rhythm. His moment of release was almost explosive.
Liam’s undisguised pleasure always ignited my own deepest passion, and it was no different just then. Rising to a climax, I cried and trembled, collapsing onto his chest. He held me close for a while, until we both were breathing normally. And then it was almost dawn, time to rise, and wash, and eat breakfast. I kissed him one last time before I faced the coldness of the room, and then I sprang up quickly before his questing hands could hold me back.
I snapped out of my dream, for I heard the water hissing out of the sides of the cauldron and into the fire below the grate. Measuring my second cup of tea, I shook my head and chastised myself. “For shame, Caylith!” Every day and night with Liam could be replayed for the pleasure it gave then—and then again and again, on second and third thought. Better to live for the present, I thought, enjoying the taste of cool mint leaf on my tongue combined with the hot, soothing tea.
Still, as I looked at the array of wild animals that stalked across the expanse of our bed, I was aroused all over again. What unexplored domain lay ahead of us tonight, what beast would crouch in the long grass, hungering for satisfaction?
Chapter 3:
Language of the Heart
The sun would set in less than an hour. I had been busy for some time, chopping vegetables and preparing them for the stew, making several trips to and from the river for fresh water, and bringing our eating containers to the Foyle for cleaning. We were fortunate to have a river so close to the house. Later, we would have a channel of water coursing through the brugh itself—and even a trickling, splashing waterfall right in the comfort room, if Michael could find a way to build it.
I filled a large cauldron with water and put in all the vegetables except the cabbage, setting it on the edge of the grate where it would take the water a while to heat to boiling. Taking a lit candle, I went to the root cellar to retrieve a bit of butter from the goatskin bag. We had no livestock yet, other than the pony and our horses. Thus any milk, cheese, or butter had to be borrowed from Mama. She and Glaedwine kept two head of cattle and a few goats in addition to a pen full of noisy hens and one strutting, unfettered rooster. While I was in the cellar, I pinched off a large piece of the yeasty dough I kept to start our bread.
While I was preparing our supper, I also made a supply of pan bread for us and for Mama, using part of the pinched-off dough and stirring it with flour and water. I poured it into shallow pans and set them near the grate, covered with a metal trencher. In half an hour or so, the mixture would rise a bit. Once the pans were set on the grate and browned on each side, we would have crusty cakes of bread.
The door opened, and a great swirl of cold wind set the fire to sparking and jumping. Liam closed it quickly and stood at the door, his head raised, smelling the air. “Mmm,” he said. I looked up from the grate and smiled in welcome.
He was across the room in a few strides, pulling me next to his rough woolen mantle, his cold face nestling in my warm throat. “A chuisle mo chroí,” he said into my skin, and I caressed the back of his golden-brown hair.
“Hello, my love. Surprise tonight,” I told him, pulling him close.
He raised his head and looked at me, his eyes alight with dancing lights reflected from the fire. “Every night,” he said, and his mouth settled on mine, suckling gently. “Is tú mo ghrá.”
I stroked his downy cheek. “And I love you. Help me. Bring the fish,” I said simply, glad he had not yet removed his warm cloak.
He knew from long habit what I was saying. Usually it took only a few words, either in Britonnic or Gaelige, for us to communicate. Part of it was the special vocabulary of the eyes and body, and part of it was the situation at hand. Not much of our mutual language was language itself.
Without further comment, he turned and left. When he returned five minutes later, he was carrying the reed-wrapped brown-speckled trout. “Deas,
a Cháit.” I knew he had complimented me on a good catch, and I smiled in appreciation.
He went to the clothes cabinet and removed the brat, hanging it on a hook inside. I saw that he wore a warm animal-skin tunic and his old leather bríste. One of these days, I told myself, I would make sure Liam got a new pair of breeches—as long as they were as tight as these old ones. I loved the way the bríste hugged the contours of his calves and thighs. I will ask Magpie to use her talents, I thought.
He came back to the fire pit, lifting the lid of the stew pot, and then inspecting the bread. “Liam, when is your feast day?”
“Mo bhreithlá? Gone,” he said. He stirred the vegetables carefully.
“How long ago?”
He shrugged. I knew better than to press him. He did not think it was important for me to know or else he hated the idea of birthdays. Either way, I thought I would ask his brother Torin instead.
“Tonight,” I said, “we have Séamas. And Michael and Brigid.”
“So?” he asked with a wide grin. “Good food, good friends.”
He sat on one of the benches and watched me wield my long knife, carefully filleting the trout. “I…cook the fish,” he said with finality, and I nodded. I put the garlic bulb and the rosemary where he would see them and sat next to him on the bench.
“Inniu,” I said. “Today. Work was good? Obair go maith?” I knew I was mangling his language, for I was still struggling with where to put the verbs. Indeed, I rarely knew what verb even to use.
“Bhí sé go maith.” He smiled. “Your day, Cat, was good? Do lá—an raibh sé go maith?”
He was talking very slowly and even simplistically just to help me. “Yes, darling.” I put my hand on his leg and sat a bit closer. He put one arm around my shoulders, and we sat like that for a while, enjoying our closeness, not needing to say more. I had seen the way Liam worked each day at the bally defenses, digging the hard earth, straining with the weight of the river rocks, fitting them into a smooth pattern. It was the kind of work he loved, next to riding the expanse of grazing lands on a spirited horse, driving cattle from low pasture to mountain pasture.
Liam and his kin had made their fortune in cattle—raising them, driving them, milking them, acquiring more. In this country, a man’s cattle was his wealth. Until I met him, Liam’s home was anywhere he happened to be on any given day, usually with a herd of cattle. Like his cousin Ryan and most of his kinfolk, a bed and a pillow meant a patch of ground and a leather saddle.
Before we married I had often wondered how Liam would react to the bally wall of marriage, the confines of a small teach, the routine of a settled life. If I were to be bluntly honest, I had wondered whether I myself would chafe in the confines of married life. I had spent a large part of my life trying to slip away from the people I saw as my guard dogs and trying to run wild as the wind in my wild red hair.
Whenever Liam and I felt too pent up, we took our shillelaghs to a special spot and tested which warrior had gotten too soft. Or we took long horseback rides or walks. Or, like this morning, we played a bit rough with each other.
Finally, Liam stirred. “Time to cook?” he asked.
I nodded. While Liam was preparing the trout, I washed at the ewer and combed my hair, then changed clothing. I saw him watching me even as he was rubbing the fish with pungent garlic, and my natural modesty made me flush and turn my back. I had never gotten used to the idea of being watched while I bathed or dressed, especially by someone with eyes so brazen as my Liam’s.
I slipped on my prettiest undertunic, the one with clouds of lace around the bodice and the silk that clung to the contours of my hips and behind. Next I pulled on my deep green léine, the one Brigid had brought for me before she knew me, before she even knew it would match my eyes. The long sleeves were made of layers of flax, all shifting colors. The pretty belt was made of two wide strands of dyed leather plaited and tied in a round knot. I tucked the long material up into the belt as though I were about to mount NimbleFoot, feeling like a clanswoman. Last, I put on the soft leather bróga she had given me, shoes that were gathered and sewn with thin, strong strips of cowhide.
I looked over at Liam, and he was standing still as a statue, looking at me. “You…beautiful, Cat,” he said simply. I walked to the fire pit and reached my hands up to his face, tracing his lips with my forefinger.
“Is tú mo ghrá, a Liam.” Oh, Liam, I love you…
He took my finger into his mouth and my heart began to race, for the way he sucked it was profoundly sensuous. We stood that way for a while, making love with our eyes while he kissed and sucked my palm and fingers. If we had not been expecting guests at any moment, I know I would have started making love to him on the spot.
“Oh!” I said, trying to catch my breath. Liam smiled in his special way that told me he knew exactly what I wanted, and he promised I would have it.
Then a knock sounded at the door, and our social evening began.
Brother Galen’s bulk filled the doorway, blocking any blast of cold wind that might have set our fire to spinning like a drunk.
The monk was, in a word, large. Yes, Brother Galen was very large. He was inches taller than Liam, and probably a hundred pounds heavier, much of it centered at his midriff. He was the only son of Éire I had ever seen with no belt around his tunic, for any extra length was taken up by his extra girth.
Like all monks, he was tonsured. But where he was not bald on top he made up for by wearing his luxuriant, black hair in ringlets down to his shoulders. His brows and eyes were dark, too, and vibrantly expressive. I was fascinated by his mouth, for his full lips seemed to me stained by sacramental wine, so dark red that watching his mouth could hold a person spellbound. He wore no beard or mustache, as if showing off his lively face.
By his own admission, Galen had been an exuberant sinner. Born Séamas Gallagher, he had grown up in the seaside settlement of Dunleary, a maritime defensive holding of High King Leary, not too far from the royal bally at Tara. There he led a rollicking life as a wharf worker and a drunkard, well known in every tavern and by every bawd who plied her trade along the waterfront.
In a happy accident of fate—or by prearrangement between Pádraig and the Lord himself—Séamas had awakened one morning on the dock watching a calm, blue-eyed priest hold a large crowd speechless with his message of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ. He drew nearer, listening in amazement. And before the morning was complete, he had been hauled in, as he later described, “like a great bloated fish,” by Father Patrick.
Liam was at the door taking his mantle before the monk could take a few paces inside. They set up a back-slapping and cheek-kissing ritual that I had seen often enough between clan members and close friends. It was plain to see that Liam delighted in the monk’s company. Just as Galen himself had accidentally found the Lord, I thought that my husband had stumbled onto the man who himself had by chance found Christ.
“Brother,” I said, “welcome again. You grace us with your company.”
He gave me a great bear hug that took my breath away. “A chailín, ’tis a joy to be with ye, and Liam, too. Allow me to present me close friend Barley Beer.” He removed a large wineskin that hung across his belly and gave it to me. “Parcel it out, lass, for after this there is no more.”
I laughed, for it was the largest wineskin I had ever seen. “I will try to make it last the evening,” I told him, “but we are expecting Michael and Brigid to join us.”
He rolled his eyes in mock despair. “Those inebriates? I may not have a chance to get as drunk as I would like tonight.” It was a double jest, for Michael and Brigid were not heavy drinkers, and Galen himself could knock down several cups before even feeling the alcohol.
He turned around and shared the jest with Liam in Gaelic. Then the two of them continued to banter and laugh in their own language while I tended our meal. I thought about the irony of Liam’s sudden volubility. With me, his words were few and none. Yet in the company of native speakers,
he could easily be the center of attention. I wondered whether he felt too restricted by the bally trench between us, the chasm of unspoken words.
It was a puzzle that had gnawed at my brain almost from the beginning of our friendship. Would our love have developed the same, or at all, if we had been able to communicate when we first met? So much of Liam’s joy came from teasing that I wondered. Was it was possible we would still have become lovers without his giant hoax of pretending I had asked him to marry me? His gift of Macha was a facetious wedding gift. Was it possible I would not even have my darling, red-maned mare if Liam and I had been able to talk with each other?
Instead of words, we had spoken with kisses, and the sentence structure had grown more and more complex. Indeed, our private syntax was still being developed. I poked at the fish, wrapped again in rushes and roasting in the fire, and I decided on the spot that I liked the way we spoke with each other. Whatever I really needed to communicate, like tonight’s exploration of Liam’s lessons with the monk, could be worked out with a trusted translator.
I had lined up five cups for our beer and was about to fill three of them when a second knock came at the door. Liam jumped up and opened it to Michael and Brigid, standing wrapped in one large mantle just like the day they had first stood at our door.
Brigid was as flaxen of hair as Michael was dark, but they shared one breath-catching feature—their luminous, blue eyes. Brigid’s eyes were shades darker than her husband’s, but seeing the two pairs of lustrous eyes was a pleasure for me that never diminished.
Liam embraced both of them at once and almost picked them up together, drawing them inside. Michael managed to turn around in Liam’s arms and draw the door shut before the gusts of wind could put out the fire. Escaping from Liam’s strong grasp, Brigid curtseyed low to Brother Galen, her hand extended. Galen took her hand and brought her upright. “Hello, fair Bree. Bow not to me, colleen.” She graced him with a lovely smile and then walked over to me.