“Then I won’t have my tongue cut out of my head for saying such things to my new rí ruirech.”
“I’ve got better plans for your tongue than that.”
Her eyes narrowed. Three days of playing cat-and-mouse with the warriors he sent to search for her hadn’t deflated the swell of his arrogance. “It’s brazen and shameless to speak in such a way to me, when you know who you are, and who I am.”
“I am the same man, and you the same woman, as the morning I watched you dancing in the mists.”
“You told me you were a common cattleman just passing through the woods. I did not know at first that you were the Ulsterman who led the O’Neill against my brother.”
He planted a hand on one of the posts of her hut, flexing the bare length of his corded forearm. “The wind must carry the news, if it found its way so deep into the forests.”
A flash of memory assaulted her, of the last time she saw her brother Niall striding around this very clearing, so full of pride, swinging his sword, with his cloak whirling around him, his blue eyes glowing as bright as the sky. “My brother could not stop talking about you before he went off to battle. ‘I’m going to fight Conor dochloíte,’ he said. Conor the invincible. He swore to cut you down with one stroke.”
“I remember him. He had a fierce sword-swing.”
“Do you remember killing him?”
The post groaned as Conor unburdened it of his weight. “Three tribes of Connacht and ten of Leinster fought against my Ulstermen and two hundred of the O’Neill. Any man could have swung the deathblow.”
The memory of Niall’s death-vision rose. She saw her brother on the rain-drenched battlefield, his hair matted with blood, his arm outstretched, and his white fingers curled around the hilt of the sword of Morna. Now she recognized the shape of the shadow falling over Niall’s corpse.
She said, “I have ways of knowing things without a body telling me.”
“Then it was fated, his death.”
“Knowing what happened and knowing it was fated doesn’t soften me to the man who swung the deathblow, Conor of Ulster.”
“Maybe I wielded the sword, but it’s your father who bears the blame. Your father chose wrongly when he threw in his lot with the Leinstermen. They plague the O’Neill like fleas on a hound’s back.”
“My father has fought with Connacht since the O’Neill stole the High Kingship of Erin. We’ve no love for you and your kind here.”
“If your father had kept his peace, High King Murchertach would have not sent me to defeat the Leinstermen, nor have sent me here to carve a kingdom from the defeated. It was your father’s folly that caused your brother’s death—”
“It was you who thrust the sword.”
“He died a warrior’s death.” Frustration threaded his words. “He died face-forward, his sword clenched in his hand—”
“For this I should be grateful?”
“It’s a prouder fate for a man than rotting away with hunger or old age.”
She knew it was true. Niall had been a warrior. A warrior could ask for no better death than at the hands of the champion of the O’Neill. But that was a man’s code, a man’s comfort, and she drew no solace from it.
“If I could take the stroke back, I would. Aye,” he nodded, as she turned to glare at him anew. “Your brother was the only one in the whole of the clan with any fire in his belly.”
“Now you insult both my tribe and my brother.”
“No man could have stopped him from dying that day on the field, and my sword was nothing but the deliverer of the gods’ will.”
His words rang true, but she did not want to hear them. She had known Niall’s death was fated long before her brother left for war. She had cried hot tears when the vision first came to her, but she knew all her gnashing and wailing couldn’t change the course of events. Since she was a wee child, she’d learned to use the foreknowledge to prepare for what was to come. Like the flooding of the valley one spring, when she had known barely ten summers. Like the O’Neill cattle thieves who tried to steal an entire herd on the southern slopes. Like her and her mother’s banishment from the clan. Like her mother’s long and lingering death.
If she were to be honest, it was not the loss of her brother that made her so angry at Conor. She had bid her farewell to Niall, a tender parting the gods allowed because of the vision. It was the warring of her own spirit that made her bark and spit like a fevered dog. This man came to Lough Riach a conqueror of all she held dear—an arrogant, murdering warrior. She should hate him. But hate was not among the strange emotions born that morning in the sacred grove, emotions even now shimmering between them. Forbidden emotions, for she was destined for another.
He said, “If the sweetness of my tongue can’t smooth your ruffled feathers, then I’ll appeal to your gentler nature.” He nudged a swollen wound on his temple, clogged with congealed blood. “Some one-eyed hag told me you are the best healer south of Cruachan.”
She eyed the wound. It needed a good soaking and stitching if it were to heal properly. Anger flashed in her—I should let it fester and rot, I should let him go about life with a scar marring his wretched face—but the fury came and left like the flare of a comet. She was a healer to her core. She could not deny his request.
“King or no king, I won’t be healing you without payment. Soon the winter’ll be here, and I’ve no liking to starve.”
“The over-king of Morna can pay well for your services.”
“Paying me with my own clan’s cattle, no doubt.”
“I’ll pay you with my own heifers, or whatever you’ll take for the healing.”
She thought on that for a space. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, and she could think of a hundred things that he could be doing with those brawny muscles around the hut. Since Niall left for battle, the pile of firewood had sunk near to the ground, and the thatch lolled off the back of her roof like an idiot’s tongue. She hadn’t had a taste of fresh boar since Niall’s last hunt, and her mouth watered at the thought of another batch of honey mead. Yes, she’d make this man pay a king’s share, and she’d feel no shame in it. It would be an eric for the death of her brother—and she’d add a large honor-price on top of the fine. It would be the only justice she’d ever get for the loss of Niall.
“Sit down.” She gestured to a stump by the door of her hut. “A lass could get dizzy looking up at you. I’ll think on a proper price while I clean your wound.”
She ignored his rumble of laughter as she stepped into the shade of her hut. She tugged down a few dried herbs which dangled from the rafters. She tossed a cluster of twigs upon the hot stones in the center hearth fire, blowing upon them until the branches caught flame. She set a pot on a tripod above it, as curls of smoke slipped out the smoke-hole in the roof.
She emerged into the sunshine some time later and wordlessly handed him porridge sprinkled with purple sloes and a bladder which contained the last of her mead. She might have little to call her own, but she was a king’s daughter and would give food and drink to any who came to her door. As she crushed some dried herbs with mortar and pestle and then threaded her silver needle, he devoured the offering with gusto. She wondered if he even knew what he was eating, or if she could have served him grass and muddy lake water just as well and saved her stores.
It took her three tries to thread the needle. She felt like a field mouse under a hawk’s nest, the way his gaze followed her every move. Jabbing the pin through the sleeve of her tunic, she grabbed a wooden bowl and headed toward the stream. She returned through the thin woods, carrying the bowl against her hip, full of the cool spring water. Some of the water sloshed and dampened her hip, and she cursed beneath her breath at the icy flow.
His eyes probed her as palpably as the branches brushing her legs. “Have you no better thing to do,” she said, “than burn holes in me?”
“Any more holes in your tunic, lass, and you’ll not be wearing it at all.”
She raised her chin. She had no s
heep, and the people of the Clan Morna were reluctant to part with the wool the women worked so hard to card and spin, even for the price of her healing. It was her Ma’s dress she wore, and Ma gone these past five years, and she’d had none to replace it.
“How did you find me here?” She placed the bowl on the ground, crouched beside it, and threw the crushed herbs within. “With me working day and night to keep the path hidden from the ignorant, I thought no man would ever find it who wasn’t led.”
“You gave yourself away with your talk and your laughter.”
She frowned as she stirred the mixture with a yew-wood stick. It was true she talked to herself. She craved the sound of a human voice, even if it was only the echo of her own. “And what made you so sure you’d be welcomed here, wounded or no?”
“I have a way of making myself welcome to women.”
“Still braying like an ass.”
He chuckled and tossed the empty bowl of porridge at his feet, then wiped his mouth on his knotted forearm. “It’s no wonder the people of Clan Morna fear to speak your name. You’ve more barbs than a hedgerow”
“Is that how you found my hut, then, charming it out of a loose-skirted bondswoman?”
“There’s only one skirt I’m looking to get under, lass.”
“Don’t be getting your blood up, for rags or no, this tunic is staying down and about my legs.”
“I wouldn’t wager any cattle on that.”
With an arrogant flip of his wrist, he tugged his fist-sized brooch off his brilliant cloak and tossed it in the dirt. The fine wool slithered down his broad back to pool around his hips. They sat a good three paces apart but she felt the heat of his body like a Lughnasa fire.
“Are you going to tell me how you found your way here, or are you going to blather until your lips hang loose from all the work?”
He lifted the mead-skin high and sucked the bladder dry. She saw the gleam of the golden drops clinging to the bristle of his chin.
“In truth,” he said, “it was easier to defeat your clan’s warriors on the field of battle than to find out who you were. I had to tease your identity from the throat of some one-eyed hag.”
“Glenna? Why would that gentle soul be hiding my name from you?”
“The same reason every last man in Morna denied that you existed—even when I held my sword to their throats.”
“So it’s grown as bad as that, has it?” She dunked a linen into the cloudy herb mixture, sloshing it around with more force than was necessary. “That explains the honey, then. I suppose it was too much to expect them to give it out of the goodness of their hearts. I suppose I’d sooner see cows fly than see them change.”
“You’re speaking nonsense.”
“I’ve got you to thank for a pot of fresh heather-honey, Conor of Ulster. Your sword put the fear of the gods in them.” She lifted the linen and wrung the water out of it. “Yesterday I passed by the sacred pool near the shores of Lough Riach, and wasn’t there a pot of the finest honey you’ve ever tasted, just waiting by the edge? Now, if it were Lughnasa day, or Imbolc, or Beltane or Samhain, it’d be no surprise at all, for on those sacred days they all sneak out from beneath the eyes of their priests and lay their mutton and mead and cream by the pool, as they did in the old days, though I think they’ve all forgotten the reason for it.”
“Nay, they haven’t.” Conor squeezed the leathery neck of the mead-skin. “They bring gifts to appease an angry goddess.”
“They bring gifts so I won’t make their cows leave off milking, or curse their unborn children with twisted limbs or blinded eyes, as if I would ever do such a thing, even if I knew the way of it. Their fear has fed me for seven years.”
She approached him with the damp linen. She felt his perusal upon her body like the kiss of the sun. She brushed his blood-matted hair away from the cut. Her fingertips tingled as she touched his skin, as she threaded them through his hair which gleamed like the warm, rich wine the priests craved so, and which felt as soft against her palm as the finest brushed wool.
Had it been so long since she had touched another human being that she had forgotten the feel of a man’s skin? The heat and bristled texture of it, the faint, salt-sweet scent, and the swift pump of blood close beneath the surface? The dampness of clear sweat slicked her fingers as she traced his smooth brow. His eyes gleamed up at her like the smoky surface of a shaded, sacred pool.
A faint buzzing filled her ears. His exotic, broad-boned features, the deep dent in the middle of his chin, and the dark stubble on his cheeks... they all faded away like a reflection in a smooth pool grown turbid. Words barely born faded and died in her throat. His eyes captured her, compelled her into silence, so she did not protest when his hands boldly encircled her waist.
His voice rasped low and husky as his hands explored the narrowness of her rib cage. “It’s a strange man who fears a lass like you.”
“The priests are strange men,” she heard herself say, even as a voice in her head screamed, pull away. Until now, she did not realize how much her body craved human touch. “With their fasting and their scorn of women and their heads shaved like the bearded full moon.”
His palms rasped down her curves to settle on her hips. “I’d sooner cut off my own sword hand than live with no meat nor ale . . . nor women.”
Something in the way he said the word brought her to her senses. Women, is it? Well, Brigid of the Clan Morna was no common, loose-skirted slave for him to plow and seed. She pressed the damp cloth hard against his temple, knowing the bitter herbs seared the raw flesh like a branding iron.
She said, “It’s no compliment to those who follow the old ways to have you acting like the only bull in a new herd of cows.”
“Have pity on a man.” He squeezed the flesh of her hip. “Beneath these rags you’ve a body men would kill to possess. Is that why the priests banished you?”
“The priests didn’t banished me,” she said. “They made my father cast me out.”
She turned away too abruptly and heard the tearing of cloth as his finger caught in her tunic. She ignored the sound and crouched down by the bowl, steeping the linen and wringing out the blood.
“Your father,” he said darkly, “is a fool.”
“Speak not of my father so.”
“Only a coward listens to the fears of lesser men.”
“The foreign priests wield powerful magic. How else could they sweep over Erin so quickly?”
“Fire worship still rages in Ulster.”
“Maybe the priests have not found their way there yet.”
“The Ulster chieftains allow the priests’ presence in their mead halls only to hear about the world beyond. They don’t betray their own blood like your father.”
She pressed the newly soaked linen against his wound. The idea that there might still be a place in this world where someone like her might belong filled her with a fierce yearning. But even as the emotions swelled in her throat, she crushed them, for it was her father that Conor scorned, her beloved Da, just a victim of the priest’s water magic, still her father and her king. And the man she tended was an Ulsterman, a sword of the O’Neill, the murderer of her brother.
“You know nothing of it.” She slung the linen toward the bowl of herb water. The needle flashed in the light as she tugged it from her sleeve. “You were not there when Da lie near to death on his pallet. You were not there when the black-robed priests forbid my Ma from tending him.”
“I’m suspicious of any man who doesn’t know the taste of a woman—”
“Mayhap there’s power in keeping out of a woman’s thighs.” She jabbed his purple, angry wound with the needle and drew the linen through. “The priests did their water ritual upon Da as he lay ill, when he had no defenses.” She pierced the other side of the wound. “When he awoke they told him he was one of them, and if he broke the rules of their God, his soul would burn in their hell for an eternity.”
“For this, he sent away his only daughter.�
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“Not right away. Da laughed at them and scorned them, just as you do.” She felt his skin grow warm beneath her hands from the effect of the herbs, and she squeezed the edges of the wound together. “But then a bloody flux affected the cattle that year, and pellets of hail as big as stones ruined the barley in the fields, and the people of Morna began to die with some strange affliction.”
“A common enough year.”
“Yes. Except that year none of the old Druid enchantments worked to save the people.” She tugged on the thread to bring the flesh together, wondering how he could sit so calmly when she knew her ministrations stung. “The priests began to whisper that it was because Da continued to sin that the wrath of their god was upon Morna.”
“What was his sin? Eating a fresh haunch of lamb on a holy day? Drinking too much of the mead, as a king should?”
“My Ma was Da’s second wife, and the first one still lived. Their ways say that a man can only have one at a time.”
“What are all the maidens and the widows of the warriors to do if a man could only have one wife? How is one woman to run a king’s house by herself? And how’s a king to run a kingdom without sons?”
“It was but an excuse.” She jabbed the needle in rhythm to her anger. “It was upon me they cast their fear. I had the devil in my eyes, they said.”
“Have pity on them, lass. It’s a hard thing for a man to look at you and be forbidden to touch you.”
The clearing filled with a sudden buzzing, and the odor of crushed summer grass tickled her throat.
“Whatever it was,” she rushed on, “they demanded that I be banished with my mother. My father resisted them for as long as he could. But soon all the clan cursed and spit upon my Ma and myself, and in that light, Da had no choice but to cast us out—”
“A man always has a choice.”
“A man, maybe, but not a king. A king is responsible for the health of his tribe.”
“I am a king, and I would not send my daughter to live among the wolves.”
She bit the thread in two. This Ulsterman was setting her mind racing, and he had no right. Her father was under the influence of those black-robed strangers. He feared to make any gesture of love to her, lest they cast some curse over his people. She forgave Da for it. She remembered the tears on his face the day she and her mother left the ring-fort forever.
Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) Page 4