Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series)

by Lisa Ann Verge

“I found it in a chest at the end of my bed.” She tipped her head toward the chipped wooden pieces as she made another stitch. “It’s worse for wear but all the pieces are there. Do you play chess?”

  His hands, she noticed, had curled into fists.

  “Surely,” she said, “a man of your learning knows the lay of the board—”

  “I know the way of it.”

  “It’s been many a moon since my brother and I played. My palms have been itching for someone to challenge.”

  “Have you not done with the tunic yet?”

  “A watched pot never boils.” Not that he’d been watching her. He was doing everything in his power not to lay eyes upon her. He prowled a circle of grass flat, like a creature trampling his bed for the night. His head swiveled constantly toward the manor house, once or twice turning angrily into the depths of the woods.

  She winced as the needle pierced her skin. “It will be a long stay in the country,” she muttered, examining the bead of blood oozing from her fingertip, “with none but a boorish doctor to keep me company.”

  “You’ll be gone by Lughnasa—and so will I.”

  She jerked at the word Lughnasa, for it brought with it the memory of a warm summer day with bees swirling in the air, of distant sea-salt spray and the hum of Irish sunlight. It had been ten years since she’d celebrated it proper. She, Mama, and Jean-Jacques used to pick bilberries in the woods on Lughnasa, surreptitiously eating them until the juice ran sticky down their chins. And there were fires deep in the forest at night that the priests frowned upon, and Mama would not let her attend for her youth—though Mama herself would slip away when she thought Deirdre was sleeping, ambling home in the dawn with brambles in her hair and the flush of sunrise on her cheek.

  Had it been ten years since she’d breathed the sweet air of Ireland?

  Deirdre absently sucked the drop of blood off her finger and pressed the wound against her saffron cloak. “It’s been so long since I’ve celebrated Lughnasa, that I no longer know the roll of the Irish year. When is it now?”

  “Four days from today.”

  “So quick to be rid of me.” She seized the needle anew. “It’s a wonder you insisted on convalescence at all.”

  She jabbed the needle through the cloth and yanked the thread through. There was no understanding a man’s mind. Aye, she’d had little practice in the ways of men and women within the confines of the convent, except what she’d overheard between the girls and their friends’ brothers in the common room on occasional afternoons, but certainly she wasn’t so daft as to mistake her own eyes! It was this doctor, not herself, who’d insisted upon this convalescence—and at no profit to himself. Yet here he stood before her, gruffly denying there was anything more to his actions two days ago. Bluster, she reminded herself. It was all bluster. She remembered too well the look in his eyes after Sir Guichard’s words. No man risked the good will of his patron without reason. And now, alone with her, he covered his awkwardness with gruffness.

  “Whatever the reason you insisted on this convalescence,” she said, “I thank you for it. Papa will change his mind about the marriage when he sees the great estate of the Lord of Clunel and knows for truth the worth of the title.”

  He spoke toward the woods beyond the perimeter of the garden. “Sir Guichard is bitter now, but he’ll come to his senses with age. He will make a fine husband.”

  “The entire world couldn’t make a racehorse of an ass.” She did not bother to stifle her snort of disbelief. “I won’t marry that sot.”

  “Don’t be living in dreams, woman.”

  “When the right man comes, I’ll marry him.” She snapped out the tunic as she rose to her feet. “There, I’m done. Better than what that strange little servant of yours can do.” She gathered the cloth over her arm and approached him, her feet light on the spongy carpet of grass. “This will be a small thanks,” she said, thrusting it at him, “for all that you’ve done for me.”

  He snatched the tunic and tossed it over his shoulder without a glance. “Your father pays my fee. I need no thanks for doctoring.”

  “You know I’m not speaking of your doctoring.”

  She raised her gaze to his face, to the square, sculpted jaw, to the angry tick of a muscle in his stubbled cheek. Then, with a deep, indrawn breath, she dared what she’d done once before: she raised her gaze until their eyes locked.

  A tingling rush filled her blood. She felt fury rise in him, felt it wash over her. Yet, despite the piercing heat of his gaze, she felt no fear before him. Somehow she knew he would not hurt her. Somehow she knew, staring into those turbulent gray eyes, that what he fought the hardest was himself.

  “What kind of man,” he said, flexing his hands, “would send an innocent to the pyres for being born with the gift of Sight?”

  Gift of Sight. She took a deep, trembling breath. Neither man nor woman had ever called her visions a gift. She had never dared think of them as anything but blasphemy. Nay, that was not entirely true. She remembered a time when she was very young when she assumed everyone had these foggy midday dreams, and she’d thought no more of it. A time in Ireland, a time before Papa came to take her, Jean-Jacques, and Mama away. It wasn’t until the exorcism that she’d realized the world would fear these visions. After that, she’d spent her days fighting the visions away, only to have them come to her, stronger and more vivid, in her sleep. She’d prayed for them to stop. She’d prayed until her throat was raw to any saint who’d listen.

  “Don’t be staring at me with those calf’s-eyes of yours,” he said. “I’ve told you nothing but a bit of common sense.”

  He stretched into his tunic, all the while rolling his shoulders as if to shake off something.

  “You can argue all you want, Conor. Aye, aye, I know your Christian name, I heard Octavius speak it.” She came close enough for her breath to ripple the soft cloth of his tunic. “But I think that despite all his roaring, this lion has the heart of a lamb.”

  ***

  Why? Why? Why?

  Conor heaved the axe over his head and hurled it down upon a log teetering on a stump. With a resounding crack, the thick wood snapped in two. The sections hurtled apart, only to skid through a rug of wood chips and sawdust until they clattered to a halt. Octavius stumbled through the slippery refuse to retrieve and stack the firewood, cursing and racing out of range as Conor ruthlessly set another log upright upon the stump.

  Why? Why? Why?

  The sky echoed the crack of the wood with a growling roar of thunder. Conor paused long enough to fist his tunic off his sweaty back. He swiped his face to sop up the rivulets of sweat stinging his eyes. Then he threw the garment she’d mended this morning across the growing pile of wood.

  Damn foolish woman, staring at him as if he were her only hope of redemption, staring at him with a face glowing with hope, damn it—hope—when he could give her none—when there was none.

  Crack.

  He yanked the blade out of the furrow in the stump. His head had grown as soft as porridge in this place. Even now, the cinnamon scent of fresh-cut oak inflamed his senses, rippling memories he’d thought long dead. All of it—the strong perfume of the old woods, the slant of light through summer leaves, the buzz of summer insects—the sounds, smells, tastes, and textures of these wretched woods intoxicated him more thoroughly than any opiate he’d ever come across in the Far East.

  Give him the stinking anonymity of a city—any city—over this.

  He seized the rough bark of another log and planted it on the stump. He’d ordered the woodcutter off to his cottage hours ago when the storm had been nothing but a few reedy gray clouds. Yet still Conor chopped, though the pile had long topped the edge of the thatch. He needed to sweat off the fire in his blood.

  For the first time in more years than he cared to count, his palms tingled for the feel of a woman’s flesh. A heaviness settled in his loins just at the thought of her. That’s what was defeating him the most. The idea of having her again
, feeling her throbbing and warm and human beneath him. Merging their hungry bodies—

  Crack.

  A sputtering of raindrops sizzled in the clearing. The scent of this place and the clean wind softened him, opened his mind to possibilities. Too often, he found himself wondering if a few decades of loving might be worth seven hundred more years of agony—

  No.

  Madness, those thoughts. Worthless little dreams that would twist into nightmares in the blink of an eye. What did it matter now if he thought he could bear the pain? His life was not the only life which would be destroyed.

  He had to save her.

  For he’d seen the signs tumbling upon one another, the similarities that could not be simply coincidence, the new life unfurling like the old. Deirdre was the daughter of her father’s second wife—as was Brigid. Deirdre’s mother died young—as did Brigid’s. Both had a brother who died. Both had been banished—one into the woods, the other into a convent. Chess, too, that mockery of fidchell.

  Conor slammed another log upon the stump and hurled his axe through it. Lightning sliced open the sky. Rain sluiced down his face. The wood split to the crack of thunder, and the two halves hurled in opposite directions.

  He would not do it to her. He could not let her relive the betrayal, the loss, the wrenching agony of that lonely existence all over again. For it was all the same, it would all be the same, from the first innocent, flirtatious laugh to the last agonizing blow... every wretched moment relived, the good and the bad.

  Crack.

  Why? Why? Why?

  ***

  At some point in time, the Clunel manor house must have been a fine residence for the noble family, with its broad-beamed hall and large fireplace, but that time had long passed. Now, no wall hangings hid the great dark stains that marred the walls where water had done its damage. The trestle table upon which they ate—with bent tin implements—was bare of cloth and riddled with childish carvings. Deirdre had spent her first night curled up on the rushes wrapped in her own cloak, while a reticent, grumbling servant doused the lumpy mattress with a pungent ointment to kill the fleas that infested the straw.

  In this cauldron of mustiness she’d been imprisoned for three days while rain poured from the skies. She paced endlessly across the floor, snapped at the lazy servants, and contemplated doing the same to the oft-infirm Lady Clunel who had yet to descend from her room to introduce herself.

  But Deirdre did nothing of the sort.

  For every nerve in her body thrummed with a buzzing anticipation. Uncertain excitement shimmered in the air, tremors vibrated in the earth beneath her feet. The very air she breathed sizzled through her blood and set her skin tingling. Everything had changed since those moments with Conor in the clearing of the garden—everything.

  Now, in the chill damp after dinner, she sat in front of a hearth which had not felt the bristles of a sweep’s broom in a generation. In the wavering light she threaded a fine strand of linen through a silver needle. She glanced from beneath her lashes at Conor sitting on the floor on the opposite side of the hearth, his face limned by the firelight, his nose deep in a battered book he’d retrieved from his pack. He claimed that only the distaste of his soggy wet pallet under the eaves kept him here in the main room.

  But he’d turned not a single page of that book since dinner.

  She lowered her head over her work and set her mind back to the sewing and wondered for the thousandth time if she was doing nothing but weaving girlish fancies out of hope and desperation. Every time their gazes met, her bones softened like beeswax left in the midsummer sun.

  “I’ve had enough of this.” She swept a cloud of sheer fabric off her lap and dumped it into the sewing basket at her feet. “I’ll go blind if I do another stitch.”

  Octavius, Conor’s manservant, started from where he snoozed on a rare spot on the floor whose rushes were still dry.

  “Have we nothing better to do here than go mad listening to the rain?” She rose from her seat and paced before the fire. “Juggle for me, Octavius. Or dance, as you did yesterday.”

  “On half a bowl of soup and a bit of hare meat?” Octavius eased himself up. “I’ve no strength in me to be bouncing about, and my limbs are fair sore from yesterday’s dance.”

  “Sore?” Conor interjected. “All you did was jump up and down like a man crazed, and all for the fancy of a maiden.”

  “It’s you who should be seeing to the lady’s needs, not I.” Octavius jerked his bristled chin at him. “Now there’s a man who could crush the rushes with his footwork, indeed, if he set his mind to it.”

  She plucked at the threads of her cloak as she sidled Conor a glance. “I can’t imagine he has any liking for dancing.”

  His gaze flickered over the edge of the book, hot and intense and utterly unreadable.

  “Chess, then.” She snapped her fingers toward the stairs. “You told me, doctor, that you knew the way of it—”

  “I’ve no patience for the game.”

  “Just a ray of sunshine, you are, breaking through the clouds.” She raised a brow at Octavius. “Well, Octavius? Will you take up the challenge?”

  “I know nothing of those fancy peg-games. Now if you had a pair of dice . . ..”

  “No singing and no dancing and no games.” She threw up her hands. “I may as well be back in the convent.”

  Conor scraped over a page.

  “If you please, lass,” Octavius said, “for the price of a bit of your string, I could tell you a story.”

  “Ah, a story then.” She fell back into her seat and rifled through the cloud of fabric to find thread and scissors. “It’s a sad day,” she said, snipping a length of white thread, “when a servant must do the work of his master.”

  The scrape of another page punctuated her words.

  Octavius took the string and settled before the fire, brushing away the rushes to sit one leg cocked and one leg curled under him. Resting his elbow on his knee, he dug the dirty butt of his hand into his temple and contemplated the rafters. “I’ve a hundred thousand tales whirling in my mind. Have you any one favorite you wish to hear?”

  She remembered a time, long ago, when she and Jean-Jacques used to sit by the fire in Ireland, listening to the crackle of the wood, while Mama told a tale as she rocked and busied her fingers with sewing. “Make it an old Irish story. It’s been a lifetime since I’ve heard one.”

  “Is there any other kind of tale but an Irish one?” His bright eyes flared. “I’ll tell you of your namesake, Deirdre. Deirdre of the Sorrows and the three sons of Usnach.”

  Octavius slipped the thread between his teeth again and mouthed it as he began.

  “There was once a king in Ireland whose wife was heavy with child. Pagans, they were, as were all the men of the day. So they called in a Druid to lay his hands upon the woman’s belly to tell about the child within. The Druid had no liking for what he saw, there was no mistaking that.” Octavius leaned forward into the light of the fire, his eyes wide. “A girl, he told them, a girl so fine that no other as beautiful had ever walked the earth. And on account of this beauty, all the rivers of Ireland would run red with blood.”

  The servants ceased their clattering of plates. They hovered near the door which led to the kitchen, ears cocked. A silence hushed over the room, but for the pattering of seeping rainwater and the occasional crackle of the fire. Octavius wound the thread Deirdre had given him around his fingers.

  “Many men called for the babe to be killed the moment she was born—which didn’t happen, of course, for then there’d be no story. The wife pleaded so piteously that they called upon the greatest king in all the land for advice—King MacNessa was his name.” Octavius straightened to glare at Conor. “Aren’t ye going to listen, man? There’s a lesson in here for you.”

  Conor scowled wordlessly and turned another page.

  “Well, then, that king I was after telling you about, he was a sly and greedy one. He said he’d become the girl’s gua
rdian, and marry her when she came of age. It wasn’t much of a burden, with her being promised to be the fairest woman in all of Ireland. So the babe was born in the course of time, and she was sent off to be raised far from the world. And, oh, lass,” Octavius breathed, squinting an eye at her, “as she grew, she became near as fair as you.”

  Deirdre laughed. “You won’t get any more wine in your cup by talking that way to me, Octavius.”

  “Won’t I now? In any case, she was fair beyond words, but lonely, oh so lonely in the place where she was forced to live. She knew no one but her devoted maidservant, and it goes without saying that she ached for more, being a strong and lusty girl.

  “Now Deirdre had a meddler of a maidservant who loved her, but she was the cause of all the trouble. She knew a man she thought Deirdre would want, a bold, young warrior in the king’s court. An Ulsterman.”

  Conor suddenly dropped his book upon his lap.

  Octavius plowed forward. “The maidservant arranged that the two should meet in the woods near where Deirdre lived, and they did—”

  “And,” Dierdre interrupted, “it was love at first sight!”

  “Ah, you know the tale, then!”

  She nodded. “But tell it anyway.”

  “Now Naoise, that young Ulster lover,” Octavious continued, “knew that the king was powerful and jealous. So he packed up and took Deirdre to Scotland where the wrath of the king could not touch them. There, they could live happily together. But the king was a proud sort, full of himself, and no ocean would come between him and his vengeance. So he sent a messenger to Naoise, and promised him the a full pardon for Naoise’s betrayal, if he came back to Ireland and brougth his wife Dierdre. Naoise missed his friends, so this was a great temptation.

  “But Deirdre had a rare and wonderful gift, as sure as skill in spinning or weaving or telling tales. The night before the king’s messenger arrived in Scotland, Deirdre dreamed of Naoise’s death. The next day, she begged her lover not to accept the king’s pardon, for she knew it was the vilest treachery.”