by Kris Kennedy
For a long time the hut was quiet, filled only by the low rush and occasional crackle of the fire. Maggie looked at the dagger and Tadhg looked at her. Thoughts and emotions crossed her face like clouds; the pained arch of an eyebrow, the slight shake of her head. He gave her all the time she needed. Finally she shifted on his hips and looked down at him.
“How did the dagger come to you?” she asked softly.
He laid his head back in the hay and curled his fingers around her hips, holding on.
“The king gave it to me outside Vienna, just before he was captured, half-fevered, hiding in the kitchens as a kitchen boy, he gave it to me and bid me get it safely back to England. Sherwood saw.”
THE KING HANDED HIM the dagger. “Take it, Irish, take it and run hard.”
Tadhg took it, then grabbed the king’s hand. “Ride with me.”
Haggard from a fever that would not leave, Richard shook his shaggy head. “I haven’t the strength. And it will not be so bad, eh?” He grinned weakly. “We’ve been on the road a long time, Irish. I could use a featherbed for a change. Rest assured, I will make it home, at some great cost to England, but I will make it. But if anyone finds this,” he gestured at the dagger, “there will be no England for me to go to.” He grasped Tadhg’s wrist. “I shall reward you greatly.” The king dropped a heavy pouch of money into his hand. “Land, titles. You shall be a great lord.”
Tadhg smiled faintly as he took it and shoved it under his cloak. “Once I was known as tighearna ba agus láib.”
“What is that?” the king asked, stripping another pouch of money free.
“Lord of Cows and Mud. ’Twas a jest, for at the time, I longed for greatness.”
The king slapped the second pouch of money into his hand. “Christ’s blood, Irish, I can make you lord of more than that. You shall sit among the great and mighty for your loyalty and sacrifice here.”
“I do not want greatness anymore, sire. I just want to go home.”
“Consider it done.” He unclasped the cloak around his shoulders and tossed it to Tadhg; it was heavier than his own, a finer weave, thicker, warmer. “Take the dagger to William the Marshal. He is at his townhouse in the city; he is lodging there permanently during my absence, to oversee the administration. And my wily brother,” the king added, unlacing a final pouch and handing it over. “It is up to you, Tadhg, all of it. Get it to the Marshal, and you will have done me well. You shall have the undying gratitude of a king.”
“Unless you die,” Tadhg pointed out as he buckled the belt around his hips.
Richard laughed, as he so often did with Tadhg. It was half the reason he kept him so close. The other half was Tadhg’s deadly skill with the blade. “Unless that, Irish. But I will not die. I am worth too much alive. And there will be featherbeds.” Richard clapped him on the shoulder one last time.
Tadhg turned for the alley door just as boots clattered into the kitchen entryway behind them. They spun.
Sherwood stood in the opening behind them. And behind him stood a phalanx of foreign soldiers. The baron looked at Richard, then at Tadhg. His gaze dropped to the dagger.
“Run,” murmured the king.
Sherwood took a quick step forward. “I advise against it, Irish. Whatever the king has offered you, I shall pay you more.”
Tadhg broke and ran. He forwent the stables and moved instead through alleyways, doubling back ceaselessly, occasionally passing through an open shop, front door to back, then pausing to feign attentive Christmas shopping outside the counter of a toymaker or a barbette stand, while always, on the next block over, or sometimes even through his own, soldiers moved in packs, searching the streets and the buildings and the occasional unlucky villager.
Finally, when darkness fell and the winter air bit hard, Tadhg stole a horse. He left a pile of coins on the wooden frame of the manger, then rode hell-bent into the snowy night, aiming for the craggy, inhospitable mountains, and thence, to home.
MAGGIE’S BROW was furrowed with tension. “Dear God, Tadhg, you were a thousand miles from home. What happened?”
“This is what happened.” He spread a hand. “He has been hunting me ever since.”
He breathed deeply, relaxing now that the memories had run their course, with Maggie astride him, her hair falling down like the tangled russet-dark crown of a nymph. She was a vision to his world- and war-weary heart. Her female heat and simple beauty, the slim hand brushing the hair back from his temple, the way both intelligence and compassion shone in the gaze she’d never taken off him, this was the balm of her. A balm on everything that had been shredded raw over the years. A bond into all the things that had been gouged out of him by seventeen years of death and destruction, the years of outlawry before coming into the light of Prince—then King—Richard, when Tadhg had been certain he’d reached the pinnacle, only to be plunged into two years of crusading, then crowned with a fortnight of being hunted like an outlaw, by a traitor, living in cold and darkness and hunger.
His desire for greatness had entirely run its course. All he wanted now was…Maggie.
So, the simple things were best after all. Clean, green earth. Blue skies. A woman’s cool hand, brushing back your sweat-dampened hair. Maggie’s eyes. A shame, that the knowledge had come too late to save him.
He tightened his fingers on her hips and slowly lifted his, rocking her forward.
“What are you going to do with it?” she whispered as she moved for him, then bent to kiss him, first his upper lip, then his lower. “This terrible burden your king has laid upon you?”
He didn’t answer as he flicked his tongue over hers as she moved across his lips.
Her gaze was somber. “Could it not be destroyed?”
Tadhg shook his head and pushed the hair away from her face with his palms. “I could polish the thing unto death, and the etchings would still be visible. I could let it rust, or toss it into a river or the deepest sea, yet rust can be polished off, and rivers change their course, as do seas, and upon time, nets can retrieve anything from their depths. And in any event…I would not do any of those things. Destruction was not the charge laid on me, and upon my life, it would not make any difference; they would hunt me still, because I know.”
She pulled back a little and peered down at him, full of concern. “Then what you are going to do?”
“I am going to deliver this thing to the greatest knight in all of Christendom, William the Marshal, and then I am going home.”
Her body stilled and her gaze locked on his, then as it had in her shop, when she’d first realized Tadhg had done naught but use her, it became a single thing: not fury, but hunger, and the truth hit Tadhg like a storm: Maggie had no home.
She had a shop, and a bed that lay above it, but no home. Maggie did not belong to Saleté de Mer, that dirty town filled with corruption and the butt-ends of lives. She belonged to hilltops and fresh air, to wildflowers and open spaces and elemental things.
She belonged in Ireland.
She belonged with him.
His chest felt tight, as if his heart was being wrapped in twine. Impossible. Maggie might belong in a great many places, but she most assuredly did not belong with him. And in no sane world did Tadhg belong to such innocence as hers. He was hard, guileful lines from beginning to end, and his mission was fraught with peril and almost certainly more death. Quite likely his own.
Nevertheless, she wanted it. That was the hunger he saw: she wanted it, wanted him, and whatever was to come.
Impossible. There was nothing to come. There was only right now.
Clever Maggie would know this as well as he. She would not say those dangerous words again, “I want more.” For there was nothing more, only this, right now, together in front of the burning fire, with her body atop his, wanting him, accepting him and the things he’d done.
It was enough. His entire life had been reduced to this moment, with Maggie.
It was better than all the thousands that had come before.
They moved
together and did not speak again. The hut was filled only with her slow gasps and low moans of pleasure as he took her again, and again, and she cried out his name from the pleasure. And the pain.
EDWIN NEEDLEMAN arrived home in a flurry of snow after a particularly inspiring miracle play put on by the blacksmith’s guild. One did not expect lurching folk to host such grand festivities, but grand it had been, in every way: the food, the wine, the new business contacts, more than enough to make up for the unfortunate ‘settling of debts’ that had occurred with Mistress Magdalena and her collection man earlier in the day.
Feeling pleased with himself and the copious amounts of wine he’d consumed, he did not care a whit for the snow falling down on his head. Nor did he notice his key did not need to turn in the lock before he cracked the door open, just wide enough of a wedge to pass inside, then he shut it swiftly behind him to keep out the cold.
He stopped short when he saw a figure sitting at the head of his table in the dark.
“Bonne nuit?” he said in tentative question, for could it possibly be a good night if some unknown figure was sitting at the head of his table in the dark?
“Good evening, Master Needleman,” said the figure. “Or rather, good morning, as it is quite late.”
Edwin brushed snow off the shoulders of his mantle and squinted into the darkness. “Yes, well, the miracle play… Do I know you?”
“Not yet. But I am always pleased to make the acquaintance of masters in their trade. As is the king.”
The man sat just inside the orange glow of several low-burning braziers, but Edwin could see there was some emblem, some crest of nobility stitched across it. He took another step inside.
“Well, sir, if you will tell me what you need—”
He stopped short as he drew near enough to see what was scattered across the table in front of his unwanted guest. Page after page of forged writs of safe passage.
“Oh dear,” he said softly.
“Yes, I think the king would be quite interested in making your acquaintance,” the man said. From the walls stepped several other men, all tall and bearing weapons.
“Oh dear,” Edwin said again, his heart hammering.
“I concur,” said his ‘guest.’ He patted the table. “Come, sit and let us speak. I am sure we can come to an arrangement that will prove amenable to us all.”
Edwin’s knees collapsed, depositing him on the bench at the other end of the table. He wheezed faintly and chose to stare at one of the braziers rather than the menacing nobleman. “What do you want, sir?”
“I am Lord Geoffrey, Baron Sherwood, on mission on behalf of your king.”
“All right,” he said miserably. “But I don’t know what I could do to help a king.”
“You are a business partner of one Mistress Magdalena, from Saleté de Mer?”
Edwin looked up sharply. “I knew it.”
The strange baron smiled. He reached into a pouch and shook out a handful of coins. They fell on the table and shone dully in the light from the soldiers’ torches as they arrayed themselves around Edwin, who felt his throat constricting in fear.
“Tell me everything, merchant, and I will make it worth your while.”
Edwin swallowed.
“When did you last see her?”
“Noon.”
“Was she with anyone?”
Good God, what had Magdalena got herself involved in? “I swear on my dead wife’s grave, sir, I don’t know anything, sir,” he squeaked. His heart thundered as the baron folded his gloved hands together.
“Needleman,” he said softly.
“Yes, sir.” The coins were at the edge of his vision.
“Have you any contracts with the king?”
He shook his head.
“Would you like some?”
Edwin’s jaw dropped.
“As I said, I can make this worth your while.” He pushed the coins with his gloved fingertips, nudging them across the table, until they sat in a little pile in front of Edwin. “Or I can make it very, very difficult.”
“Well, to tell the truth, sir, I am glad you’re here,” he began slowly. “Mistress Magdalena is an old, old friend, a good business partner, and I must say, I thought her in over her head with that one.”
Lord Sherwood smiled. In the light of the braziers, his face glowed rather demonically. “So she was with someone.”
“I should say. A coarse, rough man with very cold”–eyes, weapons, everything— “attitude. And yet, I marked how they looked at one another.”
“And how was that?”
Edwin waved a hand. “Why, as if they were in love!”
The words hit Sherwood like a blow. He stared at the fat little regrator, then gave the bench a violent shove backward and pushed to his feet. “I am not surprised,” he muttered to himself, circling the room. “Women are so easily turned.”
Behind him, the merchant made a sound of objection. “Oh no, sir, not just her. Him as well.”
Sherwood looked over his shoulder. “What?”
“Yes, yes, the rogue looked at her as if he was in love,” Edwin said in a tone of outrage. “Which is not to say she did not do the same. And please tell me, how could that be, a proper merchant and a…a scofflaw? I mean to say, it isn’t proper.”
Sherwood’s vision went blurry under the pressure of holding back a sudden, almost overwhelming fury.
The Irish crow had fallen for Magdalena?
She had tumbled to him? All that fine hair and pale skin and those eyes…
Bloody, accursed Irishman.
Sherwood’s jaw clenched together so hard his teeth squealed. He glared down at the fat little merchant, who sat like a frightened bunny, his jowls quivering. What Sherwood wanted to do was smash the man’s face into the wall, wad up those false writs and stuff them down his throat, but that would be unwise. There were larger things afoot here, and this untoward, unbidden fury welling up inside him meant nothing.
The dagger was all. And everything it would buy him.
This merchant knew things. It was time to extract those things, then hunt Tadhg down.
He forced his jaw to unclench and turned to one of his men. “Get the horses,” he ordered, and was turning back to Edwin when the soldier swung the door open and stopped short.
“Sir? You should come see.”
But Sherwood was already looking.
A torrent of white snow was coming down in great, fell flakes. It lay in fluffy white heaps on the sides of the streets, at least two inches thick and falling fast. It must have been coming down the entire time they’d been inside, waiting for the merchant to return.
Sherwood’s hands tightened into hard fists.
“Wouldn’t be wise to ride tonight, sir.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he murmured, then inhaled. “Well then, that gives Master Forger more time to tell us everything he knows.” He turned to the idiot merchant. “Tell me everything that happened, Needleman. Everything you saw, everything they said, everything you have them…everything.”
The merchant’s face paled. Then he glanced at the coin, cleared his throat, and began talking. “Well, sir, let’s see, I specialize in moderately-sized towns, you know, so I focused my attentions there….”
Behind him, as the regrator babbled on, about towns and names on papers and how his papers could get one in anywhere, Sherwood stared at the snow.
Tadhg might now have writs to half a dozen towns, but chances were he would not go to any of them. He might, of course, and Sherwood would ensure the towns the merchant was mentioning were searched, blockaded where possible. But Sherwood suspected Tadhg now had an entirely different plan in mind.
His surest bet would be to continue on, perhaps double back a few times, then cut out hard for some small port or an even smaller fishing village—dozens populated the shores, it would be nearly impossible for Sherwood to cover them all—and pay some impoverished fisherman an outrageous fee to sail him over to England.
&
nbsp; Tadhg would know this too. But he would not do it. Not yet. Because he was weak.
And therefore, he would risk everything to take the woman he’d looked at as if he loved her, home again.
With everything at stake, with everything that might yet be, Tadhg would not do the hard thing, the necessary thing. He would not sacrifice her.
Fool.
Sherwood would eat her alive.
Chapter Thirty-Three
TADHG AWOKE WITH A START in the early morning hours. The fire in the little hut was dying. Maggie was gone.
Dammit.
He rolled to his feet before the curse was fully out. How in God’s name had he slept soundly enough for her to shift in her sleep, let alone rise and leave, without him knowing?
He threw on his boots and tunic, not bothering to lace either, and snatched up his sword as he strode to the door. Drawing near, he saw it was ajar. Through the narrow opening, he espied Maggie, leaning against the frame, looking up at a blue-black night sky.
He yanked the door open. She turned and smiled at him. “I disturbed you. I am sorry.”
“What are you doing?” he demanded, shocked to find his heart was hammering.
She gestured at the nighttime proudly, as if it were some creation of hers. “Looking. Smelling. Listening. It is so quiet. There was a deer in the clearing earlier, and…. Look. Look at the stars.”
He did look, at her. The moon hung low in the sky, behind the trees, so Maggie’s upturned face was bathed in star shine and the remnants of moonlight. Her hair flowed in rivers around her face and throat, disappearing beneath King Richard’s heavy, fur-lined hood and mantle. Her eyes were bright, the corners of her mouth faintly uplifted as she surveyed her small, snowy dominion.
He realized grimly this is how the lot of them were supposed to look in church.
Maggie’s beauty went through to the marrow of her bones. She was beautiful in the way a river flowed; deep-down, long-standing, capable of carving itself into hard things, into earth and mountain. She’d surely carved herself into him, a delicate tracing into the hard rock wall of his life.