Riona

by Linda Windsor

  Her lips thinned. They shouldn’t have come into the rath. Danger surely waited.

  FIFTEEN

  The hosteler sent out a servant with food for the troupe—boiled beef, parsnips, and bread, along with a small cask of honeyed beer. Thanks to the supplies Dallan and company carried in their wagon, Riona was able to heat water for a blood-bracing tea from Finella’s dried herbs. Liex’s warming stones, still in the little sack the child wore at his waist, and Fynn’s cup had been a godsend the night before, but this way Riona could make enough for them all. The children had been exposed to dampness and fatigue enough to tax their health. A little chamomile to calm them, rosemary for a brewing sniffle, and the last of Leila’s mint were just the thing to fortify them.

  Yet with the excitement of watching the gleemen prepare for their night of entertainment, Riona feared it would take more than chamomile to calm the children. Leila followed Finella around, playing the whistle and fingering the silken material of her multicolored dress. Liex watched Marcus as if he juggled stars rather than hoops and balls. Fynn worried her most.

  “If only I had my darts and knives, I could join you,” he fretted, while Dallan practiced snapping off the heads of dandelions with the tip of his whip. “Mother stood with an apple on her head and one in each hand—”

  “You must have been good then,” Dallan observed, inventorying the various instruments he’d mastered.

  Besides the harp there were three other stringed instruments, as well as pipes and horns. According to Finella, Dallan was master of all of them and had tutored both her and his brother to accompany him. She played bells and tabor, while the bagpipe, flute, and pipe were Marcus’s accomplishments. When their skill as musicians wasn’t needed among the nobility, they resorted to appealing to the peasantry with their acrobatic and juggling skills and Finella’s herbal remedies.

  “I’ve a set of knives and a board in the wagon. Let’s see what you can do.”

  “No.”

  The gleeman and boy looked at Riona in sharp surprise. Riona could imagine what Dallan was thinking, and he was wrong. She did not look down on his profession.

  “Why?” Fynn asked. “I’m very good.”

  What if someone recognized you? Riona wanted to say, but couldn’t in front of Dallan. “I think that, given our situation, you need to rest with us. You’re my son now and don’t need to perform for your livelihood.”

  “It’s a good life, milady,” Dallan told her in a miffed voice. “One to which the lad was raised.”

  “I meant to imply nothing else, sir,” Riona answered quickly. “But Fynn has chosen to live with me, and I would rather he not …” Heavens, what good reason could she give? Intuition, heightened by an ominous sense of danger, told her it could be foolish to admit to being fugitives to strangers, no matter how kindly they seemed.

  Fynn was insistent. “After we leave Drumceatt and I’m properly adopted, I won’t use the knives, so tonight may be my last chance to perform.”

  She wanted to grab the boy’s ear and twist it, but he was so set on accompanying the troupe to the lodge that Riona gave in. Senan would know Fynn, but the bishop was a day ahead of them. At least she prayed so.

  “Then do what you must,” she relented, unable to make her case against it.

  Liex was put out that he couldn’t go with his older brother, but Riona’s promise of a story eased his disappointment. The twins were so tired that they nearly fell asleep before she finished telling the story of how David was betrayed and fled to the wilderness. Riona knew how he felt. This miscarriage of justice against Kieran was a betrayal of the worst sort, orchestrated by one of God’s own priests in the church to which she’d intended to pledge her life. How could she expect the children to respect the church and become God-fearing warriors of Christ when they saw such—

  Was not Christ betrayed by His own church?

  “You look as if you’ve seen a pooka.”

  Riona turned, startled to see Kieran watching her through half-lidded eyes.

  “No, but I have discovered something most wonderful.”

  She hadn’t been betrayed by the church any more than Christ had been. They’d been betrayed by people who professed to be one with God’s will but by design or ignorance were not. Nay, she could not hold the church itself responsible for her plight any more than she could condemn an entire harvest over one rotten piece of fruit.

  Seeing Kieran’s intention to sit up, Riona broke from her contemplation and hastened to help him. He was stronger, for it was not nearly the struggle she’d had that morning to sit him upright.

  He leaned against the wheel of the gleemen’s cart. “Then share it, for I’ve had my stomach full of disaster.”

  And the bite was returning to his cynicism.

  “Where are our light-fingered deliverers?” He fingered the torque at his neck to make certain it was still there.

  “They entertain in the hosteler’s lodge. Fynn is with them.” She took a flat of bread with boiled beef and parsnips from a cloth and handed it to him. “The lodge is full of travelers bound for the synod, including soldiers.”

  Kieran stiffened. Riona saw the same concern she’d initially felt play upon his face. “Maille is a day ahead of us,” he concluded aloud.

  He pinched off a piece of the tender meat and popped it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. The amber warmth of his gaze suspended with wariness as he took in their surroundings—the closed gate with its lantern singling it out in the dark, the rise of the earthen-work enclosure, which had been allowed to grow over with brush except along swale that had been dug for drainage.

  “Where is my sword?” Clearly, the warrior in him was returning.

  “In the wagon.” Riona fought becoming infected by his increasing apprehension. Had she leaned too heavily on faith and not enough on caution?

  “Get it.”

  At least her foster brother was returning to his old self. Sooner than argue, she fetched the blade and lay it by his side, hidden beneath his blanket. Still, she couldn’t resist saying something. “As long as you can fight sitting down, you’ll do well, but if you have to stand … well, I’d try leaning a little more on prayer and less on the weapon.”

  “Hmm. Give me something I can hold in my hand, not something with the substance of air.”

  “Substance has nothing to do with power. Air provides substance for your next breath.”

  Kieran smirked. “Faith, ’tis like arguing with your cousin.”

  Riona poured a portion of honeyed beer into Fynn’s cup for Kieran to chase down the food with. “You can’t argue with truth. You may not like it, but you can’t argue with it.” She cocked her head as if listening for something, but the message came from within. “Take our situation, for instance. That was what I marveled over a moment ago.”

  One golden eyebrow shot up in a skeptical arch. “Then by all means, enlighten me, milady, for I am sore pressed to see what there is to marvel at aside from one malady heaped upon another.”

  “For which day, milord?” Riona countered, brightening by the moment as blessing after blessing came to her. They’d not been caught. Help came when they needed it most. No, the past few days had not been to her liking, but had they not survived thus far? The voice at the holy well near Dublin rang clear in her mind and on her lips.

  “ ‘I am the Lord, the God of all Flesh; is anything too hard for Me?’ ” Riona grabbed Kieran’s arm in the thrill of her realization. Another time the maid in her would have noticed the bulge of a bicep so impressive that both her hands could not span it. For now, it was just a means of getting Kieran’s attention. “We’ve been so busy, I’ve scarce had time to think of it until now.”

  “Methinks you’ve had more than your share of this beer. Am I not laid low by a pitchfork scratch and forced to rely on a would-be nun, three ragmullions, and now three more grown ones?” He grunted in dismay. “Faith, by traveling with them we have no more rights than they. We’re naught but vagabonds with no
country, no people, no family.”

  Riona touched the side of his face, caressing it until their gazes locked. “When we are laid low, God is strongest. When we are unmolested, we take His love for granted.”

  Something kindled in her foster brother’s gaze. Had she reached Kieran or was it the reflection of the dancing campfire? Could anything melt the rath of ice he’d erected around his soul?

  “That’s like saying the physician makes people ill so that he can heal them.”

  “God doesn’t cause our distress, Kieran. Sin does.”

  Her words seemed as futile as a gnat’s charge of an oaken door, at least at that moment. But then seeds did not sprout right away.

  “Heber was no sinner. My parents were no sinners. They were godly, all of them.” Kieran slung the rest of his food away in the grass. “Where was God when they died?” His bitterness was enough to sour the sweet brew he swilled straight down.

  “Crying.” A blade of grief cracked her voice. Riona closed her eyes, picturing an anguished Father looking down from heaven. How many times had that same picture consoled her these recent years? She knew in her heart the heavenly Father wept for Heber even now. “Just as He cried when His own Son died.”

  “He could have stopped that, too, if He really cared or if He even exists for that matter.”

  “Aye, He could have. But out of love He suffered from the choice of sin-prone man, rather than take the easier way and leave mankind lost and hopeless ever after.”

  It was a prospect Riona had discussed at length on those wintry nights by Abbot Fintan’s fire. “Why,” she’d asked, “didn’t He send the angels to save Jesus?”

  In her mind’s eye, Riona saw Fintan’s aged face crinkle with an understanding smile.

  “But that would have forced His will on the men who crucified Christ. Our God is one who would have man do what is right out of love for Him and righteousness, not out of fear or bondage to Him. Satan would have us follow him as slaves, bound to his will alone. Don’t you see the difference?”

  Moved by wisdom of the late abbot’s words, she repeated them for Kieran, praying that somehow they’d offer him comfort and insight—that he might feel the all-encompassing love of God that she felt at that moment.

  When Riona of Dromin looked at a man that way, Kieran thought, he’d agree to anything. And if there were angels, one even now placed her hand upon his arm and looked imploringly into his eyes, bewitching him. Maybe it was the herbs in that fiendish concoction the glee-woman had given him, but the fire silhouetted Riona in an almost mystical aura. Her eyes had never been more alive, as if the same flame that burned without glowed within.

  Kieran reached out and touched her cheek. “You are real, aren’t you? I’m not hallucinating?”

  He wanted her. He needed her. She was the only light left for him in this world. She was light, life, and love … and perhaps even liberty for his shackled heart. He knew this in an even deeper place than the physical, in a place without shape or form, one entrapped in heavy obscurity.

  “Aye, I’m real.”

  He traced her temple, burying his fingers in her hair. An angel with hair black as sin and soft as a breath, he thought, slipping his fingers around to draw her closer, ever closer, until her faltering breath warmed his lips. He leaned forward, brushing her mouth, tentative as a butterfly lighting upon a rose, for that is what Riona reminded him of. She was a winter rose that bloomed despite all that would make it wither, while he who would protect it lay smitten by fate’s twisted humor. Trying to discern purpose in all this made his head ache as much as the fever had.

  “God has been so good to us, Kieran. Surely you must see it.”

  The words whispered upon his lips were sweeter than wine, soaking his brain so that the conflict of the heart and mind was lost in intoxicating confusion. He pulled her to him so that all that stood between them was her startled reticence. Even so, she was soft and pliable to his hard and unrelenting physique, as if custom-made to complement him, to make him whole.

  “If what I see and what I hold is from Him, then I cannot argue with you, sweetling.” He cradled her head beneath his chin, inhaling the fragrance of her hair. “I would not want to.”

  The breath she’d held escaped her, leaving her body with joyful surrender. The fists balled against his chest opened, curling around his neck as she hugged him with a strength that belied her delicate build. Whatever muse dashed those words to his lips, he thanked it. Long had he dreamed of holding Riona this way, of being able to sample her lips at the mere dip of his head. Nay, not just sample, but devour—

  Kieran’s descent was checked by a demand of outrage.

  “What do you think you’re doing with my mother?”

  Riona jerked, rolling away from him and staring as if she’d been bowled over by the question.

  Fynn stood glaring at Kieran as if to slay him with the daggers in his eyes.

  “That’s between Riona and me, not some pug-nosed snot with a knack for annoying the fire out of me.” Kieran shifted, wincing at the reminder of his wounded leg. With Riona so close, his senses had been riveted by the lady rather than by his malady. “And what do you think you’re doing sneaking up on us like that?”

  “There was no sneaking about it. I walked up here big as the high king himself, but you were so busy seducing my mother—”

  “I was not being seduced,” Riona exclaimed, casting an uncertain glance in Kieran’s direction. “I was—” she thought a moment—“well … I was not being seduced, and I’ll hear nothing more of it.” She climbed to her feet and started toward the fire, then turned abruptly. “I thought you were entertaining with Dallan and his company.”

  Fynn tugged his resentful gaze away from Kieran. “I was and I did. I’ve coin to show for it, but that’s not why I came ahead of the others. We’ve got trouble.”

  Riona put her hand to her chest.

  “What kind of trouble, lad?” Kieran asked, touching the sword Riona had hidden beneath his makeshift pallet for reassurance. His fingers met with the cold hardness. It was willing, if his flesh was. The exertion of an innocent kiss had left him drained.

  “Maille has offered a reward and posted his soldiers the entire way to Drumceatt. There’s four here at the hostelry. I saw Dallan and Marcus speaking to them.”

  “Blessings, eh?” With a cryptic twist of his lips, he glanced at Riona. She’d almost made him believe. He’d certainly wanted to. Taking his sword out, he used it as a crutch to pull himself up. His leg ached to the bone with protest. “Then we’d best be away from here before these so-called friends turn us in for the reward.”

  The moment he was upright the stars above them began to whirl in slow motion before his eyes. His brain mimicked them within his skull. A black wind caught him behind the knees and laid him down with a breath-jarring crash. As he registered the pain of the impact, the clang of the sword against the wagon wheel rang in his ears.

  “Kieran!”

  He heard Riona call his name. That sweetness alone was the painful thread of light he clung to amid the anesthetic promise of darkness surrounding him. For her he’d fight to suffer rather than take the easier path to surrender.

  It was for love He suffered …

  Riona’s explanation of love struck an awakening chord within.

  “Here, let me help.”

  Kieran stiffened. There was no time to dwell on the revelation, for the second voice was not Riona’s. As if appearing from thin air, the fairer haired of the two gleemen reached for him. Seizing him by the arms, Marcus held him until Riona drew Kieran’s head to her lap.

  “Kieran, be still,” she cautioned, stroking his hair from his forehead. “Your wound is better, but you’re weak from fighting the infection.”

  The stroke of Riona’s fingers upon his scalp seemed to still the circling stars overhead.

  “Why aren’t you performing with your brother?” Kieran asked Marcus.

  “Because, Kieran of Gleannmara, we have
work to do if we are to see you safely delivered to Drumceatt.”

  Safely? Suspicion would not let the word settle rightly with him. “And why would you help us?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Finella.”

  As if that explained it all, he rose to his feet and snapped his fingers at Fynn. “Wake your sister. We’ve a horse to paint by morning.”

  “A … horse?” Kieran repeated, disbelieving, when the gleeman nodded.

  “Aye, the gray had best be another color by daylight or we’ve no chance of convincing anyone that Lady Riona is my wife and that the twins belong to us.” He pointed to Fynn. “The older lad there can be Finella and Dallan’s offspring.”

  “What about Kieran?” Riona asked. “How can we explain him?”

  Marcus looked at Kieran. The gleeman’s grin made the hair rise on the back of Kieran’s neck. “Well, he’ll need some painting, too. But that’s Finella’s job. She and Dallan will be along once their sleeping music takes effect.”

  “Sleeping music,” Kieran sneered, no longer certain if he was dreaming or if he was at the mercy of lunatics.

  SIXTEEN

  We beg your indulgence that Dragon’s Breath is unable to astound you with his feats of fire and strength,” Dallan announced to the gathering of guests the following morning, “but neither skill nor muscle availeth against the inner fire of fever.”

  An uneasy ripple of amusement wafted through the guests and staff gathered in the outer rath of the hostelry where the troupe of entertainers prepared for a final show before departure.

  “I’d have a look at ’im still.” A soldier dressed in a leather tunic like that Kieran had stolen walked within a few paces of the bed where Kieran lay swathed in blankets. Stepping just close enough to see the warrior’s face, he grunted and backed away. “Looks like one o’ them Picts. His whole face is tattooed and hair straight up with lime.”

  Curiosity stricken, another guard ambled over. Riona prayed that Finella’s efforts with paint would work again. The woman had spent the better part of the night drawing designs on Kieran’s face while the men worked up a batch of dye for Gray Macha. She’d seen small animals dyed on their owner’s whim, but Gray Macha was more than a notion to undertake, particularly in the light of a fire. Much to Kieran’s horror, the magnificent warhorse was now a shade of bright blue, stylish enough for the noblest fancy. His black mane and tail were plaited and beribboned.