The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2)

by Lisa Ann Verge

  “Aileen.”

  She heard his voice from a faraway place. She could see the island better now. The walls of the castle shot as high as a man’s shoulder, and they dug deep into the soft earth. She nudged the mare with her knees, but the horse only bucked, setting Rhys to cursing and holding firm to the reins. Such an island as this, Aileen thought, was far too round, far too evenly made for God’s hand.

  Then she saw something that set cold teeth sinking into the back of her neck.

  She seized the reins from Rhys and dug her heels into the mare’s flanks. She crushed a path through the snow to the banks of the river. In the mud lay a series of long stones, marked in black with the lines and crosses of an ancient language. They lay in pockets of melted snow, as if too hot for any ice to harden upon them. She nudged the mare along the banks of the stream, counting the standing stones which had been pulled out of the ground and laid aside for later building, shaking, shaking as she had last autumn as she’d stepped over the bloodied bodies of Rhys’s wounded men.

  Suddenly Rhys loomed before her. Again he seized the reins from her trembling grip. “Off that horse, woman.”

  He dismounted and seized her by the waist, then dragged her forcibly off the back of the mare. She clutched his arms and stared up into his face, searching those eyes for any hope of understanding, seeing only a thundering confusion, an angry concern.

  “By Christ, woman, you’re as pale as ashes.”

  Couldn’t he hear the screams? No man could be so deaf, so blind to the world around him. No man could commit such blasphemy.

  “Speak to me.” His fingers dug into her arms. “What ails you?”

  “You can’t …”

  The words croaked out of her throat. She licked her lips, gasping for breath like a woman in labor.

  “You can’t,” she continued, wincing at the shudders of pain rising up from the ground. She swallowed and glared at the black stones around them, at the scaffolding for the castle. “You can’t… .”

  “I can’t what?”

  “Rhys … you can’t build this castle.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rhys tightened his grip on her arms. Her lips pulsed blue. She stared at the island as if it were some river–dragon roaring into life.

  He shook her. “Enough.”

  Anger mounted in him along with something else, a fear he didn’t want to acknowledge. Moments ago she’d been laughing, sitting upon that mare swathed in fur, looking like a noblewoman and laughing like a peasant. Now a sheen of moisture frosted her skin and she was trembling. A chill washed through his blood. He’d seen old men and children die of sudden fevers. He’d lost his own mother to one in the midst of Lent, fifteen years ago.

  She couldn’t become sick. She was the healer. There would be no one to heal her if she took ill, no one to seek the right herbs or tell Marged how to brew them. He’d have to send to Myddfai for a doctor, a delay that could stretch into days, days when death could steal her breath away while he stood over her and watched.

  “Enough.”

  She struggled to focus her wild gaze upon him. She curled his woolen cloak in her fists. “Can’t you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The screaming.”

  Around them the day lay silent and cold but for a crack, now and again, of an icicle snapping and spearing into the snow. “I hear nothing but your raving.”

  “Even the horses can sense it.” Her mare skittered. “Even your own palfrey.”

  “They can smell your fear.”

  “They can sense the pain.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  He probed her body for injury. She could have pulled something. She could have broken a finger in the reins when he’d pulled her horse to a sudden stop.

  “Not me,” she said, “the earth. The world.”

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “There were standing stones on that island.”

  “A dozen of them.” Covered with ivy and arranged in a circle outside a ring of oaks. He remembered the trouble he’d had finding men willing to pull them up from the earth, so many of his own full of mindless fears, so many of the Irish workers, too. “And a dolmen in the center. It took fifteen men to pull off the capstone.”

  “You broke down a—”

  “I broke it down and used the stones in the foundation of the castle. They are there now, mortared in.”

  She recoiled from him and bumped into her mare. “What were you thinking, tearing such a thing down?”

  “They were made of good rock. I put them to better use than standing forgotten under a coat of ivy.”

  “Forgotten?!”

  “Forgotten. Abandoned. The work of a people long dead and gone.”

  “And their sacred place had no more sanctity?”

  “Not for anyone living and breathing.” He yanked his hood off his head. “Come, Aileen. Aren’t you too practical to take to petty superstitions?”

  “Then I’m not the first to tell you.”

  “And not the last. Such nonsense spreads like disease.” He swung his arm toward the island in the midst of the river. “What do you see? A faery circle? Inhabited by little people who dance under the moon every night until dawn?”

  “You scorn what you don’t understand.”

  “I scorn the workings of idle minds.” He seized her shoulders and turned her to face the island. “Look at it. Look! It’s an island, a mound of dirt in the midst of a river. No more, no less.”

  She jerked her shoulders out from under his grip. “Those people you spoke of—the ones who built such a thing—saw much more than that.”

  “They saw just what I see.” Here was a sheltered valley. A river which ran in from the east and out to the west, navigable on both sides, a path into and out of the heart of North Wales. A perfect place for a castle strong enough to hold off the world. “A good meeting place. Easy to travel to. A sheltered island. Five years of work and you’d have me tear it down on a whim.”

  “I want you to put back together what you’ve torn asunder,” she argued. “I want you to rip those sacred stones from the mortar and place them upright in their holes. I want you to remove the weight of those rocks from that island.”

  “You want me to build a home for rats and rabbits and abandon the Prince of Wales’s commission.” He managed to tilt his lips up in a scornful smile. “Or would you have me build it for the faeries?”

  “It’s a sacred place,” she whispered. “It’s full of magic.”

  “Magic is for fools.” Magic was wild, unreasonable hope. For all the magic that the doctors and charlatans of England could muster, none had managed to cure him. “You have spent too much time listening to Marged’s stories.”

  What had he expected? She was a woman sharing his bed, yes, and the first for years to do so willingly, but beneath that fine fur still beat a frightened peasant’s heart. She was more skilled at milking cows and fishing and sowing the earth, and more susceptible to a mother’s wild stories told by the hearth–fire. The true mystery of it all was why he cared. Inviting her here had been just another impetuous gesture, like playing a harp, like opening that chest of silks and furs. He was full of such foolishness these days. What would a woman know of the thrill of watching a building rising under his direction, faith, under the very palms of his hands? What would this woman know of the beauty of stone and mortar, of the power of creation?

  The sounds of horses’ hooves cracked the silence between them. Dafydd and the bard headed across the field. Dafydd reached them first and pulled his horse to a halt, his brow creased in worry. “What’s wrong?”

  “Dafydd. Dafydd.” She skirted a stone and raced to him, then clutched the harness of his horse. “You must hear it. You must.”

  “Hear what?”

  “The screaming,” Rhys interrupted, raising a brow.

  Wind whistled over the plain, clattering ice crystals along the sheen of frozen snow. The river gurgled beneath a veneer of i
ce thinner and clearer than any glass made by man. Tudur Aled watched the scene with a wry smile curving his lips, the embroidery of his tunic bright against the winter snow.

  Dafydd wrapped the reins around his handless wrist, and then leaned down to lay his hand on Aileen’s shoulder.

  “Aileen, lass,”—Dafydd dug his fingers into the fur of her cloak—”this place has a way of playing tricks on a person’s mind.”

  “You do hear it!”

  “Aileen—”

  “You do. I can see it in your eyes.” She jabbed a finger toward Rhys. “Tell him he mustn’t build this castle. Tell him he must put it all to rights.”

  Dafydd said, “Sometimes, there are more important things than—”

  “Don’t you say that,” she said, “you know better.”

  Go ahead, brother. Tell me what you’ve told me every spring for the past five years, that the place is cursed and our efforts are futile. Tell me to put an end to it. Condemn me to sit in that mountain homestead and brood in exile for a lifetime. Such talk will only make me more determined to see this castle done, see it rise upon that island, sturdy and strong, with me in it as its master.

  Aileen said, “Take me away from this place.”

  She spoke the words to Dafydd. Rhys’s nostrils flared as Aileen’s silver eyes searched his brother’s face. Never once did she look at him like that, so full of trust and understanding. Never once did she lower herself to plead for anything. Dafydd’s hand lay so casually upon her shoulder—the shoulder of his woman.

  “Take her back to the homestead.” Rhys snapped the crop upon his thigh. “I’ll show Tudur Aled the castle.”

  He climbed back on his horse and led the way, not looking back. Dafydd had a softness for the Irish witch.

  He’d been waiting for this last brother’s betrayal.

  ***

  “Take care of the water!”

  Marged heaved a bucketful of dirty water out of the door of the kitchens, and then gasped as Aileen stepped back out of its path.

  “Saints be blessed! Oh, Aileen, lass, it’s you!” Marged clutched her chest. “When did you get back? I thought I’d splattered water upon the spirits of the dead last buried and doomed myself to be haunted for the rest of my life. What are you doing standing in the twilight like a ghost, with your cloak flapping open like that and the air frozen enough to crack in your lungs?”

  Aileen stared at the figure standing in the doorway. The warmth of the kitchens spilled out into the darkness. She had stood here with her feet in the frozen mud watching Marged bustle here and there, seeing the servants one by one pass her and head toward the mead–hall where the men were taking their evening meal. She had stood here breathing in the smell of poached fish, wanting with all her heart to press forward and be a part of that warmth. But her mind held her feet frozen to the ground.

  “Aileen, my lady?” Marged clattered the pail to the floor and scurried out, her hands buried in her apron. “Is the master back from the castle, then? I thought I’d heard horses, but I wasn’t sure they—by God, Aileen, you look as if you’ve seen… .” Marged curled her fingers around Aileen’s wrist. “You just came from Aberygaun, didn’t you?”

  Marged spoke the name in a hushed voice of reverence.

  “Come, lass, come into the kitchens. You’ve a look upon you that sends a chill to my heart, it does. Faith, your hands are like ice. What were you thinking standing in the cold like that?”

  Aileen stumbled after her. She blinked against the stinging smoke and found her way to a stool by the hearth–fire. She sank into it as a tired babe would sink into a mother’s arms, then listened to the lullaby of the kitchens: Water bubbling in a pot slung over the fire, burning logs crackling. She breathed in the fragrance of warm bread, onions, and roast drippings.

  Marged thrust something warm between her fingers. “Drink that, and quickly now. We’ll warm you from the inside out. Did the master even warn you before you rode off to that place? No, he wouldn’t, would he? He wouldn’t see any need to, but I’d expect better of Dafydd. You didn’t do anything to anger the Y Tylwyth Teg, did you? They’re fair enough to those who treat them well, but it’s sure they take revenge on people who ill–treat them. There was once a shepherd who wandered into that valley one day and set free a strange little man who’d got his clothes caught under a boulder… .”

  Aileen winced as she wiggled her pained toes. She hadn’t realized how cold she was. Funny, she’d felt no chill when riding to the castle behind Rhys earlier in the day, thinking of the moments in the bedchamber that morning. She hadn’t felt the cold of the brisk February day until she’d galloped out into that cleared forest land and felt death all around her. Only now, in this warm and sacred sanctuary, did she begin to thaw.

  “… And later, two old men thanked him and gave him a walking stick, and don’t you know, from that time onward, every sheep in his flock bore two ewe lambs, until he lost the stick and his luck vanished with it…”

  Aileen sucked on the rim of the cup. She filled her belly with fresh buttermilk, still warm from the churn. She stared into the flames flickering under the iron pot. Now and again a blue flame would flare up and then die, like the ghost of Rhys’s eyes.

  Magic is for fools.

  He didn’t believe. She’d known that since the beginning. She’d known he was a man whose senses had been deadened to the mysteries of the world. Yet this morning he’d walked on that riverbank amid the corpses of mangled trees, blind, deaf, and dumb to the agony screaming up from beneath the snow. Had she come upon him destroying a cathedral to build a tavern upon holy ground, she’d not have been more shocked. Holy ground was holy ground, and that mound was not the place for man’s mortar.

  “… Years ago I remembered a woman telling me about a white cow that wandered from that valley and no one knew who was the owner,” Marged said as she spooned broth into a bowl. “The farmer that found her took her into the herd just like all the others, though, she was a faery cow and didn’t they all know it. When the cow grew old and the farmer set to have her slaughtered, didn’t the cow just up and leave, and take every calf she’d ever had with her? And then there was that young girl who disappeared by the lake… .”

  Marged absently thrust a bowl of soup at her. Aileen clunked her cup down by her feet and took it.

  “… Oh, I could tell you a dozen stories of that place, Aileen—dozens and dozens, good and bad. But since the master set his mind to building a castle upon that island, there’s been nothing but bad luck. Nothing, I tell you.” She clattered the ladle back into the pot and gestured to a small clay tumbler by the hearth. “Every night I put out a bit of milk for the wee folk, and not once in all these years have I woke to find it emptied. Now what kind of house is it that the faeries won’t enter when given a little hospitality, will you be telling me that?”

  What chilled her to the bones was the audacity of it. He’d torn up a ring of standing stones and destroyed a dolmen without a blink of his eye. It was like striking a stone cross with a sword in a church. Surely the very stone would bleed, surely screams would rise to the heavens and sting the ears of God.

  “… It’s as if the faeries have turned a dark eye onto us all. I can’t remember the last time I heard of a young man falling in love with a lovely girl he saw combing her hair in the reflection of a lake, or an old man gifting some luck in return for a kindness. Except for one time, of course, the night we learned about you.” Marged rifled through the debris on the table, searching for a spoon. “But even that was a strange visit, and I won’t be the one saying whether it was for the good or—”

  “Marged.” Aileen straightened as Marged’s words penetrated the fog of her distraction. “Did you say something about the night you learned about me?”

  “Aye, that’s what I was talking about. I haven’t heard tell of a single encounter with the faeries for years and years now, with the exception of last Midsummer’s Night.” Marged plucked a spoon hiding amid some dirty bowls an
d wiped it clean on her apron. “Didn’t you know lass?”

  “Know what?”

  Marged handed her the spoon. “As surely as I stand before you now, it was a faery who told us about you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Aileen had been at it for hours. She pinched the strand of wool and rubbed a lump smooth. She stretched the scratchy hair across the back of her hand then twisted the length upon the wooden spindle. The winter wind swept down through the smoke–hole and battered the wood–fire at her feet. She watched the flames flicker lower and lower, until nothing but a glowing mass of embers singed her slippered toes. She waited for him, because now she knew why she’d been dragged into his world.

  Now she knew the task the faeries had given her as a price for her gift.

  Suddenly he was there, still muddy from the ride back from the castle. His blue gaze fell upon her face as he tossed his cloak back to reveal the body which could do such things to her. A weakness invaded her limbs. She fought it off. She was as much a slave to her own needs as any woman but she had work to do this night.

  He said, “You look better. There’s blood in your cheeks.” He tugged at the ties of his cloak. “Has it yet reached your head?”

  She bit down on an angry retort. He thought she was daft, and no wonder, with the way she’d behaved at the castle.

  “Have you lost your tongue, woman?”

  “You must be weary from the journey.” She speared the spindle in the basket of wool by her feet. “Sit, and I shall serve you.”

  He froze with a bladder of mead halfway to his mouth. As she brushed by him she sensed his wariness. She peeled the linen off the tray and the pungent scent of pepper sauce rose from the poached fish.