“He’s been meeting with an odd variety of men—and more than just Saxons.”
“Comyn is a Scot.” Christopher understood that the native Irish referred to all foreigners from England as Saxons, regardless of their actual ancestry. Whether Norman, English, or Welsh, they were from across the sea, and that’s all the Irish cared about.
Gilla lifted one shoulder. “I meant Irishmen.” Then he raised a hand and snapped his fingers to someone behind Christopher. A servant hustled forward and poured a cup of burgundy-red wine for Gilla and then two additional cups for Aine and Christopher. As Christopher accepted the cup, he realized that he was being treated like a man rather than an appendage to David.
“Who are we talking about?” Christopher put the cup to his lips and drank. As he did so, yet another of David’s lectures—this one about drinking in moderation—cycled through his head. David needn’t have worried about Christopher overdrinking today, that was for sure. If he ever needed a clear head, it was at this moment.
“My men named a MacMurrough from the south, an O’Rourke from the west, and one of the O’Brien cousins. They met with Tuyt and the lord of Kells, Walter Cusack, who has always believed he should have more power than he does.”
None of the names meant anything to Christopher, but he nodded knowingly anyway. “So the question is, what do all of these men have in common? What would make them gather at Drogheda, and what role, if any, does a man like Red Comyn have to play in their plans?”
Gilla stared hard at Christopher. “You see it too.”
Christopher didn’t. He’d been feigning wisdom and had no clue what all this added up to. He tipped his head to one side and waited for Gilla to tell him what he was thinking so he didn’t have to invent something that was probably wrong.
Gilla obliged by answering his own question. “They’re planning something—something big—something dangerous and possibly treasonous.” He clenched his right hand into a fist and pounded it once onto the arm of his chair. “And I wasn’t invited to the table.”
Chapter Seven
Beyond the Pale
James
Huw set off after Christopher. Those same men had taken the horses too, so Huw kept to his feet, somehow capable of a ground-eating trot that rivaled what the horses could do. Remaining on foot made it easier for him to make sure they were going the right way too. The other three took turns riding the two remaining horses.
They rode down from the ridge and then picked up a road, which took them almost directly northwest of Drogheda. It had been nearly dark by the time they discovered Christopher was missing, and because of the cloud cover, they were forced to light a torch. Huw couldn’t have continued to follow after dark without it. Fortunately, the way was relatively plain.
The companions had started out several miles behind the kidnappers, but ten miles from Drogheda, they caught up. The moment the flare of the kidnappers’ torches shone in the distance, James called a halt. Both groups had crested a rise at the same time, on opposite sides of the valley that lay between them.
“What are you doing?” William hadn’t slowed immediately and had to retrace the ten yards he’d outpaced James. “They’re getting away!”
“Now that we’ve found them, we have to let them go,” James said. “If they were a smaller band, I might consider getting ahead of them farther down the road and ambushing them, but they outnumber us three to one.”
“Lord Stewart is right.” Huw was sucking on his upper teeth and staring down the road ahead, not that there was anything much to see. The riders had already gone down the other side of their hill into the next valley. “I’d say they’re two miles ahead of us, but if we get any closer, they will know we are behind them and set an ambush for us instead.”
Of the four young men in James’s charge, Huw was the eldest at twenty-two, followed by Robbie, who’d be twenty in July; Christopher was a year younger, turning nineteen in June; and William would be nineteen a few months after Christopher. James knew Robbie best, of course, but he was growing to understand the others as well. William, the youngest, was a potent mix of Norman pride, fear, loyalty, and bravado, though admittedly with a huge heart. Given that he had Humphrey de Bohun for a father, a man who was the very definition of complicated, it was easy to understand why William had turned out as he had.
James hadn’t known what to expect from Christopher. He was from Avalon, so James had initially assumed he’d be very much like David. And he was in some respects, though he’d proved to be less certain of himself, gentler, and more likely to empathize with individuals on every side of an issue. While James had been impressed with the way Christopher’s easy-going manner made him universally liked, that same manner was a mask too, hiding both insecurities and a clear-eyedness that was a match to his cousin’s. He wanted to do what was right. The trouble came in knowing what ‘right’ was.
“So what do we do?” William said.
“We keep going,” Robbie said instantly. “We must determine first if Christopher is still alive, second, where he’s being taken, and third, who’s done the taking. And then we must rescue him.”
“We.” Huw tsked under his breath. “The rest of you should return to Trim to tell David what has transpired. I will continue alone.”
Robbie glared at Huw and swept out an arm to indicate James and William. “We aren’t going anywhere. He is our friend too.”
“You are heirs to lands and fortunes that nearly rival King David’s own. Your lives are not yours to risk. Mine is another matter.”
“You aren’t the only one who has a loyalty to King David,” Robbie said. “I owe him too.”
“How has King David saved either of you?” William said. “It is I who owes him the most.”
James laughed under his breath. “This isn’t something we should be quibbling over. We all go together—and not for the king. This is for Christopher, who is a good man in his own right and has done nothing to deserve what has happened to him. It is no more nor less than he would do for any of us were our places exchanged.”
Huw pressed his lips together for a second, but he stopped arguing.
William bobbed his head. “It is our choice.” He wasn’t the boy who’d run away from David all those years ago. David had been only a prince then, and it was that adventure that had brought Gilbert de Clare into David’s inner circle. Just on this journey, James had twice heard William flogging himself for his impetuousness that had ended up causing so much grief.
“I must warn you that Huw isn’t entirely wrong,” James said. “Although I am loath to split up, soon one of us will have to ride to King David to tell him not only of Christopher’s abduction but of Red Comyn’s arrival.”
“But not yet,” William said.
“Not yet,” James agreed.
They rode on through the evening, maintaining the two-mile buffer between themselves and Christopher’s abductors. Finally, they crossed the line in James’s mental map of Ireland that told him they were now on O’Reilly land. The Anglo-Norman conquerors hadn’t stretched their writ this far west in fifty years or more. There was only one real road through this section of Ireland anyway, and by now James had a pretty good idea where they were going. He had never followed this particular road before, but his brother-in-law had spies everywhere, and James had seen the maps they’d made of the terrain and the holdings of the Irish lords who ruled here.
Then they came over a rise, and he was sure. “Douse the torch.”
Huw was already moving to do so because, having reached the top of the rise with James, he’d seen the danger too. In daylight, the crest of the hill would have given them an expansive view of the wide valley below. In the dark, however, the fort perched atop the hill on the far side, some three or four miles from where they stood, was lit up for all to see. The company that had captured Christopher had reached the valley floor already, perhaps hastening a bit now that they were close to home, and were clearly headed towards it.
“I suggest we watch from here to make sure they enter the fort and then continue very cautiously,” Huw said, speaking slowly to match his thoughts. “They will know these lands and may have put out scouts. We don’t want to be caught too.”
“Do we know who rules here?” William said.
“Gilla O’Reilly,” James said, dampening his urgency and his desire to race his horse down the road. “Huw is right. Gilla O’Reilly is Irish, but he isn’t a fool. Another few hours in Gilla’s hands will make little difference to Christopher.”
After the company they’d been following entered through the fort’s gatehouse, the companions watched for another quarter of an hour, and when nobody came out and the gates seemed closed for good, they began to descend the hill. The fields on either side held silent sheep and cattle, lowing occasionally, though James had never noticed that sheep cared much about anything but the grass at their feet. Regardless, the animals ignored the four strangers crossing their valley.
James begrudged every moment of the time it took to finally come within hailing distance of the fort, though of course they didn’t hail it. After an excruciating two hours of careful movement, they reached the bottom of the hill on which the fort sat, and Huw found a trail that led into the woods to the left of the road.
Robbie, who’d been walking beside Huw, went with him, followed next by James and William, somewhat more gingerly, since they were leading the horses. Repeatedly, wet leaves scraped James’s face, and he had to duck under a series of branches that overgrew the narrow trail. Though the rain had stopped for now, they were all still so wet that it made little difference.
Then Huw, who’d gotten some distance ahead, backtracked to James and William. “We should find a place to leave the horses.”
“Through here.” James had been able to make out a difference in density of the bushes to his left, and he led his horse through a gap in a nearby thicket, ending up in a small clearing that was screened from the trail. He and William tied their horses’ reins to a tree branch, leaving them long so the horses could crop whatever grass they could find amidst the generations of fallen leaves that covered the ground.
Then James turned to the others. “We should stick together this time. The horses will be fine or they won’t be, but I don’t want to leave anyone behind.”
Nobody disagreed—as if they could, given what had happened—and the four of them crept out of the thicket and back again along the narrow trail that Huw had found. The fort ahead acted as a beacon for them—though they were careful not to look directly at the light. Even without doing so, the presence of the light on the hill served to deepen the shadows under the trees and made it nearly impossible for them to see obstacles at their feet, even as it lit up the battlements of the fort itself.
As they came closer, the fort was revealed to be larger and more imposing than James had first thought, more in the vein of a fortified manor or castle. The rise on which it was built overlooked the surrounding countryside on all sides, and it was surrounded by a wooden palisade with a ditch beneath it.
Wisely, O’Reilly had cut down all vegetation within fifty yards of the palisade—possibly to build the palisade itself—eliminating anyone’s ability to sneak up on the fort. A half-dozen men patrolled the top battlement from a raised walkway behind it. The walkway wasn’t covered anywhere but over the gatehouse, which was the only entrance James could see from his current position.
The entirety of the compound was built in wood. On a different day, Huw could have fired the fort with burning arrows shot from his great bow, as Cassie had done when she and Callum had rescued James from the men who’d abducted him in Scotland. It had been summer then, however, and not so wet.
“Are we sure he’s in there?” Robbie put hand over his eyes to shield them from the water coming off the leaves above their heads. William had retained the binoculars and was looking at the fort through them. They had never gotten close enough before this to pick Christopher out amidst the company.
James’s own eyes narrowed as he studied the wall-walk. He would have thought that an Irish chieftain—especially one who’d just abducted the king’s cousin—would have posted more watchers, but it was nearing midnight and maybe he’d fallen victim to complacency.
“I’m sure,” Huw said. “If they’d killed him, they would have left his body beside the road, in which case we would have found him.”
Robbie grunted his agreement but didn’t apologize. Huw was the only man here not noble born, and sometimes that caused friction that manifested as an appearance of lack of respect, even though James didn’t believe that was what Robbie really felt. They were all angry at Christopher’s abduction, and that was creating tension and anxiety in everyone.
James gave a sharp nod. “The fact that they’ve bothered to keep him alive this long implies that they will continue to do so.”
He thought back to his own abduction nearly five years ago at the hands of the MacDougalls. Alexander Callum, David’s friend and the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was here in Ireland even now, had tracked him across Scotland and rescued him with the help of only Cassie. If Callum hadn’t married her afterwards, James might have made his own play for her, because only a fool would turn his back on that kind of backbone or loyalty. James’s Gilles was strong that way, and his heart warmed for her.
Thankfully, regardless of what was happening at Drumconrath and Drogheda (or Trim, for that matter), she was safe with their son at her brother’s formidable castle of Carrickfergus, in the north of Ireland.
“Right. We need a plan,” Robbie said. “We have to assume that they have at least forty men in there, so we can’t fight our way in or out.”
William rubbed his hands together. “Perhaps we might consider Christopher’s Trojan Horse?”
James swallowed laughter. It was good to hear the young men considering their options. As future leaders of men, they needed to be able to think on their feet and develop a plan under duress and unexpected circumstances. “Remember, Gilla isn’t some lowly raider. He’s the chief of his clan.”
“I agree we’ll have to use subterfuge,” Huw said. “Two of us should circle around to the right while the others circle to the left. We need to find a back way in.”
“If there is a back way in. These Irish are ever at war,” William said. “They won’t be easy to fool.”
Robbie glanced at James. “You’re thinking of going in by the front door, just like you did back at Drogheda, aren’t you? That would be foolish.”
James scowled because, of course, that was exactly what he had been considering. “Why do you say that?”
“It would give the O’Reillys two important hostages instead of one,” Robbie said.
James shook his head. “Gilla O’Reilly, if it is he who is in there and not just his kin, will not harm either the king’s cousin or the Steward of Scotland. It is the same choice that Red Comyn faced, and the outcome would be the same.”
“Hostages have been killed before in Ireland,” Robbie said. “If you’re so sure, why don’t you let me go? I’m younger and less threatening.”
James’s scowl deepened. Robbie had called his bluff, because there was no chance that he was letting Robbie go in his stead. In truth, walking up to the front door was one of the few palatable courses of action open to them right now. He had warned them that one of them should ride to Trim, but with a tired horse, whoever he sent wouldn’t arrive until morning at the earliest. And while David could marshal an army on relatively short notice, Christopher could have been moved by then—or, despite what James had just said to the others, killed.
Huw stopped the conversation with a hand on James’s arm. “All the guards are gone from the palisade.”
James turned to look. Where before men had been constantly moving in and out of the gatehouse tower and along the walkway, now it was deserted. The others looked too, and everyone stilled. James held his breath, straining to hear anything unusual above the dripping of water off the leaves and
the wind blowing through the branches above their heads. He held up one finger and whispered, “Do you hear that?”
Underneath the natural sounds of the woods were unnatural ones, which grew more pronounced until he could distinguish individual cracks of sticks and the thud of feet on the soft ground, giving away the passage of men through the woods.
“Get down.” James grasped Robbie’s sleeve and pulled him behind a tree while Huw and William made themselves one with the trunk of another.
Hardly ten heartbeats later, each one pounding loudly in James’s ears, they were surrounded by moving men, all heading towards the O’Reilly fort. A number of men carried long ladders, the purpose of which had to be to climb over the palisade’s walls. The closest men passed no more than five feet away from where James and Robbie were crouched, but none saw them. Their attention was focused completely on the fort ahead, and the same shadows that had made it difficult for James to see well under the trees hid him now.
James and Robbie hardly dared to breathe until the oncoming army was past. Then, as one, the four companions straightened and turned to look towards the fort. The army reached the edge of the trees and stopped. For a count of thirty, nobody moved. Then the main gate on the east side of the fort swung open. That appeared to be the signal the men were waiting for because they raced forward. Roughly half made for the main gate, while those with ladders disappeared into the ditch before bracing the ladders against the outside of the palisade. Throughout it all, they maintained a strict silence, without even a curse when a man tripped on an unseen dip in the field.
“I counted sixty-two men before I gave up,” William said.
“They moved fast,” Robbie agreed.
“Are they Irish or Norman?” Huw said.
James shook his head. “Without hearing them speak, I couldn’t tell you. Regardless, they aren’t friendly, and O’Reilly can’t have as many.”
“Did you see how they went through the main gate?” William said. “They must have had someone on the inside to open it, as well as to take out the watchers on the walls.”
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