Thief

by Linda Windsor

  “But she was dead when we left,” Sorcha objected, seeking Caden’s hand under the table. “I knocked her away from me with my harp when she tried to kill me.” Her voice trembled. “And she fell upon her knife.”

  Sorcha had been as pale as bleached linen when Caden and Father Martin had found her pulling herself up on the bed in the upstairs chamber. The plucky lassie who’d held off the Saxon hoard, armed with naught but a harp and a song, had swooned at the sight of Tunwulf’s brutal death. Upon hearing the priest’s message that Gemma and Ebyn were both safe and well and intended to join them as soon as Gemma sold their warehouse and its contents, she brightened, at least in demeanor, and insisted on a grand celebration.

  Myrna agreed, although she wouldn’t hear of her daughter working with the women. Her mother insisted that, as the new lady of Trebold, Sorcha act the hostess to their guests at the head of the honored table nearest the hearth. Although Caden preferred a seat near a door with his back to a wall, he succumbed to Sorcha’s plea to join her.

  “Aye,” Father Martin replied. “Even Tunwulf raced off, thinking the woman had gone to the Other Side. But Rhianon had a formidable spirit. She refused to die. For three days, she fought with fever in the space between her and the Other World. I tended and prayed over her night and day in the hope that she would confess her sin and accept Christ.”

  “’Twould take the prayers of Jesus Himself to get the truth out of Rhianon,” Caden said wryly.

  Martin blessed him with a tolerant smile. “And on the third day, she came to her senses. She said that Tunwulf forced her to poison his father and tried to kill her.”

  “He promised to make her Lady of Elford,” Sorcha amended softly. She recounted for the group how Tunwulf had betrayed Rhianon and how Sorcha had saved her. “And still she survived the knife?” Sorcha finished, incredulous.

  “She has more lives than a cat, Father,” Caden sneered, “but that doesn’t make her truthful.” Nor would the Holy Spirit enter where it was not invited. At least that was Caden’s rudimentary understanding of such things.

  “Not so, I’m afraid. This life was her last,” Martin assured Caden.

  To Caden’s astonishment, Martin’s announcement offered little comfort. Was this pity he felt?

  “Don’t look so crushed, Martin,” King Modred spoke up, distracting Caden from his wonder. He picked a piece of meat from his teeth, clearly more concerned with that than Rhianon’s soul. But then, of late, Modred found the worship of pagan gods more tolerable than the doctrine that Rome tried to force on its Celtic brethren. The divide would erupt like a festering boil sooner or later, pitting nephew against Arthur.

  Not that Modred needed another reason to dislike his uncle. Arthur had killed his rebellious father, Cennalath.

  “Lady Sorcha was exonerated, and the renegade raids in Lothian have been stopped,” Modred continued, pleased with his efforts. “Although better that young Aethelfrith explain to Hussa why the villain wasn’t brought back alive to face Saxon justice.”

  Even Abba had used toads for His purpose. Look at the Exodus.

  “A man who poisons his father deserves no hearing,” Aethelfrith retorted. “My uncle will feel the same as I.” He gave Modred a haughty smile that sent a chill down Caden’s spine. He’d bet his sword arm that Aethelfrith had other motives for silencing Tunwulf so quickly.

  Had it not been attached, Caden’s jaw would have hit the ground at the sight of Tunwulf’s headless body slumped on the ground while the princeling pranced about on his steed. And not only Caden’s jaw, but dozens of others.

  Princess Eavlyn’s prediction came back to Caden. I have mapped out the stars, seeking signs for both him and for Aethelfrith as my husband’s enemies.

  The stars had favored Aethelfrith, but not Tunwulf.

  That doesn’t mean his plans will go awry with certainty, she’d said of Tunwulf. Only that nature is not with him.

  To be sure, Aethelfrith’s nature certainly wasn’t with him.

  God alone is certain.

  Sorcha’s God. His God. Abba had delivered them. When she’d sung, Caden had counted her version embellished, at least the part about the chains falling away and Elfwyn’s transformation into something the mare had been carefully trained to do. But the rest—

  A banging on the table drew attention to where Malachy struggled stiffly to his feet. “Father Martin and I … and, I hear, my niece—” he added, sending Sorcha a beaming look—“have already praised God for His protection and hand in delivering truth and justice. But I, for one, would like to thank Glenarden for sending such fine warriors to our aid.” The old priest, who had, according to hearsay, wielded a sword against the Saxons as if new life had been breathed into him, lifted his cup with a trembling hand that needed the reinforcement of its mate.

  Ronan gave him an acknowledging nod. “As I told my brother, my wife gave us little choice. Fight here or fight at Glenarden.”

  The men about them laughed. Anyone who knew Brenna, Caden among them, knew her gentle, forgiving nature. Ronan risked more danger from a newborn lamb.

  “And I especially,” Malachy continued, “would like to thank the warrior Owain.” The priest scanned the room, eyes squinting. “I can’t see him, but he must be here among your commanders.”

  Egan scowled. “I’ve leaders by the name of Shea, Ferris, Fergal, and Madoc, but no Owain. ’Twas Shea who defended the fort with you, not Owain.”

  Awkward from the attention, Shea stood up among his comrades.

  “But there must be an Owain! A head taller than me, he was, and fair as sunshine. I say none fought the renegades any harder.”

  Sorcha gasped beside Caden.

  “I saw ’im,” Shea announced. “He fought next to Father Malachy, but I didn’t recognize him. And there was no time to question where he came from. As long as he was drivin’ back the Sais, there was na need.”

  “My angel,” Sorcha said under her breath. “I told you he was an angel. Maybe even Eavlyn’s.”

  “Angel, you say?” For all his years, Malachy still had the ears of a fox. “What’s this about an angel?”

  “I sang about an angel, the fisherman who helped us for the three days I was ill and then vanished,” she reminded the men. She held up her wrist, where barely a scar remained of her injury.

  “And I’ve seen lesser wounds take a strong warrior to the Other Side,” Caden heard himself saying.

  As if he believed her. Or worse, believed Owain just might be what she said. He shook himself and carefully thought back. But no matter how he tried, Caden could not explain Owain the vanishing fisherman or the warrior as anything but God-sent. Too much had blessed them along their flight and during the fight to allow for anything but God’s intervention.

  Caden rose to his feet. “I never believed in such things as angels. But I’m here to say that if any man can point to any other explanation, I’d like to hear it.”

  A collective murmur of awe and speculation raised the noise level in the tavern to the overhead beams until Malachy banged his cup on the table again to restore order. Modred’s expression was unfathomable, while Martin’s was aglow with joy. The toad Aethelfrith smirked at the notion but held his peace rather than insult his hosts.

  “And not to be outdone by man or angel,” Malachy continued, “I want to thank Caden for bringing my niece home to Trebold.” The old man turned a twinkling gaze at Caden. “And I’d like to think he’ll stay.”

  Caden groaned in silence. Why could he not celebrate this one victory and slip away?

  “He will if I have any say in the matter,” Sorcha declared boldly at his side. “I’ve need of a husband, and Trebold has need of a lord, sir,” she told Caden. “Maithar and I have already discussed it.”

  Caden stiffened amidst the huzzahs echoing throughout the room. He tried to be kind. “I never said I’d be lingering about after I delivered you, lassie. Not once. My job here is done.”

  “Is that so?” Sorcha jumped to her feet
and away as though he’d slapped her. “And why is that, when you cannot deny that you have feelings for me?” When Caden didn’t answer, her hands flew to her hips. Once again she was the fiery queen ready to do battle. “Well? Will you tell me to my face that you do not love me, Caden of Lothian?”

  The rush of triumph and relief from the battle that had bolstered a body denied a night’s sleep and wearied by battle drained from Caden, crushed by the weight of too many regrets to count.

  “Will you?” Sorcha demanded.

  Abba help him, despite her show of bravado, her eyes had turned to pools far more capable of wounding him than the sharp tongue she wielded.

  “You deserve more than a rough mercenary who lives from battle to battle,” he finally replied.

  “I deserve the hero who saved Arthur’s”—her queenly disdain faltered—“and my life. A man who isn’t afraid to die for what is right and good.”

  “A proven prince of Glenarden,” Ronan observed, peering intensely at Caden through the brackets of dark auburn hair that had fallen forward on his face. Caden’s wits abandoned him as his brother stood taller than tall and lifted his cup. “To Caden of Glenarden,” he enunciated in a manner that dared any man to contradict him.

  A log fell upon the embers on the hearth, breaking the silence as wryness twisted Ronan’s lips. “Let us pray he comes to his senses and says yes before this lady comes to hers.”

  Huzzahs and guffaws of humor erupted all around them. Egan clapped Caden hard on the back, but Caden hardly felt it. Grace overcame him, numbing him to everything except awareness of his Father and the two through whom grace was offered. The beautiful woman who would have him in spite of his past—and the brother who strode around to the end of the table where he sat, his arms extended. Caden slid from the bench to his knees, emotion ravaging him, tearing at the guilt he’d held to so tightly, even though Abba had forgiven him.

  But Caden never expected forgiveness from Ronan, whom he’d wronged so vilely. He bent to kiss his brother’s muddied boots, but Ronan caught him and raised him by the shoulders.

  “To whom much has been given, much is expected,” he said, his fervor glistening in his cinnamon gaze. “This is the least I can do for the God who has blessed me so. I only ask that you pass the grace God gives you along to others.”

  They were night and day in coloring and temperament, yet as Ronan embraced Caden, they became brothers, not just by blood but in soul. How long they held each other, how many things were spoken spirit to spirit, Caden had no idea. All he knew was that something kindled within, making him as light as the sun’s kiss on a spring morning. Something he’d glimpsed that day on the beach but hadn’t fully grasped. Something that had kept slipping through his fingers as he tried to shift his focus from his misery to reach out to others. Something called hope.

  Suddenly Egan O’Toole wrapped both Caden and Ronan in a bear of an embrace and roared, “Now it’s proud I am to see the two of you rascals put aside your differences and all, but I’m thinkin’ Caden’s time best be spent huggin’ this pretty little lady before I steal her away and show her how a real man would respond to her most temptin’ proposal.”

  Sorcha tossed that copper mane of hers over her shoulder, her hand resting on the hilt of the dining dagger at her belt and grinned. “Are you man or mouse, Caden of Glenarden?”

  “For sure, you’ve met your match,” Ronan said under his breath.

  “Maybe more,” Egan chimed in with a clap on Caden’s back.

  A man, Caden answered in silence as he closed the distance between him and the woman he loved. A humble, thankful man. Abba be thanked that this young, incredible, impulsive, kindhearted, lovely, and so-very-talented creature would even look at this grizzled and scarred soldier, much less that she would want to spend the rest of her life with him.

  “Princess Eavlyn said the stars on All Saints Day favor a good marriage,” Father Martin spoke up.

  “Do they now, Father?” Caden’s gaze locked with that sparkling green one. “Seems you’ll find your answer to that question soon enough then, woman.”

  The room was in an uproar as Caden took Sorcha in his arms and kissed her, long and soundly. The floor trembled from stomping of feet and tables rattled with the ear-shattering beat of fists and cups on the boards.

  And if that kiss took Caden’s last breath on This Side, it was worth it. But he breathed another against her ear, his whisper soft. “Abba be thanked for giving me a reason to live.” And another as he kissed her forehead. “A reason to hope.”

  Abba, may I waste not so much as one breath more that is not spent for this woman.

  Caden found Sorcha’s mouth again with his. “And a reason to love.”

  Epilogue

  The dam of life held through the Long Dark but burst forth with the coming of spring, flooding the fields and forests with vibrant shades of green and the bright bursts of blossoms. Hearths that were cleaned and allowed to grow cold received new flame, some from the pagan Beltane fires dedicated to the old gods and others from like fires consecrated in the name of the Christian God, whose Son was resurrected.

  Trebold brimmed with life as well. On the hillock, new timber and stone sprang from the old. It fairly crawled with men from Glenarden and Trebold. The Glenarden party had arrived for the Paschal celebration a week earlier and to celebrate the late Leaf Fall wedding that most had not been able to attend. They’d stayed on to help Caden with the new hall.

  Thanks to Gemma, who’d arrived just before winter fully set in with Ebyn and a handsome sum of gold from the sale of Sorcha’s warehouse and business, they were able to start the renovation of Trebold Law.

  Sorcha adjusted the wolfskin blanket beneath six-month-old Joanna and sat her niece up so that the babe could see Ebyn, Gemma, and Glenarden’s heir, Conall, playing with a wooden ball that Caden had carved and painted for him. She and Caden had adopted Ebyn as their own, but how she longed to have more children, a baby like Joanna.

  “Let us build a place to put them first,” Caden had consoled her when her courses had not cooperated. “God will know when the time is right.”

  Lady Brenna and Lady Myrna came out of the tavern, engaged in what had been since Brenna’s arrival an off-and-on-again conversation on the use of herbs and spices in cooking and healing. Running a tavern required knowledge of both, and Sorcha’s mother thought the healer of Glenarden had no equal.

  “Look, our men approach,” Brenna said as Sorcha dabbed a bit of drool from Joanna’s rosebud lips.

  “Well, we’ve enough food to fill their bellies,” Myrna observed proudly. Her servants had set up benches and boards piled high with fresh breads, boiled roots glazed with fresh butter and herbs, and roasted meats and fowl in the tavern yard. “Even the big one,” she said, nodding to Egan.

  Sorcha drew herself away from her adoration of the baby girl to see the man of her heart ambling down the hill with his brothers and Egan O’Toole. Caden and Ronan shoved their younger brother, Alyn, from one to the other, their boisterous laughter preceding them.

  “Poor Alyn,” she said halfheartedly. “They tease him unmercifully.” Of course Alyn gave as good as he got. And most times he gave it first.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the men so happy.” Brenna sighed, her face radiating the same emotion that welled in Sorcha. Love.

  Sometimes Sorcha caught herself just staring in wonder at Caden while he slept, thanking God for sending him when she needed him most. God’s timing was impeccable, she reminded herself as she nuzzled the angel-soft wisps of Joanna’s hair.

  Brenna put her hands on her hips, her head cocked in defiance. “Leave the laddie be, you two,” she ordered as though her tall but slender frame, clad in shirt, tunic, and trousers, were big as Egan’s.

  She and Glenarden’s champion had gone hunting, accounting for some of the smaller game on Trebold’s tables. ’Twas that talent that impressed Sorcha as much as Brenna’s healing skills, although it was Brenna’s loving nat
ure that instantly won Sorcha over. Never could she have chosen a better sister. But for God’s grace, Rhianon might be her relative now.

  “He’s too full of mischief to be a priest,” Caden complained. He landed another cuff on Alyn’s head. “Someone has to beat it out of him.”

  “I’ve more brain than mischief, which is more than you can say,” Alyn shot back. He tried combing his tousled dark hair with his fingers to no avail.

  “I’m thinkin’ he’d make a fine husband for me daughter.”

  Alyn gave Egan an appalled look. “’Twould be like marrying my sister!”

  Egan winked. “But she’s not your sister.”

  Alyn rolled his eyes heavenward. “Those fancy warriors at Gwenhyfar’s court turn Kella’s head, not a dull priest. We are like night and day. We never did get along.”

  Something about her younger brother-by-law’s words made Sorcha suspect that Alyn protested too much.

  But at that moment, little Conall raced up to Sorcha and snatched the wolf pelt out from under his sister so fast, Sorcha nearly lost her grip on the baby girl. “Mine!”

  “Conall O’Byrne!” Brenna scolded.

  “My goodness, he’s strong,” Sorcha gasped.

  Ronan scooped his son up in his arms. “I thought you said you were a big boy now and that only babies needed blankets.”

  Conall buried his face against Ronan’s shirt. “Mine.”

  “Someone’s coming,” one of the men trailing down the hill shouted. He pointed toward the east road leading to the river crossing. “Saxons!”

  Sorcha’s blood ran cold. But they should be preparing and planting their fields, repairing their homes … the same as Trebold’s people.

  “Get the women and children inside,” Caden shouted over his shoulder as he ran inside. “Ronan—” He tossed a horn hanging by the tavern door to his brother.

  “I’ll summon the men,” Ronan replied.

  The men working on the fortress did so with some weapon close by. It was only prudent in a time where the enemy might be a foreigner or one’s neighbor.