Maire

by Linda Windsor

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Gleannmara’s hall was subdued. All who were perceived as a threat to Diarhmott’s justice had been gathered and stripped of their weapons. Though they were still allowed to sup in the hall, guards watched them with hawk eyes. Maire was assigned a guard of her own, while Rowan was locked in one of the storehouses that had been emptied during the winter.

  Declan acted the host to their uninvited guests in her stead. Rather than take her evening meal with Morlach, Maire took her supper with Ciara and Lianna, who was neither better, nor worse. Hospitality be damned; she’d not feed with swine. If the druid satirized her to the other side, so be it, for what would life be in this world without Rowan?

  Before their marriage, she’d been a shell of a female, structured by Brude’s teachings and Erc’s training. But Rowan had given her life. She was more than a warrior now, more than a queen—she was a woman. Where she once disdained being treated like one, she now reveled in it. To take Rowan from her would be to take away her heart and soul.

  Her hopes of getting Garret’s testimony were dashed when Muirdach returned empty-handed. There was no sign of the Cairthan heir apparent or of Brona. When Maire wasn’t fretting over her husband’s fate, it was Garret that occupied her thoughts. As far as she was concerned, the lad was in the company of a murderess, even if Lianna was not yet gone. The women’s best efforts to treat her illness seemed useless, for the lass grew weaker by the moment.

  When Maire and Ciara weren’t trying to make her comfortable, they prayed for some sort of deliverance from the black fate awaiting not just Rowan but Gleannmara. The ache in Maire’s heart was such that not even prayer gave her rest. It felt as though all three forms of the Christian God turned a deaf ear to her pleas.

  Was ever there a night so long or a day so dark? Maire wondered as she walked toward the storehouse, a strapping guard on her heel like a dog. With Rowan’s death and his own triumph imminent, Morlach was feeling generous and allowed the queen her second request to see her husband. How she’d love to have spent the night in Rowan’s arms, at least one last time. Those Scriptures of his were right. She was created for him, to be loved and cherished as a part of him. The few months they’d shared together proved that again and again.

  The guards admitted Maire inside the dark chamber. It smelled of mold and last year’s fodder. After a moment to adjust her eyes to the lack of light, she spied Rowan sitting on the earthen floor, his wrists and ankles chained. Not caring who watched, she ran to him and threw her arms about him tightly.

  “I have missed you sorely these last weeks, husband.”

  “And I never knew nights to be so cold, muirnait.”

  Beloved. That and more, Maire kissed him and he gave back as good he got, for not even iron could keep their souls apart, nor could onlookers dampen the love that flowed one to another. Still on her knees, Maire had yet to release him from her embrace. His warmth was like a balm to this terrible anguish knotting in her chest. Her voice broke to spite her brave facade as she raised her face to his.

  “Oh, Rowan, what will we do?”

  He kissed her wet cheeks, one, then the other. “We must pray and trust God to do what is best for us and for Gleannmara.”

  “I have prayed! My knees are so sore, I can hardly walk, but nothin’s changed. I’ve heard no voice, nor seen any sign that God is with us.”

  “Ach, Maire, how can I help you understand?” He rolled back his head and looked at the darkness of the domed thatch overhead. “Just because you believe in God doesn’t mean that evil will leave you alone. Satan is always ready to strike, to test just how much you do believe.”

  “The prince of darkness?”

  Maire wondered if Morlach were not this Satan in human form. Tentatively, she caressed Rowan’s brow where an ugly gash of congealed blood told of his harsh treatment.

  “The very one,” he answered, wincing.

  “I hope you gave them that did this a taste of your sword and muscle.”

  “Actually,” he chuckled, more in wonder than humor, “I didn’t fight at all. I could see the cromlech was built to fall on my shoulders when they ignored Eochan and Lorcan’s oath that I’d been with them since I left Gleannmara.”

  “Don’t even speak of a stack of gravestones.” She put her finger to his lips, unable to bear the thought. “Husband, there is a time to be peaceful and a time to fight. Crom’s toes, this smacks of fightin’ time to be sure.”

  Even as she voiced her angry words, Maire knew that a fight was futile. Morlach had manipulated things so as to make it treason to do so.

  “I don’t think I can stand to watch you burn for somethin’ ye didn’t do.”

  “I don’t want you to, Maire, and there is always the chance that I won’t.”

  Maire drew back, wanting to believe. If ever there was a time for God to send His angels or spirits, this was it! She’d fight with them and not even flinch at what they were. Spirit or flesh, she’d take anything or anyone to save the man she loved. Father God, I beg You, do something.

  Rowan interrupted her prayer. “God has protected His faithful from fire before. Three Christian men were tossed into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow to gods other than the one God. They emerged without so much as singed hair.”

  “He’d do this for you?” Maire couldn’t see Rowan’s gaze well in the darkness of the enclosure, but she knew he embraced her with it. It took away the damp morning chill.

  “Aye, if that is His will.”

  “But—”

  “Time’s up, milady. They’re lighting the fires already.”

  Maire ignored the guard. “But why wouldn’t it be His will? What manner of God is it that would allow one of His own to suffer?”

  “The same who gave up His only son to the cross so that you and I might be saved.”

  “But—”

  “’Tis time, milady.”

  “Has Garret been found?” Rowan asked quickly as the guard eased Maire away by the arm. “And Lianna… how does she fare? And mother?”

  There was so much more they needed to talk about, needed to say. Distressed beyond measure, Maire shook her head. “Muirdach took the men of his clan but could find nothing of Garret or that evil-hearted Brona. The scent that has Lianna lyin’ abed near death was intended for me! Brona offered it to me to tempt you into my bed—” She broke off at the surprised lift of Rowan’s brow. A sheepish color flowed to her cheeks, but Maire didn’t mind admitting her desire for her husband’s attention.

  “You have been nothing but temptation since first I saw you in my dreams,” he assured her. “Before we even met.”

  “Before we met?” Maire was taken back. He’d dreamed her? Surely that meant something.

  “I should have known when I first recognized you that you were the one God chose for me, but, fool that I was, I fought it because I thought it would be too good for this servant. Ah, to think of the time I wasted.”

  His dark hair fell forward on his brow as he lapsed into a moment of regret. Maire wanted to brush it back with her fingers, but the guards held her more tightly. Then, as if snapping out of his thoughts, he raised his gaze to hers. Their souls embraced.

  “But we were destined to be together, Maire, here at Gleannmara… even on to the other side.”

  Destined? Maire closed her eyes, wondering if some unseen plan of God was afoot. But she wasn’t a druid. She sensed no spirits. She was a woman about to watch her love die a horrible death. All she felt was abandonment, and it tore at her with unmerciful claws.

  “The other side?” She spat her pent up frustration with the words. “’Tis now that worries me, Rowan. What will I do without you now? What will Gleannmara do if I am forced to enter some unholy alliance with Rathcoe? What about now?”

  “Enough, milady, you must leave,” the guard insisted, his hand tightening on Maire’s arm. Sympathy affected his voice and his grasp upon her arm, but it was only the slackening of his grasp that registered.

  She
tore away from him in anger, but it was with desperation that she threw herself at Rowan and clung to him as though to life itself. Words failed her, lost in this stew of anguish and fury seasoned with hopelessness.

  Rowan kissed the top of her head gently, his voice betraying his own pain. “Ah, muirnait, I wish I could make you understand that the eternal life on the other side is more important than this temporary one.”

  Noble words, to be sure, but they made no sense to Maire—not now, not when facing life without her beloved. She couldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t. “No, it isn’t,” Maire shouted rebelliously as the guards combined their efforts to restrain her. “I swear, I’ll kill Morlach on both sides of this green earth, if I have to.”

  As she was dragged to the door, a flurry of activity in the yard gave her captors cause to hesitate. Beyond them, Tara and Rathcoe’s occupying soldiers spilled from the hall toward the gate of the outer rath.

  “What’s the fuss?” one of her guard shouted.

  “It’s the Cairthan formin’ up on the hill,” one of the running soldiers called back. “They line the horizon thick as wild geese at Samhain.”

  Excitement sent Maire’s heart soaring. Between the Niall and the Cairthan, they far outnumbered the small force Morlach and the high king brought with them. She tore out of the grasp of her guards. She’d waited for the right moment, for a sign to take matters into her own hands. In a flash, her stinger flashed free of its hidden sheath in her breastplate. It was at the guard’s throat before he could recover.

  A ferocious “Noooo!” from her husband checked its edge just shy of breaking flesh.

  “One move, one excuse and I’ll lay open your neck like a slaughtered pig,” Maire growled at her victim. “Now you, unlock those chains.”

  “Best do as she says, man,” the startled guard said to his partner. “There’s no quarter in this one’s eyes.”

  “Put away the knife, Maire.”

  Surely Rowan jested. He was a blade’s length from freedom. “We can take them, Rowan!”

  “And commit high treason.”

  “But—”

  “The blood shed today would mean more tomorrow, and more the next, Maire—and the end of Gleannmara. Many are pledged to Diarhmott. Would you fight them all?” Rowan shook his head adamantly. “I will have no blood shed on my account. It’s madness to take on the high king. You must tell Lorcan the same.”

  Certain Rowan had taken leave of his senses, Maire’s gaze shot toward him. Before she could express her incredulity, much less challenge him, a terrible blow exploded on the back of her head. She saw red and white pictures of it competing for her vision, but in the end, darkness prevailed.

  As she regained consciousness, her head swam in a black sea of pain, exceeded only by that in her heart. Slowly, Maire dragged herself up from the bed where she’d been placed next to Lianna. Disoriented at first, she shook the young woman to no avail. Lianna’s eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling, her white face cold as snow to the queen’s touch.

  Sickness churned in Maire’s belly as she reeled away from the dead maid. First Brude, now her cousin. Through the fog of faces in her aching head, the image of Rowan arose to replace them all.

  Rowan.

  Panic seized Maire as she stumbled outside and saw how dark it was. Not even the sun wished to dignify the day, for the sky was overcast with clouds. Gradually it came back to her, the attack from behind when she’d tried to free Rowan. It was hard to tell how long she’d been unconscious.

  Nothing stirred within in the inner rath, save some hens and a few mongrels. It was the outer one that had drawn the people. With neither dagger nor sword in sight, Maire raced toward the gate, her heart leaping with each footfall on the hard, packed earth. The smell of wood smoke and oil in the air moved her faster still.

  Please, Father God, I mustn’t be too late!

  The prayer echoed over and over in her mind, for she could not think beyond that. She elbowed her way through those in the crowd, who did not see her coming.

  “Let me through!”

  Above their heads, Maire could see the black smoke of the wet wood used with the dry to prolong the spectacle. It rose above the fires like a demon in its own right. The eerie silence of the onlookers told her that her husband had not yet faced the trial. At the inner edge of the circle, a guard held up his shield, as though to block her way. Plowing into him with her training and an astonishing strength for one her size, Maire knocked him flat on his back and stumbled past to where the high king held his ignoble court.

  The twin fires roared half again as high as a warrior’s head and embraced each other like lovers that would not be parted, not by rain, nor wind, and certainly not by the man standing on the opposite side of them. Maire could barely make out Rowan’s figure, so thick was the blaze.

  “Ah, Queen Maire.” Morlach gave her a mocking bow. “Have you come to see whose god is real and whose is false?”

  “This is no trial,” Maire shouted at Diarhmott, ignoring the druid. “This is murder of the commonest kind.”

  “Trial by fire is accepted by the law,” Finead reminded her smugly. “If Rowan of Gleannmara is truly innocent of Brude’s death, he has nothing to fear.”

  The druids were two of a kind, so blackhearted and evil that Maire shivered, despite the enveloping heat cast by the fires. Frantic, she glanced around for some hope, some help. No white-clad warriors stood armed and ready. Behind Rowan, the faces of Gleannmara stared back at her, as fraught with desperation as her own must be—Eochan and Declan, Lorcan, and Ciara. Rathcoe’s guards held the disarmed company at bay.

  “How could you let them take you?” she cried out at them. “We outnumber these fiendish devils better than two to one.”

  No man answered, but they avoided facing the piercing accusation of her gaze.

  “I ordered them not to fight, Maire,” Rowan told her.

  Maire turned to him, torn between strangling him and begging for his life. “You wish to die?”

  “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

  Words eluded her. There was a time she’d have labeled this cowardice, but she knew better now. Rowan was no coward. Armed with his faith, he was as courageous a man as she’d ever known. But this was foolraide.

  She stared at the two-headed fire beast, with its tongues lapping in all directions. If there were angels in there, she saw no sign of them. If only Brude were here, instead of lying lifeless in his lodge awaiting burial. All the people she relied upon were either gone or useless. Never had Maire felt so alone. Numbed by pain and confusion, she saw Diarhmott motion for the trial to begin.

  “Rowan of Gleannmara, you stand charged with the murder of Brude, a druid and brother serpent of the highest order,” Finead announced, commencing the proceeding. “Your amulet was used to strangle an old man, who accepted you and your god with the tolerance of our way. Yet you burned the symbol of your god into his forehead, marking him even unto death. What say you, sir?”

  “I killed no one.” Rowan’s answer came strong and clear. One would think he had a legion at his beck and call.

  Where are the angels?

  The words screamed in her mind. Held at swordpoint, Maire appealed to the only source of help left to her; the God who made her husband the brave and noble man that he was. Father God, I’ve said some harsh things about You and for that I’m truly sorry, but Ye must know how frightened I am. I asked before and now I’m beggin’. Help us.

  “Then how do you account for your amulet being found on the druid’s body?”

  At Morlach’s challenge, Maire’s head swam with the pain emanating from the knot on the back of her head. Her eyes became unfocused. She couldn’t lose consciousness now. When her vision cleared, she caught sight of the slim, dark-haired female next to Morlach: Brona.

  “You!” She pressed against the steel of the guard’s restraining blade until it threatened to split her leather-clad breastplate. “Wh
ere is Garret? He can testify that the amulet has been missing since the fair. Or have you killed him, like you killed Lianna?”

  Diarhmott spoke up. “This is not Brona’s trial, Queen Maire. It is your husband’s. But I will hear your accusations, when this is done.”

  “I only gave the queen a love potion to win her husband’s affection. I have no knowledge of how the maid Lianna came by it.”

  “It killed her, you peat-hearted she-dog, and it was intended for me!”

  Brona shrugged, guileless as a newborn. “Some potions needs be used anon, lest they spoil. It’s unfortunate that after it was tossed aside, Lianna found it and sought its use without consulting anyone. I have an antidote for such accidents.”

  “Lianna is as dead as Brude, and the stench is that of Rathcoe.”

  “Enough of this, Queen Maire,” Diarhmott intervened. “I gave you my word that you will be heard regarding your charge.”

  “Then ask her what she did to the witness who can swear that amulet has been missing since—”

  “My lord, I cannot say what became of that wild Cairthan lad Garret. We left yesterday to collect herbs near the Sacred Grove, and there we lost each other. I thought perhaps he’d left me to come back early, but he was not here either.”

  “Whether the amulet was missing or nay, does not erase the fact that Rowan of Gleannmara was caught with his hand still dripping with Brude’s warm blood!”

  “As might yours, Diarhmott, if you picked up the bloodied corpse of a friend in your grief on finding him so,” Rowan suggested.

  “And your friend, the priest, sir,” Finead said skeptically. “Where was he when this travesty took place? Perhaps if you might give us his whereabouts, your word would smack more of truth?”