The Maid of Ireland

by Susan Wiggs

  Wesley drew his arms more protectively around Laura.

  “Restrain him,” said Cromwell.

  Big sea-hardened hands grasped Wesley by the arms while Cromwell pried the sleeping child from his lap.

  A roar of protest rose in Wesley’s chest but died on his lips. If he awakened Laura now, she might forever be plagued by the nightmare of being wrenched from her father’s arms. The less she knew of the sinister plot, the better chance she had of surviving the ordeal.

  Cromwell held her in the crook of one arm. He looked so ordinary standing there, an indulgent uncle with a favored niece. Except for the stone-cold glitter in his eyes.

  “You know, Mr. Hawkins, it would be beneath me to harm a child. But have you ever considered the fate of foundlings in London?” Without waiting for a response, he went on, “Lost children become virtual slaves.” He gazed tenderly at Laura, smiling at the way her golden eyelashes fanned out above her freckled cheeks. “This one is pretty and could escape the drudgery. It’s said that dwarves and children are used to serve people in brothels because they’re too short to see over the edge of the bed. Then when she grows too tall...we can always hope she’ll stay as pretty as she is now.”

  The implied threat hit Wesley like a cannonball. “No, goddamn you—” He strained against his captors. The muscles in his arms braided into taut, trembling cords. Hard fingers bit into his flesh.

  “If you succeed in bringing the Fianna to heel, you’ll win your own life, and that of your daughter.”

  “You’ll have to put that in writing,” Wesley snapped, his mind galloping ahead. Seeing the expression on Cromwell’s face, he gave a bitter smile. “I’m well aware that you’ve been offered the throne, which means you’ll be guarding your reputation like the crown jewels. I want your sworn and witnessed statement that if I do as you bid, neither I nor my kin will be harmed.”

  Reluctant admiration glinted in Cromwell’s eyes. “The Lord Protector always keeps his promises. You’ll have your statement. But if you fail...” His voice trailed off and he backed toward the door, pausing in a flood of sunlight through the hatchway so that Wesley could have a last glimpse of his beloved child.

  “You accursed son of a—”

  “Don’t let me down, Mr. Hawkins. You know what’s at risk.”

  * * *

  She had failed again. Caitlin had searched the high meadows for the bullock she’d promised Logan Rafferty. But the shaggy beast had vanished like St. Ita’s stag beetle.

  Now Caitlin would have to endure more of Magheen’s strident complaints about being set aside by her bridegroom. Stabbing a shepherd’s staff into the loamy ground, she made her way back to the stronghold.

  Springtime blew sweet upon the heaths. On the morrow would come the feast of the planting, and Seamus MacBride had decreed it a high holiday. But what sort of holiday would it be without food?

  She found her father in the kitchen, a vast stone room connected to the great hall by a narrow passageway.

  “More sage, Janet,” he said, peering over the cook’s shoulder into a bubbling iron pot. “Don’t skimp, now. It’s a feast to be sure we’re having tomorrow.”

  “Daida.” Caitlin rubbed her palms on her apron. “Daida, I must speak to you.”

  He looked up. Vague shadows darkened his eyes, his mind off on another of his mysterious quests. Then he smiled, giving her a glimpse of the handsome lion he had been in his youth. A lion with the heart of a spring lamb.

  “Caitlin.” He spoke her name suddenly, as if he’d just remembered it. “Ah, ’tis a grand day, and praise the saints.”

  “Yes, Daida.” Although Curran’s warning hovered like a bird of prey over her thoughts, she forced herself to smile and nod toward the door. “If you please, Daida.”

  They stepped outside to the kitchen garden. The tops of Janet’s turnips and potatoes reached desperately for the weak rays of the spring sun. The sight of the sparse planting depressed Caitlin, so she looked out across the craggy landscape, the rise of mountains skirted by stubbled fields and misty bogs coursing down toward the sea. The late afternoon sun gilded the landscape in a rich mantle.

  Seamus’s gaze absorbed the view. “Devil so lovely a day as ever you’ve seen, eh, Caitlin? Isn’t it grand, the broadax of heaven cleaving the clouds, and the great skies pouring pure gold into your lap?”

  Why was it, she wondered sadly, that the splendor of the land moved her father to poetry, while the privation of his people affected him not at all? “Daida, about tomorrow—”

  “Ah, it’ll be fine, will it not, colleen? And isn’t it we Irish that are brewed from God’s own still?”

  She rested her hand on his arm. The muscles lay flaccid, the flesh of a man who shunned hard work as a monk shuns women.

  “Tom Gandy says you’ve invited everyone in the district.”

  “Tom Gandy’s a half-pint busybody, and a sorcerer at that.”

  “But you did, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. Your mother—St. Brigid the holy woman keep her soul—always planned the grandest of feasts. Now that she’s gone, ’twould be a sad and cruel thing for us to do less.”

  “Daida, since the English burned our fishing fleet, we can barely feed our own folk. How can we—”

  “Ach, musha, you worry too much. We be under the sacred wing of providence. We’ll feast on fresh meat, see if we don’t.”

  Suspicion stung her. “What do you mean?”

  He spread his arms in a grandiloquent gesture. “I’ve had Kermit slaughter that young bullock.”

  Caitlin pressed her fists to her belly to keep her temper in check. “Oh, Daida, no! We needed that bullock for Magheen’s dowry. Logan won’t have her back without it.”

  Seamus dropped his hands to his sides. “But won’t it be grand, the sweet taste of it and all our neighbors and kin toasting the MacBride. Think of it, Cait—”

  “That’s just it, Daida,” Caitlin cut in. She had been raised from the cradle to honor her sire, but she had learned on her own to speak her mind. “You never think.”

  She stalked off toward the stables. It was wicked to speak so to her father but she couldn’t help herself, any more than she could quell the impulse to run free along the storm-swept shores.

  In the dim fieldstone stable, the black stallion waited in anticipation, muscles gleaming, nostrils flaring. Sunlight bathed his hide in gold as if he had been singled out by the gods to ascend to the heavens on wings of mist.

  Caitlin walked between the stalls past the large strong-limbed ponies. For generations untold, Connemara horses had borne heroes to victory. But the stallion was different.

  His velvet lips blew a greeting to her.

  He had no name. He was as wild and free as the kestrels that combed the clouds over the mountains.

  Black he was, the color of midnight, the shade of eternity, as beautifully formed as nature could manage.

  “There, a stor,” Caitlin crooned, slipping a soft braided bridle over his ears. She used neither bit nor saddle. When she mounted him they became one mind, one soul, one will. Her bare legs against his bare hide formed a pagan bond of two spirits which, though as different as human and beast, melded into unity. The black needed no more than a touch of her heel to urge him out of the stable and across the rock-strewn fields.

  The smells of the sea and of dulse weed enveloped her; the scent of greening fields should have reassured her, but didn’t. The Roundheads could, at any moment, swoop down and destroy the tender plants and subject Clonmuir to a starving winter.

  Caitlin rode west, into the shattering colors of the sunset, toward the surging iron-gray sea. She let her hair fly loose, free as the mane of the black, free as the mist in a windstorm.

  Her troubles lay behind her, an enemy she had left in her dust. Her swift rides renewed her spirit, made her feel capable of confronting and besting any problem that arose. So Seamus had wasted the bullock. She had faced troubles before. Despite the danger, she knew where she could get
another.

  The black’s gallop gave her the sensation of flying: a lifting glide that made the air sing past her ears. She abandoned thought and surrendered to the pulse of hooves, the rush of wind through her hair, the tang of salt on her lips.

  They reached the coast where cliffs reared above the battering sea. Riding the wind, the black sailed over a ravine, then tucked his forelegs in a daring descent that made Caitlin laugh out loud.

  On the damp sandy beach, she gave him his head. He arched his neck and leapt with breath-stealing abandon. He crashed through the surf, a black bolt of living thunder, full of the rhythm and mystery of Connemara’s wild, god-hewn coast.

  The English claimed the coast from the shore to three miles deep. Caitlin scoffed at the notion. This land belonged to forces no human could claim.

  The sun had sunk lower when the black slowed to a walk. Deep bronze rays winked like coins upon the water.

  Caitlin dropped to the sand, the chill surf surging around her ankles. She patted the stallion’s flank. “Off you go,” she said. “Come back when I whistle.”

  His tail high, the horse trotted down the strand. Tears stung her eyes at the sheer beauty of him. He was as full of magic as the distant lands of Araby, as handsome and noble as the man who had given him to Caitlin, the man who claimed her heart.

  Alonso Rubio.

  Come back to me, Alonso, she thought. I need you now.

  “Sure there is a way, you know,” said a sprightly voice, “to summon your true love.”

  Caitlin spun around, her gaze darting in search of the speaker. A chuckle, as light as the land breezes, drew her to a spill of rocks that circled a tangled, forgotten garden. Once this had been a place of retreat for the lord and lady of Clonmuir, a place of welcome for travelers from the sea. But time and neglect had toppled the rotunda where her parents had once sat and gazed out at the endless horizon.

  “Tom Gandy,” she said. “Blast you, Tom, where are you?” Tidal pools were reclaiming the garden, and she stepped around these, lifting the hem of her kirtle. Crab-infested seaweed draped the stone blocks, and gorse bushes grew in the cracks.

  A brown cap with a curling feather bobbed behind a large boulder. A grinning, leather-skinned face appeared, followed by a thick, squat body.

  Glaring, she said, “You’re a sneak and a busybody, Tom Gandy. Cromwell would have you burned as a witch if you were worth the kindling.”

  “No doubt he’d be after doing that if he could lay hands on me.” Tom climbed over the rocks and dropped beside a clump of briars near Caitlin. Even with the lofty feather, his head barely cleared her waist. Like the rest of him, his fingers were stumpy and clumsy looking, but he reached out and retied her straggling apron strings with the grace of a lady’s maid.

  “Ah, but it’s a sight you are, Caitlin MacBride. Ugly as a Puritan. When was the last time you took a comb to that hair?”

  “That’s my business.” She tossed her head. “Yours is as steward of Clonmuir, and you’d best see to your duties.”

  “What duties?”

  “Finding another bullock for Logan MacBride, to start with.”

  “We know where to find plenty of healthy cattle, don’t we?”

  She ignored the suggestion. “Perhaps I’ll banish you to Spain. I’ve heard King Philip employs dwarves as playthings for his children.”

  “Then we’d both be playthings for Spaniards,” he observed, shaking his head. “Twenty-two years old and still not married.”

  “You know why,” she said. “Though I still don’t know how you found out about Alonso’s pledge.”

  “Pledge! You little oinseach—” He tilted his head back to gaze up into her face. “A hot young man’s promise has as much substance as the dew in summer. But we’re not here to discuss that. You wish for your true love—”

  “How do you know what I wish?”

  “—and I’m here to tell you a way to summon him.”

  Caitlin regarded the little fellow warily. Some swore Tom Gandy was endowed with fairy powers. But not Caitlin. She had seen him bleed when he scratched his finger on a thorn; she had nursed him when he lay weak with a cough. He was, despite his extraordinary appearance, as human as she. If he possessed any gift, it was only the ordinary sort of magic that allowed him to come and go soundlessly and unexpectedly; his powers were those of a wise and wonderful mind that allowed him to see into people’s hearts as a soothsayer sees into a crystal.

  “And how might that be?” she asked teasingly. “It’s the eve of a holiday. Have you a pagan sacrifice in mind?”

  “Horror and curses on you, girleen, ’tis much simpler than that. And all you’ll have to sacrifice is... Well, you’ll find that out for yourself.” Tom swept off his hat and bobbed a bow. “Sure I’ve been furrowing my poor brain with great plows of thought, and I’ve found the answer. You simply pluck a rose at the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.”

  “Pluck a rose, indeed!” She swept her arm around the tangled garden. “And where would I be finding a rose in this mess?”

  A mysterious smile curved his lips. “You’ll find what you need in your heart, Caitlin MacBride.”

  She rolled her eyes heavenward and spoke to the painted sky. “Such nonsense as that...” She looked down again, and her words trailed off. She stood alone in the bramble-choked garden. Without a sound, without a trace, Tom had vanished. A few moments later she saw the stallion vault back up to the cliffs, enticed back to the stables for a measure of fodder from Tom.

  “Odd little imp.” Caitlin plopped down on a rock and stared out at the gathering mists of evening. “Pluck a bloody rose indeed.”

  She drew her knees to her chest and sighed. Once, this garden had been a necklace of color and grace. The fallen rocks had been terraces dripping with roses. Her mother, the lovely Siobhan MacBride, had tended her flowers as if they were children, nourishing them on rich, lime-white soil and keeping back the weeds like a warrior staving off an invasion.

  But the garden and everything else had changed when the English had claimed the coast in a choke hold on Ireland. The garden seemed to be eaten up by the pestilence of disorder and conquest. Weeds overran the delicate plants, trampling them just as Cromwell’s legions trampled the Irish.

  I will rebuild my home, she vowed. Alonso will come. He promised...

  Tall grasses, ugly and dry from winter, rattled in the wind. The sea crashed against rocks and slapped at the shore.

  The wind shifted and its voice changed, a sigh that seemed almost human. A shiver scuttled like a spider up Caitlin’s back.

  Deep inside her lived a dark, Celtic soul that heard ancient voices and believed fiercely in portents. As a haze surrounded the lowering sun, the secret Celt came awake, surging forth through the mists of time. On this night, the gates stood open to the fey world. Unseen folk whispered promises on the wind.

  A curlew cried out, calling Caitlin back from her reverie. She blinked, then smiled wistfully. The world was too real to her; she knew too many troubles to escape, as her father did, to realms where bellies were full, grain yields bountiful, and cattle counts unimportant.

  Still, the charged air hovered around her, heavy as the clouds before a storm, and she remembered Tom Gandy’s words: Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.

  Foolish words. Fanciful beliefs. There wasn’t a rose within miles of this barren, windswept place.

  You’ll find what you need in your heart, Caitlin MacBride.

  The sun sat low, a golden seam between earth and sky. A single ray, powerful and narrow, aimed like a spear of light at Caitlin’s chest. She felt it burning, the heat of it pulsing. She stood and stepped back so that the sunbeam dropped to her feet.

  And there, straining through the thick briars and reeds, grew a perfect rose.

  Caitlin dropped to her knees. She would have sworn on St. Brigid’s well that no rose could grow in this unkempt bower, nor bloom so early in spring. Yet here it was, white as baby’s skin. Secre
ted within the petals were all the hues of the dying sun, from flame pink to the palest shade of a ripe peach. Painted by the hand of magic, too perfect for a mortal to touch.

  The breeze carried the scent of the rose, a smell so sublime that a sharp agony pierced her. All the years of waiting, of struggle, seemed to wrap around her heart and squeeze, killing her hopes with exquisite slowness.

  The sun had sunk to a burning sliver on the undulating chest of the dark sea. Day was dying. A few seconds more, and—

  Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.

  Without forethought, Caitlin grasped the stem of the flawless rose and squeezed her eyes shut.

  A thorn pierced her finger but she didn’t flinch. She gave a tug and the plea flew from her lips. “Send me my true love!”

  She spoke in the tongue of the ancients, the tongue of the secret enchantress buried in her heart.

  Caitlin clasped the rose to her chest and repeated the plea. She touched the petals to her lips, anointed it with her tears, and spoke three times, and her voice joined the voice of the wind. The incantation flew on wings of magic to the corners of the earth, from her heart to the heart of her true love.

  The sudden chill of twilight penetrated the spell in which, for the briefest of moments, she had been beguiled, helpless, wrapped in an enchantment against which she had no defenses.

  She opened her eyes.

  The sun had died in flames of glory, yielding to the thick hazy softness of twilight. The last purpling rays reached for the first stars of night. The mist had rolled in, carried on the breath of the wind, shrouding the rocks and sand and creeping toward the forgotten garden. Long-billed curlews wheeled black against the sky. Caitlin stood rooted, certain beyond all good sense that the spell had worked. She searched the desolate garden, the cloud-wrapped cliffs, the hazy shore.

  But she stood alone. Utterly, desolately, achingly alone.

  The wind dried the tears on her cheeks. The hopeful sorceress inside her retreated like a beaten horse.

  Blowing out a sigh and an oath, Caitlin glanced down at the rose. It was an ordinary plant, she saw now, as common as gorse, pale and lusterless in the twilight.