The Maid of Ireland

by Susan Wiggs

  “He says his name is John Wesley Hawkins,” Caitlin explained. “He’s English.”

  Gasps and grumbles colored the smoky air. Large hands closed around knife handles. Women gathered small children to their skirts. Wesley carefully kept his smile in place.

  “Is he an idiot?” a big man asked in Gaelic. He had hair the color of West Indies yams and a face that resembled a well-cured ham. He held his horn mug in two great, red-furred paws. “Look at that grin,” the giant said, tossing a nutmeat into his maw. “I say he’s an idiot.”

  Wesley made no indication that he understood the foreign, lilting tongue. He was not here to challenge a taunt, but to infiltrate the Fianna, to find out their secrets, and to capture their leader.

  “You could be right, Rory,” said Caitlin. “But he’s our guest, and we’ll give him a meal and a place to sleep. Lord knows, Daida has made certain there’s plenty to eat.”

  “And why should we be opening hearth and home to a seonin?” Rory demanded. “It’s the business of his kind to take the very food out of our mouths.”

  Caitlin’s shoulders stiffened. “I didn’t know having an Englishman under the roof frightened you, Rory.”

  He shook his shaggy head. “’Tis not that, Caitlin, but—”

  “Then we’ll treat him as a guest.”

  Enmity blazed in the huge man’s eyes. “If he makes one false move, I’ll put that gawm of an Englishman right through the wall with one great clout.”

  Wesley kept a courteous smile on his face when every instinct told him to lunge for the door.

  “You’re such a Goth, Rory,” grumbled the dwarf.

  “He doesn’t look like an idiot to me,” the white-bearded man said in English. “He looks properly Irish, save for that naked face of his.”

  “Don’t insult us,” said another man, dark-haired and nearly as large as Rory. “An English bastard would never fill the fine, wide boots of an Irishman.”

  A roar of agreement thundered from others. Horn mugs banged on the tabletop. “Well put, Conn,” shouted Rory, then turned to the man on his other side. “What think you we should do with our guest, Brian?”

  Brian had a quick smile, merry blue eyes, and a deadly looking shortsword at his hip. “I say we give him the same reception Jamie Lynch gave his son in Galway all those years ago.”

  Shouts of approval met the suggestion. James Lynch Fitzstephen, Wesley remembered with a chill, had hanged his own son from the window of his house.

  Caitlin waited for the uproar to subside. Desperately Wesley searched her face for some hint of mercy. He saw unadorned beauty and strong character, but no sign of whether or not she would let the men do their will with him.

  The room quieted, and she spoke in a voice that trembled with grief. “Has it come to murdering strangers, then?” Her soft words captured everyone’s attention. “Have we learned to hate so much?”

  “I suppose we might see what he’s about,” Rory grumbled into his mug.

  Only when he let out his breath with a whoosh did Wesley realize he had been holding it. Squaring his shoulders, he approached the table and held out his hand to the eldest man. “I assure you, sir, I am English, but I don’t necessarily regard that as a virtue.” He clasped the man’s hand briefly, and their eyes met. The Irishman was handsome, with unusually soft skin and strongly defined facial bones. His eyes were light, the color of damp sand. “You’re the MacBride?” Wesley guessed.

  “Aye, Seamus MacBride of Clonmuir, by the grace of God and several high saints. You are welcome by me, although I cannot speak for the others.”

  “Devil admire me, but I like him,” piped the dwarf, bobbing his head. “Fortune brought him here.”

  Caitlin’s gaze snapped to him. “And what would you be knowing that you’re not telling us, Tom Gandy?”

  Tom Gandy’s eyes rounded into circles of innocence and he dropped to the floor. In his beautiful green doublet, silk pantaloons, and tiny buckle shoes, he would not look out of place in a portrait of the Spanish royal family.

  Disregarding Caitlin’s question, Tom said, “Don’t we all know that it’d bring the bad luck on us to treat a stranger ill?” Rory slapped his forehead. Caitlin rolled her eyes.

  Wesley looked back at Gandy only to find that the man had vanished. “Where did he go?” Wesley asked.

  “He can go to the devil for all I care,” grumbled Rory. He scowled up at Caitlin. “You went off alone again. How many times must I tell you, it’s dangerous.”

  “You are not my keeper, Rory Breslin,” she replied.

  “Not for want of trying,” said Brian with a knowing wink.

  Wesley observed the tension in her body, the pause no longer than a heartbeat during which she looked to her father. But Seamus MacBride didn’t notice; he had lifted his gaze to the patch of star-silvered sky visible through a high window.

  Suddenly, Wesley understood her problem. He didn’t know which to credit—his experience with women or his experience as a cleric—but he had insights into female hearts, and he was rarely wrong.

  Caitlin MacBride wanted her father to be a father, not an old man reminiscing over a mug of rough brew.

  Furthermore, Seamus MacBride was completely unaware of his daughter’s needs.

  Interesting, Wesley thought. And perhaps useful.

  He paid close attention as Caitlin introduced some of the others, rattling off names like a general calling roll. Liam the smith, as wide and thick as an evergreen oak; young Curran Healy whose eyes spoke the hunger of a boy longing to be treated as a man; a surly villager called Mudge; and a host of others united in their loyalty to Clonmuir and their suspicion of their English visitor. In addition, there were wayfaring families who huddled around the fire and ate with the avid concentration of those who had known the ache of hunger.

  Wesley told them he was a deserter from Titus Hammersmith’s Roundhead army.

  The men of Clonmuir told him they were fishermen and farmers, shepherds and sawyers.

  Wesley thought they were lying.

  They thought he was lying.

  “Our visitor’s got a thirst on him,” Conn O’Donnell announced with a wolfish grin.

  To Wesley’s surprise and pleasure, it was Caitlin herself who held out a mug. Their fingers brushed as he took it. The contact sent a shock of heat through him. He sought her eyes to see if she, too, had felt the quick fire.

  Her momentary look of confusion told him she had. She drew her hand away, tossing her head as if to shake away the spell. “Drink your poteen, Mr. Hawkins.”

  He sniffed suspiciously at the contents of the mug. “Poteen, is it?”

  Taking a mug of her own, she dropped to the bench beside him. An almost-smile flirted with her lips. “It’s not usually fatal to drink the poteen.”

  Still Wesley hesitated. “What’s it made of?”

  “’Tisn’t polite to be asking,” she retorted, taking a slow sip from her cup. Her lips came away moist and shiny. “Just barley roasted over slow-burning peat and distilled. Savor it well, Mr. Hawkins, for you English have burned the barley fields since we brewed this last batch of courage.”

  Goaded by the reminder and by the gleam in her eyes, Wesley lifted his mug and drank deeply.

  The liquid shot down his gullet and exploded in his gut. A fire roared over the path the poteen had taken. Tears sizzled in his eyes. An army of leprechauns bearing torches paraded through his veins. “Barley, you say?” he rasped.

  “Aye.” All innocence, Caitlin took a careful second sip. “Also pig meal, treacle and a bit of soap to give it body.”

  Wesley quickly learned the art of judicious sipping. Avoiding questions, he took supper in the hall, then retired with a cup of tame ale to the hearth. The meal of stale bread and something gray and soupy he dared not inquire about cavorted with the poteen in his stomach. He thought longingly of the sumptuous suppers he had enjoyed with England’s underground Catholics and royalists. White-skinned ladies had delighted in teaching Laur
a her table manners. His former life had been fraught with danger, but he had known occasional comforts.

  As the men spoke of an upcoming feast, Wesley expected Caitlin to withdraw to the women’s corner. But she stayed at the central hearth, staring from time to time into the glowing heart of the turf fire as if she saw something there that no one else could see. Wesley wondered what visions lurked behind those fierce, sad eyes. Someday he would ask her.

  * * *

  “What are you looking at, seonin?” asked Rory. He and Wesley stood in a thatch-roofed outbuilding at Clonmuir. Rory held a broken cartwheel in one hand and a vise in the other.

  “Your arm,” said Wesley, eyeing the intimidating bulge of muscle beneath Rory’s tan hide. Lord, they grew men big and tough in these Irish parts. He wore a broad silver armlet engraved with Celtic knots. From elbow to shoulder ran a long, shiny scar. “How did you hurt yourself?”

  Rory tried to work a stave around the wheel. The iron hoop slipped. Patiently he set it back in place. “I cut it while sharpening a plowshare.”

  And my mother’s the Holy Roman Empress, thought Wesley, propping his elbow on a stone jutting from the rough wall. It was a sword cut if he’d ever seen one, and he had seen plenty, some on his own body. He must remember to ask Titus Hammersmith if he recalled wounding one of the warriors of the Fianna.

  Rory Breslin was certainly big enough to make a formidable fighting man. But Wesley doubted he could be their fabled leader. Though strong as a bullock, Rory was also as simple as one of the shaggy beasts that used to graze over the hills of Ireland. He didn’t possess the guile to lead men into battle and out so successfully, time and time again.

  “Why don’t you drive a nail into the stave to hold it while you secure the other end?” Wesley suggested.

  Rory’s thick eyebrows lifted eloquently. “I’ll not be needing your English advice.”

  “I wonder,” Wesley said carefully, “why you and the men aren’t out fishing. It appears Clonmuir could use the food.”

  “Because the Sassenach burned our fleet,” Rory snapped. “Every vessel’s gone save a curragh and the leaky hooker.”

  Hearing the pain in the big man’s voice, Wesley flinched. “I don’t hold with such practices.”

  Rory gave a dissatisfied grunt and went back to his work.

  “Why aren’t you at prayers with the rest of them?” Wesley inquired.

  “You ask a lot of questions, English.”

  “Very well, I’ll leave you to your chores.” Wesley stepped toward the door.

  “Wait a minute. I’m supposed to be—” Rory broke off.

  “Keeping an eye on me,” Wesley said with a breezy grin. “Don’t blame you a bit, my friend. Seems you’ve ample cause to distrust an Englishman.” He gazed out the doorway. Beyond the walls lay the tiny village of thatched huts clustered shoulder-to-shoulder around the church, bleached white by the wind. Behind them the land rose up, hills scored by deep clefts and clad in budding heather.

  No one had invited Wesley to prayers. They assumed that he, like most Englishmen, protested the Catholic faith.

  They had no priest to sing mass. He wanted to ask where the cleric had gone, but wasn’t certain they knew. Admitting he was Catholic and had studied at Douai would have wrung some sympathy from the Irish, but Wesley held silent. Something sinister was happening to the priests of Ireland; all he needed was an overzealous bounty hunter after him.

  The church bell clanged with the dissonance of aged iron. A few minutes later, Caitlin MacBride and her entourage streamed up the road toward the stronghold.

  The sight of her struck Wesley with a fresh bolt of yearning. His hand gripped the door frame, and his eyes devoured her. She wore a clean kirtle and apron. Her loose blouse and skirt molded a form similar to those he had heard described in the confessions of notorious skirt chasers. Suddenly he felt every minute of his three years of self-imposed celibacy.

  She walked beside an exceedingly pretty girl with sleek blond hair and pale skin. He remembered her from the night before; she had been sulking in the women’s corner.

  “Who is that with Caitlin?” he asked Rory.

  “’Tis Magheen, Caitlin’s younger sister.”

  “So there are two MacBride sisters.”

  “Magheen’s not a MacBride any longer. She wed not long ago.” Rory scowled in disapproval. “She came back home because Caitlin failed to make good on the dowry.”

  Wesley eyed the voluptuous younger sister, a blooming Irish rose who lacked the savage appeal of Caitlin. “What man would turn such a beauty out?”

  “You’ll see.” Rory returned to his chore.

  And Wesley did see, later, at the feast. People swarmed to Clonmuir from the countryside. They came on foot or crammed into carts, or by sea in pucans and curraghs—large, loud families who brayed greetings to one another and ate and drank as if the meal laid out on tables in the yard were their last—or their first in many days.

  A high whistle pierced the noise. Heads turned toward the main gate. A large man on a handsome mare came clattering through, followed by two sturdy-looking retainers. He wore a long tunic woven of heather wool and studded with polished stones. His mane of black hair flowed around a face fashioned of strong, clean lines and draped with a long, braided beard.

  The quintessential Irish lord, thought Wesley as the man dropped lithely to the ground, tossed his reins to a boy, and strode toward Caitlin and Magheen. He might have ridden off the tongue of a gifted bard.

  Putting down his mug of ale, Wesley moved closer to the lord’s table to await the approach. Above his white beard, braided with brass bells for the occasion, Seamus MacBride’s face was florid, his eyes sparkling, and his mood blissful from drink.

  Caitlin sat beside him, silent and watchful, her plate of spit-roasted beef untouched.

  “Logan Rafferty!” Seamus spread his arms. “’Tis well come you are to our feast!”

  Rafferty aimed a thunderous glare at Magheen. She moved closer to Caitlin and peeked demurely at him from beneath her long golden lashes.

  Logan tossed back his inky hair. “And while the lot of you makes merry, Hammersmith is on the move again.”

  “Hist!” said Caitlin, her amber eyes wide and fierce. In rapid Gaelic she added, “Have a care with that tongue of yours, a chara. We’ve an English visitor.”

  Wesley stood with one hip propped on the table edge and an easy smile on his face. Inside, he seethed like the Atlantic in a gale. Surely this arrogant lord was the leader of the Fianna. Why else would Caitlin have been so quick to silence him? And who else would know the plans of Titus Hammersmith? For that matter, why had Hammersmith decided to go on the offensive so quickly? Damn the murdering Roundhead! Only a week ago they had agreed he would wait for a report from Wesley.

  Rafferty subjected Wesley to a long perusal punctuated by flaring nostrils and glowering black eyes. “English, you say?”

  “John Wesley Hawkins.” He lifted his mug. “My friends call me Wesley.”

  “My inferiors call me Logan Rafferty, lord of Brocach.”

  “I’ll do my best to remember that.” Wesley pulled himself to his full height. The two men stood as equals, eye to eye, each broad of shoulder and narrow of hip.

  “What do you intend doing with yourself, Hawkins?” Rafferty demanded.

  I’m here to take your head off, thought Wesley. Aloud, he said, “I’m for Galway tomorrow.”

  Rafferty hooked his thumbs into the band of his trews. “Galway, is it?”

  “Aye.” Wesley had just made the decision. With a stab of loss he realized he no longer needed to seduce Caitlin MacBride in order to coax secrets from her. “If I manage to give Hammersmith the slip, I’ll take a ship to England.”

  “The sooner the better,” muttered Rafferty. Turning his back on Wesley, he said to Magheen, “The fiddler’s playing a reel, agradh.”

  She gave him a beautiful, false smile. “Why, thank you for telling me so. I was just thinking, our
English guest might like to learn the steps.”

  Wesley found himself pulled into the center of the dancers. Magheen danced like a shadow on a breeze, light and graceful, conscious that the movements of her willowy body attracted every male eye in the yard. Although she smiled up at Wesley, her gaze kept straying to Logan Rafferty.

  Wesley was curiously unresponsive to the lovely woman on his arm. Again and again his attention strayed to the golden-skinned girl who stood with her father and Logan Rafferty by the table.

  “It’s generous of you,” said Wesley, “to give an Englishman this dance when your husband’s obviously such a great lord.”

  “My husband’s a great fool,” she retorted. “I’m using you to show him so.”

  Wesley could not suppress a grin. “All men should find themselves so used.” The pattern of the reel brought them near the table. Like a she-wolf guarding her cubs, Caitlin watched their every move. Feigning casual interest, he remarked, “Rafferty must be a busy man, times being what they are.”

  “Aye. He expects me to sit and warm the hearthstones while he—oh!” Magheen lurched against Wesley. He whipped a glance over his shoulder in time to see Caitlin drawing back the foot she had stuck in her sister’s path.

  The deliberate interruption convinced Wesley that he had guessed correctly about Rafferty.

  When they passed the table a second time, the lord of Brocach reached out and grasped Magheen’s arm. “Get some manners on you, wife,” he ordered.

  Magheen tossed her head. “I’ll not be your sometimes wife, Logan Rafferty. ’tis a full partner I’ll be or none at all.”

  His spine stiffened. The people nearby hushed, the better to hear the quarrel.

  “I came here to make a bargain,” said Logan. To Wesley’s surprise, he addressed not Magheen or Seamus, but Caitlin. “I’ve decided to reduce the dowry, out of the goodness of my heart.”

  Magheen’s face blossomed into a smile that might have set the mountains to singing.

  “The betrothal papers specified twelve healthy cows,” said Rafferty. “You offered one bullock as a token of good faith. I’ll take that, and call us even.”