by Kris Kennedy
Aodh drank. Aodh had not worried for sixteen years, not since seeing his father hanged until he was half-dead, then taken down, bowels cut from his body and burned, his arms and legs torn from his body, his head cut off—it had taken four blows—and thrust on a spike outside Dublin Castle.
What was there to worry on? You grabbed what you could, and then you died.
It was a motto that had served Aodh well, and, in turn, the men who followed him through all manner of exploits. It remained true, though, that his men had tried to make him see the mad recklessness and potentially self-destructive nature of his plan to capture Rardove Keep.
Aodh had never disagreed. He’d also never wavered. And, as ‘reckless’ was generally the sort of plan he devised anyhow, and always the sort they participated in, in the end, they had followed him. As they always did. Honor, dauntlessness, a lack of other options, and a great deal of money ensured it.
He would make it worth their while.
For a moment, they drank in silence as the hall bobbed with life around them. Soldiers came and went on various tasks, and food was eaten as soon as it was brought, pulled off trays by celebratory soldiers.
“So, we send her off and settle in for a fight,” Cormac concluded comfortably. “Keep your balls and pretty arse safe.” He grinned and lifted his mug in toast.
Aodh returned the gesture but didn’t drink. “Send who off?”
Cormac hooked a thumb at the ceiling. “The lady.”
“Ah.”
Cormac stilled, much as Ré had earlier, then turned his bearded face to Aodh and blew out an ale-gusted breath. “Christ on the Cross, you’re planning something, aren’t you?”
Aodh sighed. “When I have a plan, do I not tell you?”
“’Tis precisely what I’m sitting here wondering: ‘What in God’s holy name is he about to tell me he’s planning?’”
Aodh drank. “I asked her to marry me.”
Cormac opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, then flung out a hand in wordless astonishment and fell back in his chair. It rocked under the impact.
“Only the saints could persevere in the face of you, Aodh,” he muttered. “How your mam did, I’ve no notion.”
Aodh looked away, across the room, into the hearth. “She did not. She died when I was nine.”
Cormac eyed him darkly. “You killed your mam,” he muttered, then downed his entire mug in silence. It took three swallows. Aodh wondered idly how many it would have taken Katarina.
“Ré is not going to be happy,” Cormac warned darkly.
“Nay, he is not,” agreed Aodh, just as Ré himself appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I’m not telling him,” Cormac said peevishly.
“You won’t have to.”
The Scot snorted. “Aye, he’ll see the madness in your eyes himself.”
They looked across the bustling hall at Aodh’s second-in-command. Companion in intrigues that covered the map from Paris to Cadiz, Ré knew Aodh’s predilection for mayhem better than anyone. Surely, if anyone would be prepared, it would be Ré.
Now, dirt-stained, sweating and smiling, Ré came to them, grabbed one of the mugs, and sat facing them, straddling a small bench. He drank deeply, then wiped his mouth with his forearm and grinned.
Neither of them returned it. Aodh kept looking at the fire.
Ré’s grin faded. He squinted into the silence. “What?”
Cormac gestured across the table with his elbow. “Aodh’s lost his bleeding mind.”
“How this time?”
A beat of silence. “Says he’s going to wed her.” This, despite his earlier vow.
Ré continued to stare at Cormac for a moment, then turned his clear gray eyes to Aodh. “I understand the lady holds certain…charms.”
Aodh dragged his gaze off the fire.
“But can we not focus on the battle at hand?” Ré finished, his words and gaze hard.
Aodh smiled grimly. “You are not paying attention. She is the battle.”
Chapter Twelve
KATARINA WATCHED Dickon, her young page, leave. He’d braved the Hound’s wrath for her, and she’d been charmed, heartwarmed, and vaguely unsettled by how pleased he’d seemed after his encounter with Aodh Mac Con.
Outside the walls, the winds were picking up. A sudden gust moaned past the window and blew down the chimney, lifting the fire into hot roaring flames. Then it died away again to a lower burn.
She crouched in front of it and laid another of Aodh’s pieces of precious wood atop, then carefully arranged the grate in front. It was only then she realized her hands were shaking.
Voices sounded outside the door. She pushed to her feet as it swung open, and noise drifted in from the hall belowstairs, then Walter stepped into the room.
She exhaled a breath of…relief, of course. She was relieved. Who would not be relieved to see their advisor of many years?
“My lady,” he said, sweeping into the room. “Are you well?” Tall and angular, he stepped back and frowned as Bran, her guard, poked his head in behind and swept a wary eye over the room, then nodded to her and backed out again, shutting the door.
“Has the Hound hurt you?” Walter asked crisply, moving across the room. He glanced at the hot, roaring fire and lifted his bushy eyebrows, as if surprised to see such a thing in her chambers.
“Of course not.” She felt for the arms of the lord’s chair. The chair Aodh had occupied. She sat down in it.
“Threatened you in any way?”
“No.” The cushion was still warm from Aodh.
“Taken anything?”
“Aside from the castle, Walter?”
Her curt replies seemed to recommend him to a different course. He sat in the other chair and folded his hands together as if he were about to begin a prayer.
“This must be very trying for you, my lady.”
She sighed. He was about to instruct her on herself.
“Such events tend to muddle the brain.” He rolled his hand in the air to demonstrate muddling. “It can make one”—he pursed his lips thoughtfully—“less careful. Less discerning. Less capable of clear thought.”
“More likely to run away?”
She hadn’t meant to say it so sharply.
He stilled, then swallowed and nodded. Prodigious brows steepled, and his brow furrowed. “I swear to you, my lady, I was but trying to help. I thought if I could get away, perhaps rally a few of the servants…”
She admitted this was like as not true. Walter, if pompous, had also proven himself stouthearted, at least as much as her guards. Proof came in the form of his continued presence out here on the brutal Irish marches, when he could surely find employ anywhere as an experienced, eagle-eyed steward or clerk.
And that was Katarina’s best gift: the ability to earn far more loyalty than was her due. She ought to be appreciative. She was appreciative, deeply so. But Walter had a way of making even the deepest appreciation pale beside the depths of irritation he aroused.
“In this, my lady, my past is to your good fortune. I know well how to manage an excess of passions of the sort Aodh Mac Con is exhibiting, the sort your mother exhibited—”
She could endure much, but to endure another recitation on the torments suffered by her father on account of her mother was quite beyond her at the moment.
“Tell me, Walter,” she interrupted sharply. “How does it fare belowstairs?”
The angular steward laid his fingers on the table. “The Irish Hound has prevailed unequivocally. His men are ensconced in the hall with drink and meat”—he sent her a scathing look, as if she’d known they were to be conquered and had had the meat delivered specifically for their captors—“and are showing untoward interest in the women. The women do not…” He sniffed. The sniff was a word. “Seem properly distressed by the men’s attentions.”
The men’s attentions. “Do they not?” she asked softly.
“Indeed, they return the interest, I warrant, if smile and gl
ance tell the tale.”
I do not disapprove.
Every man but me.
Do you see how we shall do it?
“Walter,” she said, watching the flames ripple across the top of the logs. “We float out on a sea here at Rardove, a sea of warfare and loneliness. We are surrounded by wolves and Irish tribes and mist, and little else. If they are not being injured or maligned, please leave the women be.”
Leave me be.
His gaze sharpened to a veritable point. “My lady, the Hound has not done anything to you, has he? Anything…untoward?”
She leaned back against the chair and tilted her face up. “He has asked me to stay on…as his consort.”
The words, once out, were not as shocking as she’d expected, but Walter flew up as if he’d sat on a pin. “He what?”
“Proposed a union.” Touched my neck. Entwined our fingers. Made me want.
“Goddammit!” he shouted, slamming the flat of his hand onto the table. His clerical face was as red as a holly berry. “That is madness!”
She assembled her expression into one of poised neutrality. “Is it not?”
He tugged on the row of buttons that ran the length of his velvet tunic. “To even breathe the proposal that Rardove should disparage herself with a commoner, a…a barbarian. An Irishman”—he was sputtering with rage—“why, ’tis unfathomable. Outrageous. Lunacy.”
“Is it not?”
Something about how she said it made Walter’s hands freeze on the gold-colored buttons. “You cannot— You cannot in all earnestness be considering…”
“How could one seriously consider such a thing?” she asked rhetorically. As rhetorical questions required no answer, she did not have to reply to its dangerous allure, of why she would turn herself over to Aodh Mac Con’s barbaric touch.
Walter breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Of course not.”
She peered into the recklessly burning fire. “And yet, there is some merit to the notion, is there not? To an alliance with the rebel?”
He gaped at her. “Benefits? To lie with a savage—”
“To distract him, waylay him, perhaps upend him, these things too. I do not mean a true union—”
I prefer to make you willing.
“—but a ruse. I shall feign agreement.” She looked up. “Think you he brought his own clerk?”
Walter started. “His own…? No, he is a savage. Why?”
“To prepare the betrothal papers. But if he has no clerk, and you were to suddenly take ill…or perhaps they were unable to locate you at all…”
Walter stopped talking. The proposal was worth it for that alone. She went on. “In this way, we can hold what we may until the queen can send reinforcements. Recall, Walter, this ‘savage’ took Rardove Keep without so much as a shout. No one knows he is here. No one may know for weeks, months. Therefore, I think we would be wise to consider the advantages of feigning an alliance with the outlaw over adopting a more…combative stance.”
Do you see how we shall do it?
Walter stared, dumbfounded; his jaw dropped. She’d exceeded even his expectations for recklessness. There was something madly gratifying about this. For a second, she wished she could do more to shock him. Fling off her shoes and dance. Suggest Walter fling off his shoes and dance.
“Never.” The word was a breath of clerical outrage. “I would see you burn on a funeral pyre first.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“Bertrand of Bridge is on his way, and when he arrives, with his garrison, he will sweep this outlaw and his rabble from our steps.”
And bring in his own rabble, she thought. Vicious, wealthy rabble.
“You cannot do this thing.”
She slid her gaze slowly over to him. “I am weary of being told what I cannot do.”
They looked at each other, a kind of tired sympathy in Walter’s regard. “That is the way of it, my lady,” he said gently. “We do what is necessary, oft as others command. To bend one’s will is no mean thing.”
“I hardly require tutoring on how to bend my will.” Hard as diamonds, the words spilled out of her as if tumbling from a pouch.
His eyes grew sad. “Katarina, child, I do but think of your welfare. Ever were you your mother’s child, rash and tempestuous. It runs in the blood. No fault of your own, but still, it must be tempered.”
“I have been tempered,” she whispered.
“I have seen the ravages of such states of high passion. Your father was imprisoned on account of your mother’s, and we saw how that ended.” Her face felt hot as he plowed on. “And when I was sent to watch over you, it was to guard against it ever lifting its head again.” He frowned. “But it already had, had it not, child? Yes,” he went on, pleased with his summary of the downfalls of the Rardove women. “Trust in me, then. Be as you are meant to be, quiet and circumspect. I shall guide us—”
For some inexplicable reason, she got to her feet.
Walter, mouth open to expound further, stilled.
More inexplicably, she started toward the door.
“My lady, what— Wait! What are you…” He hurried after. “You cannot mean… You are not capable of executing something so vast as— Why, you cannot imagine the plotting—”
“I just did imagine it, Walter. I recommend you do as well. We serve two masters now: Elizabeth, and the Irish savage.” She strode to the door, where she paused again. “And Walter? Please do bear in mind, there is nothing common about Aodh Mac Con. You have a habit of underestimating people. Please do not do so with him.”
Walter’s outrage froze.
They stared at each other. Then she flung the oaken door wide.
Young Bran, standing guard in the antechamber outside, spun. She gathered a thick handful of wool skirts in her fist and swept by him, saying coldly, “I need to see your master.”
Perhaps he was struck dumb. Or perhaps, when he looked into her eye, he saw the glint of determination that did not bear opposition.
In any event, he did not try to stop her. He did, though, turn and put a hand on Walter’s chest as the clerk tried to hurry after her.
“I’ll need to search you, sir.”
Bran would receive extra rations the moment she made it back into the kitchens.
“Good God in heaven, man!” Walter cried; he was becoming positively foul-mouthed in his desperation. Katarina heard them arguing as she went down the stairs.
“My lady!” Walter called after. “Heed me.”
She did not. Inexplicably.
“You are being reckless, girl!”
It was a last arrow, the hissed word flung like a curse. And in her life, it had been just that.
Still, she did not stop. She circled the lamplit stairs and stepped out into the great hall, then stopped short.
As Aodh Mac Con had done to the bedchamber, so too had he done to the hall. The room was, quite simply, alive.
Fires roared like dragons, gorgeously wasteful, in every hearth and down the huge center trough. Bright, leaping, wasteful, wonderful red, orange, and blue flames licked the air like beating wings.
The vast stony hall, cool even in the dog days of summer, had been made, in the cold coil of early spring, warm. Bright. Bustling.
People were everywhere, more souls than Rardove had held in its belly for many a year, milling and talking, hurrying to and fro, laughing, even her own people, intermingling. No formal, seated meal, this; it was the butt end of a coup, and there was only sound and noise and movement.
A portly industrious clerk with a pen in his hand gestured to a man running by with a sheaf of papers, while a group of soldiers near the door plucked hunks of bread and cheese off trays being hurried past before turning for the door and striding out again. Calls came from all corners of the hall, as servants, both his and hers, frantically set up long trestle tables and benches down the length of the room, their voices swept up the vent holes in the roof. It was a hum of energy. Squires hurried here and there, poundi
ng iron spikes into the walls, dangling tapestries down from them.
The bare stone walls were being made into a pageantry of color, fluttering scenes of hunts and sea battles marching along all forty feet of the hall. Swords and armor were being hung, pennants and shields, testaments to the warrior prowess of the new, outlaw lord of Rardove.
He sat at the near end of the hall, at one of the common tables, a boot kicked out, an elbow bent on the table, regarding the two armed men who sat opposite him. Aodh sat with what seemed to be a mixture of patience and boredom.
The two men, his barrage of a captain and another, red-bearded one, appeared rather more interested. In fact, they looked earnest. Intent. Angry.
His captain, blond hair sweaty on his temples, leaned forward and said in an angry voice, “It serves naught.” His words carried like light; they went everywhere.
Behind her, she heard Walter stumbling down the stairs. “My lady, you cannot do this.”
But here she was, doing this.
Aodh moved his gaze away from his earnest, angry councilors and swung across the room, to her.
“It serves something,” he said lightly, looking at her.
Something opened inside her, a ray of brightness. Aodh got to his feet. Behind him, his companions scrambled to theirs as well.
“Aodh,” warned the tall one in a low voice. “Do not be rash.”
Why, the same accusations were being hurled at each of them. They were peas in a pod.
She took a step forward.
“My lady,” Walter all but hissed behind her.
She felt as if she were floating forward.
“Aodh, Christ’s mercy, listen—”
“Katarina, you cannot—”
Both their advisors frantically trying to stop a union neither of them could possibly want.
It made her smile. Aodh Mac Con smiled back in slow, wordless reply.
Everything faded to the buzzing of bees as the Irish rebel, with his calm, devastating confidence, smiled at her over all their heads.
I do not follow many rules.
“Yes,” she said, silencing them, the way a rock tied to a rope drags everything down into the river.
For a moment, no one spoke. Then, “Christ on the goddamned cross.” Walter’s vicious mutter broke the brittle, shocked silence.