by Kris Kennedy
So she wove lies. She acted certain when she was unsure. She exuded calm when she wished to rage. She demanded rents she could not possibly have collected if her tenants refused to pay. She pretended it was not a crushing blow to find half the sheep fold dead, or Spanish soldiers washed up on her shores.
She wore the lies like a gown, donned them by day, discarded them at night when the wind blew and darkness came down like the inside of a cave, and she was all alone in her bed, unsure if breaking the lies out again would suffice for one more day.
Or, if instead, someone like Aodh would show up.
Or Bertrand. Or the Queen of England. Or the Irish.
Or all of them.
And yet, she loved Ireland so, loved Rardove with the desperate, fierce love that came from having—and wanting—nothing else. Rardove was worth pulling out the lies for every morning. It had pierced her, like a dart laid in her heart, the love for this scarred, wild, windswept land, and the notion that Aodh Mac Con belonged to it more than she, was…infuriating.
Aodh’s blond captain was pointing away into the valley. Everyone looked in the direction of his arm, except Aodh.
His lightly bearded face stared directly at her.
Katarina wished she had a slingshot. A pebble, aimed directly at his head, should do the deed.
His captain lowered his arm, and the group of men moved farther down the walkway. Aodh watched her a moment more, then, with a graceful shove, pushed off the wall and followed after.
*
“THIS WALL HAS BEEN ablated.”
The sun was rising bright, and Aodh was up on the walls with Ré and a few of the men. Cormac had just led MacDaniels and his men off to the hall, and Ré was pointing to a section of the eastern battlement wall.
Aodh dragged his gaze off Katarina’s face in the high window. If she’d had a bow, he’d be dead.
“It should hold,” Ré was saying, “but it will be weak. Best if we draw their attention elsewhere, and man it heavily. We’ll set up listeners, to detect any undermining activity. We’ll have to spare a few men from the walls for the task, and we haven’t many extra.”
Aodh shook his head. “We shall use townsfolk.”
Ré smiled a little. “You are assuming they will side with us.”
“I intend to be persuasive when I visit them.”
The sun hit the walkway as it rose, lighting Ré’s blond hair. “How persuasive?”
“A chest of gold persuasive. And my winning charm, of course.”
Ré snorted, but smiled.
Under the damp morning air lay a faint softness, as if spring was breaking through. The sky was already pearlescent, pink and orange mists glowing bright and brighter, spreading out as the sun battled its way up over the horizon.
In Ireland, everything was battle, even the dawn. Even Katarina. Especially Katarina.
“I sent out a few men to explore the sea of mud,” Ré was saying. Aodh dragged his attention back to their survey of the defenses.
Ré pointed over the wall. “’Tis a veritable swamp. At points, an actual one.”
“Quicksand?” Aodh asked swiftly.
Ré shook his head. “The villagers report ’tis more of a sucking mud. Horses won’t make it far. Cannons will die where their wheels first roll. The only way across is the way we came, along that narrow stony path. Anyone who spreads out will sink.” It was a single track. Very narrow. Fine for wagons and deliveries and friendly visitors. But for an army…
Ré said, “Elizabeth will never get an army across that. God could not get an army across that.”
They smiled at each other.
Clever Katarina.
They peered over the battlements, to the wide, sweeping vista of valley and distant hills, aglow now with the rising sun. Mists swirled low to the ground down in the dells. In the distance, green hills rose, thick with forests, deep and verdant. Aodh recalled them well. And under all this fertile, vivid, creeping dawn came the salty scent of the sea.
Something stirred in his chest.
He glanced back at the tower, but they’d walked too far, and he could no longer see the high window.
Ré followed his glance. “What are you going to do with her now?”
Shoving his cape back to let the nascent sun warm his skin, Aodh said simply, “She is no fool. She will come around.”
“Why would she do that? And further to the point, if she does not?” Ré’s face was tense and dark.
Aodh rested the heel of his boot on a joist jutting out from the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you something to say?”
“I am saying it. I think it unwise to keep an enemy combatant in our midst.”
Aodh smiled a little. “Combatant?”
“Lest it slip your mind, she pulled a blade on you. Twice.”
He frowned. “That was but an initial reaction. Fear, confusion, anger.” Great, unbiddable passion. “Understandable.”
“And now? Now, what is fueling her fire?”
He gazed out at the green grasses of spring marching down the valley walls, dew-wet, illuminated by the misty light as if cast in some faerie spell. Ireland was beautiful in spring. He’d forgotten that.
“Aodh, methinks the lady was not confused in the least,” Ré pressed quietly. “And I do not think she will come around. Why would she? Nothing is going to change about her circumstances, nor ours. She will still be the queen’s bound lady, you will still be the rebel. She will still lose her castle if we prevail—”
“Not if she weds me.”
“—or her head if she joins us and we do not.”
“’Tis a momentary setback,” he said curtly.
“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely.” He’d never failed yet in his life. He was not about to start now with the woman who made a fire burn in his loins and his cold, empty heart.
Ré’s gaze was pinned on his profile. “How? How, Aodh, do you intend to overcome this setback of the lady of the castle being held, a hostile captive, in the midst of our rebellion?”
“I have plans.”
“What do they include?”
Their gazes locked. As the sun rose, it shone on Ré’s eyelashes and the hair falling down over his shoulders.
“It would be far wiser to send her away,” Ré said quietly. “But you do not seem to want to do that, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why. Women have never held any but the most fleeting allure for you, Aodh.”
“I’m not sending her away.”
“Why not? What is she to you?” Impatience and confusion hardened Ré’s voice. “What matters she, to us?”
Their gazes locked for a silent moment.
“I suggest you leave off,” Aodh said quietly.
Ré nodded curtly and pulled his own cloak tighter around his shoulders as they drew near the southern tower and guardhouse, where men were assembling to change the morning guard. “Very well, Aodh. But you had better convince her, and swiftly, ere someone gets hurt. Most likely her.”
Aodh wanted to smash his head into the wall. What else was he doing but trying to convince her? And he was so close… Last night, she’d been so wildly aroused, her body had almost ignited under his touch. It had driven him mad.
Mad, indeed. He’d have done anything for her, anything to keep her under his spell, whispering his name, wanting him more than anything in the world.
He glanced back at the tower, but they’d passed on. Then a call went up from the gate: a rider was cresting the hill at full gallop.
Kicking up dust and pebbles, the rider hurtled down the path they’d just been discussing. He wore an Irish brat and a simple hauberk.
They hurried over in time to greet him at the gate.
He brought a message from the O’Mor tribe. Their chief welcomed the Lord of Rardove home again, and mentioned how well he recalled Aodh’s father.
He also mentioned they had four hundred warriors ready at a moment’s notice.
Ré and Aodh
looked at each other and grinned.
A cool rush moved through Aodh, the one that generally preceded the culmination of maneuverings aristocratic or militaristic. It was a familiar feeling, and welcome, and he’d come to rely on it for sustenance, a surrogate for deeper emotions, but he knew the truth: it had no staying power. It was a cool dab on a fevered brow.
But Katarina… What he felt with her reached all the way to his bones. It would last. If only she would turn to him.
*
KATARINA HEARD a shuffle at the tower door and spun.
“My lady?” said a small whispered voice. Not Walter, then.
She hurried to the door, touched the seam where door met frame. “Dickon?”
She heard an outbreath of relief from the other side. “Aye, my lady. Are you…have you…?” His voice faded away. Beyond his station and, depending upon her reply, beyond any remedy within his means, the questions were entirely out of his realm. He let them fade away.
“I am fine, Dickon, fine,” she assured him, affection warming her heart. “Do not fear for me. Be strong for me.”
“I will, my lady. For you.”
“So they did not lock you up?”
She heard a dismissive, snorting sound. “Oh, they tried.”
Amid all the trials pressing upon her at the moment, a smile lifted her mouth. “Did they?”
“Oh, aye.” A pause. “They’re so big.” Yes, they were. “’Twas a simple matter to get away.”
“And have you been eating?”
“Oh, I pinch some bread on and off, and I found some eggs sittin’ in a bowl by the kitchen door.” A pause. “I s’pse I’m a bit hungry.”
She pressed her fingertips to the door, as if by this, she could feed him.
“Do you…do you need anything, my lady?”
She laid her cheek against the cool wood. “Yes, Dickon. I need you to be caught.”
“What?” Confusion and outrage spiked his voice.
“And then I need you to ingratiate yourself. Be nice.”
A disapproving silence flowed through the crack, then on its heels, an equally disapproving “My lady.”
“Dickon, heed me. You will eventually be caught, and it will not be pleasant. And you need food. And I need to know you’re safe, not wandering and starving.”
“Not starvin’,” he muttered.
“Go to him, turn yourself in, apologize, be docile and subtle…”
“As you are, my lady?”
She frowned at the door. “If you mean to gainsay me, then do so right off and I shall find myself another champion.”
“Champion” seemed to do the deed. She could almost feel him straightening on the other side of the door. “No, my lady, I can do it. Is there anything else?” he asked grudgingly, no doubt worried she might ask for even more outrageous acts, perhaps washing his face, with soap, or some other such indignity.
“Yes, Dickon, one small thing.” She leaned her mouth close to the door. “I need you to bring me my sword.”
*
BRAN RAN INTO WALTER in the darkened stairwell. He almost plowed him over and tumbled down the stairs, but Walter’s hand gripped his shoulder and stopped him from falling. Then it dug in and pinched around the fabric.
“Where have you been, boy?” Walter demanded.
“About,” Dickon snapped vaguely, tugging to be free, but Walter’s fingers pinched harder; he was a good pincher. Dickon cast up a derisive, bitter, but defeated look. “You’re not going to turn me in, are you?”
Walter frowned. “I may well, if you do not answer to my liking.”
The light of oil lamps in the stairway made Walter into a towering, monolithic shape.
“Where were you just now?” Walter’s disapproval flowed down from his lofty, clerical heights. Dickon despaired of ever being half as tall as the egg-domed steward, which was half the reason his dislike bloomed so strongly. The other half was the manner in which he treated her ladyship.
And yet right now, Walter was the closest thing to a friend he had.
“Visiting my lady,” he muttered.
Walter’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “And?”
“She wants me to bring her her sword.”
They stared at each other.
“And then, to…to…surrender myself.” Shame laid his voice low.
Walter made a sound that, were it anyone else, he’d have interpreted as sympathy. His bony fingers loosened on Dickon’s tunic, then he went so far as to make the almost sympathetic sound again and pat his shoulder. Dickon gaped in surprise.
“Well,” Walter said, “better do as she bids, and turn yourself in.” At Dickon’s mutinous expression, he became again a disapproving clerical summit. “Ere they find you themselves, boy, and learn you what a true barbarian is.”
Dickon scowled. “They’d never find me.”
“They would if you keep pinching eggs from beside the kitchen door.”
Dickon’s jaw dropped as Walter turned and started down the stairs.
“You left the eggs?”
Walter seemed not to hear him. “You have a few days of liberty yet due you, as the master has just ridden off for town. See that you make yourself useful during it.”
Dickon started down the stairs after him. “How?”
“Collect more eggs.”
*
WITHIN THE HOUR, another round of emissaries had ridden out.
Aodh was out fast on their heels with his own contingent. Cormac and fifteen others rode at his side as the golden sun sent long rays over the tops of the walls, making the shadows retreat down in the baileys.
As they intended to win the town, and not conquer it, they bore few weapons and several heavy chests.
Ré stood on the wall just above the portcullis gate, in command of the castle in Aodh’s absence. As he passed under, Aodh stayed his horse.
“Station a guard at her door the entire time I am gone,” he ordered.
Ré nodded.
“Free the rest of her household. Not the guard, but her servants.”
Ré nodded again. Beside him, Cormac gave a grunt of approval, for this meant the maid with the bouncing breasts would be freed too.
As they passed under the gates, Aodh added over his shoulder, “And send her up a bath.”
*
KATARINA WATCHED him ride off. The horses seemed to wade through the low-lying mists down the valley, then they began climbing the far side. She watched until they were out of sight.
Aodh’s small hosting contained more soldiers than these hills had seen since Finn MacCumhail’s band of Fianna warriors, and that had been a thousand years ago, and a myth. But Aodh Mac Con’s uprising was far too real.
Queen Elizabeth would be enraged.
Chapter Twenty-One
“MY AODH?”
The majority of Queen Elizabeth’s councilors stared vapidly up at the rafter beams or whichever whitewashed stone was in their direct line of sight. A few others, absent rafters or stones, peered out the nearest window into a swiftly dying sunset as the queen reread the missive from Aodh Mac Con, who had, apparently, turned rebel.
How like an Irishman.
“My Aodh?”
The hollow shock in her voice created a shuffling of slippered feet as the men drew their averted gazes off the walls and windows and looked at each other in silent, furious query: Where in God’s name was Burghley? Only Cecil could manage the queen when she was bent, now that Dudley was dead.
Finally Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer, cleared his throat. “Your Majesty, ’tis a small enough thing, a trifling. So an Irishman has turned. It is what Irishmen do. They are savages, after all. ’Tis in the blood—”
“Trifling?”
Mildmay froze mid-word, his lips wrinkled around the effort of not saying what he’d been thinking of saying, and was now most definitely not going to say.
“A trifling that one of my most trusted councilors has forsworn me? That one of my best cap
tains has commandeered a castle on my Irish frontiers and turned it into a rebel stronghold? A trifling that he has aban—”
The queen stopped short. Abandoned me almost rang in the air, but she did not say the words, and no one else ever would. They simply watched their steely queen as she set down Aodh Mac Con’s message and picked up the camellia flower he’d sent with it. A token of his affection. A reminder of times past. He’d always known how to touch her heart.
Ireland had been a simmering pot of rebellion for the past twenty years, embroiling everyone from the queen’s own cousin, the Earl of Ormond, up to the powerful Desmond earl and his brother, down to the man who’d replaced Desmond after he’d been imprisoned, fitzMaurice.
Ireland, quite simply, turned men to rebels.
These rebellions, as well as the threats and reprisals that accompanied them—including land confiscations—had unfortunately created even more fierce opposition amid the Irishry. Indeed, it had incited more uprisings in the south, and agitated a few pebbles loose in the unruly north too, mostly defanged Irish potentiates hoping to reignite their own aspirations.
The most noteworthy of these had been the Rardove clan.
The English barony was named for the region, and the legendary dyes that used to be, thousands of years ago, associated with it. Ruadgh dubh—“roo” and “dove,” the queen had obediently repeated the lyrical words Aodh had taught her—the Irish words for the colors red and black, the deep shades of the legendary Wishmé dyes that had once come out of that wild region.
The reappearance of such a long-forgotten, warlike tribe had been an unsettling blow.
Fortunately, in the end, the rebellions had been put down, and the overly ambitious Rardove aspirant had been beheaded, quite painfully, too, she’d been told—it had taken four blows. Cousin Butler had come to heel, the earl of Desmond had been imprisoned (until he was released to rebel again a few years later), and FitzMaurice had sailed to France to seek Catholic allies to begin another rebellion.
But Aodh…Aodh had come to her.
He’d laid his sword at her feet and pledged himself, with a condition: he wanted his ancestral lands back.