“Is it unfriendly?” Deirdre whispered to Father Scanlan. It was a question she’d not have posed before the Saxon invasion. Incursions against Erin were scarcely heard of, isolated as it was from the continent.
“I’m not likin’ the looks o’ them oars poking out both sides of er, Cap’n,” a seaman called down from his lofty perch above, preempting the priest.
“There’s no markings on the sail,” Scanlan observed to no one in particular.
“Stand ready, lads. Friend or foe, we’ll not outrun ’em with our cargo aboard!” At the captain’s roar, the helmsman shifted the wheel hard to the leeward, struggling to remove their vulnerable side as a potential ramming target.
The Mell shuddered in resistance, groaning sails lashing at the lines in protest as the bow dipped into a trough. Holding to the rail for balance, Deirdre stood fast as the gaping mouth of the sea opened before her very eyes. Her heartbeat outpaced the seeming eternity the ship took to level off again. Much to her astonishment, weapons of all manner, hitherto concealed, appeared in the hands of the more nimble-footed seamen. In the rigging above was a veritable hornet’s nest of men waiting with ready sting.
“You’d best get below, milady,” Father Scanlan said, prying Deirdre from the rail. He ushered her toward the open hatch leading below. “And take Orna with you.”
As one of the only two women aboard, it made sense, but Deirdre stopped abruptly. “I can fight if I must.” She’d been indulged in training by the men of her clan.
Scanlan smiled. “I remember. But these may be pirates, not a doting uncle or your father’s men.”
“They’d as soon cut us in half as look at us,” Orna said. “Think of those poor nuns.” She crossed herself hurriedly for their sisters, who had not just been robbed and violated but viciously mutilated on the grounds of heresy against the Roman-established order of worship.
Deirdre shuddered that the Saxon King Ecfrith used the excuse of faith to feed his hatred of his mother’s people. She wanted to fillet this vermin with Kieran’s sword of righteousness, but that was not her place. Hers was a conciliatory mission to save her brother, not nearly as blood stirring as it was pride bending. Besides, a female on deck might distract the captain and his men.
“Come, then.” She stepped back so that Orna might descend the ladder first.
As Deirdre descended into the hold, she saw Scanlan kneel by the grate cover. After offering a short prayer, he closed them up in the hold. It took a moment for Deirdre to adjust to the eerie darkness broken only by checkered shafts of sun leaking through the latticed grate. Neither the air allowed in by the grate nor the leathery presence of the cattle skins or wooden casks filled with salted meats and wine could override the fetid breath of mold.
Inhaling only because she must, Deirdre settled on Gleannmara’s gold-and jewel-embossed ransom chest. Next to her Orna prayed, lips moving with the fervor of a backslid saint at hell’s gate.
Rather than waste more time pondering the identity of these people, Deirdre switched her thoughts to what she might do if they were the enemy. Pray, yes, by all means. Father above us, deliver us from evil … Ever so gently, Deirdre moved Orna to the crate next to the ransom chest. “Keep praying, friend.”
But should You allow them privy to us, Deirdre continued with her own spiritual plea, then show us what we must do to meet the foe. Give us the strength and grace to—She removed a key from the embroidered bag slung at her side and slipped it into the trunk lock—do Thy will. As she sprang the lock, the Mell jarred with such force that she fully expected to see the prow of the other vessel rip through the side.
Orna screamed as she was flung to the wattle floor separating them from the slime of the bilge. Deirdre scrambled for her dropped key. Simultaneously, an ungodly roar echoed above them, met with the shouts of the merchantman’s crew, conjuring the image of a pack of wolves seizing upon weaker prey.
Father, save us! Deirdre helped Orna to her feet. They mustn’t take the ransom. It’s my brother’s only hope. She slipped the key back into the safety of her purse.
Her first thought was to hide the gold between the ship’s ribs, under the wattled flooring they supported, but, God forbid, should the Mell go down, the treasure would be lost anyway.
Father, show me what to do! She winced as something heavy fell on the deck above them. A body? It was likely, given the screams and growls, the clash of metal and wood, the scramble for footing on unsteady ground that chorused in bloody horror above them.
Orna’s ear-piercing shriek filled the close confines of the hold, assaulting Deirdre’s senses with the sharpness of a butcher’s knife. Looking up, she saw the source—a hand separated from its body lay on the grate, fingers still trying to clutch the hilt of a long knife. Deirdre jerked away and bumped against a lashed stack of barrels, wine from the monastery on the Liffey. An idea struck her with a glimmer of hope. She could hide the contents of the treasure in one of the wine barrels! The top barrel had already been tapped for the use of the crew Hurriedly, she wrung at the tap. While the rich red wine poured into the bilge, she unsheathed her dining dagger to cut the barrel free from the secured stack of kegs.
“Orna, open the chest. We’re going to transfer the gold to this barrel.”
“B-but where can we hide it?”
“Behind these bundles of hide,” Deirdre told her. “The brigands will never know they have it … not at first, leastways.” Making it difficult for the enemy was the least she could do, pitiful as it was.
“For all the good it’ll do our rotting dismembered flesh.” Orna sniffed.
“More like they’ll take us as slaves,” Deirdre retorted with impatience.
At this, Orna became inconsolable as well as useless.
With no time to rally the maid to her senses or acknowledge her pang of guilt, Deirdre set about the task herself, shutting out the bloodletting fury above. God willing, if this ploy worked, she might somehow get the ransom back.
Her diligent ministrations had a sobering effect on Orna. “Milady, have you lost your wits?” The maid hiccoughed, struggling to her feet beside Deirdre as the latter packed the container tight with her royal cloak, her jewels, and every other item of clothing that might give away her identity.
“There’s no need to let the devils know they’ve a royal captive for whom they can further rob my father.” Faith, it would kill him. “Now, hold this tight.” Deirdre stripped off her rich overdress and packed it in as well. “All they’ll find is two Irish lasses bound for God’s humble service.”
“And what of the sword?” Orna glanced at the bottom of the chest, where Kieran’s legacy to Gleannmara lay in its sheath.
It was too long to fit in the cask and too precious to risk losing if they scuttled the ship. “I’ll hide it under my priest’s robe, Sister Orna. Now help me lift this, and then we’ll get two robes from Scanlan’s trunk.”
Her companion’s expression left nothing to be said regarding her doubt. Together they pushed the cask behind the stack of barrels. After looting the priest’s trunk of two robes bound for his brethren, Deirdre donned one, while Orna simply stood agape at her madness.
Thank God, she was tall for a woman, Deirdre thought. With a darting look at the hatch, she tied the king’s sword to her thigh with one of the woven belts from the trunk. Now the only sound above them, beyond the moans of the wounded, was the barking of orders and their acknowledgment in a harsh tongue. It slashed at the senses like a whip, unlike the poetic song of Irish tongue or the romantic staccato of the Roman.
At footsteps echoing directly over their heads, Deirdre hastily let the robe and her shift drop to the floor, concealing the weapon. The coarse, ill-fitting garment pooled at her feet as the hatch cover was jerked up.
Orna gasped, dropping the robe she was supposed to have donned. Deirdre took a slower, deeper breath to fortify her resolve against the regret being squeezed from her thudding heart. There was no time now.
A hideous face, painted and
squinting at the darkness, appeared where the cover had been. Grease-laden, crudely shorn hair fell around it as the creature grinned. What teeth were not black-edged with rot or missing altogether had a brownish-yellow cast to them. Turning away, he barked something in his oafish tongue.
Deirdre refused to cower against the stack of hides as Orna did but stared boldly up at the warrior who took the other’s place. In no rush, he removed his helmet, a princely piece embossed with silver and brass inlay. As he cradled it in one arm and swept a long, liberated mane away from his face, she saw the glittering ornament of a wolf as the armor’s crest. Blood still dripping from the long, single-edged knife hanging at his lean girded waist, he eased down to one knee and peered into the hold.
Deirdre’s breath seized at the lock of their gazes—blue fire within a steel gray as hard as the hidden blade pressed against her flesh. No doubt his heart, if he had one at all, was just as cold. The corner of his mouth pulled with a grunt of indifference, probably the most intellectual thing he’d given voice to today. Though wordless, it still managed insult. She lifted her chin at the condescension.
“Will you stand there gaping like a village idiot or will you help us out of this stink hole?”
Was that her voice upbraiding this giant of muscle and blood in flawless Latin? The universal tongue of world trade, surely even pirates would have some knowledge of it.
The other corner of his mouth pulled back, transforming his lips into a smile. Undaunted, he offered her his hand. “By all means, milady, do come up where my men and I might have a look at you and yon friend there.”
His smooth reply took her aback almost as much as the size and strength of the hand that enveloped hers. He spoke like a scholar, not a brigand. As he assisted Deirdre’s unsteady climb up the ladder, he called over her shoulder to Orna, who still cowered against the cargo of skins. “There’s no need to fear us, sweetling. Come along after your …” He locked gazes with Deirdre once again, his own softened by curiosity. “Sister,” he finished without certainty.
The hidden sword hampered Deirdre’s progress, but that was the least of her concerns at the moment. She felt as if the stranger looked not just into her eyes but into her very soul. The eyes were, after all, the soul’s window. She lowered her gaze hastily before he could name the number of jewels on Kieran’s hidden scabbard. She could not, however, resist challenging his reassurance.
“Is that what you said before you slaughtered our sisters in God’s own house?”
His cordial demeanor darkened, and he growled like thunder’s own god. “Neither I, Alric of Galstead, nor my men make war upon women anywhere.”
As Deirdre searched her memory for either the name or the place, he tilted her face so she could not avoid his penetrating look. The scowl that had been etched in her mind from his guttural declaration mellowed along with his voice.
“Women are for making love, not war.” He ventured a lazy smile that seemed far more dangerous than his fury. Her eyes widened with the rush of heat singeing her neck on its way to her face. Was he flirting? How dare he! She was a princess, her bloodline traceable to the Milesian kings who conquered Erin for the Celts. He was nothing but a bloodthirsty swine.
Deirdre raised her hand to slap Alric, but he seized her wrist just short of contact with his gold-stubbled jaw. Over his shoulder, he made some remark in his native tongue, evoking laughter from his men. She refused to dignify it by asking what he’d said, but he shared with her anyway, taking infuriating pleasure in it.
“I told my men that your study in Christian humility has been a waste of time. Besides, to waste such fiery spirit in a marriage to your church would be a pity.”
“No more wasteful than praying for your black soul.”
The Saxon’s eyebrow shot up, arching higher than its mate in surprise. Father Scanlan rushed to Deirdre’s defense before the mockery in her captor’s gaze found voice.
“My colleague is new to the order. She only wears the mean garb of our church community because—”
“I clumsily dropped my belongings overboard,” Deirdre finished, sparing Scanlan further involvement in her charade. God would forgive them, surely, but Scanlan might not forgive himself. Sometimes, she dared to think, he and his kind walked a fine line between faith and foolishness.
Splattered with innocent blood, the pirate leaned over to help Orna out of the hold. “I had noticed,” he answered over his shoulder—he could surely carry Deirdre on that one and her handmaiden on the other—“that grace is sorely lacking among your more obvious charms. You took to yon ladder like a fool on stilts.”
“If you—” Deirdre choked off her reply just in time. If you had a sword strapped to your leg, you’d walk like a fool as well. “Better an affliction of the limb than of the mind.”
The pirate captain turned back to her. Far from stung by her sarcasm, he seemed to be enjoying it. Stepping back, he boldly assessed her, the silver gray of his eyes seeming to dance in mercurial speculation—slow, yet quick; warm, then cool; amused, then something that made her shiver.
The heat she felt vanished when she heard two heathen words she understood. “Did you say slave market?” Deirdre’s challenge clearly took him, as well as his men, aback. She allowed a smile of smug satisfaction. “There are some words in your distasteful language well known in my country. Your reputation precedes you.”
“It’s a shame none here took it seriously,” he answered with unsettling gravity. He waved his arm in a circle about him. “A surrender to our obvious fighting strength would have spared all this.”
Deirdre looked around her for the first time and caught back a gasp.
Of all the men aboard the merchantman, only Father Scanlan had been spared. The rest lay lifeless, hacked by a single-edged Saxon scramasax or impaled by their deadly spears. The bloody sight would have made a lesser woman retch, exactly as Orna, who’d run to the rail, was doing that very moment. The bile that rose to the back of Deirdre’s throat resisted swallowing, but she would not yield to it either. Not here. Not in front of him. With as much dignity as her bound leg would afford, she walked over to where Orna held on to the rail to keep from buckling to its deck.
“They wouldn’t stop fighting until they’d spent their last breath,” Alric told her.
“Wouldn’t you prefer death’s freedom to slavery in life?”
“Life offers the chance to escape from slavery. There is no escape from the grave.”
Deirdre spat out her contempt. “There’s none for your heathen likes anywhere.”
The golden giant threw back his head and laughed, and then said something to his crew, which sent them into a chorus of amusement as he translated for Deirdre.
“Indeed, if I hope to fetch any price for you, I shall have to parade you with your tongue bound securely. No man in his right mind would expose himself to its sharpness unless he cut it out … Now there’s an idea.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully and, for one terrifying moment, his other hand moved toward the hilt of the blade at his waist. Only the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth gave her a whit of reassurance—that, and the way the sunlight cavorted in his gaze.
Deirdre let out a short breath of relief—for with the likes of Alric of Galstead, she was certain relief would be nothing if not short-lived.
THREE
Alric stood, arms folded, feet planted squarely on the rolling deck of the merchant ship. A quick inspection showed the vessel had suffered little damage during the battle. He allowed a small smile. Sale of both the Mell and its cargo would fatten his purse. Indeed, the tribute due the Northumbrian subkingdom of his father, denied forever to Alric by birth, would someday pale in comparison to what he took from the sea.
He’d show his family that the illegitimate son of his father’s captive Scottish princess neither wanted nor needed Galstead—not even that which his father offered out of earnest affection. The offer had only worsened the tension at court, making his stepmother, Queen Ethlinda and half brot
her, Ricbert, green as their greed. How could his father expect Alric to someday pay homage to his elder half brother as Galstead’s king when no love had ever been lost between them? Not in this world, at least, and there wasn’t likely a next.
“I reckon this will put us ahead some,” Gunnar, his second in command said. “Did you find the treasure chest yet?”
They were much like brothers, both noble second sons who would have to make their own fortunes, although Gunnar was not the bastard of a slave.
“Yes, it’s fine as any you’ve ever laid eyes upon but empty as a witch’s heart.” The loose lips of a drunken merchant in Dublin had tipped the two pirates that a royal treasure chest was included in the hold that carried his future fortune. At least he’d been half right.
His dark-haired mate looked stricken at first and then returned to his usual good humor. “Ach, to hear you speak of our beloved queen so.”
Lack of love for Ethlinda and Ricbert was yet another commonality they shared. Gunnar beat his fist against the hard leather plate of his armor, his only body protection save his helmet. His mail shirt, like Alric’s, had been left ashore. One false step and that particular protection could prove death in the water.
It was a less bloody demise, that was for certain, Alric mused, watching as the last of the dead were tossed over the side. Water was as good as earth for a grave. Either way, creatures waited to devour a man’s flesh and bone.
“Do you suppose our drunken friend meant a treasure chest and not a royal treasure?”
“Or mayhap he was spinning tales from his imagination.” Alric glanced over to where the curious sister of the church and her companions tended the wounded. It was a shame such beauty had a lame leg, for she’d be a delight to chase about a plump bed, given the right frame of mind. Alric had never forced a woman to placate his needs, but he had managed to charm a few into forgetting their initial refusals.
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