Deirdre

by Linda Windsor

Deirdre drew away when he reached for her face, but he lunged after her, seizing her roughly Stitches in her dress ripped on the shoulder he sought to expose. The sound grazed her spine like a cold spike of steel, but instead of rendering her weak with panic, it fortified her.

  “This is not your court!” she ground out, turning her face as he tried again to kiss her mouth. “’Tis God’s.”

  She drove the heel of her foot hard into the top of his, eliciting a yelp. His hold loosened, and she elbowed Ricbert’s stomach. With all her strength, she shoved her hand against his sharp, bearded chin, driving his head against the low frame over the door with a nasty crack. As he dropped, dazed and cursing to his knees, she barreled past him and broke into a dead run down the row of abandoned stalls and around the tinsmith’s shop on the main avenue to the gate.

  “Milady?”

  A man stepped out as she turned the corner toward the town proper. Deirdre glanced over her shoulder to where the bemused shopkeeper followed for a split second. Suddenly, Deirdre slammed hard against a wall of living flesh, just as hard and unyielding as any made of stone. With a startled grunt, she bounced backward, her feet scrambling for footing in the dry rutted thoroughfare.

  “Deirdre!” Developing hands, the living wall caught her before she sprawled on the ground.

  Stunned and half hanging in its grasp, Deirdre looked up. It had a face as well, and the face belonged to Alric. She made some sort of sound, half laugh, half cry. Then, winded and mad with relief, she threw her arms about his neck and held on in case her wobbly knees gave way completely She was safe at last.

  “Frig’s breath, you look like you’ve been rolling in the hay!” He picked at the straw in her hair.

  Frig’s breath. Alric’s familiar curse had never sounded so sweet to the ear.

  “And his teeth and eyes,” she chimed in, a bit hysterical.

  “Hers,” he corrected, neither hysterical, nor amused.

  “What?” Deirdre tilted her head back to judge the nature of his humor and blinked as he pulled another bit of straw from the hair clinging to her forehead.

  “Where in Woden’s world is Gunnar?” The thunder in Alric’s voice sobered her giddy relief. “I forbade you to go anywhere without him.”

  She had nearly paid dearly for her disobedience. “I was supposed to wait for Scanlan,” she blurted out, glancing back to see if Ricbert had been foolish enough to follow her. Just as she thought, there was no sign of him. The man was a coward hiding behind a bully’s mask.

  “He left me in Scanlan’s care,” she explained, her thoughts tripping ahead of her. All she had to do was tell Alric what had just happened and, in this humor, he’d kill not only Ricbert, but her and Gunnar as well.

  “What happened to your dress?” Alric fingered the shoulder seam that Ricbert had ripped.

  Father, forgive me, but I’m trying to prevent bloodshed. “I ripped it in the chapel,” she answered, leaning as close to the truth as she could. “The thatcher was working on the roof while I was inside—you know what a shambles it was—and Scanlan wasn’t back yet, so I left without him to bathe and dress for the evening.”

  It really wasn’t a lie … just not the entire truth.

  “Alone.”

  “Until I ran into you.” At Alric’s scowl, she added, “And I’m sorry I just forgot.”

  “I gave you an order, woman,” Alric’s angry snap sent the tinker back into his lodge.

  Deirdre bristled at the very idea. “An order?”

  “You gave me your word,” he said in a softer tone.

  “As you forgot me, I forgot all about you … just as I forgot for a minute that I was angry at you.” She thumped an accusing finger at the vee of his shirtfront. “You left me here the whole four weeks while you were off having a grand time on your boat.”

  “Ship.”

  “Toy,” she countered, gathering up her skirts in a building huff. “That’s no way to treat a bride to be, even if she is a bride to be against her will.”

  No less filled with righteous indignation, Alric folded his arms across his chest as if to keep them from reaching for her throat. Like two storm fronts about to clash on the horizon, they stood immobile, each waiting for the other to move. Intuition told her there would be no winning with Alric if she took him on as she had Ricbert. The pirate knew her too well.

  There was only one thing to do—the unexpected. Abandoning her haughty stance, Deirdre ducked around the broad width of Alric’s shoulders to make a mad dash for the city gates. The cheers of the guards warned her that she was being chased.

  She heard only one loud thud that was not of her making, and Alric was upon her. His vicelike grip on her arm nearly yanked it from its socket. The momentum of her interrupted flight carrying her in a circle, and she smashed into his embrace, her cry of protest smothered by the harsh kiss he planted upon her lips.

  Nostrils flaring with what wind she had left, Deirdre pushed against his uncompromising hold. Above the roar of the bloodrush in her ears, she made out laughter and crude jests coming from more people than she had seen in her hasty retreat. They seemed to whet Alric’s appetite for a long, torturous revenge, just as it provoked a riot of its own upon her senses.

  Deirdre tried to stomp his foot as she had Ricbert’s but only skimmed it, spurring Alric to lift her off the ground in defense. The more she railed against him, the tighter his arms closed around her, until she grew lightheaded from the effort. Only when she surrendered—outmanned, outmuscled, and out of breath—did he offer her quarter.

  A hero’s cheer went up as he let her go and stepped back, pleased as a pig in lavender at his victory. “Is that the way my bride to be wished to be treated?”

  Scarlet burning her face, Deirdre squared her shoulders with the dignity he’d so ravaged. “Unlike your townspeople, milord, I am unimpressed,” she declared, once she was certain her knees had regained their worthiness. “Pity you won’t be wed to them.”

  With that, Deirdre turned and walked, head held high, through the city gates. Curse his black heart! Nearly four long weeks she’d felt as though she’d grown spiritually. And in four short minutes with Alric of Galstead, she was right back where she started—ready to send at least one Saxon to perdition.

  No. Make that two. They deserved an eternity with each other.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  First she upsets his personal world, Alric fumed as he marched through the vendors’ row, and now all of Galstead. The closer he had come to his father’s town fortress, the more evident it became. Instead of working in the fields, churl and serf alike cleared the ditch banks. In the closest hides of land, water seeped into those ditches already open. While it was no more than knee-deep, it was enough that the crops on those long, rectangular pieces had begun to lose their wilted, dying look. Women and children filled pails from the ditches and carried the precious commodity inland in an attempt to revive even more. Although it looked like futile attempt to him, it seemed to have given something to the people that had not been there the last time he passed this way—heart.

  What his idealistic bride to be didn’t seem to realize was just how dangerous that could be in a place where a man was always a friend in fair weather, and with the coming of a shower—or the lack of one—he would become just as quickly one’s deadliest enemy This wasn’t her safe haven of Gleannmara, though judging from the panic that drove her round the comer earlier, she’d found that out.

  Her fear had become his the moment he saw it, stark and white upon her face. Her torn dress and disheveled state slashed at him like an enemy’s blade, and he reacted accordingly, ready to exact revenge. He had every right to be upset that Gunnar and Deirdre had ignored his orders and worse, that she seemed bent on protecting whoever or whatever had frightened her.

  Most of the vendors had gone to their homes for the day and the chapel wedged in their midst seemed abandoned also. He stepped inside and saw nothing but an abandoned book lying on the bench near the window. It was still open,
face down, which meant whatever had frightened Deirdre must have interrupted her reading.

  He picked it up. Instantly he recognized the myth of Demeter and Persephone. It had been part of his Latin studies. He supposed Deirdre might well feel like Persephone, carried off by hades’ lord to a dark place. Like his mother, she had to miss her home.

  Alric put the book down and shook off his twinge of guilt. He had his reasons, he thought, glancing inadvertently at the cross carved over the altar shelf. Even his mother’s God approved, if Orlaith’s vision was to be believed, and with each passing day he found it more difficult to explain recent events in any other way He heaved a breath of frustration and stepped outside before the quiet sanctuary provoked too many memories of the peace and security he’d felt as a child kneeling beside his mother in that very place. Clearing the blade of grief in his throat, he stepped out into the open air, retreating …

  From what? an inner voice challenged. From peace and security? Why?

  Because it wasn’t real. As he reached back to close the door, he heard a muffled thud inside. Bemused, since there was nowhere to hide in the single room, he glanced back. The book he’d returned to the bench lay on the floor. Ignoring the ripple of awareness tickling his spine, Alric put it back squarely.

  Frig’s breath, soon he’d be having visions himself. As he made certain the door was soundly latched behind him, his own observations turned upon him. There is nowhere to hide … from God. The sooner this wedding was over and he was out to sea, the better he’d be. Alric brushed off some of the fleck from the new roof, as if to rid himself of something deeper and more troubling, when he saw a crowd approaching from the commons. To his astonishment, his father’s standards flew over it.

  Heading out to meet the procession, Alric recognized Lambert walking beside Father Scanlan, both heartily engaged in conversation. His father without a horse and, more incredibly speaking in earnest to a cleric after refusing to hear even Orlaith’s testimony.

  “Well, well, the bridegroom cometh.” Lambert’s call was utterly cheerful! The man was never cheerful, unless he was enjoying someone else’s discomfiture. “But it’s too late. All of Galstead has fallen in love with your bride. You may have to fight us all for her.”

  Alric’s face grew hot, as though the sun were at its peak rather than completing its downswing for the day Frig’s breath, but she had a tick’s way of working under one’s skin and bleeding him dry of sanity.

  “Hah, look at him, Scanlan! He stands on his tongue like a gaping fool.”

  That was more like his father. “Well, this fool has news for you, news that can be verified,” Alric said with a pointed look at Father Scanlan. “I’d speak with you in private.”

  It wasn’t wise to discuss affairs of the kingdom in public, but when Lambert insisted that Scanlan accompany him and his thanes to the private chamber of the hall, Alric nearly forgot what he had to tell them. Deirdre obviously was not the only tick on the hound.

  “Well, let’s have it,” Lambert instructed, after the men had been served mead.

  “One of my captains informed me that the Welsh are gathering forces near the border, more than is needed for one of their cattle raids.”

  “How many?” one of the thanes asked.

  “Somewhere around five hundred men when he was there. More were en route.”

  “Those infernal Welsh are a wart on the hind of the earth.”

  Gunnar’s father snorted at Lambert’s vehemence. “I can take my men and fortify Chesreton.”

  “And leave Galstead itself short of men, Cedric?” Lambert said.

  “Short of men for what?”

  Alric turned to spy Ricbert at the entrance to the chamber.

  “You call a counsel, Father, and leave me out?”

  Alric bore the scorch of his half brother’s look without effect. “The Welsh are gathering an army on the border. We are discussing what to do.”

  “Ricbert, what happened to your lip?” Lambert demanded curiously.

  “I bit it,” he snapped. “Most annoying.” He took a cup of mead from the maidservant with a smile.

  “Most of our army is with Ecfrith,” Lambert said, returning to the subject at hand. “But thanks to Alric’s wedding, a good number of neighbors will be attending and can supply us with men.”

  “If you ask me, you should have paid the Mercians their protection money” Ricbert took a deep draught of the brew.

  “I didn’t and I won’t,” the indignant king replied. “Alric, can we count on manpower from your ships to defend Chesreton?”

  “Absolutely. There is one ship in port. More are due within the next two weeks.”

  “Excellent, Son, excellent.” Lambert rose from the table. “Cedric, you know what you need to do. I’ll send messages to our wedding guests advising them of the situation. If Galstead is threatened, so are they.” Those seated around the council table rose, following the king’s suit, when Lambert stopped them. “Father Scanlan, a prayer, if you will.”

  “A prayer?” Ricbert’s words dripped with contempt. “You offend Mother’s gods?” A few of the men at the table mumbled agreement.

  “Let it not be said that I am not a fair ruler,” the king said firmly “I will treat no one’s god greater than another.”

  Scanlan flinched. It was barely perceptible, but Alric did not miss it. How often he’d seen his mother do the same thing.

  “Now, Scanlan, if you will.” Leaning toward Alric, the king whispered in a none-too-quiet voice. “The man has something in his book for every occasion.”

  And Lambert was listening to it, Alric marveled. Granted, it was not the whole acceptance required by the Christian God, but just to get the king to listen was a major step. Alric waited, head bowed from an ingrained respect regardless of his belief. A few awkwardly followed his example. Lambert was not one of them. He looked at the priest in anticipation, as if he’d presented the cleric with a test and awaited the answer.

  “In the book of Isaiah the Lord says, When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.’ And in the book of Acts, Jesus Himself said of His followers meant to spread the Word of God, that ‘Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me … unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

  Alric glanced around the table through half-lidded eyes. Did these men understand what Scanlan really said? Power certainly appealed to this lot, if nothing else did. They feared weakness more than death itself. And what Scanlan spoke of was a contract, as well constructed as the one the priest had contrived for the wedding. If all went well, it was valid. If not, it would be an excuse for failure.

  But whose failure … yours or God’s?

  If Alric could lay hands on the voice that crept upon him seemingly from nowhere, he’d squash it as he would an insect.

  The hush seemed to intensify as Father Scanlan continued his prayer. “Father, we lean upon Your Word and its truth as You look into our hearts for our earnest confession and belief. These people have not known You long, Lord, and some not at all, but their ears are open to You. They ask that Yours be open to them and their petition for water of the sky and of the living Spirit, that their people might be fed the same. We ask all this in the name of He who sacrificed Himself for us, so no other sacrifice need suffice in His stead. Amen.”

  The scent of a summer meadow ablaze with wildflowers filled the lodge as Deirdre stripped and stepped into the wooden tub of water boiled with Abina’s own selection of dried herbs and flowers. Because Lambert’s guests were being attended to at the bathhouse, where a larger tub was in service, her own bath had been delayed, but she didn’t mind. Deirdre asked Abina to tell the king that she would attend his table later. For now, she would enjoy the luxury of the warm, scented water without hurry, even if her legs were drawn up to her chin in i
ts confinement.

  Besides, given Alric’s mood, she hardly felt like celebrating her upcoming marriage to the man. How could she possibly have pined for his fiendish humor? It would serve him right to squirm alone at the head table after treating her like one of his underlings. It was a fine line that separated Alric from his half brother. Both were beasts. One she had no trouble fending off.

  Alric, however …

  Deirdre furiously worked Abina’s soap into her hair, as though ridding herself of both the snake and the strutting peacock who’d claimed her lips so triumphantly before his men. Had she been able to collect her wits as she had with Ricbert, she’d have at least bitten Alric’s lip.

  Eventually her frustrations succumbed to the water’s restful spell as she rinsed her hair and leaned back against the tub, using one of the raised handles as a neck rest. Too soon for her liking, the water became uncomfortably cool, so Deirdre hastily dried off and pulled on a thin, embroidered undershift of fine linen.

  Two more days and she’d leave Abina’s cozy little abode and cheerful company to share Alric’s lodge. Tingles of anxiety and excitement raised the gooseflesh on her skin at the thought. Though theirs was not to be an intimate relationship, just being near Alric plunged her into a tizzy of mixed feelings. While he was away, she’d blindly followed her instincts—God’s direction—with the king and the people of Galstead. But with Alric, logic fled, and she became as moon addled as her father with her stepmother.

  Deirdre’s hand stopped the hairbrush in midstroke. Heaven forbid, was that what was wrong with her?

  “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  A poke with a hayfork wouldn’t have brought Deirdre to her feet any faster than the male voice behind her. She turned to face the very source of her madness. “You … well … I …” There was not a single coherent thought to emerge from the quagmire of her brain.

  “The door was … uh …” Alric pulled his sweeping gaze away from her and pointed to the door. “Ajar,” he said triumphantly.

  “Moonlight passion fades in the light of the sun.” Deirdre’s words to Orna on the deck of the Mell flashed back to her.