Irish Lady

by Jeanette Baker

  I felt Kieran’s soft kiss on my cheek. “Good night, my love.”

  “Good night, Kieran.”

  Seven

  Nuala O’Donnell, Tyrone, 1588

  We were wed by the parish priest. There was no time for the cardinal to make the journey from Armagh to Tyrone. The day was long. Wine and ale and fiery spirits that burned a path to the belly flowed freely within the castle walls. By night, men and women alike lay on the rushes, stretched out among the dogs in drunken stupors.

  I had eaten and drunk very little, my concentration centered on the man who was now my husband. He sat by my side at the banquet table, sharing my trencher, eating a bit more than I but drinking little. It pleased me that he had little appetite for spirits. It was nearly time to retire, and a strange breathlessness knotted my stomach. Perhaps I was just the tiniest bit afraid.

  From across the room my mother signaled and left the room. I rose and the hall resounded with applause. Rory stood and slipped his arm about my waist. Kieran lifted my train and screamed at me to run. Out the door I ran and down the long hallway, followed by a dozen shouting women and half the men in the banquet hall, up the stairs to the landing and then up again, down another hall to the room that was to be my bridal suite. My mother slammed and bolted the door behind Kieran and me. We leaned, panting, against the door.

  “Make haste,” my mother said, loosening the ties at my neck and lifting the wedding gown over my head. I would have lifted off the shift, but she shook her head and folded back the bedclothes to remove the warming pans. “There is no need. Wait for your husband in here.”

  I climbed into the high, curtain-shrouded bed and leaned back against the pillows. The sheets were warm. Candles of the finest wax flickered on small tables, and a flask of wine with two goblets waited on a chest at the foot of the bed. A fire burned cheerily in the brick hearth, and the smell of sandalwood perfumed the air. I shivered with anticipation. Tonight I would learn what it meant to be a woman.

  Laughter and ribaldry sounded from the hall and someone pounded loudly at the door. With a quick kiss on both cheeks, Mother and Kieran lifted the bolt and stepped out, then my husband stepped inside. I sat up and watched as he closed the door and walked across the room to the bed.

  “Hello,” he said softly, touching my cheek with the back of his hand.

  I could feel the tickle of fine hair that grew from his skin. “Hello,” I answered.

  Turning, he lifted the flask and poured two glasses of wine. Drinking his own in a single gulp, he offered the other to me. I shook my head, and he drank mine as well. First he removed his shoes and then his tunic. My throat went dry. I had never seen a naked man before, but even I knew this one was extraordinarily well formed. He blew out the candles. After a long moment I felt one side of the bed give and then I felt his body, naked as the day he was born, warm against my own. I could scarcely breathe, so great was my excitement. I wanted to touch him but did not, fearing he would think me immodest.

  His lips were warm against my forehead, my cheeks, my neck, and uncovered shoulders. When at last they settled on my mouth, I couldn’t help the moan that came from deep inside my throat and my arms reached out to pull him closer.

  I know not what I did to displease him but the instant I melted against him and my body felt as one with his, I heard his strangled cry and felt strong hands push me away from his warmth to the cold side of the bed. His breathing was rapid and shallow, as if he had run a great distance. So great was my shame that even tears eluded me. Hours later, when I was sure he slept, I closed my burning eyes until morning.

  Even before I was fully conscious, I felt his eyes upon me. Somewhere in the night his body had once again moved close to mine. I could no more stop the red from staining my throat and cheeks than I could stop the sun from shining down on County Tyrone. It appeared that Kieran was wrong, and my doubts had been well founded. Red hair and green eyes did not make up for those other womanly traits I so obviously lacked.

  The night had been a long one. I had never slept beside a man before and wondered if they all tossed and turned, grumbling and cursing the night through as Rory had.

  Finally I managed to sleep for a few brief hours but woke again when I felt his eyes upon me. I felt the color rise in my face even before I opened my eyes. He was awake, staring at me, and I was very conscious of his body pressed against mine.

  “Was your sleep pleasant?” he asked.

  “It was,” I lied. “And yours?”

  “I slept well.”

  It occurred to me to ask why he lied when I remembered that I had as well. “When do we leave for Tirconnaill?” I asked instead.

  He leaned close to me and breathed deeply. “After Mass. Your hair smells like sunlight.”

  I pushed the red weight of it away from my face and sat up. “Tell me again of your family.”

  He pulled me against his chest and settled back against the pillows. “There is only my father at Dun na Ghal. His health is poor and he rarely leaves his chambers.” My hand moved across his bare chest. He kissed the top of my head and then lifted my chin and kissed my mouth, pulling away quickly. “You tempt me to take more than I should, lass.”

  I summoned my courage and asked the question that burned in my head. “Are all wedding nights like ours?”

  He reddened. “Nay.”

  “How are they different?”

  He muttered something under his breath.

  “Rory? Have you heard me?”

  “By the beard of Christ! Where has your mother been? I cannot speak of such matters to a girl who is not yet a woman.”

  “I cannot see how what happens on our wedding night concerns my mother. You are my husband, Rory. Who better than you to tell me?”

  He was silent for a long time. I could feel the demons of logic and pride warring within him. Finally he cleared his throat. “A wedding night is when a husband takes his wife’s maidenhood,” he said stiffly. “Their bodies become one.” He shifted me in his arms to better see my face. “Do you know what I speak of, Nuala? Surely you have seen animals.”

  I nodded and saw that the color had faded from his cheeks.

  “Words do not come easily to me,” he confessed.

  I sat up and looked directly at him. “Do you find me distasteful, Rory O’Donnell?”

  His eyebrows flew together. “Nay, lass. Why would you ask such a question?”

  “Why did you not take my maidenhood?”

  There was nothing wrong with my understanding. Written in the twin flames of his eyes was regret.

  Slowly, carefully, as if I were made of delicate porcelain, he reached out to trace my brows, the thin bridge of my nose, my lips, and the sharp lines of my cheeks and chin.

  “The Blessed Virgin herself could not have been lovelier than you are to me, Nuala,” he whispered. “’Tis not for lack of wanting that I keep myself from you.”

  “Then why—”

  His fingers brushed across my mouth. “You are too young for bearing. Too many are wed one year and dead the next. I would have it go differently for you.”

  A warm glow spread through my breast. “Truly, Rory? Is that your reason?”

  He laughed and pulled me close. “Truly, Nuala.”

  I leaned into his lips. After all, there was no harm in kissing.

  ***

  Meghann woke to the tapping of a tree branch against the windowpane. She had never dreamed this way before, so clearly and in chronological segments, as if she were viewing a film. She turned toward Michael and found him staring at her. Disconcerted, she behaved as if it were perfectly natural to wake and find a man’s eyes upon her. “Have you been awake long?”

  “No.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “No.”

  She set the book on the table beside her and folded her hands in her lap. “I’d like to ask you some questions, Michael.”

  He reached over and picked up the history book. “Were y’ looking for something in
particular?”

  She hadn’t intended to tell him. The words just popped out. “I wanted some information on Nuala O’Donnell.”

  He smiled and ran his thin, long-fingered hands tenderly over the book cover. “Nuala, lady of legend.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Nuala O’Donnell is an Irish legend. She kept Ulster out of English hands for fourteen years, long after everyone else had surrendered t’ Elizabeth Tudor.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “After the Battle of Kinsale and the importation of Protestants into the North, she and her husband escaped t’ Italy. I believe she died there.”

  “Did she live in Donegal?”

  “Aye. She was Rory O’Donnell’s countess, and he was the last Catholic earl of Tirconnaill.”

  “Was the marriage a happy one?”

  Michael shrugged. “Most noble marriages of the time were political matches. There is no evidence t’ suggest that theirs was different.”

  He grinned and Meghann felt the stirring deep within her. It came whenever Michael unleashed the charm that had once been her undoing.

  “They had nine children,” he said. “I suppose they felt some affection for each other.”

  Meghann was instantly suspicious. “Are you making this up?”

  “Not a bit of it.”

  She looked skeptical. “It’s strange the way you know so much about whatever it is I ask about.”

  He looked surprised. “I told you. I know Irish history.”

  “Your education was certainly better than mine,” she observed thoughtfully. “We learned next to nothing about Ireland.”

  “I didn’t learn it in school, Meggie. All Irish prisoners of war learn their history in prison. It’s what we do t’ pass the time. While the Brits are learning about computers or electronics, we’re learning the stories of our people along with a healthy dose of political science. It’s what keeps us goin’. It’s why they won’t let us on their networks. The BBC knows that we can debate our cause with the best English minds and win.”

  Meghann wrinkled her brow. “When I saw you in the Maze you were isolated. How could you possibly conduct classes?”

  “Through the walls,” he said deliberately. “We shout the words through the pipes and memorize them.”

  These men were her countrymen. Men like her father, her grandfather, and her brothers. Meghann didn’t know why she felt the sudden, overwhelming surge of pride flare up inside her chest or why the tears burned beneath her eyelids. She only knew she had to turn away, change the subject, leave the room, something, anything, so that he wouldn’t see just how deeply his words had affected her. “Tell me about Nuala O’Donnell,” she said, wiping her eyes before she turned back to face him.

  Michael was a born storyteller. It was so much a part of him that Meghann wondered how she could have forgotten. The timber of his voice was wonderful, clear and beautifully pitched, and he knew just how to expand a moment. She could have listened to him forever, forgetting London, her work, her life, the reason why they were there, the two of them, in this isolated cabin on the edge of the Irish Sea with its lovely wood floors and tasteful pictures of shorelines and seabirds, of men with cable-knit sweaters and sunburned faces running with Irish rain.

  He began slowly, warming to his subject just as the last rays of waning light left the darkening sky. Firelight played on his face, highlighting the bones, shadowing the hollows beneath, picking out the length of his chiseled nose, the squared-off substantial chin, the mobile, beautifully formed mouth from which the words, always the words, intense and lyrical, rose up and poured out, sliding off his tongue as if there were a deep wellspring somewhere within him and a dam had broken.

  “Legend says she was the light of Tyrone until Rory O’Donnell made her his wife and brought her home to Donegal. She kept the faith even when Niall Garv, her husband’s cousin, held her captive in her own castle. She starved along with her people when the blight of sixteen hundred destroyed the potatoes. And she was the reason the English queen found no toehold in the north of Ireland.”

  Meghann closed her eyes and gave herself up to the magical quality of his story and the images his words evoked. She felt heat from the fire and mist on her cheeks, and behind her eyelids colors leaped and danced and settled until everything was once again completely clear.

  *

  Nuala O’Donnell, Tirconnaill, 1589

  At first glimpse, Tirconnaill seemed much the same as Tyrone, wilder perhaps and a bit more primitive, but not so different that one would think longingly of home. I was not at all homesick. There was too much to do.

  Dun Na Ghal Castle stood, a stark sentinel, gray and forbidding, in its place on the River Eske. Rain seeped through the mortar and collected in muddy pools beneath the rushes. Walls wept with the wet, and rats scurried in dark corners. The only warmth to be found was on the top floor, where everyone, nobles, soldiers, and servants, slept on flea-ridden rushes before enormous fires. In truth it was a somber place and would take more than a cursory scrubbing. I forgot about Rory and went about the task of setting it right.

  ’Twas nearly a year before I could look around with pride at whitewashed walls and sweetly scented rushes covering the Great Hall floor. Finally the rooms were dry, woven tapestries kept out the drafts and jewel-bright carpets, pleasing to eyes hungry for color, warmed cold feet. Plate and silver filled the pantry, bedchambers were furnished, and the larder well stocked.

  When the domestic work was done, I took a moment’s breath to look up from my chores and saw the frightening chain of events that had transpired in Tirconnaill, events that would set Rory and me on a journey that could end in only one way.

  I was the countess of Tirconnaill, a married woman bound to Rory O’Donnell by ties that could be severed only by God. It never occurred to me that Rory would take our vows less seriously than. I. He was a wonderful companion and very discreet. I had just passed my fifteenth year when I learned that marriage meant something different for him than it did for me.

  When Siobhan, with her apple cheeks and full curves, brushed against my husband and offered him her lips, and when he took them as if it were the most natural thing in the world and when his hands cupped the cheeks of her voluptuous backside, I knew what it was to feel the bloodlust rise within me. My fingers itched to claw her eyes and mark her cheeks, and surely if I’d been skilled at the dirk, Rory O’Donnell would no longer be a man.

  But I was my mother’s daughter and did none of those things. Instead, I looked away and pretended not to see what he did with Siobhan, with Jane, with Mary and Fiona and countless others who lived under his protection and mine in that unholy castle by the River Eske. I suffered my humiliation in silence until the day a messenger came from Tyrone, bearing gifts from my mother and a note from my father.

  Send your husband with your blessing, little Nuala. Ireland has need of its warriors. Pray that your womb be fertile lest Tirconnaill be left without an heir.

  It was then that I realized how long Rory and I had played at this game and what I must do to end it, or the heir to Tirconnaill would be no son of mine. The gypsy woman helped me, as I had helped her when her children had no bread. She told me how to please, where to touch with lips and tongue and slow, seeking fingers. I planned it well, wine, fresh sheets, fragrant candles, perfume. I would be willing, seductive, mature, never revealing what I knew of the women who had shared my husband’s bed and the ache it brought to my heart.

  All would have gone as it should if Rory had come at his usual time, but he was very late. He smelled of spirits and women and the rage I’d cultivated was something he’d never seen before.

  “Good night, Nuala,” he said.

  “Is it?” My voice sounded odd even to my own ears but such was Rory’s bout with the drink that I wondered if he would notice.

  “Are you well, my love?”

  “Quite well.”

  He stepped backward and tripped over a footstool. Stru
ggling to regain his footing, he stood and swayed on his feet. “Since you are well, I’ll leave you to sleep,” he said.

  “Sleep?” I walked across the room and stood before him, hands on my hips. “You expect me to sleep while my husband turns from me and ruts with half my household?”

  I felt very small and alone standing there in my white sleeping gown, spewing venomous accusations as if I were an angel condemning Lucifer to a fiery hell. I wondered what he would say to defend himself.

  “Do you deny it?” I demanded.

  His smile was tender. “Surely not half the household, Nuala.”

  “Do not jest, Rory. An unfaithful husband is a sin.”

  My cheeks were cold and I felt my lower lip tremble. I looked down at the floor. When would he see that it was more than anger that moved me? I was hurt, deeply hurt. For what had Rory made his wild impetuous ride across the moors to claim me as his bride?

  I had done much for Tirconnaill in one short year. Dun Na Ghal was no longer a fortress. It was a palace fit for an earl, with candles of the finest wax, food set for a king’s table, an abbey where daily mass was offered, and a library where books in four languages could be read. Every peasant who worked the fields had woolen blankets and meat three times a week. I knew when a tenant needed a new roof, when to administer justice between feuding neighbors, which fields should be tilled and which should be left fallow. For the first time, disease had passed us over and no infants were buried in the castle graveyard.

  The peasants called me a miracle, beloved to all in Dun Na Ghal, from the lowliest serf to Rory’s father, the O’Donnell himself. They said I was goodness and beauty and wisdom and yet I was fifteen years old, a married woman and still a maiden.

  He reached for my hands. “I am not your husband yet, Nuala, and therefore I have not been unfaithful.”