Chapter Nine

“Alors,” Arnaud interrupted, “there will be enough time for this later, when we’re in Kilcolgan and safe from the English, eh?”

Maura sat up with a start. Then, realizing exactly what she was sitting on, she scrambled to her feet. Colin took his time rising, smiling at her with a look that made her blood roar in her ears. Knowing laughter came from behind them, where the troupe watched.

She should know better by now. A man like Colin would eat her up in one swallow and then be looking for another course by the break of day, but as she turned back to the road she couldn’t lie. She did not regret kissing him like that.

“What does Arnaud mean," she stuttered, brushing the dirt of her tunic to avoid Colin's eye, "about being safe from the English in Kilcolgan?"

"The English have a custom." Humor lingered in his voice. "All comers to their fairs are given protection from arrest for previously committed crimes."

"Crimes, yes." She avoided Matilla's amused eye as she passed by. "It's lucky that you’re here then, living and breathing, after what you did. What were you thinking, wearing a bard’s robes and putting a curse on an Irishman who was sitting in the room?”

“That Irishman and I have an old grievance.”

“Did he cheat you out of your wagers in a fight? Steal the heart of a woman you had your mind set on?”

His smile flickered. “Jealousy becomes you, though there be no reason for it, a stóirín.”

My treasure. She pretended not to hear him. She’d never been anyone’s only treasure.

“Some time ago,” he said, “O’Kelly chose the English over the Irish for his own profit. He needed to be reminded that some people haven’t forgotten what he’s done.”

Maura knew little of the fighting between the Irish and the English except that it seemed to be going on all the time. “O’Kelly isn’t the only Irishman who’s in league with the English.”

“He’s the one that mattered to me, and my family.”

“So now you tell me you have a family who holds grievances with Irish chieftains.”

“Having a family,” he said, “comes with obligations. Something you might measure against the weight of that little ring of yours.”

She dropped her gaze to her ring, then hid it in the folds of her tunic. Back in Tuam, he’d spoken to her gently about her foolish hunt for her mother, more gently than the Abbess ever did, more honestly than the Abbess, too. Still, she didn't like to be reminded of her ignorance.

So she changed the subject. “Do you realize how you had everyone worried? I’d thought for sure that O’Kelly had run you through with his sword and left you bleeding to death in the rushes.”

“The only injury I suffered,” he said, patting his mouth with the back of his hand, “was a bruised lip.”

“I think you enjoy fighting.” She remembered his bloody grin and the light in his eye whenever an opponent approached. “Sometimes I think you’ve got your mind set on getting yourself killed.”

“Would you miss me, if I did?”

Yes.

During the few days he was away she’d missed him sorely. He confused her with his kisses and then his coldness, his whispered words and then the way he set her aside. Had any man come to the kitchen doors of the convent acting like this, she would have had nothing to do with him. She’d have dismissed him and forgotten him the minute his shadow slipped away from the door.

But she was changing in ways she didn’t understand. She felt it in the marrow of her bones. She used to mark the roll of her days by the clang of church bells, and now she hadn’t been to Mass in weeks. Back in the convent, she’d rarely walked farther than the hundred yards to the village and back, and now she measured her days by how many miles they’d put behind them. She’d been so afraid of all the uncertainties of the world when she first considered this path. She thought she’d miss the sound of stew bubbling in the pot over the hearth fire, or the scent of gravy simmering. She’d thought she’d always be cold on the roads without the warmth radiating from the stones, or she’d be hungry so far from a well-stocked larder. The truth was the exercise brought her to the pot with an edge to her appetite that made any plain roadside soup taste like a meal fit for kings. Every road brought new anticipation of what grand sight might appear around the bend.

But the changes in her went far, far deeper. On Sundays, she used to collect a list of her sins to be ready for confession—sins like anger at Sister Siobhan for forgetting to water the garden, vanity and covetousness for yearning for Lady Sabine’s comb, lapses in ritual like forgetting evening prayers after a long day cooking for Easter. How petty those immoralities seemed now that she’d abandoned the sisters, only to sing in thin silks in an alehouse and willingly sit spread-eagle atop a minstrel man for the sake of a desperate, wonderful, delicious kiss.

And yet, none of this felt like depravity. Deep in her heart she knew that something wonderful could happen if she gave herself to Colin. Something the nuns would call sinful, dangerous to her body and her soul. All her life she’d spent within smoke-tinged walls, safe from the rain and cold, taught the ways of the world from the pages of a Bible, only to realize that those ways were more wondrous and more complicated than she'd ever imagined.

Perhaps the larger sin was to hide oneself in ignorance, comfort, and safety rather than dare to live.

The thought stayed in her mind as Padraig piped them all toward Kilcolgan. The town itself was no more than a cluster of thatch-roofed houses lorded over by a stone castle. They traveled past it, following the river beyond a small chapel until they reached a makeshift alehouse close to the inlet shore. The people inside rose and shouted and clapped their hands at the sight of their approach. While Arnaud talked terms with the owner of the alehouse, she sat on a bench with the wind flapping the tarpaulin above her, putting Nutmeg through his paces for the children who’d gathered at the sight of him. The reddened rays of the sun cast the thatch overhang into shades of amber and gold as the sun sank like the wink of a great eye. Soon peat fires flared and darkness cast its blue-black hand upon the alehouse.

They sat to a dinner of flaky cod and a plate of something buttery and salty from the depths of the sea, all washed down with honest ale that lit her belly with a glow. That queer warmth intensified as the dinner ended and Padraig set to his pipe, playing the sort of music that made a woman’s toes tap upon the ground and her fingers rap against her knees and her heart beat a little faster.

Maura urged a nervous Nutmeg back into his basket, and then searched for a sturdy peg on which to hang the basket for the night. Around her, the fishermen clapped, waiting for their turn to whirl with Matilda and the twins, their feet stomping upon the packed-earth floor, the wind snapping the tarpaulin above them to the beat of the tabor, and farther beyond, the tide rushing up the inlet to wash the muddy shore. Padraig’s pipe wailed through her. Maguire punctuated the music with his hoots and howls, the fishermen with the sounds of shouted Irish, and everyone pounded the beat with their feet.

Her gaze found Colin’s as if drawn by a force beyond her own will. He wove through the dancers to face her, his hair wild, his eyes gleaming with all the promises of the world. He showered her with a bouquet of primroses and cowslips, while around them the fishermen’s leathery faces crinkled into knowing folds.

He held out his hand.

The devil will tempt you, Maura remembered the Abbess saying. Out in the world, the devil will tempt you with music and mead and mirth, he’ll tempt you into a dance, and that’s the first step toward sin.

Maura put her hand in Colin’s. In her mind she saw those fires that lit the countryside during harvest time, when the day-laborers pitched camp just outside the convent fields. In her mind she heard their music, too. Somehow, at the end of the day, they always found the energy to dance with the girls of the kitchen—the girls the Abbess hired to help during those busy months, those girls who laughed and spun every morning into the kitchens red-cheeked with excitement, their feet tapping to the music still, their voices and their eyes full of secrets.

Colin drew her into the dance and she stopped making excuses for what every bone in her body ached to do. They danced in circles, changing partners and twirling in giddy abandon with hooked arms and flying feet. Wasn’t it strange to have strangers touch her and not want to slap their hands away, for surely the laughter seemed honest enough.

It was always Colin she came back to. With the tug of his fingers, she moved with him, she moved against him, she moved to his command. This was nothing like the prancing she’d sometimes dared to do around the trestle table of the kitchen as she cleared up the remnants of the night’s dinner and made partners of the spoons and the tongs, of the knives and the ham bones.

As the excitement flowed through her, she began to understand what drew the women into the fields in the moonlight. She felt as buoyant as if she skipped upon water. She smiled back at the smiles in the shining faces around her. What a motley group of fishermen and alehouse wives and black-handed tanners. All men and women, no more, no less, caught in the bright joy of the moment.

Ah, there he was again, on the next change of partner—reaching out for her—and then she felt the brush of his palm against her waist, and the rough rasp of his hand as he closed it over hers. His face was only a breath away from her own, she could smell the hazel-mead he’d been drinking. The room whirled around them as he drew her about—so strong, so sure—as if her feet never brushed the ground. Her breath came fast through her lips and the heat of the fire singed her as she passed close. Above the sky twirled, the heavens winking down upon them. Laughter bubbled up inside her and filled her head with dizziness. She couldn’t stop—she wouldn’t stop—Heaven help her, she never wanted to stop dancing.

Time escaped her, or perhaps they danced in the crease of it. It was like Beltane, when the old stories said the season of darkness came to an end and the season of light commenced. But in the deep night, after one ended but before the other began, there was said to be a crack in time, a moment when this world and the other merged and the creatures of the Otherworld slipped between the veils and danced on earthly soil. Gazing around at these minstrels with their painted faces and bright silks, with their laughter and their music, it was not too far a stretch to think she’d been captured. Maybe in the morning she’d wake up alone on a knoll by the side of the road with only the throb of strange liquors in her head and wondrous fading memories of music too beautiful to bear.

So when Colin tugged her hand, she followed him without resistance out of the circle of revelers. They closed ranks behind them without a break in the rhythm. With her tunic gripped in her free hand, she followed him down to the river’s edge where the stronger music was the wash of the tide rising.

He tugged her toward a cluster of overturned boats. Then he cradled her head. There was his face, that handsome bristled face hovering above hers. There was that smiling mouth, descending upon hers.

She welcomed his kiss without hesitation.

His mouth was firm, expert, urging her to part her lips. She felt the brush of his tongue against her own. The shock took her by surprise and she pulled back so she could catch her breath. But he kissed her again, tilting her head with gentle hands, teaching her how to strengthen that frisson of pleasure skittering up her spine as his kisses deepened.

She was vaguely aware that they were still moving against each other, as if they still danced around the fire, and suddenly she felt the lip of a cart behind her, digging into her backside. He pressed her onto the bed of the cart. Through half-closed eyes, beyond the sweep of his dark hair, she saw the streak of the stars across the sky as the world tilted and she lay flat. He climbed in beside her, shuffling her farther in until she felt the full length of his body pressing, ever more urgently, against her.

She kissed him as the moonlight bathed their shoulders. The night wind brushed her face. She played with his tongue as Padraig’s pipe wailed in the alehouse beyond, as Matilda’s voice rose in song. They kissed as the buckle of his belt snagged on her leather girdle, tangling them close.

Short, eager kisses. He pulled away from her and she couldn’t help herself. She pressed her forehead against his as something changed inside her—like the sudden rising of dough slapped into the grease, burning and expanding at the same time. Her heart raced, but no longer from the breathless whirl of the dance.

She thought, Don’t speak. Don’t speak.

His hand slipped under the hollow of her back. His lips captured the lobe of her ear, his tongue traced a trail down her jaw, and the wind cooled the place where his lips had been. He nudged her closer so her breasts flattened against his chest. Liquid sensation flowed through her body and seemed to pool between her legs.

He slipped his hand over her buttock and she jerked in surprise as his fingers trailed in the cleft between. He kept going until he gripped her thigh and nudged it to spread her legs apart. Only when she felt the rasp of his woolen hose against the tender inside of her thighs did she realize that he’d pulled up her kirtle. She spread her knees wider for him. She didn’t like the hollow feeling growing inside her and she sensed he could fill it.

She was not ignorant of what lay between a man’s legs. Watching the day-laborers wander to a tree to pass water, she knew a man had a part different from a woman, a long part like a thick rope, so Sabine had once told her, whispering answers to her curious questions. She knew from the talk of the kitchen girls that the man’s part grew long and hard, and men liked to press that part inside a woman.

Now Colin yanked and tugged and she moved her bottom until her skirts were wadded somewhere around her hips. She felt the breath of the night air on her bare thighs and even higher, where the wind had never touched. He rolled atop her and she felt him, the man part of him, hard and hot and long just like the girls had confessed. She pressed against it, a reflex she hadn’t expected.

It felt good to feel him there.

It felt right.

She blinked open her eyes to meet his gaze and saw a man she didn’t recognize. This was not the laughing Colin she knew, not this stone-faced man with the flicker of a muscle in his cheek—surely, this was not the same man who had laughed and danced with her only moments before. This wide-shouldered creature whose muscles flexed beneath her hands stared down at her with a look in his eyes she could not fathom.

Maybe she didn’t look like the woman he knew, either. She felt like a stranger in her own tingling skin. Her cheeks felt red-hot, her lips swollen from kisses, her breasts tightening almost to the point of pain, made tighter as he suddenly passed his fingers across them, then focused on one nub, rubbing it through the wool.

“Maura,” he said, his voice a rasp in his throat. “You could kill a man with wanting.”

She grasped his head. “Don’t fill the night with words.”

She curled her fingers into that hair soft enough to strike envy in any girl’s heart. She moved her own hips against his body in a way she thought would put the twin’s acrobatics to shame. With a low groan, he tugged her skirts until they slipped out from under her. The wooden slats of the cart felt rough upon her backside—at least until he slipped his fingers into the cleft between her legs.

She made a noise in her throat she didn’t recognize. Her own body bore down upon that invading hand. She threw her head back at the sensation of his touch. One of his fingers slipped inside her and she started to shake. He probed and she felt a stretch, a pressure.

He went still.

She blinked out of her blindness and whispered, “Colin.”

His face was unreadable in the shadows, the stars bright beyond the silhouette of his body. He moved his fingers again, probing in that magic way, and he muttered something, words she could not hear, because suddenly she couldn’t think anymore.

She wanted.

She slipped her hands beneath his tunic, searching for the ties that held up his hose. Her fingers quivered against his flat abdomen, but she couldn’t seem to find those ties. She felt his finger slip out of her and she whispered, “no no no,” until he started stroking her, short little strokes at the top of her cleft. Something inside her tightened to unbearable tautness with each stroke of his wet fingers—where are those ties—and then she gave up with the ties and grasped his shoulders because with his stroking she felt as if she were about to fall somehow, coming closer with each slick stroke, and then she sank her fingernails into him as a sensation swelled, rising, rising, rising—

Oh.

OH.