Chapter Sixteen

The Caddell household ran on a schedule as rigid as the bells of the convent of Killoughy. Precisely at Sext, Maura pattered across the rushes of the main hall in the donjon to take her customary place next to Lord Richard—her twin brother. In the weeks that she’d been here, she’d long discovered that to be late for the midday meal was a sin almost as egregious as that of helping harvest carrots with the kitchen servants in the castle garden.

She heard the whispering as she crossed the hall. Wherever she walked, whatever she did, that buzzing always followed her. Look at the way she swings her hips. Look at her, dressed up in Lady Elizabeth’s tunics, fit to split them at the seams. Look at her walking around as though she’s queen of the place, as proud as a cock—and she has had enough of them, I wager.

Her cheeks burned by the time she sidled into her place. Fortunately, Lord William strode in through the front door and put an end to the muttering. A knight of advanced years walked by his side. She recognized Sir Maurice, one of Lord William’s vassals, who was introduced to her in the earlier days. Lord William gestured Sir Maurice to the place beside him, then he seated himself in the high-backed chair at the head of the table. He nodded to his son, his daughters, and his vassals and they all sat down too.

Lord William’s gaze rested upon her a moment longer, as it always did, as he eyed every detail of her hair and dress. She could tell by the slight incline of his head that he approved of the blue tunic she’d labored over these past days, though she thought she caught a hint of a frown when his gaze settled upon the embroidery stitched around the neckline. For in the solitude of her room, with Nutmeg dozing on her shoulder, she had found herself stitching with fine golden thread the swirls and whirls of ancient Celtic patterns, the rounds of Celtic crosses, as if by needling the designs into her clothing she could somehow convince herself she was still Irish-born.

Rebellion spurted through her. She’d spent a lifetime as a kitchen maid in a convent more Irish than English. She couldn’t instantly turn into one of his other daughters, with their lisping speech and wasteful ways and idle days, who flirted with the castle vassals with a skill that would put Matilda and the twins to shame. She’d approached those half-sisters several times, yearning to get to know them better, but they’d glared at her, mute, as if she were still wearing minstrel bells and painting her cheeks red.

For the hundredth time, she wondered what had happened to the troupe. The very morning after the revelation, she’d slipped off to the stables to seek Colin, Arnaud, Matilda—anyone—but found the place deserted but for Nutmeg’s basket, hanging on a post, and her quivering pet hiding in the rafters. Maura couldn’t have been in the stables more than a few minutes before a flustered servant girl barreled in, breathless. Maura asked the girl what had happened to the minstrels, and the girl told her they’d left during the night. When Maura asked her where, how, why, the servant shut her mouth so tight that a blacksmith with pliers couldn’t pull the truth from her.

Not for the first time, she wondered with a pang if the twins were dancing down some road again while Padraig piped their way to yet another fair.

Her reverie was interrupted when a fleet of servants flooded in with the first course. They slipped on the table a flock of roasted partridges and quails seasoned with rosemary, and a school of carp swimming in a sauce tart with a spice she’d never tasted before. She picked at the sauce-drenched meat upon the trencher bread she shared with Richard. She lifted a morsel to her lips and the thickness of the sauce clung to her teeth, her tongue, her throat. It was all too rich, but she didn’t dare say anything. The last time she mentioned that the cook of this house had a heavy hand with the spices—an expensive habit, she knew, having once been in charge of the same—she’d received nothing but a frown of disapproval from Lord William, along with the high-pitched giggling of her younger half-siblings.

Now she contented herself dreaming of wild rabbit roasting over an open fire under the bright blue sky.

“You’re not eating enough, dear sister.”

She glanced up at Richard with a start. He hadn’t spoken a word to her since that night she’d been discovered. Her so-called twin spent every meal sitting ramrod-straight by her side, grinding his jaw.

She said, “I’m not used to such rich fare.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Richard nudged a piece of partridge breast to her side of the trencher bread. “Still, you should eat while you can. Riches like this may disappear as quickly as they came.”

Maura took the meat but not the bait. He, like his siblings, held no faith in Lord William’s story of her birth. The more she looked at the young man who was her twin, the more she doubted as well. In coloring, she supposed there was a resemblance. They were both fair-skinned and had light brown hair. But Richard’s eyes were a muddy brown, like a churned-up springtime river, and his face far more angular than her own.

“Eat, Maura.” He did something strange with her name, rolling over the ‘r’ in a way that hinted of insolence. “I beseech you.”

She glanced down at the trencher bread and saw that he poked with the end of his knife a dead beetle. His lips curled in a cat’s smile as he pointedly lifted their shared wineglass to his lips and drank it to the dregs.

“Richard, you surprise me,” she said, keeping her voice neutral so as not to attract any attention. “A man grown, and yet you’re still playing with beetles. What shall I find next? A frog in my stockings? Mice set loose upon my bed?”

“I wager your bed is crowded enough without the mice.”

“And yours as barren and empty as last year’s wine barrel,” she countered. “Why is that, Richard? Are you too busy playing with your stick-boats upon the moat?”

Richard’s fair face flushed. “My bed is full enough, and with better women than you.”

“Kitchen maids and laundresses, I hear.”

“Better kitchen maids and laundresses,” he said, with a hiss in his voice, “than a common whore plucked from the road.”

“Shall I tell our father what you just called me?” She ignored the fury tightening her throat. “Here, with so many ears listening?”

“You can tell my father,” he said, “whatever you’d like. Tonight, when he fucks you again.”

She went very still. A ringing began in her ears. She stared at Richard through a thickening red haze, and in the back of her mind she began to piece together some of the things she had noticed. Her stepmother Lady Isabelle’s coolness, for one. The lady refused to even look at Maura when she passed her in the hall. Then she remembered the whispers in the garden about Lord William’s mistress, a mistress that she just began to realize everyone in this room believed was her.

She spoke without thinking. “Do you want to know what the kitchen girls say about you, dear Richard? They say, quick, quick, Richard is quick, lean right over and you hardly feel the prick—”

“Quiet your filthy tongue!”

Richard shot up out of his seat. She leaned away and summoned false tears with such ease that she found herself ruing her decision not to join Maguire and Matilda in the minstrel plays.

“Richard?” Lord William said into the tense silence. “Is something amiss?”

Maura pressed her hand against her chest and watched the shift of Richard’s jaw as he debated whether to say anything. Whatever Richard said, she was sure she would feel the full of Lord William’s irritation when he came to her room to list her failings anew. But for the moment, seeing Richard squirm in indecision was worth her act of petty vengeance.

The Mudman would have been so proud.

“Forgive me, Father.” Richard flexed white-knuckled hands as he settled back on the bench. “Nothing of import, just a bit of a … sibling argument.”

“As my eldest son,” Lord William said, “I would think your attention would be on this side of the table, where there is a discussion of import.”

“Yes, Father.”

“We will be sending some men into Lord Maurice’s lands. He is having trouble again with the MacEgans.”

She tightened her grip on the silver knife so it wouldn’t fall from her hand and clatter upon the table.

“There’s an Irishman recently arrived in the area,” Sir Maurice said, as he hiked an elbow upon the table. “He claims he’s the son of Fergus MacEgan.”

The world receded but for the echo of that name in her mind.

“He’s the youngest son.” Lord William chewed and swallowed a hunk of quail. “We assumed he’d gone into hiding because we haven’t seen him in a decade. I remember that he spent most of his youth training to be one of those Irish bards.”

“You mean an Irish spy.” Sir Maurice raised hairy brows so upswept Maura was sure he’d combed them that way. “Well, this son looks for all the devil like his father, I’ve been told. All the scattered MacEgans have rallied under his banner.”

“Ah, my dear friend.” Lord William thudded his knife down and grasped the metal of his wine cup. “When I received your message, I feared that there was more to this visit than a renewal of an old friendship.”

“I meant not to salt your meat with such bad spice, nor spoil good company with the ghost of troubles past.” Maurice glanced down the table, his gaze settling for a moment upon hers. “Let us talk of other things.”

“You tell us of the death of kings then wish to talk about horse-breeding.” Lord William’s face crinkled in grim humor. “It’s good to see that years away from war have not changed you.”

Vaguely, Maura was aware of the shuffle of servants around the table, the removal of the platters for the next course. Some part of her mind registered the gamey scent of venison and the sharpness of new cheese, but her attention was elsewhere.

“Frankly, Lord William,” Maurice said, as he sliced himself a sliver of the hard cheese, “if I thought this man—Colin—was no more than another MacEgan determined to lift my cattle, then I’d have seen to the MacEgans as I always have. But this man is different, as I’ve seen to my detriment in the latest skirmish.”

Skirmish?

Richard glanced at her and she realized she had gasped aloud. She dropped her gaze to the mutilated trencher bread and the hunk of cheese ridged with the arc of Richard’s first bite. She must be wary. Her sharp interest in such affairs would take too much explaining, and now her thoughts whirled too wildly for lies.

Maurice continued. “He has rallied more MacEgans than I knew existed in those dreary mountains. And now he’s sunk his teeth into the castle at Fahy.”

Fahy.

Maura remembered the name, remembered Colin talking about it upon the hill outside of Kilcolgan. He was heading in that direction, so he said. There, in Fahy, was the old castle-keep of the MacEgans. She remembered the cow-path that led off the road a mile or so before Shrule, the path in the woods into which Colin disappeared before the minstrel troupe trudged onward to Lord William’s castle.

“That castle at Fahy,” Lord William said, settling back in his chair, “was well defended?”

“It was not as well-defended as it has been in the past, and that blame is on my part,” Lord Maurice said. “But this man took it by sending his warriors out of the darkness like animals, screaming war cries, and pouring over the walls.”

She suddenly had a vision of Colin fighting the blacksmith in the square at Tuam, charging across the cobblestones while blood dripped into his eyes.

“Will it ever end, Maurice?” Lord William clanked his wine chalice back upon the table. “I don’t have the vinegar of those terrible years, when I inherited the barony from my cousin. Nor the same blind foolishness.”

“Father,” Richard said, leaning across the table. “Let me lead the men to defeat these Irishmen.”

Lord William’s gaze drifted sadly over his son’s visage. “See what all this talk of war does? It gets a young man’s blood pumping for adventure, and he not even knowing the wherewithal of it.”

“Father, I am knight enough—”

“Who will become the baron if you fall in battle?” Lord William tilted his head toward his daughters. “This war started because my uncle died with only female heirs. Back then, the MacEgans nearly succeeded in capturing this castle, until I returned from abroad and brought the war against them.”

Maurice added grimly, “If this son of Fergus is anything like Brendan he will fight until the last drop of MacEgan blood has sunk into the earth.”

Lord William cut the meat and lifted a small bite to his lips. “They are still to the north, yes?”

“Yes. A small contingent holds the castle, while the rest are spread across the Partry Mountains.”

“Then we shall ride tomorrow.”

***

Sneaking out of Lord William’s castle was easier than Maura had expected.

She strode across the open courtyard. The summer sun blazed upon her linen coif. She eyed the open gate, and its swarm of guardsmen and traders, tripping an excuse easily upon her tongue. I’m just setting off for a walk in the countryside to gather some acorns for Nutmeg. The lump of her gathered belongings banged her thighs where she’d tied the pack beneath her tunic. Nutmeg’s basket thumped against her back. She could only hope that some curious, sharp-eyed guardsmen didn’t dare to question the daughter of the lord of the place.

She passed through the gate, but she was not yet free. Clusters of tradesmen lived amid the narrow streets, and many might stop her, asking for alms, wondering where Caddell’s daughter traveled alone, unguarded. She held her head high, looking neither left nor right, passing through as if she had a place to be and a time to be there. So she made her way until the town gave way to a stretch of cleared pasture, dotted with cattle.

Nutmeg whirled within his basket, popping up now and again to whisker the air in excitement, daring to skitter onto her shoulder as they left the confines of the city. Still she kept walking until she found the cow-path where she’d last seen Colin. Plunging into the woods, she noted by the moss growing on the oaks the direction in which she set her foot. She knew that Lough Corrib gleamed a two hours’ brisk walk to the west of here. If she followed the shore northwards, she would come to the hills between it and Lough Mask, to the entrance of the Partry Mountains. From there, she suspected there had to be some kind of clear way to the castle in the mountains around Fahy.

With each step deeper into the woods came an excitement, and anticipation, a lightening of body and mind, a surety that what she was doing was right. She started to run, racing through the spindly saplings, racing away from the hateful whispers of the Caddells, from those prison walls of stone, away from the English—even if they were her family. She’d never felt like one of them, certainly hadn’t been welcomed like one of them, and as day after day passed in shame under strangers’ disapproval, she’d come to the inescapable conclusion that even twenty more years of living among the Caddells wouldn’t make their hearts any warmer.

She didn’t want to be Maura Caddell any more than she’d wanted to take the veil, or be the butcher’s wife. She wanted to be her own woman and make her own decisions. Thus she raced like a kestrel set free of the mews, soaring across the earth with only one destination in mind.

Hours later, as she shared bilberries with Nutmeg and worked her way around the banks of Lough Corrib, a man dropped down from the trees with a whoosh and a thud.

Nutmeg screeched and dove into his basket. The skirt of her tunic slipped out of her hands. Bilberries scattered across the forest floor.

“Look what I found, lads.” His lips tightened into a grin beneath his mustache. “A nice bit o’ hind wandering alone in the woods.”

Coarse laughter echoed from the trees. Maura noticed the toe of a boot dangling from a branch.

“You’re far from home and hearth, lass.”

Maura looked at him hard. He didn’t have the look of a common vagabond. This man had painted his face with woad, and the leather stretched across his chest looked tough and hard-boiled. His quiver bristled with arrows.

“You came from an English hearth, by the look of you.” He spoke a thick and unwieldy English. “Have you no tongue? Or will you be having me look for it and use it the way it was meant to be used?”

“You do me harm,” she snapped in Irish, “and The MacEgan himself will see you punished.”

“Will he now?” She could see his teeth now, crooked and well worn. “And what do you know of The MacEgan?”

“He is close, I know he is.”

“And why do you think Brendan MacEgan would give a damn about a lost English wench?”

“I don’t know Brendan.” Her heart tripped in her chest. “It’s Colin I speak of. The minstrel turned warrior.”

The man’s eyes narrowed behind the caking of the woad, and the tenor of his attention shifted.

“I’ve come to see him. I am Maura—” She hesitated, wondering what these men would do if they thought her a Caddell. “I am Maura of Killeigh.”

“Colin,” the man said warily, “knows many women.”

“Be that as it may,” she said, “he won’t take kindly to see me maltreated.”

“You speak an easy Irish for an English wench.”

“I’m not English.”

A lass could choose, couldn’t she? Then she thought of something else. Sweeping open her cloak, she fumbled with the sack tied about her waist.

A sliver of steel chilled her throat.

“Move slowly, lass.” His breath brushed her cheek. “I’ve no liking to be nicked by the slice of a lass’s knife, and even if you were to draw blood, there’s a dozen healthy lads in the trees above who would see you’d regret the act.”

“It’s clear enough to me,” she said, her breath short in her throat, “that I wouldn't get through that thick hide of yours with the sharpest of daggers. If you’d let me be, I’ll give you proof that I know The MacEgan.”

The man backed off, but not so far that she didn’t smell the fumes of him rising up to choke her. She fumbled in her pack until she found what she looked for—a small package wrapped in linen. She unwrapped it to show the circular brooch winking with bits of colored gems.

The man lowered his knife. Someone called from above, and, another man dropped from the trees to come and stare at the brooch winking in her hand.

“Malachy—you keep watch in the pass.” The leader adjusted his bow across his chest. “The MacEgan has a visitor.”

He turned and headed into the brush without another word. Maura shoved the brooch into her sack and hurtled through the woods to keep up with the leader’s swift stride. He strode a wandering path around rock and hill, through the thickest of gorse, taking no mind of any marker she could see. She had to run to keep up with the man. She cursed her lack of forethought for not wearing her own sturdier boots instead of the filmy bits of leather slipper that she’d taken a liking to, slippers used to no more rough handling than the dried bits of reeds spread across the castle floor. But after a while she set her mind on Colin, and then the man couldn’t walk fast enough for her.

As the shadows stretched long across the hillside, they came to a copse of wood. Shouts rang from the trees and a stir began in the midst of it. Men emerged from behind every rock and bush. The jangle and clank of sword and dirk against metal boss rang in the air as the crowd swelled.

Maura’s heart began to skitter. There were so many warriors camped in this site in the mountains. The height had a good view of the valley below where a slate gray elbow of Lough Corrib gleamed. She felt the men’s eyes upon her as she approached the stone rampart on a rise, her legs wobbly, and not from the climb. Colin was near, somewhere amid the bustle of these warriors, somewhere within those walls. Soon, she’d lay eyes upon his face, feel his arms around her, and maybe even the pleasure of his kiss.

She trembled with anticipation.

Her guide strode through the wooden gates and across a courtyard bustling with horses and men. She heard the ding-ding of a blacksmith and smelled stewing meat. Her escort pushed open the wooden door to a squat building in the middle of the courtyard. She blinked in the sudden darkness until she noticed several men seated around a trestle table. At the call of her guide, all the men glanced up. Then one man rose to his feet, dragging a coif of chain mail off his head so the links collapsed in a jangle upon his shoulders.

One man, taller than all the others, his eyes as blue as the summer sky.

She stuttered to a stop. The air buzzed around her ears. A sword hung from his belt, banging against his mail-covered shins as he approached, weighted easily on him as if he’d worn it all his life. A snatch of memory came to her, of the story of Cú Chulainn, the famous Ulster warrior who during the heat of battle was seized by a bloodlust so fierce and so blinding that he paid no mind to the path of his sword, to whether he killed kith or kin.

This man wearing chain mail, this man with the bristled cheek and stony gaze … he was Colin.

But she did not know this man at all.