Chapter Twenty-One

Maura shifted the stool so that the light streaming from the arrow-slit fell upon the swirling design of scarlet and gold threads along the collar of her bridal gown. Her silver needle flashed as she pierced the rose-colored silk. By her bed, two maidservants bickered as they struggled to re-hang the newly washed drapes of her bed. Before drying the cloth in the late August sun, they had steeped it in a heather rinse. As they shook out the first drape, the scent billowed over her.

She found herself thinking of warm hillsides. She found herself yearning for Colin’s lovemaking. Most of all, she found herself wondering what niggling concern kept dampening what should be delirious joy at the prospect of marrying the man she loved.

She winced as silver pierced her flesh. A drop of blood pearled out of her thumb. She sucked its coppery tang into her mouth before it could stain the fabric. Maybe her discontent arose from nothing more than being back in this castle with this false family. She hated being steeped in the lie that she was Lord Caddell’s daughter, but Colin had convinced her that all the pomp and fuss was necessary. Many wars ended in a wedding, but only if the wedding had a multitude of witnesses.

She felt the patter of little feet and looked down to see Nutmeg on his haunches in her lap, twitching his nose.

“Aye, you feel it, too,” she said, putting her embroidery aside to scratch his belly. “I suppose we’ll both feel better once this wedding is done and we’re out of this place.”

Feeling the servants’ eyes upon her, she set her attention back on her embroidery. Nutmeg skittered off her lap to nose around in an unoccupied corner. Lord William’s announcement of the upcoming wedding had overturned the rigid, well-worn protocol of the castle. The last of the banns had been read yesterday at Mass. Though the wedding was ten days away, the guests had already begun arriving. The first pavilions rose up in the fields outside the walls—haphazard rows of dun-colored tarps, with brightly colored pennants flapping at their peaks like cock’s combs of competing roosters. Servants bustled as if possessed, tradesmen roamed the halls, selling spices and cloth and ribbons and baubles to all who needed a new robe for the wedding day, brehons had arrived to draw up the wedding agreement, bickering with the English clerks, priests came to speak of marriage and take confession. She couldn’t even escape to the kitchen for peace, for those rooms buzzed—a hive of kneading and baking and smoking and plucking.

To Maura’s great relief, Lady Isabelle had taken the handling of most of the arrangements out of Maura’s clumsy hands. Instead, Maura concentrated on her bridal gown, on making the tiny tight stitches Sister Agnes had taught her to make. She set her mind to dreaming of how her life would be, once Colin and she were married. She wondered if they would ever have a moment of privacy again.

The door to her chamber flew open and another fleet of servants flooded in. One came directly to her and bobbed a curtsy.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, milady.” The elderly woman’s gaze darted around the room. Maura found herself thinking of those tiny, dun-colored birds that always flitted in and out of the stables, feasting on fleas and the occasional bit of grain. “I beg for a moment of your time.”

“No need to beg.” Maura would never get used to all the bobbing and curtsying. “Speak your mind.”

“It’s about the matter of your servants.”

The woman had switched to Irish, so Maura did the same. “My servants?”

“Aye, milady. After your wedding, blessed be—” the woman made the sign of the cross, “you’ll be off to your own household. And it’s no secret that you’ll need some women of your own to see to you.”

Maura blinked. She supposed once the wedding was over it would be her responsibility to hire servants to keep Colin’s castle running properly.

“I was wondering when you’d be picking them,” the woman continued, fussing with her bird-boned hands, “and if you’ll be taking many from the castle.”

“I’ll have to speak to The MacEgan.”

“Of course,” the woman said. “It’s a wise thing, to consult with your husband before making a decision. But as to the matter of servants, the mistress picks her own.”

Maura dropped her hands into her sewing. “Has someone sent you?” To remind me of my duties?

The elderly woman shook her head. “I come to speak for myself, milady.”

Maura nodded in acknowledgement. Another consequence of becoming a chieftain’s wife was that she must listen to the complaints of the village women in the expectation of speaking quiet counsel to her husband upon the bed pillow.

“Do you not remember me?” The elderly woman glanced over her shoulder at the other servants and then leaned in. “‘Twas I who risked my old bones and what life I have left, God save me, to come forward on the St. Vitus’s Day feast and tell the … tale.”

Maura looked at the elderly woman with more attention. She remembered little of that night except an elderly nursemaid sprawled upon the rushes of the mead hall blathering on about twin babies and the vow she’d made to a baroness long dead.

“Lord William has treated me well,” the servant continued, tugging her gray mantle close as if she were cold, “but once you’re gone, I fear he won’t want me around as my mind grows feeble, in case I go about speaking out of turn.”

The older woman plucked at the edge of the mantle with nervous fingers. Her gaze kept darting about, to the servants and back.

Maura asked, “Has Lord William threatened to send you away?”

“No,” she said. “Not yet. But I beg you to think on me, my lady. I may be old, but I can be of service. By the look of your future husband, it’s likely you’ll have a new babe in your arms every year.”

Her cheeks grew warm. Yes, she was certain there would be many children in the years to come. A welcome responsibility. But another responsibility nonetheless.

“And since I know that kind of work,” the old woman continued, “being a nursemaid and all, I was thinking you’d take me in.”

Maura glanced at the woman’s arms and thought they looked like they’d break under the weight of a pail of water. Then she thought of the cold gray eyes of William Caddell and imagined this Irishwoman begging outside a church, or silenced in a far worse way. She thought of the other servants she would have to hire, the children she would raise, the household she’d be responsible for on the height of that mountain. Her neck tightened up. She felt, all of a sudden, like she had to cook for thirty honored guests with nothing but a single ham, one pot, and two dull-witted servants.

Her stomach turned over like she’d swallowed a flock of birds.

“You are welcome in my household,” she murmured, distractedly. “I thank you—all the MacEgans thank you—for your service.”

After the servant bowed and left, Maura put her sewing aside. She paced to the window, and then back to the chair, and then back to the narrow window again. Nutmeg followed, his little claws skittering on the floor slates. Then, without thinking any longer, she swept up her pet and headed for the door.

The next thing she knew, she was striding through the pavilion field. Catching sight of the pennant flapping with the serpentine swan, Maura swept past a startled Irish guard straight into Colin’s tent—and a gathering of laughing, roughly-dressed Irishmen.

Colin rose from his crouch. He wore a fine tunic of crimson today, edged with silver embroidery. Gone was the chain mail that had encased his figure. Gone, too, was the bristle that had darkened his lip and jaw. Clean-shaven, he had the look of a young English nobleman at leisure.

With one look at her face, he waved his men out of the tent.

Colin held out a skin. She slipped Nutmeg to the ground and then took a sip of the ale. She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t stop the racing of her heart. So she sank her face into his silk tunic. She curled her fists into the cloth, holding him close. He held her tight against his chest. His chin rested upon her head, his heart beat steady under her ear.

The cries of a ribbon-peddler sounded in the path between the pavilions. From outside came the barks of men’s laughter, the murmur of women gossiping as they plied their needles in the waning sunshine. The smell of roasting meat wafted in through the flaps.

He said, softly, “What happened, my love?”

She murmured, “The world is changing.”

“Aye, lass, it is. Very fast.”

“I don’t like being in this castle with this false family.”

“Neither do I.”

“And I still have my ring,” she said, “and no answers.”

She pulled away from him and splayed her hand. When she’d first been given this shiny gold ring, she’d felt great gratitude for the gift. But this gift had birthed a thousand unanswered questions, and no time to find answers amid her regular responsibilities. The mix had made her so restless that she’d abandoned the convent just to seek the truth.

Now that gold ring still lay heavy upon her finger, a weight of a mystery unsolved—a mystery that might never be solved, if she didn’t set out to resolve it before taking up the new responsibilities of the Lady MacEgan.

“You once made me a promise, Colin.”

She blinked up at her lover. His smile was slow and warm.

“I did, didn’t I?”

***

“A pilgrimage! But the wedding is in ten days.”

Maura tried not to flinch at Lord William’s roar. Her false father stood behind a great desk, littered with books in tooled leather bindings and bristling with white quills and inkstands. The air of this room smelled of sweet scented beeswax, of great men in silk tunics discussing matters beyond the knowledge of a common girl.

Then Lord William glanced at Colin, who’d slipped his hip upon the desk. A strange smile flickered on his face.

The Englishman said, “Am I to assume you have agreed to this nonsense, MacEgan?”

Colin shrugged. “It’s only St. Patrick’s Purgatory. Less than a week’s travel in good weather.”

“You’d risk missing your own wedding day.”

“Only by a few days. I know how to be quick upon the roads.”

“And what sins,” the Englishman said, tapping a seal upon its dish, “does a girl of that age have that hang so heavy upon her shoulders that she feels the need to go to a shrine and delay a wedding for which all of Connacht awaits?”

“Sins aplenty, Lord William,” she said, forcing him to face her, “as you very well know.”

Lord William tsked and waved a ringed hand. “Rather than take a pilgrimage, why don’t you find a matron to give you a talking-to. Whatever sins you wish to confess don’t need to be confessed on pilgrimage—”

“You mistake me.” She cocked a brow at him. “I have little need of counsel in the matters of swiving.”

Lord William’s expression stilled. He glanced at MacEgan, who offered nothing but upturned palms.

“It’s best I leave today,” she said. “You can send guards if you wish to have us chaperoned. Though I’d prefer to travel with the minstrels.”

Dancing and singing and piping their way along the roads.

“The minstrels indeed.” The Englishman pointed to the window. “And what are we to do with the guests gathering in my fields outside? In the midst of harvest time, no less?”

“You could always make up a play yourself,” she said. “You’re very good at that.”

Lord William sighed. “MacEgan, put an end to this foolishness. Take her on pilgrimage when the marriage is done.”

“After the marriage,” she said, once again drawing his attention, “I will have many responsibilities and little time for travel.”

“Why St. Patrick’s Purgatory?” he asked sharply.

She hesitated, her spine stiffening. She had woven such pretty fantasies about the purgatory. She had imagined herself arriving and falling at the bedside of some elderly clergyman whose body ailed, though his mind remained sharp—some golden-hearted priest who would clutch her hands, recognize her instantly, and finally gasp out the twenty-two-year-old secret of a mother’s terrible confession, before slipping off to Paradise while she sobbed by his bedside.

Well, she wasn’t that foolish little dreamer anymore, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need to put the fantasy to rest.

“Certain pilgrims passed by my convent around the time of my birth,” she said, lifting her hand so that her ring winked by the light sifting through the narrow window. “I was told they were coming back from St. Patrick’s Purgatory.” She glanced at the guard by the door, carefully weighing her words, as she’d done every day since she’d returned to this castle. “I vowed I would go someday, too, in respect for those good people. That vow has remained unfulfilled.”

Lord Caddell’s face darkened. A muscle moved in his cheek. He glared at Colin. “Why are you encouraging this?”

“I made a promise.”

“You also made a bargain with me.” The Englishman fluttered a white hand toward the window. “Two hundred and seven people are coming to witness it. Yet you wish your future wife to set out on a quest whose motive—” he lowered his voice “—risks all these well-laid plans.”

She said, “It’s just a pilgrimage, my lord.”

“You’ll find nothing at St. Patrick’s Purgatory,” the Englishman insisted. “Nothing but barefoot, fasting pilgrims preparing themselves to enter the cave. Nothing but strips of linen fluttering from the tip of every branch of every bush, flags marking the visits. And no priest old enough to remember one set of pilgrims from the thousands and thousands and thousands that have passed through, in the twenty-three years since my wife’s nursemaid left you on the convent stairs.”

Ever sticking to the play, this false father of hers. “Do you ever visit your late wife’s grave, my lord?”

“Every year,” he snapped. “On her name day. What of it?”

“You’re fortunate to have someplace to pay your respects to the one you loved. For me,” she added, raising her ringed finger, “this is all I’ll ever have.”

Maura watched as a measure of understanding flickered in those eyes. For so long she felt as if she lived somewhere in-between—knowing that she had parents who cared enough about her to swaddle her and leave her a treasure, but not knowing who those parents were. It had been a purgatory, of sorts. But she understood now that she would never know who her parents were. Before she started her new life, she needed to say good-bye to the old.

The Englishman placed his hands on his desk, resting his weight so his fingertips turned white.

“There’s no use in going to St. Patrick’s Purgatory. But I can tell you something about that damn ring.”

His words were like a blow to the ears. She was sure she hadn’t heard them right, and so it took her a moment to understand. When she did, her body went very still, very numb. A throbbing began in her head, a relentless dull pressure. She wondered if, when she emerged from this fog, she would be able to forgive men who took a strange, morbid pleasure in spinning webs of intrigues.

“I’m surprised, with all your travels,” Caddell said, raising a brow at Colin, “that you didn’t recognize it, too, MacEgan.”

Colin glared at Caddell with a face full of questions.

“That insignia,” William Caddell began, “is much faded, but I’ve seen that design before, when I was a young man traveling on the continent. A hundred thousand peddlers sold trinkets like that, tokens that a pilgrim could take home as proof that a certain journey had been made. Thousands of pilgrims wear that insignia, my dear. It’s from the church of St. James of Compostela.”

Suddenly Colin was beside her, taking her hand in is, uncurling the fingers she’d tightened into a fist, as if he was untying the strings of a bound guinea fowl.

Colin traced the lines that projected to the edge of the ring face. “We once worked among the Pyrenean passes—part of the road to St. James. The symbol of that church is a cockleshell.” Colin flattened his hand over the smudged, faded lower half of the ring, so that only the rays were visible. “I should have recognized this,” he said. “It’s a seashell insignia. But the ring is so worn.”

“Sabine wore it all her life.” The men looked at her in question, that’s how she realized she’d spoken aloud. “Sabine was a laywoman in the convent.”

Colin said, “Why was she wearing your ring?”

“I’m not sure.” The Abbess had been vague about that, waving away Maura’s questions with the comment, you know how Sabine was about pretty things. “Sabine had always been partial to baubles. Since I was too young to have it, I just supposed the Abbess let her wear it.” Maura frowned as the memories flooded through her. “Nutmeg was hers before she gave him to me, too.”

Colin tightened his grip on her hand. “And Sabine—or the Abbess—never told you this was a token from St. James?”

Maura shook her head. His words gave her pause. Even she had heard about that church on the shores of Spain. Some of the wealthier novices talked about having made the pilgrimage with their families. It ranked third in the great pilgrimages—behind Jerusalem and Rome.

“This Sabine,” William Caddell said, with a darkness in his voice, “is she still living?”

“No.”

Relief spread across Lord William’s face. That sight, more than anything else, caused the back of her neck to tingle. She couldn’t believe—no, it couldn’t be true—not Sabine, silly Sabine, growing ever fatter in her bed overflowing with pillows, the laywoman who’d loved to comb Maura’s hair when she was a child but lost interest as she grew into a woman … no, it couldn’t be. She could not have lived in that convent all her life and heard no whisper of such a secret. Not even by the Abbess after Sabine’s death.

The Abbess, who’d come to Ireland from Avignon, who must have been familiar with the insignia of St. James of Compostela.

“Lord William,” Colin said. “We shall forgo the trip to St. Patrick’s Purgatory.”

“I knew you were a man of good sense—”

“The wedding will be delayed a little longer.” Colin threaded his warm fingers through hers. “Tomorrow we’re off to Killeigh.”