Besieged (26 page)

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Authors: Bertrice Small

BOOK: Besieged
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James Leslie closed his eyes briefly. It did no good arguing with fools, he thought wearily. Would this kind of thing ever stop? His eyes snapped back open, cold and determined. “Free those poor souls at once!” he thundered. “I have far more authority than yer damned Sir Willy, and I’ll fire what’s left of this place if ye do not obey me at once!” Behind him his dozen clansmen glared with equal determination at the smithy, and the small group of men who had gathered about him.
The smithy considered defiance against this Scot, but then to his horror the duke spoke again, and his words were chilling.
“Would ye like to hae yer daughters suffer the same terrible fate as poor wee Aine Fitzgerald, man?”
“Open the pen and let them out,” Robert Morgan said. “Let them take what is theirs, and leave Lisnaskea.”
“And nae harassment,” James Leslie cautioned the villagers. “These are women, and bairns, and the old ones. Ye lived in peace wi them for years until ye were infected by others wi prejudice. Ye shared happy times, and mourned together over yer dead. Ye birthed children, and danced at each other’s weddings. Remember those times, and nae what happened last night.” Then he turned to his own men, and ordered six of them to remain to oversee the freeing of the Catholic survivors while he, Kieran, and the others went to fetch the bodies of the Fitzgeralds.
They reached the lovely brick house and saw that its front door still hung open. Entering they were surprised to be greeted by Father Cullen Butler. The priest in Lisnaskea, he explained, had been murdered last night along with the Protestant cleric. It had been the death of Father Brendan that had enraged the Catholics to commit their own murders. Until that moment they had been too busy defending themselves but when their priest had been killed, they had erupted with fury.
“Someone had to come and pray over these poor women,” Cullen Butler said quietly. “You won’t be able to bury them here. The burial ground has been destroyed. And you cannot bury them at Maguire’s Ford for their graves would be a terrible reminder of the hate between the Protestants and the Catholics. They will have to lie in some quiet place, unmarked, but safe,” the priest said. “I will consecrate the ground myself, and say what needs to be said. Best your men do it, James Leslie, for then no one will ever know where Molly Fitzgerald and her daughters have been laid to rest. When Kieran is gone there will be none left to mourn them.”
Kieran Devers looked at the two bodies in the parlor. The priest had untangled the two from their deathly embrace, and laid them out upon the floor. Molly’s blue bodice was darkly stained with her blood. Maeve’s wound, being in the back of her head, was not visible to her half-brother. “Where is Aine?” he asked the priest.
“Where William Devers left her,” came the reply. “Biddy covered her before she left.”
Without another word Kieran Devers climbed the staircase of the house, and entered the chamber where Aine Fitzgerald lay dead. Below they could hear of a sudden, the sobs of grief that wracked him. All knew that next to Colleen, Aine had been Kieran’s favorite sister. Then they heard his footsteps descending the staircase, and he reentered the room, the young girl wrapped in the coverlet Biddy had thrown over her, cradled in his strong arms. “Willy must pay a price for this,” Kieran Devers said quietly.
“God will judge him, and God alone,” Cullen Butler said. “You have a wife now, laddie, and a bright future. Do not allow yourself to be trapped here in the past that is Ireland, Kieran Devers. Do not endanger your immortal soul for the sake of a moment’s vengeance.”
“You can ask me that even while looking upon the body of this innocent lass?” Kieran said brokenly. “He violated her.
His own half-sister.
She was barely out of her childhood, and as pure as a spring day. And then he murdered her. How can I forgive him any of it?”
“You must for the sake of your own soul,” the priest counseled. “Aine, Maeve, and Mistress Fitzgerald are safe now in God’s kingdom, for surely the manner of their deaths spared them the trial of Purgatory. Your half-brother has blackened his soul, and will answer for it, I promise you, Kieran Devers. Do not darken your own soul by preempting God’s authority over us all. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”
“Let us bury them,” Kieran said, still holding Aine.
“Commandeer a cart,” the duke said to one of his men, and when the cart was drawn up outside the house the bodies were carefully laid out in it for transport to their burial site.
“Give me but a moment,” Kieran said, going back into the house.
When he had emerged again they went on their way, moving back through Lisnaskea so the duke might ascertain the surviving Catholics had been freed, and were safely gone. They were, and the duke’s men joined the funeral train. The Protestants of Lisnaskea lined the village’s only street watching them go. Some were stony-faced, and grim, but a few wept. One fresh-faced young lad ran to the cart to look in, and seeing the women he said but one word,
“Aine.”
Then he dashed away.
James Leslie stopped the procession, and looking sternly on the people there said with a sweep of his hand, “This is what your hate, and your intolerance hae brought you. I hope you can live wi it.” Then he signaled his men and the cart to move on again. Behind them Molly Fitzgerald’s brick house was completely engulfed in flames, for Kieran had set it afire, determined that those who had killed her would not have her house or her possessions.
They traveled until they were halfway to Maguire’s Ford, and there, in an ash and oak wood, they dug one large grave, laying the mother and her two daughters side by side. The grave was filled in carefully, and then camouflaged carefully with a blanket of moss and dead leaves. The priest had consecrated the ground before the trio were laid to rest, and then he had spoken low, in his soft Latin, the words of the burial service. Kieran prayed with him, his handsome face grim. James Leslie wondered how much to heart his son-in-law had taken the priest’s words on the matter of revenge. He would keep a hard eye on Kieran for he would not have his daughter widowed and unhappy. Ulster, he decided, was an impossible place. One murder led to another, and another. There seemed to be no room for compromise.
It was just past sunset when the duke and his party returned to Erne Rock Castle. Biddy dozed by the fire where Jasmine sat with her daughter.
Fortune jumped to her feet as they entered the hall. “Sir Shane? Is he all right? God’s boots, Kieran, you are pale.” She hurried to her husband, and put her arms about him.
“We have buried Molly and her girls,” he said.
“Your father?”
“Dead. Willy killed him,” Kieran responded.
Jasmine gasped, shocked.
“He’s a devil, that one,” Biddy muttered, suddenly awake. “He’ll roast in hell for his wickedness, and sooner than later, I’m thinking.”
“We found Sir Shane a prisoner in his own home,” the duke said to his wife and daughter. “We freed him, but then William came. His father told him he must leave Mallow Court, taking his wife and mother wi him. He was furious for William hae bragged to him about how he hae killed Mistress Fitzgerald and her lasses. William then told his father how young Aine had died, sparing him no vile detail. Sir Shane grew apoplectic, and fell to the floor. He died almost immediately thereafter,” James Leslie told them.
Fortune burst into tears, and clung to her husband.
Jasmine’s eyes were moist. Her hands went to her belly, and she said, “How terrible. Thank God Fortune did not marry that man. He is obviously mad.”
Night had fallen outside the Great Hall’s windows. Rory Maguire joined them, and he was obviously concerned. “There are hotheads among some of the Protestants here,” he said. “The good Reverend and I have had all we could do to keep the peace this day. I think some of the younger men from Lisnaskea have infiltrated Maguire’s Ford with their poison, and are trying to stir up our people against one another.”
“Surely the Protestants cannot be so foolish as their brethren in Lisnaskea,” Jasmine said. “We allowed them a refuge in this village when they were homeless, and the English were insisting they return to Holland after their ship, the
Speedwell,
sprang a leak in the Irish Sea. They are far more comfortable here than they would have been in the Plymouth Colony. We
must
keep the peace in Maguire’s Ford! I will not allow intolerance to destroy my sons’ inheritance!”
Rory looked at her, and at the daughter he could not acknowledge. This same prejudice that had caused the massacre and misery in Lisnaskea was responsible for sending Fortune and Kieran from Ulster. His old age would be as lonely as much of his life had been. He would never have the pleasure of watching his grandchildren grow up, even if they did not know who he really was to them. “The Catholics are just as bad, but I swear to you that
I will keep the peace here, my lady Jasmine,”
he promised her fiercely.
“We will keep it together, Rory,” she told him. “We won’t allow anyone to destroy what we’ve done, what you’ve done all these years. Cullen, you’ll speak to your people again?”
“Aye, Cousin, I will,” the priest said.
For the next few days an almost eerie calm surrounded them. The duchess of Glenkirk had proclaimed her will personally in each church at Maguire’s Ford. “If you cannot live in peace with your neighbors as you always have,” she told the people, “then you must leave here. I will not have happen here what happened in Lisnaskea. Good people, both Protestant and Catholic died, and for what? We all worship the same God, my friends. Do you truly believe our God condones violence and murder of those who are different than we are? Does not the Bible preach love, and peace? Is not the fifth commandment,
Thou shalt not kill?
That commandment does not say thou shalt not kill except for. . . .”
Sir Shane was buried without incident, Colleen Kelly and her husband standing like a buffer between Lady Jane, William, and Emily Anne, and Kieran, Fortune, and the Leslies. She had told her half-brother quite frankly that she would never forgive him for what he had done to their father, or to the Fitzgeralds. “You were always more one of them,” Sir William sneered at her. “You are no longer welcome at Mallow Court, or your family either.”
“You are beyond hope, William,” she replied quietly.
The peace in Maguire’s Ford held despite the rumors that were passed about daily, and despite the infiltrators from both faiths who sought to stir up trouble. Several survivors from Lisnaskea with family at Maguire’s Ford had come to beg refuge of their kin and were taken in, which frightened some of the Protestants who were worried they might seek revenge upon any non-Catholic.
Kieran Devers spoke to Father Cullen, for he had the germ of an idea that he thought might solve part of the problem. “The duke tells me,” he said, “that I will have an easier time of being accepted in Lord Calvert’s expedition if I have my own vessel, and colonists who can help in building the colony when they settle upon a place. Since this is to be a colony for Catholics first and foremost, why should I not bring a shipload of good Irishmen and women with me?”
Fortune heard her husband’s suggestion, and was in full agreement with him. “I have two ships of my own that ply the trade route,” she told him. “There’s a wonderful old, but quite sturdy vessel called the
Cardiff Rose
that brought Mama from India long ago. It should soon be returning from the East Indies run. Then I have a newer ship, the
Highlander,
in the Mediterranean. It will be returning to England come spring.” She turned to her stepfather. “Could we not outfit both of these vessels, Papa, and sail them to the New World?”
“I should purchase my own ship,” Kieran protested.
“Don’t be foolish,” his wife chided him. “We’ll need the monies you have to outfit our ships. If it would make you feel better you may pay me a fee for leasing my ships.”
“It’s quite practical,” the duke told his son-in-law, “and I know both the
Cardiff Rose
and the
Highlander
are well-maintained both above and below the water line. You cannot be certain of that if you buy a strange vessel, unless, of course, you have the ship dry docked for inspection before you purchase it, and it is doubtful its owner would allow you to do so because of the expense involved.”
“And the
Cardiff Rose
has the most wonderful master cabin for us to travel in,” she murmured at him, her eyes bright with her love.
James Leslie chuckled at his stepdaughter. How like her mother she was although she could not know it, he thought. “I am sorry to spoil your romantic dream, poppet,” he said, “but it is unlikely many women will be allowed to go with Lord Calvert’s expedition until it is decided where he will settle the colony, and housing is built.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Fortune said.
“Nonetheless that is the way it will probably be,” the duke told her. “You have no choice, I fear.”
“Then we shall not go,” Fortune replied firmly.
“And where will you live then?” he asked her.
“We shall buy a house near Cadby, or Queen’s Malvern,” she said with what she thought was perfect logic, “or perhaps near Oxton so I may be near my sister, India.”
“With your Irish Catholic husband?”
the duke posed.

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