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Authors: Bertrice Small

BOOK: Besieged
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Fortune’s face fell. “Oh dear,” she said, suddenly realizing how foolish she must have sounded. “The Puritans in England are every bit as bad as the Protestants in Ulster where the Catholics are concerned, aren’t they?” she reasoned aloud, not needing an answer to her own question. “We could go to France, or Spain,” she suggested.
“Where you, my darling wife, would be every bit as discriminated against as I am in Protestant lands,” he told her. “There is no help for it, Fortune. If we are to live together in peace we must go to the New World; and if Lord Calvert will have me, I may have to go alone until the colony is safe for women.”
Before Fortune might protest further Adali came into the hall. “Father Cullen just sent word there is a large party of horsemen coming down upon the village from the direction of Lisnaskea, my lord. I thought, perhaps, that you would want to know. Your preparations are all in effect.”
“What preparations?” Jasmine asked her husband.
“For the defense of both the village and the castle,” her husband told her. “We canna allow that rabble from Lisnaskea to destroy Maguire’s Ford as they did their own nest.” He arose from his seat. “I must go and join the others.”
“What others?” Jasmine demanded, struggling to her own swollen feet. “I am coming with you, Jemmie. These lands are, after all, still mine, and I think it important that I am seen.”
He wanted to argue with her, but he knew she was correct in her reasoning. Besides, he considered with a small chuckle, he would not dissuade her no matter what he said. “Come then, madame,” he said.
“We’re coming too,” Fortune told them.
The duke of Glenkirk burst out laughing, but led the way without another word. They assembled in the square of Maguire’s Ford with its tall stone Celtic cross at its center. The Reverend Mr. Steen, Father Cullen, and the town’s leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, were awaiting them. About them the houses were shuttered and barred. Not even a dog or a cat wandered the street this day. Above them the skies were gray with the clouds of an impending autumnal storm, but on the western horizon a slash of blazing red and gold shone with the setting sun from beneath the clouds. Not a breeze stirred. Not a bird called. There was silence but for the faint hum of the mob which grew louder as it approached them.
Down the road into Maguire’s Ford they came, led by William Devers upon a fine bay gelding. They carried torches, and the faces of the men behind Sir William were stone hard and without pity. Seeing the welcoming party ahead of them they stopped, and their master moved his mount slowly forward until he stood in front of the duke and his wife. He glared down at them.
“If you come in peace, Sir William,” Jasmine said, “you are welcome here. If you do not come in peace, I would request you depart.”
He pointedly ignored her, directing his speech to James Leslie instead. “Is it your custom, my lord, to allow a woman to speak for you?” he asked the duke insultingly.
James Leslie laughed mockingly at the young man. “Maguire’s Ford and its castle belong to my wife, Sir William. I cannot speak for her any more than she would speak for me in matters pertaining to my possessions. Now, sir, my wife has asked you a question. Have the courtesy to answer it lest you betray your mother’s base heritage.”
William Devers flushed. He was being made a fool of before his own men, and he did not like it. He heard a faint snickering behind him, but did not turn about for he had too much pride. “We have come for your Catholics,” he said. “Give them to us that we may cleanse Maguire’s Ford of their foul popery, and we will go in peace.”
“Get off of my lands, and take your rabble with you,” the duchess of Glenkirk said in an even, cold voice. “Am I Pilate that I would betray innocent people into the hands of your intolerant mob?” She stepped forward so that his horse was forced to move back a pace. “How dare you come here and attempt to cause trouble? The Protestants and the Catholics have lived in peace at Maguire’s Ford for years. The Catholics here took in the Protestants ten years ago when they had nowhere else to go. They built a church for them, and all have lived in equanimity ever since. How presumptuous you are, William Devers, to think that you have God’s permission to come here and cause murder and chaos on this All Hallows’ Eve. You are more the devil’s disciple than you are God’s, I believe. Go now before I set the wolfhounds on you, and your men!”
“Madame, I will have what I came for,” he replied stubbornly. “Search the houses, and bring out the Catholics,” he commanded.
Suddenly a flaming arrow arced into the darkening skies above the town, and the bells in both the churches began to peal furiously. The doors of the holy houses at either end of the village opened, and the population of Maguire’s Ford streamed forth from their separate ends of the town, surrounding the Lisnaskea men. All were armed with something, from ancient blunderbusses to scythes to frying pans and iron pots.
“Our people will not allow you to turn them against one another,” Jasmine told Sir William. “We all worship the same God.”
“Hear me!” her opponent cried out from his vantage point upon the back of his mount. “How can you live in the same place as these dirty papists, men of Maguire’s Ford? We have cleansed Lisnaskea of their kind, and now with your help we will do the same here! Join us!”
The Reverend Steen spoke for his people. “We will not join you, William Devers.
Go home!”
“Have you joined the legions of the damned, Samuel Steen?” Sir William asked him.
The Protestant minister laughed aloud. “Do not presume to judge me or mine, William Devers. You have broken more than one of God’s commandments. Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, or lands! Honor thy father, and thy mother! You are no fit leader. You are a bully, and a bigot. Get you gone from here!”
William Devers suddenly kicked his horse, and the beast leapt forward, startled, knocking both Jasmine and the Reverend Mr. Steen to the road. A cry of outrage arose from the Maguire’s Ford people, but then to everyone’s surprise a single shot rang out. With an absolutely astounded look in his eye, Sir William tumbled forward from his horse and onto the ground.
“They’ve shot Sir William,” the cry arose among the Lisnaskea men. “We must be avenged!”
“Nay, the Maguire’s Ford men did not shoot him. I did,” a voice from among the Lisnaskea mob said, and surprised, they parted to allow a young lad forward.
“ ’Tis Bruce Morgan, the smith’s son,” came a faceless cry.
The Reverend Samuel Steen pulled himself to his feet while the duke helped his wife up. “Why, lad?” the Protestant cleric asked the youngster. “Why have you killed Sir William, Bruce Morgan?” Gently he took the ancient pistol from the lad, amazed it had fired at all let alone with such deadly accuracy.
“For Aine,”
came the devastating reply. “For Aine, and because of what he did to her. I heard it, but I could not believe it, and so I crept into the house while they were all trying to rescue those in the church.
I saw what he did to my lass.
We were to be wed one day, you see. I loved her.”
“Do you think I’d let you marry some damned Catholic wench, a whore’s fatherless offspring?” his father, the smithy, Robert Morgan said, pushing forward angrily. “And now look what you’ve done, you stupid boy! You’ve killed our leader. You’re no son of mine any longer!”
“Sir William was an evil man, Da,” Bruce Morgan replied, drawing himself up to his full height now, and they suddenly saw the boy was almost a man. “And do you think I would have let you stop me from marrying Aine? I never cared about her religion, Da. I cared about her!”
“Faugh!” his father snorted. “I’ll hang you myself to take the shame of what’s been done here off my name.”
There was a faintly audible groan at their feet, and Reverend Steen cried out, “Sir William is not dead! He is injured, but alive.”
Kieran Devers quietly reached out to touch young Morgan’s shoulder while the others were distracted. “Go to the castle, laddie,” he said. “I’ll not see you hanged. Hurry before they remember you again.
Sir William
will not be generous in this matter. Go now!” He watched with a faint smile upon his lips as the lad did his bidding.
“Fetch something to use as a stretcher,” the duchess of Glenkirk, finally on her feet again, said. “I’ll not have this man in my home, but perhaps Reverend Steen you will see the physician is fetched, and you will shelter Sir William until he is fit to travel again.” She looked into the mob before her, forcing herself to stand as tall as she might, but the pains wracking her were difficult to ignore. Still, Jasmine reasoned, just a moment more. “Men of Lisnaskea, are there any of you here who saw Bruce Morgan fire the shot that has injured Sir William? If not, for his father’s sake keep silent, I beg of you. You will not see the lad again, and by the time Sir William and his family stop to consider who fired the shot, Bruce Morgan will be long gone from Ulster. He is but a boy, and he loved a young girl who was foully abused and then murdered by Sir William. You know in your hearts what he did to Aine Fitzgerald was an evil iniquity, and a sin as well. Do not compound his sin or the lad’s with one of your own. Now go back to Lisnaskea. I will not permit you to wreak havoc in Maguire’s Ford.” She stood glaring at them until the men had the good grace to turn slowly about, and start making their way home, their torches lighting the darkened road before them as they went. Jasmine Leslie gasped loudly, and fell to her knees. “Yer bairn will be early, Jemmie,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Mama!”
Fortune ran to her mother’s side.
James Leslie didn’t bother to wait for help. Pushing his stepdaughter aside, he lifted his wife up in his arms and carried her through the village, across the drawbridge, and into the castle.
Seeing him enter the hall old Biddy called out, “Have you a birthing table, my lord?”
Rohana came running. “I will take care of my lady,” she said. “I have been doing it since she was born.”
“Let Biddy care for the bairn after it is born,” Jasmine said so the old woman would not be offended by Rohana. “And she can help you now too, for she has had the experience.” Then she groaned. “This child will wait for no one now it has decided to be born! It will not be like you, my Fortune, taking forever, and then having to be turned about so you could come properly. Ahhh! I can feel the child’s head!
It is coming now!”
James Leslie knew just what to do. He deposited his wife on the high board, and braced her shoulders so the other women might aid her. There was absolutely no time for niceties. Jasmine groaned with her labor. She had never had so quick a birthing, but she could quite distinctly feel the child’s head pushing down. “Rohana?”
Her serving woman pushed Jasmine’s skirts up, and peered between her mistress’s legs. “You’re correct, my lady, the head is coming. Push with the next pain. Ohh! ’Tis almost here. Gracious, I have never seen a baby born this quickly, my princess. Ohh!” Rohana caught the infant as it slid easily from its mother’s body. The child began to howl almost immediately, waving its small arms protestingly at having been pushed so rudely from its dark and warm safe haven.
“What is it?” Jasmine demanded.
“ ’Tis a lass!” James Leslie crowed, delighted. “ ’Tis a fine, hot-tempered wee lassie!”
“Well, Jemmie, you wanted another daughter to spoil, and damn me if you haven’t gone and gotten your way,” his wife said with a chuckle.
Fortune had stood staring at her mother’s very brief travail, and had actually seen her new half-sister born. She was fascinated, and asked her mother, “Do they all come so quickly, Mama?”
Jasmine laughed weakly. “Nay, poppet, they do not all come so swiftly. ’Twas my fall earlier, I believe, that brought my early labor on, although from the sound of her this child is strong.”
“A fine lass,” Biddy said, handing the cleaned and swaddled baby into her mother’s arms. “A
Samhein
lassie!”
“What are we to call her?” James Leslie asked his wife.
Jasmine considered a long moment, and then she said, “Autumn, because she was born to me in the autumn of my life, in the autumn of the year.” Then she saw the bowl of late roses on the sideboard. “Autumn Rose Leslie,” Jasmine decided. “Our daughter’s name will be Autumn Rose.”
Part Three
ENGLAND AND MARY’S LAND 1632–1635
“Love God, and do what you please.”
—St. Augustine
Chapter
13
S
ir William Devers survived his wound, but he would never walk again. As soon as it was feasible he was moved from the Reverend Samuel Steen’s house in Maguire’s Ford back to Lisnaskea. He was only in his mid-twenties, and as he lay in his bed, or sat in the chair that had been fashioned for him, he grew angrier and angrier. He wanted to hold the Catholics responsible for his infirmity, but they had not shot at him. He had been shot from behind, and the Catholics of Maguire’s Ford had been facing him. Still, Sir William Devers reasoned, if they had not been at Maguire’s Ford then neither would he have been there, and he would not be the invalid he was now. Who had shot him he did not know, nor did anyone else seem to know.
And so he did hold the Catholics answerable for his helpless state, and encouraged by his wife and mother, plotted a revenge he would never be able to carry out against the Catholics in general, against his half-brother, Kieran, and against Fortune, for he reasoned, had she never come to Ulster, none of this would have ever happened. It was all
their
fault.
No one came to visit Sir William and his family. The servants gave notice but for a few. He was condemned, it seemed, to spend the rest of his days at Mallow Court with only his mother and his wife for civilized company. Sir William Devers took to drinking anything that would free him from his pain and his boredom.
At Maguire’s Ford Autumn Leslie, born on All Hallows’ Eve, the
Samhein
celebration of the ancient Celtic races, thrived. Jasmine knew instinctively that this was absolutely her last baby, and so she nursed her daughter devotedly, declining a wetnurse. Fortune adored the baby, and spent much of her time with Autumn and their mother.
“She is so sweet,” Fortune sighed. “I should so like a little girl like her . . . one day. I know this is not the right time, Mama.”
“If Kieran goes alone to the New World,” Jasmine suggested, “perhaps you should be with child then. That way I could be with you when the child was born. Then when it is safe for you to join your husband, the baby will be old enough to travel with you, but wait until we return to England before you make that decision.”
Fortune sighed again. She wanted a normal life like her mother and her sister, India, had. A home, a husband, babies, and peace. Why could she not have these things? But she knew the answer to her own unspoken questions. She had married a man whose faith was not acceptable. They would have to make a new life in a place where his faith and hers were acceptable. But when? Why must it all take so long? She cuddled her baby sister closely, marveling that everything about Autumn was so perfect. Her dark hair with its faint auburn tints, her eyes which were beginning to hold distinct glints of green even at two months of age when she was baptized by the Reverend Samuel Steen, her half-sister, and brother, Adam, standing as her godparents.
Christmas and Twelfth Night had come and gone. The winter had set in hard. Maguire’s Ford was quiet, and there was no longer any threat of violence from Lisnaskea, the excesses of the previous October having drained all choler from them. To Kieran’s delight there were several families who had decided that they would like to go with him and Fortune to the New World, including young Bruce Morgan. They saw the opportunities available to them there despite the dangers involved. The older folk, of course, could not find it in their hearts to leave Ulster. They had always survived somehow, and would continue to do so, they reasoned.
January gave way to February, and then February gave way to March. The green hillsides were dotted with the white coats of the lambs born the month before. The duke began to make plans to leave Maguire’s Ford for Scotland. They would depart the estate the fifteenth day of May, the day after Adam Leslie’s fifteenth birthday. The two Leslie sons had settled quite well into Maguire’s Ford. The Reverend Steen had been engaged as their tutor. The king’s patent was expected before they departed, and Jasmine had already had the estate boundaries redrawn, dividing the land equally between the two boys. When Duncan turned sixteen in another four years, a house would be built for him on a site he had already chosen.
March departed, and halfway through April the royal warrant arrived, transferring Maguire’s Ford from Lady Jasmine Leslie, the duchess of Glenkirk, to her sons, Adam and Duncan Leslie. Each boy was gifted with a peerage from the king since their father was a duke. Adam became Baron Leslie of Erne Rock. Duncan became Baron Leslie of Dinsmore, which meant
from the hillfort,
the site of his future dwelling. A copy of the document was posted publicly in the village square, and Kieran took the second copy to Mallow Court to show his half-brother and his stepmother.
Jane Devers, looking worn, greeted him sourly. “You were told not to come here again,” she snapped at him as he entered the house.
“It will be my last visit, madame, I promise you. Where is William? Take me to him, and fetch your daughter-in-law too.”
Jane Leslie brought her stepson to the rear parlor of the house where he found William Devers seated in a padded chair.
“Kieran!”
William’s voice was almost welcoming.
“I am sorry to intrude unannounced upon you, Willy,” Kieran said, “but I feared you wouldn’t see me if I sent ahead. I have brought you a copy of the royal patent for Maguire’s Ford.” He handed the document to the younger man. “You will note it transfers ownership of the estate, which is to be divided equally between Adam and Duncan Leslie, now Sir Adam and Sir Duncan. There can no longer be any doubt as to the disposition of Erne Rock and its lands. They are in the hands of two Protestant milords whose tutor is Reverend Steen.”
“But Maguire is still there,” William said, “isn’t he?” His tone was now sour.
“Aye, and he will be until he dies,” Kieran said. “He causes no trouble, and he’s a genius with the horses, Willy. He is needed.”
“He’s a Catholic,” came the stubborn reply.
“His masters aren’t. Do not trifle with Glenkirk’s boys, Willy. Scotland is not that far away, and James Leslie will kill you.”
“I’d be better off dead,” William Devers replied bitterly. “I cannot feel anything below my waist, Kieran. The physician says the child Emily Anne will shortly have is the only child we will ever have. What if it is not a son? I sit here all day long with only Mama and my wife for company. Their cheerfulness and their nobility sicken me. The physician informs me, other than the fact I am dead in my legs and my manhood, I am as healthy as a horse and shall live a long life. Are you pleased to hear that, brother? I shall probably outlive you.”
“I am sorry, Willy, but the truth is you have no one to blame for your situation but yourself. Oh, the Lisnaskea Protestants gladly followed you once you, your mother, and the late Dundas had fired them up, but afterward they deserted you. Seeing you reminds them of what they did to their neighbors and friends just because they followed Catholicism. And each time they see you, they are reminded of what
you
did to our half-sister, Aine Fitzgerald. I am truly sorry for you, Willy. Yet I cannot help but think you got exactly what you deserved.”
“You weep for a whore’s brat, but not for your own brother!” he snarled. “I’m glad our father died else he might have given you back your inheritance, you bastard!”
“I wouldn’t have had it, Willy. Ulster is a place of sorrow for me. I do not belong here. You may have Mallow Court for yourself, and your heirs, and good luck to you, little brother.”
“What is it you want?” Jane Devers and her daughter-in-law entered the room. The voice was Emily Anne’s. She was very full with her child, and Kieran wondered if it was a son or a daughter, and if he would ever learn that fact. The child looked ready to be born.
“Good day, madame,” Kieran said pleasantly, and he bowed to her. “I have brought a copy of the royal patent with its seal for Maguire’s Ford so you may see the legal and official transfer of the estate from my mother-in-law to her two younger Leslie sons is complete.” He took the document from William’s hands, and passed it to Emily Anne and Lady Jane. “When you have properly perused it, I shall take it back. I have also come to bid you farewell. My wife, the Leslies, and I will be departing for Scotland in mid-May. It is unlikely that I shall ever return to Ulster.”
The two women read the warrant carefully, finally returning it to Kieran.
“She was not lying, Lady Jasmine, when she said she was giving Maguire’s Ford to her sons,” Jane Devers said, sounding surprised.
“No,” he replied, “she was not lying.” Then, there being nothing else left for him to say to any of them, he kissed the women’s hands, shook his brother’s reluctant hand, and departed his childhood home for the last time. At the crest of the hill he turned to look at it a final time. He would not see it ever again.
At the end of April word was brought to Kieran that his sister-in-law had prematurely delivered a female child who would be christened Emily Jane. The child was healthy, and the mother had survived her ordeal with courage. Kieran Devers sent the niece he was unlikely to ever see a small silver spoon and cup. He had sent to Belfast for the items several months ago, and they had only recently come.
“Poor William,” Fortune observed. “But at least they have a child. Do you think it is time for us to have one, sir? We must try harder, I fear. You have neglected me shamefully these past weeks.” Fortune was soaking in the large oaken tub before the fireplace. The tub took up much of the room that the bed did not.
He chuckled at her, stripping his own clothing off as he prepared to join her. She was adorably tempting, her red hair piled atop her head, her cheeks rosy with the heat of the bath. “We must take a fine tub like this to the New World,” he said with a grin. “I am willing to give up much to find a land where we may live in peace, free of prejudice, but I do not intend giving up our baths, madame.”
Fortune giggled. “Thank heavens we are not Puritans. I hear they consider bathing a great sin of the flesh. Some of the gentlemen I have met at court are not pleasant to be near. Get in gently, Kieran, else you’ll splash water on the floor.”
He waggled his thick black eyebrows at her as he slid effortlessly into the tub. “Did you not know, madame, I am part silky?”
“What is a silky?” she asked, curious.
“A man who can take the shape of a seal. Or perhaps a seal who can take the shape of a man. Or so the legends go.”
“Ahh,” she said, and she reached beneath the water with her hand to tease him. “And just when do you become a seal, sir? And if you become a seal, how shall we ever conceive a child?”
He felt himself hardening as her provocative words taunted him, and the brush of her nipples on his chest inflamed his desires. “Would you like to see how a silky mates?” he goaded her wickedly. He turned her about, and cupped her breasts in his hands, his thumbs tantalizing the hard little nipples. Fondling her he nuzzled at her, nipping at her ear-lobes, and the nape of her neck. “The silky,” he said, “exhibits dominance over his mate.”
“Does he?”
Fortune returned, grinding her buttocks suggestively into his groin. “Just how does he do this, sir?”
He didn’t answer. Instead his arm encircled her waist, drawing them even closer. A hand slipped beneath the water to find the little jewel of her womanhood which he teased unmercifully.
“Silkies don’t have
those,
or such naughty fingers,” she gasped.
“But their human mates do,” he reasoned. He was afire with his lust, and he knew she was too. The oaken tub was wide enough for what he wanted to do, and so he bent her forward until her face was almost touching the surface of the water. Then grasping her hips in his big hands he slipped into her female passage in a manner in which he had not previously taken her.
Fortune gasped, surprised, and would have fallen into the water face first had he not been holding her. He began to move with a slow, almost stately rhythm within her, his long, thick manhood stroking the walls of her sensitive passage, stoking the fires of her own hunger for him. She caught the cadence of his movements almost immediately, and moved with him. Her head was spinning with the pleasure he was affording her. Her breath was coming in short, hard pants that sent ripples across the water before her face.
“This,”
he ground out in her ear,
“is how the silky mates!
He covers his female’s body with his own, and takes her.” He thrust deeper, and Fortune murmured with her open delight.
“Ahhh, Kieran,
yes!”
she encouraged him, wiggling her bottom into him. His own breath in her ear was hot, and fast.
“Oh, witch, you have unmanned me, and I am not yet satisfied!” he complained to her. His juices had burst forth, but he was still hard, and filled with a hungry lust. He withdrew from her, and exited the tub, pulling her behind him. Flinging her upon their bed he entered her once again, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting, until Fortune was desperately stuffing her fist in her mouth to stifle her cries.
The room was cold, yet she was burning up. If he could not get enough of her, she could not get enough of him now. Wrapping her long legs about him she drew him closer, her teeth sinking into his muscled shoulder, her nails raking the flesh of his back.
“More, damn it! More!”
she commanded him, and he complied, pushing himself as far as he could into her eager body. She screamed softly as their possession of each other became so intense she thought she was dying, would die from the extreme excess of pleasure she was now experiencing. The world dissolved behind her eyes, shattering into an explosion of color, and then she was soaring, soaring. As quickly she was falling into the sweet darkness that arose to claim them both from their excesses.

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