Sing Me Home (8 page)

He pulled away to see her dazed gaze full of bewildered curiosity, and then the man he once was—the better man, the honorable idiot he’d thought he’d drowned in ale and fleshy pleasure—suddenly stirred within him.

He stepped away from her.

It took every ounce of his will.

Then he chucked her under the chin, pretending he didn’t carry a stick the size of a tree trunk in his braies.

“That’s passion, Maura,” he said. “Best we leave it at a taste.”

Chapter Six

T
he mead hall was alive with revelry. Serving girls hipped their way through the crowd. Ale splashed from the horns raised in toasts. Two fires crackled amid circles of red-hot stones and spewed up a stinging haze to the smoke-holes gaping amid the thatch on either end of the hall. The air smelled of venison roasted in honey, the bones of which littered the trestle table amid the soft white flesh of boiled wild onions.

Maura stood in the shadows, her back against the wood of a roof-tree, her gaze traveling over the seated Irish warriors with their flowing mustaches and glowing faces. The O’Dunn had ordered the trestle table pushed to one side of the mead hall to leave a space open for the troupe to entertain. Now, the twins wrapped themselves in knots on the rushes, their white thighs jiggling like pork fat as their tunics rode up their legs. Their bodies stretched in ways Maura never thought possible. The room rang with the bawdy comments of the Irishmen while Maura tried to swallow the dry lump growing in her throat.

She was to perform next.

She plucked at a splinter on the post, wishing it was just the usual nerves that had her twitchy and anxious. She’d always been a little edgy singing at feast days, standing before all the black robes and crisp white veils and sharp, expectant eyes—but she’d long learned that working herself up only made things worse. It was Colin’s kiss that tormented her now, as it had since Colin had marched her back to the road to rejoin the troupe yesterday. The feelings that kiss had unleashed had grown in intensity, and now she stood here, breathing hard, fingering the thinness of Matilda’s silken kirtle, wishing he hadn’t touched her even as she wondered when he’d kiss her again.

“If you pull it anymore,” a female voice whispered in her ear, “you’ll pull it apart.”

Matilda’s musky perfume wafted over her, the same scent that clung so faintly to the fibers of the bright yellow tunic Maura was wearing. She turned to find Matilda’s dark eyes alive with mischief.

“It’ll be easier than you think,” Matilda said.

Maura let go of the roof-tree. The pregnant minstrel had taken a particular interest in her tonight, helping her choose this costume. While Matilda helped her dress, Maura had discovered that this dusky-haired woman concealed a sharp mind and an even sharper eye. Maura was grateful that—for the moment at least—Matilda had misinterpreted the reason for Maura’s anxiety.

“I can’t imagine they’ll want to listen to a dull convent girl,” Maura murmured, “after watching those twins.”

“You’re here for the ladies,” Matilda said. “No mistress of any castle would ever allow us to enter the halls if the only entertainment we offered were shaking breasts and flashing white thighs.”

Maura felt herself blush. She’d gotten to know Matilda better during the long walks between towns, but she hadn’t yet become accustomed to the woman’s casual frankness.

Matilda mused, “When I first started dancing in front of crowds, I used to pretend they were animals.”

“Animals?”

“Look at The O’Dunn.” Matilda nodded toward the redheaded chieftain seated in the center of the bench. The little metal beads on her costume jingled with the motion. “He’s a pig,” she said. “Definitely a pig.”

Maura sucked in a breath as she noticed a wicked resemblance to a pig in the chieftain’s flushed cheeks and upturned nose.

“That woman next to him, his wife.” Matilda said, tapping her chin with the drinking horn. “The one who looks like she swallowed cow dung. Yes, that little mouth.” Matilda mimicked the woman’s pursed lips. “That white cap tight on her head. The little black eyes looking here and there, all about. I’d say she’s a weasel.”

Maura would laugh if she weren’t feeling as tense as Nutmeg when she commanded him to walk a slender rope held taut between her hands.

“The rest,” Matilda said, dismissing them with a wave of her beringed fingers, “they’re all chipmunks, squirrels, and skittering little vermin—”

“Are you scaring the lass to death, Matilda?”

Colin swaggered over to them, hazel-mead sloshing out of his cup, and instantly Maura became aware of how very low this kirtle was cut across her breasts, how gossamer the bright, shiny fabric. She felt half-naked under his perusal, as devoid of modesty as she always found herself in her dreams.

“I’m giving her a little advice, no more.” Matilda tapped him on the chest. “I haven’t warned her about you—not yet.”

Then Matilda sashayed away with a wave of scent, leaving the two of them alone behind the screen.

She searched his gaze now as she’d searched it every time they looked at each other since their kiss, and found in that gaze a guarded, quiet amusement. How could he appear so calm, she thought, when inside, she was a storm of feeling?

“This won’t do, Maura,” he murmured. “This won’t do at all.”

Colin reached for the ties of her coif and pulled them free.

“No,” she gasped, grabbing for her coif as he swiped it off her head, catching nothing but air.

“Hold still. You’re as skittish as a mouse under a hawk’s shadow. You have straw in your hair from the stables, it needs to come out.”

She flattened against the roof-tree as he thrust his fingers in her hair. His fingers caught on a tangle he worked loose with gentleness. Her heart kicked up a beat. Around them the servants fretted about, delivering ale and mead. Beyond the screen, couples groped in the darkened corners, cups fell to the floor, feet shuffled, the door squealed opened as someone left in search of a convenient tree.

She stood there pressed against the post letting Colin run his fingers through her hair, her voice lost, her mind gone fuzzy. Long, languid strokes. The stroking brought to mind those evenings when the laywoman Sabine would try to comb her hair into submissiveness before the darkness winked away the day. But this wasn’t the silent cloister, and this wasn’t Sabine’s ivory comb raking its way down Maura’s shoulders. Rather than making her sleepy, every stroke of Colin’s warm fingers generated a crackling in her body.

He said, “You shouldn’t keep this riot of hair so bound up under that coif, Maura. That wasn’t God’s intent.”

“What … what … do you know of God’s intent?”

“Hair like this is meant to tempt a man.”

She meant to push him away, she really did, and that’s why she flattened her hands on his chest. It had worked before, this kind of push, it had sent many a day-laborer skidding through the turnip peels, or tripping into the washing trough, but slapping Colin’s chest was like banging against a wall of solid rock, and suddenly she found herself leaning into him and flexing her palm to better feel the throbbing of his heart.

Then thick fingers curled around her arm, and they weren’t Colin’s.

“Bed her after,”Arnaud said, his brow gleaming with sweat. “Right now she must earn her keep.”

Maura found herself tugged into a golden circle of firelight, into the haze and noise, the twins passing her as they scampered off with a flash of blue silk. Padraig Smallpipe scuttled away from the trestle table to give way to Fingar, coming to the center with his harp in hand. Arnaud released her and left her standing there alone in the light with the stained cloth of the trestle table before her, with the men and women of the clan laughing and drinking mead from their horns. A man gestured toward her and said something she couldn’t hear amid the noise.

Little by little, the talk faded. Pair by pair, all those eyes fixed upon her. She glanced in panic at Fingar. The harpist lifted his blind eyes to the light pouring through the smoke-hole. A smile shimmered across his face as he stroked the first strings. Maura breathed in, let her eyes flutter close. She opened her mouth. The music of the harp strings shimmered in the air. Fingar stood, poised, waiting for her to begin.

A log snapped in one of the hearth fires. A cup dropped, clattered on the floor and then skidded across the reeds. Clothing rustled. Fingar strummed the opening to the song anew and the harp’s strings vibrated to stillness again. Maura heard Arnaud wheeze somewhere in the darkness behind her.

She blinked her eyes open. The O’Dunn turned into a boar before her eyes, all tusks and drool. The weasel grew teeth and a temper and all but slithered across the table. The rats pressed in upon her. Arnaud’s gaze pierced the bones of her spine. She’d felt the lash of Arnaud’s tongue enough to know this was her last chance to redeem herself, the last chance she had to stay on with the troupe.

Maura flattened her palms on her thighs, felt the silk slip smooth beneath her hands, then turned back to the darkness, seeking out something, not knowing what it was until she lay eyes upon Colin. There he was, leaning by the roof-tree, wiping mead off his chin, that maddening half-smile upon his face. There he stood, one shoulder abutting the pole, one ankle crossed. He swiped another horn of mead off a tray and raised it toward her in a toast, then pressed his other hand over his heart.

You know nothing of love.

She narrowed her eyes, thinking of the feel of his lips upon her mouth, thinking of the dream she’d had last night, the one she’d been trying so hard to forget, the one where she’d let him slip his rough, scar-nicked hand between her open thighs.

And then she turned back to O’Dunn-pig and his wife-weasel. The music swelled in her throat until she could no longer hold it. She dropped her head back to open her throat and sang the song until it vibrated in the smoke-filled rafters.

***

Colin lagged behind the troupe on the road to Tuam, watching the way the sunlight reflected off a certain linen coif. Since Maura’s triumph at the O’Dunn's—a triumph that had filled their pockets with groats—his little innocent had been honored like a pet among the minstrels. Maguire Mudman kept slapping a skin of ale into her hand. Padraig piped his own special sort of joy, making up words to a song about a lovely young songstress. The twins, twittering like larks in their guttural tongue, wove a garland of wildflowers to drape around her neck. Even Arnaud had stopped muttering and complaining.

He watched all this from a distance and told himself that he was content. His innocent little songstress had learned her lessons well. She was a minstrel now, and Arnaud and the others would take care of her long after Colin was captured and hanged.

So when they passed a certain huge oak stump by the side of the road, Colin hung back. This stump was all that was left of the tree that had been struck by lightning years and years ago. Beyond it, there lay a shallow stream that led to a crescent-shaped pond that he knew too well.

When the troupe rounded a bend, he stepped off into the woods. He strode through the all-too-familiar hills until he reached the little pond cut into the crease of two hillocks. There he paused. He listened to the calls of morning birds, the crackle of old leaves, the breath of a light breeze while in his head came the roar and clash of memories.

Greenery now feathered the branches, screening the scars of lances and swords that had once slashed these trunks. Saplings sprang from the dark earth where blood had once pooled. Wandering around the banks of the pond, he wondered how long after the battle it took for the blood to dry. He wondered where his men were buried. He stopped now and again, wincing as some combination of light and shadow, some knotted limb or tangle of branches loosed a dark memory.

He’d done a fine job trying to forget. The castles of Gascony, the hamlets of Normandy, the narrow winding streets of Paris, the well-beaten roads of England—good places for a man to lose himself, almost as good as a bladder of ale, a horn of wine, dancing and music and laughter—or the soft white arms of a willing woman. He’d thought he’d found what he’d gone looking for: The truth that life was happiest when it consisted of intervals of joy, strung one after another, like a rope of luminescent pearls wound in a woman’s hair.