The Falcon's Bride (17 page)

“Do ye want more?” Drina said, hefting a larger missile, a coffer of hammered silver. “Ye need to find another nest to roost in tonight Lord Drumcondra. What? She wouldn’t have ye—your high and mighty, milk-and-water miss? Your fine lady? I could have told ye that.” She lobbed the coffer at him with a satisfied nod.

If he’d had thoughts of slaking his lust in Drina, they were no more. Her assault had eliminated the need. Dusted white and splattered with malodorous cream aside, the last missile had grazed his wound. That alone would be enough to kill his ardor, which quickly turned to rage.

“Who gave you leave to make yourself at home in my bedchamber?” he asked.

“When have I ever needed leave, m’lord?”

“Why have you come here?”

“Why?” she cried. “To see if ye had met your doom at the hands of Cian Cosgrove. Ye disappeared without a word to any of us. If it wasn’t for Jeta’s reports that ye’d come here with your lady wounded, we would have thought for sure the Cosgrove had killed ye!”

“So it was my mother who called you here. She will regret that.”

“Ye bloody ingrate! I hope the leg rots and drops offa ye.”

“Oh, aye, you showed me that just now. If you’ve opened the wound, you’ll wish you’d stayed at Si An Bhru!”

Drina burst into laughter, watching him slap the talc off his jerkin. There was nothing to be done about the cream. Damned vixen! It would leave stains on the newly tanned leather, notwithstanding that he would be smelled before
he turned the corners in the castle now. The jerkin was ruined, and it was his best.

“There is a way to put it all to rights,” Drina said, sauntering toward him. He’d seen that sultry walk before. There was a time when that undulating saunter would have ended with their naked bodies entwined beneath the sheets. It wouldn’t serve now. “I want that fur wrap,” she told him. “Give it me, and I might just be persuaded to forgive ye.”

“She was right, by God!” he said. “I did turn my chamber into a brothel.”

But he said no more. Drina’s shriek and another flying object—a heavy silver candlebranch—hit the door squarely where his body had been, as he backed away just in time.

“Ye will pay for that, Lord Drumcondra!” Drina’s muffled voice said from behind the closed door, as yet another missile hit it. “Ye and your fine lady. Enjoy her while ye can. Ye haven’t heard the last of Drina!”

Thea vaulted upright in bed when the key turned in the lock, and leapt from it when the door began to open, anticipating Drumcondra’s towering form to cross the threshold. When Jeta entered instead, she sank back down, in a state of near collapse.

“Time is short,” the woman said. “Have ye decided?”

“Have I a choice?” Thea asked.

“We all have choices, my lady. Ye have denied him?”

Thea nodded. “I’ve sent him straight into that woman’s arms.”

Jeta laughed. “Ye needn’t worry over that,” she said. “He’ll get no comfort there tonight.” Relieved, though she would rather bite her tongue than betray herself, Thea
turned away to hide what she knew had to be in her face. “I did not bring her here for that,” Jeta went on.

Thea spun back to face her. “
You
?” she breathed. “You brought her here? But why?”

“To help ye—aye, and him,” the Gypsy replied. “It must play out, the destiny, the way it is designed.” She gave a sly wink. “If she had not come, where would ye be right now, eh? In that bed, is where, and him content in ye—too content with his conquest done to be away before ’tis too late, because she would have come in any case and found ye thus. ’Tis all onesided between those two; he doesn’t love her, and she knows it. He was honest with her from the start, but she just won’t give it over. The coin will flip now. Aye, ye will see that too, is as needs must.”

Thea ignored the old Gypsy’s augre. “Where is he, then? Suppose he should come back and find us here together plotting . . . whatever we’re plotting?”

“No danger of that. Old Mossie’s tendin’ what damage was done to his leg. He won’t come back here after. His pride won’t let him. He’ll walk off his passion up on the battlements, the cold north wind his only mistress tonight. We’re safe enough.”

Thea gasped. “Drina opened his wound?” she cried, having heard little past that.

The Gypsy shrugged. “Whatever she’s done, he won’t die from it. We’ve both seen how that will be if ye fail. Midnight tomorrow ends Drumcondra’s pact with the Cosgrove. It must be then, before the retaliation begins.”

“I do not think that he will harm me, Jeta,” Thea said. “Not . . . anymore.”

“ ’Tis not that I fear, miss,” she returned, “but no matter. If ye do it right, ye never need know.”

Something cryptic in the last raised Thea’s hackles, but
she wasn’t ready to probe. There was nothing for it but to trust the woman, as bizarre as that prospect was.

“That’s just the trouble,” she said. “I do not even know how I came to be here, much less how to return to my own time and take two others with me. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“That is why I have arranged this little visit. To tell ye how.”

“
You
arranged?” Thea raised her hands in protest. She didn’t want to hear more. “We are not at Si An Bhru,” she went on. That is where I was when I came among you. How can I return from here?”

“Easily,” Jeta said succinctly. “Did your brother not come among us here at Falcon’s Lair? Did he not see the falcon just beforehand?”

Thea stared, slack-jawed.

The Gypsy gave a smug nod. “The corridors are linked, miss, and the falcon knows the way. Did he not gouge the eye out of another Cosgrove’s socket in your time? Hmmm? Now ye see, eh?”

“And Drumcondra does not know the way?”

“No one knows but me and, of course, the bird.”

“You are forgetting that
I
do not know the way,” said Thea. “And Drumcondra will never go willingly—not while his blood roils for vengeance here.”

“I know it. Ye will have to trick him.”

“He will kill me for that!”

“Shhh! He may not be abroad tonight, but others are. Be still! There is no other way. Tomorrow night at the stroke of midnight, I will occupy my son in sight of the stables. A horse will be waiting. Turn the falcon loose—”

“Oh, no! I won’t go near that bird!” Thea interrupted.

“Ye
will
! Isor knows his place. He has always been your
champion, if you would only see it. Ye will set the bird free get on that horse, and follow him. Drumcondra will come after you, and the bird will lead you through the corridor.”

“And my brother?” asked Thea. “What of him?”

“I will see to your brother, miss. You leave that chore to me.”

“What if Drumcondra comes back here to this chamber? What if he . . . if he . . . ?”

“Do not borrow trouble; it has lent you enough already. There is only one thing you need to fix in your mind. No matter what occurs, you must follow that bird!”

Chapter Thirteen

The following day dawned cold and gray with the promise of more snow. Drumcondra kept his distance through the morning. Trusting that Jeta would free her from the chamber in time to do what had to be done, Thea passed the time trying to decide what she would ever tell him if they did manage to cross over.

Despite her efforts to keep it at bay, the hellish vision she’d seen in Jeta’s bucket came to the fore and would not leave. She couldn’t be certain, but the bloodcurdling scene seemed to play out in that very chamber—a fire, a holocaust where Drumcondra had been burned alive. He wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him . . . a woman who looked suspiciously like herself. Not even the bird had escaped the carnage. Thea had seen it, feathers aflame, soaring aloft through the window to its ultimate death. She shuddered, reliving the experience that she had thus far managed to block from her memory, all but bits and pieces. The agony of the warrior, trapped, aware
as the flames consumed him, his companion, too, was more than she could bear. Then the scene shifted, and there was blood . . . so much blood. The slaughter would drive the Gypsy band back to Si An Bhru and their walled-up fate inside the passage tomb where their bones would ultimately be found. And though she did not see it, she knew that Cian Cosgrove was behind it.

Was this the retaliation Jeta had spoken of? Or could it have been Drina’s jealous vengeance that fueled this fire wiping out Drumcondra and his clan? There was no way to tell. There was nothing she could do about the latter part of the vision—neither she nor Drumcondra were involved in it—but the rest . . .

It wasn’t until midafternon that Drumcondra’s hand un-latched the door and he strode inside bearing a tray heaped with food. Seated in the Glastonbury chair as far from the bed as Thea could range herself, she watched him set his burden down upon the linens chest. The Friday-faced demeanor hadn’t left him. He looked just as surly as he had last night. He made no move to attempt seduction. Instead, he went to the candle stand and to her horror collected the falcon.

“What do you do?” she asked him, hoping her tone was not as desperate as it sounded echoing back in her ears.

“There is another storm on the way,” he said. “Isor needs to hunt and feed before it comes. He cannot exist on a steady diet of eyeball and rat.”

“There’s food aplenty on that tray,” she said. “Why not leave him? He hardly looks deprived.”

“It is not what he is accustomed to,” Drumcondra returned. “He needs to hunt for his food. Making a house pet of him will only make him weak, and of no use to me.” He stopped abreast of her. “Is this a newfound affinity you have for Isor? I though you hated the bird.”

Thea gave a casual shrug. Meanwhile, her heart was hammering in her breast. “I have grown accustomed to his company,” she said. “Captivity can be a lonely state, my lord.”

“And whose fault is that, my lady?”

“Yours!” she couldn’t help herself from snapping.

He offered a crisp nod and sketched a bow, and the clucking bird bobbed its head for all the world as if it understood and mimicked the gesture. Thea snorted. Maybe the creature could be trusted, at that.

“Y-you will bring him back after?” she called out as he reached the threshold.

Drumcondra didn’t answer. He dosed her with a long hard stare, then shut the door and locked it behind him.

When he did not return in a timely fashion, Thea was beside herself. She couldn’t see through the window for the plank in the way, but it had to be late—at least dusk. What if he didn’t come? What if no one came? What if the midnight hour passed—would it be too late? She was nearly out of her mind with worry. Her food lay untouched on the linens chest. She could not bring herself to swallow it, though her belly growled for want of something solid inside. She hadn’t eaten but sporadically since she left Newgrange.

Why didn’t he return? Was this some sort of punishment for her rejection? Thea was half mad by the time a key turned in the lock and the door creaked open. But it wasn’t Drumcondra’s hand on the latch; it was his mother’s.

Thea’s hand flew to her lips at sight of the woman’s borne-down expression; everything about her screamed catastrophe. Rooted to the spot, it was a moment before Thea could speak. When she was finally able, the words were halting and strained.

“Something is . . . wrong,” she murmured through her fingers.

“It is nearly time,” the Gypsy said, handing over the ankle boots Thea had never expected to see again.

“Where is Drumcondra?” Thea murmured, tugging on the footwear.

“Gone,” said the Gypsy.

“Gone where?”

“To the Cosgrove’s castle.” She gave a dry grunt. “How he would rail at me if he heard me call it that,” she said. “I could not prevent him going. He has gone to see if the Cosgrove has met his demands.”

“And the bird?”

“The bird is with him, miss. They are as one entity—inseparable. He would not venture forth into battle without Isor now.”

“
Battle
?” Thea cried. “He has not gone alone? He is injured, he—”

The Gypsy raised her hand. “He has taken several of his trusted warriors. There is nothing to be done. Ye must go, miss. Your brother awaits ye in the stables. Ye cannot remain here any longer else ye share in the carnage to come.”

“Go?” The prospect of leaving without Drumcondra was unthinkable—unbearable. The thought of it set off earthquakes in her heart that reverberated in her very soul. It was then that she knew for certain that somehow their souls were linked, as though an invisible cord were stretched between them that spanned the corridors of time. She could not—would not—sever that tether. “How can I go without him?” she sobbed.

“You must,” the Gypsy said. “And before it is begun, while I still possess the power to help ye.”

“But how can I go without the bird?”

“You forget that I, too, travel the corridor, my lady. How
else did I come to you in the beginning? Come, your brother awaits. In an hour’s time, these snow-covered hills will run red with blood, and bodies of the dead will litter that cold white ground. Yours must not number among them. There is nothing more that you can do for him, my lady. I have failed. It is finished.”

Thea took one last look about the chamber that had been her prison, at the bed where she had so desired to give Drumcondra her virtue, and at the vacant candle stand where the bird had perched content to bask in the warmth of the chimney corner, its hooded eyes ever alert for rats. Without a word, she took up her fur pelerine draped over the Glastonbury chair, looped it over her arm, and followed the woman into the corridor.

They hadn’t taken three steps when Drina sprang from the shadows and seized the pelerine. Unprepared, Thea nearly lost her grip upon it, and a tug of war resulted for possession of the wrap. Despite Jeta’s flying fists attacking the Gypsy wench about the head and shoulders, the crafty girl swooped down, bit Thea on the wrist, and won the fur. Then, waving it like a banner, she danced off and disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the opposite wing, her laughter living after her.

“Never mind,” said Jeta, seizing Thea’s arm in her bony fingers. “There is no more time, I will fetch ye a mantle. It will not be so fine as your fur, but it will suffice. Come.”