The Falcon's Bride (33 page)

“What seems to be the press here?” he asked when those efforts failed.

“Didn’t young master tell ya?”

“I . . . didn’t speak with him directly, madam.” Drumcondra’s one concern was seeing Cian Cosgrove and leaving before ‘young master’ returned with the real surgeon. Could Divine Providence be that cruel? He hoped not. Only one thing was certain. This had to be done quickly.

“ ’Tis old master,” she wailed. “He’s dyin’, and young master Connor nowhere near ready to take over here, the wastrel. He’s not the man his father was—never will be. The place will go ta wrack and ruin, ya mark me words.”

She was already speaking of her master in the past tense. Ros had come just in time.

“What is the nature of old master’s malaise?” he asked. They had come upon more than one instance of contagion crosshatching the country. One couldn’t be too careful.

“He’s on in years,” she said, “too old fer huntin’ wild boar with the rest o’ them. He took a dreadful fall. ’Tweren’t his first, neither. He took a tumble over the gallery rail in another of his keeps when he was younger. Broke both his legs that time, he did. It left him with a dreadful limp. He was chasin’ a bird what got inta the house if ya can believe it. That was before my time. Nothin’s broke this time, but we think he’s broke inside. He’s been failin’ ever since he come down.”

“How long ago did it happen?” Drumcondra asked.

“Nigh on a sennight ago it was.”

“And you’ve just sent for me now?”

“Young master had ta give the order ta go after ya,” she said, bristling. “It weren’t up ta us, or we’d have done straightaway.”

Well, well! So that’s the way of it, Drumcondra thought, the heir presumptive courting control. They had reached the master bedchamber—
his
master bedchamber. That still rankled.

He took the candlebranch from her. “I shall examine him alone,” he said. “Do not loiter here. Run on about your duties. You’ll be sent for if you’re needed.”

The room was in semidarkness. The sight of Cian Cosgrove in what once had been his bed tightened Drumcondra’s posture, and set his jaw muscles ticking. Cosgrove was barely recognizable. Time had not been kind. His once handsome face was wrinkled now, made even more grotesque divested of the eye patch that would have spared him the sight of Isor’s handiwork. Ros strolled to the foot of the bed.

“Who’s that? Who goes there?” Cosgrove barked.

“Your worst nightmare,” Drumcondra said, raising the candlebranch level with his face. “Do you not know me?”

Cosgrove squinted his rheumy good eye and lost what color he had. “
Y-you!
” he breathed. “It cannot be! You are youthful still. Are you a spirit come to haunt me?”

Drumcondra strolled around the bed and gripped Cosgrove’s shoulder none too gently. “Does that feel like sprit, Cian?” he said.

“I
killed
you!” Cosgrove cried. “I ran you through . . . I saw you go down.”

“And when the snow melted, did you find my bones upon that battlefield?”

“I assumed that Gypsy witch of a mother of yours dragged
them off and hid them somewhere before I killed her,” Cosgrove sallied, the words edged with venom.

Drumcondra stiffened as though he’d been pistol shot. “What have you to do with my mother?” he demanded.

A triumphant smile curled Cosgrove’s cracked lips. “There’s no harm in telling you—a spirit. You cannot be real. I saw you die. I
saw
you!” He waved his hand feebly. Blood-speckled drool leaked from his lips, and he grimaced, speaking around a death rattle. “My deeds have come back to haunt me, eh? So be it! Your witch of a mother could not prevent”—he coughed—“your whore from setting fire to Falcon’s Lair, but she did take back my betrothed’s fur mantle, the thieving bitch, and took it to Si An Bhru. I have always wondered why. . . .”

“Go on,” Drumcondra said. Cosgrove was fading, and he would have it all.

“I killed her there,” Cosgrove said. “She was a sorceress, your mother. I saw her enter with that mantle, and I followed, but there was no mantle inside—only your mother. Somehow she made it disappear, but she did not possess the power to disappear herself! And so I killed her. When I returned to Falcon’s Lair, it was aflame, and you came to the aid of the few of your men that remained. It was a glorious battle . . . you died nobly . . . for a Gypsy.”

“Ahhhh, but I did not die, Cian. My mother was a sorceress, remember. Just look at me!” He whirled about, arms raised, head proud. “Does this look like a ghost?”

“That was over fifty years ago!” Cosgrove said, through another cough that spewed more blood-sullied spittle on the counterpane. “You cannot be real! What of my betrothed, eh? She disappeared as well. I told her of your mother’s fate before she flummoxed me, the bitch, she and that bird—aye, she knew. Is she still young and fair as
well? Am I the only one who has withered with age? I’ve outlived that blasted bird, though . . . your fine familiar.”

Cosgrove was rambling, and rage moved Drumcondra to the window stiff-legged.
Thea knew
. . . . and she didn’t tell him? This rotting pustule of a living corpse in the bed behind had told her . . . flaunted it . . . and she’d never spoke a word of it. Why? Because she knew if he knew, he would go back and kill this stinking living corpse, who had gone so addled that he could not tell the difference between the living and the dead. Her silence had allowed this evil wreck of a man to live out his miserable life in virtual comfort—let him take a wife and get an heir upon her after slaughtering Ros’s children, his heir, and his unfaithful wife under his very roof—
his
roof!

Again Drumcondra saw the blood sliding down the walls, dripping from the ceiling, puddling at his feet. It was as if his eyes saw through a veil of red. Everything was crimson with the blood of the slaughter.

He threw open the window, and whistled.

“Here! What do you do?” Cosgrove said. “Shut that. I am cold!”

“Dead men are always cold, Cian,” Drumcondra said as the falcon soared through the aperture and came to rest upon the studded leather gauntlet on his outstretched arm.

Cosgrove shrank back in the bed. “How can this be?” he cried. “Get it away from me! Get it away, I say!”

“Goodbye, Cian,” Drumcondra said. “We shall not meet again this side of hell.” He gave no command. Straightening his arm, he gave the bird flight, and turned away.

The creature did not seek Cosgrove’s other eye this time. It dove now for Cosgrove’s jugular and severed it with beak and talons. One long agonized cry left Cosgrove’s lungs, then not another sound as his blood spurted everywhere—real blood this time, no illusion come to
haunt Drumcondra. Trusting the bird to make a safe exit through the window once he’d fed from his kill, Ros turned his back and stalked out of his old master bed-chamber, the falcon’s contented clucking ringing in his ears as it ripped out Cosgrove’s throat.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The bird returned before Drumcondra did, its beak and feathers covered with blood. What could that mean? Thea was beside herself with worry, and there was nowhere for her to turn for reassurance. It didn’t appear to be the bird’s blood that streaked its handsome feathers. Not the way it strutted, clucked, and preened, traveling the roof of the lead wagon like the victor in a battle. Whose, then? She was almost afraid to wonder.

Cosgrove was the only soul aware that she knew he’d killed Jeta. If he were alive, he would flaunt it, and Drumcondra would never forgive her for keeping it from him. This was her greatest fear, the fear that spoiled her happiness. At first she’d been in terror of him going back to confront Cosgrove for fear he would die in another time and leave her bereft, but now there was another reason, one even more devastating. Her courses had ceased to flow, and her breasts were sore and swollen whether they made love or not. She could no longer credit her nausea
each morning with motion sickness from the wagon listing over uneven ground before she’d broken her fast. Unless she was mistaken, she was carrying Ros’s child.

Should she have told him? Not until she was certain. Would that knowledge have dissuaded him if she had? Thea doubted it. What it would have done, in her opinion, was create a distraction when he needed his wits about him. She had held her peace, and now she was having second thoughts.

She could never replace the children he had loved and lost. That wasn’t what she wanted. To give him other children to love was her heart’s desire, children that, in this time, destiny would allow him—children that his archenemy Cian Cosgrove could never take.

A knock at the side of the wagon lifted Thea out of her thoughts. She gave a start. It couldn’t be Drumcondra. He would not knock. She poked her head out to find Ina, the wife of the elder Aladar standing in the mist.

“Shhhh,” the woman whispered. “Aladar would not approve, the crosspatch. I am come to ease your mind.”

Thea swept the heavy curtain aside, and the woman climbed into the wagon.

“To ease my mind?” she said. The old woman was intuitive to a fault. Could she have read Thea’s angst over Ros’s absence? She bade the woman sit, but the Gypsy remained standing, and it was Thea who sat instead. Her knees had suddenly gone wobbly.

The woman nodded. “To settle you . . . about the child you carry,” she said.

Thea’s posture clenched. “How did you . . . ?”

The woman flashed a wink and a triumphant smile. “What? You think Ina does not see the swollen breasts, the thickened waist, the sallow mask on that fair face?” It wasn’t until that moment that Thea remembered Ina served as
doctor, nurse, and midwife among the Gypsy band. The woman gave a knowing nod. “Lie down,” she said.

Thea hesitated.

“Lie down, daughter,” the woman repeated. “I’m not goin’ ta hurt ye. We ask the question in your heart, and we have the answer, hmm?” She gestured toward the pallet. “Lie down. It must be done. There are . . . restrictions.”

Thea did as she was bade, watching Ina remove the gold ring from her bulbous finger. She gasped as the woman plucked a long gray hair from her own head and tied it to the ring. Then, holding it like a pendulum above Thea’s belly, she winked again.

“If the seed is planted, the ring will move in a circle,” the woman said.

“How is that possible?” Thea scoffed, through a nervous laugh. “I do not understand.”

“It is a method eons old, daughter,” Ina said. “It is not to understand. You will see. Now ask the question in your mind. Go on, daughter.”

It was silly, but Thea posed the question, a close eye upon the woman’s hand, not the ring suspended over her belly, to be sure it wasn’t Ina who answered the question and not the ring itself. But despite that the Gypsy’s hand was frozen still, after a moment the pendulum began to swing and sway and move in circles over her.

Thea gasped again, and her hand flew to her lips.

“You see?” said Ina. “Lie still, daughter. Now we find out if the bairn is boy or girl—quickly, before your husband returns. Husbands frown upon such augur, though they respect it, aye, and fear it. If the child be a boy, the pendulum will swing up and down your body from head to toe. If a girl, it will swing sideways. Are you ready?” she didn’t wait for an answer. “Ask your question, daughter.”

Fascinated, Thea posed the mental question and screwed her eyes shut tight. She was almost afraid to know.

“Open your eyes, daughter!” the woman commanded.

Thea braved a look, as the ring began to sway from side to side over her, though the woman’s hand and arm were still ramrod-rigid holding the hair it dangled from. It was impossible, yet it was happening, and Thea’s breath stalled in her throat.

“A-a . . . girl?” she murmured.

The Gypsy nodded.

Thea’s eyes were riveted to the pendulum moving mystically above her body. How was it possible? The woman’s hand was perfectly still, and yet the ring was moving as if with a will of its own. Shuddering cold raced along her spine watching.

Thea started to rise, but Ina’s sharp intake of breath halted her. “Wait!” she cried. “Lie still. It is not finished . . . look!”

Thea did look, resting on her elbows, and cried aloud as the pendulum began to take a different direction. Before her wide-flung eyes, it shuddered, swayed and began to swing toward her, then away—up and down her body. Once, twice, three times before it slipped from the hair and fell in her lap.

“What does it mean?” Thea murmured. Swinging her feet to the floor, she retrieved the ring. Ina put it back on her finger, folding her arms across her middle.

“You have not one but
two
bairns in that belly, daughter,” she said. “One a girl, the other a boy. Congratulations.”

“
T-two
. . . ?”

The Gypsy nodded. “The pendulum is never wrong, daughter,” she said. “Now I tell ye why I’ve really come . . . about the restrictions. ’Tis true that you are
Gadje
in the
blood, but wedding one of us makes you as one of us—subject to our rules, our traditions. Ye are
marhime
now—unclean. The buckets we set out in the stream, the ones for washing, cooking, and for the animals, you must not use the one you have been using to wash yourself now. You must use the one set farthest from the camp. That one is for the
marhime
, those with child, or with their courses.”

Thea nodded. “But . . .
two babies
,” she murmured. She could scarcely believe it. “Are you sure?”

The Gypsy nodded. “Do not fear. I will tend ye when the time comes. All will be well, daughter, ye will see. ’Twill be our secret till ye tell your husband. Tell him soon.” Laying a finger alongside her nose, the woman winked again, and left as abruptly as she’d come.

The last thing Thea needed then was another secret to keep from her husband. Worry over that kept her awake, though sleep was tugging at her eyelids. Another hour passed, and it was nearly midnight when Ros returned. One look at his hard-set scowl and ticking jaw muscles, at his narrowed eyes glazed over with rage, and she knew her worst fears were realized.

“W-where have you been?” she murmured. “The bird returned hours ago covered in blood. I thought . . . I’ve been half out of my mind with worry.”