The Ground She Walks Upon (3 page)

Griffen O'Rooney nodded. "It certainly
is
a right fine gale we're havin' tonight. "

Peter Maguire's ruddy face turned to ruby as if he were suppressing nervous laughter.

"No, Griffen, I said the Gael.
Gael, "
Father Nolan corrected crossly.

Griffen nodded to show he understood.

"So who is to begin?" Mayor Maguire asked, tucking another honeycake into his mouth. A crack of thunder broke overhead, and his face drained of color. He looked at the roof as if in prayer. "In truth, I believe
I
should be the one to tell young Trevallyan here. The geis was wrought from the four fields, and I am Lir's mayor. "

"The wind scared your mare?"

The entire table seemed to shudder.

This time the reverend shouted the explanation. "Griffen, we're off the weather now. We're on to the
geis,
all right?"

"The
geis.
Yes, of course. Let's tell him about the
geis."
Griffen nodded solemnly, as if what was to come were as inevitable as the death of another old friend. He blew his rather bulbous nose into a faded red handkerchief while all watched breathlessly to see whether his palsied hands would be able to hold the cloth to his nose for the necessary moments. When he was through, he looked around the table at the stares. "I suppose you're all a-waitin' for me to begin, me bein' a storyteller and all. All right, I'll begin.... "

"No, Griffen, this should come from his priest, " said Father Nolan.

"But I'm the mayor, and the
geis
is tied to Lir, " interjected Maguire.

"No, I'm the one to tell him because my family guards the cross, " announced Drummond.

"Enough of this bickering like Kilkenny cats. " Trevallyan pushed away from the mantel and walked to the table where the old men sat around the one ghostly candle. "No one need take the sole responsibility of explaining the
geis
to me, for I'll ask the questions and each of you will answer in your turn. What is the cross, Drummond?"

Drummond appeared a little disconcerted at the command, as if he weren't prepared to start after all. "It's an old cross, not a Christian cross, mind you, but a Celtic cross, an amulet. It's been in my family since they arrived here. " He sniffed. "And I might remind you
all"
—he glanced at Father Nolan—"that the Drummonds have been in County Lir over two hundred and fifty years. "

"Fine. Fine. But what does this cross have to do with anything?" Trevallyan asked, growing impatient.

"It moved in the case, my lord, " Drummond answered succinctly.

"It what?"

"It moved in the case. " Drummond glanced at his fellow council members as if asking them to back him. "You see, the cross was in a case my father had built in the church when he was vicar. The case was impervious to trifling because it was permanently sealed. Yet the cross was moved. It was a sign to begin. "

"Begin what?" Niall crossed his arms over his chest. Looming in the shadows, with his blond hair slicked back, wet from the walk to the door from the carriage, he looked darker than he was, and older. He carried the air of an ominous and disapproving master. Suddenly Drummond seemed to lose his tongue.

"The housekeeper Mary Dwyer—Mary—s-said she saw a light from the cross while it was in the case, " Peter Maguire stuttered, nervously picking up the explanation.

"Yes, but let's be truthful, the woman's been known to be scared of her shadow, " Father Nolan interjected. He looked suspiciously at Drummond as if his worst fear had suddenly occurred to him. "It might have been a signal, but really, how do we know it wasn't a trick of the light? And you— you could be wrong about the cross being moved. Where's our evidence that it was moved now that you've destroyed the case? We might have called this council for nothing, all because of another Protestant error in judgment. "

"I did not make an error in judgment!" Drummond rose to his feet and looked as if he wanted to call Father Nolan out.

" 'Tis well you could have!" Father Nolan stood as well. "And if you did, we'll all be feeling mighty foolish!"

"Father, " Trevallyan interrupted, putting his hand on the priest's shoulder, "if you have your doubts, why did you summon me here?"

The priest looked at Trevallyan, then at Drummond. His face turned pale and, gravely, he resumed his seat. "I haven't any doubts, " he conceded, the fight gone out of his voice. "Reverend Drummond, English land-grabber that he is, is telling the truth. It's time for us to explain the
geis. "

"Then explain it. All of you. This instant, " Trevallyan demanded, scowling at each of the four men until they bowed their gray heads in contrition.

"A family of millers had your land before the Trevallyans were deeded it by the English Henry, " Father Nolan began.

"When they found out that the land was no longer theirs, they had a sorcerer put a
geis
on the Trevallyan men, " said Drummond.

"The male heir of each generation was to marry before his twentieth year or the
geis
would go into effect, " finished the mayor.

"And tell me what the geis is. " Trevallyan looked at each man. They all looked at Griffen O'Rooney.

Griffen eerily began speaking as if on cue. "I'll tell you about the
geis,
me boy. " He stared at Trevallyan, his aged and sunken eyes still bright with intelligence. "Your
geis
has four parts because Lir has four fields separated by the standing stone with the
ogham
written upon it.

"The first part is that the cross must pick your bride. The second part states that this girl must be a commoner from our beloved Lir. Part three is that she must be found in the twentieth year of the Trevallyan heir. The story of the Trevallyan
geis
has been kept secret. It's been handed down, father to son, for hundreds of years, and the men you see before you are the only ones left who are descendents of the original council. "

The room grew silent as all watched Trevallyan's reaction. The young man looked extremely solemn. Then, all at once, he let out a boisterous laugh. "This is a prank. It must be. You cannot expect me to believe that you four are to pick my bride. "

"We are
not to pick your bride, my son,
this
is to pick your bride. " Drummond withdrew the cross from his coat pocket. The men let out a gasp at its beauty. The cross almost seemed alive. It glowed and glittered in the firelight, and the sheer exquisiteness of the scrollwork seemed impossibly fine to have been wrought by human hands.

Trevallyan took the cross and held it at eye level. Purple sparks seemed to shoot from the center of the amethyst, and the scrollwork seemed to turn liquid like writhing snakes. He stared at it like a king meeting his nemesis.

"My lord, " Drummond whispered, "in all the years I've kept the cross, I've never seen it so full of fire. The
geis
must be true. This must be a sign. "

" 'Tis just the firelight that makes it look strange. " Niall tossed the amulet to the reverend. The men gasped. Drummond strove to catch it as if it were a falling babe.

" 'Tis not good to tempt the Otherworld, my son, " said Griffen. He stared at the young man, his eyes filled with pity as if he had once peeked into Trevallyan's future and had seen the misery Trevallyan scoffed at now.

O'Rooney's stare seemed to make Trevallyan falter as if he had cut into the young man's arrogance and seen his soul. But ever the master, Trevallyan collected himself, and said evenly, coolly, though his pale green-blue eyes snapped with ire, "I cannot tempt a thing that does not exist. This is rubbish. I don't believe a word. This, " he gestured to the cross, " 'tis a beautiful work of Celtic art, but it is not made of magic and it cannot find me a bride. For, tell me, is it to grow wings and fly around the county in search of her?"

"The cross has already found the girl. "

All the men shifted to look at Drummond. His face was deathly pale. "It's true. I went out in my hack this evening, thinking the cross might give me a sign of who the girl might be. I told my driver to just go blindly where I told him to go, that there was no definite destination. "

"How did you find her?" Peter Maguire whispered.

"I held the cross in my hand and it seemed to work like a compass, its fire increasing when I went in the direction it wanted me to go. When I found the cottage far outside the village in a grove of hawthorn, I'd never seen it so brilliant. It was blinding. "

"You've found the girl, " Father Nolan said reverently.

"And who is she?" Niall snapped.

" 'Twas Grania's cottage. "

Trevallyan's laughter boomed through the vicarage. "Grania! Old, humpbacked Grania! The crone the townspeople call witch! Why this is rich! I am to marry a woman who is old enough not just to be my mother, but grandmother as well!"

"It could be her daughter, Brilliana, the cross was seeking, " said Maguire.

"Who is Brilliana?" Trevallyan asked.

"Grania has a daughter who she had very late in life. The daughter would be your age, my lord. "

"That's right!" chimed Drummond.

"We must go to this cottage and see the bride for ourselves." Father Nolan stood.

Trevallyan shook his head. "I'll not bother these women in the dead of night. Not for the preposterous reason of a
geis. "

"I once heard the tale of a young man who laughed at a
geis
placed upon him by an old woman. " Griffen O'Rooney's voice issued through the dark room like a shiver. The other old men in the room seemed to huddle together as if they were afraid of the forces they believed howled around them like the wind coming in from the sea. "James Fitzherbert was a fine young man, strapping, tall, and handsome, who lived in this county hundreds of years before you, Trevallyan. He ignored his
geis,
and famine came to Lir, famine we have never seen since. The first to starve was his true love. The lass wasted away until she was nothing more than a skeleton with large, haunting eyes that cried out for food. Some say 'twas hunger made Fitzherbert go mad, but others say 'twas the guilt that robbed him of his sanity. "

Trevallyan said nothing. He stared at O'Rooney, anger tautening his lips.

"We
must
go to the cottage, m'lord, " begged Father Nolan.

"You turn twenty at midnight, " Maguire cajoled.

"Look at the hour!" cried Drummond.

All heads turned to the walnut mantel clock. It was five minutes before midnight.

" 'Tis folly to believe I'll marry this girl. I've never met her. She could be a hag like her mother. More importantly still, I do not love her. I do not know her—"

"Ah, but Trevallyan, you have not asked about the fourth part of the
geis. "
Griffen O'Rooney's voice cut through Niall's words like a ghostly howl in the night. All the men turned to look at O'Rooney, each face paler than the next.

"So tell me, old storyteller. Tell me the rest of the tale, " Trevallyan mocked, though his cheeks were not so ruddy as before.

Griffen stared at the young man, the pity and the hope still alive in his aged eyes. " 'Tis well you'll hear the story. When we get to the cottage. "

T
he cottage
was nestled in a gnarled, dense hawthorn grove that had been planted in ancient times. The wind screamed, and the rain fell in sheets, making a rocky creek bed of the road. Reverend Drummond's hack fought its way to the cottage light. The carriage stopped before a low, batten doorway where an old crone of a woman stood, as if she had been expecting them.

Each man filed into the dim cottage. Trevallyan looked upon the interior with disgust. One single oiled sheet of paper covered the small window. The floors were cold earth, and the walls were black with decades of soot from the hearth. Cats were everywhere; fat and sleek, sleeping by the hearth, lurking on shelves, fighting amongst themselves, while rats gnawed and squealed in dark corners, too plentiful even for the pride of cats. There was poverty in Lir, but he had seen none such as this.

"Woman, " he said softly, staring at the woman's hands burrowed deep into her apron, hands that were as gnarled as the hawthorns, that should have trembled in the lord's presence, but were instead as still as sleeping mice. "These men have brought me here because they believe I have a
geis.
They think I am destined to marry a young lady from this cottage, and that is why we have come here at this strange hour. " Trevallyan watched the woman for a reaction but could find none behind the many wrinkles on her face.

"I know why ye have come," she said, her voice dispassionate, or perhaps disconsolate.

"The reverend told you?"

"He did not."

"But you know
of
our business here tonight?"

The crone smiled at him, a strangely sad smile, one that showed her only two remaining teeth. "I am Grania, a seer, Lord Trevallyan. I know many things that others do not. "

Trevallyan gave the priest a discreet look of disbelief, but Father Nolan was staring at Grania as if he were in awe of her every word.

"Come sit down to the fire. " The crone waved to the only chair in the small keeping room. It was a sturdy, oak, three-legged chair black with age and smoke.

Trevallyan refused. "Your hospitality is generous, Mistress Grania, but we won't be staying long. "

"This business will not take ye long, I wager. " Grania looked at him, studying his face with the same fervor as she might inspect a golden chalice. "Ye be a growed man now, Lord Trevallyan. And ye've come here to seek a bride. "

"I've come to indulge my elders, " he corrected, his expression lean and rational even in the distorting shadows. "I don't believe in the Trevallyan
geis. "

Grania nodded, as if she understood. "And yet ye are here. And ye want to meet her. "

"They tell me you have a daughter. "

"Brilliana was conceived of magic. The faeries took hold
of
my womb and gave me a child when all reason said I was too old to have one. "

Trevallyan gave Father Nolan another glance
of
incredulity. This time the father saw it, and he shifted his feet as if suddenly uncomfortable.

"How old is Brilliana?" he asked, wanting fervently to quit this business with all expediency.

"Brilliana turned twenty a month before. "

"Is she here?" Trevallyan's gaze wandered to a moldering curtain that divided the hovel.

Grania took his hand in her own twisted one. He was surprised that it felt gentle and warm despite its knobs and calluses.

"My Lord Trevallyan, let me show ye my daughter. I want ye to see her beauty. "

There were tears in the hag's eyes as she spoke.

Niall's expression grew sober. "Introduce me to your daughter, old woman, but don't harbor false hopes in your breast, for I cannot promise to marry her. I'll only marry a woman I love. "

The crone smiled. "Have they told ye the fourth part of the
geis,
my lord?"

Trevallyan shook his head.

" 'Tis not ye who have the choice of love. No, the fourth part of the
geis
states that ye must win
her
love. Whether ye love her or not, 'tis a cruelty for ye alone to bear. " Her smile widened. She held his hand tight as she led him through the curtain.

One lone candle sputtered in a pool of wax, keeping a weak vigil in the dark bedroom. There was a pile of rotting rags in one corner, the stench of the chamberpot, and a small rope bed shoved into the corner with a woman lying upon it.

"Here is my daughter, Lord Trevallyan. Take the candle and judge her beauty for yeself. " Grania handed him the pewter candleholder.

For some strange reason, Niall was hesitant to go forth. The firelight from the keeping room flickered behind him, and he knew the old men had opened the curtain to watch this hallowed meeting. He studied the supine figure on the bed, uncomfortable with the notion that Grania was offering up her daughter for his perusal while she lay sleeping.

Distaste twisted his features. He was not in the habit of disturbing a young woman's slumber, nor to look upon her as if she were a common Belfast prostitute. Not in Lir. He wanted to refuse, but to do so would only prolong this hysteria. And the old crone's hope of a match between him and her daughter.

He stepped toward the girl. She slept with no covers and wore only a sheer oatmeal-colored night rail that molded to her body. She was full-breasted and rounded in the hips. Even in the dimness, he knew she possessed a pleasing female form.

He held the candle to her face.

The blood bled from his own.

"Is she not beautiful, Lord Trevallyan?" Grania rasped behind him.

"Aye," he whispered, truly moved by the beauty of the girl. She was porcelain pale with black hair that hallowed around her shoulders in erotic disarray. Her nose was slim, even regal, and placed perfectly in an oval face of heart-breaking delicacy. Her lips were full, sweetly curved, impossibly red; gruesomely tempting a kiss, even though...

Trevallyan crossed himself and stared into the girl's vacant velvet-blue eyes. She was indeed a beauty, an incomparable beauty. No doubt, there had been a time when this woman had laughed and run in Lir's sweet clover. He had dreamed of a woman like her once. She had come to him in the mists, her ethereal beauty untouchable, unforgettable. Still, in his dream, he had reached out his hand to feel her warmth and make her real, but she had hid from him in the mist, and his fury had mounted, for the hand that he so desperately sought was always just out of reach. Never did he imagine he would finally hold it. Only to realize it was stone-cold.

The young woman had been dead perhaps two days.

He touched her cold cheek, running his thumb down skin as smooth as cream, as lifeless as marble. Her unblinking, sightless stare tore at him, and he cursed Death that had laid waste to such youth and beauty. She was perfection; raven-haired and creamy-skinned; the kind of woman praised by the bards. It was difficult to believe she was gone, her eyes never more to sparkle with warmth, to hold a man captive to the gypsy soul within.

Niall hadn't wanted to go along with this foolish
geis,
and yet now, staring at the impoverished beauty, lying like a statue on the pathetic rope bed, he felt an unwelcome and irrational bitterness. As absurd and foolish as it was, he felt a strange regret, as if somehow fate had cheated him. He could now go on with the rest of his life, unhampered by imagined witchery and the silly superstitions of old men, but he had no doubt that the memory of this beautiful girl would haunt him for a very long time.

He stared down at her one last time, unable to drag his sight away. A chill ran down his spine as his imagination took hold. He couldn't shake the vision of her alive, her eyes filled with fire as he chased her through the standing stones, caught her, and kissed her in a shimmering lake of blue flax. The fourth part of the
geis
said that he must win her love, and in Brilliana's case, he could see relishing that task.

And that he would have won her, he had no doubt, for he was young and even he knew he was pleasing to the female eye. She might have been the woman he'd been looking for, the woman to be his wife, his lover, his companion, the woman to carry and nurture his children. He might have had all of that. Instead, he couldn't shake the dreaded notion that it all was taken from him. Brilliana, the woman the
geis
had brought him to see, was dead, removed from this earth forever. All chances, all hope, spent and gone.

Driven by forces he little understood, he leaned down and brushed her cold lips with his, as if for once wishing for faerie tales and the life-giving magic of kisses.

He straightened, and her eyes still stared soullessly toward the leaking thatch. Resigned, he covered her cold, implacable face with a tattered blanket.

"How did she die?" His words were oddly dispassionate. A lie. He looked back at Grania who had started to weep into her gnarled old hands.

" 'Twas a long and suffering death, my lord. I saw it once in a vision, and though I did all to prevent it, her will was her own. " She wiped her eyes with her dirty black apron.

"How did she die?" he asked again, his voice emotionless, drained. He longed for the solitude of his library where he could ponder the reasons and toast the poor maid who lay so still beside him. And curse the men who had brought him out this night.

"She was beautiful, was she not? And the lads thought she was beautiful too. So beautiful... " The crone began to weep in earnest.

Abruptly Trevallyan turned around. He stared in anger at the four old men who gathered at the grimy curtain, the shock still on their faces.

"Let us leave this woman with her grief. We should not have come. " The old woman's tears were like pins in his heart, more powerful than the rain that shook the hovel.

"But—but what of the geis?"

"This foolishness is over. The
geis
is no more. " The thought should have comforted him. Tomorrow, when he was gone from this wretched place, he was adamant that it would.

"But the cross! It still burns with an unearthly light!" Reverend Drummond held out the Celtic amulet. Lightning seemed to shoot from the large fist-sized jewel. The entire piece glowed, though the cottage's interior was quite dark.

Father Nolan gasped and stepped back from the cross. Griffen O'Rooney shielded his eyes. Maguire genuflected.

Trevallyan watched the men cower before the amulet. In disgust, he grabbed the cross and shook it at them. " 'Tis nothing but the firelight reflecting in the stone! This cross did not bring you here,
you
brought you here! You want so hard to believe in this
geis
that you see signs that aren't there!" He nearly threw the cross on the ground in his contempt for them all. "This Celtic amulet is nothing more than metal and rock, and because of the asinine ideas of men long dead and gone, we've come here on a fool's errand and disturbed this woman's mourning for her daughter!"

"Is this so? Was the
geis
nothing but cruel shenanigans played on us by our fathers?" Father Nolan cried out, fear and confusion in his voice.

"Yes!" Trevallyan raged, soul-weary of the quest that had merely led them to the grave of a woman whose lost, beautiful face he wanted desperately to forget, but seemed burned forever into his memory.

"No, " said an old woman's voice.

They all turned to look at Grania. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but she had ceased her crying. Overhead, thunder ripped the heavens and released more buckets of rain. Water dripped from the thatch, forming mud puddles on the floor.

"Your bride is here, Trevallyan. She is here. "

Trevallyan looked into the crone's muddy eyes. Slowly he said, "Your daughter is dead. And you, Grania, are not a consideration, for even if our age difference was not an obstacle, you are too old a woman to give me an heir. So who else is there in this bloody cottage?"

The thunder broke anew, and a blast of wind ripped open the hovel's door. The mayor shoved it closed and sealed it with the crossbar. Still, the wind seemed to scream around the cottage, until the thunder and wind turned into a baby's wail.

Grania hobbled over to the pile of rags next to the cold, silent Brilliana. From the midst of the tattered, soiled cloths, she lifted a newborn babe; a small, pink-skinned, raven-haired girl. Grania looked down at the babe with love and sadness. "My good Lord Trevallyan, I've no milk for the babe, and she will die if ye cannot find it within ye heart to help me. "

Trevallyan glanced between the dark-haired babe and Brilliana. "Is this her child?"

"I told ye. The men thought my daughter beautiful, Lord Trevallyan. I know not the father. Her death was slow and terrible, but at least she left me this. " Grania held the wailing newborn out to him.

Trevallyan did not take her.

Quietly he said, "If you need milk for the child, I'll see to it a wet-nurse is brought here tonight. The Trevallyans have never allowed a child to starve in Lir. " He looked around accusingly at the faces of Maguire, Griffen, the father, and Drummond. "I think I understand now. This was a hoax to get me here, wasn't it? But you could have told me the truth -—that a child is in need—and I would have seen to it that the babe was well cared for. This theatrical production was unnecessary. So answer me! Was this whole night set up to extract my charity toward this bastard child?"