The Ground She Walks Upon (43 page)

"I know." His expression was bitter, without hope, and yet contrite. "I valued all the wrong things and I spurned what I could not understand. But—" His voice seemed to catch. He ignored it and continued. "But I see now there is no value in a mind that ignores the pleadings of the heart. You say I could never treat you as my equal, Ravenna, but now I truly know that you're not my equal, but better than I am. You and all those in this county I've called fools. I didn't have enough respect for any other powers except my own. I didn't understand what everyone was trying to tell me. The powers that rule destiny are too great for any man's intellect, but what we all seem to misjudge are the little powers—the little powers that finally topple a Goliath. Remember this, Ravenna. Remember it forever: The
geis
did not bring me to my knees." He spoke in a reverent, anguished whisper.
"You
did."

She stared at him through frozen tears. Her emotions were too tangled to make sense of what he said. She wanted to run. To see her grandmother before it was too late. To extricate herself from his web, finally and forever.

"Justice has been served then," she whispered to his dark, brooding figure. Suddenly unable to hear any more, she picked up her skirts and ran to the top of the stair, her hands reaching in the darkness for the door that would set her free.

R
avenna, pale
and thin, watched as the physician packed his black leather satchel.

"She's not a young woman, Ravenna. She can't even tell me when she was born. I've given her some laudanum to make her more comfortable. It's not long now. Be quiet with your words and gentle with your weeping. 'Tis time for her to go to a better place."

Ravenna nodded and wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. It seemed she'd been crying for weeks, but it seemed, too, that there was more grief in her world than for which she had tears.

"How—how much do I owe you?" she asked, walking the old man to the door.

"Trevallyan will pay me."

"Damn him, he will not!" she cursed, not caring what the doctor thought of her. But then, despondently, she realized that all the money she had in the world had come from him anyway.

"I'll send a bill then." The doctor raised her chin and looked into her eyes. "Say good-bye to her now, Ravenna. And assure her you'll be taken care of. She worries about you so."

"I'll be all right."

"If you need me, send the
O
'Shea boy."

"Yes," she whispered, hardly able to utter the word.

Softly, she closed the door. Upstairs, Grania was breathing her last. It took all Ravenna's strength to mount the black oak staircase to the bedroom.

"I'm here, Grandmother." She walked to the bed draped in fresh white linen. Fiona had come from the castle to care for Grania in her final hours, and Ravenna had left her downstairs to knit in the kitchen with a small frown on her face as they waited for the inevitable.

Ravenna clasped the dear, gnarled hand that peeked out from the sheets. Grania's eyes were closed, but Ravenna knew she was alert.

"You've been at the castle all this time?" Grania rasped, her breath almost gone.

"Aye," Ravenna whispered, tears streaming down her face. She lowered her cheek to the twisted, aged hand. It was warm, and her heart ached to make it stay that way.

"Tre-vallyan?" Grania seemed to claw for breath.

"He..." Ravenna's eyes grew dark. "He is well."

Grania took a long moment to compose herself. Her breathing softened. Her speech became strangely lucid. "Do you love him?"

Ravenna looked away, her eyes sparkling with tears. The answer eluded her. Grania wanted her to be taken care of, and the old woman believed Trevallyan was the man to do it. But Ravenna didn't need taking care of. She had her novel, and there was always Dublin. Surely she would find work in Dublin.

"Grania, I—" She bit her lip. The truth seemed inappropriate now, even cruel, but lying to her, telling her that she loved a man she did not was impossible.

"Ravenna?"

Closing her eyes, Ravenna felt as if her heart were being torn in two. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't find the right path to take.

"He's been so cruel...."

"Have... you... never... been... cruel?"

"Yes," Ravenna whispered. Her teardrops splotched her grandmother's pristine linens.

"Does... he... love..." Grania struggled, as if invisible hands were closing in on her throat. Sobbing silently, Ravenna watched her grandmother's face contort with pain.

Unable to take more, Ravenna brought her lips to Grania's hand that was already wet with her tears. "He loves me, Grania. Fear not," she sobbed. "I know he loves me."

With tear-blurred vision, Ravenna took a last look at her grandmother. Grania opened her eyes for one brief second, then a strange peace seemed to pass over her like a translucent shroud. Silence came where there had been labored breathing. The old woman's face lifted heavenward and in death, her wrinkles seemed to fall away. Ravenna could almost see the handsome woman she had once been, the one who now had a former lover's hand to spirit her away to the other side.

Ravenna wept quietly at the side of the bed—for how long, she didn't know.

"Child, child, come down and sit with me in the kitchen. We'll send for the undertaker."

In her haze of grief and loss, Ravenna felt Fiona's hand stroke her hair.

"Come away, child. She's gone. Let her go."

Ravenna wept, unable to release Grania's hand. "She's all I had. All I ever had."

"Don't, child. Let her go. She cannot be comfortin' you now."

There was no wake for Grania. She was buried in the public graveyard where paupers and beggars and those not of an established faith were put to rest. It rained, but not steadily; instead the weather came in restless bursts of wind and calm, sun and showers.

The group that said farewell was a small one. Fiona was there, dressed in her Sunday best, a netting of black around her face. Father Nolan, thwarting his bishop, said the final words, along with a gentle, if obligatory, admonishment for Grania's life being lived outside the Church. Her tears petrified within her heart, Ravenna watched as the four boys who worked for the gravedigger lowered the pine coffin into the earth.

Afterward, no one spoke. Words were useless. With a pat to her hand, a hug to her shoulders, the others departed and left Ravenna alone beside the grave.

At the side of the road, Fiona fretted to the priest. "Her heart's broke, the poor dear. She's built a fortress around herself, that one. With Grania gone, I fear she'll never let another one close."

Father Nolan looked toward the graveyard, a frown on his careworn face. Old Grania was gone; it was time to think of his own death, not long in coming. But he could not take his thoughts or his eyes from the girl. Ravenna stood in silhouette at the gravesite, the wind blowing her gown, the same old blue gown she'd worn to Peter Maguire's funeral. She appeared as abandoned as a soul could be, and yet...

A man stepped from a copse of trees, a black silk hat solemnly in hand. The father hadn't noticed the Trevallyan carriage stop down the lane, nor had he seen Trevallyan disembark from it.

Holding his breath, Patrick Nolan watched Ravenna raise her head. She turned to look at the figure behind her. Trevallyan stopped. He did not step forward.

A century seemed to pass as Ravenna and Trevallyan locked gazes. The priest felt Fiona step next to him in the hope of a better view. Even the wind ceased to blow while the two lovers stared.

But then the scene fractured.

No one could miss Ravenna's cold demeanor. Nor could they miss the proud Trevallyan fury that passed across the man's kingly face. Trevallyan nodded his head as if in prayer for the soul who had departed. Then he slowly, achingly, turned and walked away.

In despair, Father Nolan watched Ravenna bow her head as if in great pain. The tears that had not come during the funeral came now in great wretched sobs. The priest felt his heart twist in his chest. Murmuring as if unconscious, he said, "A fortress. Yes. God save us all."

T
he novel
was finished.

Ravenna hugged the pages to her chest as she took the long walk into Lir from her cottage. The wind blew, whipping at the edges of her manuscript, unleashing locks of her black hair from the pins, but it felt good to breathe the salt air. She'd been cloistered in the cottage for two weeks, living off the coins she'd found in Grania's mattress. Painstakingly she'd spent her days copying her manuscript. Now she was ready to post it.

Giving it a kiss for good luck, she opened the iron latch-door of McCarty's dry goods store and set the manuscript on the counter, but the old wattle and daub building was empty. Mr. McCarty was nowhere in sight, but this was not unusual, for the old man liked to have tea with Father Nolan of an afternoon, and he simply left the door to the store open so that people could take what they liked and leave the money on the counter.

Penning a note to attach to the manuscript, she left tuppence and asked that the remainder be put down on Grania's bill. Then she penned the name of the man in Dublin that Trevallyan had claimed to know, and the address of the publishing concern.

The wind came in gusts so strong the building seemed to tremble. A shuffling noise drew her gaze to one corner of the empty mercantile, but she discounted it as the shutter being pulled against its iron latches.

Finished, she wiped the pen with her handkerchief and then stuffed it inside the tight sleeve of her gown. She was about to leave when the strange noise sounded again, but this time more to the left of where she had heard it before.

"Is someone there?" she called, a chill running down her spine.

A crash and the sound of glass breaking came from the corner.

Stepping around the counter, she gasped at the form of old man McCarty bound and gagged on the floor. He turned his head to give her an imploring look. She ran to him and pulled the rag from his mouth.

"Who—who has done this?" she cried, her fingers slipping at the tight knots on his wrist. Old McCarty's hair seemed a shade whiter from the shock of his ordeal.

" 'Twas the boy-os. T'ey come in here with kerchiefs hiding their faces and took all me stock. Lanterns, whiskey, everything...."

She helped him to his feet, disbelief slackening her features. "Do you have a guess as to who they were?"

"Nay, tall lads. Big and strong. Alas, more of them than me."

She sat the thin, quivering man beside his stove and tossed in a brick of turf to fire it up.

"You'd better tell Trevallyan he's not much time. T'ese lads are especially bad ones." McCarty rambled while she scrounged for a kettle to make him some tea. "T'ere's been talk of the boy-os taking the castle to retrieve O'Malley. T'ey've got all they need now to do it. Even the men who arose in '98 did no such wickedness as to steal from their own."

She couldn't hold back the sudden rush of anxiety. "He'll hold them off. I've no doubt of that," she said more for herself than for him.

"T'ey'll lynch him, is what t'ey'll be doin'. I saw it once over to County Down. T'ey took the master and hung him right in front of the Big House."

Ravenna's own hands began to tremble. For two weeks she had forced herself not to think of Niall. Now, though it might take her last strength, she particularly didn't want to do it.

Agitated, she looked around at the store, finally noticing the empty shelves. The boy-os had been so neat, she might never have noticed their theft.

"Father Nolan should be able to find them and get some sense into their heads," she said. "Such madness. Thieving from you to get to Trevallyan."

"The priest has no hold over them. The Church condemns them, so they go their own way."

"Liam McCarty, what have you done to your store?" Mrs. McCarty stood at the door, a basket of tatting hooked to her arm, her gaze astounded.

"T'ey've taken it all!" McCarty shouted, near on the verge of tears.

"Trevallyan will make it right. He won't allow this," Ravenna whispered, hating to even speak the name. Hating the way worry gnawed at her insides, hating what that worry signified.

"Aye, but no' if he's stretched."

Ravenna didn't answer. She couldn't. Instead she did her best to help McCarty regain his calm while he told his wife all the awful details. Ravenna then made them a pot of strong tea, and when there was nothing else to be done for them, she departed, promising to check on them in the morning.

The walk back to the cottage was dark and ominous. Storm clouds built against the eastern horizon, creating sheets of gray with no delineation of sea and sky. The hazel trees shook like hands imploring the heavens. Ravenna felt herself trembling as well. When she got to the cottage, she could not light the candles fast enough.

She hated him, she told herself as she stared out her mullioned window, watching the daylight seep from the land. The boy-os hated Trevallyan, too, but they wished him dead. And they would see him dead, if they were not compelled to stop.

She rubbed her forehead, agitated, yet uncertain. There seemed nothing to do about the situation. Certainly she must take a note to Niall and warn him—that much she would do for any mortal being—but it was a useless gesture. Trevallyan presumably already knew the dangers, and her warning would be weak and vague. It wouldn't do him any good other than confirm what he already knew. They wanted O'Malley back. They would do anything they could to get him freed. They might have even killed Trevallyan for
her,
if she had not been set free.

The knowledge weighed heavily on her shoulders. She was only concerned about Trevallyan, she told herself, as any good person would be concerned by hearing such news.

So then why did her heart pound in her chest at the thought of them entering the castle? And why did her soul cry out at the picture of Niall strung up by his neck?

Her hand shook as she placed her fingers over her mouth. A strange, powerful emotion she had thought was dead, believed murdered by cruelty and possession, was being reborn. She did not love him, she told herself, forcing herself to picture again the dungeon, feeling her hatred grow like a child in her womb.

But it was said hatred was akin to love, and now she wondered if it was not so. The tender moments came flooding back to her stronger than the picture of the dungeon: of him watching her while she told him the story of Aidan and Skya, his eyes warm and content in the firelight; of him lying beside her in the barn near Hensey, tickling her with a piece of straw; of him shaking his fist at the
geis
and at the pitiful land that had betrayed him. He'd given her sweet, illicit pleasure, and she'd taken it because she wanted it, from him, only from him. She lived her life outside the Catholic Church and, according to Father Nolan, was hell-bound anyway, as were her mother, grandmother, and Finn Byrne, so hell was where she had wanted to go. And she had told herself that each time she'd been drawn helplessly into Trevallyan's arms and into his bed.

Yet his cruelty the past weeks could not be forgiven in a moment, she thought, feeling the flames of anger rise inside her. But the direness of the situation seemed to tamp down her fury. When she thought of him being lynched, she knew she must stop it. He didn't deserve it. Even a mere acquaintance of Lord Trevallyan's knew he was a good man, a strong man. The trouble between them arose, no doubt, because she, Ravenna, was not just a mere acquaintance of the master's, as life should have led her to be. Instead, there had been the
geis
and circumstance. And now she knew Niall deeper than probably anyone. And that gave him the ability to snap her emotions in two.

But, still, he was a good man, a strong man.

He loved her and she knew it.

God save her. And she now knew she loved him too.

A tear dripped down one cheek as she was struck by the force of her realization. She loved Trevallyan. With all his sins and grace, she loved him. For her love was not weak, as she had imagined, easily crushed by wrongdoing. It was strong and enduring and it did not relinquish easily. With even a bud still left in her heart, it could bloom again and form the mightiest of trees.

Sorrowfully, she realized she had not been able to give Grania the reassurances the old woman had desired, and remorse was like a bitter taste in her mouth. But deep down, she wondered if Grania hadn't known anyway. Perhaps her grandmother had indeed been a witch. Grania had always known things others did not. She'd known about Finn Byrne's death and his and Brilliana's immortal love for each other. And now Ravenna wondered if she hadn't known about this. She had died peacefully and without regret. Grania could tell Trevallyan had been her granddaughter's lover just by listening to the softness of her voice when she spoke of him. So she must have been able to see into her heart as well, and understand what Ravenna could not.

Until now.

The bell in the clock of the tower room rang twelve times. Greeves had long since retired; even the sculleries had gone to bed. Scarred and blackened with soot, Trevallyan Castle was still, as if listening for the reassurance of midnight silence.

Yet one lone candle still burned. High in the tower room, someone was awake, brooding and drinking, his mind, his soul, obsessed.

Trevallyan put down his glass and stared at the seat opposite him, the one that was new and unworn; the one that mocked him. He stared until his gaze seemed to penetrate the leather and pierce its core. In his mind, she was there, her black hair fanned across the arm, her sweetly curved lips parted in slumber. The rightness of the scene gave life to his imaginings. She'd been born to the chair. It had been built for her. The injustice of her absence was unbearable.

He ached to reach out and run his hand along its smooth back, as if, futilely, to feel again the residual warmth of the woman who had once sat in it. But he didn't reach out his hand. He already knew the coldness that would meet his touch. The chair was only emptiness and leather.

As his thoughts were only shadows and despair.

The creak of the door should have turned his head. A visitor at this hour was unheard of. Even Greeves knew better than to disturb him in his apartment when it was late and when the candle burned long into the wee hours of the morn. But Trevallyan did not look up. The footsteps did not interest him enough to acknowledge the intruder's presence. Scorn cut deep into his features upon the sound of every motion. Only when the intruder paused, did Trevallyan deign to speak.

"What took you so long. The servants trip you up? I confess I expected you earlier."

"It don't do to rush these things. They only get botched."

Trevallyan finally looked up. His upper lip curled in a derisive smile as he gazed full upon his visitor. "So, here you've found me. At last." His gaze held wrath and fury. "Come to kill me, MacCumhal?"

Malachi stepped in front of the small fire still smoldering at the hearth. A pistol was in his hand. "Aye," he whispered hotly, and put it to Trevallyan's temple.

"That's rich." Trevallyan sneered. "Where are the rest of them? Downstairs, testing the oak limbs?"

"Come down the tower with me. You know what we want. Just do it."

"I won't release O'Malley."

"It's your life if you don't." Hysteria skirted the edges of his voice.

Trevallyan gave him a baleful stare, his gaze scorning the pistol and the one who held it. "You stand there, MacCumhal, trying to look like such a brave man, but you aren't one. You're a coward. Your hand is trembling. And the conviction that I've seen on O'Malley's face is wavering on yours."

Trevallyan stood.

Malachi, almost against his will, stepped back. "I've come to take you to Sean or to the tree. Choose now. They'll be growin' impatient down at the oak." His gaze hardened.

Niall laughed, a dark, harsh sound that echoed down the stone stairwell. He pinned Malachi with his gaze and began to stalk him. "MacCumhal, tell me," he taunted, stepping around his chair, "I want to know: Are you with the boy-os, or are you not?" He thumped his chest. "Do you feel the cause in your heart, or do you not?"

"I feel it, me bloody lord, I feel it." Malachi cocked the pistol. "Me own da was shot down to defend the likes of you." He looked around the room that was so sumptuous and foreign to his world. "You and your kind, you've taken everything. We have nothing."

"What have you come for, really, MacCumhal? Is it just for Sean, or is it just for the rebellion, or is it for you?" Acid dripped from every word.

"For me," MacCumhal announced, hatred in his eyes. "For her," he whispered.