The Irish Warrior (19 page)

The sun was dipping low by the time Senna finally broke. It was the smell of pasties that did it. Cooked food. Warm mashed bread crumbs and egg, with bits of pork, mayhap. Or ham. Which? She was almost frantic to find out. Someone walked by with one, and she leaned forward to sniff.

The man tossed her a startled look. She tipped back into position, practically in tears. It was ham. Salted, warm ham, with cheese, spiced perhaps with basil or sage. The wafting scent of warm pastry and hot cheese made her stomach clench painfully. Basil. It was basil.

She broke and bought four of them, taking coin from the purse tucked between her layers of clothes. Inhaling one, she ate the other more slowly, shoving the remaining two in a pocket for Finian. Calmer now, she stood as twilight deepened, smiling at the antics of a small boy doing handstands while his elders juggled beside him, occasionally tossing items for him to bounce off his feet. Tinkling music from a flute filled the bustling square.

Finian appeared beside her, sidling up like smoke. He pressed up close, his body warm, the urgency in his words chilling.

“We have to get out of here.”

He didn't look at her. He was scanning the crowd. His hand was on her upper arm, turning her slowly away, when a ruckus disrupted the pleasant, bustling mood of the square.

A group of armored soldiers climbed the platform. A well-dressed, portly man hurried up ahead of them, as if he was being herded. Likely the head of the largest merchant's guild, de facto mayor of the town. Finian's fingers tightened around Senna's arm. He guided her backward, until they were up against the corner of a chandler's stall. The scent of warm wax was strong.

In the square, people stopped chattering and turned. One of the soldiers nudged the mayor, who stepped awkwardly forward and unscrolled a document.

“Lord Rardove has pressing need of this town's service,” he announced in a loud voice. “Six nights ago, an Irish prisoner Lord Rardove was holding on charges of treason escaped.”

No one seemed particularly impressed with this, Senna decided, looking around. But then, no one knew how terrifying the whole thing had been.

“This Irishman abducted Lord Rardove's betrothed when he went.”

This got the crowd's attention in a more riveting way. Senna and Finian stared at each other.

“Lord Rardove is offering a bounty for the return of the Irishman and his betrothed.” Senna noted the order of those events. “Any goodman who brings them back will receive a gold coin.” The crowd was getting excited, elbowing each other and nodding. A few youngsters ran from the square, likely to spread the news to all the destitute and ambitious of the town.

The mayor was wrapping up his appalling, instigating decree. “News alone will earn pleasure for any past debts or allowances owing to his lordship.”

One of the soldiers stepped forward, elbowing the mayor aside. His loud, commanding voice rose over the crowd. “Lord Rardove wants them above all things. Find them. If someone does before we do, this night, five marks to him.”

Now it was like a celebration. People pushed closer, tossing questions at the soldiers. A few farther back hurled insults, then quickly melted into the background.

Finian squeezed Senna's arm and they backed away from the square, while others pressed forward. Once clear, they turned down the main road, toward the west gate. She could feel the breeze rush by her flushed cheeks.

“Not too fast,” Finian said, his fingertips on her arm, “or we'll draw attention.”

Just then, a soldier wearing a Rardove surcoat stepped out from an alleyway. A hot stream of fear swept up Senna's throat. She smashed her hat down farther on her head and stared at the ground under her boots as they walked along at a screamingly sedate pace.

The soldier crossed the road and disappeared into the deepening purple-blue shadows behind another row of homes. Night was coming up fast.

“Finian?” she murmured.

“What?”

She tried to keep panic out of her voice. “They're going to close the gates.”

“I know.”

If they closed the gates, whether to trap them or for
couvre-feu,
they'd be locked in the city all night. With Rardove soldiers on the prowl. All the citizens, too.

They ducked around people and two-wheeled carts, increasing their pace, moving forward with intent focus, keeping to just under a trot. Finian bent his head beneath eaves when they had to walk close to the buildings. A horn suddenly sounded, a long, sustained note that rose at the end.

It sounded again.

They broke into a run, dodging a crowd that was suddenly streaming drunkenly out of a tavern. They spun to the right, turning onto the long, partly paved hill that led steeply down to the southern entrance. Then they skidded to a halt and watched as the huge oaken gates, studded and banded in iron, swung shut. They crashed with a resounding shudder.

Senna wanted to scream.

Soldiers stepped forward to slide the long bolts across its width, locking the gate with a huge, four-inch-thick wooden bar. The guards stepped back to their posts, small stone alcoves beside the gates. Above the gates, on the walls, was the alure, the stone walkway where armed sentries went on their ceaseless patrols.

Senna stood in the middle of the road, stunned and disbelieving. People flowed around her.

“Come,” Finian murmured, putting his hand on her arm. She spun toward him.

“We can pay them,” she said urgently. “I have money. For a small bribe, they'll let us through.”

“Aye. And for a larger one, they'll turn us over to Rardove.”

He nodded toward one of the numerous small alleyways all around, like warrens. They slunk into its dark closeness, hands skimming the wicker-and-wattle sides of homes to guide them straight.

 

“Where are we going?” she asked, stumbling beside him.

“Nuns.”

“What?”

“To the nuns.”

But they weren't, in fact. A quick detour by the back gates of the miniature abbey allowed Finian to see the abbess standing grimly aside as three soldiers shoved by her, into the warm golden light inside.

Finian slunk back to where Senna was waiting, a shadowy, lithe figure, kneeling amid the sharp branches of a yew tree.

“Not safe?” she asked.

“Not quite.”

Footsteps sounded. He put his hand on the top of her head and pushed her down farther. He crouched beside her, under the copious foliage of the tree. A moment later boots marched by, their ankles at knee level. Three soldiers passed, lanterns held high, Rardove devices on their tunics, grimly surveying everything they passed.

Finian and Senna held their breaths until they passed.

“Come, then,” he murmured. “Let's get out of here.”

She took the hand he extended and got to her feet. Small and slim, her hand fit perfectly. Her cool fingers curved around the outer edge of his palm. A wisp of hair slid out from her hat, and even that was like tamed fire in the twilight. He tucked it back up with his free hand, and she followed him through the dim evening.

Every so often a page would hurry by, holding a lantern high in the air, while behind would follow rich burgesses. From shuttered windows, candlelight shone down, making pale yellow stripes on the ground. But soon, all over the town, wicks would be pinched out, to prevent fire.

A few shops remained open, alehouses and whorehouses, open by special license and a hefty fee. Finian hurried toward one, its wooden sign
THISTLE
swaying in the breeze. They ducked inside.

“This is not what I thought you meant when you said
Let's get out of here,
” Senna murmured.

They were in a tavern. A whorehouse. It was clear as anything.

“Is this the sort of place a king-in-training ought to spend his time?” she inquired.

“I'm educating my squire,” he retorted, and propelled her toward a small table in the shadows at the back.

The room was wide. At one end ran a long series of boards, set upon trestles. Behind them, wine barrels sat on their sides, corks plugged on one end. Ale ran freely, too. A few rickety tables were scattered about the room, joined by a few even more precarious-looking stools, but as a general rule, men usually stood and drank until they passed out or won enough in bets to purchase an hour or two with one of the prostitutes.

The place was absent patrons, except for one other table. It was early in the evening yet, and Rardove's pronouncement had ensured most of the town's inhabitants were at present bobbing through alleys, hoping to find the fugitives and earn coin they could spend here, no doubt.

That other occupied table was wreathed by a group of three loudmouths, talking about the bounty laid on the Irishman, and of their earnest, enthusiastic dedication to finding him and kicking his teeth in.

Yet here they sat, in a tavern-cum-whorehouse, tossing back ale until their bellies must be small, alcoholic lagoons. Soon enough the three of them stumbled to the rooms upstairs, a woman with swaying hips guiding them. Two other women followed behind. A few moments later another woman approached with a tray with two mugs for Finian and Senna.

Senna kept her head down until the waitress left, but it was a pointless effort. Even with a dirty, pale face, her hair tucked up under the floppy brimmed hat, smeared with dirt and sweat, to him, she would always be the brightest thing about. She was a woman from her booted heels to the knotted ends of her hair, and she terrified Finian in a way the prospect of death never had.

And she was a dye-witch? Madness.

But of course, it was true. Now that Red had said so, 'twas clear as anything. She was filled with fire, passion. A dye-witch could not be made from a lesser woman.

“So, what do you think of Eire, Senna?” he asked suddenly.

She shifted her gaze back. “Do you mean the marauding soldiers or the mad barons?”

He crossed his arms. “I mean the rivers.”

She laughed, quiet, circumspect. Intimate. “They're long and wide and deep. And they make my belly spin.”

“I mean me.”

Her lips curved into a smile that would send a monk running for a brothel. “Long,” she replied, her voice deep with the burgeoning mischievousness he liked so much. “And wide.”

He grinned back. “And deep?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Shallow as a stream.”

He scooped up his mug and tipped it her direction. “I'll show ye shallow, later.”

She flushed a deep shade of pink and looked away.

The room was deserted now, but for a handful of women clustered at the far end of a high counter, a long flat board set on trestles. Behind it on a high stool sat a tall, striking, but tired-looking woman who had been eyeing them suspiciously since they entered.

“What are we doing here?” Senna asked.

“Rardove's men are searching all the homes. We'll wait here until some fat, rich merchant comes, then we steal a few of his things while he's otherwise occupied upstairs.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Have you always been so enamored of thievery?”

“A lifelong dream.”

“What sorts of
things
?”

“Cloaks, coin. Whatever might allow us out of these gates at night, appearing to be someone other than ourselves. We'll not last the night within the town walls.”

She scowled. Finian sat back, kicked his boots out under the rickety table, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Ye have a better plan?”

“Well, not a plan, per se.”

“Desperate straits require desperate measures, Senna.”

“Indeed. I simply don't like the idea of robbing merchants, no matter how
fat
or
occupied
they may be.”

“Ye wouldn't, seeing as ye are one.”

She gave him a level look. “As a last resort,” she allowed. “If it proves necessary. But if there is some other way…”

Her gaze traveled over the room and settled on the proprietor and the circle of pretty, painted women clustered around her.

He hoped Senna wasn't getting ideas about
whores.

 

A loud clatter of something falling drew everyone's attention to the top of the stairs at the far end of the room.

A man stood there, glaring at the pitcher that had sailed over the edge and smashed, spraying shards of crockery all around the feet of the prostitutes. He swung drunkenly toward the room he'd just left.

“Crazed wench,” he shouted, his words slurring together. “I'll not come here again.”

“That's for certain, ye won't!” shouted a female voice. “Not if ye don't pay for what ye took!”

The man staggered down the narrow hallway that paralleled the hall below. He pounded on another door, shouting vilely. The door ripped open. Two men came out, plucking at their tunics and hefting breeches up around their waists.

“Let's go,” he snarled. The other men followed as their leader stumbled down the stairs, grasping the railing with a fat, white-knuckled hand. He threw up a palm as the tall, stately patroness took a step in his direction.

“I'll not be treated that way, Esdeline,” he said in a pompous, drunken voice. It sounded like ‘Ess-dull-leen,' and was followed by a violent belch. “Either that wench goes, or I do.”

He waved his hand through the air, as if that would enhance the dire nature of his threat, when in truth it made him look like he was fanning away the belch. And with that, the men all staggered out the door.

The three girls who had been upstairs—the one who'd apparently thrown the jug and the two who'd been in the room with the others—came downstairs. Their faces were furious, although one looked close to tears, and not from anger. Finian could overhear them talking, their angry conference loud in the empty tavern. The defeated tone in their voices carried farthest.

“That's the third one in a sennight,” muttered one. “Left without paying.”

A few disgruntled
ayes
followed. The statuesque owner, Esdeline, her name as French as her bearing, sat on a tall stool, presiding over the conference, silent and utterly still, her graceful features rigid and stony.

“With the regiment that's been about the past few days, things have been better 'an usual.” That from the small one who'd looked scared coming downstairs. Finian heard Senna shift on the bench beside him. “They always pay, and good.”

Another girl looked at her pityingly. “Aye, but they shan't be camped here forever. They'll move out, and just come back every now and then, like usual. Maybe once a moon.”

“Balffe always comes back regular,” said the shy one softly.

Senna's face shifted around to look at Finian. It was paler than a moment ago.
Balffe,
she mouthed silently. Finian shrugged.

Esdeline reached out a long arm and brushed a wisp of hair off the girl's pale face. “Go wash, Máire,” she ordered, but her voice was soft. She added, “Use my soap, the lavender.”

Máire's face lit up. Senna shifted again, more sharply.

Someone else grumbled, not cruelly, but in an angry, disheartened tone, “Och, we could bathe in lavender every night and that wouldn't make 'em pay us.”

More grumbles.

“I am not surprised to hear that,” Senna said suddenly, quite loudly. “Sad, but not in the least bit surprised.”