The Maid of Ireland (32 page)

“What?” Caitlin asked.

Father Tully stepped forward, bringing a thin, gray-haired cleric with him. A chain of office glinted on his chest. Lifting his hand to point at Wesley, the bishop said, “This man took a saber cut meant for me.”

Caitlin’s heart dropped to her knees. “Where?” she asked Wesley.

“Just a graze.” He touched his shoulder.

“What say you, Caitlin?” asked Tom. “Has he earned the right to join the Fianna?”

Yes! her heart shouted. But pride made her doubt him.

“We’ll put it to a vote, as we do all clan matters,” she said.

And when the voting was done, everyone save Conn and Liam voted to offer Wesley initiation.

And Caitlin, more torn and confused than ever, claimed the right to abstain.

* * *

The day began bright, cool, and lonely as usual. Wesley rose from his pallet to find that Caitlin had left him and gone about her business. Lord, what he wouldn’t give to awaken with her warm in his arms, to tarry beneath the covers with that firm, silken body, to share intimate secrets and make plans for the future, to fantasize about the babies they would have.

To be fair, she had plenty to occupy her. The dispersing of the priests had taken most of her time.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he went to the basin to shave. Numbed by the icy water, he barely felt the scrape of the razor or the twinge of discomfort in his shoulder.

The shave made him feel human again. He managed a smile when Curran Healy tapped on the door and entered.

“This just came.” The youth handed Wesley a letter. “A courier from the east brought it.” His gaze took in Wesley’s bare chest and the livid gash on his upper arm. “Does that hurt?”

“Not so much.”

Curran went to the door. He hesitated, turned back. “Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Good luck to you, sir.” Curran left.

Wesley dressed in tight leather trews and knee boots. He pulled a plain white tunic over his head. He would endure the initiation bareheaded and bare chested, but first he would go to pray.

He broke the seal of the letter and read it.

His blood turned to ice, and a groan ripped from his throat. Cursing, he crumpled the letter and tossed it into a brazier. As he watched the paper burn, he tried to control his frustration.

Damn Cromwell. Damn Titus Hammersmith.

For a few weeks, Wesley had managed to put them from his mind. To fool himself as he had imagined he had been fooling them. Evidently Titus had decided to call his bluff about the profits gained from transporting wenches. Wesley should have known the threat wouldn’t last.

Twenty Clonmuir horses, the letter had commanded. To be given over to the English cavalry.

Tomorrow.

Regrets crushed his chest. Just when he had come close to winning over Caitlin and the men of Clonmuir. Just when they were about to extend the hand of acceptance to him.

Send the horses, Clonmuir’s one priceless treasure, and lose Caitlin. Ignore the order and lose Laura.

He made a fist and jammed it against his chest as if to keep his heart from tearing in two.

Then he pondered a third possibility. A way to appear to follow Hammersmith’s orders while actually deceiving him. Yes, it could work. Caitlin didn’t trust him yet, but the men of Clonmuir would help.

Wesley smiled and made his way to the chapel.

Kneeling before the altar, he folded his hands and raised his eyes to the smiling Virgin. An old feeling swept over him, a remnant of simpler times, when kneeling in the house of God had brought him close to a state of grace.

Caitlin skidded to a stop when she saw him. Unnoticed by Wesley, she moved silently up the side aisle and settled on a kneeler several feet away.

A pained, pleading expression transformed his rough features. Deep shadows molded the hollows below his cheekbones, giving him the aspect of a statue. And yet vibrancy glowed from him, the warmth of life rather than cold stone. His hands clasped each other, and she had a sacrilegious thought of those hands on her body, that mouth on her mouth.

Wesley spoke. “Make me a part of this place. Make me a part of Caitlin. Please, God, I love her so.”

Caitlin’s jaw dropped. She quickly slipped into the shadows of a round pillar, where she reeled with the impact of the declaration.

He had spoken to her of love before, had sworn it. But she had been skeptical, thinking it simply another of his lies.

But would he lie to the Almighty?

God, I love her so.

She pressed her back to the pillar and inhaled the subtle fragrance of burned-out incense. A feeling of joy rose through her, coursing upward like a fountain of light, bathing her heart and her mind in splendor.

She wanted to run to him, to fling her arms around his neck and cover his face with kisses.

She was the MacBride. Other men respected and obeyed her.

John Wesley Hawkins loved her.

She was inches from reaching out to him when hurrying footfalls sounded.

“Wesley, there you are.” Tom rushed up the aisle. “Come, we’re about to begin.”

Wesley rose and turned. Caitlin caught her breath. He looked much as he had the first time she had seen him: imposing, confident, bathed in hero-light.

Tom, too, seemed struck by his appearance. “Lord, but you’re in the high state of grace. I was about to wish you luck, but I can see you’ll not be needing it.”

Wesley laid his arm across Tom’s shoulders as they walked out. “Wish me luck anyway, my friend.”

Sixteen

W
esley stood bare chested in a waist-deep hole, a plain wooden shield in one hand and an arm’s length of hazel wood in the other. His hair had been intricately braided close to the scalp and woven with leather and beads.

Tom had explained in unsparing detail what must be done. Wesley had prepared for the trials to come. He had girded himself with prayers and self-confidence.

The rite smacked of paganism, and always at the back of his mind lurked the reality of Hammersmith and Cromwell. If this savage rite didn’t kill him, Wesley would find himself committing the ultimate betrayal against Clonmuir and Caitlin. He prayed his plan to thwart the English would work.

Nine warriors armed with sharpened spears formed a circle around Wesley. Rory posed the greatest threat, his red hair wild and his long beard flaming on the wind.

“God’s grace be with you,” said Father Tully.

Wesley nodded in thanks but his eyes stayed fastened upward on the pointed weapons. A spear hurled by a brawny Irish warrior could stave him through like a spitted pig.

A stir of movement caught his eye. Caitlin joined the circle of warriors. She wore her hair loose, and a tunic bearing the golden harp of Clonmuir encased her figure. As regal as a queen and as mysterious as an angel, she regarded him solemnly.

Their gazes locked and held. And then a miracle occurred.

She smiled at him. It was a smile such as he had never seen grace the countenance of Caitlin MacBride. There was something fresh and new about it, soft as mist, compelling as a whispered endearment.

She mouthed the words “Good luck.”

Wesley knew then that he would succeed.

A goatskin
bodhran
rattled. The warriors turned their backs on Wesley, measured off nine paces, and faced him.

He gripped the hazel branch and shield. Gandy shouted something in Gaelic. Nine spears sailed down at Wesley.

Time seemed to slow. The sharpened tips drove toward his heart. His shield came up to deflect them.

The sound of cracking wood burst in his ears. Wesley moved by instinct, seeming somehow to know the paths of the spears before they flew. The branch met them and turned their flight. Moments later, he found himself surrounded by broken spears and grinning faces.

Feeling as proud as he had the day he had first held Laura in his arms, Wesley climbed over spent and splintered spears. He caught Caitlin’s eye and gave a jaunty salute. The peculiar glow still lighted her face. She reminded him of a woman who guarded a delicious secret. He longed to take her in his arms and kiss the mysteries from her lips.

Instead he turned his mind to the next trial, a pursuit through the murky forest. Mounted on his pony, Tom trotted along at Wesley’s side. “Mind you follow the path we laid out last night,” he said. “And do be remembering you’ll have to jump a branch as high as your head, and pass under one level with your belt. Neither branch nor twig must disturb the weave of your lovely braids.”

“I’ll remember.” With mock vanity, Wesley patted his hair.

“If even one of the warriors draws blood,” Tom went on, “you’ll fail.”

The warriors girded themselves for the chase, strapping on sword belts and gripping new spears. The fire in Rory’s skeptical eyes seared Wesley with fortitude. “I’ll outrun them,” he vowed.

“Hold a minute,” said Tom. “I’ll be having those boots from you. You’re to run the gauntlet barefoot.”

Wesley drew off his boots and handed them over. The sandy earth of the yard felt soft under his feet. If anyone had told him a few months earlier that he would be running half-naked through the mountains of Connemara, he would have declared him touched in the head.

But then again, if anyone had told him he would lose his heart to an Irish warrior woman, he would have declared
himself
touched in the head.

He stopped at the fringe of woods. He sensed a magic in the moment, in the land that unfolded before him, full of sun and shadow and the secrets of warriors whose courage had been molded by half a millennium of fighting.

What vanity to think himself worthy of the giants who had taken their strength from the rugged land, their music from the sharp plaints of seabirds swooping over the fells, their poetry from the song of the wind through the green-draped vales.

“They were all just men,” said Tom, sensing Wesley’s thoughts. “Their power came from their human hearts.”

Wesley nodded. Already he had begun to empty his mind, as he had learned to do long ago on the eve of battle, when the Parliamentarians and the Royalists were fated to meet at Worcester. Determination sharpened his instincts to a blade edge.

“Ready?” asked Tom.

Wesley made the sign of the cross.

Caitlin drew up on the black stallion. Bright hope danced in her eyes. “Luck be with you, Wesley,” she said.

The
bodhran
drummed a rolling tattoo. Pipes whistled in crescendo and peaked at an earsplitting note.

Casting one last look at Caitlin, Wesley plunged into the forest. Sharp rocks cut into his feet. Thorny branches whipped past his face. And from behind, drawing closer, sounded the dread thunder of pursuit.

A hand ax sailed by, slicing the air dangerously close to his ear. “Jesus!” Wesley gasped.

The path rose steeper, littered with stones. Ahead loomed the alderwood branch that would test his agility.

He felt himself flagging, the agony in his bleeding feet rising like fire through his body. The branch drew closer...unassailable, impossibly high. A mere length of wood became the measure of his character.

He could not leap it.

In his mind’s eye he saw himself slamming into the stout wood, dropping like a wounded deer, entangled in brambles and thorns. He would forfeit all, lose Caitlin and Laura.

The pain of that thought lashed at him like a spiked whip. And then a flash of blinding light cleaved through his consciousness. He was lost, sucked into a burning white nothingness.

Cantering along with the pursuing warriors, Caitlin felt fear pressing at her. Wesley had reached the limit of his strength; she could tell from the labored movements of his powerful legs and the loud sound of his breathing. She thanked God he was fleeter than any of the warriors, even Conn who won all the foot races at Beltane.

But Wesley left bright smudges of blood in his path. Winded and bleeding, the wound on his shoulder still puffy and livid, he would never make that jump.

When he was several feet in front of the branch, she noticed a change in him. His breathing evened out and he said something. His legs coiled and extended. In a leap that would have daunted the most gifted of athletes, he sailed over the branch. Caitlin blinked and shook her head. For a moment, it had seemed that a bright glow moved with him, gilding the leaves and branches in his path.

Tom cantered up beside her. “Saints of heaven, have you ever in your born and natural life seen the likes of that?”

Wesley landed on the path. He made no sound as his bloodied feet struck the rocky ground.

Tom lowered his voice. “Caitlin, did you see...?” For once, the bard of Clonmuir was at a loss for words.

Rory loosed a bellow and plunged after his quarry. He let fly with his spear. Without looking back, Wesley ducked. He was a man possessed by some demon and yet divinely protected; he was wild and fey, no quarry of mortals. Again Caitlin sensed some strangeness about him and at first she could not place it. And then she realized. As Wesley ran, his feet seemed to skim the ground; his passing did not stir a single leaf or branch.

“Faith, he’s not clear in his head,” Tom said wonderingly.

Awe shone in the warriors’ eyes. Liam chewed his thumb against evil. The back of Caitlin’s neck prickled. Some unnatural spirit had taken hold of Wesley. Like Ruath of legend, he had harnessed an invisible wind horse.

The race continued another quarter mile. Wesley possessed a surging power that daunted his pursuers and baffled his observers. He seemed more than human as he dodged, ducked, and vaulted the obstacles without slackening his pace, and sped to the end of the course.

As he approached the fluttering pennon that marked the end of the gauntlet, Wesley sensed that something extraordinary had happened. The blinding whiteness of oblivion deepened to the shades of reality. The pain rushed back, screaming through his chest and shooting up his legs. With amazement he realized that the murderous course lay behind him.

He stopped at the pennon, grasped the pole, and fell to his knees. His hand came up to touch his hair. The braids lay neatly in place.

“You made it,” cried Tom, trotting up on his pony. “Saints be praised and sinners be damned, you did it, lad!”

“You’re a true champion,” Curran Healy crowed.

The sweat crawled in rivulets down Wesley’s face and back and shoulders. “No, Curran,” he said. “I...” He accepted a flask from Brigid and took a drink, then spat it out. “Water? By God, what must a man do to get beer?”

The girl handed him a second flask. “Tickle your throat with this, sir,” she said, her face wreathed in smiles.

Wesley drained the flask, then turned to Caitlin, who had ridden up on the black. “I have the oddest feeling that it was not my doing.”

He heard a nervous edge to her laughter as she tossed her head. “And who then did every last one of us watch moving like the Second Coming through the woods?”

Before Wesley could answer, Rory Breslin stepped forward, tugging at his gorget and puffing with exertion. “Never in my born days have I seen the like.”

“I see the hand of a wise and just God in this,” Seamus declared. “He’s one of us, else he’d not have survived.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Rory.

Wesley sent him a lopsided grin. “Yes, that I’m mortal, after all. The Fianna asks much of a man.”

“I was speaking of the poetic composition.” Slipping into Irish, Rory said, “The body might be fit—though I hold certain parts of it in grave doubt—but what of the mind and tongue?”

Still in the grip of pain and guilt, Wesley reached for more beer.

“Is it true he must make songs and recitations in Irish?” Curran asked worriedly.

“Aye,” said Tom Gandy. “So it be written.”

The large party started back toward the stronghold. Clearing his throat, Wesley hesitated. Rory glared at him.

“Nature’s call.” Wesley jumped down a slope to the shelter of the bushes.

“Me, too.” Rory joined him.

Wesley rolled his eyes. “Will you not trust me to take a piss?”

“After what I saw today, I’d sooner trust the Bad One himself.” Rory whistled through his teeth as he unlaced his trews.

Wesley couldn’t help himself. After all his bold talk, Rory Breslin invited attention. Those who bray loudest usually had the least to bray about.

Wesley blinked. His jaw dropped. For the boastful Irishman had a member that made a full-grown bullock’s look like a lapdog’s.

Wesley glanced away quickly. “Christ, no wonder you’re not married,” he muttered.

Rory chuckled. In Irish, he said, “You’ll not keep her happy for long with that.”

Filled with a long-denied yearning for retribution, Wesley took his time lacing his trews.

As he did so, he said in flawless Irish, “Pardon me,
a chara.
But I’m after thinking that ’tis not the size of the weapon that matters, but the fury of the thrust.”

* * *

A ceremonial hush closed over the assembly in the hall. Flanked by Seamus and Tom, Caitlin sat at the round table. She tensed with anticipation, her nerves burning and her heart beating fast.

The last phase of the initiation was crucial. A warrior could not be accepted until he had proven the power of his mind as well as that of his body.

Seamus toyed with the ends of his beard. “Sure I’d like to see the man become one of us. But the poor soul doesn’t know the Irish.”

Rory took a long drink of his poteen and chuckled richly. “I’d not be after worrying myself on that, Seamus. Hawkins has the touch of the green on him.”

A sadness welled up in Caitlin. She, too, wanted Wesley to succeed. How simple it would be if he gave his whole heart to Ireland. Then she would be free to open her soul to him as a wife should do.

Then she would be free to love him.

But John Wesley Hawkins was a born Englishman with no talent for the Irish. She felt the melancholy conviction that, after tonight, he would leave her. And she would be left with bittersweet memories of a love that she had been too stubborn, too proud to reach out and grasp with both hands.

The main door banged open to the gathering evening. Twilight had turned the world blue and cold. The distant bleating of Mudge’s flock of black-faced sheep sounded with the noise of the battering sea and the song of the wind.

Wesley appeared in the doorway. The hush in the hall deepened. Caitlin caught her breath.

The torchlight magnified his size. He was, in that breath-held moment, bigger than a legend, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, moving with clean-limbed grace down the length of the hall. He gave no sign that his torn feet pained him. The subtle surge of his ropy muscles beneath a loose white tunic drew the eye and held it captive.

His red hair, freed of the braids, fanned out in a magnificent mane around a face that, once glimpsed, could never be forgotten. The austere lines of nose and cheekbones were softened by his wide, full-lipped mouth. His eyes possessed hidden depths that urged a woman to plumb his soul and discover the miracles hidden there.

Caitlin felt the secret woman inside her stir to life. The ancient believer wanted to run forward and embrace the approaching man, to mesh herself, body and soul, with his sumptuous handsomeness and extraordinary strength.

His soft leather knee boots scuffed lightly against the flagged floor. The simple costume of tunic and trews, his waist cinched by the wide belt, gave him the look of a postulant about to take vows.

As indeed he had, Caitlin remembered with a jolt of discomfort. She pictured him lying prostrate before an altar lit by candles. And said a silent, shocked word of thanks that he had not found a vocation.