The Mammoth Book of Irish Romance (61 page)

“What? What was that?” Siobhan demanded, sharply yanking one of Aislinn’s tawny braids.

“Tel me, or I’l pinch you!”

“Ouch! Nothing, my lady. Nothing. I was just humming a jig. The one Lord Colm’s cousin, Finn, played at your betrothal, remember?” But then she saw what Siobhan was up to. “Oh, no, mistress! You’re not going to do it again?”

But she was.

“On wings of white / Pray, let me fly!” Siobhan chanted softly, her green eyes gleaming in the rushlight. “Mistress of / The azure sky! / By the magic / In my blood / Change me!” As it did whenever Siobhan cast her shape-shifting spel s, the air grew very stil . It was as if the bower was holding its breath.

Aislinn held her breath, too.

The fire on the hearthstone ceased snapping and crackling.

The shadows on the wal s leaped up, became dragons, giants, wizards and other monstrous creatures.

Aislinn heard tinkling in the distance, like fairy laughter, or the chiming of tiny bel s. Sounds that came from the Otherworld.

The fine hairs rose on the back of her neck as light streamed from Siobhan’s fingertips. Eyes closed now, like a priestess of the Moon, lost in a trance, Siobhan beckoned the light to come to her, to surround her.

And it came.

The golden aura slowly expanded, until it limned Siobhan from head to toe.

A second later, she melted into the deep shadows and was gone!

Straightway, Aislinn heard a fierce whirring of wings. Something heavy – something alive –

landed on Aislinn’s shoulder. She screamed, and tried to bat it off her with her fists.

“Stop!” she heard Siobhan’s sharp command in her head. “Stop, Aislinn, else I’l change you into a mouse and eat you!”

Aislinn stopped flailing, although the snowy hawk’s sharp talons dug painful y into her flesh.

She had no fondness for birds. Nor did she like the way this one perched on her shoulder, peering at her right eyebal with its own beady ones as if selecting a tasty morsel for its supper.

Aislinn jerked her head to one side, as far from the hawk’s beak as she could get. “As you wil , my lady. Oh, there’s a bloody mark upon your . . . your wing!”

“Enough! Carry me outside where I may fly free!”

The sun was setting in the west when Aislinn went out into the courtyard, carrying the heavy white hawk on her wrist.

“You must tel everyone I am sick with heartache that my lord has gone. Tel them I have taken to my bed,” Siobhan instructed, “and cannot be comforted.”

“How long wil you be gone?” Aislinn wondered aloud, imagining the merry times she could have with her friends while her mistress was away.

“As long as it takes. And while I’m gone, you can busy yourself sorting and hanging the herbs we gathered. Take the acorns to the mil for grinding into flour. Oh, and spread fresh rushes in my bower, too. Now, what was that about a red mark on my wing?”

“Nothing, my lady. Wil there be anything else, my lady?” Aislinn asked, tight-lipped. There was a rebel ious edge to her tone.

“No. I don’t think so. Just do whatever needs doing. And there’s to be no gossiping and sil iness with those wretched serving wenches while I’m gone!”

Beady golden eyes looking down her cruel curved beak, Siobhan gave her servant a fierce glare.

With those parting words, the white hawk rose up on her talons and spread her snowy wings.

She flapped, beating the air, nearly putting out Aislinn’s eye as she lifted off from the girl’s wrist.

Up, up, up, Siobhan climbed, a shril cry of
peeeeeewhit! peeeeeewhit!
bursting from her hawk’s throat as she soared.

She rose higher and higher into the streaming orange, red and charcoal sunset until it seemed her snowy feathers were gilded by fire.

“Fare thee wel and good riddance, my lady!” Aislinn muttered. She rudely stuck out her tongue.

“Pray, take your time. Don’t hurry back on my account!”

Five

Siobhan passed the night in a round stone tower. It rose from a grassy headland that faced seaward. The tal conical tower, cal ed St Kieran’s Tower by the local people, was her favourite place. She went there whenever she wanted to be alone.

Monks had built the tower over a hundred years ago to keep out the Viking invaders who came to steal their religious treasures. To date, it had served them wel . Glenkil y had not been sacked, razed or robbed.

Ousting a startled barn owl, Siobhan took up her perch with her head tucked under her wing.

Exhausted, she quickly fel asleep, only to dream of mice and voles and rabbits.

She awoke as the sun was rising, lighting a shimmering trough of silver across the glassy grey of St George’s Channel.

Spreading her wings, she soared up into the pearly pink-and-lemon washed dawn, wheeled once over Glenkil y Bay, where the seals and sea otters were playing, and flew north.

Below her, she could see fishermen, already hard at work, mending their nets and patching their coracles despite the early hour and the sharp nip in the air. Then, with a shril cry, she headed deeper into the mountains, beyond which lay the Viking stronghold of Dublin. It was the direction Colm had taken.

It had been only four days since he rode forth from her father’s keep, yet already she ached for the sight of him.

I love him, she thought with a sense of wonder. I truly love him – yet my love wil prove his undoing!

Riding the wind, she glided on, wheeling and stooping through the heavens as if she had been born a she-hawk, rather than a mortal woman bound to the earth.

Never had she enjoyed her shape-shifter’s powers more than she did in that moment. To soar above land and sea, riding the four winds, with the val eys and mountains an ever-changing tapestry of colours and textures far below was a wondrous gift; one that ordinary mortals were not blessed to enjoy.

The land that was Eire spread out beneath her in green and unending beauty.

To the east, dense forests of oaks and firs clustered between gently rounded mountains and beautiful little val eys, like Glenkil y. Tiny vil ages of wattle and daub, or cottages of dark grey stone thatched with straw were scattered between them, as were larger farmhouses, with the flocks and herds that had survived the autumn cul grazing in the pastures.

Several smal monasteries and miniscule churches of grey stone, and ornate stone crosses etched with ancient spiral patterns, showed that the old gods, the pagan gods she fol owed, such as Lady Moon, and the Tuatha Dé Danaan who lived beneath the ground, were losing their fol owers, one soul at a time, to the Christian God.

Was her betrothed a pagan or a Christian?

She did not know.

Would he care that she fol owed the old gods? Or that she possessed powers that came from the Otherworld? Again, she did not know.

Rivers twisted and turned between the stubbled fields like shining ribbons. Lakes gleamed like looking glasses of polished silver. And, bordering it al , to the east, lay St George’s Channel.

Once, Siobhan thought she glimpsed dark vessels on the hazy lavender horizon – vessels that looked much like Viking
drakkars
, or dragon ships. Their dreadful serpent prows reared high above the water, screaming defiance at the evil spirits of storm and sea. Their sails of red-and-white striped wadmal splashed a vivid threat across the horizon.

But, when she looked again, the ominous vessels had vanished as if they had dropped off the edge of the world.

She must have imagined them, she decided. Or perhaps what she’d seen had been a smal flotil a of merchant vessels, bound for Waterford to the south. After al , it had been many years since the first Vikings had sailed up the east-coast inlets to attack Irish ports, or places with wealthy monasteries, like Glenkil y.

Those early invaders had stayed, married Irish women, or brought their Norse kinswomen over the sea from Denmark and Norway to marry Irish men. Norse and Irish now lived side by side, in peace and harmony.

It was not until the next day that she caught sight of Colm and his two cousins, camped by a lake. Of the remainder of his company – horses, hounds and servants – there was no sign.

She drifted lower and lower, riding upon the air currents, until she found a perch in an oak tree close to Colm’s campfire.

From her perch, she eavesdropped as Colm talked with his cousins, Fergus and Finn.

Six

“The beast is twice the size of Bram,” Colm was saying. Bram was the shaggy wolfhound that fol owed him more faithful y than his own shadow. “Or bigger.”

“Aye, and ’tis a she-wolf,” Finn said. “I expected Airgead to be a male, from what the shepherds told us.”

“A bitch is more deadly,” Fergus observed. “This one has a litter of whelps to feed. That snare about her throat makes hunting no easy task. ’Tis why she’s kil ing the late lambs. They are easy prey.”

Colm nodded. The three of them had tracked Airgead, an enormous silver wolf, to a farmer’s pasture less than a half-league from their camp. The wolf had been crouched over the carcass of a dead lamb, its jaws stained crimson with blood.

Turning to face them, the wolf’s baleful yel ow eyes had ignited, glowing like embers, chal enging the hunters to draw closer at their own risk. Baring her pointed fangs, she snarled deep in her throat.

They had fal en back, al owing Airgead to take the dead lamb in her jaws, and flee unharmed towards the mountains with her prize.

Colm, Fergus and Finn had continued on alone, tracking the huge wolf’s paw prints to a cave in the foothil s of the Wicklow mountains. Inside were five cubs. To Colm’s eyes, they had appeared half-starved.

The hungry whelps had fal en eagerly on the meat their mother provided, growling and yelping as they devoured the lamb’s carcass.

Before long, each cub’s muzzle was bloodied, each lean bel y swol en with food.

When the exhausted mother had dropped down to the cave floor to rest, Colm and Fergus, watching from a nearby thicket, discovered why the wolf, though a giant, was only skin and bones beneath her silver-and-black pelt.

A metal snare was wound so tightly about its throat, the beast could hardly breathe, let alone eat. The silver-and-black fur of its mane had been worn away by constant chafing, which had left its throat constricted and raw. In parts, the metal snare was deeply embedded in the wolf’s flesh.

Unable to hunt or eat her fil , the she-wolf was dying a slow painful death.

“In the morning, we wil bait our trap, then lie in wait. Before day’s end, I’l have Airgead’s pelt draped over my saddle, and we’l return to Glenkil y in triumph. And on Samhain Eve, I shal take the lady Siobhan as my bride, as planned,” Colm said with relish. “I— whoa!” Al three men reached for their daggers at the furious sound of wings flapping, bushes rustling.

Colm sprang to his feet. Dagger in hand, he strode across the clearing.

“Show yourself, rogue, else suffer for it!”

But instead of the outlaw he expected, Colm saw only the white hawk.

It had fal en from its perch in the oak tree, and was flopping clumsily around like a wet hen.

He laughed. Its loud squawks sounded more like a chicken than a hawk. And who had ever heard of a hawk fal ing from its perch?

Slipping leather jesses from a pouch at his waist, he harnessed the struggling, screeching hawk by the legs before it could escape him, slipped a hood of soft suede over its head to calm it, then set the hawk upon his gauntleted fist.

“Nicely done, cousin! You’ve got yourself a fine hawk there.”

“Aye,” Colm agreed, stroking the hawk’s snowy breast. He could feel its heart beating frantical y beneath his touch. Was the bloody wound on its right wing the reason it had fal en? Was it injured, was that it?

In that instant, he could have sworn he heard a faraway tinkling sound, like that of fairy laughter, or chiming bel s.

The fine hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

First, there had been the white doe with the bright splash of blood on its shoulder that he’d chased and lost.

That same evening, his betrothed had complained of a bloody scratch on her right shoulder.

“And now, a hawk, similarly marked on its right wing . . .

You know, Fergus, what this hawk lacks in intel igence,” he said loudly, “she makes up for in beauty, does she not? A man could ask no more than that from a wife, eh?” He grinned.

“Peeewhit!”
the hawk screeched indignantly.

Fergus threw back his head and laughed. “She understood ye, cousin.”

“Aye,” said Colm thoughtful y. “I think she did. Wil you sup, my pretty?” he asked, drawing a strip of raw venison from his pack.

He offered the bloody meat to the hawk.

But instead of tearing eagerly at the deer meat, the hawk recoiled. She chittered and opened her beak wide, as if she was gagging.

“Wel , I’l be! Did you ever see a hawk refuse raw meat?” Fergus exclaimed, bushy red brows raised. “Fancy that!”

“A hawk, no. But a dove—?” Colm grinned. “Aye, I did. Perhaps a wel -cooked snail or a roasted worm would be more to my lady-hawk’s liking?”

“What?”

“Nothing, cousin,” Colm said, returning Siobhan to her perch. The hawk’s rejection of the bloody meat had confirmed his suspicions. His lovely fey Siobhan was a shape-shifter. The question now was what should he do about it? “Nothing at al .”

Airgead, crouched in a thicket of trees across the forest clearing, threw back her head to scent the chil night air.

She had fol owed the rich scent of the humans back to their lair. She watched them now with hungry golden eyes, licking her chops as they rol ed themselves into blankets about the campfire.

From the forest in the foothil s, Airgead could hear her brothers’ ful -throated chorus to Lady Moon. Their mournful howls echoed through the amethyst dusk.