Deirdre (46 page)

Sickness gorged her throat. She dropped to her knees.

“
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the L
ORD
, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

An uproar deafened her to all but her claim. God promised her. He
promised
her.

“Deirdre!” Cairell’s alarm sounded distant, yet she felt his hand trying to steady her. Someone else—Dealla?—was on her other side.

“Will you confess
now
, deceiver?”

It was Alric’s voice that silenced the rest, for it traversed where only a soul mate’s might, not through the earthly senses, but the spiritual.

Deirdre forced open her eyes. Kyras, not Alric, was lying on the ground, both hands on the blade Alric pressed to his throat. White as ash, he stared into Alric’s gaze.

“For the love of God, man,
look
!” Alric shouted fiercely. His hands trembled as much as his opponent’s on the bloodletting end of the weapon, as if the sword held them both with a life of its own. “Do you see them?”

Them? Deirdre saw nothing but two battle-weary foes, gazes locked in a pit of terror apart from the world around them.

“Believe, lad!” Alric half pleaded, half ordered. “Don’t let them take you. Take His hand!”

Whose hand? If anyone doubted Alric’s sanity now …

A sob tore from Kyras’s throat as if the wolf had ripped it out with its teeth. “Jesus,
save me
!’”

Alric withdrew the blade and drove it into the din at the foot of the platform where everyone stood—Cairell, the bishops …

A paralyzing silence engulfed them all, as though the same invisible teeth had collectively ripped out their ability to speak or move. Reaching down, Alric seized Kyras’s arm and pulled the sobbing young man to his feet. They embraced, more like a father and son than victor and defeated. As the distraught champion drew away Alric’s eye met Deirdre’s. No words were needed. She knew his heart. He knew hers.

Kyras moved to fall onto his knees before Cairell. “I … I’m sorry” He gave Dealla a tortured look. “I did it for you … for us.”

Dealla’s mouth fell open in shock. “
Us
?” She shook her head, as if she’d misunderstood.

“So you
were
in on this scheme.” Cairell snapped his fingers, and two guards took Dealla by the arms.

“
No
!” The guards stilled at Kyras’s agonized shout. “She knew nothing about it. Nothing!”

“Why, Kyras?” Tears spilled down the queen’s white face. “What possessed you to do such a thing? You signed a death warrant for those innocent people.” Dealla turned to Alric. “That treasure wasn’t to fatten Dalraidi purses, it was to save my husband’s son from being sold into slavery after your high king abducted him.”

“I make no excuses for Ecfrith, nor do I condone what he has done in the name of God,” Alric said, “but I still champion truth when I say that the bretwalda knew nothing of the prince’s kidnapping. When one
keeps the company of snakes, one is likely to be bitten. God’s justice awaits for the bretwalda’s transgressions against the Irish monasteries, perhaps to be dealt by the very serpent who sought to profit from Cairell’s ransom without Ecfrith’s benefit.”

“Where is the ransom now?” Queen Dealla asked.

“At the bottom of the sea.”

“Dealla, I have loved you since the first time I saw you.” Kyras took a shaky breath. “But you were promised to the king’s brother before I could prove myself … then to the king himself.” He lifted his hands in despair. “How could I compete with a king?”

“You couldn’t … unless you became one,” Cairell observed wryly “If I was not ransomed, I was out of the way My sister faced either death or slavery, taking the last of Fergal’s line out of the royal hierarchy. Our young, strapping champion was a natural choice to become king.”

“Did you … did you do anything to harm father?” Deirdre held her breath. Fergal had thought highly of his cousin’s son. She prayed he was spared the knowledge of Kyras’s treachery.

Kyras shook his head. “Only by what I did to you and your brother, though I might as well have. Your loss was the dagger that stilled his heart.” He turned on Alric suddenly with contempt. “Why couldn’t you just
kill
me?”

Alric clamped a strong hand on the man’s shoulder. “Because these godly people will forgive you. Those you saw will not.”

If Alric was insane, then Kyras was as well, for it was evident that the champion knew exactly to whom the Saxon referred. For a moment, Deirdre thought the younger man might retch; such was his repugnance of the memory.

The bishop of Armagh held up his hand, seizing command of the proceedings. “Exactly what was it you did see, sons?”

Kyras shuddered, shaking his head.

“Justice on the other side,” Alric provided for him. “It is unspeakable.”

A tide of hush carried Alric’s explanation over the crowd, echoing only the breath that bore it.

“I will seek council before I decide the nature of your sentence in
this matter,” Cairell told Kyras, his clear voice filling the inner rath without challenge. He nodded for the guards to take the disgraced champion into custody “Let the rest of us retire to the hall … but
not
to celebrate my coronation.” He waited for the consternate reaction of the masses to settle before continuing. “I’m sure you understand how its untimeliness robs me of any satisfaction.”

Deirdre fought the grief struck fresh by the telltale quiver in her brother’s voice, but he rallied as he was born to do.

“Let us instead celebrate God’s triumph in our hour of darkness and deception. So, good and loyal friends, enjoy Gleannmara’s hospitality” Cairell motioned to where Deirdre hopped down from the platform into her husband’s arms.

She could wait no longer to touch Alric, to reinforce the eternal bond between them with the urgency of the moment.

“I bid you all show our deliverers the welcome for which we are renowned. I and my new brother and his bride will join you when we are fit to entertain those dearest to our hearts.”

Everyone began to talk at once as Alric ushered Deirdre along with her brother’s company back into the fine stone hall. His men climbed over each other trying to congratulate him. The nobility gave them a respectful space, many straining to hear an explanation of the miraculous sight they’d witnessed yet were loathe to believe. Alric needed no accolade. All he needed, he held under his wing.

At Deirdre’s nearness, his body gave up weariness for renewal.

Alric didn’t know exactly how he escaped death. At least that was what he told Cairell as they’d made their way back into the hall. Everyone was talking at once about the maneuver that deflected Kyras’s blade and enabled the victim to become the victor with a lightning run of unerring kicks, blows, twists, and turns.

“Can you teach me what you did?” Cairell’s eyes glowed. “Faith, I’ve never seen a broadsword turned away like that, much less by someone half blind with sand in his eyes.”

“The blade itself announced its coming and its angle,” Alric
decided, replaying what he could in his mind.

“The sword song.”

Alric looked surprised. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that. ’Tis a far baser note this one sings.”

Cairell’s face fell. “I’ve heard of it, but never heard it myself.” He visibly wrestled with the troubling fact.

But it was more than the sword song that bade Alric move as he had. His body had suddenly thrummed with life. Like a dead piece of fat tossed on the fire, it had flashed. Or was it the sparks cast by the friction of the dirt he rubbed in his eyes? All he knew was that his limbs moved of their own accord, abandoning the sense of sight altogether. It was only when he stood over Kyras that his vision had cleared.

And as he looked down, he saw a love-stricken heart behind the treachery devoid of greed or ambition, save love itself. He saw the dark justice that awaited it, and the sinewy gold-banded arm reaching out of his own body for the miserable soul sinking in the dark mire beneath the sword’s point. At Kyras’s cry the warrior of light left Alric altogether, and with the heavenly Spirit, so Alric’s strength abandoned him.

Whether it was the archangel Michael, Christ Himself, or the Holy Spirit, Alric would not hazard to guess. Its only name to him was love—pure as the golden bracelets and bright as its light.

“Since this sword was undoubtedly gifted to you by a higher power than mine, it should be yours.”

Cairell’s offer penetrated the vision holding Alric spellbound. The king’s sword? His? Nay it didn’t feel right.

“My appreciation knows no bounds, milord, but I was just a servant returning it to its rightful place. It belongs to Gleannmara.” He handed the precious weapon he’d used as a walking stick over to the new king.

His brother-in-law refused to take it. “So do you now, Brother.”

“Here, here!”

“Huzzah!”

“Alric the Just.”

“Long live Alric, prince of Gleannmara!”

To Alric’s amazement, it wasn’t his men who started the cheers, but the clan chiefs of Gleannmara. If his knees had been wobbly before, now he felt as if he stood on water and all that kept him from sinking to the floor was belief—not in what was happening, but in the miracle of forgiveness God had wrought this day Irish and Saxon mingled like long-lost brothers, embracing, cheering, toasting with the heady wine of God’s love.

“Welcome home, Husband.”

Alric looked down into the limpid pools of Deirdre’s eyes, where his soul smiled back at him. Taking her in his arms, he lifted her chin with the crook of his finger. The jewels—stones and minerals—that had been his fortune lay at the bottom of the sea. Yet his heart soared like a gull streaking across the sun, singing in the safekeeping of its Creator. His voice cracked with the weight of his emotions as he repeated the very words she’d said to him when an uncertain future lay ahead.

“I am with you, beloved. Wherever you are is my home, and I’m glad to be there.”

He kissed Deirdre—his wife, his life—who’d led him to an everlasting birthright, Godsent and ordained by a love that surpasses all understanding … at least on this side of heaven.

T
he sun climbed toward its pinnacle over the sparkling, blue-green waters. Sea birds cawed overhead, having left their cliff-side nests to fish for their breakfast—great black backs diving beside more delicate kittiwakes. To the landside of the beach, heath-land and scrub rose from the rock-strewn harbor, resplendent in the early summer bouquet of bright gorse and soft heathers, which gave life to its granite bosom. Around the round little fishing huts strung about the harbor of Skerry Town, tall, wood-framed buildings rose, birthed by the ongoing clash of iron and wood.

Filled with a hearty meal from Mistress Leary’s tavern, Deirdre accompanied Alric along Water Street to where his men had embellished a jag of rock into a bulkhead capable of docking two seafaring ships. One such vessel was moored there now—the
Blessing
, renamed from one of the six merchant vessels the Saxon prince owned. Just returned from the Mediterranean with rich cargo coveted by merchants from all the neighboring tuaths, the crew readied the newly provisioned vessel for its return voyage.

The half-grown, scraggy pup trotting at Alric’s heel suddenly bounded past his master, rushing to the edge of the pier and barking a friendly hello at a richly garbed young man aboard the ship.

“And good day to you as well, Wulfgar.” Cairell of Gleannmara grinned from the rail of the ship at the tail-wagging wolfhound Deirdre had given Alric at Christmas. The pup was from the high king’s own kennels, with bloodlines as fine as there were in all Erin.

“Wulfgar, stand fast,” Alric ordered, far less amused at the pup’s disobedience.

Deirdre’s heart went out to the gangly dog. Tail tucked between his hind legs, head down, Wulfgar slunk to Alric’s side and sat down. With one last shot of puppy charm, he licked the back of Alric’s hand.

Laughter from the rail where the king and his company of dignitaries
brought the tiny beast’s tail up with renewed heart. Despite the fond smile tugging his mouth, Alric remained the strict disciplinarian.

“I did not say
come grovel
, I said
stand fast
.” He pointed behind him, maintaining eye contact in what was clearly a battle of wills.

Not too surprisingly, Wulfgar gave in first. When Deirdre did not respond to the plaintive look shot from under its furry gray brow, the pup moved behind Alric and collapsed with a whining huff into a spindly-legged sprawl.

“Abina is ruining him,” Alric observed.

“He has a noble spirit. He’ll grow into it,” one of the bishops in the group offered graciously.

“And his name,” his attendant grinned. “His back is to Prince Alric’s thigh already.”

All were part of the high king’s commission to sail to Gaul and on to Rome in an attempt to honor Cairell’s vow to his fellow captives to find them and negotiate their freedom. With highly respected members of the clergy as well as Erin’s noble families, her brother hoped to accomplish more than that. He sought to put an end to, or at least curtail, the selling of abducted Irish and Saxon children in the Mediterranean markets. The pope’s latest missive to Armagh gave him hope that he had the full support of the church.

“Well, Irish,” Alric called out to Cairell once the prodigal pup satisfied his order, “the
Blessing
looks ready to face its mistress sea again, but are
you
?”

It was nearly a year ago that all of them had washed up on Gleannmara’s shore. Deirdre could still feel the bone-deep chill and worse, the heart-wrenching possibility that Alric had been lost to her forever. She moved closer into the crook of his arm at her waist.

“Ready and looking forward to the trip, Moses,” Cairell said.

The corner of Alric’s mouth tipped at the nickname that had once annoyed him. In retrospect, that’s what he’d been. Not only had he provided escape for some of God’s children, but he’d been instrumental in helping them rebuild their lives here on the new shore, close to the sea from which he could not bear to part.