Lord of the Isle (16 page)

“You’re very quiet, lady.” Hugh took Ariel’s reins from Morgana’s hands. “Here’s a good place for the mare to graze.”

He pointed to a shady spot under a bower of pines, where the grasses and ferns flourished. Morgana picked a mosscovered stone in the shade of the pines as a place to rest and have some privacy from his kerns. She leaned on the rock and calmly folded her gloved hands in her lap.

“Hugh…” She chose her words with care, not wanting to alert him to anything being different, now that they’d come this far. “I think the time has come for you to give me back my knife. One never knows what might be in the woods, ready to take a bite out of a lady’s exposed backside.”

The grin on his face enlarged appreciably as he turned around from tying up Ariel. “My lady, if you’re going to expose your derriere, perhaps I’d best stay close by to enjoy the performance.”

“You most certainly will not,” Morgana said primly. He came to her with open hands, grasping her shoulders to draw her to his chest.

“Och, Morgana, but you’re a temptress of the worst sort. Do you know how much I want to kiss you and bed you, right here in this shady bower?”

She didn’t resist the pull of his hands, and she lifted her face to meet his lips. One more kiss of sweet remembrance would be a secret treasure to comfort her in the uncertain future. One more taste of his lips couldn’t hurt, if it provided a lifetime of comfort for the rest of her accursed days.

His hands tightened on her back, lifting her against the sun-warmed heat of his quilted doublet. Morgana wound her fingers into his hair and kissed him deeply, taking a last loving taste of the happiness and fulfillment she could never have permanently.

For the duration of his kiss, Hugh’s hands roamed over her body, as familiar to her as his face had become in the past days and nights. Then he gripped her shoulders fiercely and set her back from him, at arm’s length. He scowled darkly.

“Look at the callow fool I’ve become! Forgive me, I know no sense of decorum when I’m near you, my lady. From the moment the sun broke through the fog, all I’ve thought about is spreading your flaming hair on God’s green grass and making love to you until you cry out my name again. Don’t be long, Morgana. I can’t bear to have you out of my sight.”

He abruptly pulled her knife from his waist and put it in her hands. Then he turned and strode down the rocky rise to where Loghran O’Toole, Kermit Blackbeard and Shamus Fitz lounged beneath a fragrant, blooming hawthorn.

Morgana stood watching Hugh O’Neill’s upright back as he walked away. Another spell of her grandfather’s came to mind—
By oak, ash and thorn, the fairy’s magic is born.
That chant she had learned in her cradle. Wych elms, rowans, oaks and hawthorns were potent, magical trees.

Gerait Og had told her the Tuatha de Danann, Ireland’s mystical people of yore, lived on in such magical places. The ancient forces slumbered in the soil beneath the trees, waiting to be enchanted back to life. One day soon, the old man had told her, they would come back, when all the petty wars between the clans ended and all Ireland united under one high king—the
ri ruirech Eirinn.

Though jaded by all that had happened to her, Morgana believed in her grandfather’s truths. It would happen someday, and lucky would be the men and women of Ireland who lived to see their true king crowned on the hill of Tara. To that end, she must give her all to see that her own line continued into the future. There must always be Fitzgeralds in Ireland. Sean was their future.

As Hugh O’Neill sat down to rest beside his companions, Morgana began picking out the freshly gathered cockleburs caught up in Ariel’s tail. She knelt beside her horse’s hooves and plucked each precious little herb from Ariel’s feathery fetlocks.

It was only a mere handful, but the littlest amount of a powerful herb was more than enough to cast a powerful spell.

Visualizing all the kerns and Hugh sleeping, Morgana ambled to the highest point of the rise. There she knelt and dug a small hollow in the rich, damp earth. As she blew the cockleburs off her hand into the tiny pit, she chanted, “Agrimony, agrimony, keep safe watch over the men on this hill while they sleep.”

She covered the cockleburs with the soil she’d loosened and got to her feet, brushing the damp earth from her hands.

Smiling at the ease with which any spell could be cast, Morgana strolled into the woods to take care of her business there. When she emerged from the wood, three of the seven men were nodding against the support of as many trees.

Hugh’s eyes were as heavy-lidded as the rest’s, but he’d forced himself to stay awake till he spied Morgana returning from her sojourn into the woods. He patted the earth beside him, motioning for her to sit with him.

Morgana knelt just to the side of him and put her hands to his broad shoulders, dusting off the hawthorn blossoms that had fluttered on the easy breeze to his shoulders and snared in his head. “You are dusted with bread-and-cheese blossoms,” she said softly, so as not to disturb the dozing kerns.

Hugh plucked one blossom from his thigh, where it had fallen at the stroke of her hand. “‘Tis called quick or Mayflowers hereabouts. Hawthorn, that most magical of herbs, symbolic of the planet Mars, guarantor of fertility, chastity and constancy.”

He crushed the blossom between his fingers and thumbs and rubbed its tangy, aromatic juice across her brow. “You are mine forever, Morgana Fitzgerald, anointed thus under the spell of the hawthorn tree.”

“You know about magical herbs?” Morgana asked, sitting back on her heels, shaken by the blithely spoken spell he’d just cast.

“I haven’t become a devotee of the art, but I know a thing or two about what helps one to get along in this troublesome world.” He yawned deeply and pointed down the hillside, to the little river winding through the valley. “Take those willows on the bank of the river. An infusion made with the supple bark of a willow can cure a serious fever.”

His hand dropped from his upraised knee to pick a violet from a small clump of weeds flourishing under the shade of the hawthorn trees. “And if you pick the first violet of the spring, your dearest wish will be granted.”

Morgana looked around them. Clumps of violets rioted out of every loamy crag in the rocky earth. “I don’t think you’ve picked the first violet of this spring, my lord.”

“Ah, but how do you know that I haven’t done so already, and made my wish, weeks ago, when the blooms first appeared?” Hugh posed his tantalizing question with a smile and twirled the dainty blue flower between his fingers.

Morgana set her hands to massaging the taut muscles of his shoulders through the weight of his doublet. “I don’t,” she said, responding to his smile with one of her own. “Did you?”

Hugh turned his head so that he could see her face as he tucked the blue flower into her crown of fiery braids. “Perhaps I did. I seem to have everything a man could ever want at hand.”

“Save a good night’s sleep,” Morgana teased gently, diverting his attention with a look around at his sleepy kerns.

“None of us would be so tired if you had half the sense God gave the sparrows.” Hugh chided her softly, testing her mettle. To his mind, the highest mark of a man and a woman’s breeding showed in how they behaved in a quarrel.

“Oh, so it’s my fault you Irish are dropping in the traces, is it?” Morgana laughed ever so softly. “Look at poor Rory.

He’s been dead asleep from the moment he dropped out of his saddle and wound up in a heap right where he lays.”

“It’s your fault we left Castle O’Neill before the cock crowed, it is,” Hugh reminded her. “Accept the truth.”

“And so I have done.” Morgana put her thumbs into the hard work of softening tightly bound muscles, up and down the thick column of his neck.

“That feels
so-o-o
good. Don’t ever stop.” Hugh’s head bobbed forward as he relaxed, satisfied deeply by her sparring answers, which raked pleasantly but didn’t cut to the bone.

“I won’t,” Morgana promised absently.

Art Macmurrough’s snores buzzed like a buck-toothed saw against hardwood. Young Brian was sprawled on a bed of fiddlehead ferns. A damselfly flitted in and out of the folds and tucks of his tartan.

O’Toole was the most alert. His eyes drooped to slits. His head kept nodding, jerking against the trunk of the hawthorn tree.

Rory, Kermit and Shamus whistled in their sleep. Donald the Fair looked like a sleeping angel. Morgana almost felt sorry for them. They had been riding all through the night, chasing after James Kelly, while she had been sound asleep, getting plenty of rest.

“Help yourself to the bread and meat. There’s plenty of mead,” Hugh said around a ferocious yawn. “You get to stay awake and stand guard, my lady. It’s the penalty you pay for routing us all from our beds.”

“Very well.” Morgana watched him stretch out on the cool earth, settling most contentedly against her spreading skirts. “I shall stuff myself like a yearling pig and drink till I pop.”

“You have my permission to do exactly that.” Hugh pillowed his head against his bent arm and closed his eyes.

A moment later, as Morgana set the skin of mead aside after quenching her thirst, his eyes were closed and he was sleeping as peacefully as all his mighty kerns.

It almost wasn’t fair to take such gross advantage of them. Morgana refused to be bound by scruples. Not now, when she was within five miles of the house where her brother, Sean Fitzgerald, lived.

I
f it was possible for Morgana to make a break for freedom, so that she could travel the rest of the journey alone and unimpeded by the Irish, now was the time to do it.

Hugh’s randy stallion had made it impossible to tie Morgana’s mare up with the rest of the horses. Ariel was set apart, tied separately on the northern edge of the woodland.

Morgana headed crosslots to intercept Ariel. In her saddlebag was a map constructed by one of the Franciscan monks of the abbey at Landsdowne. Bishop Moye had given Morgana the map when she stayed overnight in Armagh. Its first marking signified the high cross at Maghera. From here on, the way to Landsdowne Abbey was clearly detailed for her. Morgana would have no trouble traveling the road on her own.

She opened a saddlebag and reached inside, searching for the documents under her clothing. She came up empty, but that didn’t alarm her. The bags had been moved and replaced on the saddle. So she slapped Ariel’s rump to move her around and searched inside the opposite pack, standing on tiptoe to see inside the deep pocket.

For a moment, she thought she’d lost the document—all the documents—but then she remembered she’d hidden them in the hems of her old black serge habit. Morgana carefully removed that garment from the bottom of the
pack, taking care not to disturb any of the other valuable contents of the pack. She unrolled the skirt and tore loose the stitching in the hem, removing all seven of the documents stored there for safekeeping.

Now that the English were as far behind her as the river Blackwater, she no longer had to worry about being captured. Nor did she worry about James Kelly’s escape from the dungeon at Fort Tullaghoge. He was too smart not to have immediately fled south to the safety of the Pale.

She unfolded the map and studied it, orienting herself with the high cross, the nearby peak of Carntogher Mountain and the woodlot marked on the map. When she was certain her directions were correct, she led Ariel quietly over the crest of the hill.

She found a rock suitable for mounting. As she gathered the reins in her hands, she looked at the hilltop that separated her from Hugh. She didn’t feel right deserting and deceiving Hugh O’Neill, but she didn’t see that she had any choice. It was better for Sean Fitzgerald’s sake that Morgana go the rest of the way alone. Saying a special prayer to Saint Brigit, Morgana set off along the heavily wooded track to the next village.

Tyrone, Morgana now knew, was one dense forest after another. They all seemed to be separated by little valleys where some clearing had taken place, enough for the planting of grain fields or some other husbandry. But most of the glens and vales were tree-covered. Without Bishop Moye’s map, she’d have been lost before she was out of hearing distance of Hugh O’Neill. She managed to find her landmarks and made the correct turn at each crossroads.

In the space of an hour’s fairly pleasant ride, Morgana arrived at the triple-arched, stone bridge in the valley crossing the river Bann. At the bridge she was rewarded by being able to see the rising tower of Landsdowne Abbey above the forest line. According to her map, the house of five white gables was nestled two miles north of the abbey, in the cleared hillside behind it.

Morgana had envisioned Carrew Cottage in her mind a hundred times over the past year, but not once had her imagination provided her such rich and fluid details as she spied on the winding road up from the bustling community of the Dominican abbey. The cottage she’d pictured in her mind had a slate roof. In reality, it was thick with aging thatch. Low whitewashed walls gleamed in the afternoon’s bright sun, against a splendid backdrop of spring-green beech trees.

Lazy smoke drifted out of a rock chimney. Someone was to home, if hot fires burned in the hearth. Encouraged, Morgana increased Ariel’s pace, leaving the little village and the abbey behind her.

A bevy of black-faced sheep clumped beside a pool in the meadow below Carrew Cottage. Behind the beech trees, a forest of tall green pines added plenty of shelter against frequently hard and cold north winds. Hedgerows bordered each field. Low stone walls separated one small plot of grain from the next, in typical Irish order.

As she came within hailing distance of the cottage, Morgana drew back on Ariel’s reins. Cautious, and concerned that she not give herself away or bring any undue notice from the village or the abbey in her direction, Morgana did not call out a greeting.

But then, she saw no one in the cottage’s yard to give that greeting to.

She let her horse walk at a measured pace that took them up the winding path between hedgerows and low stone walls to the yard outside the cottage.

All the while she held herself back, Morgana’s heart thrummed a heavy cadence in the pit of her stomach. Her mouth was dry. She didn’t dare think about what she would do if Sean was not here at Carrew Cottage. Or if one of Walsingham’s agents had gotten here ahead of her.

It was too quiet, too silent, for a house where an eight-year-old boy was supposed to live in the virtual obscurity of a large, bustling Irish family. Except for the sheep bleating
in the lower field and a line of wash fluttering on the breeze, the place was silent and still.

Alarmed, Morgana drew her
sgian dhu
from its hidden sheath and gripped it fiercely in her hand as she dismounted onto the stepping-stone outside the stable.

“Hallo!” she called. “God and Mary keep all who live in this house. Is anybody to home?”

The stillness shattered with the sound of a door slamming. Ariel snorted. The sheep in the field bleated. Morgana turned toward the yawning dark cavern of the barn, locating the direction of the slammed door. Behind her stood the idyllic house, with its five whitewashed gables, one marking each new and taller addition to the long, sprawling length of it. It was as silent as a Protestant church on Tuesday.

Her nostrils widened as she picked her way through the mud to the yawning doors of the barn. The soil at her feet was ripe with the scents of the stable, horse and cattle, though not a single animal was in sight.

A rude lean-to henhouse in back of the barn boasted a molting assortment of fowl, chickens and geese, far enough away from the back of the house as not to become a nuisance.

A handful of wooden toys scattered between the wash line and the back of the house gave mute testimony that children resided in this house. But none was visible now.

Cautiously Morgana stuck her head inside the barn door. “Captain Tanner,” she called out. “Are you here?”

A bucket tipped over from the loft and crashed to the dirt floor. Inside the air turned explosive as a man in the loft shouted, “Jesus, Mary and all the saints! Are ya trying ta kill me? Who is that sneaking up on me ta scare the wits out of a man? Jesu!”

“Captain Tanner?” Morgana asked again, hoping to identify the man in the shadowy darkness over her head.

“Captain Tanner, my arse! There’s no pirates swinging from any yardarm in this landlocked hell!”

A wooden pitchfork flew out of the loft and landed in a pile of straw two feet shy of Morgana’s boots. Morgana held her ground, refusing to jump back several feet. “Are you Luke Tanner, then?” she demanded.

Blinding rays of sunlight slanted holes through the barn’s black shadows. Each ray shimmered with dust and swirling chaff. Morgana blinked the dusty rain out of her eyes and glared up into the hayloft as a man straightened out of the massive pile of hay, hitching a saffron shirt into a pair of gray trews.

“Who is it that wants ta know?” he demanded.

A halo of ungoverned hair wreathed his sweaty, gleaming brow. A scowl blacker than winter thunderclouds marred the weathered lines of his face. The too-long, be-whiskered jaw and massive frame below it lent the landlocked pirate an air of comic menace. He matched the description Morgana had been given—beetle-browed, foultempered, and bigger than any man alive.

Morgana took a deep breath of relief, cutting to the point. “Where are the children?”

“Who is that wants ta know, I asked?” he demanded with arms akimbo, broad fists parked on his hips. The meat fleshing his upper arms bulged under the strain of his rolled-up sleeves. As intimidating as his stance was, Morgana still noticed the scuttle of someone’s legs as that someone burrowed into the hay behind him.

Her own brow darkened measurably. “I’m Morgana O’Malley. I’ve come to fetch my brother, Sean.”

“Well, and ta be sure, ye’ve come ta the wrong house, ya have, then, Morgana O’Malley. There’s none but Tanner’s get here. Get ye gone, wench! I’ve work ta do.”

“I can see what philandering work you do.” Morgana had no patience for his bluster. She’d been told the old pirate Luke Tanner was no fool, and that his appearance could be most deceiving. She didn’t retreat, as he’d commanded, but she did put away her knife.

She came farther into the aromatic barn, removing her kidskin gloves. He growled in a menacing manner as he snatched up another fork and heaved a shower of straw in her direction.

“See here, Tanner,” Morgana said briskly as she side-stepped the cascade of hay and chaff. “I haven’t any interest in masquerades or games. Time is of the essence. Call Sean out of hiding. I must be off with him to Dunluce with all due haste.”

“Sean, Sean,” he barked. “I’ve Toms and Johns and Iains under me roof, but none here called Sean. Go away, gel, I’m busy.”

Exasperated, Morgana threw the edges of her Irish cloak off her shoulders. She also fixed her arms akimbo and put her hands on her hips, declaring, “Each of us knows who the other really is.”

“Do we, then?” The man’s falsetto-voiced question bordered on mockery. “Ya don’t look the least familiar ta me.”

“I’ve proof of my identity,” Morgana argued. “There’s no need for you to be rude.”

“I said I’ve work ta do. Get you gone!”

“Aye, and I said I know what work you’re up to, man.” Morgana stood fast, directly in the path of his next forkful. “I bring greetings from Timothy Moye. He bids you open a casket of your oldest brew and give me a taste of the devil’s drink. If I’m satisfied by it, I’m to take two barrels to the laird of the Glens as payment for your last quarter’s rent.”

That secured Tanner’s intense inspection once more. He jammed his fork into the hay piled in his loft and bent over the rail. Broad-knuckled, stubby fingers gripped the aged wood. For a farmer he had very, very clean hands. But then, Morgana knew, this man was no farmer—nor ever would be. His powerful voice shook the rafters. “There’s no papists here, lassie! We’re God-fearing Protestant folk one and all!”

“When Queen Dick sits on the throne!” Morgana tossed this last at him with some heat. He was being most stubborn,
and she was nearly out of convincing phrases to prove she was from Bishop Moye and not a Protestant spy ferreting out priests in all their various disguises.

He swung his leg over the side and grabbed hold of a smooth pole, sliding down it as nimbly as a first mate managing a ship’s rigging. On the ground before her, Lucas stood nearly toe-to-toe with Morgana, peering at her face in the dusty light, as if that would prove who she was, when he’d never laid eyes on her in his life.

“So you’re O’Malley’s widow, are you?” he demanded, wary and distrustful still. “How’d the poor bastard die?”

“Unshriven and unrepentant, in the arms of two dockside whores, drunk as a lord!” Morgana snapped, adding, “God forgive and save his immortal soul, for I haven’t.”

Luke Tanner burst out with a roaring laugh. “Bless my soul, that proves it! You’re the sod’s true widow! Only a long-suffering wife could sound so thoroughly disgusted.”

Morgana failed to find any humor in a single word either of them had said. In her book, a philandering husband was no laughing matter.

“Welcome to Carrew Cottage, Lady Morgana.” His manner changed all at once. Captain Tanner swept a gallant arm over his vast waist and bowed deeply to her. “Forgive my distrust. I take no chances. We expected you two days ago. Hence, I feared an impostor had come in your place. Come, step with me out into the light and let me get a good look at you.”

“Where is Sean?” Morgana asked. “I haven’t much time.”

The elder wouldn’t answer that question. When they were outdoors, in the afternoon sun, he said, “Och, now, I can see the red hair of the Geralds in you, aye, that I can. What kept you?”

“Foul weather, and a tail of English scouts determined to stop me.”

“Humph!” He nodded, motioning with his head toward the house. “We heard there were redcoats patrolling Armagh.”

“A number of them. Some five or six are dead now. One particularly bad sort escaped detainment at Fort Tullaghoge, and remains on the loose.”

“Would I know him?”

“Since you’ve been landlocked a few years now, it is possible you’ve heard of the man. James Kelly is his name. I hear he has a son also in the queen’s service, a musketeer by the name of John.”

“Never heard of either of them,” Captain Tanner replied. He put his hands to his mouth and let loose a whistle, signaling all within hailing distance that all was well. The notes he trilled had a familiar ring to Morgana’s ears, matching the clear whistle Grace and her brother, Greg, had used. Chagrined, Morgana realized that if she’d used the same signal when approaching the cottage, she might have had a better reception.

A closed door at the back of the cottage opened and a blowsy woman looked out. “Who is it then, Luke?”

“The guest we were expecting. Set the table, Marie, and tell the young’ns they can run out and play agin.”

He stamped dirt off his muddy boots and turned back to the open door of the barn, hollering. “Come out quiet now, lads! “Tis safe!”

Quiet was not the way Morgana would have described the explosion of lads from the cottage or the barn. They dropped from loft doors, burst running from the barn door and shambled up from the cottage and the privy. A full dozen handsome red-haired lads, and almost as many with dark and sandy heads, too.

Luke Tanner’s teeth gleamed in the strong sun. “We saw you comin’, the minute you crossed the bridge.”

Morgana turned to scan the hillside and look down at the peacefully flowing river in the bottom of the valley. Sure enough, from the vantage point of Carrew Cottage there
was a clear view of the bridge and the road leading uphill past the village and the abbey.