The Ground She Walks Upon (16 page)

It was said that the better class of Lir refused to shop there. Many claimed the barn was destined to fall down any day and would surely kill any and sundry who might be shopping beneath it. But others, such as Malachi MacCumhal, frequented it often, not just to sample the crude, cheap wares but to listen to the latest whispers. In that regard, the news at the market was almost as good as the news at the pub.

"Good morning!" A wizened but familiar old man raised his hand as Ravenna sauntered by.

She nodded and smiled and kept going. Malachi was nowhere to be found yet.

"Why, if it isn't Grania's own Ravenna!" Another, somewhat familiar voice cried out.

Ravenna smiled and continued her search of faces. Though barely dawn, the place was filled to capacity.

"My goodness, child, you've grown so!"

More voices cried out to her, and she felt compelled to greet each one. It seemed she nodded and smiled at almost every old man and woman at the market.

Yet nowhere did she see Malachi.

Determined to wait for him should he appear, she settled against a fallen beam and warmed her hands at a small coal fire behind a harness-maker's stall. Daylight crept into the barn like a mist, seeping through the holes in the roof and the carriage doors until all but the darkest of corners of the enormous market were illuminated. Still Malachi did not show.

" 'Tis a right bit of bile you have a-runnin' in your veins," said a whisper behind her. Ravenna turned around and found two men deep in conversation behind the fallen beam.

"Trevallyan thinks to rule like a king. He needs to be reminded that his 'subjects' don't appreciate being subjected." The second man turned his profile toward the fire and Ravenna was shocked to find it was Malachi.

"So how to dethrone him?" whispered his companion.

Ravenna could listen no more. They were speaking as if they were like the White Boys of old. Home Rule or no, she wasn't going to listen in and be a party to their plots, whatever they were. Even the great orator of Home Rule, Daniel O'Connell, did not advocate violence, and so, she believed, neither should anyone else.

"Malachi," she said in a clear voice. She stepped out from behind the beam and stared at him.

Malachi looked up and saw her. The man next to him, a tall, painfully thin man she had never seen before, merely tipped his cap and disappeared into the dark recesses of the barn, and she couldn't help but think of rats exposed in lamplight.

"Malachi, I wanted to talk to you at the castle but—"

"But you could not shame yourself in front of your fine friends," he interrupted, malice in his voice.

"I haven't forgotten my best friend, nor would I if I were having tea with Victoria herself." She couldn't help but stare at him. She was amazed how he had changed, and yet, incredibly, he had remained the same. For the smile that began to grow on his mouth was the same smile she had known in years past.

"Have you come back?" he whispered down at her as if not quite believing she was standing before him.

"No one can send me away again. Not ever." With that she threw her arms around him and hugged him with all her might. Though it was not rational, she still expected the boy with the carrot-red hair, who was smaller than she. It was a bit disconcerting to discover herself in the arms of a man, a very big man, who held her as if she weighed no more than Kathleen Quinn's doll.

"I've not forgotten you, Ravenna. Not ever. 'Tis why I accepted work at the castle. Trevallyan shall pay for sending you away," Malachi whispered against her hair.

"The father and Grania sent me away, too. You can't have revenge on all of them, so forget Trevallyan, Malachi. We've no need to waste time hating him." She pulled back and looked him in the eyes. She was a bit disturbed at the anger still burning in his own.

"Your grandmother and Father Nolan sent you away because Trevallyan forced them to. He is an evil man. He took our land, and we must never forget that. To forgive him his trespasses is to forgive the devil."

She touched Malachi's cheek. It was rough with beard and hard, unlike the smooth one of his boyhood. "I don't want to talk of Lord Trevallyan. I want to forget him." Truer words there never were. If Niall Trevallyan and his castle were plucked from Lir and whisked skyward, never to be seen again, only then would she be satisfied. For as it was, she seemed to be spending every waking minute either in his company, or analyzing his impossible behavior.

"If you request it, then we'll ne'er speak of Lord Trevallyan again."

The fire in Malachi's gaze burned to coals, but she was not fooled by his temperance. She was further unsettled by the fact that he still embraced her and that his hands lingered at her waist. It seemed foreign to her to think of him as a man, with a man's feelings. But he was one, and the possibilities between them seemed laid right out before her with every touch of his hand and every caress of his gaze.

She stepped away, all at once irrationally nervous. He watched her with a hooded expression in his gaze, one that she had never seen before.

The pandemonium of the market should have diverted her, yet her thoughts clung to him. It wasn't that she didn't like Malachi. She loved him, and she knew she always would. But to love him as a man was something big and rather frightening. She wasn't sure she was quite ready for it, especially now, when he towered above her. She'd been told he had changed, but somehow she hadn't quite believed it. She still thought of him as the scrawny, fighting, muddy-faced lad that she had roamed with all the years before. But that lad was gone, and in his place was a man. A man who in all probability might one day be her husband.

The bustling market with its rough-and-tumble display of goods, its riotous hawking, its burn of smells within her nostrils, of woodsmoke, cinnamon bark, and greasy wool, was still not enough to take her thoughts from her profound realization. She'd always known that she was a girl apart from the rest of society, but now she realized she was worse. Indeed, a freak of nature. To be truthful, she was a female who rarely thought of marriage at all.

Not that she didn't think of love. But love was something separate and sublime, quite different from marriage. While other girls filled their dowry chests or practiced their flirting, she ashamedly admitted she had no interest in either of these activities. Marriage was simply not a goal of hers. She'd been raised by Grania, a strong woman who was independent of men. In Grania's silent code of upbringing, Ravenna had read well the message there: To rely on a man would be to end up like her mother. The love of a man was in reality too fragile, whimsical, impermanent to ever rely upon, so it was best to settle on her faerie tales and repress the desire to fall as desperately in love with someone heroic and strong as she knew Skya was soon to do.

Sometimes Ravenna wondered if she wasn't a silly girl not to be thinking of marriage all the time. If she was not a silly girl, she was definitely a foolish one. A husband would bring her out of the limbo she was in now. If she married, she would not be forced to be governess to a lord's ill-tempered children; she would not be forced to wait hand and foot on spoiled young misses who could not choose which hat flattered them best. No, she could play wife and mother on her own, without being at the mercy of others.

But she would be at the mercy of her husband, and that was where marriage and love diverged. So she would have to choose carefully. But whom should she choose? Chesham? He was rich and amusing. But even if marriage to him were possible for a girl of her social station, she knew instinctively those same qualities would make him a poor husband. He'd stick her at his country home and continue to cavort with the count and Lord Guy. It was one thing for a bachelor to sport a mistress, but the thought of a married Lord Chesham running around Trevallyan Castle after a young woman not his wife made her shudder.

Yet, there were other men to consider besides Chesham. The count and Lord Guy. The very idea made her choke with laughter. The only bride good enough for either one of those two men was a gilded mirror.

As if they would even choose her. She kept her wry little smile to herself. She was dowry-less and untitled, and, worse, a bastard. A girl not even good enough to mingle equally with the people of Lir, let alone the Ascendency. It was as ridiculous for her to think of marrying a lord of the realm as it was for someone to pay to have their palm read by a ten-year-old girl.

Of all the men she knew, Malachi was her most likely match. Perhaps it would just take some time to begin to accept him as the man he had become.

"Shall you come to tea this afternoon, Malachi?" she asked, trying to return some normalcy to their suddenly new and strange relationship. "Grania's eyesight is fair terrible these days, but still I would like her to see you. You look so different...."

Malachi laughed. She suddenly saw the boy he used to be. "She'll knock me on me backside. Your grandma don't like me, Ravenna."

"She hasn't seen you since I left for school. Come to tea—"

"I can't come to tea," he said with finality. " 'Tis busy I am, Ravenna." He put his hands on her waist—-hands that were large enough to span it—and drew her near. "But I want you to promise to meet me tonight. I'll come by your cottage and pick you up at midnight—that way old Grania won't know you've gone."

"Midnight!" she gasped. "What are we going to do at midnight?"

He smiled. "Don't tell your grandmother. Promise me? If you don't, I'll show you a good time. I promise I will."

Ravenna suddenly had the idea that Malachi thought her a simpleton. He was up to no good, and he believed for some reason that she couldn't figure that out.

She smiled at him, willing to play the game until she could twist it to her advantage. "I'll go with you at midnight, but first you must tell me what we are going to do."

"We'll be doing what every woman likes to do. This...." he whispered. He pressed his lips to hers and drove his tongue deep into her mouth.

Ravenna was appalled at the unaccustomed familiarity. She might have actually struggled against him except that surprise had bolted her feet to the ground.

He kissed her, driving his tongue deeper and deeper until at last he seemed to derive some satisfaction. Then, pushing her aside, he picked up the cap he had laid on a bale of hay and sauntered out of the market without another look back.

She just stared at him, unable to even draw her hand across her mouth to wipe away the kiss. It was a shock to discover in the years since she had been gone that Malachi MacCumhal had become just like any other man. The boy who had so painstakingly written her through the parish priest, the boy who had made her laugh and through his mischief made her forget she was not Catholic, and not legitimate, and not good enough, was gone. Disappointed and confused, she left the market with shoulders slumped in depression, and wondered about heroes who had fallen to the earth.

S
kya accepted
her banishment to the Dark Woods of Hawthorn. Her father wept as she walked away from the castle, but she knew if she were to stay, all her family would be suspected of witchery, and she could not allow that to happen especially when her father, the king, was busy defending his lands from the neighboring warring kingdom. It was a fact that the only way the king could save his daughter would be at the expense of the entire kingdom.

Ravenna looked up from her small oaken writing desk and became mesmerized by the random flickerings of the candle that lit her work. Her bare feet were tucked beneath her, and she wore only a loose, flowing white night rail with her black wool shawl draped over her shoulders to protect her from the chill night air. Grania was snoring in her room across the hall. It was eleven o'clock.

The chair scraped across the waxed floorboards as she pushed away from her writing and drew the candle to the window. The town of Lir was only a speck of waning yellow firelight in the distance. A storm spit froth over the Irish Sea, erasing the horizon. Lightning flashed, and a minute later the thin rumblings of thunder rolled over the cottage.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the cold, wind-battered panes of glass, feeling bad that Malachi might be waiting for her in a storm. But she refused to shake the notion that it was his due for his bad behavior. He'd hurt her with his kiss. Not physically, perhaps, but her feelings were wounded that he could treat her so casually. She was not a loose woman, and she was not a piece of property for him to ply and mold as he wished. He had not asked her to meet him, he had demanded it. She had had a choice in the matter, and he seemed to have forgotten that.

"Speak not a word," a harsh, raspy voice said in her ear. Ravenna struggled to sit up in bed, but a sooty hand clamped over her mouth and held her down. Her heart drummed in terror as her gaze clawed at the darkness to see who it was who held her.

"Why did you not meet me?"

Her fear seeped away like the ebb of the tide. She pulled at the fingers on her mouth and said, "Malachi?"

"Why did you not meet me?" he demanded again, his dark figure smelling like the inside of a smoky tavern.

" 'Twas not a proper meeting, now was it?" she whispered back, her deep blue-violet eyes, if he could have seen them, expressing her anger most eloquently.

"Bah! What have you become? The posh young miss? You're no Kathleen Quinn, Ravenna, and you needn't act like one."

"How dare you!" She would have slapped him on the face if she could have taken good aim in the darkness.

"Now don't you be denyin' it. You're no Kathleen Quinn and you know it."

Ravenna lowered her threatening hand. She knew she wasn't Kathleen Quinn, and he was right, there was no point in saying otherwise. "Still, I won't be having clandestine meetings with you. Grania would die if she was to waken and find me gone."

Malachi swept back her hair, his hand strangely tender. " 'Tis just that I want to be with you, Ravenna. I want to know again the times of our sweet childhood."

She stilled, unable to reprimand him when he spoke what she also wanted so desperately.

"Come," he coaxed, pulling her hand, "walk with me to the Briney Cliffs, and see the moon vanish behind the June thunderheads, as we did when we last knew each other."

"Nay. 'Tis not right—"

"Come. You know you want to. Even in this dark, I can see the wildness in your eyes, the wildness that aches to go with me."

She felt him throw a man's heavy coat over her shoulders. She pulled back, reluctant. He nearly dragged her across the floorboards.

"We're not children anymore, Malachi. This is not right," she hissed, pulling away.

He touched her, gently holding her against him. "We're not children anymore except in our hearts. Come, let's be children just this once more...."

She stared up at him in the shadows. Lightning lit the sky, and she found his eyes. The same eyes that she knew. The ones she pictured every time she read and reread his letters.

She knew she shouldn't go with him, not in the middle of the night, but as much as she hesitated, his draw was stronger. It was a chance to regain the past, to find the Malachi she sorely missed.

Before she could utter a protest, he led her down the dark staircase and out into the cold sea wind. He took her hand and ran through the night-shadowed fields of green-gold rye. And suddenly she began to laugh as she had not laughed in years, the sound bubbling from her chest like the raucous giggles of children. A stiff breeze cut through her night rail, but she didn't care if she was cold. She only wanted to remember a finer, more innocent time, and enjoy the company of her very best friend in the world.

"Is it the way you remember?" he asked when they reached the top of the Briney Cliffs. The sea swirled and swished at the base of the rocks, releasing a salty mist that she could taste. Behind her, the moon sat atop Lir, its white, unearthly glow casting blue shadows in front of them while storm clouds inked the watery horizon and bled slowly onto shore.

"Yes, it's beautiful," she whispered, hugging herself, her plaited hair flying behind her like a black banner. "Just as I remember."

"Then kiss me," he rumbled against her nape, his lips buried in the tender flesh of her neck. Slowly a hand crept up her waist, reaching... reaching... for parts she kept private.

"No," she whispered, and stepped away from him. The winds suddenly became icy. He offered warmth, but for some reason she didn't want to accept it. By all reasoning, she should desire him to kiss her. Nonetheless, she didn't.

"I remember a fiery creature from days of old, not this prude you've become," he said, shouting over the increasing blasts of wind.

She didn't answer him. Instead, she stared at the storm, wondering when she would feel the first cold drops.

"Kiss me, Ravenna," he said, his arms clamping around her like a bear's. His lips dragged down her neck, and she trembled within his warm embrace.

There was something terribly wrong with her. She spent hours daydreaming about love, and now, when she had someone to love, she was rejecting him; her very own friend, Malachi.

Whatever was wrong with her? she asked herself while he nibbled on her fragile earlobe. Was she repulsed by him? On the contrary, Malachi was a fine specimen of a man; he was tall, strong, and his face—while perhaps not the godlike visage of Count Fabuloso—it was most certainly pleasing to the eye, and doubly so to her for he was her friend.

So why couldn't she give herself freely to him? The question tortured her as his arms tightened, and he pressed himself against her form, which was clad in only a thin shift of linen.

"Stop, Malachi. Please stop," she found herself saying, though she cringed at saying it.

His lips turned cold, and he leaned against her impatiently, as if he were unused to such a reluctant female. "What is it?" he almost snapped.

"I—I just don't know." She turned away and hugged herself, staring far out at sea. "It's just that we're so different now. So different...." She bit her lower lip. What she couldn't say was that
she
was so different now. She hadn't grown up by his side and seen how the other girls in town accepted his kisses. While he was at the stables bussing the girls, she had been practicing the useless skill of pouring out tea at the Weymouth-Hampstead School. She knew she was just a bastard. He long admitted his mother had never approved of her, for she was not even saved by attendance at Mass. And yet, here she was, unwilling to take his kisses because his crudeness and lack of guile shocked her educated mind.

"Now that you've your fine friends at the castle, I suppose a gent like me ain't good enough, is it?" He took her roughly in hand.

She released a small cry. He frightened her, but she couldn't bear the thought that she might have hurt him. "No. You must not think such things," she gasped.

"Then what is it? Are you looking for a proposal before a man can kiss you?"

"Nay. I don't want a proposal." She struggled to be free. He wouldn't release her.

"You mean you don' be wantin'
my
proposal." His anger turned on like a spigot. "You want a big, rich man, isn't that right? It's what all you lassies want. A bloody gent to buy you nice things and set you up fancy."

"I don't want those things," she confessed, panting. "They offer no guarantee of respect and love. And that is what I want most, Malachi. I want respect and love, and you aren't giving them to me!"

"I'll respect you with this!" He raised his hand as if to strike her.

She faced him, her stance frozen, her eyes daring him to do it.

They stood there, poised on the cliff like statuary until a flash of lightning crackled across the water. The violence of it seemed to waken Malachi to what he'd been about to do. In horror, he glanced at his raised hand. In the same fury, now of contrition, he pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair.

"Forgive me! Forgive me! My God, I would never hurt you." Now it seemed his turn to tremble. " 'Tis just I saw you in the castle and I... I could not bear it. You're mine, Ravenna. You always have been. Don't go to the castle anymore. You must not do it."

Suddenly he froze.

"Oh, Jaysus," he rasped. Quickly, he let her go. She nearly stumbled over the rocks.

"What is it?" she cried out. Then she saw the reason. In the distance, streaming out of Lir was some kind of search party. The men carried torches and there looked to be nigh twenty of them.

"What on earth is that? They can't be looking for me," she whispered. "Grania couldn't get to town that swiftly...."

"Listen, Ravenna, I must go—" He grabbed the coat from her shoulders. Without it, she realized how bitterly cold the night really was.

"Malachi—" She hugged her chest and turned to look at him. The tone of his voice had told her everything. "Have you gone and done something bad? Are they looking for you?"

"Ravenna. Just kiss me once, for you may not see me again for a while." His voice shook. In the fading moonlight, she could see his gaze shift to the stream of torchlights running over the hills.

"What have you done, Malachi? Oh God," she whispered, staring at him. "Is Home Rule worth this violence?"

"Yes," he rasped, pulling his hair in agitation. "The Big Lords are not our kings. We had our own kings before they sent these English dogs to command us. Trevallyan sits in his castle while I fetch his coal for his hearth. Me! A descendant of Celtic warriors!"

She took a deep breath. Her heart felt as if it were being ripped from her chest. "But you haven't hurt anyone, have you?"

He stared at her while the storm battled behind him. She could hear the rain fall on the sea beyond like the coming of troops.

" 'Tis just been mischief, Ravenna. You must believe me. The boy-os and me haven't hurt anyone... intentionally."

She saw the gleam of tears in his eyes, and she longed to hold him, but there wasn't time. The men streaming from Lir were spread about the countryside. Already they could hear their shouts above the screams of wind.

"Go," she said to him, afraid of him and for him at the same time.

" 'Tis a war we're fightin', Ravenna. Just keep that in mind and don't judge me harshly." He held her close, but his embrace was as quick and ethereal as time. In seconds, he disappeared into the rocky outcrops of Briney Cliffs.

"The memory of you was my only friend in England," she cried into the shadows of the night, but she knew he had not heard her.

The trip back to the cottage was cold and terrible. The wind brought rain, and the path became obscured with mud. Her thin linen night rail was no protection from the elements, and the freezing downpour soaked her to the bone. She might have regretted the trip, but though the rocks cut her feet and wind drove through her like icicles, she was glad she had gone. Malachi trusted her enough to reveal to her what he was up to. Perhaps one day, she might get him to see that destruction and violence weren't the answer to Ireland's problems, as Father Nolan had said so many times.

Her shawl caught on a hawthorn. She tugged on it but it was no use; the thing held fast. "Bother it anyway!" she cursed in the howling wind. She'd return for it in the morning. A sodden shawl wasn't going to keep her warm tonight.

She slid down the hill and into a field of blowing ryegrass. Covered in mud, she had to fight the tears that sprang to her eyes. Life was too difficult sometimes, she thought.

Bitterly she picked herself up and slashed through the tall grass as it cut at her ankles. Seeds and burrs clung to her muddy wet gown, increasing her agony. Why did they fight, anyway? she asked herself, trudging desperately through O'Reilly's fields. Malachi fought for his precious Home Rule, but he had raised his hand to strike a woman. Was Home Rule going to help her? Was it going to make Malachi and men of his kind see her as a person and not just a young woman for the taking? He would never admit it, but Malachi was in some ways no better than his English counterparts. Lord Chesham had prettier words and far better skills at seducing a woman, but in many ways he and Malachi wanted the same thing.