The Spinster and the Earl (2 page)

But the tricky part of delivering the large head was not to be so quick. The baby’s chest was free and the wee bairn was making able attempts to take its first breath before being completely delivered outside its mother. Beatrice reached her hand over the baby’s face, bringing a finger on either side of its small nose and gently squeezed the nostrils shut to prevent the baby from breathing in clotted blood and choking. She then carefully guided the newborn’s head through into the world.

“It’s a girl!” she heard the baby’s sister exclaim with delight.

Beatrice opened the child’s mouth, spread her nostrils, and patted her back to encourage her breathing. A moment of worry flew threw her mind, but then the baby took her first breath. A wail was heard as the baby cried out with a set of healthy lungs, letting her tiny presence be known.

Smiling, Beatrice efficiently cut the umbilical cord and washed the newborn in a clean basin of warm water, taking care with the clean rags provided, finally wrapping the newborn in a warm lambskin bunting. She brought the child to Maureen’s open arms, and joined the delighted laughter of mother and sister,

Quickly dealing with the afterbirth, and checking that both the mother and child were doing well, Beatrice took a moment to admire the now sleeping baby. Maureen tenderly kissed her daughter’s delicate, wispy locks of bright red hair.

“Aye, one can see she’s a Ryan already. Just look at that bonnie red hair,” she said and congratulated Maureen, who was beaming despite her exhaustion. It had been one of the most challenging births she’d ever attended and certainly one of the most rewarding.

*    *    *

Over a tankard of ale, the proud parents asked her to be their new daughter’s godmother. Considering the position an honor, she accepted with pleasure and offered to have the baby baptized in what had once been her own christening gown, a long hand-crocheted garment of snowy white satin, lace, and ribbon.

After she toasted her new goddaughter, she took her leave. Refusing the family’s kind offer for a ride home on their nag, she began to return by foot to Brightwood Manor. “Oh, bother!” she muttered as tiny drops of rain splattered against her cheeks. She shivered a little for good measure as a chilling wind blew past, whipping up layers of her long skirts.

Dark clouds had been brewing overhead since the beginning of the day. They now rumbled ominously as she walked the barren dirt road leading to the parish of Urlingford. Hastening her pace, she walked towards the local tavern, The Boar’s Teeth, in hopes of reaching it before the tempest arrived in full force, bringing with it a certain drenching.

Looking out over the rolling hillsides, she spied the small village of Urlingford snugly situated at the bottom of a green valley. It looked to be a good brisk half hour’s journey. A cluster of whitewashed homes and the tall, square church’s steeple were the only buildings that recommended the tiny village. Sturdy, thatched farm houses were dotted about the countryside. The thriving sheep trade was the main staple of living for the village. She had just come from one of these small sheepherding farms.

She sighed as she wrapped her shawl more securely around her head, preparing for a very wet walk to the village. Fat droplets of water splattered her face, as she received her own baptism from the darkening sky. She could barely make out the imposing silhouette of Drennan Castle, shrouded as it was in the approaching storm’s gray mist.

The once imposing gothic castle had been strategically built on one of the highest hilltops in Urlingford. An ancient relic, the keep had originally been an intimidating fortification with six stone towers. But time and neglect had taken their toll as two wings of the castle were on the verge of collapse, which left just one wing stubbornly refusing to crumble around the dying earl and his two loyal servants.

Strange, but she could vaguely make out what appeared to be a human shape standing by the stone boundary wall. She squinted up at the hill . . .

It appeared to be a tall man wearing a great over-cloak, leaning on a walking stick. The form she saw was a familiar one, although blurred by the rain, she recognized it belonged to none other than old Dermott James MacCallan, the last Irish born Earl of Drennan. These past two months a cancerous growth had been eating slowly away at the venerable old gentleman’s spleen.

Beatrice had called upon her friends Gladys and Sarah to help her attend him, along with a very properly certified doctor from Dublin. But it had all been to no avail. The old gentleman was too far gone to be saved by any herbal potion or new scientific methods. The best they’d been able to do was ease some of his suffering.

As for his family, they had been nowhere to be seen throughout his long, painful illness. All and sundry knew he had no living descendants of his own flesh. But his three well-titled sisters, who had sons and daughters to provide for, finally deigned to pay their ailing brother a visit. Aye, she’d seen many of his relations come and go this past fortnight full of feigned solicitude and familial affection for the dying lord.

“Come to pay our last respects to our brother,” they told her haughtily when they approached the death bed. Their faces were appropriately solemn and sad.

But if truth be told, a more meddlesome bunch of vultures she’d never encountered before, and she’d seen plenty of them when attending to the very ill. The siblings came dressed in the black of mourning to sit beside the dying earl, advising the old gentleman to whom he should leave his title and estates. They quarreled amongst themselves in front of him until he could tolerate it no more.

“Cease! You are driving me to bedlam itself with all your cackling prattle!” he shouted, punctuating his words with the loud smack of his cane against the side of his death bed.

He reached out and pulled a bell rope, summoning his head butler, ordering the lot off to the dowager house conveniently situated on the other side of the village to await his impending end.

He told them, “I want to die in peace. I’ve already made up my mind as to who shall inherit my place on this earth.” And with that remark, the vultures abruptly stopped. With offended sniffs and grumbling huffs about their ungrateful brother, they left him alone. None of his sisters knew his choice and he adamantly refused to tell.

“You’ll have to wait until my last will and testament is read,” he said, and with a dismissing wave of his hand, bid them a final farewell.

“Merciful hour!” Beatrice muttered, her eyes widening in surprise. “For sure now, and what be the old gentleman after in this uncertain weather?”

Then, another figure made its unexpected appearance. This form was much smaller, it appeared to be in the shape of a small diminutive person standing beside the bent form of the much taller old lord. Goose-flesh prickled up and down her arms and an uneasy feeling settled in her chest. She drew the long ends of her heavy, wool shawl more closely about her for comfort.

’Twas said in the village that leprechauns once lived beneath the hill long before the castle had been built, in a network of mystical caverns full of riches beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings until the invading Drennan clan, a warring tribe of barons and earls, dared to build their own fortified keep directly on top of the wee people’s sacred home. The old story went that in a quest for revenge, the fairies placed a powerful
gessa
, a dooming curse, upon the entire clan. From then onward, a slow and certain decline occurred about the castle, as bit by bit, decade upon decade, the once great keep began to crumble after one disaster or another be it by fire or flood. In one more decade, nothing would remain of the castle but a pile of stone and rubble.

“Aye,” said Beatrice half-aloud to herself. “And when the old gentleman dies, the
daoine sidhe’s,
the fairies’
revenge will be complete. For there were no offspring from the old lord.”

She shivered and berated herself for her own grim fancies. “But don’t you start believing any of those fanciful tales or you’ll find yourself as witless as the rest of them. Why ’tis pure superstitious nonsense, nothing more.”

The intriguing question as to the true identity of the second silhouette did cause her to stop and look back at the ancient castle. It was queer that the old earl was out in this dreadful weather, ill as he was.

And to what purpose would a small village lad and an old ailing lord be about on a day like today, she frowned, pondering to herself, with the heavens on the verge of tearing wide open?

But, faith now, mightn’t the old lord have called out to a passing lad to aid him in returning to the relative safety of the intact part of the keep? Only, why was he outside in the first place? But even as she posed these worrisome questions to herself, she pushed through brambles and twigs in an effort to find a way up to the castle keep.

She reached the stone wall marking the castle’s boundaries after taking one last slippery step. She stood at the same spot where she had last seen the two silhouettes. To her chagrin, she saw neither hide nor hair of the lord of the castle, or for that matter, his mysterious companion. Standing in the damp mist she looked miserably down at the ground hoping no one would spot her.

“’Tis intolerable enough to be uncomfortably soaked and wearing mud-filled shoes,” she told herself. “It would be even more dreadful if I were to appear before the earl’s household like some bedraggled creature that’s been lost in a storm.”

She maneuvered carefully around the wall and as she did so a shiny, round object lying on the ground caught her attention. It blinked enticingly up at her. Bending over, she palmed it.

Rubbing the splattered dirt off the smooth surface of what now appeared to be the face of a gold coin, she wondered who might have dropped such a valuable item? In the middle, a square hole had been bored, elegant Gaelic words were etched around the rough edges. The script read, “
Where there be gold, there be the shee.”

Swallowing, she finished the translation with sinking dread, “
And with gold there be the fairies!
”

Whirling around as if a thousand tiny eyes were observing her, Beatrice’s heart leapt to her throat. And for the first time in her twenty-four years, she found herself shamelessly afraid of the unknown. An unknown that was so uncertain and frighteningly otherworldly that it made her tremble.

“Musha, musha, ’tis the curse of the Drennans I’ve clasped in m’hand!” She gasped in horror.

She ran over to the wall of the castle that overlooked the foaming sea below. She drew her hand back and pitched the coin in. Drawing her shawl protectively about her, she then flew down the castle hill as if the hounds of hell were snapping at her tender heels.

Unbeknownst to her, Beatrice’s life had suddenly changed in a magical way she would never in a million years have imagined.

One week later, Beatrice stood at her market stall selling her spun wool. She had been selling her wares by the village harbor since she was old enough to have her own flock of sheep. The sun shone down on her from a cloudless sky. The warmth suited her mood as she gave a friendly nod to several traders she knew. The market was filled with people ready to make a bargain. It was going to be a profitable day.

A fisherman with missing gaps in his smile approached her.

“I’d like to buy some of your finest wool, my lady,” he said smiling at her. “I hear you sell the best there is t’ be had in Urlingford. And me wife, well the fine woman wants to knit me a shirt to keep me warm, she does. And as I’ve just come into a bit o’ luck, I thought I’d oblige her and buy the wool from you, ma’am.”

“They say I have the finest, do they?” she asked, pleased. “Well then, I hope your wife’s fingers are nimble enough to work with these soft beauties, because they may glide right off her needles.”

“Aye, have no fear on that account,” the man said, nodding. “She’s one of the best knitters here about and no wool has been known to slip out of her quick grasp.”

Obligingly, she showed the seasoned fisherman her wares.

He chose the very finest wool that she had to offer, a lovely angora fleece carted and dyed a becoming shade of dark red. He then reached into his tin fishing kit and produced a coin, the exact same cursed gold coin she’d tossed away. Quite obviously, the fisherman could not read the script.

Eyes wide with surprise, she stared at the small bit of metal in the rough callused hands of the old man.

“How . . . how did you come by that coin?” she asked, not daring to believe her eyes that it was the very same coin she had discovered that stormy night on the grounds of Drennan Castle, and shortly thereafter tossed into the sea.

“I caught it.” The fisherman grinned with relish. “Cut it out from the belly of a fish! For sure ’twas like the miracle of Jonah, the finding of it, my lady.”

“Aye, it was,” repeated Beatrice in a murmur and numbly took the coin without another word.

All that day she tried to rid herself of the coin. At first she thought to be rid of it quickly by dropping it into the begging cup of a poor man, but it was not to be that simple. The beggar took it and rented himself a room for the night from the local innkeeper, ordering a big meal to be sent to his room. The innkeeper’s wife, upon spying the coin in the till, scooped it up and handed it to her wastrel son. His father, the innkeeper, had disowned his son when the young scoundrel almost drove them to ruin with his gaming and wenching ways—and them with three young lasses to wed! Ah, but a mother will always forgive her son.

“Take it before your Da sees me . . .” she whispered. “You’re as thin as a twig. Haven’t you been eatin’, Brian?”

He shook his head and said, “No, I’m starvin’, M’ther.”

She sighed the sigh of a long-suffering woman, and drying her tears on her apron said, “Take this then . . . go and buy yourself some food. I’ll not let you fade away before me eyes.”

She handed the magic coin over to him. He kissed his mother on the cheek in gratitude and cheerfully walked towards the market. But before he reached the stalls, he quickly spent it on his knees, gambling on dice.