Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) (30 page)

The burgher swiveled with the crunch of gravel and showed
Conor his back. The hem of his robes trembled in fury. His fingernails, shaped into perfect rosy crescents, dug deep into his sleeves.

“Am I
to understand,” the burgher said in a tightly controlled voice, “that you have taken my daughter’s innocence?”

“I prefer to think of it as giving the lass a bit of knowledge and experience.”

That is for the agony you will cause her in this life, and twice for the agony you have caused her in the other.

The hem of the burgher’s robes rippled anew, the silver embroidery flashing. A dog barked somewhere beyond in the next holding. Monsieur Mézières eased his hands down to his elbows, and then grasped his wrist behind his back. He began a slow, deliberate pacing.

“Congratulations, Doctor Mac
Sídh.” His throat flexed as if he struggled to pull out the words. “Your deception was flawless, your treachery, unimagined. This ruse should earn you a good, long time in Hell.”

For a flash of a moment,
Conor reluctantly admired the burgher’s control. Another father might have raged the moment he’d understood, he might have attacked him blind with fury, or called men to do it for him, but this burgher assessed the situation and the cost, as if he were bargaining for dangerous wares on the back streets of Baghdad. Or a king upon whose smallest decision hung the fate of thousands.

But
Conor needed emotion—he needed blind, outraged fury, and he felt a needle of irritation that he’d thrown his biggest spear—the seduction of the man’s daughter—and found his foe still standing.

The burgher continued
. “I’m sure you’re well informed about the consequences of your actions, should I bring you before the courts of high justice in Troyes. The count of Champagne is an acquaintance of mine. He owes me a large sum of money. I could accuse you of seduction and see you hanged.”

Conor
couldn’t wait that long—nor would he put Deirdre through the shame of a trial and the misery of the sight of his death.

“Of course,” t
he burgher continued as if he were talking to himself, “I suppose you know already that I will do everything in my power to prevent a scandal which would sully my name—and my daughter’s prospects.”

And have you thought once about your daughter’s wants, your daughter’s needs,
and your daughter’s heart?

The burgher ceased his pacing. “How much do you want?”

Conor brushed some soot off his sleeve with exaggerated calm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How much will it take for you to crawl back into the hole
you slithered out of? Five thousand
livres
?”

The metallic taste of acid seeped into his mouth. “A man would have to be daft to take five thousand liv
res when the lass has a dowry of twenty thousand plus whatever—”

“Twenty thousand, then.”

A merchant, indeed, thinking everything has a price, too foolish to know there are things on this earth so precious they cannot be gauged by the weight of gold.

In the growing silence, t
he cordons in the burgher’s neck bulged. “Thirty thousand.”

Impatience seized
Conor, as it had not seized him in centuries. Impatience at the games people play, the old, tired steps they danced around one another, which always ended in the same place. He wanted this thing done. It looked as if the burgher lacked the courage to finish it here, by himself.

The burgher said,
“Fifty thousand livres—”

“I’m not in the market to be bought.”
Conor rose to his full height, realizing even as he did that it wouldn’t help his cause to threaten the man with his size. So he swiftly turned his back and snarled the words over his shoulder. “Unlike you, Mézières, I value her more than for money.”

“Eighty thousand—”

“Enough.”

The burgher raised his arched brows,
then tapped one fingernail against a rusted iron rivet.

Tap
tap tap tap.

The tapping ceased. “Is she with child?”

He froze and thanked the gods that the wily burgher couldn’t see his face. There had been a child, once—his and Brigid’s child—conceived by the shadows of the Lughnasa fires, amid the wonders of the eclipse, in the same way that he and Deirdre had been frolicking these past weeks, and he could only hope there was another babe ripening in Deirdre’s womb. The solid possibility of that gripped him. The thought of a babe, a child of his own loins. He resisted the urge to grasp the gritty stone back of the bench as the sky tilted a little. A man couldn’t ask for that much happiness.

What was it that Octavius had said?
I can only interfere in the ways of the world so much. The rest is in your hands.

A steely courage flooded back int
o his limbs. He knew the roll of fate. The only question was if he had the power to change it.

“Not yet,” Conor
responded, turning to face the burgher with a grin spreading across his face. “But not from a lack of trying—”

“One hundred thous
and
livres
. Not a denier more.”

Conor ignored the offer
. “I’m going to marry the lass.”

This time the
arrow hit its mark, for the burgher stood up from his perch on the arm of the bench and swept his cloak off its back. “What makes you think I will allow such a union?”

“Because I want it.
Moreover, because your daughter wants it.”

“I won’t permit it.”

Conor managed an easy shrug. “There are ways of having it done without a father’s permission—”

“You’ll get no dowry.” The burgher
sliced the air with the edge of his hand. “I’ll cast her out.”

“
Your money means nothing to me. It’s your daughter I want, as my wife, now and forevermore.” Conor swaggered to the burgher’s side, close enough to smell the sticky orange perfume wafting up from his skin. “You have a choice: Approve the match and be content, or disapprove and lose a daughter—and a future.”

Mézières
turned upon him. His red-rimmed eyes burned like embers within twin holes in a husk of a charred tree. “You touch my only daughter again,” he warned in a harsh, restrained voice, “and I’ll have your throat slit in the night by men who do it for sport.”

Conor
brushed a finger over the embroidery of the burgher’s neckline. “You don’t have the courage to bloody your hands.”

Then
Conor deliberately turned his back. He sensed the moment the burgher’s trembling fingers curled around the gold hilt of his dagger. He sensed the moment the burgher’s rage overflowed, and the fury spilled over into the primitive, bestial violence latent in all men. Conor spread his shoulder blades, relaxed his muscles, and waited for the blow—

Cold steel ripped through skin and muscle and bone and soft, yielding organs. He jerked forward against the force, th
inking at least the burgher’s aim was true. He knew enough about death to sense it in the swift draining of his blood and the shiver of the oncoming chill. Pain, delayed, seared through him, and he squeezed his eyes shut against it. No matter how many times he died, always, there was this mind-numbing agony before the dark silence. But he was determined to die without a sound so as not to alert Deirdre to witness.

He fell like a rock
. The hot paving stones seared his cheek. He squinted up against the white blaze of sun. The burgher loomed over him, a grimace distorting his features as he yanked the dagger out of Conor’s back, then wiped the blood on the inside of his scarlet cloak.

“A pity about the roving bandits in these woods,
” the burgher drawled, snapping the dagger back into its sheath. “One never knows when they’ll strike.”

Twenty-one

A single cart waited
on the road, hitched to a bowed-backed mare. A scouring wind unleashed a hot rain which hissed upon the earth. The Clunel servants huddled in the lee of the manor house, pressed against the sweating stones to avoid the dripping thatch overhang.

Deirdre stood apart from the others.
Gusts of wind slapped her hair across her face. She let the damp tresses blind her. She needed no eyes to see, for the scene unrolling before her was nothing but a vivid nightmare. She was an observer, detached, silent within some calm place inside herself. Those lifeless gray eyes and the stiffness of his bloodied limbs had been but an illusion.

Conor
couldn’t be dead.

Octavius rounde
d the corner of the manor house leading a makeshift bier. Four white-robed clergymen with their hoods pulled over their faces hefted it upon their shoulders. The women wailed at the passing of the swaddled corpse. Anger rumbled up from deep within her. She wanted to rake the faces of those screaming women with her nails, pummel them with her fists until they ceased their wretched moaning. Conor was not dead—Conor was
not dead
. It was nothing but sleep that kept him silent upon the bier.

But she stood motionless, her fingernails biting into
her palm, as the bier approached, as the strange, white-robed men shuffled by her on silent feet. She stared at Conor’s body muffled in the linens and thought—
untie him, he cannot breathe.
He shall catch his death in this rain. All the while a small voice whispered in her ear—
you’ve gone mad.

You’ve gone mad.

She’d seen him with her own eyes, his stiff body turned over in the bloodied weeds, his face pale even in the sunlight. She’d fallen upon him and shook him and kissed his cold blue lips and strained her ears to hear his heart beating in his chest. He couldn’t be dead because her Sight hadn’t warned her of the death as it had with Ma and Jean-Jacques. How could the Sight fail her with the man who was spirit of her own spirit, heart of her own heart?

Now she stood with
rain blinding her, watching the clergymen slide Conor’s body upon the cart, thinking,
I’ve gone mad. I’ve gone mad.

She
gagged upon the cloying scent of orange as her father’s hand fell upon her shoulder.

“It’s a woeful day, my dearest Deirdre.”

The weight of her father’s grip seemed to press her into the ground. Through her flying hair, she watched the white-robed men tie Conor upon the cart and then cover him with an oiled sheet to protect him from the rain. The black bellies of the approaching clouds skimmed the tips of the trees.

“Weep.” Her father curled his fingers into her shoulder. “Weep as a woman should.
As a wife would.”

Wasn’t
it kind of her father to say such a thing? Wasn’t it generous that he granted her the dignity of that word, when he’d come to her only this afternoon full of stern scolding, and then, hard upon it, haughtily granted promises of concessions? For the love of her, he’d said, he would see to it that her betrothal to Sir Guy was broken, and her marriage to Conor arranged. At the time her heart had trilled with wonder at having a father so open-hearted.

Now suspicion twisted
ugly within her. After his talk with Conor, her father had come to her with skin pink from scrubbing, his hair damp and clinging to his nape. He’d had a quick, jerky way to his walk, a self-consciousness to his speech. After Conor’s body was found, her father was quick to cede the arrangements to Octavius, quick to cede the responsibility of seeing the man who would have been his son-and-law well-buried. She hated herself for the sinful seed germinating in her heart. She hated herself for doubting the last of her kin, her flesh and blood, her only family.

Honor thy father.

The world was turned upside down and nothing remained as it once was.

“Come.” He
r father urged her toward the portal of the manor house as the rain spattered harder. “There’s no more to be done here, Deirdre, and you’ll catch your death of cold if you sta—”

She turned to him and
let the wind scour her hair from her face. She met his gaze with her own, thinking—
Leave me be, leave me be
. At the sight of her eyes, her father’s face washed gray.

She jerked
out from under his grip and stumbled toward the road. Black clouds rumbled as Octavius climbed upon the cart and gathered the reins. Her skirts dragged upon the weeded path as she raced toward the cart, which jerked forward before clattering onto the road.

She clutched the rough stone pillar which marked the gateway, hot tears mixing with the rain pelting her cheeks. She did not run beyond the boundary of the manor house. Something bound her here, at the limits of her world, while her heart stretched out to the white-robed figures walking beside the cart
. She stayed while they retreated into the gray mists of twilight, of rain and storm.

Mo
ira suddenly stood behind her. “Octavius will see him well settled, child, you’ve no need to worry.”

The
grit of the damp stone scraped her cheek as her legs gave out. Slivers of chipped stone dug into her knees. The rumbling thunder drowned the creak of the battered wheels. Lightning flashed and silvered the cart once before plunging it all into grayness again.

Behind her, Moira
began to moan.

“Stop it,” Deirdre snapped
. “I’ll have no keening in Conor’s wake.”

“
It’s not keening.” Moira’s eyes glowed opalescent. “It’s a lullaby, and I sing it for both of you.”

“Go back to the manor house, Moira.”

“Och, child.” Moira reached down and ran gentle fingers through Deirdre’s hair. “You must believe.”

Believe.

Deirdre sat in the muddy portal while thunder cracked and lightning arched across the sky, staring at the silver curtain of rain through which he’d disappeared. Waiting for something, and she knew not what.

A seed of hope settled in the fissures of her heart.

Believe.

***

Deirdre perched on a stool in her bedroom, listening to the first howl of winter wail through Troyes. Her wrist cracked with stiffness as she jabbed her silver needle into a cloak draped across her lap. Glancing toward the door, she slipped her hand into her alms bag and palmed another dirty silver
denier
, then tucked the coin into the hem before stitching the tiny pocket shut.

Slicing the thread with her teeth, she
lifted the blue-gray wool and passed a critical hand over the pockets running the length of the hem. But for heaviness in the drape, no man would know that the accumulated change of ten years of frippery purchases were secreted away in this common cloak. Deirdre smiled grimly. There was a bit of the burgher Mézières in her, after all. God willing, thrift would be the only trait she would ever inherit from her father.

The door suddenly squealed open. Moira backed into the room, her arms bowed u
nder a teetering pile of linens.

“
Ah, you’re here, Moira. Not a moment to spare.” Deirdre stood up, draped the woolen cloak over the stool, and reached for her alms purse. “Put those linens aside, it’s nigh Terce and Mass will be starting soon.”

Moira tumbled the heap upon the bed. “
We’ll have time to make Mass if we leave when we hear the bells—”

“
I don’t want to battle crowds.” Deirdre tied the fringed silk purse to her girdle and adjusted the sag. “Today every sinner in Troyes will be out worshiping, praying for forgiveness.”

“N
ot all Christians are as pious as you, child. There’ll be plenty of room for everyone in that cathedral, even if it is All Hallows’ Eve.”

She
felt a quiver at the name. She’d been counting the hours through Michaelmas and the interminable weeks of the harvest, all while planning, scheming, preparing. But now, finally, the scent of baking soul-cakes wafted up from the kitchens below. Now, the wood was piled high by the hearth. Even in this pious place, a long night’s fire would burn to keep evil from entering the house. For it was All Hallows’ Eve. The night of the Dead, when the ghosts of the departed revisit the earth.

The maidservant snapped out
a linen and let the cloth billow down over the feather mattress. “There’s something special about this day, I’m thinking. Do you think it’s because it’s the old Samhain’s Eve?”

A
flush rushed to the tips of her ears. “It’s just another name for the holy day, it’s the same no matter what name you call it.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing else you’d want to do besides stand in a cold, drafty church? God will forgive you for missing a single Mass, if you’ve something else in mind, like a walk in the country, perhaps—”

“You’ve been talking to my father.”

“Your father hasn’t given me a moment of peace, asking about your health, all the while with me standing there with linens toppling out of my arms.”

Deirdre
could imagine him pacing the length and breadth of the main room, his arms behind his back, his wrist fisted in his other hand, while Sir Guichard taunted and laughed and guzzled more of her father’s finest wines. She could imagine her father mentally counting the clinking drain of his sous, secretly cursing her for “ailing,” all the while interrogating Moira about her state.

And she knew what Moira said
. Moira told him that she was weak, listless, still in mourning for her dead fiancé. She told him that she wasn’t sick enough for a doctor—though her father would never trust another one—but too fragile to marry. That’s what Moira had said that first day back in Troyes. Back when her father wanted again—already—without a single word to her—to set a date for the wedding with Sir Guy.

Deidre
was grateful for that. Really, she was. But today, today her forced confinement would end. Today, she would join the world of the living again.

“You’d best wait until the bells,” Moira continued, bending to tuck the edge of
a linen under the mattress. “If he sees you up and about, looking all flushed like you do right now, you’ll have yourself married to that drunkard before dinner.”

No, Moira.

She’d never consent to marry the Sire de Clunel. She knew that not from her Sight, which had failed her in these turbulent months, but from the surety of her own convictions. The distortions that had warped her perceptions most of her life had dissipated during the ride to Troyes nearly three months ago, when she had gazed upon her father lounging across from her in the silk-draped litter and seen him for who he truly was: A heartless man bent on ambition at any cost.

It was a cruel twist of fate, really.
Where once she had been blind, now she could see. And where once she could see . . . now she was utterly blind.

“I won’t wait a second more.” Deirdre grabbed her kneeling pillow and hooked it under her arm. “I’m going to church now, and I will pray at Mass that my father will find wisdom enough to set Sir Guichard out on his rump.”

“It’s plain that I won’t have any peace until you’re there.” Moira snatched the pillow out of Deirdre’s grip. “But you’ll wear a veil and a wimple and you’ll walk hanging on to my arm every step of the way, do you hear me?”

Cold autumn air blasted them when they left the house, blessed with having just missed the burgher. Despite the bite of cold, the Grande Rue swarmed with people. In a few days, the second yearly fair—the fair of St.
Remi—would begin, and already the wide avenue clattered with the ruckus of banging hammers as the merchants set up their stalls. Deirdre eyed some tattered men loitering on the far corner and then curled her gloved hands over the hand warmer Moira had pressed her to carry. The hollow metal sphere which cocooned a few warm coals would make a fine weapon, if she needed one.

Without a backward glance at her father’s house, Deirdre plunged into the stream of humanity just as the church bells of terce began to clang.
A schoolboy with close-cropped hair barreled by her, swatting at anyone who got in his way with his Latin grammar book. The cathedral loomed up at the end of the street, shooting its limestone spires to the sky. Deirdre tugged Moira out of the flow, toward a poulterer’s shop on the south side. Geese, tied to the apron of the stall, honked and gabbled. A pastry peddler cried his wares above the clangor. Deirdre’s pace faltered as the spicy scent of hot apples and buttery dough wafted over her.

Moira tried to tug her back. “What are you
doing, child? The bells are near done—”

“
Moira, fetch me one of those pastries before church.” Deirdre tucked the hand warmer under her elbow and dug one-handed into her alms purse. “They smell like a bit of heaven itself.”

“You can’t be eating before you take Communion.”

“Save it for after Mass then. But we’d best buy it now before they sell out.” She pressed a few deniers into Moira’s hand. “Get one for yourself, too, now go on.”

Moira squinted into the crowd, trying to pick out the shape of the peddler’s cart with her foggy sight.
“By God, what I do for you, you contrary child!”