Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) (4 page)

Finally, he said,
“Aidan, she knows.”

“
Knows what? That you’re fighting like a madman because she hides from you?”

“She knows,” he
repeated, “why no man has ever claimed me as his son.”

Aldan choked on his own spittle. “
Now I’m sure you’ve gone mad.”

“You know the name of your father
. But who is mine?”

“N
ot even the Druids of Ulster can give you the answer to that. Your mother took the secret to her grave.”

“And yet no man has ever claimed me as his son.”

“Your father might have died before he saw you rise to power.” Aidan leaned toward him, disbelief raising his brows. “Is this what’s been rattling in your head these past days?
Will you ever put a stop to it? We’ve talked of this all our lives, until there’s no more talking to do.”

“
I won’t rest,” Conor said, “until I know who lay with my mother in the circle of the Samhain fires—”

“Do not speak of
it.” Aidan glanced at the old woman coming near. “Are you beginning to believe what they all say of you?”

“P
erhaps I am.” Conor clutched the hilt of his sword, flexing his hand over the fit. “Why else has no other man ever beaten me in single combat? Why no wound has ever bled me dry?” He clutched a handful of his dark hair. “Why no gray hair has ever grown on my head, nor lines wrinkle my face, though we are of an age, foster-brother?”

“Mayhap it’s all the ale you drink, or the meat you eat, or the women you tumble
. That’s what keeps you looking like a man of five-and-twenty winters.” Aldan planted his fists upon his brass-studded girdle. “Stop looking past the length of your sword arm for the reason for your good fortune.”

“She knows.”

“That knock on the head has made you daft. But if it pleases you to think this creature knows the mysteries of your birth, then I won’t be able to talk you out of it.” Aidan squinted at the woman who approached. “Thank the gods you’re here, woman. Stitch him up and stop him from sputtering any more dribble.”

Conor
sat upon a boulder and with a single, royal gesture summoned the old woman to tend him. She swabbed at his temple with a damp piece of linen as he gazed northward, brooding.

Maybe
Aidan was right. What else but an enchantment, this queer burn for one woman? Before arriving on the shores of Lough Riach, he had tumbled willing bondswomen as often as most men took meals—and then went on to think of more important things. There were tribes to conquer, cattle to steal from clans too weak to hold them, battles to be won, a world begging for the tread of his feet. Three days ago, he had won a hard-earned kingship. Yet while the bounty of the lands of the Clan Morna laid spread out before him, all he could think about was finding and possessing the woman who had wrapped foxglove around his wrist in the misty light of the morning.

He tugged up his sleeve.
The chain of blossoms crumbled around his wrist. He fingered the dried leaves until a few fell to dust.

The old w
oman cackled at the sight. “Now I know why you scorn the ladies of Morna so, my lord.” She smiled as she crinkled her good eye, as bright a blue as the springtime sky. “That foxglove chain is an old enchantment. Older than myself. When I was a lass, we used to wrap it around the arm of the man we wanted as a husband, though it’s said it was once used to capture fairies and the like. There’s no more talk of that in these parts.”

Conor
passed his gaze over her. A simple iron pin held her dun-colored cloak closed, marking her as of no consequence in the clan. “What are you called?”

“My
name’s Glenna.” She pointed a gnarled finger toward the south. “I live in the last hut, beyond the copse of trees.”

Conor
saw the hut, isolated and alone, some distance from the rest of the settlement. He had made a point to search it, but it had been empty.

“I was out with the cows when you
searched.” She re-wet the linen cloth and wiped new blood from his face. Her bad eye, milky and glazed, rolled oddly. “I’m told that you and your men follow the old ways, my lord.”

He tugged on the foxglove. “What do you know of this that my Druids don’t?”

“That chain binds you to the one who caught you. You must answer her every demand.”

Aidan rose
from his dozing with a yelp. “Guard your cattle, Conor, lest the creature, wherever she hides, steals the last calf away from you and trades it for thread and cloth and golden baubles.”

“Must be a fool
of a lass,” the old woman said, “to hide herself from a man as fine as you. There’s not a woman in the clan who’d balk at sharing your cloak.”

“This
woman wants more than his cloak,” Aidan interjected. “She’s stealing his wits, as well.”

The old woman turned her good eye on Aidan
. “Do you even know the lass?”

Aidan countered,
“Do you?”

“I know every woman in the tribe.
Brought most of them into the world. Maybe, if you describe the lass to me, I can bring her to the new king.”

“Y
ou old witch,” Aidan said. “Soon you’ll be promising—”

“Red-gold hair she has,
” Conor interrupted. “She’s seen no more than twenty summers. Her clothes were those of a common bondswoman.”

“Her eyes,” the old woman whispered, “did they swirl like the green depths of Lough Riach?”

Conor felt his heart throb as he remembered the way her gaze tugged at his senses. He seized the old woman’s arm.

“Mercy
, my lord! My bones are as dry as sticks—”

“Tell me her name.” 
“

“
I cannot! It’s forbidden to speak it!—”

“Her
name.”

The old woman
winced. “Brigid,” she gasped. “She’s called Brigid.”

“By the gods.”
  Aidan stumbled to his feet. “You didn’t imagine her.”

“
They call her
cailleach—
witch,” the old woman sputtered. “And she won’t be welcoming the likes of you.”

Conor
scowled down at her. “Bring me to her, now.”

“But—”

“Now.”

“S
he’s the king’s daughter,” the old woman said. “And you killed her only brother.”

Brigid’s eyes danced with mirth. She twitched a willow switch at the weasel-like creature crouched at her feet, teasing the pine marten with a tuft of fur. The little tree-cat swatted at it. With a flick of her wrist, Brigid made the fur jump. The tree-cat leapt back, uncertain, its back arched and its black eyes bright and wary. Then it crouched belly down in the dew-laden grass, ears perked, watching.

“Don’t you
want it
, maoineach
, my precious?”

She flicked the bit of fur over the marten’s head. The creature shot up on its hind legs and cuffed it. He tumbled on his back,
and then twisted his sleek body to all fours to bound up again in pursuit of the elusive tuft. Brigid twirled in a little circle around him, mimicking his movements, her laughter riding on the breeze.

“Silly little tree-cat.” Brigid dipped down and scratched the marten behind its pointed ears. The half-wild creature succumbed to her touch, his beady eyes fixed on the fur. “Since you were a wee, wounded little kitten we’ve been playing this game.
I’d think you’d have the sense to know that it’s not a mouse.”

Brigid’s fingers stilled in the creature’s glossy pelt.
The sun slanted down through a break in the trees to pool in a little clearing in front of her hut. The birds still chattered their summer melodies in the boughs above. Though the gentle rays warmed her hair, a cold prickle of foreknowledge tickled the nape of her neck. She found herself straining her ears, listening for an imaginary intruder.

“
Oh, I have less sense than you,” she muttered, as the pine marten leapt from under her hand and embedded its claws deep into the tuft. “Men always run from my eyes. It’s folly to think that this man is any different.” She lowered her voice. “And I’m a fool to even be thinking on it. It’s disrespect for the dead.”

“Good morrow to you, Brigid.”

The
pine marten darted into the woods. Conor emerged into the clearing like the sun emerging from behind a cloud. Sunlight shimmered on the swirls and vines embroidered on his tunic. A curious, jeweled brooch girding his three-colored cloak. The bulge of his upper arm sported a gold band that gleamed the same red-gold as the torque around his neck.

As unpredictable and uncontrollable as it was, her Sight never failed her.

He said, “No words of welcome for your new over-king, lass?”

“I’ve no
words at all for the likes of you.”

“Aye, you do
.”  His laughter mocked her. “Your head’s near to bursting with them.”

“
Then I won’t have my tongue cut out of my head for saying such things to my new
rí ruirech
.”

“I’ve got better plans for your tongue than that.”

Her eyes narrowed. Three days of playing cat-and-mouse with the warriors he sent to search for her hadn’t deflated the swell of his arrogance. “It’s brazen and shameless to speak in such a way to me, when you know who you are, and who I am.”

“I am the same man, and you the same woman, as the morning I watched you dancing in the mists.”

“You told me you were a common cattleman just passing through the woods. I did not know at first that you were the Ulsterman who led the O’Neill against my brother.”

He planted a hand on one of the posts of her hut, flexing the bare length of his corded forearm
. “The wind must carry the news, if it found its way so deep into the forests.”

A flash of memory assaulted her, of the last time she saw
her brother Niall striding around this very clearing, so full of pride, swinging his sword, with his cloak whirling around him, his blue eyes glowing as bright as the sky. “My brother could not stop talking about you before he went off to battle. ‘I’m going to fight Conor
dochloíte
,’ he said. Conor the invincible. He swore to cut you down with one stroke.”

“I remember him. He had a fierce sword-swing
.”

“Do you
remember killing him?”

The post groaned as
Conor unburdened it of his weight. “Three tribes of Connacht and ten of Leinster fought against my Ulstermen and two hundred of the O’Neill. Any man could have swung the deathblow.”

The
memory of Niall’s death-vision rose. She saw her brother on the rain-drenched battlefield, his hair matted with blood, his arm outstretched, and his white fingers curled around the hilt of the sword of Morna. Now she recognized the shape of the shadow falling over Niall’s corpse.

She said, “I have
ways of knowing things without a body telling me.”

“Then it
was fated, his death.”

“Know
ing what happened and knowing it was fated doesn’t soften me to the man who swung the deathblow, Conor of Ulster.”

“
Maybe I wielded the sword, but it’s your father who bears the blame. Your father chose wrongly when he threw in his lot with the Leinstermen. They plague the O’Neill like fleas on a hound’s back.”

“My
father has fought with Connacht since the O’Neill stole the High Kingship of Erin. We’ve no love for you and your kind here.”

“If your father had kept his peace, High King
Murchertach would have not sent me to defeat the Leinstermen, nor have sent me here to carve a kingdom from the defeated. It was your father’s folly that caused your brother’s death—”

“I
t was you who thrust the sword.”

“He died a warrior’s death.” Frustration threaded his words. “He died face-forward,
his sword clenched in his hand—”

“
For this I should be grateful?”

“It’s
a prouder fate for a man than rotting away with hunger or old age.”

She knew it was true. Niall had been a warrior. A warrior could ask for no better death than at the hands of the champion of the
O’Neill. But that was a man’s code, a man’s comfort, and she drew no solace from it.

“If
I could take the stroke back, I would. Aye,” he nodded, as she turned to glare at him anew. “Your brother was the only one in the whole of the clan with any fire in his belly.”

“Now you insult both my tribe and my brother.”

“N
o man could have stopped him from dying that day on the field, and my sword was nothing but the deliverer of the gods’ will.”

His words rang true, but she did not want to hear them. She had known Niall’s death was fated long before he
r brother left for war. She had cried hot tears when the vision first came to her, but she knew all her gnashing and wailing couldn’t change the course of events. Since she was a wee child, she’d learned to use the foreknowledge to prepare for what was to come. Like the flooding of the valley one spring, when she had known barely ten summers. Like the O’Neill cattle thieves who tried to steal an entire herd on the southern slopes. Like her and her mother’s banishment from the clan. Like her mother’s long and lingering death.

If she were to be honest, it
was not the loss of her brother that made her so angry at Conor. She had bid her farewell to Niall, a tender parting the gods allowed because of the vision. It was the warring of her own spirit that made her bark and spit like a fevered dog. This man came to Lough Riach a conqueror of all she held dear—an arrogant, murdering warrior. She should hate him. But hate was not among the strange emotions born that morning in the sacred grove, emotions even now shimmering between them. Forbidden emotions, for she was destined for another.

He said,
“If the sweetness of my tongue can’t smooth your ruffled feathers, then I’ll appeal to your gentler nature.” He nudged a swollen wound on his temple, clogged with congealed blood. “Some one-eyed hag told me you are the best healer south of Cruachan.”

She eyed the wound
. It needed a good soaking and stitching if it were to heal properly. Anger flashed in her—
I should let it fester and rot, I should let him go about life with a scar marring his wretched face
—but the fury came and left like the flare of a comet. She was a healer to her core. She could not deny his request.

“King or no king,
I won’t be healing you without payment. Soon the winter’ll be here, and I’ve no liking to starve.”

“The over-king of Morna can pay well for your services.”

“Paying me with my own clan’s cattle, no doubt.”

“I’ll pay you with my
own heifers, or whatever you’ll take for the healing.”

She
thought on that for a space. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, and she could think of a hundred things that he could be doing with those brawny muscles around the hut. Since Niall left for battle, the pile of firewood had sunk near to the ground, and the thatch lolled off the back of her roof like an idiot’s tongue. She hadn’t had a taste of fresh boar since Niall’s last hunt, and her mouth watered at the thought of another batch of honey mead. Yes, she’d make this man pay a king’s share, and she’d feel no shame in it. It would be an
eric
for the death of her brother—and she’d add a large honor-price on top of the fine. It would be the only justice she’d ever get for the loss of Niall.

“Sit down.” 
She gestured to a stump by the door of her hut. “A lass could get dizzy looking up at you. I’ll think on a proper price while I clean your wound.”

She
ignored his rumble of laughter as she stepped into the shade of her hut. She tugged down a few dried herbs which dangled from the rafters. She tossed a cluster of twigs upon the hot stones in the center hearth fire, blowing upon them until the branches caught flame. She set a pot on a tripod above it, as curls of smoke slipped out the smoke-hole in the roof.

She emerged into the sun
shine some time later and wordlessly handed him porridge sprinkled with purple sloes and a bladder which contained the last of her mead. She might have little to call her own, but she was a king’s daughter and would give food and drink to any who came to her door. As she crushed some dried herbs with mortar and pestle and then threaded her silver needle, he devoured the offering with gusto. She wondered if he even knew what he was eating, or if she could have served him grass and muddy lake water just as well and saved her stores.

It took her three tries to thread the needle. S
he felt like a field mouse under a hawk’s nest, the way his gaze followed her every move. Jabbing the pin through the sleeve of her tunic, she grabbed a wooden bowl and headed toward the stream. She returned through the thin woods, carrying the bowl against her hip, full of the cool spring water. Some of the water sloshed and dampened her hip, and she cursed beneath her breath at the icy flow.

His eyes probed her as palpably as the branches brushing her legs. “Have you no better thing to do,” she said, “than burn holes in me?”

“Any more holes in your tunic
, lass, and you’ll not be wearing it at all.”

She raised her chin
. She had no sheep, and the people of the Clan Morna were reluctant to part with the wool the women worked so hard to card and spin, even for the price of her healing. It was her Ma’s dress she wore, and Ma gone these past five years, and she’d had none to replace it.

“How did you
find me here?” She placed the bowl on the ground, crouched beside it, and threw the crushed herbs within. “With me working day and night to keep the path hidden from the ignorant, I thought no man would ever find it who wasn’t led.”

“You gave yourself away with your talk and your laughter.”

She frowned as she stirred the mixture with a yew-wood stick. It was true she talked to herself. She craved the sound of a human voice, even if it was only the echo of her own. “And what made you so sure you’d be welcomed here, wounded or no?”

“I have a way of
making myself welcome to women.”

“S
till braying like an ass.”

He chuckled and tossed the empty bowl of porridge at his feet, then wiped his mout
h on his knotted forearm. “It’s no wonder the people of Clan Morna fear to speak your name. You’ve more barbs than a hedgerow”

“Is that how you found my hut, then, charming it out of a loose-skirted bondswoman?”

“There’s only one skirt I’m looking to get under, lass.”

“D
on’t be getting your blood up, for rags or no, this tunic is staying down and about my legs.”

“I wouldn’t wager any cattle on that.”

With an arrogant flip of his wrist, he tugged his fist-sized brooch off his brilliant cloak and tossed it in the dirt. The fine wool slithered down his broad back to pool around his hips. They sat a good three paces apart but she felt the heat of his body like a Lughnasa fire.

“Are you going to tell me how you found your way here, or are you
going to blather until your lips hang loose from all the work?”

He lifted the mead-skin high and
sucked the bladder dry. She saw the gleam of the golden drops clinging to the bristle of his chin.

“
In truth,” he said, “it was easier to defeat your clan’s warriors on the field of battle than to find out who you were. I had to tease your identity from the throat of some one-eyed hag.”