Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) (9 page)

It was as if the bonds of her body fell away. Their lips, their breath, their spirits mingled. A sound rumbled up from deep inside him, deeper than the man . . . a groan from the core of the earth itself. He dragged her against him until only two thin layers of linen separated their bodies, until the fury of a hundred Lughnasa fires couldn’t rival the heat between them. And still they kissed, their lips joined, the texture of hard and soft, of demanding and yielding, all so new to her and yet it felt as if nothing that had come before had ever been right. .. and as if finally, on this hilltop, she had been born.

He pulled her away, his eyes white with passion. He gripped her shoulders and squeezed them
as if to prove that she was made of flesh and blood. “What enchantment is this,” he asked hoarsely, “that can bring a warrior to his knees?”

She traced his cheek with her hand, trying to catch her breath.

“Speak to me, Brigid.”

She
felt beneath her hand the thunder of his heart. “It’s magic, though it’s not of my doing. I’ve not the power to conjure such things alone,
mo rún
.”

His head jerked up, as if he had j
ust noticed the eerie pall that hung over them. Shadows around them softened. Vivid green grass and blazing yellow gorse and bright pink heather bleached into gray. The wind breathed cool on their skin. On the slate-gray surface of the Lough, a flock of ducks suddenly took flight.

She clutched his tunic, trembling still from the force of the kiss. Magic seeped into the air around them. Her stomach clenched—
Let him not come, not today, for no mortal man can survive one-on-one combat with a warrior of the Sídh
. Her fingers dug deeper into his tunic. She wanted Conor—Conor—no other, man or god.

Then, suddenly, the light filtering through the ash leaves above them shifted and narrowed. The dappled shadows thinned and curled until pale crescents of light peppered
Conor’s tunic, like the cloak of a revered Druid. She traced one of the tiny slices of moon as her heart swelled in her throat.

“My . .
. my vision,” she murmured. “Tiny crescents on his cloak . . .”

He did
not hear her. He jerked up, drawing her with him. He stepped out from the cover of the ash tree, grasped the hilt of his sword, and squinted up at the sky.

“By the club of the Dagdá
. . . Look!”

She followed his gaze, her breath short and knotted in her throat
. She knew what she’d see, for she’d seen it a hundred times before in her vision. The sun hung in a cloudless sky like a two-day-old moon. A blue green light deepened upon her skin. Soon, they would be plunged into an uncanny twilight. Soon, this unearthly moon-sun would burn metallic and white-hot in the sky.

Conor
watched the last glimmers of light bead around the edge of the black disc of the moon. “The moon passes across the sun.”

The last bead of light hovered,
and then died. The world plunged into deep blue darkness. High in the sky hung a black disk threading pearly, translucent light into the star-prickled sky. On the horizon, a dark orange glow hovered.

Brigid stared at
Conor. The midday twilight tinged the planes of his face silver. She gazed upon his features, so new to her, yet as beloved as if her soul had known them for a hundred lifetimes. The shackles of her guilt fell away. It did not matter that this man had killed her brother in battle. It no longer mattered that he had conquered her tribe. He and she were fated long before his name had fallen cursed from her lips.

Stubble prickled her palm
as she lifted a trembling hand to his face. The memory of the vision swept through her mind. The gray mists of her stubborn ignorance parted, finally. Now, now, she recognized the salt-sweet taste of his kiss, now she recognized the swell of her secret lover’s arms, now she recognized the scent of the Otherworld which clung to his skin. The answer had lain before her all these weeks, as plain as the moon, but she had not had the courage to see it.

She curled her fingers into his hair. “Och,
Conor, I’ve been so blind.”

He unclenched his sword, his gaze sharp upon her. “Tell me what you see.”

It was a command, but with no anger. In this eerie twilight, in this meeting of night and day, in this merging of the worlds, the barriers they had held against each other crumbled into dust. There would be no more games between them.

“All my
life I’ve been plagued by a vision—a vision of a man. My lover.” The words surged to her throat. “I never knew his face, but I knew I was destined for him. The Sight is wary and uncertain when it grants glimpses of one’s own fate. I did not understand the full of it until now.” She glanced at the black disk glowing in the sky like hot metal, then back at Conor’s face. “It was you I saw in my vision,
mo rún
.”

“Not some creature of the
Sídh
?”

“It was
fated we meet, Conor. Long, long ago.”

Her stomach clench
ed, for there was more she knew now that the prophecy’s knot was unraveled. She knew why Conor was not like other men. She held her tongue. There would be time enough in the passing of the days to ease him into accepting the truth of his lineage.

“In my house, lass, you will have a place of honor.” A muscle flexed in his cheek. “In my
house, you will be my queen.”

Her heart rose to her throat. His silver gray eyes burned with new intensity.

“Brigid of the Clan Morna.” He clutched her wrists, where her hands lay flat against his chest “Be my wife.”

In the sky above, sunlight burst forth from a tiny spot on the edge of the black moon and rushed like water around one half of the disk. Her soul soared high, high, as light as air beneath the wings of a sparrow. With the uttering of those commanding words, the loneliness which had always clung to her melted away, filling the void with joy and hope and sunshine.

Conor’s wife. The Queen of Morna. No more would she live alone in these woods, dreaming of the impossible. She’d have a strong, mighty husband, she’d live among the people of Conor’s tribe—people who followed the old ways who surely would not fear her. She’d have children.

Then another th
ought came to her—a memory of her father’s tearstained face the day he was forced to banish her and her mother from the clan.

In her joy, she dared to hope for yet another miracle.

“Speak, woman.” Conor’s fingers tightened around her wrists. “Speak, or I’ll kiss the yes out of you.”

She
tugged her wrists from his grip and stepped back from him. “Tonight, in the sacred circle of oaks, by the light of the Lughnasa fires, I will become your wife.”

“I won’t be waiting for fires, lass
—”

“I’m the daughter of a king, and I will be a queen,” she
said, skittering back. “Will you have no ceremony to the joining, and all your people wondering about it?”

“There’ll be enough ceremony,” he
murmured, seizing her and pulling her flush against him, “after the bedding.”

She stopped his kiss with her finger,
and then lifted her lashes to meet the hunger in his eyes. “Before we marry in the old way, you must go back to Morna. It is the custom. You must ask for my father’s blessing upon this union.”

“Your
father is my subject.”

“
I know the patience will choke you,
mo rún
.”
But this is a chance I cannot forfeit, a chance for my father to take me back without shame.
She traced his lower lip, and her fingertip trembled.

“
Please do this one last thing for me.”

The bellow of bagpipes shook the rafters of
Conor’s newly built mead hall. Golden ale splattered on the reeds as drunken warriors stumbled up to dance. The red-faced pipers elbowed flat their bulging leather bags, their fingers flying over the crude pipe-holes, while all around them men jostled and drank and played dice on the paving stones, and sweaty bondswomen hipped their way through the crowd, bracing platters of roasted boar.

Tonight, the king would take a queen.

Behind the woven wooden screens which walled off the king’s living quarters from the rest of the hall, Conor sank his teeth into the champion’s portion of the boar and tore off a greasy shank of meat. Attendants hovered, fastening his leather belt studded with garnets and strapping on his gold arm-bands. A bondswoman teetered on a bench behind him, yanking a stag’s-horn comb through his wet hair. On the third snag, Conor released a roar which sent her scrambling to the ground.

“Enough.” He tossed the haunch toward a platter, sending platter, haunch, and all skidding across the paving stones
. “Out, all of you!”

Aidan sprawled across the mountain of pelts on
Conor’s pallet, brooding with a horn of ale braced on his belly. “What’s all this murdering noise about?”

“My wife will
think I’m a woman,” Conor said, jerking his hands through his damp hair, “with all this primping and preening.”

“A wee bit of the marriage shakes, have you? Not a horn of ale ago you
were grinning like a wolf and announcing your marriage to all who’d hear. Has the fairy magic worn off already?”

Conor
tugged at the laces at his throat. “You’d like that, I’m thinking.”

“It’s
no secret I don’t trust enchantments.” Aidan held up a hand against Conor’s fierce glare. “Don’t look at me like that. Your rod’s ready to jump at the smell of her. You should have wed her and bed her this very afternoon, but you left her there. You, who never waited for man or god. Is it a wonder I’ve a bad feeling about all this?”

“
I thought it was the ale which made you as dour as an old goat since I rode in from the woods.” Conor jerked aside the woolen curtain and gestured to a bondswoman laden with a tray of mead. He swung a horn toward his foster-brother. “Take this. I will have more from you than frowns on my wedding day.”

“You
’ve had enough of my best wishes,” Aidan said, rising to snatch the cup, “at the two other weddings of yours I’ve witnessed.”

“Aye, and look what that’s brought me.” He braced a foot against a bench and peered out at the reve
lry at the other end of the hall. “Nothing but a lass who weeps at the sound of my footsteps, and a stringy princess of an Ulsterwoman.”

“And two and twenty fields of
the finest grazing land any Ulsterman has ever seen, a hillside full of cows and a bull to rival the bull of Connacht, and a seat in Tara’s mead hall.” Aidan sucked mead off his mustache and spit out the shank of hair. “What does this creature of yours bring you? Nothing but the clothes on her back, and whatever wicked enchantment she holds over you.”

Conor
belted down the honey-mead in a single gulp. Perhaps he was bewitched. Now, out of the magic of Brigid’s presence, he could think of no other reason why the Champion of Ulster—a
king
—bowed without a battle to her foolish request. He’d left the woman he would make his wife standing alone on the hillside, while he stood here burning for the taste of her, waiting like a common slave in his own mead hall for an underling’s arrival.

Conor
thrust his empty horn in Aidan’s belly. “You’ll be singing another song when you lay eyes upon her.”

“Sh
e could be as fair as Deirdre of the Sorrows and it wouldn’t matter, I tell you.”

Conor
barked a laugh. “Is this your mouth I’m hearing these words coming from?”

“Beauty never boiled a boar, or spun thread or wove cloth—and rarely does it bring cattle a
nd land. That’s what a king marries for.” Aidan jerked his chin toward the tumult in the hall. “If you’ll want beauty, find a bondswoman. There are enough of them itching to share your bed.”

“You’ll be making a feast of your words
when you lay eyes upon her. I’ll wager a bull upon it.”

“I’m a bull richer, then
. I’ll not be blinded by the beauty of a
cailleach
.”

The ugliness of that word writhed between them like a strange living thing
. Conor jerked closed the woolen curtains and turned to face him squarely. A blood-red flush worked its way up Aidan’s face and flooded over his scalp.

Conor said, “You’ve been spending too much time between the legs of that Morna girl, foster-brother.” It was not Aidan’s way to judge a woman so quickly
. It was not Aidan’s way to think much of women at all, out of bed. “You know nothing of my wife.”

Aidan’s jaw hardened
. His throat worked, but no words fell from his lips. Conor frowned as he whirled his mantle over his shoulders. He wanted no discord between him and his foster-brother over the woman he would soon marry.

T
hen Conor heard the door of the mead hall squeal open. A sudden light filtered through the cracks in the wooden screen. The music wheezed quiet and the clatter of dancing feet ceased as a hushed silence fell.

Avoiding Conor’s eye, Aidan stood up and fingered the door curtain aside
. “Looks as if you’ve no more waiting to do. King Flann has arrived.”

Conor
slapped his brother’s shoulder. “Stand with me now, as you always have.”

Aidan proffered him a quiet nod.

In the mead hall, King Flann stood in the wispy light of a smoke-hole, in a circle littered with gnawed meat bones and pools of spilled liquid. The hem of his blood-red woolen cloak trailed into the rushes, caked thickly with mud. Deep blue jewels flashed on the old king’s knuckles. His breath wheezed through his throat as he braced himself upon a polished wooden cane, for the path between the King of Morna’s ring-fort in the valley, and Conor’s ring-fort under construction on the height, was steep and rocky.

The old king lowered his eyelids in greeting, no more.
Conor chose to ignore the slight. The old husk of a man looked as if one good, stiff wind would shatter his bones into powder. With a flick of a finger, Conor commanded a bondswoman to offer his guest meat and mead. King Flann lifted the flat palm of his hand as she stumbled forward.

Conor
’s nostrils flared. “Refusing my hospitality, Flann?”

The elderly king made a sparse gesture to the two black-robed priests flanking him. “We fast today.”

Conor nodded for the bondswoman to step back into the shadows. Strange ways these Christians had, denying themselves food in a time of plenty. At least now he could dispense with the formalities.

He said,
“I’ve summoned you here to celebrate with us this night.”

Flann’s features
soured as if he’d gulped a cup of four day-old milk. “Do you mock an old man? Your Lughnasa is a pagan feast, of no interest to a Christian.”

“And what of a wedding feast?” Surely the old man
already knew. Conor had made no secret of it as he rode into the ring-fort today. “Is that of interest to a Christian?”

The old king
bowed his head. “Marriage is a sacred thing.”

Conor
glanced beyond Flann to the two Romans hovering in the shadows. Conor had suffered the priests’ attendance in his kingdom because a conquered people took comfort in their presence. He cared not what gods a people worshipped, as long as they remained loyal to him. Now he understood that these wretches had kept the truth from the old man, forcing Conor to be the first bearer of the tidings.

Conor
said, “I’m to be wed this night.”

King Flann raised his brows
. “For a third time? Your other wives, I’m told, are still living.”

“I’ll be wedding your daughter.”

The revelers jostled in nervous curiosity. Smoke from the fire on the far end of the hall whirled and eddied around the smoke-hole, casting a wavering light between the kings. Conor waited for the old king’s well-wishes, growing impatient for them, his thoughts already halfway to the sacred circle of oaks.

Aidan surged forward
. “Do you have nothing to say? The king honors you and your clan by choosing to marry your daughter.”

“You are mistaken.” The jeweled chains about Flann’s ne
ck clanked as he shook his head. “I have no daughter.”

A frisson rippled through the crowd. Somewhere, a cup clattered to the floor. A bagpipe, accidentally crushed, wheezed a discordant breath.
Conor dragged himself back from a distant place and glared at the old king.

“Think again.” Conor swaggered off the dais and towered over the old king, who stared at some unfocused point beyond the hall. “Think hard, Flann, and maybe I’ll forgive the lapse as a trick of your fading memory. Brigid, you called her, when she was born to your second wife. Niall’s sister and your only living kin.” He lowered his voice to a pitch which had raised the hairs on many a man’s neck. “Tomorrow, your banished daughter will become queen. I’d advise you to bless our union.”

The old man stank of decay and musky herbs, and the pink flesh of his scalp shone through hi
s thinning mane of hair. Conor stilled the primitive urge to shake him. He was nothing but a sick, ignorant old man, mired deep in the ditch of his own digging. Conor banked his frustration with Flann, as well as with Brigid, for forcing this duty upon him. She could not help but cling to a young girl’s distorted memories.

Flann repeated,
“I have no daughter.”

The crowd staggered back, farther away from the two kings. One of the priests grasped Flann’s sleeve, but the old king raised a regal finger, and the priest released him.

Conor just wished the old king was worthy of a challenge. “What is it, Flann? What can you not bear? The thought of a pagan wedding under a moonless sky? Or the bitterness knowing I shall have what women I please, while you must send your own child away?”

“
It’s pity I have for you. Your soul will burn for eternity.”

“
I think it’s the thought of my pagan blood mixing with the blood of a daughter of your own loins. It’s the thought of a son with my face and my gods and your crown—”

“She will bear no sons.”
Flann’s red-rimmed eyes burned like twin holes in the husk of a charred tree. “Thirty-one summers you’ve seen, King Conor. No child of yours has ever taken root. None ever will.”

The scrape of
Conor’s sword rang in the room. A woman’s shout pierced the shocked silence. The priests lunged for Flann as Conor raised his arm, but Aidan clamped both hands on Conor’s wrist, and, carried by the momentum, Aidan flew in front of Flann, knocking him into his priest’s arms and stopping the blow before it could connect.

Aidan looked at him with wild eyes
. “Would you kill her father as well as her brother?”

The words penetrated the blood-red haze of his battle lust. He shook off Aidan’s grip and stepped back, his heart pumping, his chest heaving with thwarted murder, the hilt of the sword scalding his palm.

The priests helped the old king to his feet. Dirty rushes clung to his blood-red cloak, but the old man did not deign to wipe them off. Conor nudged Aidan aside and stood so close to King Flann that his words left spittle on the old man’s hair.

“Fo
r my wife’s sake—for the queen—I grant you your worthless life.” Conor scraped the tip of his sword across the king’s golden torque. “Heed me: You are forbidden to speak to her, to speak
of
her, even to lay eyes upon her—except to crawl begging for her forgiveness. If you disobey me, I shall tear out your heart while you still live and feed it in pieces to the wolfhounds before your dying eyes.”

Conor
whirled on his heel, strode the length of the hall, and hacked the woolen curtains of his chamber aside. Aidan followed as the rumbling in the room rose to a roar and the priests hurried the old king out of the hall. Conor speared his sword into the mountain of pelts.

“You’re bewitched for sure,” A
idan said from the doorway, “to let a man who said such a thing live and breathe.”

He curled his hands into fists. Blood lust still thrummed through his veins. “For a woman gifted with the Sight, in this, Brigid is blind.”

Aye, Brigid . . . waiting for him in the circle of oaks. A muscle flexed in his cheek. He wondered if she sensed this moment, if she saw it with her Sight—if, even now, she stood trembling, alone, the illusions she’d nurtured for too many years shattered around her. He seized his sword and slung it through his belt loop.

Brigid no longer needed a father. Tonight, she’d take a husband.

Conor shunted aside the ripped woolen curtains.

Two steps into the mead hall, Aidan clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Where are you going?”

“To her.”