A Rose in Splendor (3 page)

Deirdre watched spellbound as the pistol fell from the man’s grasp as he coughed. The spasms racked his body and he curled up into a ball. Common sense told her run, for she was free, but fascination held her rooted to the spot.

Finally, when the racking stopped, she bent and picked up the pistol. It was a cold, heavy weapon, the same as her father’s pistol.

“Careful, you’ll blow your lovely nose away,” the man said suddenly.

Deirdre jumped and took a step back. She had thought him dead or asleep. When he moved to sit up, she took another step backward and his hand shot out toward her. “Give it to me, lass. I’d not like to harm…so fair a bairn…but I will…. Give me me pistol!” he rasped.

Deirdre took another careful step backward. He was still cloaked in shadow but his harsh breathing betrayed his condition. “You’re hurt.”

He did not answer but with a terrible groan hoisted himself to his feet. The breeze caught at his cloak and it unfolded, billowing out like the black wings of a nightmarish creature.

Magnified by her fear and the broad sweep of his cloak,
it seemed to Deirdre that he rose to a height of ten feet and filled the confines of the tiny stall. “You’re a fairy! A demon!” she cried.

Clutching his middle, he staggered into the slanted light from the open stable doors. Then, like a puppet whose strings have been snipped, his legs folded under him and he collapsed in a single, fluid movement.

Deirdre dropped the pistol and clamped her hands over her mouth to keep back a cry. He lay now in dim light and she saw that he was, indeed, a man. He wore heavy, scarred, muddy jack boots. His face was turned away and the tangle of long black hair at the back of his head was matted with blood.

Unable to resist any wounded thing, Deirdre took a step closer. Was he dead? She could not tell, for he lay so still. She moved another step closer, wondering what to do. If he were one of her father’s men or only a soldier of King James, he would not have hidden himself in the home of sympathizers. No, something else had brought him here.

Deirdre glanced at the pistol lying nearby. Perhaps he was a highwayman. They were as prevalent as soldiers these days. If her father came in and found a highwayman, he would have him hanged summarily.

Greatly daring, she knelt down beside the fallen man and shook his shoulder. She felt relief mingled with trepidation when he stirred slightly and moaned under her prodding.

“If you’re a thief, then you should know we’ve nothing to steal,” she whispered anxiously. “The silver’s gone and the gold plate. There’s not so much as a pearl in me mother’s jewel box.” Too late, she realized that perhaps she should not have mentioned her mother’s jewel case, for the man slowly lifted his head.

The first thing she noticed were startling blue eyes in a face drained of all color by pain. Then rapidly she noticed the dark bruises beneath his eyes, the thin scraggly beard which matched the shaggy blue-black mane of curls that fell across his brow, and the smear of bright red blood trailing from his mouth.

White skin, raven-black hair, and bloodred lips: he bore the colors of the mythical Deirdre’s lover.

Deirdre jumped to her feet, her small body trembling so hard that she could barely stand. It was a fairy’s trick. Hadn’t Brigid warned her that the people of the otherworld did not like to be mocked? The fairies must have heard her boast of the man she would marry and had deliberately set about to frighten her by conjuring up this ghost from her daydreams.

“Do not hurt me, please!” she begged. “I did not mean to mock you. ’Twas a joke. I’ll never mock the stories again, I swear it!”

The man blinked and shook his head slightly, as if he did not understand her. “Help me,” he said, his voice scarcely audible.

“Aye, anything, only do not hurt me!”

He winced as he reached out a trembling hand to her. “There’s the soul of Ireland in your misty green eyes.”

He closed his eyes, as if musing on a far-distant thought. When his eyes opened again, his gaze had changed. There was helplessness there, and his voice was edged with desperation. “Are you, I’m wondering, as gentle and kind as your gaze?”

Deirdre nodded slowly, unable to look away from his pain-ravaged face. She had never seen a man so badly hurt, nor had she ever heard a voice like his. It wrapped her in a warmth that was both pleasing and discomforting. She reached out to take his hand and was again amazed by his strong-fingered grasp. “I’ll help you.”

“Dee!” came a sudden call just outside the stable doors. “Dee, where are ye, daughter?”

“Da!” Deirdre cried joyously. “No, do not move,” she scolded as the stranger pushed feebly against the ground in an effort to rise. Squatting, she put a hand to his face. His skin was icy to the touch, as though he had just come out of a winter wind. “’Tis me Da. He’ll help you.”

*

Lord Fitzgerald had spent the better part of a day and half in the saddle, leading a wretched band of war-weary
soldiers on what for many of them would be their last ride through their homeland. Having signed the terms of surrender in the Treaty of Limerick a few days earlier, he, along with more than thirteen thousand other men of the Irish army, had chosen expatriation rather than submit to English rule. France promised a freedom that they would not now have here in their Irish homeland.

It was a hard decision, made worse for the families of the soldiers. As an officer, Lord Fitzgerald was one of the lucky few who had been given the freedom to carry his family with him. Most of the regular troops had been summarily herded aboard ships and shipped across the Channel without even a glimpse of the families they were leaving behind.

“Damn their English souls!” Lord Fitzgerald tossed off automatically in sympathy with his thoughts.

It was left to officers like himself to inform the soldiers’ families of where their menfolk had gone. Times were hard. It would be months, perhaps years, before some families could follow their stout-hearted fathers, sons, and lovers.

As he made his way toward the entrance of his stables, he rubbed his eyes, which ached from road grit and lack of sleep. He smelled of horses, gunpowder, and sweat. Beneath his dust-powdered periwig, his scalp itched from flea bites. Had this been any other day, he would have ordered up a bath, a full meal, and several glasses of port before retiring for a sound sleep. Now he barely had time to gather his family together and race for the docks at Cork, where a French ship awaited them.

No doubt his famous ancestor, Gerald Fitzgerald, would spin in his grave to know that he had handed Liscarrol over to the care of a Protestant, even if he was a Fitzgerald, but his cousin Neil Fitzgerald, because of his religion, would be able to ensure that he would not lose his home. The English had promised no retribution against the Catholic families who had surrendered at Limerick, but only a fool or one too young to remember the atrocities carried out by the Englishman Cromwell would rely on such pledges.

With Liscarrol in Protestant hands, even if they were Irish Protestant hands, the government could not readily confiscate it.

A bitter vetch it was, leaving his homeland in defeat. Well, there was no turning back now. His decision was made, and if his family was bewildered and frightened, they would follow him…as soon as he located his only daughter.

“Dee! Where are ye, me darlin’? Why do ye not—?”

When he turned in to the stable and saw his daughter kneeling on the ground beside a fallen man, his first thought was that it was one of his own soldiers. Then reason asserted itself. His men had not been dismissed from the yard. This was a stranger. Trained to note details in an instant, he saw the jack boots of a fighting man and the pistol lying nearby. Though he lay inordinately still, the stranger’s chest rose and fell with the rapidity of a man in distress.

Lord Fitzgerald’s heart lurched. The outbreak of the plague had taken away thousands of souls a year earlier. War always brought pestilence and disease. Yet, here was his darling daughter trying to comfort the strange man as she would a wounded bird or lamb.

“Dee, lass. Come away. Let him be.” He spoke in the calm, authoritative voice that had made many a man under his command keep a clear head in battle, but the sweat of anxiousness glazed his brow in the moments it took him to reach Deirdre and snatch her up into his arms.

“Da!” Deirdre squealed in delight as her father’s arms closed around her and lifted her up high. The strength of his embrace nearly crushed the breath from her, but the pain had a joy in it that she did not mind.

“Dee, lass, what are ye doing here?” her father questioned.

Deirdre reared back from the smothering confines of his chest, her young face clouded with worry. “You must help the man. He’s running from the English. They wounded him. I said we’d help him, but he’s afraid. He thinks you mean to hang him, Da.”

“Does he now?” Lord Fitzgerald murmured, his gaze moving from his daughter’s troubled expression to the man
sprawled a few feet away. Wounded. Thank God! Injuries would heal…or not. At least his daughter had not been exposed to disease.

He noticed now the hat and its white cockade and sighed. No doubt the man had been on the run since the battle for Limerick. Perhaps he lived nearby and could be carried home before they left for Cork.

He set his daughter down carefully. “Go fetch me the sergeant, lass. O’Conner’s his name.”

“But, Da—” Deirdre protested, only to be turned about by her father’s hands on her shoulders.

“Do not disobey an order from yer superior, lass! Fetch the sergeant. I’ll keep watch over yer wounded lad. There’s a good lass,” he encouraged as she started for the doorway.

When he turned back, he picked up the pistol and pocketed it before bending over the ailing man. With strong but gentle hands he turned him over. When he saw the stranger’s face, Lord Fitzgerald muttered an oath. Despite the dirt and blood, there was no disguising his youth. This was no seasoned soldier. This boy with peach fuzz for a beard could be no more than seventeen.

The lad groaned and his eyes flew open. “Who…who are you?”

“Ye’re in no condition to care overmuch,” Lord Fitzgerald answered gruffly, but he cradled the young man’s head against his knees. “Who are
ye
,
lad, and where’s yer company?”

The boy shook his head slightly. “No company.”

“All dead?” the brigadier asked gently.

Again he shook his head. “Not a…soldier. Rapparee.”

“So,” Lord Fitzgerald said shortly. This was not the answer he had hoped for. A professional soldier himself, he had little liking for the rapparees, as these undrilled fighters called themselves. The countryside swarmed with irregular troops, farmers and peasants mostly, who would offer aid in one battle and then disappear before the next. Often they fought with the tools of their trades: scythes, pitchforks, pikes, and
sgians
.
Some rapparees were honest fighters and defenders of their homes. Many others were
nothing more than thieves and murderers who used the Irish cause as a cover for their crimes.

Fitzgerald remembered the pistol in his pocket. Pistols were rare among common herdsmen. Powder and shot were even more difficult to obtain…unless this lad was a highwayman.

Fitzgerald shook the boy until he groaned. “Tell me yer name!”

The boy coughed and choked, bringing a blood-tinged foam to his lips.

Fitzgerald cursed roundly when he saw the blood. After laying the boy flat he unsheathed his
skean
,
threw back the cloak, and began cutting away the bloody tatters of clothing wrapped around his body.

When the last shreds of cloth gave way under his knife blade, Fitzgerald saw the dark bloody bruise that covered half the boy’s right side. With knowledgeable fingers he located three broken ribs. Perhaps one or more of them had pierced the lad’s lung.

When his eyes fell to the boy’s waist, he blinked in surprise. Tied about his waist under his shirt was a wooden rosary and crucifix such as monks wore. Fingering it curiously, Fitzgerald pondered the reason for it. The life of a rapparee was about as far from a priestly existence as a man could imagine.

“Ye sent for me, sir?”

Brigadier Fitzgerald looked up into the ruddy face of his sergeant. “Aye, I did. We’ve a wounded lad here. A rapparee, by his own account, only he’s slow to speak his name.”

Elam O’Conner looked down dispassionately at the injured boy and said, “Will ye be having me coax it out of him?”

From the corner of his eye, and to his great consternation, Lord Fitzgerald saw his daughter step from the shadows. “What are ye doing here?”

Wide-eyed at the sight of the young man’s horribly battered chest, Deirdre came closer. “Is he dead, Da?” she questioned. “He looks dead.”

“No, lass, he’s not dead,” Lord Fitzgerald assured her.

His voice hardened as he added, “Ye were not to come back. ’Twas an order.”

Her gaze shifted to the boy lying disquietingly still. “I found him,” she said, as if by saying that she could reclaim him as hers.

“Aye, lass, and a brave thing it was ye did. But ye’ve no need to think about it any longer. We’ll patch him up and have him on his way in a trice.”

Deirdre looked up at her father, her gray-green eyes swimming with tears. “He thinks you’ll hang him, and he hurts something fierce.”