Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (29 page)

The pain in her words penetrated even the misery all around him, filling him with regret. How could he have been blind to her pain as he stood in the glow of the bonfires? He had been too deeply engulfed in his own feelings of anger and betrayal to hear what Maryssa had been truly saying to him. Perhaps she really was afraid of dashing off into the unknown. Perhaps she truly feared her father. But beneath her fears, in the depths of her changeable eyes, he had seen an understanding of his soul far deeper than any he had ever known.

Tade glanced about the shadowy cave, seeing Rachel's bent head and his father's bare arms, stained red as he labored over Caitrin MacVee's shattered ankle. He knew now that he could never have abandoned them to this brutality. Not even for Maryssa. He could not have lived with himself had he done so.

The sound of dragging footsteps nearing the cave's mouth drove Tade to wade through the huddled masses toward the shadowed opening, a wild hope gripping him, coupled with sick desperation.

"T-Tade?"

The quavery voice of young Brian MacGary made Tade stumble down the path and put his arm about the youth to support him. Thick, sticky blood clung to Tade's hand, and Brian uttered a guttural moan of pain as Tade's fingers brushed torn flesh.

"Caitrin . . ." Brian choked out the name. "Is Caitrin MacVee here?”

"Aye, she's inside," Tade said, bracing his body more firmly against the lad's sagging weight.

"I couldn't find her. Looked for her. Oh, God, Tade, I went back and—" A sob tore its way out of the boy's throat.

"Whist, now. She's been hurt, but she's alive and safe."

But Brian seemed not to hear him as shudders racked his lean frame. "I went back, Tade," he sobbed. "Blood . . . there's so much blood."

Tade's jaw clenched, his stomach churning. "Brian," he said in a bracing voice, grasping the boy by the arms, "when you went back or when you were fleeing the soldiers . . ." A knot rose in Tade's throat, nearly crushing the words, but he forced himself to go on. "Did you see Father Devin?"

"Father Devin?" Brian's glassy eyes fixed on Tade's. "When I—I was running . . . when the soldiers came, I saw him—saw him run to Ma Bedelia . . ."

Tade fought to keep himself from shaking the injured boy, battled the terror that writhed in his chest. "And then what did you see, Brian?"

"The—old woman was so slow . . . so lame. Father Devin couldn't reach the wild lands before—before they fell upon him. I saw the man . . . the evil man . . . plunge his sword into Ma Bedelia and—"

"Damn it, Brian, what happened to Devin!" Tade hated the harshness of his voice, hated the raw terror that surged through him.

"I didn't . . . couldn't see. I ran. Oh, sweet Mother of God, Tade, there was so much blood!"

Pain, fury, and hate raced through Tade's veins, turning him white-hot with rage. Blindly, he scooped Brian into his arms, stumbled back into the cave with the injured boy, and settled him on one of the makeshift pallets.

Deirdre rushed over to him, her face stricken, as though somehow she knew.

"Tade—" The word caught in her throat, and he could see the terror in her eyes.

"Take care of him, Dee." Tade's anguished gaze flashed from Brian's pain-ravaged face to the stiff shoulder of Kane Kilcannon, whose movements were now disturbingly slow and awkward. "I'm going back to the glen."

"Tade, it is too dangerous! The soldiers—"

"Damn it, Dee, I have to find Devin!"

He heard her cry of confusion and protest, felt her hand try to stay him, but he shook himself free of her grasp and bolted from the hellish cave.

Later on, he could not remember anything about his race through the rugged Donegal hills except the burning of the muscles in his thighs, the blood pounding in his heart, and the dread and rage that gripped his vitals. A dozen times his boots skidded from beneath him, sending him crashing against a jagged boulder or a sharp stone, but he felt neither the bruising and tearing of his flesh nor the warm trickle of blood from the gashes scoring his skin.

The blood
, Brian had sobbed,
so much blood
. . . Tade could picture devout old Ma Bedelia, her silvery head bent, her gnarled fingers plying the worn beads of the rosary that rarely left her hands. And he could see Devin struggling to shore up those feeble legs, battling to shore up the woman's deep faith as the soldiers' steel bit flesh.

"Nay!" the denial tore itself from Tade's throat as he crested the rise that had once held the glen so serenely in its meadow-grass palm. Bile rose in his throat as he staggered down the hillside. Fragments of the old ones' tales of Christ's Wound darted through his horror-hazed mind, tales of the soil bleeding.

Twisted, rag-clad bodies littered the ground, red stains standing out against flesh that was already blue with death. Small forms of children lay curled protectively in the lifeless arms of their mothers while men, caught battling to protect their fleeing families from the soldiers' onslaught, lay clutching, even in death, what few crude weapons they had possessed.

Tade's gaze skimmed over Timothy O'Donnel's dark head, his death-stiffened hand caught about that of his fallen twin. Ryan Moynihan and the O'Byrne brothers lay nearby, their spent pistols beside them, their eyes glazed with death, while Greenan O'Toole's broken body was curled around that of his smallest daughter, both of them reeking of gore and of death.

"Sweet Jesus," Tade choked out, "what kind of monsters could do this?" The words trailed off as his eyes caught a glimpse of silver set against the meadow's green. The silver of Bedelia O'Friel's hair. It was as if every sword thrust, every musket ball that had struck flesh, buried itself in Tade's body at that instant.

Half-blind with tears, he stumbled toward the place where the old woman lay, a cart's length away from the stone altar. Forcing himself to gaze at her lifeless body, he felt his knees give way beneath him, and he sank deep into the blood-sodden ground. Gaping like a hideous leer, her breast had been laid open, slashed through by a Sassenach sword, while beside her . . .

Tade's fingers reached out and closed stiffly on the crude object that lay there, stained with blood. It was a crucifix—the tortured body of Devin's beloved Jesus upon the cross—which Tade had fashioned for him and given to him on the day Dev had donned his priest's robes. The same crucifix Tade had seen Devin snatch from the mass rock as the soldiers plunged into the valley.

His eyes swept grass, defiled now with the blood of innocents, as he searched desperately for the golden halo of Devin's hair, the crumpled heap of his robes against the hillside. But it was as if God had reached down and plucked his servant from the midst of the carnage, banishing all evidence that Dev had ever been there.

"Devin!" Tade's eyes blurred with tears of desperation as he struggled to stand. "Dear God . . . Dev!"

The thunder of approaching hoofbeats scarcely penetrated the haze of agony and helplessness that gripped him. He wheeled, praying it was the English who neared, thirsting to avenge himself on the murderers who had wrought these horrors. But instead he saw the taut familiar faces of a dozen mounted men, their eyes savage and expectant as they reined their horses to a halt.

"Phelan Fitzpatrick staggered into Ballyshea Inn an hour past. He told us what happened," Gilvarry Beagan explained, handing Tade the reins of the huge midnight-black stallion he had led. "We rode straight to the caves, pistols loaded, swords ready, but Deirdre said you'd come here."

"Aye." Tade's mouth curled grimly as he regarded the men he had formed into the most feared rebel band in all Ireland.

"MacGary stayed at the cave," Beagan said. "So many of his family lay injured."

“That is where he belongs." Tade shoved Devin's crucifix into the waistband of his breeches, then swung up onto the prancing stallion.

"Tade,” Revelin Neylan said as he nudged his gray gelding forward. "They've taken Father Devin."

Tade's gaze leaped to Neylan's steely eyes. "He's still alive?"

"Aye. But not for long, if the Sassenachs have their way. Word has it that some bastard named Dallywoulde is taking him to Derry as a cursed example." Neylan's gaze faltered. "They're going to execute him, Tade. Put him beneath the knife."

T
he garden
of Nightwylde was like a vanquished knight's lady, grieving for a lover who would never return. Rose vines, many seasons dead, straggled over crumbling stones, their withered tendrils whispering of remembered beauty, while weeds encroached upon what had once been a path of such whimsical loveliness that it clouded Maryssa's mind with visions of the delicate lace on a maiden's gown.

She hugged her arms tight against her middle, trying to draw more warmth from the folds of her cloak, but the winds seemed to play at darting beneath the wrap, taunting her with the knowledge that she must soon abandon even the garden's meager haven. Abandon it to condemn herself to the surly company of her father and the more menacing society of Ascot Dallywoulde. She bent over to scoop up Odysseus as the rollicking kitten pounced at her feet, but the little wretch evaded her, bounding into the lengthening shadows. The expression of pure feline delight he shot her from beneath the drooping vines should have made the most staid of mistresses smile. But instead the kitten's antics brought only a renewed mistiness to Maryssa's eyes, as she remembered the night Tade had brought him to her.

It seemed as though three lifetimes had passed in the endless hours since she had left the Samhain fires, and the future stretched before her like a bewitched ocean, endless, gray, unbroken by any joy except the hope that she carried Tade’s child. Maryssa's fingers fluttered to her abdomen, cradling the babe she was certain thrived within. She lifted her chin, resolve and strength flowing through her. From now on her life would revolve around the child she would bear. The babe she would love, nurture, and protect with her own life if need be. Tade's child.

She closed her eyes, picturing in her mind a soft, blanket-wrapped bundle with angel-kissed cheeks, a tiny, eager mouth, and eyes as green as the Donegal mountains. Even her dread of her father's black fury could do little to dull her happiness in the coming child. Yet thoughts of Ascot Dallywoulde—his chill outrage, his thirst for vengeance-- filled her with a fear so primal and savage that she was stunned to know such emotions lay hidden within her.

Maryssa's hand tightened over the slight swell of her stomach. When she refused to accept the loathsome Dallywoulde as husband—exposing him to scorn and humiliation throughout London—what would happen? Would not the fanatical Dallywoulde be eager to tear this fruit of "sin" from her arms? Would he not seek to punish a child he would regard as the get of the devil?

Maryssa turned her gaze to the castle, seeing the odd moving glow of a candle as some servant moved about the rooms, touching flames to the awaiting tapers. Aye, an eerie voice whispered inside her, he will wreak his vengeance at any cost. She felt an unbidden shiver course down her spine as the spectral glow from the castle windows insinuated gold fingers into the night, as though Ascot's own bony hands were stretching out, seeking to find her and crush her in their grasp.

She shivered, knowing even as she pulled her cloak more tightly about her that it was not the wind that had chilled her. The garden suddenly seemed quiet—too quiet. Even the breezes seemed to have died; the rustle of the withered leaves, the rattle of dead vines, and the sounds of Odysseus's frolics had been stilled.

She started at a kind of thump at the far side of the garden, as though something had tumbled from the wall. Her heart stopped as she struggled to listen. "Odysseus?" she called softly, battling the sudden instinct to flee to the castle. "Odysseus, come here!"

The snap of a fallen branch beneath something heavy made Maryssa spin around, her eyes focusing on a shadow rising up against the far wall.

"Who goes there?" She forced the words through lips stiff with fear, her voice surprisingly steady.

She resisted the urge to step backward as the silhouette moved from the shadows, the waning light falling over a stained, torn dress and fiery hair. She gasped in shock as her gaze fell upon the face of Deirdre Kilcannon. Maryssa shook her head as if to clear it; the image before her was so unlike that of the spoiled, thoughtless child who had caused her such pain. Torment was etched deep in the impish curves of the girl's face, and even in the sparse light, Maryssa could see the tears in Deirdre's eyes.

Maryssa's hands clenched in her skirts. It was as though the agony in the girl's waxen face were a great stone crushing Maryssa's own chest.

"Deirdre," Maryssa managed, rushing toward her. "What . . . what is it? Tade?"

"Nay, it is not . . . not Tade," Deirdre sobbed. "I—I mean it is . . . They'll kill him, and Devin, too, and I . . . you have to help me!"

"Deirdre!" Maryssa attempted to take the shaking girl in her arms, terror striking deep, but Deirdre jerked free, regarding her with a horrifying mixture of mistrust and stark desperation. "Tell me what happened," Maryssa demanded. "Now, Deirdre, or I can't aid you."

"Da—Da says you already know. He said you sent the soldiers down upon us. He thinks that because Tade brought you to Christ's Wound, you—"

Nausea twisted in Maryssa's belly, a sick horror stirring to life. "Soldiers? Dear God, Deirdre, please—" Her words were a plea for the girl to end the anguish of not knowing, the anguish of understanding perhaps too full well.

"I—I don't believe you could—would throw us to the priest hunters.”

"Dee, it matters not what people think," Maryssa broke in, desperate. "Just tell me what befell you."

"We were at mass when they came," Deirdre choked out. “Murdering. Killing babes and—and the women, aye, any who fell in their path. Tade . . . he had to help me. Carry me. A bullet struck me, and—and I couldn't run." Deirdre turned tortured eyes to Maryssa. "But some Sassenach named Dallywoulde captured Devin and took him away. They mean to kill him."

Dallywoulde. Terror clawed at Maryssa's soul, obliterating the joy that had surged through her at the knowledge Tade still lived. Her fingers clenched, bruising Deirdre's arm, as images of Devin Kilcannon's solemn, devout face swirled before her eyes. Devin in the hands of the brutal knight. "Sweet God," she breathed. "Of course I'll help. I'll do whatever I can. I do not know what I can do, but tell Tade and your father that I will try my best."

Instead of easing the agony in Deirdre's face, Maryssa's offer of aid brought a burst of tears and sobs from the girl's slender body. "Da lies nearly dead of a fever. The wound he took at the Englishmen's hands festered until . . ." She looked away. "He can't even open his eyes, can't move. And Tade rode off with some other men to try to free Devin. But Rookescommon prison is so—so huge. They'll be slaughtered before they can find him."

Maryssa bit her lip, fighting to block out the image that rose in her mind. Rookescommon. When she had traveled through Derry with Celeste Ladonne, the maid had taken great relish in pointing out the massive prison, its barred windows glowering out at the streets below like malevolent eyes. It had seemed to Maryssa that hell must look the same— impenetrable, evil, offering no hope of escape. If Devin was indeed locked away in Rookescommon bowels how could he possibly be freed?

The memory of the raid Tade had staged to rescue Andrew Muldowny haunted Maryssa. Three of the Falcon's band had been killed, but Muldowny had been snatched from the gallows. The resultant rage of the soldiers' superiors had rocked military circles all the way to England. No warden of any jail in Ireland had known peace since that raid, and even Maryssa, cut off as she was from the news, had heard Colonel Rath vow that every turnkey and every soldier stationed on Irish soil had sworn that he would not be the next to be made the fool by the rebel Falcon.

With the jailers thus spurred to alertness, there would be no time for Tade's band to seek one prisoner among the hundreds who crowded the massive stone prison.

But if Tade knew exactly where to find Devin . . .

She felt a twinge of revulsion as she recalled the day Sir Ascot had dragged her to an amusement much favored by London society. Decked out in their grandest silks and brocades, the bewigged gentry had gained entry into an asylum to titter at the antics of the insane and then had gone to a prison to view renowned cutthroats and brigands as they dropped from the gallows.

Maryssa bit her lip as a shocking idea entered her mind. If Sir Ascot Dallywoulde had captured Devin Kilcannon, might it not be thought natural for his betrothed to want to see his caged quarry? And if she could get into the prison and be taken to Devin's cell, Tade might have a chance.

Maryssa cupped the sobbing Deirdre's face in her hands, brushing aside a tangle of curls from the girl's cheeks. "Listen to me, Deirdre," she said. "I think there might be a way to help Tade, aye, and Devin. You'll have to come with me, take me to Derry. Then we'll have to find Tade—get word to him somehow."

"Tade left a message for Brian MacGary to meet him at a place called the Hangman's Fool. But how can we—"

"Leave that to me." Maryssa shoved back her hood, feeling suddenly confined inside the walls of the garden. "I'll be at the crossroads as soon as all here in Nightwylde lay asleep. Be there, Deirdre, astride a horse. Don't fail."

"I—I won't." Deirdre rubbed the tears from her eyes with one grimy fist. The shuddering sobs had ceased. "Maryssa"—the name sounded natural on the girl's trembling lips—"I was wrong to hate you. Wrong to try to—to tear you and Tade apart. You love my brother, I know that. I could see it on your face last night at the fires. It is that which gave me the courage to come here and beg you—"

"You need beg me for nothing, Deirdre," Maryssa soothed. "Whatever aid I give, I give freely." She forced her voice to remain calming and steady, but the acceptance by Tade's beloved sister now, when it was too late, tore at Maryssa's heart.

"Hasten now," Maryssa told her. "I have to go make ready."

Deirdre nodded, then headed toward the wall she had climbed minutes before, but she stopped and darted back to catch Maryssa in a hard embrace.

“It will be all right, Deirdre," Maryssa said, smoothing a hand over the girl's tumbled curls. "I promise you." Deirdre nodded, her face showing a small brightening of hope; then she spun and swung herself up over the wall with the same easy grace ingrained in her brother.

Maryssa stared for long seconds at the place where Deirdre had disappeared, wishing she could indeed be certain all would be well. But a hundred fears and doubts gnawed at her stomach, all overlaid by the evil in Ascot Dallywoulde's eyes. Scarcely realizing she did so, she turned and scooped up the kitten that had curled up beneath a dying shrub. Her nerves tingled with an odd sense of exultation at the knowledge that she was facing the peril fate cast her, attempting to divert calamity instead of accepting it as though she had no choice. And yet fear—for Tade, Devin, Deirdre, and, aye, herself—sharpened her senses, making her feel like a whipcord strained taut.

The door that led into the castle from the garden was in disrepair, its hinges protesting as Maryssa hustled inside. But she had barely swung the door closed behind her when she felt the change in the atmosphere of tension and anticipation that had haunted the corridors earlier in the day.

Cradling Odysseus in her arms, she paced down the narrow hallway, drawn as though by some sorcerer's spell. A laugh, hideous and grating, sounded from behind the half-open door of Bainbridge Wylder's library, and Maryssa froze, seeing inside the room a pair of blade-thin shoulders and a cruelly twisted mouth.

"Drink, Ascot! This is my finest wine." The heartiness in her father's voice seemed oddly brittle despite the cheerful words. "And you well deserve it after this day's work."

One midnight-black sleeve rose up, touching a crystal goblet to pale lips. “It is but God's work I do," the chill voice said. "And it is far from finished."

"But you said Devin Kilcan—" Bainbridge seemed to stumble over the name, and she could hear in the sharp-edged tones something akin to . . . was it discomfort? "I mean, the papist scum lies in prison, his death assured."

Dallywoulde's low chortle made Maryssa's skin crawl. "Aye, one cursed priest. Yet I believe our Father Devin might be more important than even I suspected."

Bainbridge Wylder's inquiring grunt was muted by a rustling, as though Sir Ascot were rummaging among some objects. "Important?" Bainbridge snorted.

"Ah, here it is."

Maryssa drew deeper into the shadows along the walls, her heart pounding.

"What do you see here, good uncle?"

“It is nothing but a cursed rosary. All the Catholics carry them."

"Aye." Maryssa could hear the triumph and eagerness in Dallywoulde's sneer. "But how many papists do you know who carry a rosary with a falcon engraved on the back of its crucifix?"

Maryssa's blood turned to ice.

"A falcon?" her father interjected. “Do you think you Devin Kilcannon is the outlaw you seek?”

"Nay. That whey-spirited wretch is no rebel raider. But whoever the Black Falcon might be, he holds this priest in high regard. If it were not sin to gamble, I'd wager my life that we've just captured a lure with which to draw the Black Falcon from his cliffs—” Dallywoulde's voice dropped low. “—and into our waiting chains."

Maryssa sagged against the wall for support, feeling her confidence fade. It was one thing for Tade to storm out of the night and strike swift and hard with surprise as his greatest weapon. But if Dallywoulde was already lying in wait . . .

"Then your men," her father said, "are prepared to seize the rebel scum?"

"More than ready."

Maryssa saw Dallywoulde's lip curl.

"Double the usual guard is posted over that devil priest; the men are under the command of Captain Marcus Langworth. He is a right able leader when he's not out chasing petticoats. But I vow he'll not be tempted by Salome herself, after the threats I left thundering in his ears this night."

“It will be good when the righteous here in Donegal can drive the highroads in peace once more,” Bainbridge grunted.

The righteous . . . Maryssa closed her eyes, seeing again the serene hidden valley and Devin preaching to his flock. Her stomach tightened as she envisioned a scene from a nightmare—soldiers spilling into the hollow, slashing the helpless with their swords.