Dark of the Moon (14 page)

His eyes were so filled with turbulence that Caitlyn let the subject drop. But when Connor had returned her to the stable, taking off alone on Fharranain like the devil was on his heels, she wasted not a minute in corralling Cormac, who was halfheartedly forcing a potion down the mouth of a sick sheep in the sheep bam.

"Cormac, what can you tell me about Sir Edward Dunne?" she demanded without preliminaries. Cormac barely glanced up. The sheep he straddled was whipping its head about like a snake as he worked to force the yellowish liquid down its throat. From the wet yellowish splotches that liberally adorned his clothes, it was obvious that he had been trying for some time, without success.

"Sit on the bloody beast's head, would you?" he growled. Then, as the sheep lifted a cloven hoof and caught him squarely in the shin, he winced, cursed, and muttered with pent-up passion, "I hate bloody sheep!"

Caitlyn did as he asked, planting her bottom on the sheep's neck and straddling its head with her knees. In this way Cormac finally managed to pour most of the foul- smelling potion down the animal's gullet, then straightened and wiped his forehead with relief. Caitlyn got to her feet, and Cormac quickly jumped away from the sheep, which had begun to bawl. It scrambled to its feet and scurried to the far side of the stall. Cormac exited the stall, and Caitlyn followed him.

"Cormac, tell me about Sir Edward Dunne!" she insisted as he leaned against the outside of the closed stall door for a moment and gazed malevolendy at the baa-ing sheep.

This time she got his attention. "So you ran into Sir Edward, did you? Not on your own, I trust?"

She shook her head. "Connor was with me. They didn't seem to like one another overmuch."

Cormac snorted. "Connor hates Sir Edward, and I don't imagine Sir Edward is any fonder of Connor. Sir Edward thought to acquire Donoughmore, you see, when our father died, as the Penal Laws prohibit Catholics from inheriting land. He even made an offer for the property to the Crown. But what Sir Edward had not counted on was that my father raised Connor a Protestant to prevent just such an eventuality. Connor had merely to prove that he was not a Catholic, and he did so. So Connor was allowed to inherit after all."

"Connor is Protestant?" Caitlyn recalled that Mickeen had told much the same tale when she had first come to

Donoughmore, but then she had not been as interested in the part of the saga that affected Connor.

Cormac looked at her briefly. "Aye, though the rest of us are Catholic. My father would have done anything to keep the land in the family, and did. He always feared that it would be taken away from him in his lifetime, though that never happened because of our maternal grandmother's connections at Court. But he knew that after his death there would be no way of saving the land if his heir was of the True Church."

"But that still doesn't explain why Connor hates Sir Edward in particular."

Cormac smiled bitterly. "Ah, but you see, Sir Edward has long coveted Donoughmore. It would near double the size of his holding. And our father died violendy, at the dme the Castle was burned. It's Connor's belief, and the rest of ours as well, that Sir Edward was behind what happened."

"The Fuinneog an Mhurdair?" gasped Caitlyn, who had retained that much Gaelic.

"So you've heard that, have you? Aye. But we've no proof, and Connor will not kill a man on suspicion alone. But you stay away from Sir Edward. He's a bad sort."

"That's what your brother said. He told Sir Edward I was your cousin."

The grim look faded from Cormac's face, to be replaced by a fleeting grin. "Did he, now? I think Conn rather likes having a wee lassie about the place. Livens things up. In fact, in the short time you've been with us, you've made quite a place for yourself, young Caitlyn."

Such talk embarrassed Caitlyn, who was not used to receiving affection in any degree. She smded rather shyly at Cormac, then bethought herself of something. The smile rapidly changed to a scowl.

' 'There's no need for you to be calling me 'young Caitlyn' in that patronizing tone. You're not that much older than I."

"I'm eighteen," Cormac said with the air of one claiming a great age.

"Well, I'm sixteen." Caitlyn replied, her nose in the air. "I'm no' a child, so you can just stop behaving as if I were."

"You're naught but a baby!"

"I . . . !"

"Are you two squabbling again?" Liam had walked up behind them without their hearing him. He shook his head. "Cormac, did you dose that sheep?"

"Aye."

"Well, there are three more down with it, and Rory's brought two of them into the shed.

You can dose them while he drives down the third."

Cormac groaned but went to do Liam's bidding. Caitlyn trailed along in response to Cormac's request for her assistance. In other words, he wanted her to sit on the victims' heads.

With the two of them working in tandem, it didn't take long to pour the medicine down the sheep. When they were through and walking back toward the bam, Caitlyn ventured another question that had been troubling her.

"Cormac, do you think I'm . . . well . . . pretty?"

He looked down at her in the liveliest surprise. Caitlyn blushed to the roots of her hair.

"You, pretty?" he hooted. "O'Malley the beggar-boy pretty? Good Lord, what maggot's in your brain now?"

His rejection of the idea as totally preposterous fired Caitlyn's temper.

"Sir Edward said that I would be a right little beauty when I'm grown."

Cormac hooted again. "I've always thought Sir Edward lacked a brain. Now he's proved it."

Furious, Caitlyn doubled up her fist and punched him in the ribs with all the force O'Malley would have used. Then, leaving him gasping and rubbing his side, she marched into the house.

A week later, Caitlyn was down with a bad chill. Shed been confined to the house for two days, sneezing and coughing and in general feeling awful. It had been raining without stop for all of that time, so the younger d'Arcys thought and said that she had taken the illness just to get out of her outdoor work. Caitlyn, miserable at being kept indoors with only Mrs. McFee for company, could have told them that she would have traded places in an instant. But arguing took energy, which she didn't have. So she just sniffled and retired to her room, letting them say what they liked.

When she awoke it was past midnight, she judged, and her bedroom was as black as the inside of a cave. The night was moonless, and the rain made the dark seem twice as impenetrable. The steady pattering on the roof just above her head had seemed companionable when she had gone to sleep earlier. But with the discomforts of her illness, she was not sleeping well, and now she had awakened in the middle of the pitch-black night. Thoughts of banshees and ghosdes ran through her mind, along with a vivid memory of the ghostly horsemen who haunted the Casde. Shivering, Caitlyn thought that they were likely to be abroad again on a night such as this. She was glad she was not in the Castle to see them.

Such thoughts made the darkness intolerable. Shivering, she reached for the candle on her bedside. The flint and steel she usually kept there were missing, and of course the fire in the small grate had gone out, probably sizzled to death by raindrops coursing down the chimney, so she could not light it. Remaining alone and awake in the dark was too unpleasant, she decided.

She would make her way to the kitchen, where Mrs. McFee kept the fire smoored, or banked, so that it would not be going out overnight. From that she would light her candle and her fire.

Since she slept in her shift, she pulled her quilt over that for protection against the night air.

She did not possess such a thing as a wrapper, but the quilt served her well, although modesty was a secondary consideration to warmth at the moment. The d'Arcys all slept like the dead, with Cormac in particular rattling the rooftop with his snores, so she was unlikely to encounter one of them on her journey. But it was too cold in the house to go without some sort of covering, even if she had been alone.

Feeling her way in the pitch-darkness, Caitlyn made it down the stairs to the kitchen, lit her candle, and was on the second-floor landing again when it struck her: she couldn't hear Cormac's snores. She couldn't hear anything at all, besides the rain. A sudden conviction seized her that she was the only living being in the house. The notion was chilling. She would never sleep unless she knew for sure that the d'Arcys were where they were supposed to be.

Carefully cupping her hand around the candle, she moved toward the door to Connor's chamber. They couldn't be outside on such a wild, stormy night. . . . Uniting the knob carefully so as not to waken him if he should be sleeping within, she pushed open the door and lifted her candle so that light spilled over the bed. It was empty, had not even been slept in. Feeling equal parts indignant and alarmed, she checked the three other rooms in rapid succession. None of the d'Arcys were in their beds. They were not even in the house. What possible explanation could there be for all four of them being absent at the same time? On such a night?

Caitlyn stood pondering for a moment. A suspicion occurred to her—it was on just such a night that she had seen the ghosdy riders at the Casde. But those riders had dis- appeared before her very eyes. They could not have been flesh-and-blood men. They had been banshees, or figments of her imagination, she had decided long since. On the other hand, Connor and Cormac had come to find her, at the Castle, the very next morning, knowing precisely where to look despite the fact that they had been searching for her for three days previously without success.

The more she thought about that, the more damning it was. But how had they disappeared?

Only banshees could vanish into the air at will. . . .

Making up her mind suddenly, Caitlyn entered Cormac's room. When she emerged, she was dressed as a lad down to die cloak around her shoulders. She would go to the barn first, to see if any horses were missing. If they were—and she expected that—she would mount Belinda and ride out in search of tracks.

By the time she reached the bam, her head and cloak were thoroughly wet. A wetting on top of the chill was not a good idea, but she was too intent on discovering the d'Arcys' whereabouts to give it much thought.

Luckily she had had the forethought to bring a lantern with her. As soon as she threw open the door of the stable, she was able to determine that Fharannain was missing. Making a quick inventory, she discovered that Thunderer was missing as well, as was Balladeer, Rory's horse, and Kildare, Cormac's horse. Aristedes' stall was empty too, and for a moment Caitlyn was puzzled. Sticking her head into the litle room at the back of the stable that Mickeen occupied, she had her answer: Mickeen was on Aristedes. But where could they have gone?

Caitlyn remembered that Mickeen had said the devil drove Connor, and she remembered too his tale of the volunteers that had attacked the Castle and killed the old Earl. Was it possible that Connor and his brothers, and Mickeen as well, had joined a rival gang, the Straw Boys, perhaps, or some such? Obviously whatever they were doing was done in the greatest secrecy.

No one was supposed to know, and except for herself she assumed no one did. And she wouldn't have known if she had not awakened in the middle of the night with the miserable chill and then failed to hear Cormac's snores. She could have lived at Donoughmore for years and never guessed.

She was still standing in the little room that was Mickeen's when she heard a great rumbling noise. For a moment she thought it was thunder, but then the stone floor began to shake. Eyes wide, Caitlyn stared at the floor. She had no idea what was happening, but she did know that the stable was no place to be. Running, she stopped short just outside Mickeen's room and gaped. At the opposite end of the stable, where the straw had been swept clean, a large square hole was opening in the floor. Even as Caitlyn blinked at it, disbelieving her own eyes, the rumbling ceased. From somewhere came the presence of mind to blow out the lantern she held in her hand. The stable did not go dark; light was shining from the hole. Seconds later, with a clatter of hooves, five horses burst from the earth with their riders. Connor on Fharannain was in the lead.

A grand night's work," Connor said jovially, swinging down.

"Aye," Mickeen replied as the rest dismounted too. A flickering lantern swung from Mickeen's saddle horn. He lifted it down and set it carefully on the swept area of the stone floor.

The yawning hole through which they had emerged was now dark; clearly the illumination that had shone from it had come from this lantern, which now cast light in a wavering yellow circle around the men. "Though 'twas rough there for a bit. Those outriders were handy with their poppers."

" 'Tis a wonder none of us were hit." Liam was stripping the saddle from Thunderer, a wide grin splitting his usually serious face. A black mask with elongated slits for eyes covered the area above his mouth.

Thankful that the circle of light didn't extend to where she shrank against the stone wall, Caitlyn watched quiet as a mouse so that her presence would pass unnoticed. Looking around the group, Caitlyn saw that the others were all masked and cloaked like Liam. The hooded black cloaks enveloped the men to the knees, so that only black riding boots showed, and covered their heads so that their masked faces were deeply shadowed. If she hadn't known who they were, Caitlyn doubted that she would have recognized any of them. Here, then, without a doubt were her ghost riders from that night at the Castle. The secret of their disappearance was now solved too: clearly there was a tunnel beneath Donoughmore, and she was willing to bet it had its origin somewhere at the Castle. But what had they been about so late at night, in such weather? What kind of skulduggery had they been up to that could not bear the light of day?

"A bullet whisded so close past my ear that I swear I could hear it whispering my name."

Cormac untied his soaking cloak and dropped it and his mask down the yawning hole. Then he turned back to unsaddle Kildare. Liam and Mickeen disposed of their cloaks and masks down the hole as well, then saw to their horses. Rory was the last to dismount and stood leaning against Balladeer, making no attempt to either unsaddle the horse or remove his disguise.