Dark of the Moon (3 page)

She would not let herself think of the meal until all was straight between them.

"Eat, lad. There're no strings to the food. I know what it's like to be hungry." Despite those unsettling eyes, his voice was gentle.

"You?" She stared at him with disbelief. Then pride reared its head. "Anyways, I ain't
that
hungry. Like I said before, me pals and me, we just had tea. Boiled potatoes and . . ."

"I'm sure you can manage something. Just so as not to be rude."

She looked at him for a long, wary moment. But the aroma of that stew was not to be denied.

"All right. I guess I owe you something, seein' as how you didn't hand me over back there."

"Indeed." If there was just the faintest touch of dryness to his voice, his face was perfectly bland. There was no offense to be taken there.

After one final, suspicious look at her companion, Caitlyn picked up her fork and dug in.

The first hot, cooked meal she'd had in weeks was so delicious that, after the first bite, she quite forgot the Sassenach who had provided it and wolfed it down like the starving child she was.

When she had finished, the last crust of bread used to sop up the last drop of gravy, she sat back, replete, to find him watching her. The look on his face told her nothing, but she felt herself flushing. She'd made a right pig of herself, despite her fine words. And before a Sassenach.

"You keep pinching purses, you're going to hang. You're not that good at it." His tone was one of impersonal warning.

Stung, her eyes widened with indignation. "I'm bloody good! I've been doing it for years and never been nabbled! Afore, I mean! You ..."

"You're slow, and I felt your hand in my pocket like a lead weight. If you haven't been caught before, it's sheer good luck."

"What the bloody hell do you know about it?"

"I know a poor thief when I'm robbed by one. A poor, stupid thief. Because you're not going to quit until you're caught, are you? You'll hang higher than Christchurch's steeple." He sounded disgusted.

'Then you can come cheer at the hangin', can't you, you bloody pious Orangeman?" Her voice rose on the last word. Buoyed by a sudden surge of rage, she jumped to her feet. Men turned from the bar and swiveled in their seats to look. The gentleman sat back in his seat, his eyes narrowed as he took in her anger for a long moment with no reaction whatsoever. Then, reaching across the table without a word, he twisted his hand in her coat front and yanked so hard that she abruptly , found herself sitting on the wood bench again. Her first reaction was to rub her tender behind, which had just suffered a severe bruising. She managed to control the impulse while she blinked at him.

"You'll curb that temper with me, my lad, or I'll curb it for you, understand? I've had some considerable experience with hotheaded bantlings." He paused, his eyes glinting at her. Then he said abruptly, "You know aught about sheep?"

"What's to know about sheep?" Her response was surly, but she remained seated.

"Answer the question!"

Caitlyn's eyes narrowed. "I love the little beggars like they was kin." It was a lie, and a brazen one at that. The closest shed ever been to a sheep was to sleep in a barn with one once.

But his arrogance deserved a lie.

"Think you can cut peat and muck out a stall?"

"Depends on why it needs doing."

He chose to ignore her insolence. "I've got a sheep farm in County Meath. I can use another lad about the place, if he's willing to work hard and behave himself. Of course, I was picturing someone a little meatier, stronger ..."

"I'm strong as an ox, I am!"

"Three hot meals a day, a bed in the barn, lots of fresh air, and hard work is what I'm offering. Unless I'm mistaken, it's more than you have here."

"You offerin' me a job? Why? I just prigged your purse—almost." Honesty forced her to add that last, while suspicion shone out of her eyes as she looked at him. His expression was unreadable.

"Because I used to know a lad who was a lot like you. A hotheaded, ready-for-anything gamecock. I had a fondness for him."

The look he gave her seemed honest enough. But she had seen a lot of honest looks in her time, and most of them came from the biggest liars around.

"I'm no' interested."

He shrugged, standing up. "Suit yourself. I'll be at the Brazen Head in Lower Bridge Street.

I'm leaving at first light tomorrow. If you want honest employment and a safe berth, be there. If not, good luck to you."

He laid some coins for the meal on the table, nodded at her, and walked out of the pub.

Caitlyn chewed her lip as she watched him go. A job—he was offering her a job? She'd never had a job as such before. And, he'd said, a safe berth. A loud burst of laughter from the bar distracted her from her thoughts. She was an Irishman in a bloody Sassenach pub, which was not at all a good thing to be.

As she got to her feet her eyes chanced to fall on the table. Hesitating, she looked around to find herself unobserved. Then with a lightning movement she scooped the coins he had left from the table and into her pocket and swaggered out the door.

O'Malley! And here was I thinkin' you were hanged for certain sure!" Willie stood up to greet Caitlyn as she ducked into the tumbledown shanty that served as home to a fluid group of eight or so lads. Made by their own hands of discarded lumber and tin, it leaned against the back wall of the Royal Hospital. Dozens of such tiny structures had been erected along the stone walls of the building. They were regularly torn down by dragoons and just as regularly built up again by the residents. It was a way of life.

"Ah, you know I've the luck of the Irish, Willie." Caitlyn basked in Willie's amazement at her escape as she crouched to warm herself at the tiny peat fire. The smoke the fire gave off was malodorous, but she scarcely noticed. From birth she had been exposed to the awful stink of Dublin's slums. Sewage ran raw in the gutters, at least in the Irish quarters. Garbage rotted in the streets, breeding enormous rats and cockroaches the size of fat mice. After a pair of hours spent in the Protestant sections of the city, Caitlyn felt even more keenly than usual what the interlopers were robbing them of. Protestant Dublin had wide streets, beautiful brick homes and shops, and a semblance at least of law and order. Catholic Dublin was menaced by roving gangs of beggars and thieves. The pinkindin- dies, as they were called, roamed about the mews after nightfall, slashing and robbing their victims, raping women in the streets, breaking into shops and homes almost at will. Homelessness, hunger, and brutality of the worst sort were part of daily life. Liffey fever was rampant. People died of it every day, their corpses dumped into the gutter with the sewage and garbage if they had no kin to arrange a burial for them.

Surviving was the sole employment of thousands, and it made them as vicious as wild dogs.

"Doyle and the others've gone to the pub for a dram. I didn't feel like going with 'em. I—I thought never to see you again, O'Malley."

"Holy Mary, Willie, don't start blubberin' like a babe. You should've known a bloody Sassenach couldn't hold me.

Willie gave a watery grin. "Aye, I should've known it. How'd you get away, O'Malley?"

Caitlyn stood up, her hand going to her pocket where the Sassenach's money was tucked well down into the farthest corner. She'd meant to tell no one of her windfall. If word got out, the coins would be taken off her before she could say bloody England and her throat likely slit for their trouble. But Willie was her friend. When her mother had died in childbed, after having been turned off from her position as maidservant at Dublin Castle because she was increasing (through no fault of her own; she'd been forced by a drunken lord), young Willie, orphaned like Caitlyn, had been the first to stand her friend. Although he was younger than she, he'd been on the streets all his life and was wise in their ways. It was he who'd shown her the ropes. For a long time Caitlyn had been haunted by memories of her beloved mother, shamed and with nowhere to go but the streets, racked with coughing spells that had left her so pale and thin that the sunlight had almost shone through her except for the increasingly swollen mound of her belly. The end had come some eight years ago at the self-same Royal Hospital against which Caitlyn's shanty now leaned. Kate O'Malley had died in the charity ward, frightened and in pain, without so much as a pillow on which to rest her head. Caitlyn, with her until the end, had been left with her mother's blessing and naught else. It was while she lay dying that Kate O'Malley had insisted that her daughter begin to dress as a lad to protect her from the predators that were men. Caitlyn, with a horror of suffering her mother's fate, had not resisted, and by the time she had met Willie sheltering under a bridge she'd almost forgotten that she'd been born a lass. Willie and the others had no inkling of it.

In those early weeks, Caitlyn had cried at night, frightened and missing her mother. Willie had comforted her then when the others had laughed, his thin young arm hugging the shoulders of the lad he'd thought her to be. Remembering, Caitlyn looked at Willie, who was the closest thing to family she possessed. Her mother's thin face seemed to float before her.

"Take a chance, Caitie. 'Tis likely the only one you'll get." The words were as clear as if they'd actually been spoken. Caitlyn blinked, crossing herself reflexively. The vision had been so real, only Willie's tear-marked face convinced her that she'd imagined it. Earlier that day she'd come face to face with the evil eye, and now she was seeing banshees. It was unsettling.

"Come, Willie, I Ve a wee surprise for you," she said, draping an arm around Willie's shoulder in an unusual gesture of affection and leading him from the shelter. "I've somethin' to talk over with you ..."

Caitlyn stood uneasily outside the Brazen Head in Lower Bridge Street the next morning. Only a few people were up and about, servants mostly, stoking up fires and seeing to animals. The day was dawning sluggishly, the sun seeming reluctant to poke its head through the floating curtain of gray mist. Rain threatened. The clouds overhead were so low that they looked ready to settle on the rooftops. The smell of dampness was in the air.

A shaggy Connemara pony pulling a well-laden farm cart plodded around the corner and was pulled up at the hitching post not far from where she stood. The scrawny ostler shed seen earlier jumped down from the seat and walked stiff-legged to hitch the animal to the post. That done, he straightened and looked her over with glum disapproval.

"You got business hereabouts, lad?"

"As much as you."

"That so? Well, I got to go back and get another horse. If aught on this cart is disturbed while I'm gone, I'll know where to look."

Caitlyn's reply was crude, and the gesture that accompanied it was cruder. The ostler spat in her direction, glared, and stumped off toward the stable behind the pub. Caitlyn eyed the pony and cart with some interest. Making off with them wouldn't have occurred to her if the ostler hadn't put the idea in her head. But since he had, she calculated that the pony itself would be worth a good bit of change, to say nothing of the cart and its contents. Perhaps she could just put aside the idea of taking the Sassenach up on his offer and prig the pony and cart instead. She could live on the proceeds for a goodly while, and handsomely too. If she didn't swing for it. . .

.

The Sassenach walked out of the Brazen Head. His linen was as snowy as it had been the day before. Despite the just-hatched gloom of the morning, the white shirt and frilly jabot seemed to glow. This morning the rolled collar of his frock coat was black, and his breeches were black too. He'd changed the red-heeled shoes for knee- length black boots meant for riding, and he'd evidently left off the face powder, for his skin was no longer softly white; but he was still as foreign to her kind as a Hottentot. A sneer curled Caitlyn's mouth as she looked at him. Despite the physical strength she knew he possessed, and the kindness that had prompted him to feed her and offer her a job and a home, he was still bloody English. A bloody English popinjay.

He was looking up and down the street, a slight frown creasing his forehead and bringing those thick black brows together over his devil's eyes. Clearly he hadn't noticed her, standing as she was in the structure's shadow. Or if he had, he had foigotten who she was. Sudden anxiety beset her. She had not realized how much she had counted on his offer. To be quit of the hellhole that was Dublin, to eat regularly and not have to worry about hanging for it, seemed suddenly infinitely desirable.

"Eh, yer lordship, here I be." The scrawny ostler came back around the corner leading a great black horse, saw the Sassenach, and hurried toward him. "Fharan- nain here wasn't inclined to wear a saddle today at all, at all."

"He never is." The Sassenach accepted the horse's reins and rubbed an absent hand down die beast's nose. Casting a narrowed eye at the ominous-looking sky, he said, "We'd best be on our way, Mickeen. Maybe we can ride out of this before it hits."

"Aye." The ostler came around to the hitching post and untied the pony, casting a darkling look in Caitlyn's direction as he did so. Clearly the time had come to make her presence known, if she meant to do so. An unaccustomed attack of nerves hit her. The bloody Sassenach hadn't meant his offer, had forgotten it already, she knew. Caitlyn O'Malley had never asked anybody for anything in her life. Her pride wouldn't even let her be the one to do the mock begging in their scams. She couldn't ask for a crust if she was starving. But he had offered her honest employment, as he had called it, and she was here to take him up on it. She wouldn't let the bloody Sassenach go back on his given word without a fight.

"Eh, you. Remember me?" She came out of the shadow and walked boldly toward where the Sassenach stood with his horse. He turned and looked at her, frowning. Then a slow smile curved his lips.

"I do indeed. You taking up sheep farming?"

"Aye. Leastways, I'll give it a try."

"Fair enough. Climb up there in the cart with Mick- een. We've got a ways to go, and I'd be getting on with it."