Dark of the Moon (5 page)

This last cryptic comment sailed over the heads of his audience. "Who murdered the old Earl?" Caitlyn was as fascinated as Willie.

"Ah, now
that
we don't know, though there are some . . . But if his lordship knew for certain, you can be sure he'd have been avengin' his da afore now. Aye, and would probably have swung for it. So it's as well we dinna know."

"But who set the Casde afire?"

"We'll not be knowin' that for sure either. It was night, and the Castle was beset by a band of Volunteers, disguised to conceal their true identities, the Anglo cowards! They tried to burn us out, they did, howling 'Death to the Papists!' like bloody banshees while they looted and killed.

We was taken asleep, you see, and afore we knew what was about they were upon us. They murdered the old lord, and many there were who saw it too, but not afore he was able to send his sons to safety. Likely they meant to kill the lads too, but there their evil plan went awry. His lordship was but a lad of twelve, but he took charge of his wee brothers that night and has had charge of them ever since. For thirteen years he's been father and mother both to 'em, and bonny lads they've grown to be, though they've known their share of troubles. Aye, and I'd like to see the man who could take Connor d'Arcy's land from his hold now!" This last was said under Mickeen's breath, with an air of almost gloating.

"But . . ."

"Eech, the pair of you chatter like squirrels. It's tired I be of answerin' your questions." It was a measure of the fury that Mickeen had worked himself up to in the telling that the snarl he sent Caitlyn's way was not meant for her. The expression of sheer hatred on his weathered face was directed at the anonymous Volunteers, the secret organization of Anglo bloodmongers who rode out at night, hooded and cloaked, in huge gangs to wreak bloody havoc upon the Irish Catholics. The Irish in turn had their own Straw Boys, so called because, since they were poorer, their disguises from hoods to cloaks were made of straw and they resembled nothing so much as walking haystacks. Caitlyn had seen an assembly of them just once, when they had marched on Dublin Castle. She had been no more than a wee bairn, but they had left an indelible impression on her. Like the city, the countryside was rife with violence, it seemed, as sectarian gangs warred on one another and the innocent.

Mickeen's rebuke left Caitlyn and Willie silenced. As the cart slogged through the mud, taking a meandering path that led finally around the Castle's outer wall, Caitlyn saw that the structure was indeed no more than a burned- out shell. Sheep grazed in the overgrown bawn, the keep inside what was left of the fortifications. As she watched, one of the flock outside leaped baa-ing through a hole in the tumbledown wail to join its brethren feasting within. Three of the round towers were intact, but the fourth was crumbling, leaving a gaping wound in its side. Caitlyn stared at the high-set windows, shivering as she wondered which one was the Fuinneog an Mhurdair. Black streaks scorched into the gray stone gave mute testimony to the conflagration that had once raged within. The cart rounded the far side of the Castie, and Caitlyn saw that dozens of timber shacks leaned against its charred masonry. Living quarters for the peasants who worked the farm, she deduced from the presence of the women who sat in open doorways watching their young children playing nearby. Sheep grazed apparently at will on the green velvet slope leading to the Boyne. Rough-clothed peasants, both male and female, walked among the sheep. On the other side of the stone wall that bisected the grassy meadow, a group of peasants labored together with the scythe and slane, cutting turf.

"Is this the farm, then?" Willie's question was subdued. Mickeen's harsh recital and the devastation they had just passed had obviously shaken him as they had Caitlyn.

Mickeen snorted, bitterness twisting his face as he stared at what lay before them. "Aye.

The farm. Connor d'Arcy, descendant of the first king of Ireland, true son of Tara, Lord Earl of Iveagh, a sheep farmer! His da would spin in his grave did he know. But as they say, needs must when the devil drives. And the devil drives his lordship for certain sure."

Caitlyn shivered upon hearing that, remembering those devil's eyes. Sure, and if his lordship were possessed of the devil she and Willie were in the soup, and no mistake. They'd likely escaped the hangman only to fall prey to Hellfire. With a sideways look at her companions, who were paying her no mind, she crossed herself and prayed that as protection that would suffice.

A magnificent view of the Boyne lay before them. It slashed like a silver whip deep into the valley separating the d'Arcy family holdings from the woodlands across the way. The hiss of the water as it rushed past rocky banks formed a muted background to the plaintive bleating of the sheep and the rhythmic thud of falling scythes. As the cart creaked downward toward the river, Caitlyn became aware of the manor house nestled in a grove of mighty oaks. Compared with the Casde, the house was small and poor, but as they approached she saw that, taken on its own, it was a neat residence, two story and solid, made of stone with a corbeled roof. Behind the house lay two bams and a smaller shed. Chickens scratched in the yards of both barns. A calico cat washed herself on the front steps of the house, while what appeared to be a very old dog sunned itself in a side yard. There was a well-cared- for air about the place that Caitiyn immediately liked.

As the cart approached, the dog got stiffly to its feet and began to bark, tail wagging. The cat looked up and then disappeared into the bushes at the side of the porch. Two men standing in a walled patch of fresh-tilled land midway between the house and the first barn looked up, squinting. With an air of disgust one threw down the staff with which he had been prodding an unresponsive sheep and headed toward them. The other shook his head and, abandoning the straggler, waded in among a tight-bunched group, flapping his arms in an attempt to herd them as they milled about, clearly paying his antics no mind. A dozen or so of the baa-ing creatures had apparenUy wandered into what was almost certainly the kitchen garden, and the men had been trying to get them out with what appeared to be little success. As the first man strode toward the cart, Caitlyn got the impression that he was glad for an interruption to their task.

"Mickeen, thank the lord you're back! Mayhap you can get the blatherin' sheep out of the bloody garden! Rory and I are havin' no luck at all, and Connor's sure to come out of the stable any minute and chew the hide off the pair of us. You know he thinks we're all natural-bom sheep fanners, as he is, if we'd just try a little harder."

' 'And right he probably is too. I ain't noticed either you nor your brothers givin' tending sheep the care it deserves. If sheep farmin' is good enough for his lordship, it should sure be good enough for the likes of you, Cormac d'Arcy.''

Given Mickeen's recent comments on the awfulness of an Earl of Iveagh's having sunk so low as to become a sheep farmer, Caitlyn could not repress a grin at this lecture. The young man who had greeted them so frenziedly turned his attention to her and Willie as Mickeen stepped laboriously down from the cart.

"And what have we here?" He was taller than Mickeen by half a head. His loose linen shirt and breeches could not conceal that he was gangly in the way of lads who have not yet achieved their full growth. His black curly hair, carelessly tied, dubbed him unmistakably as one of his lordship's brothers. But the narrow, even-featured face was not so striking, and as Caitlyn pondered the difference she realized it lay in the eyes. Those devil's eyes of his lordship's were dominating, unfoigettable. This lad's eyes were a laughing hazel.

Mickeen looked back at them, his expression as sour as Caitlyn was coming to believe was habitual to him.

"I know not their names. Your brother took pity on 'em in Dublin, and here they be. Runnin'

a bloody orphanage, we are, it seems."

"I'm Willie Laha." Willie jumped down from the cart, his freckled face apprehensive as he looked up at Cormac d'Arcy. "We're to be farmhands, his lordship said."

Caitlyn climbed down more slowly, giving Willie a censorious look as she did so. He was practically slavering his gratitude already. She didn't trust these people, any of them, his lordship included, despite Mickeen's sad tale.

They were strangers, with no reason to feel kindly toward Willie or herself. After all, why should these d'Arcys and their hangers-on share even a meager part of what was theirs with anyone else? In her experience, a body hung on to what he had. In their place, that's what she would do.

"What's your name, then?" Cormac turned his measuring gaze from Willie to Caitlyn. A grin lurked around the corners of his mouth, and his eyes looked as if he were always laughing.

Caitlyn estimated his age at perhaps two years more than her own, which would make him around seventeen. She stood mute, contemplating him with a scowl. Such open friendliness made her warier than ever.

"He's O'Malley. A bit of a temper he has, but a good lad." Willie poked her in the ribs with his elbow as he spoke. Caitlyn shot Willie a look that should have silenced his tongue forevermore.

"I can speak for meself," she said, her eyes meeting Cormac's with more than a trace of belligerence. He lifted his eyebrows at her expression and whistled comically. She scowled at him.

"His lordship must have been all about in his head, is all I can tell ya. This one's a real hothead," Mickeen muttered, spitting. Then, to Cormac, "Let's go get them sheep out o' the garden afore his lordship sees where you've let them get." He moved off with Cormac following, adding over his shoulder to Willie and Caitlyn, "You may as well come along and make yourselves useful. No point in just hangin' about."

Willie loped off after them. Caitlyn followed more slowly. With all of her other worries, another had just lifted its ugly head. She had a sneaking suspicion that she was not going to like sheep. . . .

By the time she reached the walled garden, the others had managed to get the sheep rounded up into a tight little group and were herding them toward the open back gate, which led to the velvety meadow where sheep were apparently intended to be. A renegade cut and ran as Willie, following Cormac's example, flapped his arms at it. Baaing wildly, it headed straight for Caitlyn, who had just stepped through the front gate, its sharp little hooves churning the manure-rich, rain-wet furrows into thick black mud as it went.

"You! O'Malley! Stop 'em! T\im 'em!" They were all shouting at her as three other sheep whirled and pounded after the ringleader. Sure enough, the stupid creature in the lead was still heading at a gallop straight toward where Caitlyn stood transfixed just inside the whitewashed pickets of the closed front gate. But this was not a fleecy little white lambkin. It looked enormous, and furious, and it had horns.

Enough was enough. She was not risking life and limb to herd some murderous sheep. As it bore down on her, head lowered and baa-ing louder than Gabriel's horn, she scrambled to get out of the way. Her foot slipped in the mud where the sheep had already apparently churned up the moist earth, and she slid face first into thick ooze. The shock of it as she lay facedown in muck took her breath for a moment. Then what felt like a thousand-ton weight slammed into her left shoulder, and she realized that the bloody stupid sheep had run right over her. Her mouth opened at the pain of it. Black mud immediately filled her mouth.

When she surfaced, spitting mud, it was to find the four would-be sheepherders bent double with laughter. She glared, feeling fury start to heat in her toes before boiling up toward her head. They were laughing at
her,
Caitlyn O'Malley. Even the bloody sheep, bunched now with its three followers in the bloody corner, seemed to be laughing as it shook its horned head at her.

"So you think to make sport of me, do you?" She got to her feet, shaking her hands to send mud flinging from them, wiping her fingers down her face with no more success than to spread the mud around. From head to toe she was covered with malodorous black ooze. Inside, her temper was raging. She was filled with a desire to kill the guffawing foursome on the other side of the garden plot. Roaring inarticulately, she charged, fists clenched and murder in her eyes.

"l-ook out! Beware!" Still laughing, they scattered be- fore her assault, the one whom Cormac had called Rory leaping straight up to balance on top of the gray stone wall. Making sounds of inarticulate rage, Caitlyn chatted after Cormac, who was laughing the loudest. He ran, zag- ging this way and that as laughter shook him. Launching herself off the ground, she tackled him, catching him around the waist and knocking him on his side in the ooze. Laughing so that he was almost helpless, he rolled onto his belly, lifting both arms to shield his head as she straddled him, battering his head and back and whatever else of him she could reach with her fists.

"Here now, O'Malley, stop!" Cormac managed to get out between gusts of laughter. Lean as he was, he was still far bigger than she. But the laughter he could not seem to control weakened him, and Caitlyn's years on the street had made her tough. Add to that the fact that she was ragingly angry, and the blows she landed were damaging. Still, all he did to defend himself was block the blows aimed at his head, and laugh. Which only fueled her fury to greater heights.

Mickeen was scurrying toward them, stick in hand. "You there! O'Malley! Stop! Stop now, do you ken?"

Caitlyn knew she was in for a thrashing when he reached her, but she didn't care. The urge to kill burned strong inside her. From his place up on the wall, Rory was laughing even harder at his brother's comeuppance, while Willie, in the far corner of the garden across from the sheep, looked suddenly scared. His eyes went wide.

"What in the name of all the Saints is going on here?" The roar made even Caitlyn start and look around. There, on the other side of the gate which Caitlyn had recently abandoned to escape the charging sheep, stood Connor d'Arcy, Earl of Iveagh, giving off anger like a peat fire gives off heat.