Lord of the Isle (13 page)

Same old slippers, Same old rice, Same old glimpse Of Paradise.

“June Weddings” William James Lampton

C
atherine Fitzgerald paced round and round the bed where her kinswoman slept with the ease of an infant.
Why will you no’ listen to me?
Catherine exclaimed, exasperated by the restrictions placed upon her in death. Mortals simply wouldn’t listen to the dead’s voices unless they were hit over the head with something outlandish. Then they might listen to an urgent warning.

Exhausted by wasted pacing, Catherine sat at the foot of the great bed.
Can’t you see you’ve made a mistake, girl? Why didn’t ya weep or rail at the awful man when he left you like he did? How could you just shrug your shoulder, as if to say it’s nothing to you?

Catherine heaved a deep sigh. Men, especially those from Ulster, were a race apart from women. Their words, deeds and manners defied explanation. Hugh was as exasperating a master as his bloody-minded grandsire, Conn O’Neill.

What had Morgana Fitzgerald done after the cold bastard stomped out the chamber, issuing his orders right and left like he was God Almighty’s right-hand judge? Why, to Catherine’s mortification, her grandniece had done each thing Hugh ordered her to do.

Never mind that it took no more than a moment or two! It was the principle behind such orders. Morgana was a Fitzgerald.

Come, girl.
Catherine gave the bed a hard shake.
Get up. I want you to come walk with me outside the castle walls. You must see where these barbarians put my grave. I’ll no’ rest until the ground around me is blessed. Will you not get up, you lazy girl? The O’Neill opened the door an hour ago. You can go free!

In her exasperation, Catherine shouted her last words. To no avail. Morgana slept. Oblivious of the tracking in and out of a dozen household servants. Oblivious of the aroma of the hot meal laid out for her on a table beside the bed.

When the last servant had gone, Catherine gave the open door her hardest push. It slammed against the frame and sprang open again. But when Catherine turned to look at the bed, a sunbeam entering the westward cross-and-orb cut a brilliant path across the wood floor and shone brightly on the covers at the foot of the bed. Catherine could not pass over a direct beam of daylight. She faded back into the shadows, powerless and silent, condemned to wait endlessly for the night to return.

Morgana woke late in the. afternoon, refreshed from hours of needed and undisturbed sleep. She yawned and stretched her arms wide, cognizant of exactly where she was and how she’d come to be in Hugh O’Neill’s bed.

The sun had traveled during her long sleep to the opposite wall. A bright cross-and-orb sunbeam warmed the light covers lying over Morgana’s feet.

That wasn’t the only change in the chamber. The door stood wide open. A table and two short benches graced the previously vacant interior wall. Morgana’s saddlebags lay on one of the benches. A candelabrum holding eight candles—only one of them lit—focused her attention on a delectable assortment of food spread out on the linen-covered table.

There was also a crucifix on the stone wall, a prie-dieu set before it, and a trunk of clothing that Morgana recognized from the solar.

Morgana slipped out of bed, reaching for her kirtle. First things first. She hurried to the table and lit the other seven tapers.

Her hunger ran deep at the sight and smell of food. She shoved her saddlebags aside and sat. Eagerly grabbing the loaf of bread, she broke it in two, then stuffed half with tangy cheese and slabs of delicious honey-cured ham.

A painted china pot steamed as she poured its herbal contents into a cup. Morgana concluded that the tray had been delivered only a short while before she woke up. She had absolutely no curiosity about who had brought all these things into the chamber while she slept. What mattered to her was appeasing her hunger.

Until her belly was filled, she couldn’t concentrate on other things. Like where Hugh O’Neill had gone and when he would come back.

She took clean stockings from her saddlebags and checked her boots. They were thoroughly dry now on the inside, for which she said a quick prayer of thanks.

The trunk provided Morgana with an adequate assortment of clothing, replacing the baggage lost in her hasty flight from Benburg. It contained everything she needed: combs, kirtles, petticoats, stockings, richly woven surcoats, overskirts, lawn chemises and bodices, and several very finely embroidered stomachers.

Morgana closed the door for privacy as she washed and dressed. She tamed her hair into a neat chignon fastened by a gossamer net. Decently dressed for the first time since she’d arrived at Dungannon Castle, Morgana decided the time had come to explore it.

She tiptoed to the door, opened it and looked out, investigating this newfound freedom.

She saw no one on the landing or the stairwell, though she heard voices coming from below. That decided the course of her inspection. She lifted her hems and carefully made her way up the winding, dark staircase.

There was no doorway to the uppermost room. The stairwell simply opened into a massive round loft some twenty feet in diameter, filled with brilliant sunlight.

Morgana exhaled in surprise. All sorts of curious contraptions, tables, shelves, furnaces and materials crowded the sunny room. The oddest of all was a huge cylinder of polished brass. It was as tall and as big around as a fully grown man. It appeared to be perfectly balanced in a peculiar angle by a metallic construction of wheels and bars and puzzling belts and pulleys.

She thought at first she’d entered a stillroom for making whiskey, but the airy chamber lacked all the telltale scents of liquor preparation.

Drawing closer to the brass contraption, Morgana saw that a smaller cylinder rose from the first and passed clear through the slate roof. Numerous open skylights in the roof proved the cylinder jutted up like a tilted chimney several feet beyond the roofing. Some sort of chair had been suspended off the floor beneath the contraption, in an odd upside-down position.

“How very strange,” Morgana murmured. Her fingers touched the ring of fitted brass where the larger tube encased the smaller. She dropped to her knees to examine more closely the upside-down chair. Bending her head to see the bottom, Morgana spied a very small tube protruding like a teat on a cow’s udder. A ring of ivory fitted over that.

“I call it a stellar octascope,” intoned a voice as bland as a Jesuit’s and sober as a judge’s. Hugh O’Neill stepped out from between facing rows of tall shelves jam-packed with more oddities and curios.

Startled, Morgana clutched her heart. Her alarm eased the moment she recognized the speaker was Hugh. “My lord, you frightened me. I didn’t know anyone was up here. What is a stellar octascope?”

“A fixed tube through which I may examine the same portion of the sky each sunrise.” Hugh sauntered into the
light carrying a small wooden box with glass circles packed in excelsior.

Morgana frowned at the odd little pieces of glass she saw in the box and shook her head. She hadn’t wanted to confront Hugh O’Neill until she found out what condition her horse was in. So that she could tell him exactly how soon she expected to depart from Dungannon Castle. Now she had no point from which to bargain—or dictate.

“Come here.” Hugh set the wooden box on his cluttered worktable, motioning to Morgana. “Showing you what a looking glass is is easier than trying to describe it.”

Morgana did not care much for the dark expression she perceived on his face. Perhaps he didn’t like having intruders enter this chamber. And she felt very much like an intruder.

She gave one last look at the odd mechanism, and made up her mind to be strong. She squared her shoulders, certain that doing so would enable her to withstand any demands he put to her. She came to his table, not knowing what to look at first. So many odd things were spread across it: feathers, glass bottles, metal mechanisms, flasks and tubes, a mortar and pestle, and small piles of chemicals laid out on bindles of brittle white paper.

All at once it came to her that this tower room was very like her grandfather’s study at Maynooth, before the whole castle had been razed. Was Hugh O’Neill a warlock? She looked for a pentagram and a crystal ball and found none.

He’d picked up what Morgana thought was a hand mirror. Then she saw that it had no silvered back. It was clear glass, encased in a carved wooden frame. She’d gotten close enough that Hugh O’Neill only had to reach out his hand to draw her closer to him—which he did, apparently without thinking.

Hugh drew her over to the scope. “I am studying the rising of the sun and the planets in the sky. This octascope merely allows me to examine the same section of sky each time I come up here. Much as the seafarer uses scopes to
look for land in the distance. Come up on the roof and I’ll show you what I mean.”

Hugh retained hold of her hand, leading her up the wooden steps to the roof of the tower. He kept numerous scopes set up there, but to begin with he took out his pocket scope and put that in Morgana’s hand. “See that oak tree on the side of the hill?”

“Yes.” Morgana moved back from the edge of the turret. Below was a lake of shimmering water, and she didn’t like looking down at that at all.

“Good. Look through here until you find the tree, then adjust the tubes by turning them gently until you bring the tree into clear focus. When the scope is focused, there should not be any blurred edges. That’s right. Make the separate tubes smaller or longer, whichever your eyes need to see it clearly.”

“I see it!” Morgana had some idea of how to work that instrument. Grace O’Malley had one very similar to it. In just a moment, Morgana had a solid fix on the distant oak. “This brings it much closer, doesn’t it?”

“Aye,” Hugh agreed. Again his hand closed over Morgana’s, and he led her to a stationary scope at least four times the size of the hand-held device. He sat down on the wooden seat below it and drew Morgana onto his lap. Turning the scope toward the oak tree, he focused it to his eye, then leaned back and invited Morgana to look.

Very conscious of where she was sitting, Morgana tried to keep her bottom as still as possible. But with Hugh’s arm circling her waist and his cheek flush against hers as he adjusted the scope, she couldn’t help remembering what had transpired between them during the night.

“Here, look now. I’ve got it focused just right.” Hugh drew back his head, yielding the eyepiece to Morgana.

“Oh! That’s impressive,” Morgana declared. “Why, the leaves are so close, I can see the veins on each leaf, and the bark on the trunk of the tree.”

“So you can.” Hugh inhaled deeply of the clean scent of soap clinging to her hair. In bright sun, her hair was the color of flames. His fingers twitched to tug the dark netting loose and let those magnificent tresses fall into his hands.

“This is incredible!” Morgana said excitedly. “It almost looks like I could reach right out and pluck the baby acorns off the tree! Amazing.” She swung around on Hugh’s lap, looking at his face. “And the really big one inside? What will that do? Put things a mile away right in front of my face?”

Hugh smiled, pleased by her reaction, but to answer her he had to shake his head. “No, it won’t do that. It’s for looking at the stars. Do you know about astronomy?”

Morgana laughed, her back resting easily against Hugh’s chest. “What I know about the stars in the sky could be put into a thimble. I can locate the North Star, but I couldn’t navigate my way anywhere without the sun rising and setting in the same places every day.”

“It doesn’t, though.” Hugh corrected her, pointing out to her the scope’s undercarriage. “By tracking where the sun rises every day, I can prove that the earth is circling the sun just like Copernicus did.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Morgana couldn’t help asking. To her practical mind, such study seemed frivolous.

“Well, for one reason,” Hugh said gravely, “keeping track of the movement of objects in the sky allows me to predict with certainty when celestial events will happen.”

“Like what?” Morgana laughed again. “The second coming of Christ?”

“No.” Hugh solemnly shook his head. “Solar or lunar eclipses and the rising and setting of certain stars, the passage of comets and arrival of meteor showers.”

Morgana was well educated, but he might as well have been speaking Greek, for she understood less than half of
what Hugh said. “I think it would be ever so much more useful to be able to predict tomorrow’s weather.”

“Tomorrow’s weather is easy to predict, my lady. The sun will shine all day, and the night will be crisp, cool and clear. The following day will be wet and damp and miserable again.”

“And how is it that you know that?”

Hugh raised his arm and pointed to the southern horizon, where the tops of yesterday’s slow moving storm could still be seen in the far distance. “That has been the pattern of the weather for the past month. Two to three days fair, then more wind and rain swoops down from the sea. Tomorrow, you will have good sun for your journey to Dunluce. If we ride hard, we’ll make good time and be at Mac Donnell’s demesne before the next storm breaks.”

Morgana’s eyes were very solemn and intense, studying his face. “Are you going to escort me?”

“Of course.” Hugh kept his expression blank. He knew her purposes now, but she had no reason to confide in him, unless she trusted him. It was quite obvious that she didn’t.

“Well.” Morgana got to her feet, her hands busily dusting her skirt, though there was nothing on the cloth that needed brushing away. “That is wonderful news. I don’t quite know how to thank you.”

“You don’t need to express any gratitude for common courtesy. We Irish always open our homes to travelers and pilgrims. That is a fundamenial Celtic trait.”

Morgana nodded, thinking that her home had once been as gracious and as open to travelers as his. Now she had no home at all. She felt bad that she’d never be able to reciprocate in kind.

Hugh adjusted the scope, turning it north, toward Slieve Gallion’s purple peak. “Would you like to see the road we’ll be traveling? Tullaghoge is in the next glen, but with this scope it is possible to see the high cross at Maghera.”