Lord of the Isle (24 page)

Morgana choked. “Boys!”

“Well, we did,” Maury insisted, turning his wide, innocent blue eyes on Morgana. “Last night, when you and the O’Neill were doing—”

Morgana put her hand over Maurice’s mouth, but not quickly enough to stop the giggles from both ends of the table. “That’s enough, Maurice James Fitzgerald.”

“If we all listen very hard, we can hear the brass cannons on the east tower.” Inghinn tried to divert the boys’ attention. “I’m certain I heard it firing.”

That put paid to the boys’ interest in relationships. Cannons fascinated every one of them. They delved into the food before them with a vengeance, wanting to finish and be excused to go find the east tower, the west tower, and any other part of the castle that had cannons on it.

As soon as the meal was finished, Inghinn’s sisters-in-law retired.

Inghinn summoned Donovan to take the boys on a short tour of the battlements. After the silver-haired retainer led the boys out of the hall, she explained to Morgana her reasons for sending them on a tour.

“I hope I haven’t offended you by doing that. It’s going to be a long night, and I know how curious little boys can be. If we. let them see the battery, they might bed down a little easier when the time comes.”

“I suppose you are right,” Morgana replied. “Sean and Maurice have watched cannon fire before, but perhaps the other boys haven’t.”

“Donovan won’t let them get close to the battleworks. But it won’t hurt for them to look about a little bit.”

Morgana ran her fork over her plate, pushing the food she hadn’t eaten aside. She couldn’t have explained why she felt like talking to Inghinn; she just felt the need to confide in someone. Women, she knew, understood each other.

“I don’t suppose this is going to end before the tide rises, will it?”

Inghinn lifted the bottle of wine and filled Morgana’s goblet to the rim. “No. I don’t think so.”

Morgana picked up the gold goblet and drank from it. “I can’t think what to do now. Grace won’t dock here, with all this barrage going on. I may have wasted all my efforts bringing my brothers out of hiding.”

“Don’t look at it that way. When Father comes to hall, he’ll surely know Grace’s alternate plans. She’ll go to another cove. Antrim is full of safe harbors for those who know the seas. We’ll wait awhile and see.”

“Hugh took me out on a parapet during the storm this afternoon. Would you mind going there now? I want to see what’s happening.”

“That’s probably where the boys are. I should have thought of asking you if you wanted to go look, too. Bring your wine. I’ll show you the way.”

The galleries were spookier in the dark of night than they had been that afternoon, when Hugh walked Morgana through Dunluce’s twisting and turning corridors. Even with oil sconces burning every twenty feet, the castle felt frighteningly dark and ominous.

“Everyone tells me this place is haunted,” Morgana said matter-of-factly. “I can believe it now.”

“You should. It is.” Inghinn laughed. She held her lantern higher, lighting the steps that wickedly curved through the old tower to the parapet. Several torches also lit the way, but the dark spots were treacherous and the worn stones easy to trip upon. “I’ve lived here all my life, and it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes our guests have a bad night, when it
storms and the wind howls. But to tell you the truth, I’ve never met any of the infamous ghosts that are supposed to live here. Cara sees them all the time.”

“Funny you should mention that.” Morgana took care lifting her hems so she wouldn’t stumble. Talk of ghosts didn’t frighten her, not when the living had such power to scare the wits out of her. “The boys tell me she has the sight. I would expect that means she can communicate with ghosts and spirits, too.”

“More like imaginary playmates, I would say. There aren’t any other children in the house, and I suppose she is lonely for company her own age.”

“Cara is the only child here in this castle?” Morgana asked, astounded.

“Aye, she is.” Inghinn nodded. “Father put a lock on the dungeon to keep her out of there, but she still finds ways to get down to the caves without notice. Sometimes she disappears for days, and I have to turn the whole place upside down looking for her. I’ll be glad when the banns are read and I leave Dunluce for good. I won’t be looking back brokenhearted or homesick. No, I’m looking forward to having my own family. And with O’Donnell, I won’t be squandering my life on sons to sacrifice on petty wars. He’s a scholar, you know.”

“I’ve never met him.”

“Well, you will.” Inghinn insisted. “You will come to the wedding with Hugh O’Neill.”

Morgana didn’t say that was unlikely, since she was leaving Ireland for good tomorrow morning if all went as planned. She wouldn’t be going anywhere if Grace O’Malley’s
Avenger
didn’t dock at Dunluce. The appalling thought followed that neither Sean nor Maurice would be leaving, either.

They stepped out onto the parapet through a door that was already open. A great glow of light filled the doorway, more light than torches and lanterns were able to provide.
The boys and old Donovan were running straight at them, yelling and screaming.

Cara Mulvaine sat on the stone balustrade, rigid with horror. Her hands were pressed to her small head. Her mouth was wide open in a scream of terror. Red and yellow flashes of light outlined her body and her dirty, torn dress.

Sean skidded to a halt and grabbed hold of the girl, yanking her off the edge of the parapet. They crashed to the floor as a deafening explosion erupted in the harbor. Blistering fireballs flew skyward. Tongues of flame licked out of the cove into the air. Burning wood landed on the roof of the parapet.

Maurice threw himself against Morgana’s knees, tumbling her backward into the stairwell. The next flash blinded Morgana as she landed hard on the steps. Both she and Maurice were trampled by boys running for their lives. Everybody’s screams echoed in the bartizan.

Gunpowder was exploding on the ships in the harbor. A rain of fiery wood splattered against the castle walls, hailed down on the lead-and-slate roofs. Donovan and Inghinn shoved the screaming Cara out of the way and slammed the heavy oak door shut.

Sean threw himself down on Morgana, burying his face in her neck. “God save us, we’re gonna die!”

Stunned, Morgana clutched his head, her first instinct to see to her brothers’ safety. She found no blood on either of them, no cuts, no injuries. She got them up, pulling both onto their feet. “Stop screaming.”

“Fire storm, fire storm!” Cara Mulvaine chanted, catatonic with fear.
“Play the man, Master Ridley…”

“Shut up!” Sean screamed at her.

“Quiet!” Morgana commanded. “Where’s Hugh? Cara, shut up! Where’s the O’Neill?”

“At—at—at—the—the—wharf,” Maurice stuttered. “I s-s-saw him.”

“Donovan, take the children to the hall,” Morgana and Inghinn Dubh said at the same time.

“Don’t leave us!” Sean screamed.

Morgana yanked his hands away from her waist and shoved Maurice into his arms. “Get Cara and bring her down to the hall. Take care of Maurice. Do it, Sean Fitzgerald!”

“Play the man, Master Ridley…”
Cara Mulvaine’s singsong chant echoed eerily in the roar of the fire.

Inghinn caught hold of Morgana’s arm and pulled, transmitting terrified urgency through her touch. Both of them ran down the twisting steps. The children’s cries chased after them. The Colraine boys huddled in a knot at the base of the stairway, heads covered by young arms.

“To the sea gate,” Inghinn gasped as they dashed into the gallery above the great hall. James’s and Albert’s wives, and all the castle servants, streamed across the hall below.

“Get blankets and wet them. Bring buckets and water!” Inghinn shouted orders as they ran. “Form a bucket brigade. Arliss, fetch your medicines.”

There wasn’t time for more. Inghinn yanked on Morgana’s arm, turning her into the stairwell that dropped to the sea gate. The door had been barred. It took both of them to lift the beam of wood off its rack.

Inghinn fumbled in her pockets for her chatelaine’s keys. Her hands shook as she thrust a key into the lock and turned it.

Morgana grabbed the door handle and yanked on it with all her might. Smoke rolled through it into the castle proper.

Blinding light filled the end of the black tunnel. “Hugh! Hugh!” Morgana screamed. She ran straight to the fire and tripped.

She fell onto a soft pile of bodies. Men gasped for air in the fierce cloud of blackening smoke. “Hugh!”

Morgana grabbed the first limb she found, yanking on it. The mound shifted. Inghinn grabbed a hand and pulled. Someone threw a bucket of water on their backs. The pile on the ground shifted. Another slosh of icy water roused the fallen. Men crawled on their hands and knees to the open
door. Others got their feet under them and staggered to the open door. Servants, all water bearers now, set down buckets and grabbed burning people, yanking them inside the castle.

“Hugh!” Morgana screamed again, choking on the smoke, feeling each inert body she crawled over. “Here! Inghinn, here’s your father!”

A huge flame licked across the roof of the cave, blackening the stone. The heat singed Morgana’s ears and nose as she ducked underneath it. She covered her mouth with her hands, eyes open and stinging, searching for more bodies amid the splash of the tide surging up the seagate.

The last two were pulled by their feet back to the steps. Morgana heard Inghinn choke. She felt Inghinn’s hands pounding on her back, dragging her away from the wall of flame engulfing the seagate at the mouth of the cave.

“Hugh, Hugh…Hugh’s not there,” Morgana croaked.

“Your hair’s on fire!” Inghinn screamed. Her words failed to register on Morgana.

“Hugh’s not there,” she repeated hoarsely.

Buckets of water were thrown at her and Inghinn as they staggered through the oak door, and then it was slammed shut. Morgana stood rigid, drenched in the wash of liquid, choking, barely able to breath for the searing heat that filled her lungs.

Someone pulled her out of the smoke-filled stairway and up into the castle’s great hall. Unrecognizable, fire-blackened bodies were laid out on the cold stone floor. Sorely Boy Mac Donnell coughed as if to expel a lung.

Morgana wiped her hands across her eyes, searching for Loghran, for Hugh, for Rory O’Neill, for anyone she could recognize. Inghinn collapsed beside her, sinking to the floor, coughing puffs of black smoke out of her mouth.

“Oh, God, no, not this, not this.” Morgana turned away, burying her face in her hands. The sound of hammering on the huge doors of the hall made her stop crying and look up
at the massive carved planks of wood, barred to keep the enemies of Dunluce out.

She seemed to be the only person in the hall aware of the racket. Morgana stumbled to the door, but for the life of her, with the size of the beam of wood that ran across it twelve full feet, she saw no way to open it by herself.

A small wicket door to the right had a steel grate fixed into it. Morgana twisted the iron hasp and dragged the porthole open. She stood on tiptoe, putting her face to the iron grate, blinking owlishly out. Fresh air washed her nose and mouth. As of yet, there were no fires in the castle’s ward. “Who is there?”

“Jesus be praised, it’s about time someone answered this door!” Loghran O’Toole stuck his face to the grate, nearly nose to nose with Morgana. “Would it be asking too much for the door to be opened for the earl of Tyrone or must we stand out here while a rain of cinders burn the clothes off our backs?”

“Loghran?” Morgana said, dazed.

Loghran didn’t recognize the black face looking back at him. He didn’t recognize the voice either. He did recognize the language spoken.

“Lady O’Malley, would you be so kind as to…” He started out speaking with the soft accents of a man using persuasion to get what he wanted then wound up roaring with a vengeance the command,
“Unbar the door!”

Stupidly, Morgana lurched away from the violent shout that was literally yelled in her face. She pressed her hands to the sides of her head, and stared at the workings of the door, baffled by a command that she couldn’t possibly obey with any sort of alacrity.

When she didn’t respond with the speed that Loghran thought she should, he began pounding on the door again with the handle of his sword.

Morgana found the iron hasps on the wicket and shoved at the first bolt. It had been oiled. The other two hadn’t. They stuck fast to their iron casings. She got the lower one
unstuck, the topmost wouldn’t budge. She needed something harder than her fingers to release it. There weren’t any hammers or tools nearby. She clawed at the iron bolt, scratched and pulled. It wouldn’t come apart. A glance at the chaos in the hall proved she had to deal with the door alone.

Desperate for a tool, she remembered her knife and lifted her skirt, taking Gerait Og’s golden blade from its sheath at her knee.

Hugh was outside that wicket.

Loghran had said he was. Morgana believed Loghran. She believed God wouldn’t take Hugh O’Neill from her. Not now. Not now that she’d found him. She laid the handle against the iron bolt and pushed, putting all of her weight into the work of moving the frozen bolt. It gave very little to her pitiful bit of force.

Morgana pressed her forehead against the wooden door. She smelled rust and iron, tasted it mingling with her own sweat when she licked her parched lips. She closed her eyes, desperate to summon the strength necessary to open the door.

Loghran’s sword beat the tattoo of a bodhran summoning the Irish to war. Morgana opened her eyes to the sight of her grandfather’s amber jewel, pressed to the wood between her face and the great doors of the hall. They focused on the seven-petaled blossom of cinquefoil embedded in the amber. The herbs’ powers came to her like a revelation.

Morgana stepped back, amazed at the power she held in her hands. “Sweet Saint Brigit,” she whispered. She held the answer to her desperate prayers in her hands!

This time, when she closed her eyes, it wasn’t in defeat, it was in prayer. “Jesus, Mary and all the saints, give the hardness of gold, the weight of amber and the power of cinquefoil to my hands. Let me open this door so that love can fill my heart and my soul. Bring my love to me, whole and unscarred, so that I may prove my love for him all my
days. Do this in Jesus’ name and I will serve him faithfully, atoning for all my sins, making reparations for my wickedness, amen.”