Lord of the Isle (28 page)

“You can’t mean that!” Grace blinked. She looked around to her ship and saw James Fitzgerald standing at the near railing, watching and listening. “My lord, Morgana says she’s not coming with us. Morgana, what will I tell your mother?”

Morgana looked at her father, then back to her cousin and closest, dearest friend. “You’ll think of something, I’m sure, Grace. Tell her I haven’t the courage of the O’Malley women. Or tell her that I’m Irish and I’m not leaving my
home again. She has the boys. They are what she wanted most of all. I’m old and grown. She’ll understand, and she has Father to contend with.”

“Grace, it’s time.” James Fitzgerald unfastened a line and cast it to the shore.

“Morgana, are you certain?”

“Never more certain of anything in my life.” Morgana looked up at Hugh and smiled when his hands tightened on her shoulder and waist.

“My lord Father, I’ve brought the deeds you requested, and the letter from Bishop Moye. If you have need of me, you can reach me at Dungannon. Give Mother my love and tell Sean and Maurice that I will pray for them every day.”

Morgana lifted the saddlebag that she’d set at her feet and handed the heavy pack to Grace. “What’s in it, gold?” Grace grumbled. “It weighs a ton.”

“Gold and jewels and the deeds to all of Father’s estates released by the church. It’s all there. I included a quitclaim to my dowry estates. I won’t be needing any of them, and Father will be needing properties for collateral to pay for his army.”

Stunned, Grace O’Malley looked up at Hugh and asked, “Sir, do you realize what she is giving away? The value of her properties. Morgana, your father will mortgage everything to the hilt. It costs a bloody fortune to live in Paris, raising an army.”

“I don’t think that will matter to Hugh and me. We will have everything we need in Dungannon. He’s going to take care of me, and I’m going to take care of him.”

“That’s right,” Hugh affirmed. “Wait here, Morgana. I’ll go aboard and tell your brothers we’re not sailing with them. Perhaps I can convince your father to come and say goodbye to you.”

Hugh took the heavy pack from Grace’s hands and carried it onto the ship. He did his last duty where that pack of valuables was concerned by handing it over to James Fitzgerald. “I believe everything inside here is yours, sir.”

Judging by the heft of the pack, James had to agree. He looked to Morgana with new respect rising in his eyes. “She’s made her decision to stay with you. I don’t know how you did it, young man, but I will tell you to remember all your days that she’s a Fitzgerald daughter. Mistreat her or dishonor her and you will answer to me.”

“I’ll take good care of Morgana,” Hugh responded. James Fitzgerald didn’t intimidate him. He saw the man’s worth for himself, and understood how he used each of his children as pawns furthering his political games.

Morgana had made the right decision. Hugh hadn’t had a thing to do with it. He knew it—and Fitzgerald knew it, too.

The boys were very sad to learn their sister wasn’t going with them to Paris. Fitzgerald declined to step ashore and embrace the daughter he was leaving behind.

Hugh had found the parent he needed in Loghran O’Toole. Morgana, too, must have found someone else more caring than her father.

Hugh unfastened the last mooring rope as Grace gave the order to trim
the Avenger’s
sails.

“Hold! Captain O’Malley, we’ve got a stowaway!” A crewman hollered from below deck. All heads turned at the howling and screaming coming from the forward hold.

“Damn my eyes, now why am I not surprised?” Hugh pulled hard on the last rope, to keep the ship from slipping away from the wharf.

A sailor brought out a screaming, kicking and howling Cara Mulvaine. Grace grabbed the girl by her ear and marched her over the gangplank.

“For the last time, Mulvaine, you’re not sailing with me! Stow away on my ship one more time and I’ll tie you to the mizzen and give you forty lashes with my cat-o’-nine-tails. Hold on to her, Sir Hugh.”

Hugh had enough to do holding the rope. Morgana caught Cara. “Don’t you dare bite me again!”

Grace ran back across the plank. Her crew hauled it in and caught the rope Hugh tossed to them. Cara howled a
curse that nearly smothered all the goodbyes being shouted as the ship pulled away and heeled into the wind.

“I hope your ship springs a leak!” Cara screamed. She spat into the sea, then wiped her mouth with a filthy hand.

“You know what, you little heathen?” Morgana said as she firmly jerked the girl around and marched her back up to the sea gate. “I’m going to give you a bath and make you put on a clean dress.”

“No, yer not!” Cara argued. “You can’t touch me. It’s the law!”

“We’ll just see about that,” Morgana declared, not bothering to point out to the child that she was most definitely touching her. Morgana had a death grip on the girl’s wrist, and she wasn’t going to let go.

Hugh sucked in a lung full of sea air before he said, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew, little mother.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Morgana asked him. “I said I’m giving her a bath. She needs it.”

“Some soap in her mouth and a taste of respect for her elders might be in order, as well. But she’s Sorely’s granddaughter, and his ward. Don’t you forget that.”

“As if I could,” Morgana replied, miffed.

“Ah, Morgana, Morgana, I can read you like the stars already,” Hugh said with deep pleasure as he draped his arm across her shoulders and escorted the two ladies back into Dunluce.

When Morgana made up her mind to give Cara Mulvaine a bath, she hadn’t imagined the girl would fight with everything she had against such a common procedure. They hadn’t any more than gotten inside the hall when the battle began. Cara had the aim of a Dublin brawler and the will to strike back at anyone she perceived as weaker than her.

Thank God Hugh hadn’t deserted her and left her on her own to deal with the child. Cara Mulvaine understood one thing—brute force. Hugh had plenty of that. He made one threat to take a stick to her, and Cara shut up. She went quietly to the bathhouse with Morgana and, with grim lips,
stood silently by as Morgana filled a tub with steaming water.

“We’ll wash your hair first, Cara. Come and bend over the basin for me. I promise not to pull on the tangles when I comb your hair out.”

“You’re not supposed to touch me!” Cara insisted. Huge tears glistened in her eyes.

Morgana sent a meaningful glance to Hugh’s long shadow, outside the door of the bathhouse. He had declined to participate, but had agreed to remain close by as a necessary authority figure.

“We’re not going to start on that tack again, young lady.” Morgana was certain the girl understood Morgana’s meaningful glance to Hugh’s shadow. “If you are a good girl and stay still while I scrub your hair, I’ll tell you about my adventures sailing the oceans with Grace O’Malley.”

“She’s a wicked harlot pirate,” Cara said as she came to the bench and knelt, then bent forward over the basin.

Morgana picked up a pitcher and dipped it in the tub of steamy water and wet the girl’s long, tangled black hair. “So you admire her then, do you? She’s my kinswoman, you know. My mother and her mother were cousins. They grew up as princesses on Clare Island.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Clew Bay, off the coast of county Mayo.”

“Is it pretty?”

“Hmm…” Morgana thought the question over as she scrubbed soap into the tresses. Cara’s hair was in terrible shape, filthy beyond belief, tangled and knotted. Combing it was going to be an ordeal. “It’s a different part of Ireland. Wild gales strip the island bare in the autumn, twisting the trees. There’s plenty of rocks and grass and meadows. But it doesn’t have the cliffs that Dunluce has. You might like to go there sometime and see it for yourself.”

“I only want to go home to Scotland.”

“Oh, I see. Is that where you thought Grace was going? If you had asked, she would have told you she is going to
Paris. That’s in another country entirely, where they speak a whole different language, French.”

“I know that. I’m not stupid.”

“Did I say that you were? I think you are a very clever child.”

“I’m not. I’m accursed. The Mac Donnell says so.”

“Close your eyes tight, Cara. I’m going to rinse the soap out, and it might sting your eyes.”

“Then jus’ leave the soap in. I do all the time.”

“Ah, well, no wonder.” Morgana said, finding the reason for the clammy feel of the girl’s hair when it was wet. “Wouldn’t you like to have soft, shiny hair like mine?”

“Can’t be shiny. Mine’s black.”

“Your aunt Inghinn’s hair is very shiny and beautiful, and it is black. She rinses the soap out well, and so do I. It makes it so much easier to comb and brush.”

“I don’t have no combs. I jus’ use my fingers.”

That explained something else—the tangles. “Well, that simply won’t do, Cara. You’re growing up. You can’t be a wild sprite running about the moors forever. Close your eyes.”

“It burns!”

“Keep them closed. I’m rinsing it as quick as I can.”

Morgana gave her a small cloth to press over her eyes and continued with the work at hand. A second soaping and a good healthy scrubbing saw the black curls squeaky-clean to her touch. Rinsing them clean was an ordeal to be borne. The soapsuds did sting. Cara howled about it, but put up with it rather bravely all in all.

Morgana wrapped Cara’s head in a towel and set about seeing to the bath. She untied the laces on Cara’s wool dress and drew it off her. Morgana had thought the dress in bad shape. Cara’s undergarments were worse, torn, ragged, and filthy with caked-on dirt and grime. Her aunts should be doing this for her on a regular basis. Morgana’s heart went out to the poor, motherless child.

As she tipped another kettle of hot water into the tub to warm it to a comfortable temperature, Morgana asked, “How long have you lived at Dunluce?”

“A long time.” Cara shrugged both shoulders. She stuck her fingers in the tub of water, her eyes downcast. “You’re going to have three sons, Hugh, Shane and Brian.”

“I am? Those are very nice names for three sons.” Morgana reacted to the prediction as if it were commonplace to talk to a seer. “Am I going to have any daughters?”

“No. Your aunt Catherine tries to talk to you, but you don’t listen to her. She says she’s buried in the wrong place and she can’t rest in peace until she’s moved to hallowed ground.”

Startled, Morgana blinked twice before asking, “What makes you say that? How do you know I had an aunt named Catherine?”

“She married Conn O’Neill and somebody murdert her, but the priest thought she killed herself jumping out the window of the same room you jumped out. She died.”

Cara lifted her gaze. She had that same oddly glassy look Morgana had seen before. “I don’t want to take a bath. Thank you for washing my hair.”

The child turned and walked away from the tub, heading out the door in her shift and old-fashioned kirtle. Morgana caught her in the doorway. “We’re not finished, Cara. You’ll get in the tub now. Come. I insist.”

“You’re not supposed to touch me.” Cara said in a flat, toneless voice. “Your fingers will fall off if you touch me.”

“No, they won’t. Come, child. Soap won’t make your fingers fall off, either.”

They came, then, to the worst of it. Getting Cara shed of that filthy outgrown kirtle and into the tub bare naked. The towel holding her hair up was lost in the struggle, and naturally all that clean black hair tumbled down her back and into the water.

That wasn’t a bad thing. Only Morgana had to lift the heavy hair up, wring the water from it and wrap it up in a towel. Cara had sunk down to her chin in the water. But at
some point Morgana had to ask her to stand so that she could wash all the underwater parts as clean as her neck, face and ears. That was when Morgana saw all the marks on the girl’s body.

The bruises were every color of the bruise rainbow. Yellow and nearly gone. Purple freshly laid on her skin. Blues and grays that were days or weeks old. Horrified, Morgana gave up trying to count the number on just her back.

At first, Morgana was too appalled to say anything. Children were punished for disobedience. Morgana knew from her own observations that Cara Mulvaine was not the most obedient or meek child on earth. The Ten Commandments told every Christian how to live and what to expect of life. Sins were punishable offenses.

This very morning, Morgana had stood behind the bed where her own father had caught her in the act of fornication. She had expected the wrath of his hand to fall upon her. She hadn’t managed to work out why he’d spared her a beating. In her heart, she believed any punishment was deserved for being caught in such a flagrant sin by both her brother and her father.

Hugh had something to do with that. On the same vein, had the tables been turned and it had been Hugh who caught her in that same omission, Morgana knew, his wrath would have been ten times greater than her father’s.

So it wasn’t that she was shocked to see the marks of beatings on an unruly child’s body. There were just so many marks, and they were everywhere, except on Cara’s face. She had bruises on her small fingers, in the palms of her dirty little hands. A dozen angry red welts crisscrossed her fleshless back, where the sharp bones protruded from the backs of her shoulders. They were fresh, put there this very morning.

“Cara, who is it that beats you?”

Cara looked down on her own shoulder. “Och, tha’s the Mac Donnell’s blackthorn staff. It doesna hurt anymore.”

“He hit you with his walking staff?”

“When I took it to him, aye. I found it and thought he could use it to walk to chapel.”

“You brought him a staff and he beat you with it?”

Cara took the sea sponge from Morgana’s still hand and lifted a foot from the water and scrubbed the sole. “It wasn’t so bad as a whipping with his strap. I sat in his chair and soiled the linen at the table. Am I clean enough to suit you? Kin I have my kirtle and dress back? I don’t have another.”

Morgana said nothing to that. Too many times in the past three years, she hadn’t had another gown to put on, either. “Cara, I want to have both of them washed so that you’ll be clean from inside out. I’m going to ask the O’Neill to carry you up to my chamber for me. I’ll get you something else to wear from what I have. Will you let him carry you into the manse?”