ROOK AND RAVEN: The Celtic Kingdom Trilogy Book One (20 page)

Sean took his cue and rounded up the older, not quite so tired or acquiescent children, herding them toward the house, nightclothes and bed.  He came back to carry his niece up who was sound asleep with mouth slightly open, a rosebud in her fair face.  Heavy as he now was, Jessy hefted Trystan in her own arms, his long legs dangling.  She couldn’t get over how fast he was growing.  Time moved too quickly.  She carefully maneuvered him into his own
bed in the room he shared with Jem.  He only stirred when she was tucking him into his night shirt and pulling up the blanket.

“Mama,’ he whispered drowsily, “Love you.”

“Love you too darling, sleep tight and don’t let Jem bite,” it was an old tease.

“Happy birthday Mama,” he murmured as long dark lashes fluttered down and he snuggled into the warmth of his bed.  Jessy brushed her hand one more time over the dark hair before placing a gentle kiss on the hand, tucked as always, against his cheek.  God, she hated leaving.  Mondays began with such joy and ended with such a tight pain around her heart. This Monday the pain was even worse.

“Papa will be here soon,” said a sleepy but assured voice from deep in the covers.

Jessy whirled about in shock, but she saw her son was already fast asleep and she would not wake him.  Why had he said that?  Maureen had hinted many a time that there were signs at his birth.  She saw, every now and then, something in his eyes to suggest that, like Michael, he could see and sense what others could not.  Tonight she didn’t want to think about him being gifted or out of the ordinary.  She just wanted him to be a small boy asleep and safe in his familiar bed.  Everything seemed to be happening too quickly, too many changes at once and she just didn’t want to think about her son being
gifted right now.  That would have to be for another day when she up to thinking about it.    

She found Sean sitting on their favorite bench under the pear tree near the table, plumped with comfortable cushions and instead of another cup of punch, a snifter of brandy waiting for her.

He toasted her as she sat down and the good crystal he had raided from

Margaret’s dining room made a lovely chime.

“Where are David and Maureen?” Jessy asked as she sipped.

“Oh, giving us a few moments,” Sean informed her lightly. “You haven’t opened your present from me yet.”

She went to get up but he pressed her back to the bench gently and yet firmly.  She looked at him questioningly in the lantern light and shadows. The planes and angles of his face made lovely work of the flickering lantern light.  Henry, she thought, was an idiot.  Even without factoring in his loving spirit and brilliant talent, Sean Powers was a man of extraordinary male beauty and charm.  He turned slightly toward her, his eyes intent on hers as he took her hands in hands.

“Do you ever think of the day we met? I know we never talk of it, but I wonder,” he said softly.

Jessy studied the face she had grown so familiar with, come to love so dearly.  Sean was a lean and handsome man, with usually laughing, rather dreamy eyes and a perfectly cut head of pure golden hair.  Despite most being aware of his tastes, the ladies still swooned over him.  The gloomy, rainy day she had first met him she had thought an angel was inviting her into a carriage. He had gleamed like a candle on a dark day. She had not been in her right mind that afternoon.  She hadn’t eaten in two days, was light headed, pregnant and looking down from Putney Bridge thinking seriously of jumping. He was an angel, just not the kind they taught children about in church.  

“I never think of that day at all. Well, expect when I step onto the stage, or see that all Tim’s burns marks have healed, or when Mick greets my visitors like he’d rather toss then out then let them in, or when it rains, or I cross the river, or,” and here she pressed her hand to his cheek looking into his eyes, “I tuck my son into bed. So, you see I never think of that day at all,” she smiled in the growing dark.  “With David away with the army, I had nowhere and no one to turn to, you saved me in so many ways.”

“Have I ever told you what I saw that day? Of course I have, but I will tell you again.  I saw a girl about to throw herself off a bridge in the rain, a girl who looked like a drowned princess in a fairy tale, all tangled red hair and a neck like a swan.  This girl spoke to me without a word or even seeing I was there.”

‘What did she say? This drowned princess in the rain?”

“She said ‘this is what you were born to do, to save me, save me Sean Powers’ and so I told the driver to stop, opened the door and asked you in.  I thought you would take more persuading and I was quite prepared to get my new jacket soaked to haul you inside but, you came like a lamb.”

“I’ve never been sure why I did to be honest.  Mother’s always tell their daughters to not get into coaches with strange men but I just knew the moment I saw you in the carriage it was the right thing to do.  You looked like a golden angel holding out a hand.”

“No one has
ever
accused me of being an angel except you,” he mused.

“I would be dead, Trystan would have never been, I would never have known Michael, I wouldn’t have the good,
truly good
life I have and can give others without you, so if I want to call you an angel I shall,” she said emphatically.

“Don’t you dare tell me thank you again after all these years.  You’ve helped make me rich and infamous so we are quite even. Well,” he got up and moved to the table, “before it all changes and the Earl of Redsayle comes to interrupt the idyll we have built here, I just wanted to tell you that day was one of the most important in my life.  I will stop being so serious now and tell you it is time to open your presents. Let’s start with this larger one shall we?”

He handed her a simply wrapped brown paper and twine covered package with a great flourish even going down onto one knee.  It made her laugh for Sean was notorious for always insisting on wrapping presents himself and hadn’t a clue how to go about it.  They were always a hideous disaster.  He had used about three times the required paper and Sean had to get a knife from the table as none of the twine would unknot.

She couldn’t hide her curiosity and expectations.  Sean’s presents were always imaginative and not always what other people would even consider presents, but always managed to make her smile, laugh or cry when needed most.  She tore into the packing like an eager child and he smiled indulgently. 

She gasped when she saw what lay inside the slim box she opened.

‘Sean!! It can’t be real can it??” she nearly squealed. For resting in a velvet lined box was a deceptively simple and delicate gold circlet entwined with what looked like Celtic knot work.  The center piece, which would rest above the brow was the graceful arched head of a horse.  If anyone had tried to tell her a circlet with a horse’s head for the center piece could be commanding yet feminine she would have laughed.  But there it was held in her hands.  It was stunning.

Sean reached into the box lifting the crown, for it could be nothing else, from the box and placed it upon her head.  The arching neck of the horse reached high up her brow, proudly looking out from eyes set with blue stones that picked up the blue enamel along the knot work of the circlet.  The mane parted from both sides of the neck to sweep into the sides of the circlet above her ears. Upon the horse’s forehead a small Circle of Light was wrought and she recognized the symbol from her mother’s books on Celtica she had read as a child.

She had the strangest sensation that the circlet not only had shifted slightly to form to her head but she felt as if light was emanating from the crown and down into her body.  The feeling was very strange and mildly alarming.  She looked up to see that Sean, and David who now stood behind him, had very strange looks upon their faces.  It made her nervous and bit frightened the way they looked as if they had never seen her before.  Their faces looked frozen and eyes wide in the gloom.  She felt she had to say something to lighten the strangeness.

“If I am meant to wear this as Boadicea Sean you were robbed.  Did someone tell you this is Iceni?  It’s from Celtica.  A lovely gift, an amazingly, frightfully expensive gift but you must have meant it for the play of course, so now I feel bad to tell you it won’t work. You did only mean me to borrow this for the play did you not?”

“N-no,” Sean’s voice came out rather hoarse. “I meant you to keep it. I didn’t buy it.  I’ve had it for years but I did think it would be perfect for the play.  Michael told me I would know when to give it to you.  Now seemed the right time.”

“Michael!! Where in the world would Michael get something like this and why would he have you hold onto it all these years?”

“Mick said the night before Waterloo a gypsy woman came to their tent selling trinkets and such.  You know how they work, she saw the new ring on his finger, figured he had a new wife and told him some far-fetched and lovely
bit of nonsense about how this was meant to be yours and being Michael he bought it.  Mick said she practically gave it away for naught and just smiled and left.  That night Michael had a dream that seemed to upset him. He then gave the circlet to Mick with instructions to I got it.  You know the rest.”

She did know the rest.  Michael had died in Mick’s arms the next day and with his last moments had made Mick promise three things, to tell Jessy to keep Trystan safe, keep him a secret and made Mick promise to look after the two of them with his life.  It had taken two years before Mick would admit to her that Michael had been shot in the back and not from the enemy front.  Mick had unfortunately, in a fit of rage, nearly decapitated the man who had shot Michael and so the mystery had remained; did Michael somehow have an enemy who had not only killed him but would wish his wife and child harm?

All they could do was abide by his wishes blindly.

The more years that had gone by the less likely it had seemed the mystery of who had killed Michael (and why) would be solved.  Mick and David had tried to identify the killer but he had nothing on him to give a clue to his identity.  They could find no one to admit to recognizing or ever having seen him before.  In the rush of men who had enlisted to go to Belgium and fight the final battle against Napoleon it was not really a surprise he would be a stranger in his own regiment.  Why he killed a man clearly within his own lines was the greater question.

With Michael’s body brought home and Trystan safely born, the decision to abide by Michael’s last wishes was made.  Jessy knew she couldn’t raise

Trystan on the lie that Michael Powers was his father, Mick was determined to follow his childhood friend and officer’s wishes, and the final word was Maureen’s.  She had made up her mind to return to England and raise the children at Mallory’s End, her husband’s home.  She convinced Jessy that if she would take up Sean’s offer to go to work at the theater in London, she would raise Trystan with her own children.  He and Kate were so close in age and looked so alike it was easy enough to pass them off as twins, even barring the dissimilar eye color.

At Mallory’s End Trystan would be one of a large family.  The old manor also received Mick’s blessing as it was built during the Tudor age.  It was well fortified with a tall stone wall, old dried moat, two priest holes, three tunnels and no near neighbors.  It was a place that provided protection and yet freedom for the children.  It also had the benefit of secret places to hide and multiple escape routes should it ever prove necessary.  The village was absolutely loyal to the Mallory’s as well, as they had built the house, provided for the village and been its main support for almost four hundred years.

The only ones to suffer from the arrangement were Jessy and Trystan by not sharing a home.  Even that had not been as bad as Jessy had feared, Trystan was happy, active and loved at Mallory’s End.  The only thing hanging over her head had been when to tell him about his father.  He had always
seemed blithely unconcerned about having a father or not as his “cousins” hadn’t a father around either.   Fathers were not a part of the daily regime at the End and just didn’t come up. 

He had never once asked about his paternal heritage.  She had known it was strange he had never asked, but been so relieved not to try and explain, she had purposely ignored the peculiarity.  His words tonight were the first he had ever spoken of his father.  It was unnerving.

But here she still stood with this odd crown on her head and her thoughts were making her dizzy.  This crazy, beautiful thing Michael had bought her and had put aside for ‘the right time’ couldn’t possibly have really been meant for her.  What was she to do with it?!  Why had he even bought it and how in the world did some gypsy woman get her hands on it? Could it be stolen property?

David stepped up behind and with a quiet “if you don’t mind” he removed the circlet and held it closer to one of the lanterns.  The look on his face told Jessy what she had already suspected; it was real.

“Where have you been keeping this all these years Sean? Knowing you, it’s been a box for props or sitting about in an unlocked desk,” David said dryly. “It’s quite real.  Celtica made too, just as Jessy noted. Priceless. How or why some gypsy woman in Belgium would have it is beyond me.” He carefully placed it back into its box and did his best to wrap the torn paper back around it.  His prickle of unease in Maureen’s kitchen earlier was growing into full-fledged alarm.  He didn’t like this at all.

“Forgive me for not wanting to offend you Sean, but even if Jessy does end up wearing this for the play, I had better keep it in my safe.  We would all feel better with it locked up don’t you think?” he looked around the group.