The Falcon's Bride (15 page)

“How do you know this? What is it to you? Who
are
you?” Thea sobbed, her eyes brimming with tears.

The Gypsy smiled the smile that did not reach her eyes, and said, “I am Jeta, Drumcondra’s mother.”

Chapter Eleven

James stared at the iron-barred door, waiting for the shadows to give birth to the Gypsy who had laid hands upon his sister. It was outside of enough. What was Thea doing here in this wreck of a castle with this odd lot? How had she got here? How had
he
got here? One moment he was leading the weary Andalusian stallion through a gaping hole in the building, a close watch upon a falcon circling aloft; the next he was in a well-appointed great hall swarming with servants in a part of the structure that showed no sign of deterioration, and two lackeys had seized upon him. He wasn’t foxed. Though he’d brought a flask of whiskey along to warm him on the journey, he hadn’t touched a drop.

He was chained in the bowels of the castle by means of shackles that were fashionable over a hundred years ago. But for a healthy jostling, he hadn’t been harmed, though one of the lackeys had taken possession of his beaver, and another had confiscated his multicaped greatcoat. Small
loss. The garments were soaked through from the snow and wouldn’t have protected him from the cold that prevailed in the dank castle’s lower regions in any case. Mold and must frosted everything. The walls were bleeding with rising damp. He was leg-shackled to one of them by means of an iron ring set in the floor, waiting. It didn’t take long. He heard Drumcondra’s heavy boot heels echoing along the stone passageway long before he set eyes upon him. This was no ghost.

James got to his feet stiffly. Negotiating the moat in the snow had taken its toll on seldom used muscles. He would definitely need to take a few turns around the mattresses at Gentleman Jim’s when he got back to London—
if
he got back to London. Where the devil was he?

“I mean to know how you got in here,” Drumcondra said, facing him, hands on hips. “How did you gain entrance with the portcullis lowered? The water isn’t frozen solid, only crusted over. You couldn’t have walked across. It would never have supported your weight. Did you swim in this weather?”

“Of course not!” James said. “Where is my sister? What have you done with her?”

“She has come to no harm. Answer my question.”

“The moat is dry, you fool!” James served. He was out of patience now. “I walked across—well, slid down the far bank and struggled up the near. It’s not my fault that your gudgeons were asleep on their watch. I could have used an assist coming on in that storm.”

“You trespass upon my land, sir,” Drumcondra said. “What is your business here?”

“I’ve come looking for my sister, whom you have imprisoned so it seems. I demand you release her at once!”

“You demand, eh? I think not.” He thumped his broad chest. “
I
demand. Now you tell me why you and your
sister—two Englishers, mind—roam about County Meath in times when border wars are waging, and your countrymen invade our shores to plunder, eh?”

England invade Ireland? It was the first he’d heard of it. A hundred years ago or more, perhaps. Was the man addled? “I know of no invasion,” he said. “My sister is betrothed to a . . . gentleman hereabouts, and we have come to his estate to celebrate Christmastide and make the wedding preparations.”

“Mmm,” Drumcondra grunted.

“What? You doubted her word, sir?” said James. He was incredulous. How dare this ignorant Irish muck-savage question the motives of his betters? Perhaps Nigel Cosgrove was right—at least in one regard: the Gypsies evidently were a blight upon the land.

“What were you doing at Si An Bhru?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“New . . . New . . . grange you call it in England.”

“Y-yes,” said James. The man really was a primitive if he still called Newgrange by the old name. “Thea wanted to see the passage tomb on the solstice.”

Again Drumcondra grunted. “Did Cosgrove send you?” he asked.

“Well, yes, of course,” James said. “Look here, what is all this about, sir?”

“She is his betrothed?”

“She is, but—”

Drumcondra raised his hand in a gesture meant to silence him. “Why did he not come himself?” he asked. “Is he . . . unwell, then, that he would send his betrothed’s brother
here
unarmed on such an errand?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, he is,” said James warily. The Gypsy seemed about to rejoice. “He is abed, sir, recovering. A falcon gouged his eye out.”

Drumcondra froze in place for a long moment before he spun on his heel and stalked out of the chamber, locking the iron-barred door behind him.

“Wait!” James called. “Where do you think you’re going? Let me out of here! Turn me loose, I say! Are you in league with that old Gypsy woman? Did the lot of you abduct my sister, and bring her here to this slag heap?”

But there was no answer, nothing but the sound of Drumcondra’s heavy footfalls carrying him away.

“Please, my lord, I beg you let me see my brother,” Thea sobbed. Drumcondra had returned to the chamber in a seething rage. Standing with his broad back toward her, he searched the flames in the hearth, the muscles ticking a steady rhythm along his angular jaw. “Why will you not let me go to him? What have you done with him?”

“He is safe enough . . . for now.”

“What do you mean, ‘for now’?” she asked. “Answer me, my lord!”

“Demands, demands—always demands,” he growled. He pounded his breast with his fist. “
I
demand,” he said. “I told him the same. One more day and then we shall see.”

“What do you mean?”

“You heard me deliver the terms,” he said, spinning to face her. “One day is gone. Cosgrove only has one more to vacate my land, bag and baggage, or—”

“Yes?” she snapped, “or what, my lord—you will give me to him ravaged?”

He glared at her. “The Cosgrove sent him!” he thundered. “I had it from his own mouth, your precious brother. The bastard is still mending from Isor’s handiwork, so he sent your brother. Is he simpleminded, then, that he would march single-handed upon my keep to collect you?”

“Y-you had what from him? What did he tell you, my lord?”

“A-ha!” he blurted, his eyes flashing. “So there
is
something between you and the Cosgrove! You are saving yourself for him!”

“I . . . I told you we have never even met,” she sobbed. “I never set eyes upon C-Cian Cosgrove until you took me to that keep!”

“You lie!” he thundered. “You
were
staying at the castle. Your brother took you to Si An Bhru to see the sun rise on the solstice.”

Thea swallowed hard. Of course Drumcondra thought James was speaking of
Cian
Cosgrove. Why wouldn’t he? He didn’t even know Nigel Cosgrove existed. She had to get to James and try to explain before he made another blunder. Meanwhile, what could she say that this hulking Gypsy warrior would believe, and that would calm him?

“You must have misunderstood,” she snapped, aiming for indignation when all the while she was trembling inside. “I said that we were on our way to Cosgrove’s castle—”

“
My
castle,” he flashed, thumping his breast again.

“Y-your castle, yes,” she recovered. “We were on our way there when I begged him to pass by the tomb. We became separated, and your minions laid hold of me. He . . . he must have gone on to the castle when he couldn’t find me. Look here, what does it matter? He is my brother. He has come looking for me. He has no quarrel with you.”

“Indeed not, fair lady,” said Drumcondra. “I have one with him. He stays below until the sun sets tomorrow. What happens then depends upon the Cosgrove.”

“Now it is
I
who do not believe
you
,” she said haughtily, tossing her dark curls. “He is dead or maimed or otherwise harmed. That is why you will not let me see him!”

“I told you, he has not been harmed.”

“Prove it,” she sallied. “Take me to him. Let me have one moment alone with him, and then you may do . . . as you will with me.” She uttered the last with downcast eyes, remembering the bucket and what she had seen in the bloodied water. She couldn’t think about that now. Not now. “Please, my lord.”

With no more said, he seized her arm, led her into the corridor, and down the roughly hewn staircases to the lower regions.

Drumcondra was limping by the time they reached a row of recessed chambers. It was plain that his wound was grieving him far more than he was willing to admit. They stopped before one of the cells, and he had just picked out a large key dangling from a chatelaine he wore around his waist when Jeta stepped from the shadows with a smile and sly wink toward Thea, and laid hold of Drumcondra’s arm. Annoyed, he bent while she whispered something to him in a foreign tongue. Nodding, he shoved Thea inside the cell and locked the door behind her.

“Here! What are you doing?” Thea called as Drumcondra strode off with the Gypsy. “You are just going to leave me here?”

“You wanted to see your brother,” the warrior’s voice echoed back along the corridor, “so, see him. I will return.”

Inside the cell James staggered to his feet, and Thea rushed to embrace him. “You are hurt!” she cried. “I knew it!”

“No, no—just stiff as a coat rack,” her brother assured her. “I had the devil’s own time negotiating the trench that evidently used to be a moat around this deuced place. I entered through the ruined wing, and went in search of a suitable chamber in the sound part of this keep to wait out the storm, when the lackeys seized me. Never mind that,
what are you doing here? How did you get here? You called the hulking brute that locked me in here Lord Drumcondra. This dilapidated relic is evidently his keep. Is he one of Ros Drumcondra’s descendants? What the deuce is going on, Thea?”

She burst into tears. “Oh, my dear God,” she sobbed, “I don’t know how I shall ever tell you.”

“I think you had best try,” her brother said testily, rattling his shackles.

“Be careful what you say to Drumcondra,” she began. “You’ve said too much already.”

“Too much? Stuff! The blighter scarcely gave me a chance to say anything at all. He
is
one of Ros Drumcondra’s descendants, then? Come, come, Thea—it is I, James, your brother. You have never, ever found it difficult to speak to me in any regard. What is all this?”

Thea drew a ragged breath and wiped her tears away. “Very well,” she said. “You shan’t believe one word of it, I’m sure, but I think that I can prove it if you will just be patient with me.”

“Yes . . . ?”

“He is not descended from Ros Drumcondra, James. He
is
Ros Drumcondra.”

“
What
? Have you attics to let? That is impossible, Thea. The man lived nearly a hundred and twenty years ago. I’ll believe that you saw his
ghost
that night back at the castle before I’ll believe this.”

“There isn’t much time,” Thea said. “I need to say this before he returns, James. Please, hear me out, and if you still do not believe me after it’s told, I beg you say nothing to Drumcondra.”

“I am waiting,” snapped James, clearly out of patience.

“I do not know how you got here, but I think I know how I did,” she began. “If only you had gone into the tomb
with me, I wouldn’t have to explain anything. When the light failed, I stepped back out and you were gone—everything was changed. There was no entrance behind me, only a mound of snow. There weren’t even any footprints, mine or yours, and no tracks from the sleigh runners in the snow. At first I thought that I had exited through another opening, but I had not. Then two men grabbed me. I was struck on the head, and awoke sometime later chained much as you are here now in what I thought to be a cave. Drumcondra saved me from . . . I daren’t speculate upon what those Gypsy bandits might have done to me.”

“You were compromised?” James breathed.

“Compromised?” she blurted. “Good God, James, that does not even signify here!”

“Go on,” he gritted through clenched teeth.

“Newgrange is a passage tomb, is it not—a corridor between the living and the dead? At least that is what it is supposed to be—what the ancients believed it to be. When I first set eyes upon Ros Drumcondra, I thought that the legend was true, that he had come on the solstice to reclaim his castle and his land. Instead—and this is the truly impossible bit—I had somehow traveled back to his time through the corridor. He is no ghost, James. It is Drumcondra in the flesh, and you have now joined us—in the Year of Our Lord 1695.”

“That is preposterous!”

“I agree, but it is true, James. If you had a view of the grounds, I could prove it to you. You say there was a trench where the moat once was. There is no trench there now. The moat is filled with water, and there is no ruined wing. The castle is intact.”

“But that is impossible! I nearly broke my back navigating the drifts in that trench. At one point, Nigel’s Andalusian
was buried to the withers. I led that horse right through what once was a solid wall of stone and timbers.”

“Do not mention Nigel,” Thea said. “These know nothing of Nigel Cosgrove. It is Cian Cosgrove who lives now, and who, through some bizarre happenstance has just had his own eye gouged out by a falcon as well—the same falcon, James. Jeta, the old Gypsy who came to Cashel Cosgrove said it is so, and God help me, I believe her. That bird is almost human. There
are
time channels here, despite what Nigel said. This place and the passage tomb must somehow be connected. I cannot think how you have come here else such is true.”

“At university, we touched upon such phenomenon as what the professors called
lay lines
, and John Nash has mentioned such in his architectural essays and lectures. He said that much land here and at home is rejected as building sites because of the locals’ superstitious fear of them. But I have never credited occult or supernatural phenomenon, or such speculative doctrines that cannot be proven. But you do, don’t you? You actually believe you’ve traveled back in time to 1695. They must have really beaned you right and proper. I believe the blow to the head has quite scrambled your brains.”