The Ground She Walks Upon (23 page)

R
avenna did
not sleep for two days. Her anger simmered beneath a calm facade like a pot of water on the edge of a boil. Fury turned to hatred, then cooled to a false, self-induced detachment. Deep down, she knew she was not indifferent to Trevallyan, but she made a deathbed vow to herself that from now on she would show nothing but dispassion toward him.

Grace found the cottage as if led by the hand of a faerie. She reached the copse in the woods where the cottage lay just when the last beams of sunlight filtered through the dense canopy of tree boughs. Darkness carpeted the forest floor like a moss. The only light was from clusters of mushrooms that seemed to glow as if sprinkled with enchantment. In just one visit to the old woods, Grace understood why her Celtic people weaved the tales they did.

An old bridge built of gnarly, petrified wood stood between her and the cottage. Below, she could hear the singing of a brook as it skipped across smooth stones. A candle burned in the cottage beyond, and Grace felt a flood of
excitement pulse through her at the thought of seeing her long-lost sister once more. "Who goes there?

The voice brought Grace upright. The horrible croak was most certainly not her sister's voice. "Who may ye be?

There it was again. A wretched, annoying, whiny sound like fingernails dragging across slate.

"Tell me, or ye will not be crossin' my bridge.

Grace looked down. Way down, to where the brook flowed beneath the bridge. There in the dank, shadowy cover stood a troll no taller than wheatgrass. He wore grimy, patched braies the color of mud; short, pointy-toed boots, and a wretched, filthy bliaud that had once been the finest velvet but was now crushed and soiled. He stared at her from the darkness, his pale knobby nose a blight on his face, his stringy black hair falling across piggy, malevolent eyes.

She cleared her throat to hide her fear. "I—I
am Princess Grace. I've come to see my sister Skya who lives in the cottage."

"She
is yer sister?" A pudgy shadow of a thumb jabbed in the direction of the cottage.

"Indeed." Grace nodded. "I've come a long way to see her.

"If ye be that one's sister, then ye will not be crossin' my bridge."

To her dismay, the creature crossed his arms and stared at her, a mutinous jut to his horrible little chin.

Ye will not be crossin' my bridge,
a little voice inside her mimicked. This little troll was like a crotchety old woman. "Surely you don't hold the power to keep me from crossing the bridge? Why, you barely reach my hips." She stifled a small giggle.

The troll jumped up and down in a display of fury, and she heard water splash beneath his little boot-clad feet. "You will not cross my bridge! You will not cross my bridge!" he ranted.

Grace gathered the fabric of her kirtle and stepped onto
the structure. The bridge gave an audible moan beneath her human weight, a thing for which it was clearly not built. She took one step and another. The other side, where her sister's cottage dwelled, loomed ever closer, but beneath her, she heard the ominous sounds of the troll rummaging around in a container as if he were desperately searching for something. He must have found it, for he released a vile little laugh.

She placed a foot on the other side and began to run. In her mind, she thought she heard the sound of hundreds of tiny feet running behind her, but she discounted it. Until a creature grasped on to her linen kirtle and clawed its way onto her shoulder.

Screaming, she looked right into the face of a huge, ugly rat. Behind her, an army of them ran toward her, so many that they were tumbling from the bridge into the shallow brook. The troll's laughter rang through her ears with the lyrical sound of sweet revenge.

"Help me! Help me!" Grace cried, and ran to the cottage. She pounded on the door, and when it opened, she ran inside, rats and all, not even bothering to acknowledge the sister whom she hadn't seen in years.

"Grace!" Skya exclaimed, running to her to give her a hug. The rats did not seem to bother her at all.

"Skya..." Grace croaked, limply holding out her arms for her sister's embrace. Rats fell from her head and shoulders as Skya held her tight.

"Come have food and drink and tell me of home." There were tears in Skya's eyes as she gazed at her little sister, but this was not the kind of reunion Grace expected. Mutely, she watched Skya clear a place at her board and set down a clay pitcher and a plate full of sweet biscuits.

Grace wondered if she was living a dream. Rats streamed in the front door unnoticed, but when one shimmied up the table leg and scurried for the biscuits, she couldn't muffle her gasp.

"Rats! Rats! Why does he always send rats!" Ignoring her sister, Skya picked up the offending creature that was
just about to feast on the biscuits. She held the rodent up as if to study him, then she gazed around her cottage. Grace looked too, cringing at the hundreds of ugly gray-brown rats that haunted the corners and cabinets.

"Oh, bother it! He'll pay." Then to Grace's amazement, Skya snapped her fingers. The rats suddenly turned into brilliant white doves, hundreds of them. They flapped their wings and flew from every window and door, leaving iridescent feathers in their wake. Without comment, Skya blew the snowdust of feathers from the board and bade Grace sit down and enjoy her refreshment.

"Tell me of home. How is Mother? And Father?" Skya asked.

Grace's ears still rang from the coos of the doves as they fled the cottage. "Skya, you're really a witch, aren't you?" she said in awe.

Griffen O'Rooney had finally found a home. He had a warm, dry bed, the first he'd seen since the madness struck years ago, and three fine, healthy meals a day in the castle kitchen with the company of more servants than he could talk to. In the mornings, when he awoke, Fiona gave him his breakfast beside a blazing hearth.

"Heat's good fer the bones," he said to Fiona while she punched down a yeasty dough at a marble-topped kitchen table.

She smiled absentmindedly at him. No one at the castle seemed to mind the old man. Even the lowly sculleries thought it better to have Griffen in the kitchen, warm and dry, than out frightening them all in the cemetery.

"I've got to be speakin' with the master today," Griffen announced with self-authority.

"Ah, the master's quite busy, Mr. O'Rooney. Perhaps I can send Tommy James here to give you someone to talk to.... now let me see, where did I see that boy last? He was helping in the stables,
I
think...."

"I must talk to Trevallyan today," Griffen insisted, clearly not hearing her. "I must tell him the story of how I come by the ring. 'Tis time, I think, for him to marry. Why, the lass is all grown up."

"I really can't say if the master will see you," Fiona said, a distracted, confused expression on her face. She picked up an armful of laundry and made to leave.

Griffen's mood seemed to just skirt panic. "I must be tellin' the master the story today. You will tell him for me, won't you?" He looked at her.

The room was like an abandoned tomb when Trevallyan finally made his way to the kitchen. The old man sat in a black-painted Windsor chair by the fire as if trying to escape the chilly stone walls around him. His eyes were dreamy, his face serene. An old man waiting to be called home.

"How many years are you now, Griffen? Into your nineties, I would imagine," Trevallyan said at the doorway.

Griffen looked at him. If he could not make out the words, he at least still heard the sound.

"Fiona said you needed to speak with me." Trevallyan's face took on a patronizing expression.

"I've a yearnin' to speak with you, Lord Trevallyan," Griffen repeated, clearly not hearing a word.

For some reason, he was in the mood to indulge the old man. Trevallyan eased his form onto a nearby bench. He remained silent while O'Rooney began to speak.

"Me lord, I've the third part o' the gimmal." Griffen's rheumy gaze stared at Trevallyan's hand. He touched the ring on the master's last finger. "You cannot be marryin' the girl without it, and I'm feared I may be dyin' soon."

The muscles in Trevallyan's jaw hardened. He knew the old man was going to bring up this nonsense, and after the last meeting, he didn't want to talk about it.

"You must know where it is. The ring, the third part of the gimmal, be put in the graveyard fer safekeeping. Your wife is sleepin' beside it. She guards it in the vault."

Trevallyan nodded. The situation couldn't be worse in a penny Gothic.

"Me father gave me the ring when I was a young man. He told about the
geis,
and he told me his father before that gave him the ring."

"You mean it didn't come from a faerie who lured him into a forgotten wood and plied him with drink?" Niall could have bit his tongue after he said it.

"Drink? I'd like a drink," O'Rooney echoed, obviously hearing only half of what he had said. Niall smiled. He rose and searched a cupboard. The servants would deny until their faces were blue that they kept spirits in the kitchen, but he'd bet his castle that they did. He came upon a bottle of whiskey jammed behind several crocks of dried apples. He poured O'Rooney a healthy drink, then placed the bottle within easy reach of the old man.

"Ah, nothin' like a good gargle, eh?" Griffen smiled. He hadn't a tooth left.

Trevallyan nodded. He stood up to leave, but O'Rooney kept him with, "There's one last story I have to tell. 'Tis the story they tell near Antrim way about a man..."

Trevallyan sat down on the bench once more, growing impatient but unwilling to be rude.

"... A fine young man he was, rich and powerful. He could have any young lass in the county fer his wife...."

Niall shifted on the bench. Any more parables about his life and fate, and he was going to have to use Herculean measures to stop himself from wringing the neck of the bastard who recounted them.

"... But instead, this young man—this viscount, he was—found a girl in Dublin who caught his eye. She was a beautiful girl, with raven-black hair and breathtakin' eyes, eyes that should have been laughin' but weren't...."

The feeling of deja vu crept into Trevallyan. Slowly he gave O'Rooney his attention.

"... He didn't take the girl to his bed at first, because she was such a sad creature. She had followed a man to Dublin and had been discarded. Men had been cruel to her. It took her a long time to be trustin' the viscount, but he vowed to make her trust him, because he found himself in love with her. Despite her past, she was the girl he wanted to be marryin'. When she laughed, his world was filled with birdsong, when she cried, he mourned as though the banshee was at his door."

Trevallyan didn't move. A thousand questions flitted through his mind, but he remained silent so the old man wouldn't lose track of his story.

"He sent the girl home with the promise of a weddin'. He should never have done it. He feared she was goin' to be havin' his babe and he had nightmares o' losin' her. O' losin' his babby." Griffen looked at him and Trevallyan felt shivers run down his spine. The story was inversely parallel to his own life. In many ways it followed, except that the tragedy he knew Griffen was about to relate was, unlike his own life, softened by love.

"He did lose her," Griffen whispered. "Near Antrim way, 'tis said this young man met his fate before he could fetch his bride. He died with her name upon his lips and the promise that he would meet her in the hereafter."

"Antrim, you say he was from?" Trevallyan belted out in an attempt to get Griffen to hear him.

"Aye. Antrim. I've heard said the castle is named Cinaeth."

Trevallyan nodded. He was about to ask further questions when O'Rooney began to speak once more.

"I should have been tellin' Grania, but the story was old. It went through many a mouth. I don't know the truth of it."

" 'Tis all right, old man." Trevallyan placed a hand on the fragile shoulder. Griffen seemed to take comfort from it.

" 'Tis your tale now. I couldn't let it die with me."

Fiona entered the kitchens at that moment. Both Griffen and Niall looked up at her as if they were astonished where they were.

"Oh! Am I interruptin'?" she asked, blushing to the tips of her toes to find the master in the servants' domain.

Trevallyan stood and looked down at Griffen. "Nay, 'tis all right, Fiona. We're finished with our discussion. Leave Griffen to the bottle. Tell Greeves to replace the one I took."