The Irish Warrior (31 page)

The night dragged itself out without incident, the only remarkable thing about it being the armies encamped around the baron's keep. Tents and small fires lighted the plain before the castle, dark things disturbed now and then by shouts of male laughter.

To the west, on the abbey's hummocks and streaming down their sides for miles, camped the Irish. Pitched battle was not the usual state of affairs in Ireland, but then, the threat was not a usual one.

As midnight became a distant memory, Rardove sat in the great hall, slumped on a bench before the low trough fire. He drummed long, thin fingers on his stained breeches, drunk and incredulous. The events of the day were forcing upon him a self-examination he hadn't experienced since he exploded inside his first wench, thrusting and quivering, leaving him spent and sure that
this
was what he wanted from the world above all else.

He swallowed a bolt of wine, staring straight ahead. His entire world had crumbled. Everything he ever wanted had become a curse or been destroyed. Elisabeth, his only true love: gone, and in a sudden blaze of heartache that had never stopped thudding, even twenty years later.

How could she have preferred Gerald de Valery over him? For a short time, he thought he'd won that battle. She'd come to him, had she not? He'd secured these Irish lands, at great risk to himself, for
her.
She'd wanted dyes, and he'd got her the most legendary ones around. And, eventually, she came. Left de Valery for him.

Having her close was all he'd wanted from living. Listening to her, watching her move. And for one blessed year, he'd had his dream.

Then she fled. Dead on the Irish marches.

God, how he missed her. The bite was as sharp as the morning he realized she was gone. With the recipe. She hadn't wanted him after all.

Rardove had had to kill her, of course. Track her down and strangle her before she made it to the ship. He'd had no choice. He could not let her escape with the recipe.

But in the end, she'd had no recipe. He'd found nothing on her person, nor back at the castle. No coded instructions, no written clues on how to re-create the fabulous, dangerous dyes she, the last of the dye-witches, had crafted for him.

And now he had the daughter. She sat in a chamber above him, around a sweep of stony stairs, driving him mad. She was a living, breathing problem. A woman he couldn't possibly contain. She was nothing like her gentle, loving mother, except in looks and the capacity for treachery.

Except…she said she could make the dyes.

But in some dim, honest corner of his mind, Rardove knew even this would not assuage the awful, pounding pain in his heart.

His hands rose to cup the sides of his head, as if to ensure the insides did not spill out. The room was a melding of chalky light and bulky shadows. His pointed fingertips almost touched over the crown of his head as he bent under the pain.

 

That night, the winds blew chill and the stars sparkled brightly. On the hills with his men, Finian called for music. The king stood a few yards away, back in the shadows, silent. On the eager green turf the musicians worked their craft. Thoughtful looks were etched on their granite faces as the music spilled out, harvested from centuries of brave deeds done by men now rotting in their graves.

Finian stood at the edge, a moment of stillness amid weeks of action, and the realizations crowded in thick.

All these years, what every Irishman knew was that The O'Fáil had an expansive belief in Finian O'Melaghlin. Endless, enduring. But perhaps, after all, it had its limitations.

Or rather, perhaps it reckoned on
his
limitations.

Finian could wield any weapon, fight any war, carry any negotiation through to its unforeseeable end. He could make his mates laugh and his women swoon. He could sing a passing tune, lift bricks of peat, and he alone could provide the necessary leadership to guide the
tuatha
to safety and prosperity again. He had everything a king and councilor and warrior required.

He had not, though, believed he had what Senna required.

And mayhap the king had known that all along. Mayhap 'twas part of what
he
believed in. Counted on. That Finian was flawed.

Senna saw him not as a warrior, not a potential king, but as a man full. And perhaps it
would
do. Perhaps he did have it in him.

So he stood at the edge of the circle of warriors and stared across the windswept land, intent on a rescue.

Perilous and foolish, it mattered naught. He would claim Senna come high waves of protest from all the shores of his life.

 

In Rardove's chamber, bent over the long trestle counter, as she'd been for the last ten hours, Senna lifted her head. Every move she made, lifting and moving, measuring and boiling, was like a taste of her mother.

She felt like a wraith, a ghostly shadow of her own past, right down to how she pushed the hair off her brow with her inner forearm, the only part of her arm not stained with dye. Just like her mother.

The missing pages were laid out beside her, utterly, awfully comprehensible. Her mother had indeed been a weapons-mistress. A consummate one. And Senna understood the coded language as if she were reading a ledger. Such things
were
in the blood.

In front of her lay a small fragment of wool. Her wool. Her special crafted wool, from sheep that her mother had begun breeding twenty-two years ago, woven in the intricate pattern that had seemed simply complicated, not meaningful. Now it was dyed with the Wishmés.

It shimmered and guttered light and the absence of light as she lifted it between the tips of two fingers and held it in the air. You'd hardly know it was there.

It hadn't taken years after all.

Her eyes started filling with tears. Oh, she was filled with such awfulness. And such goodness. Like in her womb right now. That was goodness.

She'd not thought it possible. The ravages of a night of “wedded bliss” had resulted in three physicks concluding she was barren.

Finian brought her back to life.

She sat on the floor, settled her spine against the wall and pulled a lantern closer. Sliding out its horn covering, light blazed forth, spilling pale yellow light in a wedge. Her lap, the side of her leg and her low boot were illuminated. That's all she needed.

She would destroy the pages, for certes. But first, she planned to study them one last time, commit the entire thing to memory. Every image, sketch, word would be etched in her mind.

She was really
very
good with documents.

After, she would burn the pages.

Then she would escape. Because Senna had no intention of dying here.

But seeing as she hadn't a blade, a horse, an ally, or a plan, she wasn't quite sure how she would do it.

She rested her palm on her belly and, bending over the pages, started reading.

 

In the main hall, soldiers were lying down for the night, curled up against the walls and spread across the floor.

The hall was shadowy and warm. Pentony strode quietly across the room, nodding briefly to any sleepy eyes that he met. He froze when he spotted Rardove, bent over, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

He looked dead. Then, a small groaning sound came from the lump of him. He didn't look up.

Pentony went into motion again, swift and silent. There was much to arrange before the dawn. He slipped outside and inched open the portal gate in the bailey wall. He nudged a rock in front of it with the toe of his boot, scratched a thick-armed Celtic cross into the wooden door, then walked back inside.

He'd have to hope that something inside him was aligned with something inside the man who'd already risked as much for Senna as Pentony had for her mother.

 

Hours passed. The strange, uninvited music drifted away. The night grew ebony and the moon set. Stars glistened and pale scents were carried on the rising wind.

The dark of night was dislodged by the pearly gray of predawn. The bells in the chapel were beholden to another hour of silence before they rang out Prime. Down in the inner bailey there was a flurry of activity and sound, muted by the thin mists of night: hooves and hushed, masculine calls of one man to another.

Senna heard the heavy thud of a boot outside the door. She shot to her feet, pages in hand. Slow listening. Heartbeats thudding. Cold sweat shivered down her spine. A mouse could not have scurried by without her hearing. But there was nothing. Nothing.

She swallowed thickly and turned to the brazier, building it into a wild flame, not at all like a brazier was intended to burn. But then, it hadn't been intended to burn military secrets.

She leaned close to blow. The flames flared higher. She reached for the pages.

Rusty hinges creaked behind her. “So. You did it.” Rardove stepped into the room.

She spun and tripped over the hem of her skirt. The pages went flying, but she couldn't look away from Rardove. His hair was in disarray, tufted and dirty. His face was flushed from drink, but it was his eyes that terrified her. They were mad. They looked coated in pottage, mealy and thick, but when they caught sight of the dyed fabric on the counter—the shimmering butterfly wing she'd made—they cleared.

He picked it up. Felt it all over, then set it down again and looked at her blankly. “These are the pages?” He gestured to the sheaves of parchment scattered across the floor.

She didn't reply. He unslung his sword and extended it, twisting the tip gently back and forth, as if admiring it. In the flickering candlelight, it cast flashing points of fire all across the room.

Her voice, despite all intention, dropped to a whisper. “What are you doing?”

He looked up. Mad, staring eyes. “Taking care of an inconvenience that has plagued me far too long.”

He was between her and the brazier. Between her and the door. He lifted the sword.

Senna took a running leap, flinging herself past him. He wrapped an arm around her waist as she flew by and slammed her to the ground. Senna fell, but as she landed, she threw her knee between his thighs.

He grunted and his eyes glazed over. The respite was sufficient, allowing her to roll away. She banged into the brazier. It toppled over. She scrambled backward and flung handfuls of the pages toward the stream of chunky orange coals. The pages scattered like small birds, an arc in the air. They fluttered to the ground. None made it into the coals.

“You
bitch,
” Rardove snarled. He staggered to his feet and lifted his blade. She was still on the floor, trying to kick sheaves of parchment into the flames. His shadow rose up.

“No!” she screamed and threw up her hands to block the blow of his sword.

“If you do it, you will die,” said a voice from the doorway.

Rardove's head snapped around. “Pentony,” he rasped in amazement. “Get out!”

“No.”

“Get out!”

“No.”

Senna scrambled away, hyperventilating and staring in amazement at Pentony, who stood in the doorway with a sword. Rusty, aye, but lifted for a blow.

Without removing his eyes from the baron, Pentony reached behind him and locked the door. Senna almost cried.

A second later, from outside the door, loud shouts exploded, and fists pounded against the wood. “Lord Rardove!” a soldier shouted. “Are you a'right?”

No one even looked at the door. Sweat dripped down between Senna's breasts and made her palms slippery against the floor as she tried to scuttle backward another inch.

“Get out of here, Pentony,” Rardove said, sounding tired, and turned to Senna. The appearance of Pentony's sword, lifted to hover, edgewise, just at the vein on his neck, stopped him short.

A bubble of foamy mucous gathered in the corner of the baron's mouth. The spittle from his lips flicked into the air and exploded in invisible bursts. “I will kill you,” he wheezed in fury.

“I know.”

Rardove began choking on his words. They squeezed out in meaningless sounds of rage. His face burned a fiery red, his fingers twitched on his sword, but he dared not move.

“I gave you
everything,
Pentony,” he spat. Senna could feel his eyes following her as she scrambled to her feet and stood behind the gaunt seneschal. “Money, a free hand with the finances, direction over all my lands—”

“I found I had lost my soul,” Pentony said in a quiet, dignified way.

Rardove's face contorted. “You lost that some thirty years ago, when you trussed up the skirts of that nun and defiled her—”

“She was not yet a nun,” he whispered hoarsely.

“You escaped punishment, of course, due to your royal connections, but I heard hers was severe indeed. More like torture, with the stones and the—”

Pentony's face lost all semblance of being a blooded thing. “She was my wife.”

“Nay,
priest.
She was to
become
your wife, if only you could have waited. Waited for her to leave the nunnery, for you to renounce your vows. But you could not, and I was told the baby's screams could be heard at all five Cinque Ports, if the peasants can be believed.”

Pentony's blade twitched against Rardove's throat. “She was my wife in mine heart, and I have carried her there all these years.”

Rardove barked in laughter. “She must have been a rare beauty, then, for the only thing I have seen you hold tight to in all the years I've known you is money, steward.”

Pentony paused. “In truth, she looked like Lady Senna. And her mother.” He half turned his head to her. “Go. Go now.”

Senna's chest started heaving, holding back the sobs of fear and sorrow punching at her heart. Tears blocked her vision; she could barely see the floor. Her head was roaring, her heart hammering. She stared at Pentony, slowly shaking her head.

Rardove struck without warning. He took a sidearm swing at Pentony's torso. The blade cut true, and it split open the tunic and the flesh beneath. Pentony's bloody body collapsed on the floor.

She screamed, her hands by her cheeks, unable to believe what had just happened.

“Get out!” Pentony called hoarsely to her. Rardove kicked him flat onto his back. Pentony's head lolled to the side. A trickle of blood seeped from his lips.

For a moment she and the baron stood there, staring at the steward, then Rardove turned, sweat rolling down his cheeks and neck.

“You're next,” he rasped.

She leapt back, spinning, trying for the door. She crashed into the table instead and fell, her legs tangled in the wooden posts. Rardove lifted a foot to step over Pentony and towered above her prone body.

She pushed backward. He stopped her by planting a boot on her belly.

“No,” she screamed, thrusting her palm outward. “No!
The baby!
”

Rardove faltered, his face bleached white.

Then, with a tumultuous, thundering racket, the door suddenly cracked and was flung open. A black silhouette stood in the battered frame with a drawn sword.

It paused for the briefest moment, then Finian vaulted over the threshold and into the room.