The Maid of Ireland (36 page)

Caitlin clutched Laura tighter. “Clonmuir’s under attack!”

Daisy surged to her feet, her bulk causing the pinnace to list. “God, let me at those tight-pants bastards!”

Tom passed the tiller to her and tacked northward.

“What the devil are you doing?” asked Caitlin.

“We’ll not go scudding into that vipers’ nest with just the three of us and the poor wee girleen. We’re going to Brocach.” With grim finality, he set the course.

“Not there! Logan’s a traitor. Wasn’t it he who betrayed Father Tully, and then convinced me that Wesley meant to give Clonmuir horses to Hammersmith?”

“’Tis time his lordship proved his faith with the Irish, then.”

The fresh wind carried them swiftly northward. Blessed Mary, thought Caitlin. What if Wesley were slain? She winced at the notion that he would never again hold his daughter in his arms, never again hear Caitlin declare that she loved him.

Logan’s watchmen must have heralded the arrival, for Magheen herself came running down to the landing to greet them.

“Caitlin! Saints in heaven be praised, you’re alive!” Laughing and sobbing, Magheen hugged her tightly.

“What of Wesley?” Caitlin demanded, bracing herself for the worst.

“Still holding out at Clonmuir, God willing.” Magheen hoisted Laura onto her hip. “And who is this wee pretty?”

As they made their way to the hall, Caitlin gave hasty explanations. Then, full of fury and fear, she planted herself in front of Logan, who sat in his thronelike chair on the dais.

Staring at her as if she were a ghost, he jammed his thumb into his mouth, chewing it to ward off enchantment.

“Feeling guilty, Logan?” Caitlin taunted. “Aye, I’m back, come to haunt a traitor.”

He yanked his thumb free. “
Arrah,
it’s redeemed I’m wanting to be. Sure haven’t I done my best. For two weeks I’ve been sending runners to your husband advising him to seek terms. But the madness is at him. The only way he’ll lay down his arms is with his life—and the life of every fool who fights at his side.”

Caitlin closed her eyes, picturing Wesley battling the English legions. For her. For Clonmuir. For Ireland.

Magheen stepped up beside Caitlin. “And I’ve been telling you for two weeks that some things, Logan Rafferty, are worth dying for.” She tugged at Caitlin’s sleeve. “Come. Wesley sent us Clonmuir’s horses so the English would find no prize if they managed to breach the walls.”

Caitlin blinked. “The black?”

“Of course.”

Logan shot to his feet. “By God, woman! I forbid you to go to Clonmuir.”

Magheen tossed her head. “I take no orders from a coward.”

Thirty minutes later, wearing breastplates and helms from Logan’s armory, Caitlin, Magheen, Daisy, and Tom rode hard for Clonmuir. They had left Laura in the indulgent care of Aileen Breslin, and Logan in a state of blind shock.

They had gone only a short distance when the thunder of pursuit sounded behind them. Caitlin whipped a glance back.

Logan and a company of men-at-arms came on in a flurry of dust, the particles aglow with the hues of the sunset. Weapons rode at their hips, and banners fluttered over their heads.

“Stop,” said Caitlin to her companions. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

Logan drew up between Caitlin and Magheen. He handed Caitlin a swatch of black silk. “You forgot something, my lady. Veil yourself with this.”

Hope rose in Caitlin’s chest as she recognized the golden harp of Clonmuir embroidered on the fabric. “Thank you, brother-in-law.” She secured the veil so that the silk flowed down her back.

Logan turned to Magheen, reached out and touched her arm with a gauntleted hand. “And I forgot something as well, my love. I forgot my place in the world, my sacred duty as your husband and as an Irishman.”

Of one mind and one purpose, gilded by the light of sunset, the Irish surged forward.

Logan lifted his fist to the sky. “Fianna and Eireann!”

* * *

Evening closed over Clonmuir, but this night the Roundheads did not retreat to the abandoned houses of the town.

With a twist of cold dread, Wesley knew the reason.

The Roundheads had battered a huge breach in the wall—an opening wide enough to admit six horsemen riding abreast. Logan had been badgering Wesley for days to seek terms. Staring at the breach, Wesley was tempted. Then a memory intruded, Caitlin’s voice, fierce with conviction:
Clonmuir is my home. I’d defend it until the last stone is torn from my dying hands.
He knew what her decision would be. He would not fail her by giving in.

His arms ached from twisting the cranequins of his big crossbow. The few muskets and the small cache of gunpowder had been spent early in the siege. The war flails, hammers, axes, and swords were of little use against the distant cannons.

As night fell, the English soldiers flowed like black shadows toward Clonmuir. Wesley took aim with his crossbow and pulled the trigger. A man screamed and fell.

For you, Caitlin. Wesley glanced at the first bright star of evening. For you.

Seamus MacBride and Father Tully worked a catapult. With the wind whipping his beard, the elder MacBride resembled a wizard. They strapped a rock in place. Father Tully blessed it. Seamus loosed the hoisting rope from the windlass. The rock sailed over the wall and felled two Englishmen.

Conn and Curran made good use of their yew longbows, bringing down soldiers as quickly as they could shoot.

It wasn’t enough. A swarm of Roundheads funneled into the breach.

“To the yard!” he yelled, flinging down his crossbow and drawing his heavy broadsword.

Fiery Irish curses roared from the men. Swords and axes, hammers and war flails made from grain-threshing tools, appeared in their hands. Wesley leapt down from the wall walk.

His mind emptied. He knew only the numbing reverberation of sword blows, only the clang of steel, only the searing heat of hopeless hatred.

The enemy came on, streaming in nightmare waves across the yard. Torches ignited the thatched outbuildings. Screaming shadows streaked through the darkness. Irish curses trumpeted from hoarse throats while the English fought in weird, single-minded silence.

Mounted soldiers and warriors on foot harried Wesley from all sides. He felt his strength seeping like sweat into the bloodied ground. Stealing glimpses through the smoke and flame, he saw Rory, a senseless heap in the mud. Father Tully and Seamus desperately tried to repulse four men armed with plug bayonets.

And then, riding a low tide of despair, Wesley saw Titus Hammersmith enter through the main gate. With his sausagelike curls bobbing beneath the edge of his helm, the Roundhead commander rode a bay war-horse toward the guard tower.

Curran Healy had sprung from concealment near the tower to sling a stone at a foot soldier.

Riding with icy precision, Hammersmith bore down on the unsuspecting boy. Wesley bolted across the yard.

“Over here, Titus!” he bellowed, waving his arms to call attention to himself. “Or have you sunk to butchering children?”

Hammersmith checked his horse and turned while Curran melted back into the shadows. A musketball whined past Wesley’s head. A warrior encased in siege armor stepped in his way. Furious, Wesley held his sword in a two-handed grip and swung out. The bone-shattering impact nearly tore the blade from Wesley’s hand, but left no more than a dent in the armor.

A curse of frustration had barely escaped his lips when a sledgehammer swung out of nowhere. With a clang like the clapper striking a great bell, the hammer clubbed the warrior on the top of his helmeted head. He fell without a sound, and Liam the smith gave Wesley a raised fist of victory.

Wesley ran through the smoke, jumping the body of a fallen wolfhound. Reaching Hammersmith, he swung out with his sword, slicing the stirrup. Hammersmith slid off-balance. Seizing the moment, Wesley dragged him from the saddle.

Hammersmith coiled into a ball on the ground. His booted feet exploded in a blur of motion, catching Wesley in the chest and sending him reeling back. In one graceful motion, Hammersmith surged to his feet.

“Aye, catch your breath, my lad,” Hammersmith taunted, “for I’ll give you a fight you won’t soon forget.” Gripping his sword in both hands, he hacked at Wesley.

Wesley stumbled backward, trying to buy time to catch his breath.

“You’d run from me?” Hammersmith goaded. “What would your dear wife think of that?” Seeing the furious look on Wesley’s face, he drove the insult deeper. “Aye, we all had her on her dying breath, my friend, and a sorry lay she was by then!”

Wesley felt something inside him snap. He no longer cared that he could hardly breathe, that his sword hilt slipped like a channel trout in his sweaty grip. He no longer cared whether he lived or died. But first, he intended to kill.

The Roundhead commander’s well-aimed blade hissed through the air toward Wesley’s head.

Wesley ducked and returned the strike. Irish curses streamed from him as if he had been born speaking the tongue.

Hammersmith fought quietly, straitlaced and unimaginative, in the manner of Cromwell’s army. He emitted no soul-deep calls of triumph or despair, gave no heartening battle cries, invoked neither saint nor monarch.

In a deadly calm corner of his mind, Wesley pitied him. Hammersmith had never known true passion, while Wesley had learned to commit his whole heart and soul—and soon his life—to a cause. Caitlin had given him that. In return, he would give her memory the death of Titus Hammersmith.

Wesley brought his sword up and out to meet a new strike. The impact reverberated numbingly up his arm. He heard a metallic clatter. His sword felt strangely light.

Hammersmith had broken it in two.

“Yield, Hawkins,” Hammersmith ordered. “Yield, and pray I remember you’re still an Englishman.”

“Call a retreat,” Wesley countered, surprising himself with the clear strength of his own voice. “Retreat, and beg God you die an easy death.”

Hammersmith said no more, but came on with rhythmic swings of his sword, a reaper felling a bloody harvest with his scythe. Wesley fended off blows with the stub of his sword. Hammersmith backed him step by step to the wall. Wesley’s circle of awareness tightened until he saw only the gleaming blade swinging like a pendulum, its razor edge coming closer and closer, kissing his heart with death.

“Oh, Jesus,” he wheezed through his teeth. “God have mercy on my soul.” Wesley ducked beneath a whizzing blow and felt the cool wind on his neck. He waited for the bright light of oblivion to close over him.

But he remained alone in this world to face the thrusts of his enemy’s sword.

Hammersmith lunged. Wesley twisted to one side. The blade ripped through his tunic, through the leather of his cuirass.

Hot pain seared his chest. Jumping backward up two steps toward the walk, he prayed for the light, the pulse of mystic power that would receive his agony. Only a faint glimmer penetrated the urgency of the moment.

The English blade slashed out. Wesley backed up three more steps. Four. Five. The soothing light retreated to a pinpoint.

“Not now, for Christ’s sake! Not now!” Wesley eluded blow after blow, his lungs aching with exertion.

“My God,” Wesley begged, “who—what
are
you?”

I am you.
A last flicker, and the light vanished. Forever. The finality of it stung like a small, secret death in his soul.

“No! Come back, I—”

“By God, you’re a madman!” Hammersmith pressed on, stronger than ever, closing in for the kill.

Wesley reached the wall walk. He could hear the roar and crash and hiss of the sea far below the cliffs. The stiff wind buffeted his back.

Below, the yard rang with clanging weapons and screaming horses and bellowing men. The Irish battle cries had dissolved into mindless bellows of pain.

“Do you hear that?” Hammersmith demanded. “They’re dying! Yield, and I’ll consider being merciful.”

“You really don’t understand, do you, Titus?” With new fervor, plumbed from some inner well of strength, Wesley spoke through his teeth. “To an Irishman, death in battle is a greater mercy than surrendering to scum like you.”

Hammersmith’s sword made a clean arc toward Wesley’s neck. The blade slammed against his gorget. The force of the blow nearly choked him. The pain rang through his neck, his head, his vitals.

The white light did not come to take it away. At last Wesley understood why the gentle priest inside him had left. It was time for them both to die.

He did not know why he bothered to ward off still more blows with his broken sword. He did not know why he bothered to duck and twist and feint from side to side.

All was lost. Caitlin. Laura. And now Clonmuir.

Hammersmith’s sword struck the wall. A flurry of sparks briefly lit the air, illuminating his adversary’s face. And in that face Wesley saw the destruction of Ireland.

He must not die alone. A few more steps, and they would reach Traitor’s Leap, the sheer drop to the sea. Together, he and Hammersmith would plunge into eternity.

Out of the corner of his eye, Wesley spotted movement. Ducking beneath a blow, he thrust upward with his half blade. Too short. The jagged end snagged in Hammersmith’s blousy trousers.

Shadows rippled across the yard. A keening wind tore the shroud of clouds from the rising moon.

At that precise moment Wesley spied, in silvery splendor, a silk-veiled warrior on a magnificent black stallion, sailing through the main gate.

Good God, had he died and gone to heaven already?

Hammersmith made a driving thrust. Wesley moved aside. Instinct, not thought, directed his movements now.

For his heart, his mind, and his soul were focused entirely on the lithe warrior.

On Caitlin.

She was a rainbow cleaving through a sky of boiling clouds, a vision of light in the darkness of his soul. She was a miracle. Wesley glowed inside like a pilgrim whose faith had been restored. He dared not question what marvel had brought her here with a small army at her back. He knew only that he was not alone. All was not lost.

Renewed power surged like wildfire through him. “You sorry son of a bitch,” he said to Titus.