The Maiden of Ireland

Goaded by the reminder and by the gleam in her eyes, Wesley lifted his mug and drank deeply.

The liquid shot down his gullet and exploded in his gut. A fire roared over the path the poteen had taken. Tears sizzled in his eyes. An army of leprechauns bearing torches paraded through his veins. “Barley, you say?” he rasped.

“Aye.” All innocence, Caitlin took a careful second sip. “Also pig meal, treacle and a bit of soap to give it body.”

Wesley quickly learned the art of judicious sipping. Avoiding questions, he took supper in the hall, then retired with a cup of tame ale to the hearth. The meal of stale bread and something gray and soupy he dared not inquire about cavorted with the poteen in his stomach. He thought longingly of the sumptuous suppers he had enjoyed with England’s underground Catholics and royalists. White-skinned ladies had delighted in teaching Laura her table manners. His former life had been fraught with danger, but he had known occasional comforts.

As the men spoke of an upcoming feast, Wesley expected Caitlin to withdraw to the women’s corner. But she stayed at the central hearth, staring from time to time into the glowing heart of the turf fire as if she saw something there that no one else could see. Wesley wondered what visions lurked behind those fierce, sad eyes. Someday he would ask her.

* * *

“What are you looking at, seonin?” asked Rory. He and Wesley stood in a thatch-roofed outbuilding at Clonmuir. Rory held a broken cartwheel in one hand and a vise in the other.

“Your arm,” said Wesley, eyeing the intimidating bulge of muscle beneath Rory’s tan hide. Lord, they grew men big and tough in these Irish parts. He wore a broad silver armlet engraved with Celtic knots. From elbow to shoulder ran a long, shiny scar. “How did you hurt yourself?”

Rory tried to work a stave around the wheel. The iron hoop slipped. Patiently he set it back in place. “I cut it while sharpening a plowshare.”

And my mother’s the Holy Roman Empress, thought Wesley, propping his elbow on a stone jutting from the rough wall. It was a sword cut if he’d ever seen one, and he had seen plenty, some on his own body. He must remember to ask Titus Hammersmith if he recalled wounding one of the warriors of the Fianna.

Rory Breslin was certainly big enough to make a formidable fighting man. But Wesley doubted he could be their fabled leader. Though strong as a bullock, Rory was also as simple as one of the shaggy beasts that used to graze over the hills of Ireland. He didn’t possess the guile to lead men into battle and out so successfully, time and time again.

“Why don’t you drive a nail into the stave to hold it while you secure the other end?” Wesley suggested.

Rory’s thick eyebrows lifted eloquently. “I’ll not be needing your English advice.”

“I wonder,” Wesley said carefully, “why you and the men aren’t out fishing. It appears Clonmuir could use the food.”

“Because the Sassenach burned our fleet,” Rory snapped. “Every vessel’s gone save a curragh and the leaky hooker.”

Hearing the pain in the big man’s voice, Wesley flinched. “I don’t hold with such practices.”

Rory gave a dissatisfied grunt and went back to his work.

“Why aren’t you at prayers with the rest of them?” Wesley inquired.

“You ask a lot of questions, English.”

“Very well, I’ll leave you to your chores.” Wesley stepped toward the door.

“Wait a minute. I’m supposed to be—” Rory broke off.

“Keeping an eye on me,” Wesley said with a breezy grin. “Don’t blame you a bit, my friend. Seems you’ve ample cause to distrust an Englishman.” He gazed out the doorway. Beyond the walls lay the tiny village of thatched huts clustered shoulder-to-shoulder around the church, bleached white by the wind. Behind them the land rose up, hills scored by deep clefts and clad in budding heather.

No one had invited Wesley to prayers. They assumed that he, like most Englishmen, protested the Catholic faith.

They had no priest to sing mass. He wanted to ask where the cleric had gone, but wasn’t certain they knew. Admitting he was Catholic and had studied at Douai would have wrung some sympathy from the Irish, but Wesley held silent. Something sinister was happening to the priests of Ireland; all he needed was an overzealous bounty hunter after him.

The church bell clanged with the dissonance of aged iron. A few minutes later, Caitlin MacBride and her entourage streamed up the road toward the stronghold.

The sight of her struck Wesley with a fresh bolt of yearning. His hand gripped the door frame, and his eyes devoured her. She wore a clean kirtle and apron. Her loose blouse and skirt molded a form similar to those he had heard described in the confessions of notorious skirt chasers. Suddenly he felt every minute of his three years of self-imposed celibacy.

She walked beside an exceedingly pretty girl with sleek blond hair and pale skin. He remembered her from the night before; she had been sulking in the women’s corner.

“Who is that with Caitlin?” he asked Rory.

“’Tis Magheen, Caitlin’s younger sister.”

“So there are two MacBride sisters.”

“Magheen’s not a MacBride any longer. She wed not long ago.” Rory scowled in disapproval. “She came back home because Caitlin failed to make good on the dowry.”

Wesley eyed the voluptuous younger sister, a blooming Irish rose who lacked the savage appeal of Caitlin. “What man would turn such a beauty out?”

“You’ll see.” Rory returned to his chore.

And Wesley did see, later, at the feast. People swarmed to Clonmuir from the countryside. They came on foot or crammed into carts, or by sea in pucans and curraghs—large, loud families who brayed greetings to one another and ate and drank as if the meal laid out on tables in the yard were their last—or their first in many days.

A high whistle pierced the noise. Heads turned toward the main gate. A large man on a handsome mare came clattering through, followed by two sturdy-looking retainers. He wore a long tunic woven of heather wool and studded with polished stones. His mane of black hair flowed around a face fashioned of strong, clean lines and draped with a long, braided beard.

The quintessential Irish lord, thought Wesley as the man dropped lithely to the ground, tossed his reins to a boy, and strode toward Caitlin and Magheen. He might have ridden off the tongue of a gifted bard.

Putting down his mug of ale, Wesley moved closer to the lord’s table to await the approach. Above his white beard, braided with brass bells for the occasion, Seamus MacBride’s face was florid, his eyes sparkling, and his mood blissful from drink.

Caitlin sat beside him, silent and watchful, her plate of spit-roasted beef untouched.

“Logan Rafferty!” Seamus spread his arms. “’Tis well come you are to our feast!”

Rafferty aimed a thunderous glare at Magheen. She moved closer to Caitlin and peeked demurely at him from beneath her long golden lashes.

Logan tossed back his inky hair. “And while the lot of you makes merry, Hammersmith is on the move again.”

“Hist!” said Caitlin, her amber eyes wide and fierce. In rapid Gaelic she added, “Have a care with that tongue of yours, a chara. We’ve an English visitor.”

Wesley stood with one hip propped on the table edge and an easy smile on his face. Inside, he seethed like the Atlantic in a gale. Surely this arrogant lord was the leader of the Fianna. Why else would Caitlin have been so quick to silence him? And who else would know the plans of Titus Hammersmith? For that matter, why had Hammersmith decided to go on the offensive so quickly? Damn the murdering Roundhead! Only a week ago they had agreed he would wait for a report from Wesley.

Rafferty subjected Wesley to a long perusal punctuated by flaring nostrils and glowering black eyes. “English, you say?”

“John Wesley Hawkins.” He lifted his mug. “My friends call me Wesley.”

“My inferiors call me Logan Rafferty, lord of Brocach.”

“I’ll do my best to remember that.” Wesley pulled himself to his full height. The two men stood as equals, eye to eye, each broad of shoulder and narrow of hip.

“What do you intend doing with yourself, Hawkins?” Rafferty demanded.

I’m here to take your head off, thought Wesley. Aloud, he said, “I’m for Galway tomorrow.”

Rafferty hooked his thumbs into the band of his trews. “Galway, is it?”