But Cian had the distinct feeling that if Tiernan thought he could treat Shive as he had treated all of his other temporary diversions, or indeed he had treated the rather persistent Orla O’Rourke, he was in for a big surprise.
Cian spent the first part of day with Shive as she worked at her loom industriously, discussing every subject under the sun, music, poetry, their mutual acquaintances, especially Ruairi and her cousins, and indirectly, Tiernan. He found her a worthy bride for his brother in every way. He had no doubt that given time, and the opportunity, she would prove a valuable asset to the O’Hara clan.
In order to make her feel more welcome, Cian offered to take Shive on a tour of the castle after their midday meal.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“No, of course not. I’m only surprised that Tiernan hasn’t shown you around himself before now.”
“Well, I have been very ill,” Shive explained in order to excuse her husband’s apparently remiss behaviour. “In any case, I was reluctant to suggest it. I thought it might seem a bit too, well, greedy, to ask to see my new home.”
“Not at all. The sooner you settle in, the better. I don’t mind telling you, this place certainly could use a feminine touch. There was only ever one girl in our family, Claire, who’s now a nun over at Killour. She’s about five years older than Tiernan. My mother had several miscarriages in between, you see, and between Tiernan and Lasaran, and Lasaran and myself. She died the year after I was born. She always said a man’s wealth was his sons, apparently,” Cian sighed, his face clouding over at the memory of his dead mother.
"So Tiernan raised me, with some help from Claire, although one always got the feeling her eyes were more focused on the next world than this.” Cian smiled gently.
“I’m sorry. I too lost my mother at an early age. She died when I was born. Father always blamed me.”
“That's a shame.” Cian shook his head, before adding more brightly, “Well, what about that tour?”
“I’ll just go put on some other clothes. These skirts are a bit long and awkward if I’m to be going up and down the ladders.”
“Quite right. I’ll wait here in your charming little workroom, and then afterwards, if you’d like, I can help you unpack some of your things.”
Shive frowned. “They’re mainly household items, tapestries, linens and suchlike, so I’m not sure what I should do with them.”
Cian grinned as he knelt in front of a chest and began to remove its contents carefully while he waited for his new sister-in-law to make herself ready. “I think you’ll have plenty of ideas once you’ve seen this old place.”
Once outside the door, Mahon and Ernin appeared nearby.
“Where are you going, Shive?” Mahon asked in a seemingly casual tone.
“Cian was just about to give me a tour of the castle. Would you like to come?”
“I’d love to.” Ernin smiled, and proceeded to trail along after Shive everywhere, with his brother right by his side.
Once the tour began, Shive could see what Cian meant about Castlegarren needing a woman’s touch. The largest part of Tiernan’s fighting force were housed in the castle in some very cramped and rather dirty conditions.
The castle was a four-story rectangular structure lined with ramparts on the second story, and four sets of ladders, one on either side of the entrance hall, which could be pulled up easily in case of attack, and two on either side leading up from the great hall to the upper floors.
Each of the upper two storys had eight rooms for the men, with about twenty men sharing quarters. Between each pair of rooms was a reinforced dividing wall, so that even if one part of the castle fell, all four sections on each floor would have to be taken.
Each room had a central fireplace for warmth, and coal braziers in the corners. There was also a privy and linen press in each, but the beds were old, the rushes musty-smelling, and the sheets were all filthy. Dirty linen lay strewn everywhere, and the privies stank to high heaven.
“Good Lord, surely the men don’t want to live like this?” Shive exclaimed in horror.
Cian shrugged. “The servants have so much to do to feed the men as it is.”
“Then they should take it in turns doing the chores, two men doing it for a week and then handing over to another two men. They should have warm water to wash, and clean sheets and shirts. The privy is appalling!”
Some of the men overheard her remarks and Irial, the old sergeant at arms, remarked, “But no one would be wiling to haul the hot water all the way up all those ladders.”
Shive glanced around, and saw a tiny casement in the wall. “Use the longest rope you can find, and a bucket then. Haul it up through the window, and get rid of your slops the same way.”
The men discussed this novel idea amongst themselves for a few minutes, and agreed to try. Irial drew up a roster of names, with the oldest and youngest men being given more fit partners to help.
“The main thing is that everyone takes the responsibility. As for sheets, we can strip those beds, and get started on some washing now. I have plenty of linens downstairs, and there are more in the chests in Tiernan’s chamber. Now all we need is lots of soap and hot water.”
Shive hastily removed her warm sheepskin jerkin, and in no time the beds were stripped. The mountain of grey linen disappeared below into the kitchens. She went downstairs with Cian to fetch clean sheets, while some of the men went down to the stable to get clean straw for the beds themselves, and hurled the old bedding out of the window onto the midden below. Then each man helped make their own beds on the top floor, according to Shive’s instructions.
Cian said nothing, merely lifted a hand to help whenever it was required. He marvelled at what a whirlwind his new sister-in-law could be when she set her mind to a task.
“That’s the last of the sheets for now. Once those other ones are washed and dried, we can do the same for the downstairs living quarters,” Shive told Irial when he had helped make the last of the beds.
“Well, we can at least get the men started on sweeping and scrubbing out the privies, and washing all that linen downstairs,” he said.
Shive took some of the men downstairs to the kitchens to help lay out the wash tubs and draw all the water to be boiled.
Every available pot and pan was set on the massive kitchen fires. While they waited for the water to boil, Shive gave the men instructions on how to scrub the sheets and shirts. There was a great deal of horseplay amongst the soap suds, and Shive herself was doused more than once. Cian noted how well she took her drenching, laughing heartily and even shooting back a slippery bar of soap by aiming it at her mock foe and squeezing.
When Shive was satisfied that they could all get along fine without her in the kitchens, she returned to her tour, taking in the sixteen plain chambers on the second floor, including her own.
“Not that I had much better at Rathnamagh or Skeard, but it certainly is bare in here,” Shive observed, running her hands along the one chest and single chair. She went into the more attractive chamber which Tiernan used, but it too wasn't exactly luxuious for a man of his wealth. She spotted the plain wooden board, once a door, no doubt, which served as his writing desk, and shook her head.
“There are no tapestries on the wall, or rugs on the floor even,” she marvelled.
“My room isn’t much better, nor is Lasaran’s, or the little workroom you’ve been given,” Cian said in an apologetic tone.
“Well, we’ll see how far my current supply of wall hangings and rugs goes, and we'll spread out the few pieces of furniture I brought with me.”
“By rights they should go in your room,” Cian asserted.
“I have a chest, a good bedstead, and a couple of tables. What more could I need?”
Shive began to unpack the rest of her things, and soon she and Cian were inserting hooks into the walls for the hangings with Irial’s help.
The older man did not go up and down on the chairs, but told them whether
or not they had got the tapestries straight, and enthusiastically lent a hand moving the chests, tables and chairs Shive had sent over from Skeard. She had learned how to make the pieces herself from the local carpenter many years before.
Almost all the rooms on the floor received a small but cheerful addition. Shive paid special attention to Tiernan’s room, hanging her two best tapestries there, and putting up hooks for a third. She planned to put the one she was currently working on, the hart and the harp, in his room as well.
Some of the other men who had stayed behind during the hunt offered to help with the household chores, so Shive suggested they look at the great hall with a view to giving it a thorough cleaning and putting down new rush matting on the floor.
Shive scrubbed at the smoke-blackened horn in the windows herself, causing Irial and Cian to protest more than once that she shouldn’t be climbing about when there were others willing to do the job for her.
“I can do it myself, thank you!” Shive waved them away as they continued to scrub.
Irial and Cian exchanged glances. Either she was the best actress they had ever seen, or she was truly a hardworking, sensible, practical chatelaine such as they had never known before at the castle.
Mairead came up with a few old tapestries which had been taken down years ago, and after a vigorous beating outside in the open air, they were fit to be re-hung.
“I think this room is warmer already,” Cian remarked as Shive bent to stoke up the fire at the far end of the hall behind Tiernan’s usual chair.
“Good, I’m glad.” She moved to stoke up the second fire in the hearth on the adjacent wall.
The last few rooms on that floor were small reception rooms, and again, Shive and her army of cleaners had the place looking spotless in next to no time.
“I would never have believed you could completely transform a place in only one day,” Cian admired, “but you certainly have, Shive.”
“Not just me, all my wonderful helpers,” Shive said with a flourish of her hand to the squad of men who worked alongside of her.
“Now the only thing to do is look down in the kitchen at the storerooms, and see if we can’t do something about the food around here. Not that it’s bad, it is just a bit too salty for my tastes, and not savory enough. And the bread is very coarse, even the white we had this morning,” Shive opined.
Many of the men grunted their assent.
Shive investigated the flour barrels, and had the miller begin to re-grind two of the barrels with some of the men’s help.
She looked at the spices in the larder, and brought down what she had brought with her from Skeard. The venison stew was transformed with only a few sprinkles from each vial, and soon the men, overwhelmed by the glorious aromas, began to ask when they were going to get their dinner.
“As soon as you hang up all that wash!”
Shive smiled as she watched the men scurry to begin wringing out the sheets and shirts as she had shown them. They hung them on the makeshift lines one of the men had rigged up in the roof space of the kitchen and scullery.
Shive surveyed the barrels, and planned out some menus for the rest of the week which made the most of what there was. The food would also offer the men a bit of variety from the same old venison stew that they seemed to have with alarming regularity.
“Pheasant, woodcock, grouse, they’re all here. It’s just a case of knowing how to prepare them,” Shive advised the cooks, and spent the rest of the day in consultation with them about how things could be improved with very little effort or expense.
It was a very jolly company that sat down to dinner that night, chatting amiably about all they had learnt and accomplished together. Shive had earned the unstinting admiration of many, particularly Irial, who despite his reservations about a female swaggering around in breeches, was happy to say that Tiernan had not married some uppity little miss, but a real woman.
But the mood changed considerably later that evening when Tiernan arrived home and shouted for a bath in the kitchen after his day’s exertions, and found the entire row of tubs taken up with shirts soaking, and the kitchen and scullery filled with dripping laundry.
Shive offered to help remove the things and fetch him a change of clothes, but Tiernan dismissed her curtly by saying it was unseemly for his wife to ever be in the kitchen in the first place. And especially not when all the other men were about to have their baths as well.
Fortunately, all of the men remained silent about all of the washing and cooking having been Shive’s idea. She disappeared up the stairs quickly to avoid his penetrating stare.
Even when he was finished with his ablutions, Tiernan did not seem to notice any of the changes she had made in the castle. Nor did he pay any particular attention to the savory food which Shive had served him with her own two hands. Even worse than his lack of praise for all her efforts, however, was the fact that while Tiernan circulated all around the hall regaling everyone with tales of their hunting feats that day, he almost seemed to go out of his way to avoid Shive.
Cian could read Shive’s hurt expression as she sat at the long table that night at supper picking at her food listlessly. He patted his new sister-in-law on the shoulder.
“I can see how despondent you look, Shive, and can guess why. Tiernan can be a very difficult person at times, especially around women. He doesn’t mean to cause you hurt. It would probably never even occur to him that he had done so. He’s just not used to the changes in his life that you have brought him yet, that’s all. Give him some time. It will all be fine between you two, I’m sure.”
Shive stared at Cian in silence for a few moments, weighing up his words, and the kindness which was obviously intended. “Thank you for those crumbs of comfort, Cian, but I wonder if you’re right. I fear I may have sorely disappointed him.”
“Disappointed him? In what way?”
“I'm so young and well, inexperienced compared to all the other women he's known. He's made no secret of the fact that he's had other lovers before me,” Shive added when Cian’s eyebrows raised in surprise.
“I see. So you think you have to compete with those other women in his life, even though I can tell you for certain that they didn’t mean anything to him?” the earnest young man said quietly.
“It's easy for you to say that, Cian. But everyone knows how disappointed he was when Grainne Maguire ran off with Muireadach O’Rourke. He's bound to make unfavourable comparisons. I’m sure he has every reason to.”
“My dear, you’re young, true, but you managed your uncle’s household very well for many years. In terms of intelligence and beauty, I tell you truly I have never met anyone your equal. Certainly not Grainne Maguire.” Cian laughed, recalling privately the vain and haughty young blonde Tiernan had been entangled with briefly.
Shive blushed to the roots of her hair. “But those aren't the only attributes a man looks for in a companion, now are they? I’m sure I’m not as beautiful as the other women Tiernan has, well, courted. I say this to you because I believe I can trust you, and you know your brother well. I went into this marriage with my eyes open, desirous of making Tiernan happy. I do have a basic understanding of things between men and women, well, bulls and cows, rams and sheep, if you know what I mean. But I have no, well, older female to advise me on, er, matrimonial matters.” Shive blushed again. “I fear I may have sorely disappointed him last night.”
“You mean, you and Tiernan--”
“Sush, not so loud. He’ll hear you!” Shive flushed guiltily, putting a hand on Cian’s arm to silence him when she caught Tiernan staring at the two of them together.
“Sorry, Shive,” Cian apologized, suddenly beginning to get the full picture, and finding the whole thing rather amusing. This little slip of a girl had actually managed to discomfit his bold and brazen elder brother.
“It’s just that well, he tried to pull away, and left me immediately after. I think he may have been displeased,” she revealed in a whisper.
Cian stared back at Shive’s candid gaze, and paused for thought before commenting on what she had just confided in him. “Not necessarily, Shive. He might have been worried about other things that had happened during the day, or, more likely, Tiernan may have had been worried about the fact that it was obviously your first time, and that he might have hurt you.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. But then he rushed away, as though he were upset or annoyed.”
“Again, it need not have been because of anything you did or didn’t do, Shive. Speaking from personal experience, at least when I was younger, sometimes kissing, and well, holding each other in bed can seem, er, too intimate somehow. He is not used to having a woman around all the time, day and night. He may be feeling a little trapped right now. ‘Tis only natural with you being so newly married. It will wear off in time, I'm sure,” Cian advised, though he was anything but certain what was going on in Tiernan’s mind.
The Hart and the Harp Page 11
