ROOK AND RAVEN: The Celtic Kingdom Trilogy Book One

by Julie Harvey Delcourt

  “Please tell me you put some decent brandy into that punch,” David begged Sean.

  “What do you take me for? Of course I did! Damn good French brandy at that!” Sean acted affronted and they all laughed.

  David cleared off a swath of the birthday table and swept crumbs off the chairs for them all and with a gallant gesture bade them all to sit.

  “Nice of you to bring the barouche to get us back to town my friend but now that we all have something proper to drink, why don’t you tell us what is wrong,” David looked at Sean searchingly. “You wouldn’t have been this late for a trifle and I can see something is wrong.”

  Sean took a moment to get another cup of punch having downed his first in short order.

  “Well the day started out smashingly. I have ended my relationship with Henry,” he paused as the other’s all made various sounds of concern and attempted comfort. He waved it off with feigned lightness. “It was coming for a while. I knew what he was when I got involved, an angelic faced social climber. Seems he has been climbing a bit higher than a well-heeled playwright. He has also been frequenting some clubs no one with an interest in an actual relationship would be caught dead in. So, I gave him his conge. I’m getting too old, make that mature, to play these silly games or be played for a fool. At least not for long.”

  He sat back down and leaned his head back, closing his eyes briefly. Jessy slipped her hand into his, feeling for her dear friend who, of anyone she knew, was not only ready for but deserving of true love. Life as a man who preferred other men did not hold out great hope for that, not in England, but she couldn’t help but wish. The true bad news was about to come as she could feel him steeling himself.

  ‘There was a fire and break in at the theater,” he said it stark, plain and fast.

  A chorus of exclamations and questions erupted from all three.

  ‘Wait! Wait! While we have started on the Boadicea set, we haven’t even started working on any of the scenery or effects so I find it rather baffling.

  Keegan was found knocked unconscious backstage and your dressing room had obviously been ransacked, as well as mine. This is no accident. I spent the last several hours directing clean up, repairs, and reassuring the cast and crew that the play will go on as scheduled.”

  “It isn't unheard of for rivals to commit a bit of sabotage here or there, especially when a play is already generating interest but this was different,” he paused for a long moment and no one spoke. “Keegan swears before he was knocked out he saw a figure in a black robe with “a face as white as death and lips blue as if inked”, his words not mine. Seems a bit melodramatic even for the world of theater does it not?”

  David felt his spine crawl with a touch cold as ice. The description, which the others did not seem to be taking too seriously, sounded too close to how Sebastian had described the priests of the Gooar Odin. Keegan may have been cracked on the head, but he wasn’t known to be an imaginative man. One of the lay brother soldiers possibly? But what the bloody hell could their purpose be in disrupting Sean’s production or searching Jessy and Sean’s rooms? None of them had anything to do with what Sebastian was involved in, but then maybe that was the connection. Sebastian had been to the theater, had been to Jessy’s dressing room. Did it mean the Gooar was onto Sebastian after all?

  As David sat silently worrying over in his head the implications he let the ebb and flow of the conversation pass him by. He caught a word here and there and it seemed the others were of a mind that the attack was the work of a rival theater. He did notice Maureen chewing her lower lip and staring off into space a few times. They would both keep their council. Whatever she was feeling, or possibly seeing, she would reveal when she thought it best. He could say nothing without first warning Sebastian of this newest development. He had no idea where the man was or even when he would see him. When they got back to town he would have a talk with Mick about a closer watch on Jessy and making the house as secure as possible.

  “Trystan! Come here darling!” Jessy called. Being no one’s fool, Trystan knew the call from his mother meant the night was over for him and, with slumped shoulders and a glum face, put his jar of fireflies on the table and came to his mother’s seat. Jessy ruffled his dark hair, which she noticed was due for a trim, and thought for the thousandth time how like Sebastian he was at the same age. Thanks to Maureen’s rearing he had escaped the more extremes of temperament and general moodiness from which Sebastian had suffered. Trystan’s sweetness was not buried as deeply as his father’s had been.

  It would take only a single look from any who had ever seen Sebastian to know this child was his. The two shared identical eyes, chin and that stubborn lock of black hair falling across their foreheads in exactly the same way. She drew his warmth in and held him in her arms until she felt his own fold about her. If she had not had this child, maybe there would have been a chance, slim she admitted, that she could have moved on. Monday, and any other day she could get free, Sebastian was before her in the form of the child she loved. It had kept her heart and thoughts firmly tethered to Sebastian even when she had boiled with hate and pain.

  She could feel the moment his young body gave up the battle against exhaustion and he suddenly felt as if all the stuffing left him. He was pliant and half asleep in her arms before five minutes had passed. She smiled over his head at Maureen who held an equally sleepy Kate in her own lap and received a smile in return. Trystan and Kate had been born only four days apart and were the dark children of the family. Jokingly they were called ‘the changelings.’ The Mallory children had varying shades of fair and light brown hair, all except Kate. She had her grandmother Powers dark hair; the Powers Witch she had been called behind people’s hands.

  Neither woman had been due to deliver but the news of both men’s deaths at Waterloo had been such a wrenching shock Maureen had gone into labor. Jessamy and Sean had feared for Maureen’s life. She had loved Robert so passionately, so completely it was if her soul left her body with the loss. She had given up during a difficult labor, crying out she didn’t want to live, and so Sean had gathered the children and taken them into the birthing chamber.

  The children were just babies clinging to each other, their uncle and new aunt. Sean made Maureen look at each of them. He had harangued her in a way that had shown Jessy for the first time the steel and the huge heart that was Sean Powers. He was wrecked by the loss of his beloved little brother and he would be damned if he was going to lose Maureen too. He would not allow her to give up and the children be left orphans. Maureen had looked at her children’s terrified and tear stained faces as her brother shouted at her in a full Irish rant and found the will to live.

  Yes, these two dark children were a special legacy and a light in their lives that she and Maureen shared a deep bond over. These children, so close in age and different in temperament from the more rambunctious of the Mallory children, were often to be found together. They were fast friends and it only deepened the connection two mother’s had forged in sorrow, in loss and in joy. Holding them here together on their laps in the darkness the women didn’t need to speak, they knew each thought of the fathers that had sired them.

  Sean took his cue and rounded up the older, not quite so tired or acquiescent children, herding them toward the house, nightclothes and bed. He came back to carry his niece up who was sound asleep with mouth slightly open, a rosebud in her fair face. Heavy as he now was, Jessy hefted Trystan in her own arms, his long legs dangling. She couldn’t get over how fast he was growing. Time moved too quickly. She carefully maneuvered him into his own bed in the room he shared with Jem. He only stirred when she was tucking him into his night shirt and pulling up the blanket.

  “Mama,’ he whispered drowsily, “Love you.”

  “Love you too darling, sleep tight and don’t let Jem bite,” it was an old tease.

  “Happy birthday Mama,” he murmured as long dark lashes fluttered down and he snuggled into the warmth of his bed. Jessy brushed her
hand one more time over the dark hair before placing a gentle kiss on the hand, tucked as always, against his cheek. God, she hated leaving. Mondays began with such joy and ended with such a tight pain around her heart. This Monday the pain was even worse.

  “Papa will be here soon,” said a sleepy but assured voice from deep in the covers.

  Jessy whirled about in shock, but she saw her son was already fast asleep and she would not wake him. Why had he said that? Maureen had hinted many a time that there were signs at his birth. She saw, every now and then, something in his eyes to suggest that, like Michael, he could see and sense what others could not. Tonight she didn’t want to think about him being gifted or out of the ordinary. She just wanted him to be a small boy asleep and safe in his familiar bed. Everything seemed to be happening too quickly, too many changes at once and she just didn’t want to think about her son being gifted right now. That would have to be for another day when she up to thinking about it.

  She found Sean sitting on their favorite bench under the pear tree near the table, plumped with comfortable cushions and instead of another cup of punch, a snifter of brandy waiting for her.

  He toasted her as she sat down and the good crystal he had raided from

  Margaret’s dining room made a lovely chime.

  “Where are David and Maureen?” Jessy asked as she sipped.

  “Oh, giving us a few moments,” Sean informed her lightly. “You haven’t opened your present from me yet.”

  She went to get up but he pressed her back to the bench gently and yet firmly. She looked at him questioningly in the lantern light and shadows. The planes and angles of his face made lovely work of the flickering lantern light. Henry, she thought, was an idiot. Even without factoring in his loving spirit and brilliant talent, Sean Powers was a man of extraordinary male beauty and charm. He turned slightly toward her, his eyes intent on hers as he took her hands in hands.

  “Do you ever think of the day we met? I know we never talk of it, but I wonder,” he said softly.

  Jessy studied the face she had grown so familiar with, come to love so dearly. Sean was a lean and handsome man, with usually laughing, rather dreamy eyes and a perfectly cut head of pure golden hair. Despite most being aware of his tastes, the ladies still swooned over him. The gloomy, rainy day she had first met him she had thought an angel was inviting her into a carriage. He had gleamed like a candle on a dark day. She had not been in her right mind that afternoon. She hadn’t eaten in two days, was light headed, pregnant and looking down from Putney Bridge thinking seriously of jumping. He was an angel, just not the kind they taught children about in church.

  “I never think of that day at all. Well, expect when I step onto the stage, or see that all Tim’s burns marks have healed, or when Mick greets my visitors like he’d rather toss then out then let them in, or when it rains, or I cross the river, or,” and here she pressed her hand to his cheek looking into his eyes, “I tuck my son into bed. So, you see I never think of that day at all,” she smiled in the growing dark. “With David away with the army, I had nowhere and no one to turn to, you saved me in so many ways.”

  “Have I ever told you what I saw that day? Of course I have, but I will tell you again. I saw a girl about to throw herself off a bridge in the rain, a girl who looked like a drowned princess in a fairy tale, all tangled red hair and a neck like a swan. This girl spoke to me without a word or even seeing I was there.”

  ‘What did she say? This drowned princess in the rain?”

  “She said ‘this is what you were born to do, to save me, save me Sean Powers’ and so I told the driver to stop, opened the door and asked you in. I thought you would take more persuading and I was quite prepared to get my new jacket soaked to haul you inside but, you came like a lamb.”

  “I’ve never been sure why I did to be honest. Mother’s always tell their daughters to not get into coaches with strange men but I just knew the moment I saw you in the carriage it was the right thing to do. You looked like a golden angel holding out a hand.”

  “No one has ever accused me of being an angel except you,” he mused.

  “I would be dead, Trystan would have never been, I would never have known Michael, I wouldn’t have the good, truly good life I have and can give others without you, so if I want to call you an angel I shall,” she said emphatically.

  “Don’t you dare tell me thank you again after all these years. You’ve helped make me rich and infamous so we are quite even. Well,” he got up and moved to the table, “before it all changes and the Earl of Redsayle comes to interrupt the idyll we have built here, I just wanted to tell you that day was one of the most important in my life. I will stop being so serious now and tell you it is time to open your presents. Let’s start with this larger one shall we?”

  He handed her a simply wrapped brown paper and twine covered package with a great flourish even going down onto one knee. It made her laugh for Sean was notorious for always insisting on wrapping presents himself and hadn’t a clue how to go about it. They were always a hideous disaster. He had used about three times the required paper and Sean had to get a knife from the table as none of the twine would unknot.

  She couldn’t hide her curiosity and expectations. Sean’s presents were always imaginative and not always what other people would even consider presents, but always managed to make her smile, laugh or cry when needed most. She tore into the packing like an eager child and he smiled indulgently.

  She gasped when she saw what lay inside the slim box she opened.

  ‘Sean!! It can’t be real can it??” she nearly squealed. For resting in a velvet lined box was a deceptively simple and delicate gold circlet entwined with what looked like Celtic knot work. The center piece, which would rest above the brow was the graceful arched head of a horse. If anyone had tried to tell her a circlet with a horse’s head for the center piece could be commanding yet feminine she would have laughed. But there it was held in her hands. It was stunning.

  Sean reached into the box lifting the crown, for it could be nothing else, from the box and placed it upon her head. The arching neck of the horse reached high up her brow, proudly looking out from eyes set with blue stones that picked up the blue enamel along the knot work of the circlet. The mane parted from both sides of the neck to sweep into the sides of the circlet above her ears. Upon the horse’s forehead a small Circle of Light was wrought and she recognized the symbol from her mother’s books on Celtica she had read as a child.

  She had the strangest sensation that the circlet not only had shifted slightly to form to her head but she felt as if light was emanating from the crown and down into her body. The feeling was very strange and mildly alarming. She looked up to see that Sean, and David who now stood behind him, had very strange looks upon their faces. It made her nervous and bit frightened the way they looked as if they had never seen her before. Their faces looked frozen and eyes wide in the gloom. She felt she had to say something to lighten the strangeness.

  “If I am meant to wear this as Boadicea Sean you were robbed. Did someone tell you this is Iceni? It’s from Celtica. A lovely gift, an amazingly, frightfully expensive gift but you must have meant it for the play of course, so now I feel bad to tell you it won’t work. You did only mean me to borrow this for the play did you not?”

  “N-no,” Sean’s voice came out rather hoarse. “I meant you to keep it. I didn’t buy it. I’ve had it for years but I did think it would be perfect for the play. Michael told me I would know when to give it to you. Now seemed the right time.”

  “Michael!! Where in the world would Michael get something like this and why would he have you hold onto it all these years?”

  “Mick said the night before Waterloo a gypsy woman came to their tent selling trinkets and such. You know how they work, she saw the new ring on his finger, figured he had a new wife and told him some far-fetched and lovely bit of nonsense about how this was meant to be yours and being Michael he bought it. Mick said she practically gave i
t away for naught and just smiled and left. That night Michael had a dream that seemed to upset him. He then gave the circlet to Mick with instructions to I got it. You know the rest.”

  She did know the rest. Michael had died in Mick’s arms the next day and with his last moments had made Mick promise three things, to tell Jessy to keep Trystan safe, keep him a secret and made Mick promise to look after the two of them with his life. It had taken two years before Mick would admit to her that Michael had been shot in the back and not from the enemy front. Mick had unfortunately, in a fit of rage, nearly decapitated the man who had shot Michael and so the mystery had remained; did Michael somehow have an enemy who had not only killed him but would wish his wife and child harm?

  All they could do was abide by his wishes blindly.

  The more years that had gone by the less likely it had seemed the mystery of who had killed Michael (and why) would be solved. Mick and David had tried to identify the killer but he had nothing on him to give a clue to his identity. They could find no one to admit to recognizing or ever having seen him before. In the rush of men who had enlisted to go to Belgium and fight the final battle against Napoleon it was not really a surprise he would be a stranger in his own regiment. Why he killed a man clearly within his own lines was the greater question.

  With Michael’s body brought home and Trystan safely born, the decision to abide by Michael’s last wishes was made. Jessy knew she couldn’t raise

  Trystan on the lie that Michael Powers was his father, Mick was determined to follow his childhood friend and officer’s wishes, and the final word was Maureen’s. She had made up her mind to return to England and raise the children at Mallory’s End, her husband’s home. She convinced Jessy that if she would take up Sean’s offer to go to work at the theater in London, she would raise Trystan with her own children. He and Kate were so close in age and looked so alike it was easy enough to pass them off as twins, even barring the dissimilar eye color.