A woman. Colton resisted the urge to slap the side of his head and wilt from embarrassment. A girl had just scared him speechless! A bashful one, too, by the looks of her, a shy creature who had undoubtedly scurried into hiding as they approached.
Struck by the realization that his curiosity had to be making the girl uncomfortable, he abruptly lowered his gaze. Oswald would think it great sport to entice the maiden out of her hiding place, but Oswald also found it sporting to toss kittens into the air to see if they’d land on their feet. This girl had probably heard of their arrival at Athlone, and might be terrified…or wise.
He looked toward the reeds again, afraid she might have moved away, but the emerald eyes waited there still, as wide and round as his own had been a moment before. He nodded in an unspoken promise of discretion, then pulled the hunks of cheese from his saddle. “Eat quickly, will you, Oswald?” he called in English, hoping the girl would understand. “The hour grows late, and I want to reach Athlone in time for a proper dinner.”
He glanced toward the reeds once again as he led his horse out of the water, but the girl with the green eyes had disappeared.
Cahira thought her blood would freeze when the knight’s eyes met hers. Her temper, which had boiled hot at the casual, proprietary way the knights lounged upon her father’s riverbank, chilled in the instant his dark eyes met hers. Her heart skipped a beat as they stared at each other, and the scalp of her head tingled at the thought that momentarily he would be hauling her out of the water.
But his face had tightened with fear, and for a moment she wondered if he had seen some truly terrifying thing behind her—a bear, perhaps? Then one moment moved seamlessly into the next, the fear faded from his face, and still they remained in their places, frozen like statues. An array of emotions flitted over his handsome face—alarm, distress, and curiosity—then he lowered his eyes to his saddle. Cahira was tempted to catch her breath and duck under the water, but a blush burned his cheekbones.
The blush spoke volumes. He knew! He had surmised she was a woman, and he knew why she was hiding. Indeed, what man would not?
But the blush also spoke of shame, which implied decency, which meant that this man, surely one among hundreds, would not reveal her hiding place. The next moments confirmed her supposition, for the knight merely led his horse out of the water and told the other—in careful English—to hurry and eat. And before Cahira could have murmured an Our Father, the two Norman knights had mounted and ridden away.
She stared after them as she pulled her heavy garments out of the water and made her way to shore. She hadn’t understood a word of the knights’ conversation in French, but she had caught Richard’s name several times. And the other man’s arrogant, self-assured attitude needed no translation.
Behind her, Sorcha’s teeth were chattering. “Sure, and don’t I know we were about to die? Saints preserve us, but God was good! We could have been dragged up from the water and kidnapped, leaving your poor father with no choice but to go to war to redeem us!”
Cahira slipped in the mud and nearly fell, then regained her footing and slogged up the bank. Once she reached the top, she dropped the heavy hem of her gown and followed the winding trail of the river with her eyes. She could see the two riders, each leaning back in the saddle, the foolish one making wide gestures toward the river on one hand, the trees on the other.
The fool was probably talking about what Richard would do with the land when he owned it. But as long as she lived, Richard would not possess a single corner of Connacht.
“What strange men! I was so frightened!” Sorcha was sobbing in earnest now, her fears pouring out in a flood of tears. “Sure, didn’t I tell you we shouldn’t be wanting to see Normans? And didn’t I say we shouldn’t be leaving the house without a guard? Your father will be in a desperate bad humor to hear of this. He will rant and rave and storm about—”
“Then don’t tell him.” The figures of the two knights blended into the woods and disappeared. All Cahira could see now was the winding length of the Shannon.
She turned to her maid and fixed her in a steely gaze. “We were splashing in the water, and we got wet. That is the truth, and it’s as much as my father needs to know.”
“But the Normans! They are evil!”
“You don’t know that. You couldn’t understand them any more than I could. And while they might be arrogant and wear buckets on their heads, they committed no evil in our sight.” Her thoughts turned toward the dark-eyed knight who had discovered her. He was not evil; she’d stake her life on it.
Sorcha stopped weeping and rubbed her arms.
“They weren’t both arrogant.” Cahira turned toward the woods to look for her cloak. “One was—well, he seemed a lovely man.”
Sorcha squeaked in surprise. “Lovely?”
Cahira turned back to her maid. “He saw me, Sorcha. He could have found us both, but he said nothing.”
Sorcha merely stared, tongue-tied, as Cahira reached out and took her arm. “We’ll walk back slowly, so the sun will dry us a bit,” she whispered, squeezing the girl’s wrist. “And as we walk, we’ll pray that God will bless the Normans’ visit to Connacht with peace and safety. My father will not trouble Richard. So as long as Richard does not trouble my father, all will be well.”
The girls found their cloaks and used them to dry off as best they could, then linked arms and began to walk along the trail to Rathcroghan. Cahira lowered her lids and kept her gaze on the ground, not wanting to talk. Sorcha took the hint and followed quietly, the silence broken only by the sound of her occasional sniffle.
They had just reached the first hedgerows when a hoarse whisper broke the silence. “By all the saints, have you any idea what worry you’ve caused me today, imp?”
Murchadh stepped out from behind a tree, his hands on his hips and his countenance as troubled as a stormy sky. “Your mother has been frantic with worrying for half the day, and your father gone to his knees in the chapel. And I’ve been tearing up the fields looking for you—”
“And now you’ve found me.” Cahira threw her arm around Sorcha’s shoulder and gave Murchadh her sweetest smile. “We went for a walk to the river, that’s all.”
“And why would you be as wet as drowned rats?”
“We splashed about. ’Twas terrible hot in the sun.” Cahira released her trembling maid and stepped closer to Murchadh. “At least that’s what we’ll tell Father. ’Tis a reasonable story, don’t you think?”
Murchadh sighed, then rubbed the back of his neck as though it ached under the strain of guardianship. “Tell me the real story, lass, and let me decide what needs telling to the king. Were you really at the river?”
She tipped her head back and looked at him. She had to tell Murchadh the truth. It was part of their pact—he taught her, guided her, and indulged her in return for nothing but honesty. Long ago he had declared that keeping track of her was challenge enough for one man; he couldn’t be expected to weigh truth from lies as well. So she was honest with him about her escapades, and Murchadh never told her father more than was absolutely necessary.
She looked him straight in the eye and gave him a clean answer: “Yes. We went to the river.”
“By heaven above, why?”
“Because Rian said he saw Normans there.”
Murchadh had been irritated before; now a wave of red-hot anger flooded his face. “You went to see Normans? What kind of eejit have we raised?”
“I’m not an eejit, and I was careful. They didn’t—” She was about to say see me, but that wouldn’t be exactly true, and she had never lied to Murchadh.
The red in his face faded to a dull pink, and Cahira knew that duty wrestled with pride and curiosity behind his mask of disapproval. Finally one bushy brow lifted. “Did you, um—did you see them?”
“Yes.” She grasped his arm. “They were extraordinary, Murchadh. Dressed all in metal from head to toe, with the funniest helmets I have ever seen. They wore swords and daggers
at their belts, and their huge horses walked on hooves wider than your hand!”
Murchadh lifted his hand and studied it as if he’d never seen it before.
“They also spoke a language I’ve never heard—I suppose it was French. Though when they left, one of them did speak English to the other.”
“Why?”
“I think—because he wanted me to understand him. He saw me when I was hiding in the reeds.”
Murchadh drew in his breath, then gave her a swift head-to-toe glance as if mentally cataloguing her limbs.
“I’m not harmed.” Cahira folded her arms. “And he did not reveal my presence to the other. He just mounted his horse and rode away.”
“Faith, ’tis good he did.” Murchadh reached out, smoothed the frizzed hair at her temple, then dropped his hand to his side. “Your father won’t admit it, but the Normans at Athlone have frightfully unnerved him.”
“I don’t understand.” Cahira linked her hand through Murchadh’s arm as the three of them turned and began to walk up the road. “He said he wants nothing to do with Richard. And, as you always say, it takes two men to raise a quarrel.”
“’Tis not a quarrel Richard has in mind; ’tis conquest. And while your father is right in avoiding conflict, Richard might get the idea that the men of Connacht have no stomach for battle. Your father worries—even I worry—that the knights encamped at Athlone will think us cowards.”
Cahira shook her head. “Philip is our kinsman. He would not let those people think ill of us.”
“Philip is in an awkward position, for he has a prowling wolf outside his door. He will do what he can to keep the wolf at bay, but sooner or later the hungry wolf will strike someone, perhaps even Philip himself.” Murchadh fell silent as a shadow passed over them and a hawk screeched overhead. “And no matter what Philip decides,” he finished, his voice low and troubled, “he does not speak for the O’Connors.”
Cahira turned the situation over in her mind. “If there were only some way to prove ourselves,” she murmured, her eyes lifting toward the towers of her father’s fortress. “If we could show them that our warriors are as skilled as their knights.”
Murchadh snorted. “We can’t, lass. Our men aren’t trained with their weapons. We use the battle-ax; they use lances and broadswords.”
A guard in the tower waved a salute to the trio in the road. Cahira and Murchadh waved in reply, and as the man turned to survey the horizon in the opposite direction, Cahira noted the quiver on his back.
“We both use archers.” The thought froze in her brain as an image came back to her. The arrogant knight with the scarred face had pretended to shoot an arrow over the river.
She whirled around to face her keeper. “Murchadh, we both use archers! And there is a tournament on the morrow. We could send a man to Athlone. He could enter the contest and prove we are as able, as courageous, as skillful as any Norman knight!”
His mouth quirked with humor. “By the saints above, how are we to do that? Your father has forbidden us to go to Athlone.”
“I heard him forbid his men to participate as a group.” Cahira shrugged away the shame of her eavesdropping. “One man could go, though, and not give his name unless pressed for it. And if he shoots well, the Normans will know we are neither cowards nor clumsy farmers.”
Murchadh’s eyes warmed slightly, and the hint of a smile acknowledged the merit of Cahira’s idea. “So,” she pressed on, “who is my father’s best archer? Coinneach?”
“No.” Sorcha spoke up, startling both Cahira and Murchadh with her interest in the conversation. “Murchadh is far better than that bumbler.”
Murchadh smiled at the compliment. “Olaghair then.” Cahira frowned. “He’s good with an ax and strong as a bull, but he’s no archer.”
Sorcha snapped her fingers. “Gillebard is very skilled with a bow and arrow.”
“Bah.” Murchadh spat the word. “We’d be lucky to get him sober before the morrow. Besides, Cahira is a better shot than that beslub-bering, fly-bitten minnow.”
Cahira tilted her head toward her mentor. “What about you?”
The warrior considered the question, then shook his head. “I shouldn’t do it. I’m your father’s chief man, and everyone knows it. Philip would assume I was representing Felim o’ the Connors, and the Normans would agree. And if I failed…” His voice drifted off into empty air. “Faith, if they bested me, the Normans would lose all respect for us.”
Sorcha waved her hand in dismissal. “We have no archer then. ’Twas a good idea, but if no one is fit to compete—”
Cahira stopped in the trail, her mind and body coming to an abrupt halt.
“Lass?” Murchadh’s eyes darkened with worry. “Is something amiss?”
Cahira lifted her gaze and gave her maid a slow smile. “I could go,” she whispered, the realization blooming in her brain.
Sorcha’s mouth twisted in a wry grimace. “Sure, you’re a better shot than any man around. You could wear a short tunic and hose and put your braid in a cap.”
“I could.”
Sorcha gasped, the blood draining from her face. “I was only jesting!”
“Och, and have you both lost your minds?” Murchadh took two angry steps forward, then spun on his heel in the path. “Have you no sense at all, lass? You can’t go among the Normans, not as a maid, and certainly not as a man. Your father would never allow it, and your wee mother would perish at the thought. You ought to stay home with the other womenfolk; you ought to be home right now. You are nothing but a troublesome imp, haven’t I said so? The devil himself has put this idea into your brain.”
“Would you have the Normans mock us?” The last traces of Cahira’s doubt had fled, replaced by a glorious rage. “Would you have them think they can drive us from our homes and hitch us to their plows? That is what the Normans have done in the south! Even the great kings of Ireland have been set to working in the fields, and the brehons are not allowed to dispense law and justice where the Normans rule.”
Murchadh’s mouth dipped into an even deeper frown. “How do you know this?”
“Lorcan told me. Rather than evict the people from the lands they took, the Normans retained them to work the soil.”
“But the betaghs,” Sorcha protested, “have always worked the soil!”
“Before the Normans came, they worked the soil for the Irish kings, who fought for them,” Cahira explained, her voice hoarse with frustration. “How many of the Norman barons will fight for their betaghs? Lorcan says freemen and even those of noble blood have had to either submit to the Normans or flee from their homes. The blood that has flowed in freedom from of old has been reduced to slavery!”
Murchadh gave Cahira a look that said his brain was working to solve a completely different set of problems. “Even so,” he said finally, “you cannot change anything by going to Athlone in a man’s clothes. You know Richard wants an audience with your father. What if he decides to detain you for his own purposes?”
“Richard need not know we are present. Philip may be intimidated by Richard, but he is our kinsman, and he would not betray us to the Normans.”
“Still, you will take a very great risk—and what will you gain for it?”
Cahira answered with quiet, desperate firmness. “I’ll prove that the Irish will not give up easily. I’ll be an example to the men of our deirbfhine, all the O’Connors, who will no doubt be watching and wondering what the Normans intend by this invasion. I’ll give my father’s people the will to resist; I’ll show them that the blood which has flowed in freedom from of old will not be defeated!”
Flushed with determination, she lifted her chin, daring her confidants to challenge her. Sorcha, however, lifted her hands and covered her ears. “I’ll hear no more of this! You speak with your father’s persuasion, so I cannot resist you. But this idea is madness! You are no less an eejit for all your convincing talk.”
Murchadh looked at Cahira with an odd mingling of wariness
and amusement in his eyes. “Faith, I should not allow you to do this.”
Cahira drew herself up to her full height. “I will do it, Uncle, with or without you. Would you rather spend the morrow helping me or guarding my room? For I will go, if I have to sneak out a window and crawl out through the drainpipes. And then you’ll have to search for me, and you’ll find yourself at Athlone anyway, but in a terrible bad humor.”
“You are a saucy, tickle-brained harpy,” Murchadh answered, crossing both arms over his chest, “and your father will have me hide for even discussing this with you. But you raise a valid point, and your aim is as sure as any man’s. We’re not likely to be having this chance again, and I believe we should be happy while we’re living—for we’re a long time dead.”
He stroked his beard. “What if I traveled with you to Athlone?” He paused, letting the question fall like a pebble into a quiet pool, then proceeded to answer it. “I can ask your father if I may escort you and Sorcha to visit your kinsman, Philip. Richard will not know us from any other Gaels in these parts. And even if he does learn of our presence, he’d be a fool to try and detain us with Philip’s men ready to defend your father’s honor.”
“We’ll travel together—just the three of us?” The idea seemed to deepen the color of Sorcha’s cheeks, and Cahira knew the girl’s thoughts had shifted from worry to love. Murchadh was the king’s best man, and, despite his age, one of the most handsome. Sorcha had quietly adored him for years.
Murchadh frowned. “I’ll have to pack your quiver and bow on my mount. ’Twould not be seemly for you to travel armed.”
“But no one would question a warrior traveling with weapons.” Cahira laughed in sheer joy, amazed at how easily her plan had fallen into place.
A reluctant grin tugged at the warrior’s mouth. “Sure, and you’ll be in a desperate bad humor if I refuse this thing.”
The Emerald Isle Page 10
