Ciara handed over the serving pot to Blath, but Eochan leapt to his feet and intercepted it.
“Here, let me carry this for you.”
Blath turned pink, a shy smile showing her acceptance and appreciation of the big man’s gesture. Behind him, Declan snorted and elbowed Maire. Her foster brother didn’t need to elaborate. It was clear as day that Eochan of Drumkilly was smitten by the Cairthan lass and that his affection was returned. Maire had seen the two of them wander off into the darkness for a while the night before, longer than it took to fetch a turn of wood for the fire.
“As I see it,” Ciara said, taking a seat next to Lorcan, “it’s no different than deciding which bolt of cloth to use for which garment. The heavier cloth is more suited to a cloak, while the lighter is ideal for a robe.”
“Or choosing a weapon that’s best suited for combat,” Garret suggested eagerly. “At close quarters a sword or axe is too awkward. Only a dagger will do.”
“Or this!” Eochan boasted, holding out his fist.
Maire chuckled along with everyone else in earshot. It was so unlike her eldest foster brother to brag. Declan did enough for the two of them. But then this attraction between a man and a woman made even the most predictable of man unpredictable.
Or woman, for that matter.
That very morning, she’d awakened before the sun’s first light to find herself curled against her husband, tight enough to cramp a flea between them. Their blankets had been doubled over them rather than wrapped separately about each as they’d started out the night before. There was enough land about the camp to graze dozens of cattle, yet she’d wound up next to Rowan, in his arms, no less! When she opened her eyes, his grin was the first sight to greet her. Rightly, she rolled away in an instant, but by the bite of the frost on the ground, she missed the warmth of their cozy nest.
The conversation at hand gave way to other topics as the clans took their meal. No small amount of admiration and speculation was centered on the two warhorses grazing nearby. Other men and women ventured to say who was best suited to the land and who to the sword or the livestock.
Rowan’s idea had germinated at least, Maire observed. Whether it would take root remained to be seen. It did sound good, but how long could this testy camaraderie last before someone came to blows?
The only way to build trust is to give one the chance to provide the building block for it.
Rowan’s words of the previous day rang true in her heart. Brude told her to follow her heart. Maire scooped up some of porridge with the scone one of the Cairthan women handed out and popped it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. Her decision was made. There was no doubt in her mind the decision was good for Gleannmara. The problem lay in getting two peoples to accept it. As queen, however, she would stand by Rowan’s idea and personally run through the first rebel who tried to disrupt it!
“Look, a rider approaches, there, at the bottom of the slope!”
Maire and the others stood, staring in the direction young Garret pointed. Indeed, there was someone coming. His coming on horseback suggested the news he brought was urgent. One word, one name came to Maire’s mind, wiping out everything except the cold dread that seeped through her veins.
Morlach!
The messenger was from Erc of Drumkilly, Maire’s foster father. Morlach and Finnaid had passed through Declan and Eochan’s home tuath with an entourage headed for Tara. It was Morlach’s intent to appeal to the high king for justice regarding Maire’s keeping Gleannmara from his clutches by marrying Rowan instead of him. His honor had been insulted. The good faith with which he’d invested his time and money in running Gleannmara while Maire came of age deserved more than being forbidden to set foot on its land by some hostage, a stranger taken and married by the queen to keep Morlach from his just reward. The druid expected to extract an honor price at the least, if not have Maire’s marriage dissolved. She had married someone else while under royal contract to him.
“But there was no contract. I pledged nothing!” Fury consumed Maire’s voice. “If I owe the blackguard anything, it’s my sword through his heart for what he’s done here!”
“If he has a heart,” Garret remarked dourly. “The druid has done us both much harm.”
Lorcan was even less optimistic. “Aye, but who will petition the high king against him?” He turned to Rowan. “Boils and satire is one thing, but if Morlach wins Diarhmott’s support, the Uí Niall and the Cairthan can marry to the last couple, for all the good it will do when they die to last couple as well.”
Rowan closed his eyes for a moment, as if steeling himself. Or was he talking to his god? Maire shivered, wondering if the god came as spirit or man in an invisible cloak.
“I don’t believe Diarhmott will take up arms against us, if we can convince him that there is more to this matter than politics, that it’s a spiritual matter as well. He has a Christian wife and the support of Armagh.”
Declan sneered. “Think ye a wife and a cluster of priests will sway the king against a druid as powerful as Morlach?”
Rowan smiled. “But Diarhmott will not be going against a woman or an old priest. He’ll be going against their God, the one God. And that, good people, he will not do.”
“He’s no Christian!” Lorcan declared. “And Morlach helped him to power.”
“Along with Maeve and the Niall,” Maire pointed out, not about to let the druid take all he glory. She wished she had the same self-assurance Rowan conveyed. She wished Brude were here. He’d know what to do. Perhaps she should send for the druid.
“But ’twas an Armagh bishop, I think, that presided with the druid over his coronation,” Ciara put in.
Garret backed her up, grinning. “Aye, the old man nearly put his staff through the king’s foot, so I hear.”
Rowan stepped up on one of the stone benches situated around the campfire.
“Enough!” he shouted, silencing the individual discussions of speculation that ensued. “I will go to the high king myself to present Gleannmara’s case.” He glanced down at Maire and held out his hand. “Will you go with me, little queen?”
Maire pulled herself up on the flat rock with it. “Aye, I’ll go with my king. And I’ll tell Diarhmott of how well Morlach cared for my land and its people!” She turned to Lorcan. “And will you go to speak for the Cairthan?”
Garret jumped up in his father’s place before the older man could make up his mind. “I will! I am the aiccid.”
Lorcan was not as eager, nor as convinced as the others who volunteered to follow Rowan to Tara. He stared at his brother as though looking through the man, but his answer was nowhere to be found. Ciara put a hand on his arm.
“Let me go with him, son.”
“Nay, Maithre, your legs—” Rowan started.
“I’ll ride,” the lady answered, cutting him off. “Aching bones is the least of my worries.”
“Aye, like as not, Morlach told Drumkilly of his plans so that Rowan and his queen would hasten to Tara as well to rebuke him.”
Lorcan shoved himself to his feet, the slowness of his rising telling that the same cold, which bothered his mother, had begun to plague him too.
“But no soul from Gleannmara will ever see Tara,” he predicted eerily. “I’d wager my sword hand he plans an attack.”
“And I’ll wager mine that we will be expecting it,” Rowan countered. “But we will reach Tara, and I will win Diarhmott’s neutrality, if not his support.”
“Then you go, but neither our mother nor my son will go with you.”
“Father!”
The rebellious fire in Ciara’s gaze took Lorcan back.
“I’ll not be told by the son I bore into this world and reared from a squallin’ pup what to do.”
“Do what ye will then, but that squallin’ pup—” he pointed to Garret—“will not be goin’.”
“I’m just gone sixteen! I’ve a right to make my own decisions, Da!” Garret stepped next to Rowan. “And I’m goin’ w
ith the king, if he’ll have me.”
“Ye’d risk my only child on this god of yours?” Lorcan challenged his brother.
“I’d say the risk is up to him to take. He carries himself with reason beyond his years, from what I’ve seen.”
“Then I’ll go!”
Broad, thin shoulders dropping in resignation, Lorcan turned from his son’s defiant pose and extended his right hand to Rowan. “I lost his mother to Morlach’s greed, and I robbed my mother of one of her own born. Crom Cruach’s shadow has blighted my days ever since.”
A handshake not quite enough, Lorcan embraced his younger brother fully. “Have a care with them, Rowan of Gleannmara, and go in the light of this god of yours. Succeed, and the Cairthan will do whatever you think is best for Gleannmara.” He cleared his throat and backed away, but the blur in his eyes was not one of tenderness but threat.
“Fail and, should you survive, I will kill you with my bare hands… and we’ll have nothin’ more to do with a clan destined for sure destruction. We’ll not stand against Morlach’s black art, not even with that old Uí Niall druid behind ye.”
“Brude has forgotten more than Morlach has ever learned!”
“Aye, lass, that’s the point. Your Brude has forgotten!”
“The one God forgets nothing and knows all.” That said, Rowan stepped down from the rock and turned to help Maire. She needed no assistance, but at the moment, she needed the reassurance of his touch, of his conviction. She wanted to believe this god was as strong as Rowan claimed. It appeared that Rowan did have the god’s ear. Brude said as much. But years of fear in which the power of the druids was drummed into her head were hard to dismiss as lightly as her husband did.
“If we return with Diarhmott’s promise of neutrality, will the Cairthan not only swear allegiance to me and Maire, but to the one God?”
“If your god brings you back alive and in one piece with the high king’s word to keep out o’ this muck of a squabble, I’ll kiss the bottoms of this god’s boots!”
Rowan laughed. Despite Lorcan’s hostility, he embraced his elder sibling in a bear hug. “Good enough, brother. I’ll hold you to that.”
Ciara placed an arm at Maire’s back. Without looking at her, the men’s mother sighed.
“I prayed long for that sight, my queen. Now God has answered my prayers beyond my wildest dreams.”
“So you believe all will be well then?”
Ciara’s face was aglow when she looked at Maire. It looked as though the sun erased the lines of age and replaced them with joy. “Aye, I do, so long as we walk in God’s will and give Him the glory for all our blessings.”
Maire scowled. “So this god doesn’t take well to failure, I suppose.”
“He never fails,” the woman answered patiently. “We do, but He doesn’t.”
“But if he’s with us and we fail…”
“Then we fail because of something amiss with us, not Him. But He’ll give us the strength and courage to try again.”
For all he was claimed to be, this god was a confounding one!
“This is making my head hurt, woman! First your god will see it done, but if it isn’t, it’s not his fault, but he’ll help pick up the pieces and try again. Why doesn’t he just make us do it right to start with and be done with it?”
Maire’s exasperation drew Rowan’s attention. He glanced in concern from his mother to Maire.
“Is something wrong?”
Ciara smiled. “Only that God gives us the will to choose right or wrong, and that if we choose wrong…”
“He lets a fool fall right on his face!” Maire finished with an enlightened look. “Now that makes sense.”
Satisfied, at least for the moment, she turned to Declan.
“We’ve a trip ahead of us, brother. Best see what can be put together to see us to Tara.”
Declan bowed shortly in acknowledgment. Then, spinning on his heels, he slapped Eochan, who was leaning over Blath in a conversation totally apart from that which occupied the rest of them, across the back of the head. “Come, lover boy, we’ve work to do.”
Maire chuckled when Eochan came up swinging, but the younger, more agile Declan avoided the halfhearted blow and was away. At the touch of a hand at her back, she turned, expecting to see Ciara again, but it was not Rowan’s mother whose arm slipped about her waist. It was her husband himself.
“You make me proud to serve you, Maire.” The earnestness of his gaze was enough to melt the heart of a stone statue, much less that of a mere woman. And at that moment, that was what Maire felt like, not warrior nor queen but all woman.
She wished for some equally moving reply, but all that came to her rattled mind was out before she could stop it.
“So this god of yours, he wears boots, does he?”
The travelers from Gleannmara spent that night in Drumkilly’s hall. Erc and Maida, Maire’s foster parents, put on a sumptuous feast in the tall thatch-domed hall. Garret and Ciara enjoyed places of honor along with Maire, Rowan, and Declan. Eochan elected to remain with the Cairthan, allegedly to help Lorcan decide which of his people were best suited for the planting and building and which would remain behind to tend the cattle. Declan put it most likely when he remarked that the man had fallen in love with being a hostage. Eochan managed a show of indignation at the jibe, but it was his cheeky grin that gave him away as he rode away from them to deliver the message to Brude to meet them at Tara.
Servants kept food and drink in plenty until Maire had to say no or let out her belt. The latter being a sign of overindulgence, she covered her cup with her hand each time one passed with a flagon of wine or pitcher of beer. Rowan, too, kept a clear head and satisfied belly, no more, no less. He played the part of king to her queen as if he’d been born to the role.
In truth, Maire supposed he had. He was a lord in his own right in Wales and by birth at Gleannmara. If she was to follow the man’s line of reason, his God had delivered his crown, or in his case, Rhian’s torque, through her. Whether this same God would bless her remained to be seen. So as not to offend him, however, she did bow her head when Rowan asked blessing on the meal. So, she noticed, did the others. It was out of respect and hospitality. She supposed this god deserved at least that much for allying the Cairthan with them. Blood ties were strong. As Erc pointed out, half in heart and half in jest, she’d done well by Gleannmara despite that red-headed temper of hers.
After hearing the tales of their adventures in Wales, with Rowan and Declan playing the bards, games were suggested, but Maire declined. Between the ale, the food, and the good company, sleep called louder than her hosts.
“We’ll make up the celebration at the May games, I promise,” Maire told the older couple.
Erc and Maida held hands throughout most of the evening, and the smiles they exchanged when no one was looking embraced Maire’s heart. That was what she wanted, that kind of love. Were Maeve and Rhian still holding hands on the other side? As she lay on a plump pallet of straw on the floor of the hall, where servants and visitors alike had settled for the night, she sighed dreamily.
“What was that about?” Rowan’s low whisper startled her. “What thoughts make our queen sigh like a lovestruck maid?”
“Hold my hand, Rowan.”
This time, it was his turn to be taken back. “What?”
“Are you deaf? I said hold my hand!”
Impatient, she reached across the short space between their pallets. In a moment, her hand was enveloped in the strength and warmth of the man lying at her side.
“Are you certain you don’t want me to hold all of you?”
Her heart tripped. He spoke so low, to avoid the ears of those resting about them, that she didn’t quite make out his words. Or perhaps she simply didn’t believe what she heard.
“What?”
A low rumble of response escaped his chest. He propped himself up on his elbow, still clinging to the hand she instinctively threatened to pull away. The glow of the dyi
ng firelight highlighted his handsome features. His was the kind of face the stonecutters fashioned effigies from. Clean lines, chiseled to the right proportion. Handsome. A girlish sigh built in her chest, but his wry reply killed it.
“Are you deaf, woman?” He moved closer. “Or is this some feminine wile of yours trying to get me to move closer?”
Maire arched one skeptical brow. To her astonishment, Rowan leaned over and brushed it with his lips.
“What game are you about now, Emrys?”
“Every morning I wake up with you fitted against me as if we were two nestled cups. If you wish to come into my arms, then come outright rather than sneak up on me while I sleep.”
Blood ran hot to Maire’s cheeks. “Of all the—”
Rowan silenced her indignation, devastating it with a kiss. Her lips moved, not with words but in concert with his. And when he pulled her to him, her body obeyed eagerly, as if it craved the warmth it had secretly sought out in her sleep.
Except that she was not asleep. How could one sleep when a ferocious tide catapulted through her veins and sweet thunder clapped in her brain? She wanted to reach for her head to secure it, but it was Rowan’s hair her hands clasped. On a mission of their own, her fingers entwined in the dark, thick locks secured by a leather thong at his neck. In a moment they were freed.
Then, with no warning, Rowan stiffened and rolled away, leaving naught but the strip of leather in her hand. His chest rose and fell, as if though took all his breath to keep up with it. He closed his eyes and swallowed.
Maire watched the bob of his Adam’s apple, alarm invading the rhapsody his ardor still played on the strings of her heart.
“What is it?”
A few feet away, someone rolled over and raised his head. Realizing she’d raised her voice, she crawled closer and whispered again.
“Rowan, are you sick?” Maire remembered his declaring how he’d been healed upon coming down the hill from meeting with the Cairthan.
“Nay, I’m just tired.”
“Then what were you healed of the other day?” So much had come about so quickly she’d never had the chance to satisfy her curiosity.
Maire Page 19
