Maire’s jaw slackened in amazement. Surely this wasn’t the hothead she’d known all her life. What had come over her foster brother? It was one thing to stand by and brood, but that Declan would take up Rowan’s cause was beyond her ken.
“Aye,” Rowan agreed, lifting his cup. “To Gleannmara, home to the just and the compassionate; enemy to the greedy and ambitious.”
“Brude, mayhap you can word that in a motto for our banners,” Maire said, rising to lift her glass with Rowan’s. “Brude?”
The old man shook himself from whatever possessed his thoughts. “What was that, you say?”
“Can you make up a motto for Gleannmara’s banners that says home to the just; enemy to the greedy and ambitious?”
The old man thought a moment and nodded. “Aye, I will think on it. ’Tis a noble thought indeed.”
“What do you think of this plan of the king’s, Brude?” the woman who had protested earlier asked. “Have you seen any reason why some should pick up and leave for enemy land? I don’t warm to the idea of turning our pastures to grass and takin’ to the hills with them that just stole six head from us.”
“I have seen no reason, woman, but I have heard.” The druid waited until the murmuring about him died down. Now all eyes were on him, those of servant and aire alike.
“King Rowan’s God has a chosen people—His favorites, if you like. Many of us are descended from the ones who fled here when their nation fell because they refused to follow Him.”
“The blood of the Milesian princes runs in these veins, druid,” Declan boasted. “As for the bruns, I can’t say.” He poked one of the dark-haired Muirdach men and got as good as he gave.
“Many Milesians took Hebrew brides, but that is neither here nor there, in this story, metalhead.”
The assembly roared at Brude’s admonishment. Declan took it in good humor and sat down.
“The Christian God led the Hebrews from slavery and oppression to a land of milk and honey. There isn’t a one of you who doesn’t know that we have lived under Morlach’s oppression.”
A ripple of oaths and agreement testified to the old man’s word.
“And there isn’t a one among you who doesn’t fear the man’s power.”
The agreement grew louder. What Morlach didn’t take by force, he took by his magic.
“Well, I have seen firsthand the one God’s power.” The druid’s tone heralded a sharing of the unknown, which hushed the assembly.
“Rowan and Maire’s company walked without harm through Morlach’s ambush to Tara. I was accused of making them appear as a herd of deer, for that was all the blackguards saw along the way, but it was not my power. I wasn’t with them.”
No murmur, nothing stirred in the hall, save the snapping and crackling of the fires. Even the cooks stopped stirring their pots, lest the rattle of the ladles against the sides interrupt.
“And the boils,” Maire said as she grabbed Rowan’s arm and held it. “I have yet to see a blemish from Cromthal’s curse.”
“Perhaps Rathcoe awaited on the wrong road,” someone ventured uneasily.
“Perhaps,” Brude conceded, “but once again we passed his ambush on the way home to Gleannmara. Two bowmen and his apprentice, Cromthal, waited for the chance to kill our king and the priest as well, but they dared not.”
Maire was transfixed along with the rest of the gathering, Rowan included, by Brude’s last words.
“Eight warriors garbed in white surrounded our king and the priest. Neither Rowan nor Tomás made a move but what these fierce men moved with them. They were armed with ready weapons and protected by armor that shined bright as the morning sun, even in the darkness.”
So that was what Brude saw last night! The flesh pebbled on her arms and every hair on her scalp tingled. This was the stuff only the Sidhe and the druids could see.
“Father Tomás saw them, as did I, and, of course, Morlach’s henchmen. They ran like scalded hounds through the brush, alerting the guards.”
“Aye, that they did, and in every direction at the same time,” one of the O’Croinin said to his wife Elsbeth. “Me and Dub never closed an eye after that.”
“Nor Dath ’n’ me,” Cellach of the Muirdach vowed.
“And who were these warriors in white?” Maire demanded, peeved that her druid had waited until now to tell her. Druids! Always keeping secrets. And priests as well, she thought, eyeing the meanly clothed cleric crossing himself beside Brude.
“Angels!” Rowan’s comment reflected the wonder on his face. He nodded slowly, accepting it. “Now our coming through unchallenged makes sense.”
“What are these angels that walk among us like spirits?” Declan asked.
“God’s Sidhe,” Maire answered with an air of authority. She hadn’t spent half a night trying to get the understanding of these beings for naught. “They are seen only when He wants them to be seen and they do what He wishes them to do.”
“And you’ve seen them, Brude?” the warrior asked skeptically.
The old man nodded, the light from the lamps shining on his wrinkled brow. “Aye, I’ve seen them. They are more beautiful and fierce than all the heroes of Erin. But enough of them.” Brude reached down and picked up his walking stick. “’Twould take more than this lifetime to know all there is to know about this God and His warriors. Sadly, I do not have long to learn as much as I’d wish.”
“You’re ill, Brude?” Distracted from her annoyance by Brude’s comment, Maire hurried around the head table to where the old man hobbled toward the door. Had he seen the banshee of death among the angels?
“Nay, Maire. I’m old.” He looked over his shoulder at Rowan. “Tomorrow, I go to live with Father Tomás, to become the student.”
Maire felt the blood drain from her face with such force, she half expected to see it pooling on the floor. “But Brude, what will the Niall do without you?” What would she do?
Where Brude once towered over her, he now looked her in the eye. When had he grown so bent?
“I have found the Creator of truth and light. So has your husband. Follow his lead, for he knows more of God than I.”
For the first time in her life, the druid kissed her on the cheek. Heretofore, his affection had come only in the form of a nod or a smile of approval. “Gleannmara will know greatness so long as her fires burn for the Christian God alone.”
“For darkness is destroyed by light.” Another truth she’d learned the night before her wedding.
“You are the best student this old man ever taught.”
“And you the best teacher.” Whether it befitted a queen or not, Maire embraced the druid. Her eyes were wet as she drew away. Brude had been there always, but his mind was made up. To make more protest was to invite admonition and disgrace. Surely a part of her would go with him. How could she be whole without her Brude?
“Now I must rest these weary bones for the trip tomorrow.”
Turning back to the head table, Maire saw Rowan seated, his head bowed as if he slept, and the answer came. Now she understood. Brude was leaving so that Rowan might take his rightful place as her husband. In awe at the way this master plan seemed to be unfolding, she took her place beside Rowan. As she did, he enveloped her hand in his own and, lifting it, rose.
“We are not done with Morlach. Even as we celebrate God’s blessings upon us, he conjures yet another blackness with which to strike us. But God is ever present, ever watchful, and ever protective of those who will accept Him.”
“I’d hear more about him first,” someone said.
“I’d see more of his work first,” another agreed.
Those who did not fall in with one of the skeptics, sided with the other, save Declan and Garret. Drawing their swords, they made their way to the dais and knelt before Rowan and Maire.
“Drumkilly accepts this God.”
“And the Cairthan,” Garret echoed his new chosen mentor.
“So tell us more of Him,” Dub O’Croinin suggested,
garnering more encouragement from the listeners.
Rowan shook his head. “The hour is late, my friend. But I promise I will share what I know of Him, for it is my duty and honor.” He took up Maire’s hand unexpectedly. “But tonight, my wife is my honor and duty.”
The hoots of approval would have scorched Maire’s cheek with embarrassment before now. But as she walked out of the banqueting hall on Rowan’s arm, past a smiling Ciara, she felt as though she would burst with pride. Or was it anxiety that threatened to overwhelm her?
In the privacy of their lodge, Rowan closed the door and slid the wooden bolt into place. Maire half expected him to turn on her and take her, then and there, as she’d heard happened when the baser nature of man consumed him. After all, she’d invited it more bluntly than a practiced coquette.
When he turned, though, his face was as solemn as a druid’s, not one of a prospective groom. He was Rowan, self-possessed and in control. She wondered which was worse.
“I want to be certain you understand what you say. Maire, before I take you to this bed.”
“Not another night of these Jesus stories.” Her nerves would not stand it.
Rowan chuckled quietly. “No, not a Jesus story. Just a few words of what you mean to me.”
Ach, he was going to pledge his love. Perhaps that would give her heart time to settle back in her chest. She sat stiffly on the small bench at the foot of the bed, a smooth, oiled width of wood designed just for such a purpose and for dressing.
“Remember the story Father Tomás told of the creation and how Adam and Eve disregarded God’s warning about the apple?”
“Aye, though I still think it was much ado over a piece of fruit.”
Rowan looked about to take up an argument, but thought better of it. “I believe Adam ate the apple for one reason, Maire. Because he feared God would kill Eve for her disobedience and Adam could not bear to live without her. Better that God kill him, too.”
She hadn’t thought of this tale as a love story when Father Tomás told it to pass the time on the journey home, much less that this Adam was gallant. “And you’d give your life for me?”
“Aye, little queen. I was prepared to do that when we first met, sooner than take your life, but God showed us each an alternative to our problems.”
Maire thought about this, wonderstruck, as he went on.
“God tells man to love his wife more than himself.”
“And what does He tell a woman to do?”
“To submit to and respect her husband.”
“If he’s respectable and not without reason.”
Rowan ran his fingers along the taper of her cheek. “We are to put no one ahead of the other, save God himself. We are to become one, Maire, in more ways than the obvious. In spirit and accord. Gleannmara has wedded us already in that sense.”
“Aye, but…” The word submit was a stumbling stone she could not get past.
“Will it be so hard to submit to someone who puts you ahead of himself, who would die for you? To someone who is one with you in more ways than the physical? ’Tis what you’ve been doing all along, for the good of Gleannmara.”
Submit. There had been times when Rhian and Maeve disagreed, but in the end, one submitted to the other for the good of the tuath. They were of one accord and one spirit, and they had ruled as one. They’d fought as heartily as they loved—as one.
Maire’s eyes widened. He was offering her what she’d always wanted, a love like that of her parents.
“No, Rowan ap Emrys or O’Cairthan. It will not be hard.” She took his hand and folded her own into it, pressing both against her heart, that he might hear its earnest testimony. “Like my father and mother before us, we are one in spirit and rule.”
Maire went into Rowan’s arms willingly, no longer fearful of where the commitment might lead. Before the night was out, to refuse to submit to this man would be to refuse to submit to herself. When he kissed her, she kissed him back with equal fervor. Desire flared, burning like incense to not only her senses, but his. It was not her passion that fanned the flames, nor his. It was theirs. It was not his touch, nor hers that exacted immeasurable pleasure, but theirs. It was not his nor her heart that beat with primitive madness, but theirs, playing a rhapsody as one.
As Maire fell back with Rowan against the soft bedding, frantically shedding all that was earthly between them, one thought rose to the surface of her mind. It was only fitting that they become one as man and wife in her parents’ bed, which had known nothing but an enduring and sustaining love.
TWENTY-THREE
Daylight. It came as surely as God’s judgment. And where will I stand in either? Rowan wondered, riddled with self-recrimination as he paced the outer rath at the break of dawn. His weakness of the flesh barely spent, he’d torn himself from the bed, leaving the woman of his dreams—the love of his life—sleeping like an angel. Not that Maire had been the least angelic, once introduced to the throes of passion. She loved as fiercely as she fought.
Faith, the memory still stirred him in the midst of his humble meditation. “Father, how can I separate the physical from the spiritual where my wife is concerned?” he cried, falling to his knees in his exasperation.
“Why would you wish to?”
Rowan pivoted, astonished that he’d voiced his anguish and even more so, that he’d been heard. Father Tomás rose from a nearby rock, where apparently he too had sought to meditate in the stillness before sunrise.
Rowan made a frustrated grimace. “I intended to have the wedding annulled.”
“For what purpose?”
“To pursue my studies in the priesthood… without the distraction of a wife. I thought I had it all worked out in my mind, exactly how to keep my promises to myself and to Maire, how to serve both God and Gleannmara, but…”
“But God’s plan was different?”
Rowan looked up at the sky where the sun’s first rays threatened to illuminate the horizon. “I don’t know what is God’s plan and what is mine. I wanted to become a priest, a teacher.”
Tomás smiled. “You already are those things, Rowan of Gleannmara. It doesn’t take a clerical robe to do that.” At Rowan’s bewildered look, the priest went on. “I have seen your example sway the queen and her people toward God in ways I could not possibly imitate. God has given you a passion for Him that is infectious.”
“Then think of what I could do if—”
“To isolate it somewhere in a glen or on a mountaintop would be a disservice to Him and to yourself. You would not be content.”
“I would master contentment!”
“As you master your desire for Maire?”
Rowan could not answer. The priest’s point was well made. Rowan could master nothing without God’s support.
“Do you love her?”
“Aye, that must be it, for she consumes my thoughts, both night and day, both in and out of my presence.” Rowan chuckled in wonder. “For one so worldly, she is such an innocent…a treasure like no other woman I’ve ever met.”
“The queen is indeed a collection of contrary qualities, much like her king.”
Rowan glanced askew at the priest, uncertain if his words carried compliment or criticism. “’Tis an effect she has on a man. She can make me so angry that I nearly forget my faith in one moment, and then surrender my annoyance in the next.”
“I would think marriage to her would truly test and refine a man’s spiritual nature.”
Marriage as a test of God? The idea had never occurred to Rowan. He’d seen the hardship and denial of the priesthood as the real test of a man’s devotion to his God. And while he knew marriage required dedication and compromise, there were the more desirable aspects to sweeten the dish. They were what Rowan feared was seducing him from his chosen path to serve God, rather than himself.
“We are all chosen to serve God in our own special way, my son,” Tomás told him patiently. “While I do not pretend to know God’s plan, I can share what I have o
bserved. Gleannmara needs a strong king and Maire needs a good husband. You have been both thus far and in doing so, you have served God well. You have reached beyond the glens and isolation of our priesthood and into many lives in a way that men like myself may never touch.”
“But I thought as a priest I might serve God better.”
“So did Zechariah. He cleaned the temple, all the while thinking the priesthood a more godly and worthy pursuit. Yet it was to the lowlier servant that God gave one of the greatest tasks, to father and raise John the Baptist, that the coming of the Messiah might be announced. So who was greater in God’s eye, the man who honored Him by cleaning the temple or the priest?”
Rowan nodded, digesting the example. As in the army, there were no unimportant tasks. The messengers were as important as the front line soldiers or the generals. The difference lay in amount of recognition given. So were his reasons for wanting the priesthood self-serving? The idea struck Rowan a jolting blow.
God had been with him on all his pursuits save one: avoiding his attraction to the queen of Gleannmara. What he’d seen as test to overcome in order to join the priesthood—the forced marriage and his uncommon longing where Maire was concerned—was God’s way of showing His will, rather than Rowan’s.
How could he have been so blind? Rowan jumped to his feet and gave the priest a bear hug in his enthusiasm. The terrible weight was gone.
“Father Tomás, bless you and thank you.”
Feeling as though he could fly, Rowan left the priest, speeding back toward the royal lodge and Maire—his queen, his lover, his friend, his wife.
Maire positively glowed, he thought later as they rode Shahar and Tamar across Gleannmara’s fields and pastures. Envious, Rowan watched the sunlight and westerly breeze toy with the little wisps of hair that had escaped her braid. Like a little girl with a cherished doll, he’d helped her wrap its silken length in a leather casing after rising entirely too late for decency.
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