Twig of Thorn (The Blackthorn Cycle Book 1)

by L. M. Hawke

  Twig of Thorn

  The Blackthorn Cycle: Book One

  L. M. Hawke

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Preview Chapter: Cage of Thorn

  Also by L. M. Hawke

  Preview Chapter: Virgin Shift

  About the Author

  1

  The moment the bus hissed to a stop and opened its doors, Una was sure she had made a mistake. She peered anxiously out the window at the village of Kylebeg. It was nothing more than a ragtag collection of stone-front and Tudor-style cottages and shops, crammed cheek by jowl along a single, cobblestone road. The old-fashioned cobble road forked off from the modern motorway, which the bus had just vacated so it could make its stop outside Kylebeg. Una glanced back at the motorway, placid and smooth, stretching off into the Irish countryside. Then she looked uneasily at tiny Kylebeg again.

  She clenched her hands into fists until her nails bit her palms, and thought maybe she ought to stay on the bus… let it get back on the main road, let it carry her off to some other destination. It didn’t matter where, so long as it was someplace Una felt certain she could live, could actually belong. For once in my life, she thought wryly as the bus driver cleared his throat and squinted at her in the rear-view mirror.

  Una had no idea where she was going, but staring down the village’s single road—it was hardly more than a lane, really—she was damn sure that Kylebeg wasn’t her destination. It couldn’t be.

  She glanced up to the front of the bus again, and immediately regretted it. The driver was through with polite suggestions that she get off his bus and let him get on with his work day. He scowled at her in the mirror, his bushy black brows coming together in a definite and pointed frown. “You said you were going to Kylebeg, Miss. That’d be it, over there.”

  This is it? This is all of it? The narrow road through the village curved around the shoulder of a hill and promptly disappeared. There were hills all over the place in County Tipperary, as Una had learned on the long bus ride from Dublin. The countryside undulated like a restless sea, rising and falling in rounded peaks and deep, cool-shadowed valleys of brilliant green. It was pretty country, but it was so… isolated.

  “Come on, Miss. I’ve got a schedule to stick to.”

  With a sigh, Una gathered up her duffle and rucksack and stepped off the bus, refusing to meet the impatient driver’s eye again. The moment she was out, the doors hissed shut behind her and the bus rumbled with renewed vigor. It pulled away from the town, and from Una, as if eager to leave them both far behind.

  She was left alone on the roadside. The smell of petrol faded as the bus pulled onto the motorway. As she stood, stunned and blinking at the village before her, a fresh breeze lifted from the hills, carrying the scents of sheep and hay. It was a flawlessly clear day. The sky was a deep, vivid blue above gentle waves of pasture and farmland, and the sun was warm enough on her face and shoulders that it should have felt welcoming. But there was no question Una was out of her depth here, in the village of Kylebeg—as she would be anywhere in the countryside. What did a Dublin girl know about rural life?

  What did this Dublin girl know about city life, either?

  The rumble of the bus finally faded to nothing, replaced by the gentle, distant bleating of sheep and the muted clanging of a bellwether’s collar. Birds sang cheerily among the tall grass of the fallow pastures, and from the thickets of gorse and blackthorn tucked into folds between hills.

  And then, over the sheep and birdsong, Una heard another sound. Music—faint at first, but unmistakable as it drew nearer. The high, jaunty skirling of pipes mingled with a clatter of drums and the whine of a fiddle. She could hear many voices, too, raised in laughter and good-natured shouts.

  As she stared at the motionless village, wondering where the distant cacophony was coming from, a procession appeared at the edge of the hill—the one the road curved around—and made its way toward the town’s small heart. It was not a large procession—two hundred people, if that. But even at a distance, she could tell it was like nothing she had seen before. Everyone was dressed in bright, vivid colors, like a bank of wildflowers in riotous bloom. But there was something off about their clothing. It was loose-cut, flowing and rustic, as if made in the simplest possible way. The women wore circlets that trailed long, bright ribbons behind them, and some of the men wore head-dresses made of antlers and furs. The children shrieked with wild abandon as they ran up and down along the edges of the procession, tossing flower petals from the baskets they carried.

  The first of May, Una realized. Today is the first of May. Of course, in Dublin she had watched the pleasant old rites of spring, such as children dancing the maypole in the park. But those had been nostalgic (even patronizing) nods to traditions long past. This celebration felt entirely different, from its obvious fervor to the paganish, sharp, utterly animalistic antlers rising and bobbing above the crowd.

  They certainly are rustics in Kylebeg.

  As the procession spilled into the village and spread thickly along its street, Una pulled the crumpled letter from her pocket and looked it over one more time, to be sure she’d made no mistake, and Kylebeg truly was her correct destination. The paper was thick and ivory-white, like a relic from a long-lost age. The note was written in a small, tidy, elegant hand. No one wrote letters by hand anymore.

  My dear Una,

  It has been many a year since I saw you last, and I have not written in all that while, for which I hope you will forgive me. I have always been content to keep to myself, but it has made me a dreadfully poor communicator.

  You are the last of my kin, the sole remaining member of our branch of the Teig family. My health will not hold out much longer (do not feel sorry on my account; I have lived a long and very happy life, despite its many sorrows.)

  As my time in this world wanes, I know that now I must pass on to you what is mine to give. It is all yours now, dear, and great and valuable is the inheritance.

  Do not feel awkward or ashamed, for I know we have not been close. But you are the last of the Teigs, and all that belongs to our family must now pass to your keeping. Come to Kylebeg, County Tipperary, as soon as you receive this letter, so that we may get re-acquainted and settle the estate that is now yours by rights.

  With love, expecting,

  Nessa Teig

  (your grandmother)

  Una re-folded the letter, shaking her head in wonder or denial—or both. No mistake, this was the place. She had better set about finding her grandmother. Nessa had indicated no return address on the envelope; it bore only the mark of the Kylebeg post.

  With a sigh of resignation—and a small thrill of anticipation in her stomach—Una settled the straps of her bags more firmly on her shoulders and walked down the road toward the village.

  * * *

  The May Day celebration was as rambunctious as any music festival or football championship Una had ever attended… not that she had attended many. Football particularly was of no interest to her, but she had dated plenty of men for whom the sun rose and set on their teams, so naturally she had been subjected to more than her fair share of games. The Kylebeg crowd whooped and hooted and shouted unintelligible, slurred phrases at one another as Una attempte
d to weave down the center of the main street, exactly like hooligans at a match.

  “Sorry,” she muttered as she bumped into one person after another. “Sorry, pardon, sorry…”

  The people seemed to take no notice of her. Nor did anyone glance twice at the overstuffed bags she carried. Yet Una could not help but sense the strangeness of Kylebeg’s residents. Up close, their clothing looked positively medieval—or pre-medieval, perhaps—all tunics made of rough-woven homespun, belted with braids of grass or dyed wool. Every neck was draped with garlands of flowers; the women had even woven flowers into their braids. Loose petals broke free to flutter among the long ribbons they trailed from their twig-woven crowns. The men in their antler hoods boomed with laughter and pounded each other on the back. Now and then one would catch a woman by the wrist and kiss her. Una was glad nobody tried it with her; antlers or no, she would have given any man who tried it a sock in the eye for his trouble. The press of bodies and their buoyant, almost wild dancing mingled to form a close, animal, strangely compelling smell, undercut by the intoxicating sweetness of so many flowers.

  “Excuse me,” Una said when a grinning, red-haired woman caught her eye. “Do you know Nessa Teig?”

  “What, love?” the woman answered, then shrieked with glee as an antlered man caught her up in an embrace and whirled her with her feet off the ground.

  Una tried another person, an older man who did not wear one of the intimidating racks of horns. “Excuse me, sir. I’m looking for Nessa Teig.”

  “New here, are you?” the man asked, winking.

  “Yes, but I—”

  A group of women surrounded him, taking his hands and leading him in an impromptu circle dance. Una sighed and pressed on.

  The crowd jostled her this way and that, and no matter where she looked, no matter whom she asked, she found no hint of her grandmother’s whereabouts. Certainly, she did not see Nessa Teig among the revelers. It had been almost twenty years since Una had last seen her grandmother in person—she’d been a girl of just five or six years at the time—but even with such an old and faded picture of Nessa in her mind, Una couldn’t imagine her petite, delicate-looking, almost ethereal gran jumping about and hollering in a celebration such as this one. Nessa had been a dignified person… or had seemed so, to wee Una.

  The crowd tumbled her out from its center, into a narrow alley between two timber-framed, white-daubed shops. Una sagged with relief in the shelter of the alleyway, letting her bags slide to the cobblestones.

  “Hullo there, Miss!” A short, stout, red-faced man approached from the edge of the crowd. When Una met his eye, he offered a brief, courteous bow. His manner would have been appropriate to a courtroom, had he not been dressed in a loose green tunic, mud-caked wellies, and a hood of some brown, thick-furred skin. At least he didn’t wear any antlers.

  “Er,” Una said uncertainly.

  “A joyous Beltane to you!”

  “To… to you as well, sir. I’m looking for Nessa Teig.”

  “Ah! Good old Nessa!” The man held his ample belly with both hands as he laughed appreciatively.

  “She’s my gran, you see, and she sent me this letter…” Una fished in her pocket for the note, as if it would confer some legitimacy on her presence. “I’m only trying to find where she lives. You see, I’m from Dublin, and I’m to stay here with her for a while, and—”

  “Nessa Teig never told me she had a granddaughter.”

  “Well, she does,” Una said, more defensively than she intended. The day had been wearying, and the bizarre celebration, with its swirls of color and clamoring sounds, was making her feel quite lost and helpless. “She didn’t give me an address, though. I only need to find it so I can settle in. I’ve got nowhere else to stay for the night, you see.”

  “I can help you, yes, indeed. And it is very fortunate you showed up when you did, for I wondered what to do about the house.”

  “What’s that?” Una said, bewildered. “I’m sorry… you’ve quite lost me.”

  “But this solves everything, yes, indeed. Fortunate!”

  The little man edged past Una and gestured for her to follow. Ordinarily, she would never have gone with a strange man into an alley, but even in her disoriented state, she sensed that there was no more harm in this fellow than in an asthmatic pug dog, or a teddy bear with stuffing leaking out of its side. He was as sweet and harmless a creature as ever walked the Earth.

  He pulled a ring of keys from his braided-wool belt. A narrow wooden door was recessed into the back of one of the white-daub buildings. The man wiggled a remarkably old-fashioned-looking key in the lock, grunting in frustration, but the door finally opened with a squeal of rusty hinges. He ushered Una inside, and when he shut the door behind, most of the noise of the celebration was cut off, affording Una a few precious moments to catch her breath and steady her thoughts. She set her bags down again and looked around.

  The room was spacious, taking up most of the Tudor-style cottage. It was paneled in dark wood, which had the glossy patina of long age, and lined with dozens of bookshelves, each one so crammed with books that many lay crosswise over the tops of their fellows. Still more volumes were stacked on the floor. Leaded windows faced the street outside—and the Beltane celebration. A large, carved-wood door stood between the windows, proving that the entrance the fellow had used was a back door. A big, plush, wool-tufted rug spread across the stone tiles of the floor.

  The little man scampered behind a vast oak desk, which dominated the room with a weighty sense of officiality. He eased himself down into a leather-covered chair with an air of extreme pleasure in his own authority. The desk sported an engraved brass plate that read, Michael O’Malley, Esq.

  “Now then,” Mr. O’Malley said.

  “You’re… a barrister?” Una stared at his name plaque. It was difficult to imagine what use a place like Kylebeg might have for a barrister.

  “And mayor of our great town, and commissioner of the commons, and Kylebeg’s historian.”

  “Gracious,” Una said, trying not to crack a smile. “What a lot of hats you wear.”

  “Let us get you sorted, Miss Teig. The name is Teig, isn’t it? Like your grandmother?” Una nodded, and he waved a hand in satisfaction. “What a lot of hats I wear, yes, indeed. I suppose I should count ‘official welcomer’ among my other titles. In Kylebeg we are well known for our hospitality. Even in the midst of the Beltane celebration, we can’t let you go neglected. Your first name, my dear?”

  Una doubted whether Kylebeg was known for anything at all. But she smiled gratefully and sank onto one of the two chairs that faced Mr. O’Malley’s desk. “Una.”

  “As I said,” O’Malley resumed, “Nessa never mentioned a granddaughter to me, but she was close about a good many details of her life. We all loved her so, and forgave her reclusive tendencies. Have you proof that you are her heir?”

  “I have this letter,” Una said. She passed it across the desk.

  Mr. O’Malley pushed back his fur hood, revealing a ring of rumpled, chestnut hair around a shining bald pate. He glanced quickly over the letter. “Yes, that is Nessa Teig’s handwriting. I’d stake my life on it. That is all the proof I require.”

  Una sat back suddenly in her chair; it emitted a loud creak. O’Malley’s words finally filtered through her bewilderment and struck her brain with their full, startling force. “Was? Loved? Her heir?”

  Michael O’Malley passed the letter back to Una. Sympathy sobered his blue eyes. “Yes, Miss Teig. Your grandmother left this world some two nights ago. Peacefully, in her sleep, as we all hope to do one day. The lad who looks after her garden found her in her bed with a smile upon her face. We held her funeral rites just last night. If we had known you were coming, we would have waited, of course.”

  Una shook her head, vaguely, dazed. “No… no, it’s quite all right. You couldn’t have known I was on my way.”

  “So you see, Miss Teig, you won’t have any trouble finding a place to s
tay the night. You’ve a house all to yourself: your grandmother’s. It is yours now, and her land along with it.”

  2

  Michael O’Malley graciously picked up Una’s bags and led her back through the smaller door into the alley. The sound of the celebration swamped her again, muddling her thoughts… not that her thoughts had been particularly well-ordered to begin with. She followed O’Malley down the narrow lane, stumbling and dazed by his news. At last, the alley ended and Una found herself gazing out at a long stretch of pasture land, with the tiny town of Kylebeg at her back.

  O’Malley nodded toward a motorcycle parked alongside the cottage. It was candy-apple red and sported a sidecar; nothing could have looked more improbable against the building’s ancient, ivy-covered wall. “My conveyance,” he said. “Do get in. I’ll drive you out to your grandmother’s estate… your estate, I should say. It’s near enough to walk, if you fancy a good long stroll. But with the celebration we’ll find it easier to take the bike.”

  Una clambered into the sidecar, tucking her bags in around her. O’Malley fired up his bike’s engine. Neither of them donned a helmet, which seemed silly, considering O’Malley was apparently the highest authority in all Kylebeg. Any Dublin politician would never have dreamed of riding about without a helmet; his career might never recover from the flood of outraged tweets and Facebook posts.

  O’Malley wheeled the bike about in the gravelly patch behind the town’s buildings, then sped off toward the hill—the very one around which the procession had come. The rear sides of the town’s cottages and shops flew past at a dizzying speed.

  Una clutched the edges of the sidecar with white-knuckled hands. She had never ridden in a one before. In fact, she had never traveled by motorcycle at all. She felt much too low to the ground and far too exposed; the wind whipped her long, dark hair out behind her and stung her eyes until they blurred with tears. The bike shuddered and bounced over the unpaved lots behind the town. Pebbles and dust pinged against the sidecar’s windshield, whizzing past Una’s face. She hunched, doing her best to stay behind the protective barrier of the windshield, which seemed inadequately small. Then the bike swerved sharply at the final cottage and sped toward the street.