The Maid of Ireland

by Susan Wiggs

  “Do it, Rory!” Caitlin yelled.

  “Forgive me,” he said in Irish. “We’ll find a way to save you, see if we don’t.”

  “Go back to Clonmuir,” she said, her voice calm and reassuring despite the knife at her throat. “Tell Tom to carry on as best he can until I return.”

  Rory’s fists clenched with terror and rage. Wesley felt a lurch of sympathy. He, too, knew the horror of seeing a loved one threatened by an enemy.

  “It’s time to go, Rory,” he called.

  With his massive shoulders slumping in defeat, Rory heaved the tender overboard and jumped in. Within minutes, he’d landed Conn in the hull. Both men gripped the sides of the rowboat, their faces turned to the hooker.

  Gazing across the swells at their pained faces, Wesley finally gave vent to sympathy. “I swear by all that’s holy, I won’t harm her,” he said. “We’ll be back!”

  Caitlin punctuated his promise with an elbow to his ribs. He pulled her more tightly against him, feeling firm muscle and soft curves. “You’re making this hard, and it needn’t be. Don’t fight me, Caitlin.”

  “I’ll never stop fighting you, you leaky-brained coward!”

  Wesley sighed, then inhaled the delicious scent of her hair. “I’m sorry to hear that, love.” Wrestling her to the planks, he bound her hands and secured the rope to a cleat.

  Not once during the binding did she cease cursing him with oaths in English and Irish, layering the invectives as thick as dulse on the sand. In bright blue language she cursed the day he was born. She cursed his family back to five generations. She cursed the air he breathed and the space he occupied.

  The breeze dried the cold sweat that had formed on his face. Gratefully he put his knife back into his boot and set a westerly course.

  Though he sailed alone with Caitlin MacBride on the high seas, Wesley felt no swell of victory. The sense that all the planning, all the maneuvering, was just an elaborate game designed to get his daughter back, drained the emotion from him.

  “Now what?” she demanded with a deadly look in her eyes. “Do you mean to take me out and drown me?” Before he could answer, she laughed bitterly. “No, that would be too much of a mercy to hope for. You English seem to enjoy torturing your captives before murdering them.”

  Wesley realized uncomfortably that if she did know his eventual plan for her, she might beg for a slow death instead.

  He gave her his most engaging grin. “My plans have not changed, sweet Caitlin. We’re going to steal us a priest.”

  * * *

  “We’re lost.” Caitlin rubbed her sore wrists and scowled at the rope that bound her. Hawkins knew how to tie a pretty knot. She had probably worn her teeth to the gums working at it.

  “No, we’re not,” he replied.

  She pressed her lips together in vexation. The sky was a swinging bowl of stars. They had skirted the rockbound coast of Connemara and entered the surging waters off West Connaught.

  “You know nothing about the priests,” she insisted acidly.

  He sent her a wounded look. “They’re at Inishbofin.”

  “Inishbofin!”

  “Aye, in exile at the old garrison there.”

  “I’ve heard of the island,” said Caitlin. She had been too angry to speak to him during the long, comfortless voyage, but now weariness loosened her tongue. “The Irish held out there until two years back.”

  “Now it’s in Commonwealth hands.”

  “Is that where you were tortured?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t tortured at Inishbofin.”

  “Then how do you know about the priests?” He made no answer, so she turned the subject. “And just what are you after doing once we get there?”

  “I told you. We’re going to steal a priest.” He rummaged in a basket, took out a piece of bread, and handed it to her.

  She grasped it with her bound hands and took a bite. “Just one?”

  “We can hardly accommodate more in this boat. But it’s a start, don’t you see? We’ll have reconnoitered the garrison. We’ll know how it’s guarded. One day we’ll be able to come back and free them all.”

  It was odd to hear him speak so, to see his eyes light with noble purpose. “Why would you want to rescue the clerics of Ireland?”

  He looked away as if she’d caught him cheating at backgammon. “I was almost one of them. I don’t wish to see priests locked up like criminals. Tell me, how did the chaplain of Clonmuir disappear?”

  “Father Tully? Sure it was just after Magheen’s wedding to Logan. The nuptial feast took place at Clonmuir.”

  “He disappeared from Clonmuir?”

  “No. There was a processional to Logan’s castle at Brocach. Father Tully went along to bless the marriage bed, for Logan hasn’t had a chaplain since the Sassenach outlawed them. The next day, Father Tully was nowhere to be found.”

  “So he disappeared while he was under Logan’s protection.”

  “If you have something to say, then say it. Don’t bandy about like a cock in a pit.”

  “Why is it that, when the Roundheads raid, Rafferty’s holdings stay intact?”

  “He’s chief of the district. Even the Roundheads still show a bit of respect for the Raffertys.”

  “Then why was Father Tully snatched from his household?”

  “Saints and angels, I don’t know,” she snapped. “But I do know what you’re doing. You’re trying to drive a wedge between Logan and me. Well, it won’t work. Logan is a fine Irishman. If he’s adopted a few English ways, that is only because he judged it the safest means to keep his people from being harassed. You are the faithless one.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment. From his silence, she knew the argument was over. In spite of herself, she felt relieved, because he raised uncomfortable doubts in her mind. She stared back at him, refusing to flinch and trying to deny the handsome picture he made as he sailed to the west. Iron-gray swells rose at his back, framing him in liquid glory.

  “Ah, Cait,” he said. “Do you remember the things I said to you that day on the strand, the way we touched each other?”

  She recalled every shocking word, every soft caress. “No,” she said. “I’ve put that folly completely out of my mind.”

  “You have not. I need only to look in your eyes to see that you remember. And it’s important that you do remember.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I meant every blessed word. There’s Inishbofin,” he added, pointing at a line of winking lights in the distance.

  * * *

  Five hours later, in the dark heart of the night, Caitlin was stirred to wakefulness by the shifting of the hooker in its secret mooring in a rocky cove of Inishbofin.

  Two shadows stepped into the boat and came toward her. Round helms glinted in the uncertain gloom.

  She gasped, wrenching her bound hands and preparing to fight to the death against the soldiers.

  One of the Roundheads yanked off his helm. A mass of tight black curls shone in the moonlight. A familiar voice whispered, “Hush, a stor, it’s me, Father Tully, and our good Mr. Hawkins.”

  Five hours after that, as dawn broke over the craggy coast, an English frigate hove into view.

  Ten

  “Papers all seem to be in order, Mr. Hawkins,” said Tate, the English captain. “Still, your story’s extraordinary. I shall have to keep you under guard until we reach Galway.”

  From a wealth of secret documents concealed in his thick belt, Hawkins had brought forth yet another paper. Thus far, Caitlin had watched him produce a safe conduct from Titus Hammersmith and a passport authorized by Oliver Cromwell himself.

  Ice cold with anger, she was more certain than ever that Hawkins was no mere Roundhead horse soldier.

  Seeing the look on her face, Father Tully squeezed her hand.

  Tate scrutinized the passport, his thin lips moving silently as he read. A narrow, pointed beard gave his face an unpleasant shape. “Says here you’re a special agent of the Lord
Protector.”

  Hawkins started to look at Caitlin, then stopped himself. “That’s what it says.”

  “Would you care to elaborate?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Caitlin felt a sudden loss of breath, as if an invisible hand had grabbed her by the throat. A special agent of the Lord Protector. Special agent...or secret weapon.

  “Dar Dia, but I’m a fool,” she whispered to Father Tully in Irish. “I knew about him, and never even realized.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She told him about the letter Curran had stolen, months ago in Galway. “The letter mentioned Hawkins,” she concluded. “Not by name, but I should have realized when he first came to Clonmuir.” Furious with herself, she pressed her fist to her mouth to spare Father Tully from her curses.

  Suspicion hooded Tate’s pale eyes as he read and reread the paper. He seemed torn between beating the truth out of Hawkins and ingratiating himself to an intimate of Oliver Cromwell.

  Caitlin voted for the beating.

  “I must say, it does look irregular, you in the company of an Irish slut and a popish cleric.”

  One corner of Hawkins’s mouth glided up in a dangerous half smile. His gaze slid pointedly over Tate. “Believe me, Captain, I’ve been in worse company.”

  The men stared at each other across the wall of Hawkins’s implacability. Finally he blew out his breath. “The woman’s tired. Surely you don’t want it said that you withheld hospitality to a female, Irish or not.”

  Tate jerked his head at a subaltern. “Take them below.”

  Clinging to Father Tully’s hand, Caitlin followed the sailor to the foredeck and descended a steep ladder to a dark, damp room full of rotting rope and mildewing canvas. His face a snarl of contempt, the seaman pushed aside a pile of old sail to reveal four cramped bunks.

  “You’ll lodge here.” He kicked at a large brass container. “Use that for puking. And other necessities.”

  When he left, Caitlin sank to the wooden slats of a bunk, which was inadequately covered by a thin moth-eaten mattress. She dropped her head to her hands. “Father Tully, forgive me. This whole affair is purely my doing.”

  He sat beside her and patted her knee with his strong, squarish hand. “Nonsense, daughter. There’s none left in Ireland to resist the English. All our warriors—the great O’Donnell, Mahony and Comerford, the O’Carrolls and the Croftons—have all been forced from our shores. You held out against the Sassenach as long as you could.”

  “I’d be fighting still if I hadn’t been so stupid as to trust an Englishman.”

  “Resisting the Roundheads is like throwing rocks at the moon. Now. Tell me all that’s come to pass at Clonmuir. How is your father?”

  She laughed humorlessly. “Daida has gone on a quest to find the priests of Ireland.”

  “Ah. He hasn’t found Inishbofin yet.”

  “He probably got waylaid at a booley hut in the hills and is distilling poteen with a shepherd. I pray he’s safe somewhere.”

  “The Lord protects children and—” Father Tully caught himself, but not before Caitlin understood.

  “—and madmen?”

  “Faith, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know. He abdicated as the MacBride before he left.”

  Father Tully’s eyebrows lifted, two thick caterpillars framing eyes of the purest blue of heaven. “Did he now?”

  “I was elected the MacBride in his place.”

  The priest gave a low whistle. “Glory be to the high saints of heaven. You always were the MacBride in fact. ’Tis fitting.”

  Encouraged by his ready acceptance, she felt the lid being lifted from a boiling pot. Like escaping steam, the words poured out of her. She told Father Tully of the problems between Logan and Magheen. She told him how she had nearly settled the dispute only to be thwarted by her father.

  “He roasted your last bullock, you say?”

  “Aye.” But she felt no anger, only helpless frustration. “Daida sees Clonmuir through the frame of the past. He remembers how it was in the days of his youth, when the English were still far away and Clonmuir prospered.”

  She drew a deep breath, lowered her voice and continued in rapid Irish. She related her first meeting with Hawkins, the lies he had told, her naiveté in sending him on his way.

  She offered the details of the raids, the capture of Hammersmith’s stores, and of Hawkins.

  “I should have given him to Logan. But he would have revealed my involvement with the Fianna. For the same reason, I couldn’t send him back to the Roundheads.” She twined her fingers in her lap. Hawkins could be telling them now. The Fianna could be ruined, and all her friends punished.

  “In your grandsire’s day,” said the priest, “the scoundrel would have been given a drumhead trial and a speedy execution.”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t do that, either. My will is weaker than that of my grandsire.”

  “Because your heart is bigger.”

  “But look where it’s got me. A captive on an English hulk. No doubt Hawkins means to drag me before Hammersmith, and he won’t be bothered in his conscience when he hangs me.”

  “Don’t be so swift to judge Hawkins ill,” said the priest. “Perhaps he means to help in a way you’ve not considered.”

  She gazed at him in surprise. He smiled. “The man’s a Catholic—he told me so when we were escaping Inishbofin. He knows he’s failed in his vocation. Still, I’ll not condemn him until I discover what he’s about.”

  Caitlin flung her arm at the cramped chamber. “Can he be about anything good?”

  “Time will tell.”

  She thought of the many facets of Hawkins. She remembered his gentle touch and the feelings that poured through her when he kissed her. She remembered him laughing in the sunshine and looking more handsome than a Celtic god. She recalled his passionate claim that she should be the MacBride. He was the blank-eyed mystic, taming a stallion. He was the hot-blooded lover, bringing her desires to life, the compassionate confessor, hearing a man’s last words.

  “He’s a sly fox,” she told the priest. “He’ll say anything to win your trust.”

  “I fear slyness far less than outright cruelty.” Father Tully rubbed his fine knob of a nose.

  Like an oncoming squall, certainty blasted over her. “You were mistreated at Inishbofin!”

  “The Almighty doesn’t make a man bear more than he’s able.”

  She studied him closely, seeking signs of injury. He was gaunt and windburned. “Are you all right, Father?”

  He nodded. “Aye. What the English fail to understand is that they’ve hardened the Irish against privation and cruelty. They thought they were giving us short rations when in sooth a day’s allotment of bread was more than most of us were used to seeing in a week.”

  “But they did more than try to starve you.”

  “They may beat my flesh to the bone, but never will they touch the soul deep inside me. That belongs only to the Almighty, and no Englishman can take it from me.”

  Caitlin wished her faith ran as deep as Father Tully’s. But she couldn’t take a passive role; she had to fight back. She was too much a creature of the here and now.

  “How is it that you were captured?” she asked.

  “Sure wasn’t it odd. Day after the wedding, Lord Logan asked me to consecrate a field for the planting. As all his men-at-arms were sleeping off the nuptial toasts, I went alone. The field was deserted. I was after thinking there was no one in sight save myself and the Almighty. I’d barely uncorked my bottle of holy water when a gang of ruffians seized me.”

  “Englishmen?”

  He hung his head and stared at the planks. “They were Irish, my girleen.”

  A chill trembled through Caitlin. Though she fought the recollection, she remembered Hawkins’s speculation that Logan’s hand had been in Father Tully’s disappearance.

  “There are bounty hunters everywhere,” he said. “Some forty pounds Brit
ish is what they got for me.” Father Tully moved to another bunk. “Rest now, child. You’ve had a rough time.”

  * * *

  “We’ve got to do something about your hair,” said Wesley, sitting in the prow of the ship’s pinnace and gazing at Caitlin.

  “I’ll not primp for Titus Hammersmith,” she said, bracing herself against the swells of Galway Bay. “Let him see me as I am, as you’ve made me.”

  Wesley’s skin crawled with guilt. During the voyage to Galway, he had accepted plenty of ribbing on the subject of his captive. The English seamen had chided him for having selected a recalcitrant and weather-beaten wench when there were so many soft, comely females to be had in Ireland.

  Wesley had responded with sheepish grins and manly backslaps, when inside he seethed with fury and burned to demand respect for the MacBride. But for her sake, he concealed her identity, and so the sailors had no more regard for Caitlin than they would have had for a fat ewe being taken to market.

  He was grateful that she had kept to her quarters. He took care not to speak to her more than was necessary, for when he did, he could not stop his voice and his eye from going tender.

  Even now, in a crowded pinnace sailing to harbor in Galway, he longed to take her hands and tell her, Soon, Caitlin. Soon all will come clear. But he knew better than to hope for forgiveness.

  The boat bumped the dock. The once beautiful city of Galway stood drenched in mist. The grand marble houses huddled in miserable neglect. At the fish market, a few procurement officers and army contractors milled about, dickering with fishmongers over the price of herring.

  Father Tully, whom Wesley had come to admire for his good sense and fortitude, climbed onto the dock and extended his hand to Caitlin.

  “I’ll help the lady,” a seaman said, shoving the priest aside. He grasped Caitlin by the waist, his hands deliberately finding her softer parts as he lifted her.

  The instant he put her down, she lashed out with her bare foot. With reflexes quickened by the dangers of sailing, he jumped away, and she succeeded only in stumbling to her knees on the wooden planks.