The Maid of Ireland

by Susan Wiggs

  Cantering along with the pursuing warriors, Caitlin felt fear pressing at her. Wesley had reached the limit of his strength; she could tell from the labored movements of his powerful legs and the loud sound of his breathing. She thanked God he was fleeter than any of the warriors, even Conn who won all the foot races at Beltane.

  But Wesley left bright smudges of blood in his path. Winded and bleeding, the wound on his shoulder still puffy and livid, he would never make that jump.

  When he was several feet in front of the branch, she noticed a change in him. His breathing evened out and he said something. His legs coiled and extended. In a leap that would have daunted the most gifted of athletes, he sailed over the branch. Caitlin blinked and shook her head. For a moment, it had seemed that a bright glow moved with him, gilding the leaves and branches in his path.

  Tom cantered up beside her. “Saints of heaven, have you ever in your born and natural life seen the likes of that?”

  Wesley landed on the path. He made no sound as his bloodied feet struck the rocky ground.

  Tom lowered his voice. “Caitlin, did you see...?” For once, the bard of Clonmuir was at a loss for words.

  Rory loosed a bellow and plunged after his quarry. He let fly with his spear. Without looking back, Wesley ducked. He was a man possessed by some demon and yet divinely protected; he was wild and fey, no quarry of mortals. Again Caitlin sensed some strangeness about him and at first she could not place it. And then she realized. As Wesley ran, his feet seemed to skim the ground; his passing did not stir a single leaf or branch.

  “Faith, he’s not clear in his head,” Tom said wonderingly.

  Awe shone in the warriors’ eyes. Liam chewed his thumb against evil. The back of Caitlin’s neck prickled. Some unnatural spirit had taken hold of Wesley. Like Ruath of legend, he had harnessed an invisible wind horse.

  The race continued another quarter mile. Wesley possessed a surging power that daunted his pursuers and baffled his observers. He seemed more than human as he dodged, ducked, and vaulted the obstacles without slackening his pace, and sped to the end of the course.

  As he approached the fluttering pennon that marked the end of the gauntlet, Wesley sensed that something extraordinary had happened. The blinding whiteness of oblivion deepened to the shades of reality. The pain rushed back, screaming through his chest and shooting up his legs. With amazement he realized that the murderous course lay behind him.

  He stopped at the pennon, grasped the pole, and fell to his knees. His hand came up to touch his hair. The braids lay neatly in place.

  “You made it,” cried Tom, trotting up on his pony. “Saints be praised and sinners be damned, you did it, lad!”

  “You’re a true champion,” Curran Healy crowed.

  The sweat crawled in rivulets down Wesley’s face and back and shoulders. “No, Curran,” he said. “I...” He accepted a flask from Brigid and took a drink, then spat it out. “Water? By God, what must a man do to get beer?”

  The girl handed him a second flask. “Tickle your throat with this, sir,” she said, her face wreathed in smiles.

  Wesley drained the flask, then turned to Caitlin, who had ridden up on the black. “I have the oddest feeling that it was not my doing.”

  He heard a nervous edge to her laughter as she tossed her head. “And who then did every last one of us watch moving like the Second Coming through the woods?”

  Before Wesley could answer, Rory Breslin stepped forward, tugging at his gorget and puffing with exertion. “Never in my born days have I seen the like.”

  “I see the hand of a wise and just God in this,” Seamus declared. “He’s one of us, else he’d not have survived.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Rory.

  Wesley sent him a lopsided grin. “Yes, that I’m mortal, after all. The Fianna asks much of a man.”

  “I was speaking of the poetic composition.” Slipping into Irish, Rory said, “The body might be fit—though I hold certain parts of it in grave doubt—but what of the mind and tongue?”

  Still in the grip of pain and guilt, Wesley reached for more beer.

  “Is it true he must make songs and recitations in Irish?” Curran asked worriedly.

  “Aye,” said Tom Gandy. “So it be written.”

  The large party started back toward the stronghold. Clearing his throat, Wesley hesitated. Rory glared at him.

  “Nature’s call.” Wesley jumped down a slope to the shelter of the bushes.

  “Me, too.” Rory joined him.

  Wesley rolled his eyes. “Will you not trust me to take a piss?”

  “After what I saw today, I’d sooner trust the Bad One himself.” Rory whistled through his teeth as he unlaced his trews.

  Wesley couldn’t help himself. After all his bold talk, Rory Breslin invited attention. Those who bray loudest usually had the least to bray about.

  Wesley blinked. His jaw dropped. For the boastful Irishman had a member that made a full-grown bullock’s look like a lapdog’s.

  Wesley glanced away quickly. “Christ, no wonder you’re not married,” he muttered.

  Rory chuckled. In Irish, he said, “You’ll not keep her happy for long with that.”

  Filled with a long-denied yearning for retribution, Wesley took his time lacing his trews.

  As he did so, he said in flawless Irish, “Pardon me, a chara. But I’m after thinking that ’tis not the size of the weapon that matters, but the fury of the thrust.”

  * * *

  A ceremonial hush closed over the assembly in the hall. Flanked by Seamus and Tom, Caitlin sat at the round table. She tensed with anticipation, her nerves burning and her heart beating fast.

  The last phase of the initiation was crucial. A warrior could not be accepted until he had proven the power of his mind as well as that of his body.

  Seamus toyed with the ends of his beard. “Sure I’d like to see the man become one of us. But the poor soul doesn’t know the Irish.”

  Rory took a long drink of his poteen and chuckled richly. “I’d not be after worrying myself on that, Seamus. Hawkins has the touch of the green on him.”

  A sadness welled up in Caitlin. She, too, wanted Wesley to succeed. How simple it would be if he gave his whole heart to Ireland. Then she would be free to open her soul to him as a wife should do.

  Then she would be free to love him.

  But John Wesley Hawkins was a born Englishman with no talent for the Irish. She felt the melancholy conviction that, after tonight, he would leave her. And she would be left with bittersweet memories of a love that she had been too stubborn, too proud to reach out and grasp with both hands.

  The main door banged open to the gathering evening. Twilight had turned the world blue and cold. The distant bleating of Mudge’s flock of black-faced sheep sounded with the noise of the battering sea and the song of the wind.

  Wesley appeared in the doorway. The hush in the hall deepened. Caitlin caught her breath.

  The torchlight magnified his size. He was, in that breath-held moment, bigger than a legend, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, moving with clean-limbed grace down the length of the hall. He gave no sign that his torn feet pained him. The subtle surge of his ropy muscles beneath a loose white tunic drew the eye and held it captive.

  His red hair, freed of the braids, fanned out in a magnificent mane around a face that, once glimpsed, could never be forgotten. The austere lines of nose and cheekbones were softened by his wide, full-lipped mouth. His eyes possessed hidden depths that urged a woman to plumb his soul and discover the miracles hidden there.

  Caitlin felt the secret woman inside her stir to life. The ancient believer wanted to run forward and embrace the approaching man, to mesh herself, body and soul, with his sumptuous handsomeness and extraordinary strength.

  His soft leather knee boots scuffed lightly against the flagged floor. The simple costume of tunic and trews, his waist cinched by the wide belt, gave him the look of a postulant about to take
vows.

  As indeed he had, Caitlin remembered with a jolt of discomfort. She pictured him lying prostrate before an altar lit by candles. And said a silent, shocked word of thanks that he had not found a vocation.

  He reached the table and went down on one knee before her. Despite the obeisance, Caitlin could detect nothing even remotely humble in the man bowed down before her.

  Following the dictates of tradition, she said, “Rise and tell us the poems of the ancients.” She spoke in the Irish tongue and did not expect him to understand the words.

  He straightened. She fought to keep her face expressionless, but the emotions shining in his eyes made indifference impossible.

  What did he see when he looked at her?

  God, I love her so.

  He had whispered the words like a prayer in the chapel.

  Now his eyes spoke the same message to her.

  Her woman’s heart heard and believed. A beautiful smile softened her lips. Wesley’s answering smile warmed her heart.

  “If I may begin,” he said.

  Her spirits dropped, for he spoke in English. In the language of her enemies. She forced herself to nod.

  He took a step backward. His gaze moved over the entire assembly. His presence filled the room like firelight.

  Wesley began to speak.

  Beautiful Irish words flowed like warm honey from his throat. Every syllable, every inflection, every roll of the tongue sang like the wind through the vales of Connemara, like the cry of a bird over the heaths, like the chiming of distant church bells.

  “He would have made a good priest,” Tom whispered.

  The entire assembly sat spellbound by his mastery, by the long grave looks he sent about the room, by the vibrating timbre of his voice.

  The voice of Wesley speaking Irish, sounding like an ancient Celt.

  “Faith, I’ll be out of a job,” Tom muttered.

  Wesley told of battles won and fortunes lost, of strong women and valiant men. Of a love that was as bright and deep as the very soul of Eireann.

  When the recitation ended on a vibrant, irresistible note, grown men wept. Women sighed and lifted their eyes to heaven.

  “How the devil did you learn our tongue?” Conn asked wonderingly.

  Wesley’s unfocused stare fixed itself on the low-burning fire, as if he were looking into the very distant past. “I was fostered with Irish monks at Louvain. They put me to work at the presses, printing works in Irish that had been banned here.” His shoulders drooped a fraction of an inch. “I must go, my friends. This day has taken the heart out of me.” He left the hall amid a babble of amazement.

  Scarcely aware of herself, Caitlin rose from the table. Tom said something but she didn’t hear. The lodestone of Wesley’s magnetism drew her inexorably from the hall.

  Unashamed, she opened the door to their chamber and stepped inside.

  * * *

  He stood warming his hands at the brazier and did not turn or acknowledge her approach. His head was bent, his face grave and unreadable. Yet still that terrible, beautiful glow hovered around him, illuminating the red-gold sheen of his hair and the quiet majesty of his form.

  Full of awe and longing and fear, Caitlin stepped up beside him. He made no reaction; it was as if the trials of the day had drained his energy and Caitlin’s constant refusals had sapped his spirit. Aye, for months he had endured her scorn, had forgiven her distrust, had accepted her condemnations.

  She prayed she had not come too late.

  In silence, she went and filled a basin with water and healing herbs, setting it on the floor in front of him.

  “You’ll be wanting to bathe your feet,” she murmured.

  He lifted one brow in faint surprise, then lowered himself to a stool. He reached for the laces of his boot.

  She put her hand on his wrist. “No. Let me.”

  The eyebrow went up a notch, but he shrugged and settled back while she removed his boot and eased his feet into the water. Her fingers moved gently over the tender and broken flesh. She winced as she remembered his wild race through the woods.

  “Were you put through the ordeal, too?”

  “Of course.” She kept her gaze focused on the basin. “But for me—for all of us—it was different. There were allowances that weren’t extended to you.”

  “Because I’m English.”

  “Aye.”

  He stood, wiping his feet on a towel and then going to the window, gazing out at the night. Caitlin studied his broad back, the ruddy hair curling over his neckline, the tense pressure of his hand on the embrasure.

  Oh, Wesley, am I too late?

  She approached him softly, hoping he would turn, hoping he would smile. And then, for the first time since a wish made on a wild rose had summoned him, she reached out.

  Her arms went around him from behind. She rested her cheek against his back, hard the sharp intake of his breath and the forceful beating of his heart.

  A hundred times he had begged her to let him love her.

  A hundred times she had denied him.

  Now the asking was up to her.

  She did not know where to begin. And then she remembered his recitation in the hall, the simplicity of words sprung from a yearning heart a thousand years old. “‘His touch did enslave my soul and did gild my heart with splendor...’”

  He turned slowly, and his hands came up to grip her shoulders. “Caitlin...?”

  A smile hovered tentatively about her lips. “‘Come, my love,’” she recited, “‘move soft with me, to where the wild birds call...’”

  “‘...and the land reaches out to kiss the sea,’” he finished, his voice quiet and deep with wonderment.

  Caitlin wound her arms around his neck and drew his head close to hers. “Aye, you are the sea, my Wesley,” she whispered. “As terrible and deep and beautiful as the sea struck by God’s own hand. And so here I am, coming to you, asking you...”

  “Asking what?” Anger flashed in his eyes. “My God, woman, what more can I give you?”

  She raised up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his cheek. “I can only hope I’m not too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “To tell you that I love you.”

  A sound of joy and pain and yearning burst from him. He swept her up into his arms and laid his lips on hers. They shared a deep, open-mouthed kiss, and the taste of him flooded her, probed her soul with fingers of light.

  Caitlin wanted to whisper the words that were in her heart, but this was not a moment for talking. It was instead an eternity of light and darkness, a timeless moment when all things became clear.

  Desire poured like warm rain through her. An answering passion flared in Wesley; she felt the bright heat emanating from his skin.

  Of one heart, one soul, and one accord, they shed their clothing and stood bathed in the low golden light of the brazier.

  Wesley’s eyes adored her; his tender regard transported her to a realm where the past was forgotten, the future a golden promise.

  “You make me feel like a wild spirit who’s found a home,” he whispered. He covered her breast with his hand. Her flesh sprang to vivid life, and she stepped into his caress, a begging sound escaping her lips and a heady throb of rapture moving through her.

  “Wesley.” She murmured his name between tastes of his lips, his throat, his shoulders. “You once said you would write poetry on my skin.”

  His smile moved against her temple. “Are you asking me?”

  She rested the palms of her hands on his slim, hard hips. “No, I’m begging you.”

  He pulled her into his arms. She reveled in his crushing embrace, in the hungry, urgent kisses he rained over her mouth, her throat, her breasts. She loved the roughness of it, the frank lust barely tempered by tenderness. Her old dreams of a stiff, courtly lover fled before the storm of his passion. This was what she wanted, what the woman inside her craved—to be swept away on a whirlwind.

  She inhaled his scent; he s
melled of the woods at midnight, of heather soap, and of mysterious essences unique to him alone.

  He laid her on the bed linens and held back a moment, struggling visibly for control, and then he came to rest beside her. His eyes contained depths of wonder and desire and uncertainty. His hands beguiled her flesh with caresses as soft as the passing wing of a moth. His touch brought her to a state of unbearable sensitivity.

  “Caitlin, agradh.” The Irish sounded mellifluous on his tongue, strange and yet wholly right. “’Tis a miracle that you have come to me at last.”

  She twined her fingers in his hair. “The miracle happened ages ago when I held a rose and wished for you, and you came to me.”

  “Sometimes I think I was sent.”

  She held very still for a moment, wondering at his words. “Magic or happenstance,” she said, “it matters not.” And then she touched him, marveling at the way his flesh heated and leapt to life under her questing hand.

  He made a strangled sound in his throat. “Jesus! Slow down, woman!”

  She laughed in delight and slowed, but did not stop her caresses. “Am I a bother to you?”

  He rose up on his knees. “Yes, by God, and I love you like this. Brazen and lusty and honest. But wasn’t it you who begged for poetry?”

  She nodded, staring at the languid play of fire glow over his body.

  “Good,” he said, “because the inspiration is on me.”

  His large rough hands moved over her breasts and belly and hips. She arched upward into his embrace, reaching, clinging, breathless with wanting him. His mouth followed the path of his hands, delving into warm secret places, and Caitlin was lost, no longer aware of anything beyond the undefined promise of the man wrapping her in his soft spell. She whirled like a grain of sand in an hourglass, spinning inexorably toward warmth and completion.

  “Wesley,” she gasped.

  Her breath fanned the passion flaming through him. He felt open and raw, his nerves ragged with tension. He was not accustomed to feeling so intensely, so deeply. To loving so desperately.

  He told her so in English and then in Irish. He told her with his hands and with his lips. And after a while, they spoke a secret lover’s language that neither remembered learning.