The Maid of Ireland

by Susan Wiggs

  Biting blue oaths streamed from her as she struggled. The evening wind whipped the tawny banner of her hair. Ladyman aimed the musket at her head.

  “My God.” Wesley blinked, then shook his head as if to banish the vision. The deck listed from the force of a swell.

  Hammersmith gave a tight smile. “Now, about your knife...”

  Wesley dropped the weapon. A dizzying blur of action wheeled around him. With bellows of rage, a tide of angry Irishmen came roaring up from the hold.

  Hammersmith pivoted, slicing the air with his sword. Wesley ducked, feeling the wind on the back of his neck.

  Ladyman’s musket went off. A cloud of yellowish smoke enveloped Caitlin.

  English and Irish filled the deck. The gut-deep explosions of muskets mingled with roars of pain and the clash of steel. Moving through a fog of rage and sulphur smoke, Wesley found Tom Gandy’s loaded crossbow on the deck. Gandy was nowhere in sight.

  An ax in one hand and a hammer in the other, Rory fought two Englishmen on the ladder between decks. A musket ball slammed into him with a wet slapping sound.

  Out of his mind with fear, Wesley raced toward the bow where he had last seen Caitlin.

  A shout stopped him. Hammersmith appeared at the rail on the high afterdeck.

  Cold to the very heart of him and aware that all was lost—Caitlin, Laura, life itself—Wesley took aim with the crossbow.

  * * *

  Choking and half blinded by the smoke of musket fire, Caitlin twisted in the arms of her captor. He laughed and squeezed her breasts. He was used to women who did not know how to fight.

  She kneed him in the groin. Hard.

  He fell, gasping and puking, to the deck.

  She jumped over him, shoved aside Ladyman and his spent musket, and stumbled across the deck. Her ears rang from the exploding shots. A foul cloud of yellow-gray fog enveloped the deck. Arrows whined through the rigging, thudding into wood and sometimes into men. Ducking low, Caitlin fought her way over coiled ropes, intending to leap over the aft rail to freedom.

  Fury and regret blazed in her heart. Fury at herself, for not trusting Wesley, and regret that her husband had not confided his plans to her.

  She reached the high afterdeck. The smoke was thick here, rising from the deck. She reached for the rail.

  And found herself once again in the grip of Titus Hammersmith.

  * * *

  Wesley emptied his mind as he prepared for the kill. The Roundhead captain made a perfect target. Screaming commands from on high, his buff coat flapping around him and smoke billowing up from the decks, Hammersmith was a fat roebuck.

  Filled with cold purpose, Wesley pulled the trigger of the crossbow. In the same tiny slice of time, Hammersmith’s arm shot into the mist. He yanked something—someone—toward him.

  Caitlin!

  “No!” screamed Wesley. “No! Jesus God, no!”

  The crossbow bolt thudded into her chest. She reeled back and dropped out of sight.

  “You sorry fool,” Hammersmith barked in triumph. “You killed your own wife!”

  * * *

  Night sounds rose in a screeching, croaking chorus over the island. The pop of the campfire punctuated the eerie sounds. Rory Breslin groaned and swore. He had pried the musket ball out of his shoulder but the wound had become inflamed. The others lay about, exhausted, none wounded so badly as Rory. The overwhelming numbers of English had driven them overboard and they had swum to the island.

  Wesley stared unseeing into the heart of the fire. His body felt stiff and his mind agonizingly alive. Punishing himself like a flagellant, he relived the scene over and over again.

  The sharp bolt triggered by his own hand, driving through the smoke-filled air. Caitlin bursting through the thick fog, straight into the path of the bolt. The deadly missile embedding itself in her chest. The look of utter shock on her face just before she fell. Titus Hammersmith’s taunt, Wesley’s own screams of rage and denial. The impassioned curses of the Irishmen, swimming for their lives in a hail of musketry. Their cries of rage and impotence as the English set sail.

  Now here they lay, still weak from the shock of seeing Caitlin killed before their eyes.

  How could everything have gone so wrong?

  Wesley tried to pray. Failed. Praying was for men who still believed, who still hoped. All hope had died in John Wesley Hawkins.

  Faintly he heard snatches of conversation among the men. Seamus MacBride’s voice trembled with grief. “Aye, my Caitlin was too good for this world. Sure and the great God carried her to heaven on wings of light.”

  Murmurs of sympathy rippled through the gathering. Someone asked, “Where could Tom have got his wee self off to?”

  “Sure no one’s seen him since the start of the battle.”

  “I’m after thinking he’s dead, too.”

  Rory nudged Wesley. “’Tis a shock to be sure, but we saw how it was, all that smoke and us as wild as berserkers and the Sassenach shooting off like crazy. May God forgive you, for it was a pure and natural accident.”

  Wesley continued staring into the fire, seeing the color of Caitlin’s eyes in the golden flames, the gloss of her hair in the glowing embers. He heard her voice in the keening of the wind and the shush of the waves on the shore. He felt her touch like the ghostly echo of a dream, and deep in the heart of him he couldn’t accept that she was gone.

  He moved through the task of hauling out their hidden curraghs, and the men murmured their admiration for his stoicism. But Wesley knew better. The rage and sorrow inside him brimmed higher and higher, and soon he would not be able to contain himself. Soon the fury would burst forth with fearsome strength, wreaking vengeance without mercy upon the race of men who had been responsible for Caitlin’s death.

  * * *

  Driven by the rage that ruled him, Wesley threw himself, heart and soul, into revenge. He had no room in himself for softness. He could not smile at a posy offered by a shy child. He could not pray during Father Tully’s night-long vigil for the souls of Caitlin and Tom. He could not commiserate with Magheen who, as soon as she heard the news, came to Clonmuir and sobbed out her grief until she lay weak and spent on the chapel floor.

  Instead, he coldly plotted campaigns designed to kill and maim and plunder.

  He felt a flash of some feeling—he wasn’t sure what—when Logan came to fetch Magheen. Rafferty was uncharacteristically subdued, guilt in his shining jet-colored eyes as he offered money and food to the refugees who still streamed to Clonmuir.

  The first week, the men rode out in a daring raid to the heart of English-held Galway. Wesley felt a cold relish when, through the slit of his antique visor, he saw the astonished fright of the Roundheads, surprised in the dead of night. Crossbow bolts whirred through the darkness and thumped into English flesh.

  Sometimes the fighting became a blurred dream. He would find himself holding a bloody sword, but with no memory of killing. At these times he caught the men regarding him with something like wonder. And afterward, he reached for a rosary to put himself into dreamless sleep with the clicking of the beads.

  During an ambush on the road between Galway and Lough Corrib, Wesley captured an Englishman he recognized from Hammersmith’s household. Before slitting the man’s throat, he learned that Hammersmith had gone to England.

  Now there was truly no hope of getting Laura back, either. The knowledge did not throw him into paroxysms of fury, for Caitlin had taken all his love and tenderness into eternity with her. He had nothing left to give Laura now.

  He could not let himself think of his daughter, clad in Puritan black, laughing in Cromwell’s lap.

  The second week, a fisherman from the Claddagh arrived with Caitlin’s beloved black stallion in tow. Wesley was in the yard, pacing up and down as he planned another raid.

  The visitor stopped and stared. Wesley saw himself reflected in the man’s apprehensive face. His hair unkempt, his half-grown beard straggly, his clothing dirty and his eyes wild, he kn
ew he made a formidable sight.

  The man handed over the horse. “She said there’d be a reward.”

  Wesley jerked his head toward Seamus, who sat beneath an alder tree poring over his book of hours. “See the MacBride.” The visitor hurried away.

  The high gloss of the stallion’s blue-toned coat gleamed in the afternoon sun.

  And Wesley, who had not shed a tear since seeing his wife fall from the shot loosed by his own hand, buried his face in the magnificent horse’s neck and wept. The sobs rose from a bottomless well of sorrow inside him, erupting with a violence that made men remove their caps and children dive for their mothers’ skirts.

  But the great outpouring brought Wesley no comfort. A sound of rage tore from his throat. He vaulted onto the horse and savagely kicked its flanks. Having no handhold save the inky mane, he bent low over the neck and rode at the horse’s caprice.

  They streaked across fields and fens, jumped stone fences and thundered along the strand, sand and surf flying up and stinging his face while he worked the horse into a high lather.

  He came to the forgotten garden where he and Caitlin had first met. Tumbled rocks and spiny green brambles formed ugly bracelets around the tidal pools. Breathing fast, he dropped from the horse and let it wander away.

  It was what Tom Gandy would call a clarion day, the sun bright and the sky hard and clean. And still the place seemed to pulsate with enchantment. Magic hung in the very air he breathed. Secrets wafted on the voice of the wind.

  Wesley sank to his knees and dug his fingers into the damp sand. “No,” he bellowed. “Caitlin, you cannot be gone!”

  But she was, borne to heaven where she would no doubt strike fear into the hearts of the angels.

  The day stretched into evening, and evening into twilight. He lay on the sand, pondering the hopelessness of his lot. Hammersmith was gone to England to report Wesley’s treachery to Cromwell.

  Wesley remembered the Lord Protector’s gentleness with Laura, the way the implacable eyes softened and the murderous hands soothed. Deep inside Wesley lived the certainty that even Oliver Cromwell would show mercy and give Laura a gentle upbringing. The Puritans were a harsh lot, but they looked after their own. And Cromwell, so recently deprived of his favorite grandson, clearly considered Laura his own.

  All that was left to Wesley was the fight. Only in the teeth of a life-and-death struggle did he feel himself truly alive, pulsing with a lust for revenge.

  The stars came out, and the brightest one burned its incandescence deeply into his mind, rousing memories of the day of Caitlin’s inauguration. Then, the MacBride had seemed eternal. And surely she was! She could not be gone. She had only been transformed into a higher state of existence.

  Like the brightest star.

  London, August 1658

  “Oh, my dear, this simply won’t do at all.” Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell strode into the cell of the Brick Tower, overlooking the moat on the north side of the Tower of London. He crossed the room to stand beside the leather-sprung cot. “You haven’t touched your supper. You haven’t eaten for days. I took such pains to have delicate fare sent to you.”

  The cot creaked as Caitlin stirred to life. She struck out with her arm and swept the laden tray to the floor.

  “I’ll not be after choking myself on your English pig swill!”

  Unperturbed by her outburst, Cromwell waved back the huge, blond-haired man who had stepped inside behind him. “Mr. Bull, bring wine for the lady and me.”

  Caitlin caught the giant’s eye. Thaddeus Bull had delivered the meal, and with it a blown glass vial which she fingered in the pocket of her apron.

  Moments later, Cromwell poured pale yellow sack into two pewter goblets. Drawing a stool to the cot, he set the cups on the table. She drew back her hand to fling the cups away.

  “I wouldn’t, Mrs. Hawkins,” he said. “You might find you’ll need a drink.”

  I might at that, thought Caitlin, her fingers tightening on the vial. She lowered her other arm.

  “You sorely try my patience,” he said. “My daughter Bettie is not ten days in her grave, and I’ve been making myself ill with all the travel between Hampton Court and London.”

  Caitlin’s view of the Lord Protector was colored by hatred, but she noted the gray lines of grief framing his mouth, the slight tremor in his voice as he spoke his daughter’s name. So, she thought uncomfortably, the monster had a heart, after all.

  “My condolences on the death of your daughter,” she said through stiff lips. “But you’ll not have my pity on your illness.”

  “I’m not asking for it,” he snapped. He looked past her, and his eyes softened. “God’s will be done,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “At least I have Laura.”

  Caitlin had no interest in the man’s mutterings. “Why are you here?”

  “You were duly tried today.”

  His words cut a swath through her control. “Tried, was I?” she demanded. “And what manner of justice is it that puts a body to trial, and she not even present to give a defense?”

  “The same manner of justice you showed to the English you murdered,” he shot back. “Are you interested in hearing the outcome?”

  Caitlin tried to resist her sudden longing for the wine, but the lure of the sack proved too great. She snatched one of the goblets and took a sip while Cromwell did the same. “Go on.”

  “The High Court of Justice has convicted you of treason, murder, theft and the practicing of the outlawed popish faith.”

  Caitlin took another sip of wine. The smooth Spanish sack failed to thaw the frozen wasteland of her heart. “I cannot be guilty of breaking your laws, for I do not claim England as my sovereign country.”

  He shrugged, the chain of office moving on his shoulders. “The Council decrees that you are to be hanged, drawn and quartered.”

  Horror erupted in her brain. “You cannot harm me! You signed a statement protecting the kin of John Wesley Hawkins.”

  “He broke faith with me!” Cromwell burst out. “I’m no longer under any obligation to him.”

  “Faith, faith, faith,” Caitlin burst out. “I do not understand the word anymore. Whose faith, yours or God’s? And which God, yours or Wesley’s?”

  “You add blasphemy to your crimes, woman!”

  Caitlin stared implacably at the Lord Protector, noting with distaste the bulbous shape of his ruby nose, noting with a tremor of fear the bright cruelty in his eyes. Yet her mind wandered far away.

  Back to Ireland. Back to Wesley.

  She should have trusted him. She should have believed her own heart that told her he would never, ever betray her.

  During the long days of the voyage to London, she had pieced together the truth. Wesley never meant to give the horses to Hammersmith. He and the men of Clonmuir had planned an ambush.

  The raid would have worked if she had not interfered and gotten herself captured.

  Wesley, why didn’t you tell me?

  Because she would not have trusted him. Too late, she knew the truth. Too late, she knew she loved him. Had loved him from that first spellbound moment when she had wished for him on a white rose. She adored him with a painful, pitiless intensity that mocked every naive idea she had ever had about the love between a man and a woman.

  Now their love would never have a chance to flower. And that was the greatest tragedy of all.

  Her hand came up to touch the healing bruise just below her collarbone. Wesley’s arrow had struck the breastplate beneath her tunic. The impact had knocked her off her feet but the injury had been slight.

  No doubt Wesley believed he had slain her. Another tragedy that would never be resolved.

  “...no reason at all to delay carrying out the sentence,” Cromwell was saying.

  Caitlin dragged her mind to the present. “When?” she forced herself to ask.

  “Tomorrow.” He refilled both their wine cups.

  Caitlin’s fingers sneaked again into the folds of
the rough shift she wore. She felt the vial and remembered Bull’s words.

  You won’t want to endure the torture, he had whispered, his large, blunt-featured face alight with a twisted compassion. Spare yourself the agony with Dr. Bate’s remedy. Bull had instructed her to dissolve the powder in a cup of liquid. One sip alone would rob him of his duty.

  Her soul recoiled at the thought of taking her own life. But the brutal alternative brought her to a decision.

  She dropped to her knees in front of Cromwell. “Please, Your Highness,” she pleaded, although the words tasted as sour as vomit in her mouth. “I beg you, spare me!” She pressed the hem of his cloak to her lips. “For the love of God, please!” She caught at the chain of office that spanned his shoulders.

  He shoved her back. The chain came loose and fell to the floor. “Groveling ill becomes an Irish chieftain. Sit down!”

  She meekly obeyed.

  He bent to retrieve the chain.

  She unstopped the vial and dashed the contents into her wine cup. Her unsteady hand made the vial clink against the rim of the cup. She winced, certain he would notice. But as he groped around on the floor, the powder fizzed briefly; then the granules disappeared. She tucked the empty vial back into the pocket of her apron.

  Cromwell straightened, scowling at the broken link of the chain. “Hawkins should have heeded me, by God. Now he’ll lose all. All!” Gaining control of himself, he feigned a regretful look. “Pity about the child, though.”

  Shock slammed into Caitlin’s chest. “Child? What child?”

  “Did he not tell you about Laura?” A mysterious smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I must’ve scared him more than I thought.” He rubbed his chin. “Still, that would be like Hawkins, not wanting to use her to manipulate your sympathies—as if there were any such thing in your heathen soul.”

  Swallowing back apprehension, she asked, “Who is Laura?”

  “Why, his poor little daughter. Nigh on four years old, she is, darling mite. In his preaching days he dragged the child on his treacherous errands, passing her off as an orphan and himself as a priest, when his true purpose was to incite the people against me. Poor little motherless mite. When Hawkins was arrested, he entrusted her to a godly woman who had the wisdom to bring the girl directly to me.”