by Erin O'Quinn
Confused, I stood. “Yes, well, I am afraid the battle has already commenced,” I said, for it had already begun to rage in my heart and in my very gut.
“Please excuse me, Liam, Michael. I need to sit alone for a while.” I looked around for a place of retreat, but the two men seemed to understand my need. With his arm around Michael’s shoulder, Liam turned and left. I found my refuge again and sank to the deck. I leaned into the gleaming curve of the longship Brigid. I had already named it after Michael’s lost love, his beautiful love redeemed.
I thought about my words with Liam today. How odd that it had taken us almost a year to talk with each other. Yet had I learned anything today that I did not already know about him?
Yes, I answered myself. Now at last I knew that he was capable of real love, not just sexually charged love. It was the love of a man for his own kin. I knew now that he felt sorrow over the possible loss of his sweet homeland. I knew that he was deeply fascinated by me, even if he did not understand the nature of love between a man and a woman.
How could he? He was almost as young as I, and I did not understand it at all.
I was amused in a way by his notion that he could win me by vanquishing his “rival.” I thought that attitude had died with the bones buried under the Standing Stones. And yet if it was part of his very upbringing, his deep-felt sense of rightness, how difficult would it be to change his mind?
I could imagine Kevan’s look of pain and disbelief that a man would vanquish him to win my love. Knowing his natural reserve, I thought that Kevan would simply walk away and let me decide the outcome.
If I was sure of anything right now, it was that I needed to be with Liam, to talk with him, to explore his world, until I knew him better. This fierce emotion I felt for him—was it merely the natural pull of a woman for a desirable man? Was there any substance in him, and indeed in me, that may lead to a serious partnership?
I thought of my best friend Brindl and her new husband Thom. They had taken the time to become friends and to explore their emotions deeply before committing to their marriage. And I? I had gone from an adolescent kiss to deeply sensual cravings in a matter of weeks with more than one partner. It was clear I had much to learn about myself.
By now the sun stood at the top of the mainsail, and I began to feel drowsy with its warmth on my skin. I saw that Michael had left the wineskin, and I tasted a bit of the sour vintage. Ah, well, that too would improve as soon as I got home, I promised myself.
Hours later when I awoke, it was slowly and sweetly, with Liam’s rich tenor voice winding itself into my dreams. I reached out my hand and he took it, simply took it, with no display of sensual desire that I was used to from him. I decided I liked that very much, for I hated to be constantly aroused by him, my mind clouded with urgent needs. I wondered if I could make him understand that some day.
After his song ended, Liam sat holding my hand and looking out to sea, his eyes serene. Then he turned and looked into my eyes.
“Caitlín, we…talk?”
“Yes. Let us talk.”
I felt a light movement on my left and saw that Michael had quietly sat next to me, waiting for his cousin to speak so that he could mirror his words in my language.
“Me cousin Michael and I have talked, Cat. He returns to his home on the Lough Neagh. Sure an’ it has been empty these five years, all waiting for his bride. He wonders if you and I would prepare it, while he leaves to bring back his Brigid. It would take not long. But it would mean much to him.”
I did not have to think about it. This is the chance I needed to spend time with Liam, and also to do something for my friend Michael.
I looked at Liam, then at Michael. “I would love to do that,” I replied. I thought my happiness probably showed in my eyes, so I did not have to adorn my answer with extra words.
I wondered whether it had been Liam or Michael who had devised this plan to bring us together. Then I decided it did not matter at all.
“Tell me about your family, Liam,” I said.
Right away his eyes took on that taunting light I knew so well. Michael spoke almost in unison with his cousin so that it seemed that we really were talking. “Ye already know, I have left me wife and children for love of ye, lass.”
“Besides them.” I smiled, for I loved his teasing ways, although I would never admit it to him.
“Then ye know about me father, for ye met him at Tara.”
The scamp! I found out by accident that his father was no less than the High King of Éire. Even though his was largely a ceremonial title, King Leary was still a powerful and interesting man.
No doubt Liam had told him that I had healed his near-fatal wound at the shillelagh match. I had applied only a simple herbal powder, but it had worked to seal the gash on his foolish head.
In gratitude for saving Liam’s life, King Leary had granted me and my people all the former holdings of the Sweeney clans, an area huge and varied and beautiful.
I nodded. Of course I remembered his father. Liam continued. “Me mother Máirín is a gentle soul who puts up with me father and all his rough brothers. Besides myself, she bore three large sons. Me brothers and I live not in Tara, but some of me family still live in the royal bally there.”
“Where do you and your brothers live?”
“Ah, Caitlín, we are a bit, ah, rowdy. Undisciplined. We live where we are at the moment. Me mother despaired of us long ago. Now ye know why no woman will have me.”
“Who were the twelve men with you when we met?”
“Two brothers—the ones who guided ye to your priest Pádraig—and ten cousins.”
“And you have kin in other parts of Ulster, I think. I know about the MacCools. Who else?”
By now he was clearly puzzled at my questions. “So I be not charming enough for ye. I think ye mean to meet the better-looking ones. Is that it, devil woman?”
“Liam. I want to know you better. I want to know about your friends, your family, your way of living. Is that so terrible?”
“But ye will find out,” he said simply.
I could see that he was not trying to hold secrets. To him, it was incomprehensible that someone would ask such questions when they had eyes and ears to understand with. Time would be the teacher, he seemed to say.
“Do you want to know about my family?” I asked.
“I know ye rescued your mother. I saw and felt your love for her. Who else do ye love as much?”
“I have a great aunt in Britannia. Yet she will not join me here. And that is all, besides one stubborn cousin who will die fighting a lost cause on a distant shore.” I thought about cousin Milos on the faraway white cliffs, intent on drowning in the wave of oncoming Saxons on the long shoreline of Britannia.
“I am sorry, Caitlín. Family is the rope that ties people together. Ye need that love as much as the love of a strong man.”
“Be not sorry, Liam. Right now my mother is more than enough! And oh—I almost forgot Matthew. He is somehow related to me, through my grandfather. I suppose I could call him my uncle.”
“And will he stay behind, too?”
“He is a healer, and he will stay where he is until he feels a greater need in Éire. And yet he will someday join me, I am sure. And his twin sons, too, I hope.”
“So, Caitlín, we both have family to love us. Now let us love each other.”
He leaned to me and kissed me, so gently I could feel a slight pulse in his lips. Where did all his sweet emotion swell from? It really was more than the pull of passion. I may have been wrong about him. Perhaps he really did feel more than the urge of his bold manhood.
“Sometimes ye want just the love. Am I right, Caitlín? Without the hunger?”
“You have read my heart.”
He did not answer, but he put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close to his side. We sat that way, silent, until the sun began to shine through the lowest riggings of the sail. Michael had left, but I knew not when, for I felt only th
e nearness of Liam.
Chapter 4:
Reeds and Grasses
We sailed into the little inlet at the mouth of the River Lagan. It had been hardly a year since my little currach had landed here with its thirty pilgrims. This time, only three people left the ship—Michael, Liam, and I. The rest of the passengers were bound for my own holdings that Liam had started to call “Ballycaitlín,” the beautiful lands ceded to me by High King Leary, near the settlement of Derry.
I looked for the high rock where we had landed last year, but this landing spot was different, for the waters were deeper. We used a small rowing boat. When we were safely on land, the crew hauled it back to the longship with a tarred rope.
We sat on the shore in the morning sun, surrounded by tall reeds and calling waterfowl. I threw my head back and drank in the breeze, the feel, the smell of my new homeland.
Michael was on his knees, his head down, seeming to be in an attitude of prayer. Then I saw him lower his head and kiss the very ground. It felt almost like a sacred moment as my friend greeted the homeland he had forsaken five long years ago.
I marveled that Michael could have left his homeland and his beloved Brigid for so long, festering all those years about her love for MacCool, a love that had never been! MacCool needed to be taught a hard lesson for all his lies and for all the misery he had caused my friend Michael, and no doubt the lady Brigid, too. I did not even want to relive the sorrow he had caused Liam and me by his boast that he had become my lover.
Liam and I sat apart from him for awhile, allowing him time to compose himself. Even from more than ten feet away, I could see tears bright in his eyes.
At last he stood and looked at us. “Come,” he said. “I would know me fate, for good or for ill.”
Liam and I joined hands and followed Michael as he walked westward, toward the great shining lake they called the Neagh, where he had built a home years ago. I was eager to see it, for I remembered MacCool’s description when we spoke together several months ago.
“I was captivated by his teach,” MacCool had said, “for he somehow had fashioned windows made of melted sand, and I swear to God ye could see light through them I tell ye, he could make anything his heart and mind could see.”
Michael had made the currachs that brought escaping pilgrims to Éire, he had built the sleek, fast longship we had just sailed in on. I ached to see his house, and an idea started to form in the back of my mind. What if Michael were to build one for me—more of a brugh, a large homestead? I would wait and ask him later, after he discovered what destiny held for him and his once bride to be.
We had a day’s walk ahead of us, and we would spend one night under the stars of Éire. Michael told us we should see his home around midmorning tomorrow. That evening, Michael made for himself a nest of grasses under a spreading oak. Liam and I walked a ways off, seeking a private place to lie together.
Liam left me sitting near a stand of blackthorns and returned with an armful of soft, young willow catkins, graceful reeds, and grasses. He spread them on the ground. Without saying a word to each other, we lay stretched out fully. I lay on my side and he lay close behind me, his arms around my waist, his breath and mustache on my neck.
We lay that way, still, breathing deeply, for long minutes. Then his circling arms drew me nearer, and I felt his taut body against my back and buttocks. His mouth started to move on the nape of my neck, but very slowly. The slower his mouth moved, it seemed, the harder my heart banged in my chest. Surely he could feel it.
Then his mouth moved to my ear, and he said my name, very low. “A Cháit.” By now I knew it meant “Cat” or “Cate.” His tongue and lips played with my ear and my cheek, teasing me, asking me to turn to him. When I still did not move, his hands moved from my waist and cupped my breasts. His fingers found my erect nipples even through the woolen tunic, and he began to pull on them, all the while licking my ear in the same rhythm as his fingers. Hot, hot, I thought I was burning up, and I turned into him, not wanting to yield, and yet I did.
He felt for my hand in the dark and brought it to the top of his bríste. “Take it off, ” he whispered.
Saying nothing, I fumbled to untie the thong around his waist. I felt his movements as he shrugged off the britches. In a few moments I knew he was lying naked next to me, not moving.
I, too, lay still and quiet. “Touch.” His mouth was in my ear, and his tongue burned. I could feel myself trembling, wondering what would happen when I touched his great cudgel, like a warning shillelagh. I had felt a man’s groin before, once, and to me it seemed like a weapon, waiting to strike. I was a little afraid.
I reached out and touched him. Oh, my, I thought. It was like a band of steel tied up in silk.
Not waiting for him to ask me, I brought both hands around it and held it, marveling how it had suddenly appeared and how hot it felt under my cool palms.
Then he moaned. The sound of his vulnerability caused a bolt, like lightning, to shoot up my legs and into my own groin. I groaned, too, almost without willing it, unable to hold it back.
“Anois, now, now, kiss it,” he murmured urgently, and his words stunned me. I could not believe he wanted me to bring my mouth to his groin. What would happen if he suddenly climaxed? What would I do?
I had never thought that lovemaking could be more than sucking of breasts and meaningful touches. In my fantasies, I had never let my mind wander this far. How could I, when I had never yet seen a man naked? I had not an idea what a man could possibly want outside of the vague notion of “fornication.”
I bent low, then lower, my mouth opening to him, my whole body shaking. And when it touched my mouth I thought it was the softest skin I had ever felt. First my tongue, then the rest of my mouth enfolded his straining erection, and I surrendered to the ecstasy of making Liam feel good.
Morning came suddenly. I used to awaken at least an hour before dawn, but the past days in Deva with Kevan, and two mornings ship-side, had spoiled me. Now I woke to a cloudless dawn, and Liam was not beside me. I walked behind the stand of blackthorns and saw him then. The long knife must have been Michael’s, for Liam did not wear one. He was cutting a shillelagh from a particularly supple-looking branch, paring away the hard thorns that had begun to grow along the sides.
He looked up and saw me, and he smiled a smile of pure joy. It suffused his face and leapt from his eyes, too.
“Dia duit, a mo chroí.”
I smiled at him, but I was looking at the gleaming cudgel he had formed. So like a man, I thought. He had to have his weapon. I wondered briefly what had happened to the one he used to wear.
Finished, he walked up to me, swinging the shillelagh, testing its heft. And then he did the unthinkable—he held it out to me. I looked from the weapon to his eyes, and back again. Still he held it out.
I reached for the shillelagh, and I naturally began to feel the heft. The knobby end was smooth and dark, and the weight of the stick seemed perfect for me. And then I really did smile, for I understood this was his gift to me.
Liam was awarding me the champion’s shillelagh, the shillelagh he should have won in Tara before his head became the target of a brutal attack.
This dark, knobby stick was his way of making up for his failed shillelagh match in Tara, a way of thanking me for healing his hard, stubborn head. Perhaps, too, it was offered in subtle gratitude for last night.
I would ask Michael later how to say “thank you.” For now I stood on tiptoe. With one hand, I softly held his auburn curls, bringing his mouth to mine. “A mo chroí,” I repeated his own words to me. And then I stepped back, and with my other hand I brandished the darkly gleaming weapon. “But next time, be careful.” I tucked the shillelagh into my belt.
Some words needed no translation. He knew I had forgiven his lapse of warrior readiness, and he would not repeat his mistake.
Michael had somehow brought down some kind of waterfowl, and Liam built us a fire. We sat cross-legged and ate, not talking overmu
ch, for we could see that Michael’s blue eyes were moving with a thousand unanswered questions. When he rose, we did, too. Then the three of us walked silently westward, following the sun.
It seemed that the closer we got, the longer Michael’s strides became, until I was almost running to stay close to the clansmen. Liam was grinning and singing, and Michael’s face was red with the exertion of almost running for the last two miles.
We had not yet seen the lake, but the profusion of grass and reeds and the high-circling geese and swans signaled its presence. We entered an area of almost solid aspens and young rowans, and then Michael stopped. His head up, almost as if smelling the air, he said, “Here be all me land. Me home lies just beyond those trees.”
And then instead of running, he slowed to a walk. He began to move even more slowly, as if coming upon his home gradually would make it even better somehow. Like stalking his prey, Michael edged to the place where I could see sunlight shimmering on water through the aspens. And then he bounded through the low branches, his voice raised like a child, and I could not even see him any longer.
Liam and I took our time approaching, and then we stopped, looking though the rustling tree branches. And there stood the most beautiful, perfectly round, exquisitely colored teach I had ever seen, a little house studded all around with circular windows.
I wondered what Michael had used instead of lime to color the daub-and-wattle walls. They shone a soft yellow, like the inviting center of a buttercup. Tall grasses grew all around, testament to years of vacancy, and their buff-colored awns nodded and beckoned in the little breeze that blew off the lake.
The lough itself was deeply blue, unspoiled by any but wild things that grew on its shore and soared overhead.
Michael was standing before his own door, as though begging entrance from phantoms inside. I saw by the way the grass grew right to his door that no one had entered for a very long time. Then Michael walked with a purpose to the door and grasped the metal handle, pulling it forward. It opened easily, and he walked inside.
