Maire Read online

  The air inside was rank with a combination of smoke, mold, and animal scents; it was more abusive to the nostrils than Cromthal had noticed in the past. It was like breathing the decay of death. The apprentice climbed the steep winding steps of the keep to the second floor where Morlach entertained his guests. That they were few was indicative of his popularity among the nobility. The aire respected him—if fear could be called respect—but did not like him.

  Even as he entered the hall, where most of the crannóg’s activity took place, Cromthal saw Morlach rise from the gaming table he shared with Finnaid of Tara. Likewise, the apprentice’s hair rose with anticipation. Like the figures on the chessboard, the master manipulated people. This time, however, his queen had eluded him. The apprentice evaded the looks of both his master and Tara’s druid.

  “So she comes?”

  Morlach was always intimidating, measuring a good half a head above the average man. The volumes of his fine linen robe made him appear even larger across the shoulders, where a woven yoke of golden thread adorned the garment. It swirled in homage about his ankles as he stepped down from the dais expectantly.

  “I didn’t hear the horn heralding her approach,” he drawled, voice laden with suspicion.

  “The trumpeters did not see her, master.”

  It never occurred to Cromthal to lie. It would do no good. He swallowed, his palate was so dry his tongue stuck to it. Morlach surely knew. He merely intended to play a game, like the cat with a cornered mouse.

  “She is returned safely, is she not?”

  “Aye, Maire has returned, and her men cheer of her valor and the success of her raid.”

  Morlach’s dark thatched brow knit, his gaze boring down on the apprentice. “And…”

  The torque at Cromthal’s neck grew tight, as if to squeeze the answer from him.

  “She has returned with a husband, master.”

  Better to die quickly than to be prodded to death with questions to which Morlach already knew the answers.

  “Who is this man?”

  Cromthal’s fingers confirmed the torque had not shrunk as it felt, but they held no sway over Morlach’s will.

  “Emrys… Rowan ap Emrys… a Welsh lord and hostage.”

  Morlach inhaled, his chest swelling with the heat of the rage singeing his face.

  “And you have something of his for me?”

  Cromthal had nothing belonging to the lord on the prancing stallion. Nothing Morlach could use to do him harm. He’d dared not go near the horse’s hooves for fear its master would run him down. He shook his head, his tongue paralyzed with icy fear.

  The druid refused to let Cromthal tear away from his gaze. The apprentice stood as though chained to the spot. Not even when Morlach slung his fist toward him, did Cromthal move. He saw the carved stone chess piece coming at his face but was helpless to protect himself from its painful slam against his forehead. He heard the crack of bone amid the red riot of pain exploding in his consciousness. Then darkness as black as his master’s mood smothered even that out.

  Gleannmara.

  Maire looked up at the run-down hill fort built by her parents in disbelief. Nine years she’d been away and it had come to this? Parts of the earthen works were washed away, allowing the coming and going of livestock, at least to the outer fosse. The ditch itself was overgrown with all manner of thorn and brush. One of the entrance gates lay against the fence surrounding the inner court, while its mate hung ineffectively on one hinge.

  This couldn’t possibly be the prosperous tuath she’d left nine years ago. Gleannmara’s walls and buildings had glistened stately white, topped with golden thatch. Its earthen works were green, closely trimmed by fat cattle and shot gray with stone here and there. The livestock wandering aimless about the settlement now were gaunt and wiry, despite the green of Gleannmara’s pasturelands. And where were the neatly tilled fields surrounding the keep? Granted, her people were more herdsmen than farmers, but there had been a few well-tended tracts of land, enough to supply the people of the hill fort and its surrounds sufficient corn throughout the winter months.

  “This is your doing, Emrys. The evil eye is upon Gleannmara, while you go untouched.”

  Maire glared at the man who’d stood up to the druid and insulted his master.

  “This is not my doing nor the work of an evil eye.” Rowan studied the lay of the land and its habitats with an unfathomable expression.

  “Brude,” Maire called the druid, as if to confirm what her own eyes could not—would not—see. A druid could see past illusion. “Where are my people? What has happened here?”

  Maire remembered Gleannmara’s glory—the song and laughter, the abundance of field and forest to feed the many friends who frequented its tables, the remarkable precision with which the seasons came and went, each cherished in its own way. What lay before her now looked to be the result of nine years of winter, and this already spring.

  “What do you see, child?”

  “Abandonment.”

  “And…”

  Maire glanced at the druid. Disappointment and disillusionment stung her eyes, but she refused to give them sway. Chin jutting, shoulders squared, she turned back to examine the disheartening landscape. Here and there a wisp of smoke curled gray against the blue of the sky. She sniffed the air where its familiar scent wafted on the breeze. Her assumption was too hasty.

  “No, not abandonment.”

  She chewed her thumb, as though she were the legendary Finn, seeking wisdom. But Maire had not touched the Salmon of Knowledge as the Finian soldier had done more than a century before. If this were some horrible spell, however, perhaps this would break it, and she would see her home as it really was, proud and gleaming from its hilltop.

  “My people are hiding,” she said at last, not the least certain. She was neither Finn nor a druid, so the result was just the hapless measure of a disconcerted young woman, chewing at her thumbnail.

  “What manner of cowards are you?” Declan shouted behind her. Her foster brother began to beat on his shield. “Queen Maire! Queen Maire!”

  One by one, two by two, more and more of her people were delivered from their stunned silence by Declan’s prompting until the hills roared her name. Maire hardly felt worthy. She was grateful for the spirited mare she rode alongside a silent Emrys, because had she been afoot, her legs might have betrayed her. She’d heard how Morlach had bled her people, but this was worse than she thought even he could do.

  From behind, the warriors who’d mustered from the fortress before the voyage rushed forward, carrying the blue and gold colors of Gleannmara. “Make way for Queen Maire! The scion of Maeve and Rhian rules Gleannmara again!” Unable to hold back from seeking out their loved ones, some of her men broke away to search the hedgerows and forest edge for sign of them.

  “By the tides, Maire, ’tis worse than we thought.” Eochan stepped up to her side. “No wonder Morlach sought to lure you to Rathcoe for the wedding.”

  “Morlach!” Maire spat the name out like risen bile, even as the trees and brush began to give up those hiding among them. Women and children mostly surged forward to meet the returning warriors. The only men who remained behind were those unable to fight due to age or infirmity. “By my mother’s gods, Brude, he must pay for this.”

  Kneeing the mare forward, Maire sped toward the boisterous reunion of her clan. Hers. Not Eochan’s nor Declan’s but the blood of her blood. Would she know them after nine years, these cousins and cousin’s cousins?

  Raising her spear over her head, Maire whooped in triumph. They would know her. She would be the queen who restored Gleannmara to its former status. The booty of the raid would rebuild her home, making it a dwelling place fit for the queen the victory had made her.

  “Look well, Rowan ap Emrys. ’Tis the last time your eyes will see this keep in such a sorry state.”

  Although he didn’t believe in such things, Rowan could swear Maire was a shape-shifter. On the ship, her transformation
from quarrelsome vixen to queen of passion for her tuatha robbed Rowan of his earlier mischief. When Maire looked up at him as she was now, he wanted nothing more than to please rather than tease her. Her excitement was infectious, jarring as the impact of her sword against his had been so many days ago. The effect flowed through his fingers to the very core of his senses.

  She’d almost made him believe she was Gleannmara, shape-shifted into the comely form of a woman. Well he could accept that Gleannmara’s spirit coursed through her veins like the running waters of its hills and vales. It was then that he knew for certain that it was the voice of this warrior queen that called him home rather than that of Glasdam, the trusted servant of his blood family whom Rowan thought he’d seen in the visions.

  “The last time,” Maire vowed again, shaking him from his reverie with the fervor of her emotion.

  “God willing,” he conceded, fighting a war of his own as he looked around the hills he’d roamed as a boy.

  Little could the young woman know how much better it looked to him than the last time he’d seen it. There’d been no fosse or hill fort. Apparently, when Maire’s parents captured the best land on Gleannmara for themselves, they’d erected the fortified enclosure. When Clan Cairthan had occupied it, the cattle ran as free as those who herded it. In truth, then, his home was more of an encampment, a gathering of friendly fires with makeshift huts, which could quickly be knocked down and moved to the next site where greener pastures awaited.

  The Niall were clearly the stronger or at least more progressive of the two tribes. So where was his family? Driven into the hills to exist as they might? Or worse yet, was the Cairthan slaughtered defending their land? It had to be one or the other, for he saw no sign of his own.

  He wasn’t prepared for the mixed feelings that clashed within as he kept his stallion at a respectable distance behind Maire to watch her reception. One part of him seethed to think of his family members driven off their land; another saw his brother’s fate at least as justice for what he’d done to Rowan.

  But it wasn’t up to Rowan to judge, he reminded himself sternly. He had not come home to gloat or to exact revenge. His, he prayed, was a higher purpose; although exactly what it was and how it was to be accomplished had yet to be revealed to him.

  Desperately, he floundered in a storm-tossed sea of emotion, reaching for the Word. That was his mission, his reason for being here, he told himself sternly. His was not to champion Emrys, the Niall, or the Cairthan—not even Maire. His was to champion God’s Word, the Way, for where it lived, so lived true happiness.

  Safe at the church and seminary at Emrys, he’d studied and lived the Word without significant price. Now he was in another country, in a contrary role as hostage, husband, king, and man. The cost rose significantly with each passing moment he spent with the unpredictable pagan queen and the people who may have eradicated his own clan.

  Lord, I cannot meet this challenge as servant and champion to any but You.

  “It was the thievin’ Cairthan!”

  Declan’s heated exclamation snatched Rowan from his earnest prayer to where the enraged Scot raced toward Maire with the news. Relief calmed the roaring sea of resentment and dismay in Rowan’s mind. The Cairthan lived! God answered his prayer before he’d uttered it. Better his people were cattle thieves than dead.

  “They waited until our men mustered away on the ship and then raided,” Declan informed the group clustering about him.

  “Cowards all, takin’ a herd from the likes of women and children!” Eochan chimed in with his brother.

  “Say the word, Maire, and we’re after them.”

  Declan stepped up to Maire’s horse, looking up expectantly. His youthful face was flushed at the prospect of another battle. He cut his teeth on stories of valor. He’d been born and trained to fight.

  How well Rowan remembered that primal rush of excitement, before he came to equate the spilling of blood with the destruction of one of God’s own children. Before, his enemies were nameless, soulless animals, and slaughtered as easily as a sacrificial offering. His gaze was drawn to Maire as she inadvertently moistened her lips to reply.

  “Best we secure what we have before we go after that which we’ve lost.”

  Satisfaction tugged at the corner of his mouth. Again he thanked God—for one so young and naive, the queen had a good head on her shoulders. He credited Brude’s influence, for it was obvious the druid had overseen Maire’s education, while her foster father saw to her combat training.

  Yet it was more than her tutelage Rowan admired. It was her use of what she’d learned. Few sons of kings, for all their counsel, would have held their disappointment and resulting rage in check as the warrior queen had just done. Its sting had struck its mark, but she hadn’t flinched. Its scarlet colored her cheek, but she’d kept a level head, the head of a leader… such a beautiful one.

  Rowan drew himself from the spell the warrior queen guilelessly cast before he lost his own wit. Beauty and brains were a dangerous combination in the hands of a woman—especially one so undeniably skilled with a sword as sharp as her wit.

  ELEVEN

  That the hall and chief’s house stood unblemished by Morlach’s greed was a credit to the craftsmen who built them. At least Maire could hold her head up when Emrys strode into the hall, which was some thirty meters in diameter, and took a seat opposite the door, beside her on the royal bench. Made of polished wood and intricately carved, it was as elegant, if not as luxurious, as the couch in his parents’ home. Maire’s hostage had little to say since their arrival, not that he’d not said enough for a score of men to Cromthal. ’Twas small wonder Gleannmara stood at all, for Morlach would not tolerate her refusal in good grace.

  While this wasn’t the grand homecoming she’d expected, her clansmen had pulled together a feast fit for a king. The Cairthan hadn’t taken the remnants of the summer fare from last year, and a whole beef had been boiled in honor of Maire’s coronation, after Brude made a ceremony of sacrificing it and sprinkling its blood in the sacred grove. Her new shoes, made of the softest leather for the official inauguration to come, felt strange to her feet, as strange as sitting on Gleannmara’s royal seat. The shoes were a mite small and always would be. Rather than break them in to the shape of her foot, she would wear them just twice—now for the tribal druid’s acknowledgment and later for the royal inauguration by the high king’s man. Later the slippers would be sewn together and placed among Gleannmara’s trophies. Still, it was all so strange.

  Aye, she’d been here before in whimsy or a dream, but this time it was real. She was queen, responsible for her people’s welfare and hardly off to a good beginning. Her muster of the rath’s men had left it defenseless against its enemies. True, they’d come along readily and the damage could be repaired, but it bothered her as much as the threat posed by Morlach. They celebrated their new queen with such enthusiasm that Maire was hard put to believe she could live up to it.

  Had Maeve smiled as Maire did now, while anxiety wreaked havoc behind her image of pleasure?

  The weight of her new authority rested heavily on Maire’s mind as she watched her men pass about horns of plundered mead and wine with one hand, while stuffing their mouths with the fresh-baked breads scattered on each table. Those women who weren’t serving were gathered in the grianán. In a similar perch across from the sun loft, Brude’s apprentices plied their harps and voices with tales of valor and love long past.

  Gleannmara’s bard secluded himself in the conical stone dwelling, which had been his home, when the hall and chief’s residence belonged to Maeve and Rhian. After their deaths, according to his pledge, Brude accompanied young Maire to her foster home to see that she was prepared to become queen when she came of age. Now he composed a song to glorify the raid and her return as queen. It would be the crowning event of the return.

  “You are still troubled by the druid.”

  Maire cast an annoyed look at her new husband, yet another worry to
be reckoned with. “And you’d do well to do the same, if your brain was larger than a mouse’s teat.”

  Rowan held out his arms, sturdy, well-muscled, bronzed by the sun—they were arms made for protection. “I see no sores nor withering flesh.”

  It was a shame such limbs were attached to a half-wit. Maire glanced away to where Declan sat, a pretty wench on each knee. One was her cousin, Lianna, a feminine creature with a mass of golden brown curls falling over her shoulders. The other girl was probably a distant relative, one Maire did not recognize. Both laughed as the warrior attempted to empty his horn by embracing the two of them at the same time. The wine spilled down his chin and splashed onto their dresses, evoking giggles and laughter among all.

  “The night isn’t over, Emrys.”

  Her gaze returned to the strong bare arms, now folded across a broad chest, swathed in the coarse cloth of a priest. What in the name of her mother’s gods was wrong with her? While she certainly wanted no part of Declan’s folly, Maire found herself wondering what it would be like to know the security of the Welshman’s embrace. Security…she hadn’t known such a feeling since she was a child upon Rhian’s knee, right there on that very bench. Nothing could harm her then. Her only worry was that she’d be sent to bed before the revelry was over.

  Today, when he’d ridden Shahar to shore, emerging from the sea like a god, Maire had never known such relief. The sheer power and majesty of his visage suggested that nothing born of this world or any other could daunt him. It only took the Welshman a few blustering words of bravado backed by his faith in that strange god of his to end her hope. If only she could be so sure of her beliefs.

  Maire shook her head, refusing the loaf of bread he offered her. With a crook of a smile, he shrugged and broke it in half.

  “Leave the Cairthan to me.”

  To her astonishment, Emrys was in earnest. The tilt of his lips dropped as he awaited her reply.

  “Do I look as if my mother’s crown has banished the last of my wits?”