Maire Page 8

  “I have seen the sword that will save Gleannmara, and it is not yours.”

  “What do druids know of swords?”

  “What do warriors know of the future?” Brude responded in a dismissing tone. “I have read the entrails of the sacrifice.”

  Aware that they had attracted the attention of those working the ship as well as those awakened by the rise of voices, Declan gave way. “Forgive me, sir. My devotion to our queen has made me reckless.”

  “Valor and humility are good mates.”

  With the same hand that might have cast a spell of death, Brude blessed the warrior, saving his face in the public eye. The tension coiling in Maire gave way to relief. There were times she could strangle Declan with her bare hands for his brashness, but never in truth would she wish him harm.

  As the reckless warrior stomped toward the bow of the ship, Maire moved closer to Brude. “This vision of the sword, Brude. Was it Maeve’s?”

  “No. Now we must prepare for your marriage.” The druid guided Maire with his hand toward the ancient chest containing all of his belongings, the subject of swords clearly at a discouraging finish.

  So she was not to save Gleannmara with her mother’s sword. That could only mean one thing.

  Her gaze found Rowan ap Emrys as if by command. His—the weapon of a stranger—was the champion sword of Gleannmara. Even as their gazes met, Maire felt a disconcerting charge of awareness sweep through her—strange, yet familiar; chilling, yet warm; alarming, yet soothing. His face revealed no more thought or emotion than hers, yet her senses reeled, one against another.

  Marriage? Maire fought a swell of panic as the ship beneath her battled with that of the tide, barely mastering it. There had been hardly enough time for her to accept that she was now a queen. At least she’d been trained for the leadership of her tuatha. There was no one to prepare her to become a bride… no one but the druid.

  “What must I do, Brude?” Her voice croaked like that of a boy breaching manhood.

  “You must trust the Spirit of all spirits. Our lives, like our surroundings, are a series of patterns, and you, my queen, are but a half-finished part of a great masterpiece.”

  Maire wanted to pull the druid away from the chest containing the white folded linen he thoughtfully fingered and demand to know in plain terms what he meant, but she feared his answer. Instead, she studied the curious marks of ogham on the timeworn wood as she waited for whatever voice had gained his attention to release him back to her. She’d always thought there to be magic in the druid’s chest. Brude had allowed her to search for it when she was a child missing as many teeth as he, but all she’d found were clothes and a few meager personal items. It amazed her, considering the kingly gifts the druid received in his position. He was always passing them on to others, claiming his search for the truth of life required few worldly goods. Such things impaired the spirit. A druid’s mind was as much a mystery as his magic.

  As the old man straightened, a flash of gold and silver, fired by the sun’s rays, surprised her. It was a girdle, finely crafted, like nothing she’d ever seen in the druid’s trunk.

  “This was made from Maeve’s jewelry. Wear it with the gift from Emrys’s mother. Both are fit for a queen.”

  “Won’t it hang on my breastplate?”

  “You will be a bride today, not a warrior. Save your armor for the days that follow.”

  Although there was no hint of humor on Brude’s lips, it fairly danced with glee in his gaze. It was the same look he’d given her years ago when she’d announced in grand disappointment that there was no magic to be found in his chest.

  Maire’s heart took a grudging plunge. There was no way she would inquire now as to the secrets shared between man and wife, once she and Emrys were declared so. What if he changed his mind about their agreement regarding intimacy? From her observations of men with females, their word didn’t mean a whole lot in the scheme of things. There would be no real defense against that—no legal one anyway.

  And if that came to pass, Maire knew as well as Emrys what she was supposed to do. The tactics were not the question, but the execution. Would it be like her first battle, where the anticipation and flush of excitement would catch her up and carry her through? Once she’d started the fight on Emrys’s soil, there’d been no time to think about what she was doing. She’d had to do and survive because if she dwelt upon it—

  “Emrys will wear this.”

  One battle at a time. Maire retreated from her thoughts with an involuntary shudder. Brude held her father’s torque in his hand; the same princely one he’d worn when taken hostage by his conquering queen. The gold with silver inlay of his native tribe’s design had been polished to a sheen. She remembered tracing the small concentric circles with her fingers as he held her in his arms. Part of her protested as she nodded in agreement. It was only fitting.

  “Brude.” She placed a hand on the druid’s leathery forearm. Despite the shrinkage of many winters, the muscle beneath was as strong and pliant as the wires on his harp. She lowered her voice. “What exactly did you see last night, in the entrails of the calf?” She had to know.

  “Nothing but entrails.”

  Maire’s heart sank. “But…”

  “’Twas later, in my sleep, that I saw the triumph of light over darkness.”

  Relief flooded through her veins. She hated it when her mentor druid baited her with nibbles at the fruit of knowledge instead of biting through to its core. “Then the spirits are with us and against Morlach?”

  “The spirits of light have many faces. That of the dark is only one. Anything else is shadowy illusion.”

  “Is it Emrys’s sword you saw?”

  “I saw light triumph. When there is more to tell, you shall be the first to hear, my queen.”

  He saw light, so they were going to triumph over Morlach. If only she knew how, Maire thought, resigned to Brude’s final word. Trust did not come easily to her. Yet she had no choice. And so, with the beautifully wrought belt over her arm, she turned to face her destiny.

  As his protégé walked away, head high, shoulders squared, grace in every step, the aging druid blinked his eyes. They filled with the mist of nostalgia. She looked like Maeve, he mused. The little princess had grown into a woman, and now the welfare of her people depended on her. Brude wished he could tell her more, but the fact was, he did not understand the signs himself. Light and darkness had swirled in his mind—a quagmire of energy, power against power.

  As his spirit was drawn into the fray, he’d been blinded by the overwhelming brilliance of triumph. It consumed him so that he knew no fear when he could not see the enemy’s black fist. Instead, he’d felt an unprecedented peace. It permeated his very essence as the sun warms the freshly turned earth of a field. There were no more patterns for him to decipher, for they were all blended into one. In that instant, while his human mind groped for understanding, he knew the spirit that survives the body from this world to the next had at last seen the truth his ancestors had sought from time’s beginning. And the sun was but a small star in its glow.

  Even the wind held its breath as the gathering of warriors stood solemnly around the altar at the stern of the ship. No part of the wooden deck was sheltered from the high sun burning unchallenged in a cloudless sky. The victory fire, renewed with faggots of oak and rowan, licked at them with hungry forked tongues. Brude waved his arms over it as he had many times, his skin unscathed, and turned toward the couple standing at the fore of the crowd.

  Maire resisted the urge to wipe a bead of sweat from her brow, trying to recall any time in the past when she’d seen the tribe’s chief druid perspire. She couldn’t.

  For all the water on her brow, her mouth was as dry as ground bone. She shifted from one foot to the other. The hem of the silken dress from Delwyn ap Emrys brushed against her calves and stuck. A proper wedding costume would skim her ankles, but this was hardly a planned affair. She’d pledge, he’d pledge, and it would be done. It cou
ld be undone just as quickly before a court of the Brehons after Morlach’s threat was disposed of. It was the in-between that plagued her.

  “Do you both understand the significance of this union?”

  “I understand.” Rowan ap Emrys’s voice rang deep and clear as the thickest of harp strings beside her.

  Maire stared at the altar, unable to bring herself to look at the man she was marrying. Having stolen a glance from behind the leather-curtained enclosure where she’d dressed, she knew exactly what he looked like: a cleric with a warrior’s collar, except his hair had not been shaven at the crown but grew thick and raven black. ’Twould be a glorious mane were he disposed to let it grow past his shoulders in the Scotti fashion.

  At least the gods had given his skull a comely shape that needed no particular cover. It was nobly proportioned, set upon a strong sinewy neck now adorned with her late father’s torque. But then, all of him seemed well proportioned.

  “My queen?”

  It was to be in name only, she told herself. “I understand.”

  “May the guardian spirits bless you with communication of the heart, mind, and body from the east; warmth of heart and home from the south; the deep commitment, excitement, and cleansing of the waters of the west; and the fertility of the north; that you and your fields may multiply.”

  “May we so be blessed.”

  “Yes…blessed,” Maire mumbled simultaneously with the man at her side, her voice a mere whisper above the thunderous pillage of inner panic. She was queen. She was the ruler. The marriage was in name only. Anxiety stirred the wine and bread she’d consumed on rising. Even her stomach resisted this course.

  “Rowan, will you cause her pain, burden, or anger?”

  “I may,” she heard him answer shortly.

  “Is that your purpose?”

  “No.”

  “Maire, will you cause him pain, burden, or anger?”

  “Aye, very likely.” The thought became words before she could call them back. Her eyes widened in dismay beneath Brude’s stern gaze.

  “And will that be your intention?”

  For the first time, Maire cast a sideways look at Rowan. By her mother’s gods, he was all but laughing at her. One side of his mouth was pulled like that of a fish hooked good and proper. A flush of indignation steadied her voice. “Not unless he oversteps himself.”

  A tide of amusement rippled through the assembly. Chin jutting in defiance, Maire slashed a satisfied smile at her groom and turned back to Brude expectantly. Her satisfaction withered under the druid’s silent reproach.

  “Nay, then,” she conceded.

  “Rowan, will you share Maire’s laughter, her dreams, and honor her?”

  “In as much as I am not required to offend or abandon the Lord, my God.”

  “Will you share our queen’s laughter and dreams and honor her?” Brude’s impatience was like an explosion of thunder on a clear summer’s day.

  “In as much as I am not required to offend or abandon the Lord, my God,” the Welshman repeated. “’Tis no less than I agreed to when the bargain was struck, druid. I stand by my honor to keep it.”

  For an immeasurable length of time Brude studied the upstart, then offered, “As we stand by ours.”

  A collective sigh of relief, Maire’s included, surrounded them. The spirits surely protected Rowan ap Emrys, or Brude would have reduced him to a blubbering idiot before all.

  “And you, Queen Maire, will you share your laughter, your dreams, and honor Emrys?”

  “I will,” she replied, swallowing the stipulation she was about to blurt out about when he deserved them.

  “I’ll have your hands.”

  Maire put her right hand out, palm up beside Rowan’s. Brude neatly sliced Rowan’s dominant finger first. He then squeezed a single droplet of his blood into a silver cup of wine. A similar cut was made across her finger. It stung, but she refused to flinch. She stared as a scarlet drop of her blood fell into the cup.

  “The marriage of your blood is like the marriage of your spirits,” Brude announced in a louder voice. “Drink.”

  He offered Rowan the first sip, then Maire. She inadvertently licked away the mustache dealt by the druid’s shaking hand. He turned and poured the remaining contents over the fire. With a hiss, the wine was quickly evaporated.

  “I will have the symbols of your vows. Yours for protection,” he said to the groom.

  The sword Rowan surrendered at Emrys was handed to him hilt first. Bracing agilely as the ship veered to one side, Rowan placed the blade on the deck between them and the druid.

  “And yours for hearth and home.”

  At Brude’s prompt, Maire took up the sword she’d inherited from her mother and laid it across the other sword, forming an X.

  “No broom for our queen,” someone remarked behind them.

  A hint of a smile tugged at the corner of Maire’s lips. The bride usually contributed a broom, representing hearth and home.

  “It seems we’ll have a well-protected home.”

  These were not only the first words Rowan had spoken directly to Maire that day, but his first as her husband.

  “So it appears.” Maire offered her hand to him for the dance. A piper struck a note as Rowan clasped it with his own. The instrument filled the air like the lark’s joyous welcome of new day.

  This nonsense meant nothing to him or his God, but that didn’t mean that Rowan could not appreciate the beauty and grace of the woman whose feet moved like graceful butterflies, lighting between the crossed blades just long enough to spring over the next. A wreath of mistletoe crowned her glorious titan hair; she was a vision of femininity, surely one of God’s most exquisite creations.

  It was hard to believe that the delicate hand he held as they danced a pattern around and over the swords had sliced his rib cage with a blade, much less that it could wield a sword that would tax some men’s strength to lift. A flash of a smile revealed teeth that would shame the finest pearls, and the challenge tossed from the demure slant of her green eyes as she caught his gaze and as quickly let it go was enough to warm a statue to the core. Her Celtic blood fired every motion, every look, with the passion of the ages.

  The piper gave out before either Maire or Rowan would admit fatigue. With a gallant bow, Rowan stepped back for Eochan to take over the pattern dance. Having pretended to sip from the wedding cup to avoid breaking the Lord’s law against drinking blood, he eagerly accepted a noggin of drink. While draining it, he was surrounded by well-wishing warriors who’d been ready to take off his head the day before.

  Scotti hospitality was instilled in them before they had memory. Such was the temperament of these people, as quick to embrace over a barrel of wine as to fight over it. At least it was the temperament of most of them. They made good allies and formidable foes.

  Instinct drew Rowan’s gaze to the ship’s rail, where Declan wore a scowl as dark as his features were fair. Cup in hand, the Scot could not tear his gaze from Maire as she danced first with one of her clansmen and then another. Though it nagged at Rowan for reasons beyond his ken, he could not blame the man. There was something about Gleannmara’s queen more dangerous to Rowan than her sword. It struck contrary sparks of fear and anticipation against the tinder of his senses, as though, were he not careful, even his heart was at risk.

  SEVEN

  Consummated!”

  Maire looked at the wizened druid, certain she’d misunderstood. After all, the noise of the revelry had escalated with each barrel tapped and drained dry that day. In truth, her head felt as though it were light as the cherub white clouds of summer. Her dress, damp from the wild dancing, clung to her frame, though her throat was wrung dry and her voice hoarse from song. Her incredulous echo of the druid’s word came out, tweaked by strain.

  Brude, whose strong voice, even after the sun and moon’s full cycle of song, never failed, repeated himself. “The union must be real. Morlach will not be bluffed. I’ve stayed his hand as long as
I can, but even now the east wind picks up again.”

  Maire glanced uncertainly at the sails. They were puffed like a well-fed babe’s cheeks, straining toward Erin. The seamen aloft scrambled like cats in a tree full of birds working the ropes and chains to make the most of the favorable weather.

  “Are you saying Morlach has summoned the east wind?”

  “It does go against the natural pattern.”

  “But who is to say that we still do not coast on the fair wind of our victory?”

  “Are you willing to take that chance, Queen Maire? Erin was nigh on three days journey behind us with the natural pattern, yet she will be barely two on return, should the east continue to fill our sails. By the new sun, our homeland will rise on the horizon.”

  That was good news to Maire. She had no love of the sea. Thankfully, she had not given into the heaving sickness that had threatened her their first day out. Warriors bigger than she had been brought to their knees by it. Celt to the bone, even in their misery, they’d made it a competition, turning the sickest into a weak-kneed, grinning victor.

  “By all the natural elements, we should not set foot on Erin’s soil till the third daybreak. The ship’s crew is wary and demands to know the meaning of this strange wind.”

  “I wasn’t aware Clon’s men noticed anything but their share of the booty.” That was what Eochan had to promise the Dal Raidi captain. The closing of a tin mine had put the trader in dire need of goods, so he was amicable to a mutually beneficial adventure.

  “Do you think Morlach will not know he is being tricked?”

  “By my mother’s gods, Brude, what would you have me do? Lay with Emrys before the eyes of all? We made the vows. We danced the dance.”

  She felt the fire of anger in her cheeks. Give her an enemy with weapons she could see and feel the bite of, not one who conjured spells and changed the patterns of the universe.

  At Brude’s answering silence, she gave in to exasperation. “Then cast a spell to blind Morlach!” Crom’s toes, she’d worried about Rowan changing his mind but never dreamed Brude would be insistent on such a thing.