The cool wind of trepidation blew across Deirdre’s conscience as she remembered Killian’s reaction to her discovery. She had never seen him angry before, and it was a revelation.
“You have done what?” he had demanded.
“You lied to me,” she had answered, too annoyed by his petty contrivances to notice at once the strange look that had entered his eyes. “You said there were no coaches available. There were. I ordered one of them. Though you seem enamored with the city, my husband, I am bored with Cork. We will leave for Liscarrol in the morning.”
The hand that grasped her shoulder and spun her about had astonished Deirdre in its power. Then she saw his face. The bitter cold blue of his eyes, so hard and angry, silenced whatever she had been about to say. His features were stony, altering his countenance into that of a stranger. “You will cancel the coach,” he had said low, his voice made more menacing by the tenuousness of his control. “You will cancel it and never
never
question my authority again!”
Deirdre shook her head in denial as the memory assailed her. In that moment she had been afraid of him. He had seemed for the first time the Avenging Angel of her brothers’ stories.
If not for her moan of pain she doubted he would have realized how mercilessly his fingers dug into her skin. When he released her, he had seemed as amazed as she to see the red imprint of his hand on her skin above her low-cut bodice.
She touched her shoulder. The marks had remained there for hours, a silent reminder of the depth of rage of which he was capable.
And yet, he had been immediately contrite. Through her stunned surprise she had recognized the look of horror and then shame as he stared at the evidence of his anger. He had bathed her bruised shoulder in cool water and then kissed each mark. And though he had not said a word of apology, she understood and accepted the depth of his remorse.
Later, in bed, with the balm of satiation between them, he had sworn to her that he would take her to Liscarrol as quickly as possible. He had convinced her that a coach would be useless on the narrow boggy trails. They rode, leaving most of their possessions in Cork to be sent for later. There had proved to be wisdom in that.
Deirdre glanced back covertly at the two men riding donkeys and leading pack animals behind her. Killian had hired them for protection. Yet, the men he had chosen were singularly unsuited for the work. They were seamen; anyone could tell that by listening to them. They were unaccustomed to riding, could barely keep their seats on stretches of uneven ground. Besides that, they were rude and sly and made her uncomfortable when Killian was not beside her.
Once more she kicked her horse, digging in hard, and this time the horse went into a canter. Urged on by this success, she shouted and slapped the horse’s haunches and the beast stretched into a gallop that sent her racing after Killian.
Killian heard the approaching horse and slowed his
pace, but he did not glance back. He had lost his temper with Deirdre again, a thing he had promised himself he would not do.
It was not her fault that the journey had been forced on him too soon. Yet, if she had not been so stubborn about leaving, he would not now find himself alone with two men whom he trusted less than he would a stray boar or wolf. They were two of the duchesse’s smugglers and they did not yet trust him enough to allow him to leave Cork unescorted.
“Do you find my company so distasteful?” Deirdre questioned as she drew alongside him.
Killian did not reply directly. “If you are weary we will pause for a short while, but we must reach high ground before dark.”
Deirdre caught her lower lip between her teeth. He had not even glanced at her. “You are angry.”
“I am impatient with this wretched weather.”
“And you wish both the elements and I would go directly to Hades,” Deirdre finished for him.
Killian turned to look at her. Her face was damp and the bright curls that had escaped her hood were darkened with rain, but those things did not mar her in his eyes. “You are quite lovely when you’re angry,” he confided with the beginning of an intimate smile.
“Well, you are not!” Deirdre retorted but could not repress a return of his smile. “You are a most uncivil bore.”
Killian was not fooled by her demeanor. There was hurt lurking in her eyes, hurt he had put there five days earlier. He looked away. He could not explain to her his reasons for wanting to remain in Cork. She had forgiven him for the bruises on her shoulder, but he suspected that other things might not be so easily forgotten or forgiven.
“I am a man accustomed to his solitude,” he began as he stared straight ahead. “I’ve never needed to answer to another for my moods or actions. This business of being a husband, of caring for the needs of another, is new to me.”
“I had not considered, my husband, what a burden I
must be to you,” Deirdre answered. The tone of her voice made him whip his head toward her and he saw the golden glint of anger as well as hurt in her green eyes. “So I will relieve you of my burdensome presence!”
Before Killian could guess her intent, Deirdre urged her horse forward with a hard kick. He shouted at her but she gave no sign of having heard him as she galloped away.
“
Gom
!”
Killian swore as his body tensed to give chase. The horses he had purchased in Cork were of poor quality, not the well-bred steeds Deirdre was accustomed to. The animal did not have the breath and stamina for a long gallop. He relaxed; she could not go far.
Expecting to be chased, Deirdre crouched low in her saddle until she nearly lay on her horse’s neck. With all her strength she urged the horse on, up the slope of a hill and then down the steeper plunge of its far side. The wind raced past her, whipping her skirts and tugging at her cloak. It tore her hood from her head and dragged the heavy knot of hair from her crown and sent it spilling across the horse’s shoulder.
The ride made her pulse beat hard and quickly in her ears but she did not care. It was the first exhilarating moment of the journey. As the green, granite-strewn ground stretched out before her, she inhaled deeply of the wet pungent air. It smelled of mud and wood and turf and…
She did not recognize the first unpleasant whiff as anything other than the stench of stagnant bog water. Ahead stood a lone oak, its dark skeletal limbs spread in welcome to the sky.
She tugged on the reins to slow her horse’s pace but the animal was already tensing. It dropped from full gallop into a reluctant trot, tossing its head nervously as the unpleasant odor reached its nostrils.
With the back of one hand she brushed the tears of the ride from her eyes. The sight before her was so completely alien to her experience that she did not at first recognize what she saw.
Hanging from the lower limbs like misshapen sacks of grain were nearly a dozen bodies. The tree groaned under its burden, its heavy limbs moving imperceptibly as the
dark forms suspended from it swung gently in the wind like ghastly fruit.
Deirdre opened her mouth and screamed but she could not turn her face away. She sat spellbound by the horror while her mind recorded the horror before her.
All her life she had heard tales of the atrocities of war, of murders and tortures that turned men like her father silent in the midst of a sentence, but she had never seen a hanged man.
The victims were men with blackened, swollen faces so distorted that she doubted they would be recognized by their own kin. One by one, she gazed at each in morbid fascination until she came to the last.
It was a small bundle, its arms and feet not bound like the others. Strung from a lighter limb, it spun dizzily in the wind, its swath of long black hair whipped into a pathetic banner for the girl it had once been.
The hanged girl was no older than Deirdre herself had been when Killian MacShane first entered her life. Her skin shrank against her bones. Had she, in helping Killian, come so close to this end? What evil could have marked so young a child for that slow torturous death? The horror of it still distorted the child’s face as she seemed to cry out to Deirdre for release. Was there no one who fought for the girl’s life? Would no one even cut her down?
Deirdre did not heed the cries of the men riding toward her. An anger stronger than fear replaced her revulsion. She was not afraid of death but abhorred the bullying cowardice of men who would hang a child.
Without waiting for help, she withdrew the O’Neill skean from its sheath on her saddle, tucked it into her belt, and dismounted. The oak was ancient and easy to climb but she was hampered by the heavy skirt of her riding habit. She had gained no more than a few feet when she was plucked from the trunk by a strong pair of arms.
“No! Stop! Let me go!” she cried. Enraged to be thwarted, she twisted and writhed to break free of the hands that held her back from her purpose.
“Dee, lass! Dee!” Killian commanded sharply as he struggled to contain her flailing arms and legs He saw the
silver flash of a blade in her hand, and when she made a downward slash toward his wrist, his soldier’s training took over. He closed his hand over hers and gave her wrist a quick twist. With a yelp of pain Deirdre opened her hand and the weapon fell to the ground.
“Deirdre!” he cried as he spun her about.
For an instant Deirdre gazed unseeingly at Killian and then she became aware that it was he who gazed down at her with concern. “They hanged her! And no one would stop them!” she cried. She gripped Killian hard by the arms. “You must cut her down, Killian! You must!”
The anguish in her voice overruled the protest Killian was about to make concerning the foolhardiness of her actions. “Aye, Dee, I’ll see it done. Go back to your horse.” He turned to the men who had dismounted beside him and pointed to the body of the child. “Cut her down.”
“Are ye daft?” the one called Sean questioned in amazement. “The English leave them as a reminder to the local folk. I know the law. Not till they drop from rot are they to be touched. Sean O’Casey will nae dance the jig for an English fiddler.”
“Aye, we’d best be gone before the English return,” the second man offered. “What with the lady screaming her head off, like as not the bloody English heard her as far away as Dublin.”
There was sense in all they said, but when Killian looked toward Deirdre she was watching him. He lifted his pistol from his belt and cocked it. “Cut the lass down and bury her or you lie here and rot beneath her.”
The men stepped back. They did not carry pistols. “You’d nae do it!” Sean challenged.
Killian leveled his pistol at the man’s middle. “I’ll not have my orders questioned.”
“He means it, Sean,” the other man whispered.
“Aye, I do mean it.”
Sean swore under his breath. “Ye’re nae better than the bloody English, but I’ll be damned afore I bleed me life’s blood for want of a burial!” He turned away and with a jerk of his head signaled the other to join him.
Killian put away his pistol as Sean shinnied up the oak,
a skean clamped between his teeth. After the body of the girl was cut free, Killian retrieved a flagon of wine from his saddle and brought it back to Deirdre, who had moved away from the protection of the oak into the blustery day.
He laid his cloak about her shoulders to shield her from the heavy gusts of spring rain and held the wine to her lips. “Sip it slowly,” he cautioned.
Deirdre swallowed a little of the wine before she shook her head and backed away from him. She watched warily as he drank more freely before stoppering it. “I—I have never before seen a hanging,” she offered in a low voice. She looked up angrily. “You must get rid of those men. They’re inhuman. The sight of that poor wee bairn is enough to curdle the blood of any feeling man.”
Killian considered her words. He had seen so much killing and death in his years that the simple matter of a hanging left him unmoved: Of course, he felt sorrow that a child had died on a gallows tree, but he was not horrified. “There are worse ways of dying,” he offered as solace.
“Worse ways?” Deirdre echoed faintly. “How can you say such a thing? That—that poor lass was not above eight years of age. How can you be so indifferent?”
Killian bridled under her incredulous stare. “I’m a soldier, lass. I’ve seen more than you would imagine.”
Deirdre clasped her hands tightly together. They felt like ice. “I have heard many tales of the horrible deeds that men in battle are capable of. Conall and Darragh spared me little. But if war has made you indifferent to the unspeakable crime that was committed here, I—I…” She could not finish. There was nothing to say if he could gaze upon the sight and feel nothing.
Killian saw the horror in her face but did not know how to help her. Death was a terrible thing, violent death a horror that each must face in his or her own way. Yet, he longed to reassure her, and he was grateful that she turned into his arms when he held them out to her.
“I am not indifferent, nor am I unmoved,” he said quietly as he stroked her hair. “But I’ve learned that a man must spend his energies upon those things he can change. My anger will not bring the bairn back. ’Tis done, Dee. You must forget it.”
Deirdre raised her head, her green eyes shining with tears. “Never!”
“What will you do, challenge the Englishmen you meet with your skean?” he questioned in sardonic humor.