After a thorough scrubbing, she had donned the dark wine velvet gown Killian had brought her. It shone vibrantly against the smooth skin of her neck and bosom, and she felt beautiful for the first time in months.
“Aye, you warm my heart, Dee, but that’s the very reason I must get you away. There’s trouble. If the English came once, you can believe they will come again.”
“What will you do to pacify them?” Deirdre questioned innocently. He had told her of the Bill of Discovery and how he had escaped it, but he had not mentioned the petition she had been shown by the soldier seeking admission into the English Church.
“What I must,” Killian muttered.
“Does that include collusion on the loss of your soul?”
Killian turned cold inside. “Who told you?”
Deirdre’s eyes flashed. “Why did
you
not tell me? Why must I hear of your schemes from strangers? Do you not trust me?”
Killian stood up. “I wanted to spare you that.”
“What, the fact that my husband is capable of blithely turning his coat without turning a hair?
Mille murdher
!
I am not a child to be protected from the matters of adults.”
“It has nothing to do with that,” Killian roared, drowning out the end of her speech. “This is not a parlor game or a romp, Dee. Our lives may hang on every action we take or refuse to make. The green meadows and hills filled with quiet times and sweet tunes are gone. Can you not see that every man, woman, and child who calls himself an Irishman is fighting for his very survival?”
“I’m not too good to fight for mine,” Deirdre answered stoutly.
“No, Dee, you’re not. But I cannot think on what might happen if you lose.” Killian turned away, amazed by the unsteadiness of his voice. For years he had faced the danger of death or maiming. It had never frightened him, never fostered within him this stark cold terror that the thought of losing Deirdre brought to mind.
Deirdre came up behind him and put her arms about his
shoulders. “Perhaps I have been foolish or careless, but not out of ignorance, my husband. I see what war has done to my home, what unjust laws and greed have done, but it is my home. I wanted you to make it yours.”
Killian stood still within her embrace. He felt as cold and rigid as the granite peaks of the Shehy Mountains. “I want to keep you safe and I do not know if that is within my power. Whatever I have done, or will do, I do it for you.”
Deirdre leaned her forehead against his back, smiling through the tears that had risen. “Two months ago you said you did not know how to be a good husband. You have learned, my love.”
Killian turned in her arms and Deirdre caught in his eyes the gleaming of tears which would not fall. “You will then trust my judgment?”
“Only if you do not ask me to leave you,” she answered.
Killian sighed like a bellows and then the beginnings of a smile lifted his mouth. “It would be like you to return as quickly as I sent you away.”
“Aye. Like bath water thrown into the wind, I’d rebound with unpleasant swiftness.”
Killian hugged her so tightly that she moaned. “Then you must at least promise me you will not leave Liscarrol or speak to anyone until I have settled matters with the authorities.”
“Very well, my love.”
“And under no circumstances are you to be seen with Teague O’Donovan.”
“What of the Mass and Dary’s christening?”
Killian’s expression became one she had seen only once before. “If you set one foot out of this house without my permission, I’ll wedge you into one of these wine barrels and ship you to the duchesse!”
Deirdre stiffened. “Mention that woman’s name again
and I’ll be the one sealing you in a barrel!”
Killian bent his head and kissed her. “The matter is settled.”
“Aye. For now,” Deirdre murmured
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Lady MacShane, ’tis to be a fine new moon rising just before daybreak,” Mrs. Mooney said as she laid a wooden plate of oat bread before Deirdre. “There’s nothing quite like a Sabbath moon. A body could do worse than to rise to greet a morning moon.”
Deirdre looked up in surprise, for Mrs. Mooney had seldom spoken to her in the weeks since Killian’s return, and then only when he was not present, as he was now. A single quick nod of the woman’s head confirmed what Deirdre suspected. Word had come that Father Teague would be saying Mass at daybreak somewhere nearby.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mooney. Where do you think would be the best view of such a sight?”
“Och, for a young body such as yerself, ’twould be no great journey to take the path to the top of the mountain beyond the river. Following the right shoulder would bring ye to the top for a grand view.”
“That sounds like a great deal of exercise for a small reward,” Killian said between a bite of oat bread and a sip of buttermilk.
“Perhaps for you it is,” Deirdre replied genially. “But I
have not stretched my legs in a great while, I am cramped in every limb. I miss horseback riding most of all.”
Killian gave her a quick warm smile. “Then take the pony.”
Deirdre could not hide her surprise. “Do you mean it?”
Killian nodded. “Would I deny you a rare fine moon rise?”
“Will you come with me, Mrs. Mooney?”
The woman nodded and turned away.
“Then ’tis settled,” Deirdre announced and picked up the first piece of her supper.
“Be careful,
mo cuishle
,”
Killian added in a low voice.
Deirdre glanced at him suspiciously but his expression was bland. “Of course.”
The night dragged by so slowly that Deirdre could barely lie still in bed. She was glad that Killian slept so heavily and soundly beside her, for he would have guessed that she was up to no good had he been aware of her restlessness.
Finally she heard a scraping in the room below and knew that Mrs. Mooney had been awakened either by Dary or by Colin’s wife, Mrs. Ross. Moving as quietly as possible, she slipped out of the bed and was immediately enveloped in the icy breath of darkness. She had placed her clothes on the floor beside the bed so that she would not need a light, and she dressed quickly, adding a woolen shawl over her velvet gown.
“There ye be!” Mrs. Mooney greeted in a loud whisper as Deirdre descended the stairs. “I was about to come up for ye.”
“Will you lace me up the back before we go?” Deirdre asked, lifting her shawl.
Outside, the pony had been bridled and a blanket thrown over his back, and Colin held his head while Enan lifted her onto the animal’s back. “Would ye want to be holding
wee Dary, yer ladyship, seeing as ye’re riding?”
Deirdre nodded and took the child Mrs. Mooney held, folding her woolen shawl over his thin garments. “Will Mrs. Ross be coming too?”
Colin shook his head. “His lordship will be waking
before we return and wanting his breakfast, no doubt. Sila agreed ’twould be she who stayed. We must go, yer ladyship, or ’tis late we’ll be!”
It was still dark when they set out, but during the twenty minutes of traversing the valley, the black gloom gave way to a blue-gray twilight. Thick white wisps of mist hovered over the path of the river and circled the tops of the trees to the south. As they began to climb, Deirdre finally ceased to shiver with cold. Dary stirred in her arms, his face a pale blue amid the covers.
“Today we’re making a good Catholic of you,” she whispered as she held him tighter. “You must live up to that honor, my
bouchal
,
for ’tis certain a number put themselves in mortal danger for you.”
The pony’s hooves sounded sharply in the silent morning air, each a distinct
click
upon the granite stones as they climbed.
When at last they reached the shoulder of the hill, the morning sky was bathed in pastel shades of blue, mauve, and rose beneath the deep green sod of the surrounding countryside.
Deirdre did not realize they were not alone until she looked back over the rise and saw other dark shapes like themselves climbing the hill. For an instant fear gripped her, but as she pointed them out to Colin, he merely nodded.
“That’ll be the O’Dineens and the O’Donovans,” he whispered low.
The “church” was nothing more than a deserted hillside, the altar a simple crucifix set up on a huge boulder laid on its side by time. It was a mean and demeaning place for this holiest of rituals, and she wished fervently for the graceful archways and stained-glass windows of a real church.
She did not recognize Father Teague among the dark knots of men and women clustered together, nor, she noticed, did any man speak to another as they took up their positions before the makeshift altar.
Deirdre knelt in the grass with the others, feeling the sharp prick of heather stubs through the velvet of her
gown, but she did not give voice to her complaints. Lowering her head, she breathed deeply of the air tinged with salt from the sea more than fifteen miles to the south.
Slowly she began to relax and gradually she took up the ancient psalm that had begun at the far side of the congregation. No one had to warn them to sing softly, but that did not dim the beauty of the tune or the fullness of belief that surrounded her.
If only Killian had come, she thought fleetingly, ashamed now that she had not told him what she intended to do and asked him to join her.
The Mass began without preamble. Suddenly a man in cassock appeared before the altar. He emerged from the crowd and never turned back toward them during the service. When the moment of distribution of the Host came, he pulled his hood forward over his head and stood with his face in shadow. But for his voice intoning, “
Corpus Christi
,”
he might have been no more substantial than the sooty shadow he cast on the dew-drenched grasses.
Following the others, Deirdre knelt before the priest and extended her tongue for the Host.
For an instant the priest did not move, the Host held suspended by his fingers, and Deirdre raised her head to look at him. And then the Host was in her mouth, and he was moving on down the line of kneeling supplicants.
She rose and turned to walk away only to catch her breath in awe.
The moon had risen in the east, a silver crescent illuminating the surrounding clouds tinging their edges rose.
The fragile instant of beauty, of colors and light, went as quickly as it came but not before Deirdre absorbed the moment forever in her memory.
How wrong she had been. The canopy of the heavens
was a more lovely and fitting setting for God’s work than
any manmade beauty ever could be.
This was why she had come home, to be a part once more of the wild, ever-changing beauty of a land whose heart was not its monuments or its politics but the natural
constant vibrancy of its nature and the people who loved it more than bread and hearth.
When the moment came for her to step forward with Dary, she did so proudly and without fear that she would be recognized. If there were spies on this hillside, they could do nothing now. This moment belonged to the honest, God-fearing souls who had risked their lives to be a part of an outlawed worship of God. If only Killian were here, the moment would be perfect.
The priest did not look at her as he performed the baptismal ceremony and Dary was named Dary Finian Fitzgerald, given in foster care to Lady Deirdre Fitzgerald MacShane.
It was over quickly, and before she turned away from the altar, the faithful had begun to disappear into the mists below. The touch at her elbow surprised her and she turned back to face Father Teague.
He had lifted back his cowl and his fair hair hung in damp strings before his brow. “’Tis a brave but dangerous thing you’ve done, taking in an orphan bairn without name or lineage. Any of the folks gathered here this morning would have raised him.”
“But would they have loved him?” Deirdre asked softly.
Teague looked at the woman before him, seeing past her beauty for the first time to her spirit, and he understood why Killian had chosen her. “May God go with you, Lady MacShane,” he said in blessing.
“And you, Father,” Deirdre answered.
The trek home was accomplished more quickly than the journey out; and when Deirdre sat beside Killian, who had waited to share her breakfast, she could hardly contain the joy that filled her.
“You look especially lovely this morning,” he remarked as he gazed at her. “Was the view that fulfilling?”
“Aye, and more,” Deirdre answered.
“Good, then you will have a memory to take with you.”
Deirdre shook her head. “I have said I will not go.”
“You have said a great many things, Dee, but I wonder if you will truly disobey the wishes of your husband?”
Deirdre reached out across the table. “Do not force me to go. Please, Killian. I will be discreet as a mouse. No one will even know I’m here.”
“Not even when you attend Mass on a moonlit hillside?”
Deirdre gasped. “You knew!”
Killian nodded grimly. “I am not a fool,
acushla
.”
“Why did you not say so and spare me the need for deception?” she retorted.