The pinpoint light of the vision grew steadily brighter until its icy brightness stung like sleet against Meghan’s skin.
The light flared and disappeared.
The hissing grayness of a rain-darkened dusk replaced the brilliant light as Meghan found herself standing in the shadowy stillness of a
rath.
The room was not empty.
Clad from shoulders to boots in a great mantle of saffron wool, a young Irish nobleman filled the doorway. His head was bare, in defiance of the elements that had plastered his wild black mane to his back. Above his raven-black beard his face was a fierce blend of feral savagery and mortal comeliness. Heavy brows formed ominous ridges over blue eyes so brilliant they resembled those of an osprey; sharp, inquisitive, and with the ceaseless roving of a predator.
A low moan tore Meghan’s attention away from the man. From the formless shadows a naked young woman appeared lying on a bed of rushes, her knees bent and her back arched in support of her distended belly. Fever had painted a scarlet
patch on each cheek and matted her beautiful flame-colored hair to her pale brow.
Transfixed, Meghan watched the man move to the bedside. For the space of three heartbeats there was only the girl’s harsh breathing as he knelt by her side. Then she moaned as a new birth pain began.
Meghan began to shake like a wind-wrung leaf. It would happen now, something terrible, something she could not stop or prevent, something that might drive her mad!
The girl’s cries rose higher and higher until the very room shivered with the long pealing screams of agony. Meghan pushed her hands against her ears but the cries were inside her, keening like a banshee’s wail.
When the cries ceased, it was like the bursting of lungs. Silence rushed in to fill the void in a curious hiss like an expelled breath.
Choked with terror, Meghan saw the man rise, anger turning his eyes dark as he gazed on the now-silent girl. The lightning flash of a dagger appeared in his hand, the same skean Turlough had drawn.
The blade slashed through the air toward the girl’s defenseless abdomen. Meghan screamed. The downward stroke cleaved the vision. It ripped apart before her horror-filled eyes, spewing blood and darkness…and the mewling cry of a newborn.
“No! No! The blood! There’s so much blood!”
*
“Meghan! Meghan, darling! ’Tis nothing. A mere cut. Open your eyes and see for yourself. ’Twill mend, lass, ’twill mend.”
Revelin hardly recognized his own voice as he took Meghan’s face in his hands and kissed her again and again. He did not know how else to still her cries. Her lips were so cold that he feared she would die of shock. Yet, there was no reason for it. After he had carried her into Turlough’s tent, Sila had wrapped Meghan’s wound in clean linen. The cuts on her palm had been long but not deep.
“Meghan, love,” he whispered, offering the heat of his breath to her frozen mouth. “Meghan, please open your eyes.”
Meghan resisted the seductive call in the voice she remembered as Revelin’s. She knew she would go mad if the vision continued. And yet, she knew she could not prevent a single moment of it when it chose to return. She was cold, numb with the horror of its memory. What more could happen? She opened her eyes.
Revelin thought he would be relieved to look down into her eyes, but facing the deep blue bruising that was Meghan’s gaze was like an unexpected blow to the stomach. His arms tightened convulsively about her.
“Meghan, ’tis over. No one’s been hurt. Look here.” He reached for her hand. The bandage was spotted in places with rosettes of red, but the main bleeding had stopped. “See, love. You are not hurt badly.”
Meghan gazed at the white expanse of cloth covering her hand before her eyes drifted back to Revelin’s face. “What happened?”
“Don’t you remember? Well, ’tis not important.” Revelin lifted her from the rush-and-bough mattress that served as the chief’s bed and turned to Turlough. His heart had nearly stopped when he’d seen Meghan fly at the earl of Tyrone. Turlough was a soldier, capable of a death-wielding response before he knew his intended victim. Yet, her cry had warned him and he had not hurt her. Meghan had cut herself.
Revelin tried to keep that in mind as he addressed the chieftain. “I think we’ve provided enough of a spectacle for one evening. With your permission, my lord, I will find shelter for the lass.”
Turlough regarded the two young people before him with detachment. They were a picture of contrasts, the golden-haired lad and the girl with her delicate dark wildness. A more sentimental man might have wished them well and left them to their hearts. But he was a chieftain and warlord. They were
pawns in his strategy. “Did ye understand the lass’s ravings?”
The question took Revelin by surprise. What had Meghan said? There was something about visions of blood. “She said nothing of consequence, my lord. She was frightened. She has spells of imagination, that is all.”
“Is it now?” Turlough looked down at the skean he still held. The girl had recognized it. He had seen her staring at it in horrified fascination before she had passed out. “There’s more to it than that, lad. Put her down.”
Colin had followed his chieftain into the tent. Now he moved from the corner of the room, and the look in his eye betrayed his wish for any excuse to attack Revelin. After a short hesitation, Revelin placed Meghan back on the bed.
“That’s a good lad.” Turlough moved to the foot of the bed and held up the skean by its blade so that the intricate pattern of the hilt was displayed. “What meaning does this have for ye, lass?”
After one brief look, Meghan turned her head away. “Nothing.”
“Ye’re a poor liar, lass, and I’ve little patience with a good one. Ye had a vision, did ye not? Aye, that’s better,” he said as she turned back to him. “What did ye see, lass? The truth.”
Meghan shook her head in denial, but the words came tumbling out without her permission. “A woman, giving birth. And a warrior. He wore the O’Neill mantle but I—I did not know him. He had that. He—” Her eyes fastened on the blade. “He killed her! Plunged it into her belly.” Meghan’s hands flew up to cover her face as hard sobs racked her.
“That’s enough,” Revelin said angrily. “You’re torturing a simple girl who cannot tell nightmares from reality.”
“Can she nae?” Turlough replied, contemplating the weapon in his hand. He licked his lips nervously. It did not seem possible, but…the girl herself had described it all, just as he remembered it.
His gaze switched to Meghan. She had the same dramatic
coloring, the wild black hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. And the birthmark was real; he had touched it. And yet, it could be a trick to make his claim to Ulster less secure. There had been persistent rumors over the years. Perhaps the girl had been coached. There was Sila, of course, to school the girl in such tales. Sila was the one who had proposed the test of naming the murderer. But he was not so easily led. Turlough closed his hand on the hilt. He would need more proof of the girl’s gift of visions. He would begin again, from the beginning.
“Ye’re nae a believer in fairies, are ye, young Butler?” he said after a moment. “Yer English upbringing makes ye deaf and blind to the nature of the blood that runs in yer veins. Yet, every man knows there are things beyond his mortal understanding. The lass is different. ’Tis plainly marked on her for all to see. If ye were a wise man, ye’d claim her for yer own. When I’m done, I may give her to ye that ye will make of her a proper wife.”
“No!” Colin shouted. He strode into the center of the tent, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword. “I offered for the girl this very morning. Ye promised ye’d consider it.”
Turlough’s brows drew together at the tone of the Scotsman’s voice. Colin’s indignation held no weight but it angered him.
He turned to Colin. “The lass is not for ye, lad. If she proves to be who I suspect, ye’ll be knowing it, too.” He walked back to the bed where Meghan lay. Her sobs had subsided, but tears dampened her cheeks. “Take this, lass, hold it tight. Ach! Don’t turn away. It will not pass ye by, ye must see that now.”
He is right,
Meghan thought as she stretched out her hand. The skean was a little longer than the one she had carried for years, but it seemed much more dangerous, evil. And it was warm to touch, as if alive. She shivered, and would have released it had Turlough not wrapped his big fingers over hers to hold it in her palm.
“There’s a lass,” Turlough continued in an unexpectedly gentle voice. “The man ye dreamed, what was his form?”
“Tall,” Meghan answered in a whisper. “And black like ye, but more handsome,” she added in innocent honesty.
Turlough smiled. It was common knowledge that his cousin had been the more handsome of the two. “What of the lass?”
As Meghan stared at the blade a dark shadow of the vision drifted through her mind. “Red-haired she was, and beautiful.” The vision crystallized, not with soul-quaking intensity but with the blunted edge of far-off memory. “He killed the woman. He plunged the skean into her pregnant belly. I heard the babe cry out in protest!”
Maura Fitzgerald and Shane O’Neill.
Turlough crossed himself, muttering a seldom-used prayer. “Saints preserve us, ye’ve witnessed yer own birth!”
“You’re mad!” Revelin broke in, reaching past Turlough and snatching the skean from Meghan’s hand. “No one dreams his own birth. You’re putting thoughts into her mind and she’s too frightened to realize it.”
Turlough’s sharp gaze focused with new understanding on Meghan’s troubled face. “’Tis not I who led her, lad. There’s fairy business in this. It began seventeen winters ago.” Turlough wiped the sweat from his brow. “We should have known something was amiss. Shane and I were but lads together, basking in the heat of our lust, until he set eyes on Maura Fitzgerald. She was betrothed to an O’Donnell, but Shane was so taken with the lass that he stole her from under the O’Donnells’ noses. He wanted her child, and paid the priest to pray every day that the babe would be a lad.”
“I’ve heard the story.” Colin jeered. “The lass died and the babe with her. They still talk of Shane running mad with the grieving of it. Ye can’t expect a man to believe this lass is the dead child.”
“Can’t I now?” Turlough responded, turning on the younger man. “What would ye be knowing of O’Neill business, Scotsman? Aye, ’twas pain that maddened Shane, but not all for loss of Maura. The priest had promised him a son. When he
realized Maura was dead and no child to show for it, he…” Turlough paused. How to tell what so badly shocked him, even now as a memory of sixteen years?
He extended his hand to Revelin for the skean and received it. “This was Shane’s. He was wild with grief, ye’ll understand. I saw it, too—and the woman Una—the feeble kick within the dead womb. What was a body to do? ’Twas his heir. The babe had a right to life.”
A shocked silence followed Turlough’s confession.
“The babe was a lass,” Revelin said at length.
“Aye, a lass.” Turlough’s thoughts turned inward to memories he had tucked away. “’Twas his punishment, Shane said. He wanted a son too much, and to mock him the fairies stole his lad and replaced it with a changeling. I took fright on seeing the babe and ran away to fetch the priest, but Una and the babe were gone when we returned, and Shane would never speak of what had happened.”
He looked up into Revelin’s doubtful gaze. “Nae a man else knew, ye understand? Ach, ’twere rumors, but until this Beltane I had not seen the lass since her birth.”
Turlough shook his dark head, as much amazed by the tale as if he were hearing it for the first time. He reached up unconsciously and touched his left cheek. “’Twas easy to recognize her. The mark is the same.”
“Born of a dead woman,” Colin murmured, making the sign of the cross. He seemed to remember that he had once kissed her, and wiped his lips as though they had tasted poison. “She’s not human, she’s a
cailleach
!”
He backed toward the entrance. “I take back my claim. Let him who dares take the lass!” Throwing back the flap, he disappeared into the night.
Turlough, too, moved toward the entrance with heavy steps. From the moment he saw her mark he had suspected that the lass was Shane’s daughter. He was a Christian man, but more than a millennium of pagan Celtic blood ran in his veins. It was commonly admitted that the O’Neill’s cunning, skill, and
tireless vigor was owed to a knowledge older than that of the Norman world of monks and cathedrals. He himself had trafficked with more than one wise woman over the years. Yet, this slip of a girl possessed a power greater than any he had witnessed. She could see into the past. What then of the future?
Turlough swung around. “Ye can see the past, lass, but what of the future? I’m not an ungenerous man. I will give ye whatever ye name if we will look into my future. What I want to know is, will I rule Tyrone in peace?”
Meghan looked at the black-haired man so like and yet different from the vision of the man he claimed was her father. “Ye will not rule in peace, nor would ye want to.”
Turlough’s old grin returned as he conceded the wisdom of that. “But will I rule long?”
Meghan closed her eyes. She could tell him nothing. Yet he had promised her anything for a prediction. Her eyes opened. “I want to go free. And I want you to release Revelin Butler and his three companions.”