“Attack?” Meghan looked him over again, noting the sword in his hand. “Sir Robin, ye will nae fight?”
Robin grinned cockily, his sunburnt freckles standing in high relief on his cheeks. “Do you think I should stand idly by while these Anglo-Irish Butlers have all the fun?”
Meghan shook her head. “Ye’re English.” A thought struck her and her eyes widened. “Ye would nae fight the Butlers?”
Robin’s high, infectious laughter filled the tiny room. “’Tis why I love you, Meghan, you say what you think. I’ll not
betray my hosts. It occurs to me that you might at least wish me luck.”
Meghan put out a hand to him and the next moment she was swept up in his embrace. His breath was warm and quick on her cheek an instant before his lips covered hers in a hotly passionate kiss. Almost at once she was released. “That’s to remind you that I intend to come back.” He smiled radiantly at her. “I’ve decided ’tis time I took a wife. When I come back I’ll fight even Revelin if I must, for I want you. I love you!”
Then he was gone, with his last words ringing in Meghan’s ears. Astonishment held her to the spot for the space of several heartbeats. She could not have heard aright. Robin in love with her? How? Why, when he knew she carried Revelin’s child?
An explosion in the distance shook the walls of the castle. She raced to the narrow window to look out. To the south near the main gate the town had begun to burn. A second explosion followed the first. The flash of light that appeared through the dense fog and accompanying blast of noise reminded her of lightning striking a tree. But this was not lightning. This was gunpowder.
Below her, beyond the stretch of the moat, men bearing pitchforks, clubs, and spikes were running toward the sounds. Against them came a tide of women and children streaming toward the castle. Mist shrouded them after only a few yards and they were lost. Had Sir Piers opened the castle bridge to these frightened folk? The question decided her course of action. She would not remain shut up in the tower when she could be useful below.
Within moments she was dressed as best she could without help, abandoning most of her petticoats and fastening her gown only halfway up the back. When she had braided her hair and tied it back with a ribbon, she strapped her skean to her arm and went down.
In the main gallery she found Lady Mary with her children, their servants, and a few soldiers.
Lady Mary rose from her tapestry loom as Meghan appeared. “My dear! Sir Robin said he had left you safely behind your bedroom door.”
Meghan dropped a hasty curtsy, aware of her inadequacies in the presence of this regal lady. “I could nae hide away, Lady Mary, when there’s trouble.” She cast a worried look at the tall Tudor windows as another blast shook the dawn.
“Cannons!” Lady Mary cried and bit her lip. “We were unaware that Sir Peter was so well equipped. Piers will be furious.”
Meghan looked about. “Where is Sir Piers?”
“Out there,” she answered, casting a hand toward the town. “When Edmund did not return before dawn, Piers took a party of men and went to find him.” Her eyes filled with tears but her voice was firm. “I am most unhappy with my gracious husband! He leaves us here to wait when he might have commanded the castle forces.”
“My lady!” a servant cried as he came unbidden into the gallery. “My lady, Sir Edward is at the gate requesting entrance.”
“Edward? Is Elenore with him? Why do you stand there? Let them in!”
The servant looked uncertain. “Sir Piers gave orders to lower the drawbridge to no one but himself, m’lady.”
Lady Mary did something that quite surprised Meghan. She reached out and boxed the servant’s ear. “Dolt! He could not have known that his own brother would come to the door. Open it immediately!”
The servant held his ear but there was a wide smile on his face as he bowed and hurried out.
She turned to Meghan, all blushes. “What must you think of me? There are times when I believe Piers’s rough manners will overwhelm me entirely, though I must admit, they are most effective. You must be hungry. Kate, bring Mistress Meghan breakfast.”
Meghan had no time to touch her breakfast before the gallery was once more disturbed, this time by a family of nobles who bore the dust of the road on their clothes. The fourth Butler brother was in his middle thirties, and as he moved he clanked from the armor he wore beneath his mantle.
“Mary!” he greeted warmly, and as he pulled his hat from his head, Meghan saw that, like his brothers, he was dark.
“Edward! Elenore!” Lady Mary cried and went to embrace the arrivals. “Just look at Elizabeth,” she continued, hugging the tall slender girl who came behind her mother. “And James and John, how you’ve grown!” she said, ruffling the hair of the two boys. “Come in, come in, we’ve food and drink for all!”
Edward shook his head. “I’ve come only to see my family safely behind Kilkenny’s walls. Piers is fighting beyond the city gates and Edmund has disappeared.”
“Dead?” Lady Mary questioned fearfully.
“Nae, he’s ridden home to Clogrennan, I’ll hazard, to raise more troops.”
Lady Mary bit her lip nervously. “The city gates are broached, truly?”
Sir Edward smiled. “’Tis one thing to broach a city’s gates. ’Tis another thing entirely to storm a castle. Carew is not a madman. He would not dare attack the home of the earl of Ormond, who at this very minute sits in the queen’s chambers.”
Lady Mary nodded, but Meghan, who watched in silence, saw the look of doubt creep into all their expressions, and a feeling of unease moved deep within her. A castle was not impregnable. If this Englishman Carew did attack, Sir Edmund would need to arrive in time to save them. She could not say why she knew that; but the certainty of it further disturbed her, and she backed away from them.
The morning passed slowly, punctuated by the ever-advancing sound of cannon fire as the battle for the city continued. After the first frantic minutes following the arrival of Edward Butler’s family, Meghan had retired to an alcove near a window that
faced south to watch silently as house after house went up in flame.
The chattering in the room behind her slowly receded until there was only the push-pull of her own pulse in her ears. The mists over the city darkened as though night were falling, and the orange-red tongues of flame grew steadily until they licked the heavens. Cannon blasts increased until the night was showered with sparks. And wherever they fell, new flames leaped up, greedily consuming the town.
Suddenly, she was on the street outside the castle, being shoved and jostled as the terrified townsmen ran past her, their screams of fear bursting in her ears. “We’ll die! We’re going to die!”
Meghan bit hard on the knuckle she had wedged between her teeth to keep from crying out. The stinging pain seeped slowly into her consciousness until she was once more inside the castle, looking out on a bright sunlit afternoon.
A vision. She had had another vision, but was it real? Would Kilkenny fall completely? And would she die? “No, please God, no! Spare the child!”
“Oh dear! What have you done?” Lady Mary questioned when Meghan’s whimpering drew her to the alcove.
Meghan looked down at her bleeding finger. “I hurt meself.”
Lady Mary fell back a step before Meghan’s bleak look. “Are you ill, child?”
Meghan shook her head. She would not tell them, could not tell them, what she had seen. If they believed her, they would panic. If they did not, they would think her mad. She rose unsteadily to her feet. “I’m a wee bit weary. I’ll go to me room now.”
She did not look up as she passed out of the gallery and into the corridor but she heard whispering behind her. Once in the hall, she began to run. She had to get away, to lock herself in the tower to protect Revelin’s child. When she rounded a corner she collided with one of the servants.
The young girl’s cry of surprise turned to horror when she
saw who had bumped into her. “Saints preserve us! She touched me! I’m cursed! Cursed!”
Lady Mary came hurrying across the hall. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
The servant girl crossed herself, tears pouring down her cheeks. “She’s cursed me. Look!” She held out a hand smeared with blood. “She’s put the curse of death on me, she has, with her bloody mark! We’ll all be killed for taking in that devil’s spawn!”
When Lady Mary slapped the servant, Meghan fell back until the cold stone wall stopped her. “I—I did nae do it!” she wailed. She held up her bloody hand to cover her cheek. “I hurt meself, ’twas all. An accident. I would nae curse ye, I would nae!”
Lady Mary gave the girl a quick shake before releasing her. “Go below, you wretched creature!” Turning, she put a hand on Meghan’s shoulder. “Pay no attention. The girl’s frightened witless by the battle; we all are. Go along to your room and forget the incident.”
Meghan hurried up the circular staircase that led to her room and shut and barred her door. She flung herself on her bed and gave in to the tears she had held back. “Revelin, Revelin, where are ye?”
After a few minutes, she drifted off to a troubled sleep.
*
The blast at the castle gate shattered the pitcher on the table by Meghan’s bedside. The stupor of sleep made her limbs feel twice as heavy as usual as she struggled to sit up. The room was in darkness, the only light a dull wavering glow that filtered through the arrow-slit windows of the tower.
The vision had come again as she slept, and for a moment she thought the sounds of battle so close must be the dregs of that unwanted dream. A woman’s scream on the stairwell that led to her room dashed that hope. Meghan sat up, her heart beginning to pump in long heavy strokes as her eyes focused on her door. The battle was going on inside the castle walls!
Booted feet clambered up the narrow winding stairs, and then with a loud
whack!
an ax bit into the planks of her door.
Meghan leaped to the floor as the ax slashed through a second time, making kindling of the once stout oak door. Freeing her skean, she dived under her bed as a huge arm reached through the mangled opening and lifted the crossbar.
Meghan felt her heart leap into her throat as she spied two men through the fringe of the bed hangings. They were not English soldiers, nor were they even clansmen to be recognized by the color of their mantles. They were dressed in bloody chain-mail shirts and wore skullcaps of steel. No insignia placed them. They were
bonaghts,
mercenaries.
The room was small and she knew they would find her. They did so almost at once. After stripping the bedding and overturning the armoire, they lifted the bed, frame and all, exposing her.
“A lass! A bonny fine lass!” one of them declared in Gaelic as he reached down and lifted her from the floor by her arm.
Meghan bit off a cry of pain as he jerked her up, and waited until he had set her on her feet before lunging at him. He had not expected her attack and her blade bit deeply into his throat. As he tumbled backward she wrenched it free and ran toward the open door. Roaring a curse, the second man caught her by the open flap of her gown as she gained the doorway.
Desperate, Meghan grabbed the splintered door and jerked. The cloth gave way, leaving her assailant with a scrap of cloth as she ran down the stairwell. The treacherously winding stairway was wide enough to allow the passage of only one grown man at the time, and the man behind her was hampered by his six-foot ax. Prayers formed on Meghan’s lips that there was no one ahead as she flew recklessly down the spiral.
When she rounded the final turn she could not stop and sprawled headlong into the corridor. She tasted blood as her chin hit the floor with a sickening jar, but she was up in an instant. Instinct drove her toward the main gallery, where she had left the others. The ringing sound of steel could be heard
over the shouts and cries of men in the courtyard, but as she neared the gallery she could tell that there was no battle here; but the sight that greeted her slowed her step.
More
bonaghts
were looting the gallery, tearing tapestries from the walls and stripping the carpets from the floor. Gathered in a circle in the center of the room were Lady Mary and Lady Elenore and their children. One mercenary had Lady Elenore by the throat, the blade of his skean held just above the grip of his hand. With a whimper of fear, Meghan slipped into a dark shadow near the doorway and watched.
“Where be yer husband, bitch?” the man shouted.
Lady Elenore shook her head. “Not here! Dear God! Spare us! We’re women and children!”
“Aye, women! There should be something to be had in that, too.” The
bonaght
sheathed his skean, then suddenly reached for the neck of Lady Elenore’s gown and ripped it open to the waist. The sound of shredding cloth and Lady Elenore’s accompanying cry snared the attention of several other men.
“If ye will nae aid our search, ye may as well entertain us.” Still holding her by the throat, he kicked out his booted foot and yanked her legs out from under her. He fell with her, not bothering to break her fall. Lady Elenore’s ragged gasp of pain was smothered in his brutal kiss as the soldiers nearby came to urge him on with filthy oaths and suggestions.
Meghan leaned back into the shadow and closed her eyes as fear ran like ants over her skin. Lady Elenore was being raped before her own children’s eyes! Meghan knew she should do something. But what? And how could she know that anything she might do would stop them? One man she could kill, but a dozen? They would overpower her and then use her as they did Lady Elenore.