Sing Me Home (15 page)

Maura said, “You’ve got four brothers dead, another blinded in one eye, and the MacEgans pushed to the edge of the world. Did you think, by coming here, you could set that all to rights?”

Colin’s smile dimmed. A bird swept low over them, screeching in warning. “I am the only son who isn’t dead or maimed—”

“And thus smart enough to know better than to fight lost causes.”

“How rich it is that you talk of lost causes, with that ring of yours, and your wild hopes of finding your family.”

“I don’t have to spill blood for what I seek.” She clutched the hand that bore the ring. “But who do you plan to kill? Your brother spat on the names of a long list of men. Are you to kill the O’Shaughnessy’s and the O’Heynes? Or are you going straight to the English baron who controls these lands—Lord William Caddell?”

William Caddell.

Colin’s nostrils flared. He remembered the wash of Galway Bay upon the shore. He remembered the sight of the tattered army around him, the remnants of his defeated clan. He remembered standing there, barely twenty years of age, thinking of the three brothers who had died in the wars, the father hastily buried by the side of that pond, the fourth brother lying upon a makeshift litter in the purple of twilight upon the coast of Connemara, his face soon to be a death mask—thinking of all the waste, all the battle, all the grief. He remembered, too, the sound of horses coming from the woods behind him, the sound of swords scraping unsheathed as his warriors prepared to die. But the horsemen who crashed upon their hiding place were his own men, carrying Murtough—blinded in one eye by the sword of William Caddell—blinded yet spitting a hundred thousand curses upon William the Black, just as Colin’s father had done, not two days before, as he died beside that lake.

And all the men had turned to
him
with vengeance in their eyes, as if a twenty-year-old poet could be the warrior MacEgan.

“Colin,” she whispered, drawing him back to the height of the hill, the June breeze that didn’t smell of blood. “If everything Murtough is babbling is true, then there must be a price on your head.”

“Wasn’t it you who said the devil would stretch the rope to the ground, if I ever found myself hanging?”

“Don’t use my words against me.” Her eyes were wide and wet. “What are you going to do if you get yourself caught?”

“Die. It’s how the legends usually end anyway. And the wars.”

She gripped his sleeve. She shifted so she was on her knees before him. “You can’t do this, Colin. Not you,” she whispered, tugging at the wool of his tunic, “not the man with the enchanted heart.”

Something moved inside him as he looked down at her lovely, fair face with its winged brows and the freckles on her temples—a strange sliding of heart and mind, a dangerous sense of doubt and reckless hope. He wondered, in the days to come, whether he would ever see such gentleness in anyone’s eyes again.

“You wanted to escape before Murtough found you,” she whispered, in that husky songstress’s voice. “There’s a whole world out there, free of the past, free of what cannot be changed. Let’s run away, like we planned.”

For one moment, he traced her jaw with his thumb and let himself imagine traveling with her through rolling green hills, sleeping among the cows and waking with them lowing on the warm hillside. He imagined the bubble of a kettle over a fire, while they slept upon a pallet of fresh hay. He imagined picking the straw from her hair every night after kissing her cheeks pink. He imagined waking up to the first rays of the sun with her warmth curled in his arms, with nothing but their bodies and a thin blanket holding back the chill. He imagined swimming in a hundred different rivers, building a new home every night by the side of the road. He imagined shedding his name, disappearing into the world, drowning in this woman’s arms.

In some ways, he’d lived that life already—at least a darker, meaner shadow of it. But for all that he pretended he enjoyed the oblivion found in ale and willing women’s arms, his obligations had eaten away at him. He could not ignore the family that called to him anymore, and still call himself a man.

He caught the edge of her lip with his thumb. “Go back to the camp, Maura.”

“Colin—”

“I must do what I promised my father. I intend to put an arrow through William Caddell’s heart.”

Chapter Twelve

M
aura watched as Maguire crouched in the dust of the road and squinted at the donkey’s raised hoof. The Mudman grimaced and then stood up with a sigh.

“A rock was there and gone,” he announced. “But it left a fine deep rut, that’s what’s causing the beast to limp. It needs to be washed and bound, and the donkey rested for at least a day.”

Arnaud threw up his arms. “Bad luck dogs us like a rat after an apple cart. We’ll have to camp here and put off Shrule again.”

Maura nodded. She watched as the twins bobbed their heads, as Fingar slipped his harp off his back as if in resignation, and Matilda pressed the flat of her hand against her swelling belly. Then Maura sidled a secret glance toward Colin, standing with his arms crossed.

Colin pushed away from the tree and sauntered toward the donkey. “A rock, Maguire?”

“Aye, a rock.” The Mudman planted himself in front of the beast. “Are you doubting my word, then?”

“I’m admiring the way you taught the beast to limp,” Colin said. “Will he do it on command, like Nutmeg?”

Maguire chewed a piece of grass to the other side of his mouth. “I won’t push this donkey any harder. We’ll lame him for good if he doesn’t get a day’s rest.”

“Strange that all this bad luck happened as soon as Murtough climbed on that farmer’s cart and left me behind with all of you.”

Matilda made another low groan and clutched her abdomen. Maura stepped quickly to her side, as did the twins.

“Come, Matilda,” Colin said. “You’d be more believable if you hadn’t been singing like a maiden on May Day all morning.”

“What would you know of it?” Matilda took Maura’s arm as the twins helped lower her to the grass. “You know nothing of childbearing except how to make one.”

“It’s a wonder you all haven’t starved to death with how badly you play your parts.” Colin eyeballed the troupe. “Don’t you understand? Once Murtough reaches the MacEgans, they’ll send someone to fetch me. All you are doing is putting off the inevitable—”

Foolishness.

She’d spoken aloud. She knew it because suddenly he was looking at her with those angry eyes. Turning around, she set her foot into the lush grass off the side of the road. She swung up Nutmeg’s basket and hiked it over her shoulder and then trudged into the shadow of the woods without real direction, knowing only that he’d follow.

She had to stop Colin from reaching Shrule in any way possible.

“Don’t be long,” Colin shouted, “or I’ll come after you.”

“Now there’s a promise,” she shouted back. “I’ll take my time, then.”

She plunged into the shadows. She took a grim pleasure in the snap of twigs under her feet. She kept her mind on the blind need to save the man from a folly she still could not comprehend.

Colin the Minstrel—an Irish chieftain.

The MacEgan.

She reached a river and kicked a stone over the surface. It skipped twice across the water before sinking into the current. She swept Nutmeg’s basket off her back, hooked it on a broken branch of an oak tree, and then sank down on her haunches. She dropped her chin into her hands and looked for answers in the shimmer of sunlight on the water.

Through a break in the trees, in the far distance, she could just see little streams of smoke that marked the English town of Shrule. She wished she could obliterate the whole town with a single thought. She wished she could obliterate the past three days. Things weren’t right anymore. She was still a kitchen maid out on a foolish quest, but he was no longer Colin the lecher. He was a stranger walking in Colin’s skin.

“I know you’re not as deaf as Padraig.”

Colin came through the trees, his shirt billowing open, showing a glimpse of hard, uncompromising chest.

She said, “You didn’t have to follow me.”

“But you knew I would. Don’t deny it,” he said as she opened her mouth. “We’re all playing our parts here, Maura, but you’re smart enough to know this won’t change anything.”

She jerked to her feet, startling Nutmeg where he rustled in the grass. “So you’ll play the part of the fool?”

“Don’t.”

Tense silence fell between them. A bird chattered in the boughs of the oak. A pebble tumbled into the shallow water. The scream of the insects soared. Colin gave her a long look and then turned to walk away.

“You made a promise to me, Colin,” she said, raising her voice. “You promised to bring me to St. Patrick’s Purgatory.”

It seemed like a hundred thousand years ago. What a fool she’d been, thinking she could find her parents. She was only just beginning to realize that better things could be found upon the road, better than what she’d originally set out to find.

“The shrine will not disappear,” he said, in an odd, gravelly voice. “And Arnaud is a better escort than ever I could be.”

“You’re breaking your promise.”

“Yes.”

“Not even a twinge of conscience.”

He showed her a face without humor. “Don’t try to save me, lass.”

“How about you saving
us
, then? If you’ve got killing on your mind, it’s likely we’ll all be hanged.”

“They won’t know I’m one of you.”

“Is that another of your promises?”

His face darkened. He wheeled around and headed back through the trees, away from her, out of her life.

“I suppose this has been nothing but a bit of business between you and me.” She stomped down to the river’s edge and nudged one slipper off with the toe of her foot. “I sing for my supper, and you kiss me until I want to make feet for children’s stockings.”

He stopped in his tracks. She felt a trill of success. She'd kept him near for one moment longer.

She tugged at the ties of her tunic. “Oh, I’ve been listening to Maguire,” she said. “What else does he call swiving? Being in a woman’s beef? Playing in cock’s alley? Aye, I’ll have quite a vocabulary to bring back to the convent with me, if they'll have me back at all.”

“What are you doing?”

She dragged the length of her tunic over her head. “I’m hot and dusty, and the river looks cool.” She flung the tunic away, then hiked up the skirt of her linen under-tunic to pluck free the garter that held up her stockings. “And I’d best get used to stripping off my clothes in front of strange men, since you’re so determined to leave me unprotected.”

She felt his gaze on her pale thigh like the touch of a feather. She yanked off one stocking and tossed the black wool in the growing pile of her clothing. She flashed leg in the bright sun as she undid the second. Then, deliberately, she tugged at the ties of her coif and pulled the linen cap off her head until her hair tumbled over her shoulders.

In all her life, she had barely undressed in front of any of the sisters or even the kitchen girls. They took baths in their own shifts, which provided some element of modesty. But here she was standing in her thin under-tunic in the bright of day on the banks of a river, letting a man she hardly knew stare at her body.

It was a strangely powerful feeling to be able to hold the attention of the gleaming-eyed rover she’d vowed not to succumb to, forcing him still just because her figure was outlined by the light.

“Is this all that men do, then?” She circled her bare toe in the water. “You stand about and stare at a woman? Faith, Matilda led me to believe there was a lot more sweat and grunting in it.”

“A wise woman,” he said, his voice husky, “would put her clothes back on.”

“There’s a fair in Dunmore.” She tugged her under-tunic up another inch, a hand’s span above her knee, feeling the cool breeze whirl under the linen. “That band of masons we passed told Arnaud about it, I heard them myself. Dunmore is northeast of here, in the direction of St. Patrick’s Purgatory. I suppose it’s as good a place as any for me to start earning real wages.”

“You earn real wages singing—”