Sing Me Home (19 page)

The door closed quietly behind him. He took a few steps deeper into the room and gave her an assessing look very unlike the bewildered gaze he'd turned on her when he first laid eyes upon her in the hall.

“I understand,” he said, folding his fingers together, “that you may be as shocked by tonight’s revelation as I am.”

Speechless, she twisted her ring around her finger.

“In the days to come, there will be many people questioning the truth of the story. You understand that, yes?”

“I will be first among them,” she confessed. “I can scarcely believe it myself.”

“Oh, but I need you to believe, Maura.”

His lips lifted in a half-smile, and one bushy eyebrow arched above his eye, and Maura wondered how he could be so at ease when her whole world had upended.

“We’ll begin with a little honesty. I expect you will tell me everything I need to know. Your position here depends upon it.”

“My position?”

“Your position in this house, as my long-lost daughter, a young woman worthy to carry the name Caddell and all the benefits that go along with that.”

“Benefits.”

“Come, you are not so innocent, I think.” He splayed his fingers to indicate the warm, well-appointed room. “Many might take advantage of such a situation. I am a rich man, as you can plainly see.”

Lord William Caddell. Protector of Kilcolgan, Lord of Athenry, the Baron of Shrule. The man her lover had sworn to kill.

“Come,” he urged into the silence. “You must understand what I’m saying. I know you haven’t lived in such fine lodgings while traveling the roads with a minstrel troupe.”

“I’ve only been among them a few weeks, my lord.”

“Is that so?”

“I grew up in a convent, and before these last weeks, I hadn’t been beyond my village, not ever.”

He raised an amused brow. “Make sure to speak of that in the coming days. It’ll serve you well.”

She blinked, not understanding.

“To silence the naysayers,” he explained. “There will be many. That’s why my advisers will insist that I seek verification for the story that you are the foundling of which that nursemaid spoke. I’ll be writing to the Abbess at Killoughy tomorrow morning. Will she confirm everything you’ve told me?”

Maura couldn’t imagine how the Abbess would react upon receiving a parchment with an English baron’s seal, one that asked about
her,
no less. “The lady Abbess will confirm it. I’m sure they’re all still worrying about me, I left the convent without warning.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

She wondered why he was questioning
her
when it was
he
who’d claimed her as his daughter. “My lord—”

“Father,” he corrected sharply. “Best you start calling me that.”

She bit her lip and wondered why he didn’t speak with more warmth than authority, like he had in the hall below. Maybe this whole evening was a cruel farce. Maybe he suffered from bouts of madness. Maybe his son would be the next person through the door, asking her to gather her things and leave with the minstrels in the morning, when Lord William was sure to forget the drama of the night.

Her heart leapt at the thought of leaving with Colin, even as she silently scolded herself for not paying more mind to what was being offered to her.

“Father,” she began, the word sticking in her throat, “it seems you may have some doubts about my provenance yourself.”

“I have no doubts.” He didn’t seem in the least bit dull-witted as he combed his fingers through the pointed tuft of his beard. “You are my daughter, I have proclaimed it so.”

She twisted the ring again, anxious for him to leave so she could seek out Colin or the minstrels in the stables.

“So to start,” he said, “you must begin living like a daughter of a baron. Dressed,” he continued, “in the finest clothes, fed at my own table, and tended by many servants. You will find your stay exceedingly comfortable.”

She spread her arms to indicate the warm robe. “I thank you for your kindness.”

“In return for that kindness,” he continued, “you must behave like the daughter of a baron.”

Maura blinked. There had been no daughters of barons at the convent, but there had been many daughters of the lesser aristocracy. She had been closest to Sabine, a laywoman who adored pretty things, like birds and squirrels and jewels and ivory combs and making pets of little girls.

“You must be modest,” he continued, his voice gravelly. “No more of those obscene silks, no more rouging your cheeks. No minstrel stories, or bawdy puns or language not fit for church.”

She thought of Maguire Mudman and his riddles, Matilda and her painted lips, the twins and their easy laughter, and felt a strange tug in her heart.

“My dear,” he exclaimed, nodding his head. “You play the innocent well, I’m quite impressed.”

“Innocent?”

“Indeed. Remember, though, I have eyes in all places—in the castle, the stables, in churches, on the bridges, and everywhere on the road.” He made a grunting noise that he stifled by clearing his throat. “I’m not the failing old man my son wishes me to be.”

“I … I don’t understand.”

“I suspect you do, despite your protestations.” He turned and headed toward the door. “It may take a while for you to adjust to your new position, but I think you’ll find that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.”

“Drawbacks?”

He paused, clearly irritated. “You’re carrying my name, and my protection, and I expect a certain amount of decorum.”

“Decorum.”

“Must I be blunt?” He curled his fingers over the edge of the door. “As of today, Maura of Killeigh, there will be no more swiving in the fields with minstrels.”

He closed the door behind him, bolting it from the outside.

Chapter Fifteen

C
olin urged his mount up yet another slope in the foothills of the Partry Mountains. Rain splattered from the trees, soaking his six-colored cloak, now glued to his horse’s flanks. He backhanded a rivulet off his chin and urged his mount around the crackle of gorse that choked the old trail.

Something hissed by his cheek and then
thunked
into an oak nearby. To his right, the shaft of an arrow quivered.

A voice sifted from the sky. “Who comes into MacEgan lands?”

He recognized the lilt of the Connemara dialect as easily as he’d once recognized musical scales by the ringing of pitched chimes.

“I am Colin.” He sensed more than one pair of eyes upon him, more than one bow drawn against him. “Son of Fergus MacEgan.”

Colin’s tongue rolled around the surname as it would roll around a bone found within the meat of a fish. It had been ten years since he’d called himself by it, and longer than that since he’d considered himself worthy of it.

A man dropped out of a tree and landed flat-footed upon the trail. Beneath a tunic of deerskin, knotted sinew held the warrior’s hose to his legs. The warrior strode closer, assessing him with narrowed eyes. Colin didn’t recognize Aedh the blacksmith, not at first. All that remained of the once burly vassal was a tunic that caved in around his belly and cheeks that had sunk deep into his skull. But the drooping mustache was the same, as russet as autumn leaves.

“Unless Fergus himself has risen from the grave,” Aedh said, lowering his bow, “then it’s Colin for sure.”

Men dropped from the trees like ripe apples in September, men in ragged dress with wood-handled knives strapped to their waists. He saw among them familiar, older faces—scarred, the skin tight to the bone, all with eyes full of a strange brightness.

Aedh said, “Your brother Murtough returned yesterday and told us he’d found you alive in Kilcolgan.”

“I sent him ahead.”

“Brendan, your cousin, holds the rod of the clan now.”

Colin tried to hide his surprise. He’d been led to believe, by the Connacht exile he’d stumbled across in London, that Brendan was all but dead.

That was months ago.

“Aye, Brendan lives still.” The blacksmith curled his fist into the bridle of Colin’s horse. “I’ll lead you to him.”

Colin tugged on the reins. “I know the way.”

“Not anymore you don’t. We’ve more than one trap set for the likes of the English along this path, should they dare to show their faces here. We move from mountain to mountain with the change in seasons, and watch the paths well.”

Like rabbits beneath the sight of a fox.

Colin allowed Aedh to lead him down a tight path, wide enough for only one horse at a time. They hugged the edge of the woods, keeping quick in the shadows, though nothing disturbed this rain-drenched world but the leap of a roe deer. They sifted their way through the narrow pass that led up to the old MacEgan stronghold, but rather than head toward it, they took a sharp turn to the east, up a rocky ledge, through a pasture speckled with bow-backed cattle, to a clearing beneath a blue haze of smoke.

The makeshift homestead consisted of no more than a shallow trench surrounding a cluster of wattle buildings. As they came closer, Colin noticed men clattering dice against a stump. Women bickered over an open fire and half-naked children chased a stray dog around a tree. Colin heard the ripple of his name across the land, a strange murmuring—
cullin
,
cullin, cullin, cullin
.

He was used to drawing attention whenever entering a settlement. But during his time as a minstrel, it was laughter and joy and applause that had greeted him, not this quivering expectancy. Not the sight of women clasping their hands against their chests, or children reaching out to brush their fingertips across the hem of his cloak. Not the sight of warriors rising from their duties, their faces blanching as if he were a ghost.

In their gaze he saw the look they had given to his father Fergus all those years ago, when Fergus bright in his new-forged chain mail, Fergus with the bloodlust of righteousness in his eye, had set out to take back for the MacEgans what had been seized from them.

He wanted to shout for them to stop.

Men stood sentinel at the door of the mead hall. The door swung open as Colin approached. Brendan MacEgan stumbled out on the arm of another warrior, his king’s cloak of many colors wrapped around chain mail. At the sight of his cousin, Colin bit down on the urge to hiss his breath through his teeth. Brendan was Fergus’s brother’s oldest son, older than Colin by less than fifteen years. Colin remembered him as a man quick of thought, strong of opinion, and unstoppable in battle. Now his cousin stood in the doorway little more than hardened flesh upon bones. Only his black eyes showed life, fierce beneath half-drooping lids.

“Colin.” Brendan spoke the name in a gravelly voice. “We thought you dead.”

“Aye.” Seizing the horse’s mane, Colin swung himself off the beast’s back and stood before his cousin. “But you sent me off so that I might live.”

A silence settled over the clearing, a tense, watchful silence, and Colin knew the source of it. More than one cousin or brother or uncle had killed his own kin for the sake of seizing power. Looking at this proud but wasted warrior, Colin suddenly understood why Aedh had spoken of Brendan’s recovery with such weariness. These men anticipated a change of leadership—hoped for it—for as Colin stood in their midst, they did not grip their sword hilts to protect the man they now called The MacEgan.

Brendan shuffled a foot. Grasping the shoulder of his guardsman, he started to bend a knee. Colin stepped forward and seized him before his cousin could sully his hose upon the wet ground.

“No.”

Brendan raised his hooded gaze. Beyond the etching of weariness, Colin could see how the wheels of his cousin’s sharp mind turned. Suddenly the past ten years hung on Colin like irons. It was Brendan who had stayed behind with the clan when Colin had been hustled onto the boat out of Galway Bay. It was Brendan who hid in these hills what was left of the MacEgans, and their cattle, and their women. It was Brendan who had kept these clansmen alive for ten hard years while he danced under the sun and drank in alehouses and made love to the women of Gascony.

Brendan had earned the title of The MacEgan.

Colin had not.