Sing Me Home (9 page)

Now he crouched at the edge of the pond, splashing the water over his face, slicking his fingers through his hair. A man’s path was blazed by so many little decisions, one after another. The last time he’d gazed into this water, he’d been little more than a youth with a bloody sword. Now what lay before him, reflected in the surface, was a mangled distortion of his own father’s face. Same dark hair, same eyes. Yet so different in temperament, it was as if they were not kin at all.

Ten years of exile. Maybe he’d finally become man enough to fulfill the vow he’d made to his dead father.

He stood up abruptly. The toe of his boot disturbed the edge of the water, shattering his reflection. He told himself that this was nothing but a pond. The sound of sword-stroke had long faded, the last drop of blood had long sunk into the earth.

I can still turn away.

He girded his belt and walked away from the pond, thinking how easy it was to believe his own lies.

Chapter Seven

C
olin lifted a square of blue silk and waved it at the crowd around him. Men and women spilled out the back door of the alehouse to watch. A baker, his black hair flecked with flour. A butcher, his leather apron marked by blood. A candlestick maker, his hands swollen by bee stings. Clean-shaven faces, close-cropped hair. No multicolored cloaks here. No flowing mustaches, no braided
culans
hanging over the men’s shoulders. Beyond the flax of the alehouse thatch, he glimpsed the stone cylinder of the castle—the forbidding spike the English had planted in Irish ground to claim it as their own.

When he was last here, Tuam had been only a summer ring fort, a small mound of earth used by the O’Manns for hunting in the nearby woods. Now it was full of Englishmen—Englishmen and at least one treacherous Irishman by the name of O’Kelly who’d passed the troupe on the road, riding proud on his palfrey, his long mustache flowing, heading straight to that English castle.

Tonight, Colin thought grimly, he would remind O’Kelly of his treachery.

And so it all would begin.

Colin snapped the scarf by a corner, then balled his hand and tucked the end in the tunnel formed by his fist. His gaze gravitated to a woman whose eyes began to glitter with knowing amusement.

“Good day to you, my lady.” He mimicked a courtly bow. “Would you be so kind as to assist me?”

She agreed with a lazy smile. He shoved the scarf into his fisted grip and asked her to poke it in tighter. She did, with a sturdy finger, taking her time with the ins and outs of the task, while bawdy comments flew around them.

“Faith,” he said, addressing the crowd, “I’m usually the one doing the poking.”

The words fell from his lips by rote, though he knew by the laughter that the joke had worked easily. He’d made the same joke a thousand times before, in French, English, and Langue d’Oc. He’d performed the same tricks and rolled with the same sort of woman in patches of spring clover in valleys all across Europe.

He leaned into the woman as she finished. “Did that satisfy you as much as it did me?”

She pursed her lips, as if still deciding. Then he raised his clenched hand and muttered a few words of Latin—
veni vidi vici
—then held his fist out to the wench again.

“Time to yank it out, my lady.”

The woman pinched the tip of the scarf between her thumb and forefinger and then tugged at it with languorous slowness. He released a grunt of relief as the knotted end popped out.

“Lady,” he muttered, “don’t stop now.”

She continued to pull, and out of his fist came another scarf, knotted to the first, a gossamer thing the shade of peaches in summer. The crowd gasped, and even the lady took enough time out of seducing him with her eyes to raise a brow as a succession of bright silk scarfs slipped out of his fist. Colin let his grin widen and made comments about the length of it, all the while wondering in the back of his mind why the sight of such a pretty, willing woman left his cock limp.

When the last scarf fell out of his fist, the crowd applauded and Maguire, on cue, popped into Colin’s place. The little man gathered farthings into his hat even as he started telling a tale about an itinerant priest and the peddler’s daughter. Colin backed out of the clearing, avoiding the woman’s seeking eye, and ducked into the alehouse. He came out of the other side into the brightness of day.

One sweep of the streets and he glimpsed what he hadn’t expected to see—a white coif, pure and clean. Maura, standing in the shade of the blacksmith’s shop.

Colin’s gut tightened. Maura should be safe at the camp, not wandering around this English town alone. She wore her kitchen-servant garments, not the bells and rouge and silks of a minstrel’s trade. As he watched, three burly apprentices pressed close around her. He shot across the cobbles and without a pardon muscled himself between the men.

“There you are, Abbess.” Colin draped an arm across her shoulders as he turned to eye the apprentices. “Angling to get me in a fight with a blacksmith?”

She blinked up at him in surprise. By God’s Nails, the wench didn’t even know that three men were closing in around her, three Englishmen who wouldn’t give a moment’s worth of thought for her welfare. If he hadn’t shown up, she could have ended up on her back on the smithy’s floor, servicing the lot of them.

“This good apprentice,” she began, trying to wiggle the weight of his arm off her shoulders, “has been kind enough to explain how metal is molded.”

“That’s not all he’ll mold, if he gets a chance.”

She tilted her head and gave him a scolding eye.

“My lady,” one of the apprentices said, as he shifted a bellows off his shoulder to set its point in the dirt. “Is this your husband?”

“No … no,” she said, “He’s just—”

“Then leave her alone, minstrel.” The apprentice eyed Colin’s cape and the jagged hem of his tunic. “Such a fine lady won’t be meddling with the likes of you.”

Colin’s nostrils flared. The apprentice was young and burly, with swelling, work-reddened forearms. As a rule, Colin avoided tangling with the village blacksmiths wherever he traveled. They were strong enough to pull teeth out of a man’s jaw. But after seeing the traitor O’Kelly riding the roads surrounded by armed retainers this morning--a man against whom Colin's only weapon could be words--Colin was primed to flex his muscles at the first opportunity that presented itself. He felt a familiar rush to his head, a warmth of anticipation in his blood, as he curled his hands into fists.

Maura seized his arm but he shrugged it off.

The smith lunged first, tossing the bellows aside before barreling into him. Air whooshed from his lungs as he heard Maura cry out. He and the blacksmith, locked in a hold, plunged onto the road, bumping into passersby until they tripped to the ground. Pebbles needled Colin’s back as they skidded to a stop against the alehouse wall. Then Colin seized the blacksmith by the scruff of his leather jerkin and tossed him off, leaping up just as the apprentice rolled to his feet. The blacksmith charged again, but another man emerged from the shadow of the shop and darted between them, holding out one meaty hand to stop the apprentice from attacking.

“Do your fighting on your own time, William. You’re mine until vespers.” The sweaty-faced master blacksmith fixed his glare on Colin, assessing him up and down. “A piece of sterling says my William will beat the guts out of this one.”

Then Maguire Mudman twisted out of the crowd like a whirlwind. “Is it going to be a fight, then?” With a toothless grin, he flipped a silver coin in the air. “A piece of silver, then, for the minstrel.”

“A ha’penny on the magician!”

“A groat on the blacksmith—”

“Double that for me—”

Maguire pulled out a wax tablet and began scratching wagers. Colin took measure of the blacksmith as he wiped the blood from the corner of his lip. Aye, the apprentice was strong and quick, and the blow to the belly had been a surprise, but Colin had several inches and a good two stone on him. Staring at this puffed-up young man, Colin didn’t give a damn about the bids. No matter how the wagers fell, he intended to beat the stuffing out of the boy.

Then there she was, standing before him, anger radiating from her like heat from a kiln stone.

“What are you thinking,” she whispered, “haggling over me like some market day harlot?”

“What are
you
thinking,” he retorted, “wandering around this town alone?”

Her gaze faltered, but only for a moment. “I may be alone,” she said, “but I’m in a public place, amid a crowd—and not far from where you and Maguire were working.” She crossed her arms. “I’ve been traveling on these roads long enough to be aware of some of the dangers, Colin.”

He grunted. She shouldn’t wear that coif, Colin thought. Hair like that shouldn’t be hidden under a bit of linen. “You’re dressed well for your wanderings.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Where’s Nutmeg? Your bells, your silks?”

“It’s best, in some cases, that I don’t play the minstrel.”

“I like you better as the minstrel.”

“Whether I’m minstrel or maiden, you keep your distance, I’ve noticed.”

She regretted the words the moment she said them, he could tell by the way her skin bloomed pink right to the roots of her hair. He knew what she was talking about. He’d made a point of not being caught alone with her lest he be tempted into teaching her more lessons about love. She was too innocent to understand that he was staying away from her for her own damn good.

So he jerked his chin toward the apprentice, now swaggering back to his anvil. “Your blacksmith won’t keep his distance, I’ll wager you that.”

“Don’t be talking nonsense.” She fingered the ring upon her hand. “William was telling me how such a ring could be made.”

“William, is it?”

“It’s a fine Christian name.”

“No doubt he yearns to hear it whispered from your lips.” He frowned. “What’s this about your ring?”

“Never mind about that.”

She turned with a flip of her tunic and marched into the shadow of an alleyway, escaping so fast that Colin knew he’d touched a nerve. He brushed the dust off him, saw that Maguire was busy taking bets, and then eyed the apprentice who had taken a stance near the front of his shop to pound a crescent of reddened metal with an iron mallet. With a challenging grin, Colin made sure the boy saw him set off after those twitching hips.

He caught up with her just as she stepped out of the alleyway into the open space that spread before the city gate. He grasped her by the waist, ignored her cry of surprise, and pulled her into the shade under the thatch overhang of one of the shops.

A rider galloped past, harness and bells jangling.

“Watch yourself, Abbess.” Her hair smelled warm. “You were nearly crushed under those hooves.”

“I’m in more danger now, I think.”

“You have to take care.” He felt his throat tighten. “The troupe needs you now.”

“Stop with your flattery. The troupe doesn’t need me, and I’m only here until St. Patrick’s Purgatory. Which,” she said, pushing out of his grip, “I’ve recently been told is
north
, while all this time we’ve been walking
west
.”

“I warned you back in Killeigh that a minstrel troupe follows the fairs.” He seized her hand before she could slip away. “Now tell me what’s special about this ring that you risk flirting with blacksmiths.”

Her lips went tight and she tried to tug her hand free. He ignored her efforts and eyed the ring. Its face was scratched and worn, but the metal was heavy and untarnished, a sign of true gold.

He said, “This is no tinker’s work.”

“Of course it isn’t.”

“I know you didn’t steal it. Was it a gift?”

“This is mine. It has always been mine.” Her mouth moved but she seemed to be having some trouble forming words. “I found out, not long before I left the convent, that this ring had been discovered in my swaddling clothes.”

He met those guarded hazel eyes and remembered how she’d told him she was a foundling. A woman without a family. A woman without family obligations, without the weight of unfulfilled promises.