The O'Madden: A Novella (The Celtic Legends Series), Page 4

  An Englishman.

  She glimpsed Glenna’s hut ahead. It hugged the base of a giant oak tree which sheltered the thatch. Maeve hurtled toward it and shoved open the door.

  “Glenna!”

  The door slammed open to silence. The scent of boiled herbs and the pungency of dried reeds assaulted her. But the ashes of a fire lay cold in the hearth. Maeve leaned against the trestle table. Where could she be? It was far too late in the season for Glenna to be herb-gathering, and Maeve had passed Glenna’s cow chewing grass, its udder already emptied.

  Wasn’t it just like Glenna to flutter off when Maeve needed her most?

  She whirled out of the hut and planted herself on the stump just outside the door. In her youth she used to sit by Glenna’s feet while the older woman twisted her fingers around the spinning as she twisted her tongue around a tale. Here, Maeve had grown to womanhood learning the old Irish stories and the history of her people. Here, she’d been taught her life’s duty.

  Now sitting in this clearing where she’d spent so many years of her childhood, she willed herself to be calm. She had journeyed halfway to the sea, to another village’s Samhain fires, just to choose a lover. She had been so careful. In the nights since, she had even come to imagine that they’d been chosen to be together, drawn by some Otherworldly force.

  If so, it had been an evil force. The mischievous creatures of the Otherworld now laughed at her, piling curse upon curse.

  Maeve pulled her cloak tight around her. She stood up and wiped away the tears she hadn’t known she’d shed. This half-blooded Englishman must leave Birr, like every other full-blooded Englishmen before him. The curse was specific and clear.

  She headed home more slowly than she had fled, hating the fates that would force her to drive off the man who haunted her dreams.

  Three

  Garrick stumbled out of the castle into the cold slap of morning. He yanked his cloak closed against the chill. Pale pink clouds fingered the eastern horizon, driving back the deep blue of night. The air rang with an inhuman caterwauling which had torn him from an uncomfortable sleep.

  He rounded the castle seeking the source of the noise. He saw a milkmaid shriek across the yard and vault herself through the open door of the kitchens. He planted his fists on his hips and turned to the source of her terror. Cows. There were a dozen of them, trailing in an uneven line out from the hay barn. He’d never known cattle could make such an annoying wail. Then again, he’d never known cattle.

  He trudged across the yard. One of the cows turned its head and rolled an eye at him. He slowed his pace. The closest he’d ever gotten to a cow was a tepid pail of milk his mother bartered for with the red-faced farmer who drove it into Wexford every morning. Stupid-looking beasts. Bigger than any he’d seen driven through the town of his youth. It was the bulls one had to beware of … wasn’t it?

  Garrick edged around the portal into the musky shadows of the barn. He skidded through something wet, then stubbed his foot on a milk pail and sent it cartwheeling. Milk splattered across the ground.

  At least he thought it was milk. He crouched down. The familiar smell of it wafted up, musky and warm. He trailed a finger through the fluid and then frowned at the liquid clinging to his fingertips.

  “It’s green today.”

  Garrick looked up at the sound of her voice. She swept in, her black hair a cloud against the spill of the morning light. Four servants skittered around her banging pails against their knees. They bobbed at the sight of him and then rushed to crouch down beside a cow.

  “Aye, as green as the hills,” Maeve mused, staring at the milk seeping into the dirt floor. “At least it isn’t blood-red. That gave us quite a scare last time. We thought the cows might have been taken by a bloody flux.”

  The green clung to his hands like tar. He knew milk wasn’t supposed to be green. But his groping, sleep-fogged senses were focused on something more visceral: the bright-cheeked woman standing over him, clear-eyed, clear-skinned, and radiating energy. The woman he’d not seen since she’d torn out of this very barn yesterday, spurning his marriage proposal.

  Maeve strode past him as he rose from his crouch. “We’ll have to milk the cows anyway, else they’ll stop making milk altogether.” She slid back the bolt of the opposite door and pushed it open. Morning light poured through the barn. “The girl who usually milks the cows ran off without a word this morning. By the time we realized the cows weren’t being milked, we’d already sent out another milkmaid who knew nothing of the curse. It gave her quite a scare.”

  “The curse.”

  “Aye. It has begun again.” She leveled him with a gray-eyed stare. “I’ll send a girl to buy some milk from the villagers. They’ll have enough to spare, for now. Unless you have a taste for cursed green milk.”

  She swiveled on a heel and disappeared around the edge of the portal. Garrick moved to run his fingers through his hair but caught himself. He stared at his splayed hand, rubbed the green milk on his cloak, and then stepped out into the light. He caught sight of Maeve striding straight-backed toward the henhouse.

  He let his gaze trail over the curving lines of her lovely figure as at least one part of his body stirred from a fitful sleep. It had been a restless night for more than one reason. Now he’d woken to discover her behaving as if a marriage proposal from the castle’s lord was as unremarkable as cows giving green milk.

  He strode into the pen and clacked the gate closed behind him. Her shoulders flinched at the sound. “So,” he began, leaning back against the loose post of the hurdle. “Tell me about this curse.”

  She flung open the doors to the henhouse and the birds burst out in a flurry of feathers and clucks. “Didn’t your father see fit to warn you?”

  Garrick swallowed a bitter laugh. The earl saw fit to visit his by-blow once a year or so. For the fleeting moments of the Earl’s critical perusal, Garrick as a boy had to undergo days of scrubbing, snipping, and coaching. Mostly, Garrick remembered the way the Earl’s man had shoved the documents for these lands into his mother’s hands— then galloped away, peering nervously into every dark alley of that part of Wexford that rarely saw such a fat mark.

  “The Earl,” he said drily, “was remarkably unforthcoming on the details of this manor.”

  “Then you don’t know about The O’Madden.”

  “Who?”

  “The person destined to break the curse and drive the last Englishman off this land.”

  Garrick straightened. He could stomach a tumbled-down wreck of a castle. He could stomach a tiny glitch of a village, a bow-backed herd of cattle. Those things could be changed and improved. A manor could grow. But he’d had no inkling that the ownership of this land was contested.

  “These lands are mine now.” Garrick braced himself in the portal of the henhouse as Maeve stepped inside to peruse the nests. “Any man who contests my hold will have to deal with me.”

  “Steel is useless against a widow’s curse.” She slipped a basket off a hook just inside the door and slung it over her elbow. “I see I will have to tell you the full of it.”

  “It’s high time you told me the truth about something.”

  She flinched. Her gaze skittered away as she groped for eggs in one of the nests. “I never lied to you.”

  “Didn’t you, Maire?”

  “I had good reasons for that.”

  “It’s those reasons I’m still seeking. No.” He could tell she was summoning up another half-truth. In love and fighting all was the same: There were times to attack, and there were times to retreat to better ground. “You’ll tell me when it pleases you. That’s the way of women and I have more patience than most. For now, tell me more of this O’Madden.”

  She had the dignity to blush. She rolled an egg into her basket. “Before the English came,” she said, “these lands were ruled by the O’Maddens. It was a fine clan, a strong clan, and the lands were healthy and fertile.”

  Garrick knew something of history. His fathe
r had paid a priest to teach Garrick his letters, an Irish priest who’d been happy to take English coin and then teach a half-breed whelp the bloody history in his own particular way. The priest had talked to him of the brave O’Donnell’s of Tirconnel, the mighty O’Neill’s of Ulster, the fierce Maguire’s of Fermanagh—heads of the great clans. Over the years, the English had tried to destroy them and the loyalty of their people. The English had, for the most part, failed. The blood of the tribal clans ran deep.

  Garrick remembered no talk of O’Maddens.

  “The last O’Madden,” she continued, “built this castle when the English first threatened, nearly thirty years ago. He was sure a stone castle would hold out against them. It did, for some few years. But when the English came to conquer for good, the O’Madden ultimately lost the battle and he was murdered for rebelling.”

  “Such a story is common enough.”

  “I’m not done with it, Garrick of Wexford.” Her fine-boned features hardened. “The English were so frightened that another O’Madden would rise to take the dead one’s place that they decided to take all of the O’Madden’s sons—every last one of them—and hang them on the trees of the yard.” She rolled an egg into the basket. “The O’Madden’s widow cried for mercy. She fasted at the earl’s door in protest. But the Englishman ignored her.” She paused and her jaw trembled. “They say the youngest cried for his mother as they dropped the rope around his neck. He was three years of age.”

  Garrick glanced at the trees scattered around the castle, imagining those branches hung heavy with bitter fruit, not able to fathom it. “Time can twist the truth into something it never was.”

  “Does it ease your conscience to think so?” She gripped an egg tight in her fist. “Some still live to bear witness.”

  He tightened his jaw. He couldn’t deny he’d heard worse stories. He knew little of the Earl, and nothing of the Earl’s own father, who had probably been the one to order the hangings. But how could he denounce that blood, when it was only through that blood he claimed this place?

  “The English,” she argued, placing the egg with exaggerated care into her basket, “are remembered for what they’ve done. Take it as a blessing, my lord, that I didn’t accept your proposal and mix your proud blood any further.”

  He stifled a flash of anger. “You shouldn’t judge a whole of a race of men by the sum of its rotten parts.”

  “Then think of the Statutes of Kilkenny. The English are forbidden to marry the Irish without royal dispensation. Even half-blooded English.” Her skirt snagged on a nail protruding from the henhouse wall. She yanked at it. “You’re not even supposed to be speaking the Irish, yet I’ve not heard a word of English out of you yet.”

  “I’ve never had much of a mind for the King’s rules.”

  “Well, there’s proof there’s a little Irish in you.” She pulled her skirts free on the sound of a tear. “Alas, not enough to give me any hope.”

  “But I have hope. Hope you’ll come to your senses and be with me.”

  “Stop talking like that.”

  “We’ve got more than a bit of talking to do about All Hallows’ Eve.”

  She shouldered by him so close that he felt the give of her breast against his arm. His gaze dropped to her belly, taut and flat, and he wondered if a bit of himself was still in there, growing already. No doubt it was too early to tell.

  “The less said about that night, the better, by my way of thinking.” She brushed her gaze over him as he fell into pace beside her. “There’s no changing the past. And I would never have recognized you as his son. You’re not like the others the earl sent, mincing and prancing about in silks and stinking of perfume.”

  “The English don’t treat their bastards as generously as the Irish do.”

  “You have this manor. That should be enough for you.” She slung the basket of eggs to her other elbow. “I’ll not be anything but your servant for the short time you’re here.”

  “I’ll be here until I’m buried under the dust.”

  She stopped mid-yard and glared at him. “Did you sleep well last night, my lord of Birr?”

  He drank in the sight of her, flush-faced, bright-eyed, and fierce. “I would have slept better, had I a hot-blooded, silver-eyed woman in my bed.”

  “No doubt you can find a woman willing to do your bidding for the price of a few coins. We’re a poor enough people here.” Color crept higher up her cheeks. “But are you going to pretend that you didn’t hear the footsteps last night? The moans or the wailing? Not even the most starving woman could be tempted to sleep in that bed of yours for a night, whether you’re in it or not.”

  Garrick hesitated. Last night, he’d been awakened three times by the sound of someone stomping around above his chamber. Each time, he had climbed the only set of stairs to the third floor of the castle. By the light of the stars, he’d searched the area open below the ruin of the roof. He’d found no one. Not a living soul. The floorboards were so rotted with weather that he hadn’t dared to clamber across them, lest the floor cave onto his room below.

  “She haunts the place,” Maeve said, clutching the basket to her side. “She won’t rest until justice is done.”

  “The castle is haunted by birds and neglect, no more.”

  “It’s haunted by the widow who cast a curse upon this land. The wife of the last O’Madden.”

  Garrick knew the old saying well. Shun it as you would shun a widow’s curse. Not even a priest’s curse carried as much potency as that of a widow betrayed.

  “So,” he said, “her curse was to turn the milk green?”

  Maeve narrowed those silver eyes at him. “She vowed that there would be no prosperity in these lands until the last Englishman was driven out, and an O’Madden of pure Irish blood ruled at Birr.”

  “You said that all her sons were killed.”

  “Aye.”

  “Then she cursed the land forever.”

  “Not so.” Maeve tilted her chin. “Everything is normal when there are no English about. Now that you’re here, the curse has returned.”

  “There are worse things than green milk.”

  She fished an egg out of her basket and dropped it at his feet. The jelly splattered on his boot. It wobbled a bright robin’s-egg blue.

  Maeve raised a brow. “The last lord of Birr left after a week. I’m told he saw blood oozing from the walls on All Hallows’ Eve.”

  “More likely he drank too much ale—”

  “Not a single English lord has remained on this land for more than a month. I’ve no doubt I’ll see your back soon enough.”

  She swiveled away and headed toward the kitchens. He watched the proud slope of her back, thinking that he’d been here twenty-four hours and he knew he’d found what he’d spent a lifetime searching for. Curse or no, he’d be damned if he’d give either one of them up without a fight.

  Aye, Maeve, you’d like to be rid of me and of all that happened between us. You’d like to forget it even though the memory shimmers between us every time you meet my eye. I see the pulse racing in your throat when you’re near. I feel the heat of your body from across a room. I sense your presence before you come through a door. You’d like to forget the magic of that night. You’d like to pretend that we aren’t meant for each other, curse or no—but we are, Maeve, we are, and I know it in my bones.

  The woman and the place both held mystery. They needed nothing more than a man of determination to crack them. He wondered how great a length she would go to, to be rid of him

  and whatever unspeakable secret she held to her heart.

  He raised his voice to carry across the yard. “It’ll take more than green milk and ghosts to get rid of me, Maeve.”

  She slung the basket off her arm but he couldn’t read her expression across the distance.

  “Time will tell, my lord. Time will tell.”

  ***

  Maeve frowned into the churn as she ran a hand through the mess of curdles. She sucked he
r finger into her mouth and frowned. The sourness burst on her tongue as if she’d bit into an unripe apple.

  “Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now.” She wiped her hands upon her apron and met the frightened eyes of two young servants. “Don’t be staring at me like that. It isn’t the first time the butter hasn’t come on the milk, and no doubt it won’t be the last. Go to old Aileen and ask if she can spare a bit of her butter.” Her eyes narrowed on a thought. “And take one of the furs on the lord’s bed to trade. It’s sure he has no need of that mountain, and won’t miss one or two.”

  The girls skittered out, bumping into another woman bustling into the kitchens from the castle.

  “They are here, my lady,” the servant whispered. “They’re coming up the road now.”

  “Well, what good is it to tell me?” Maeve tipped the churn on its side and rolled it across the dirt floor with her foot. “Go and tell the master—it’s him who’ll be receiving the tribute this year.”

  “He’s off doing something again.” The servant wrung her hands. “I heard Seamus say the master was fixing the hurdles around the sheep pen.”

  Maeve frowned as she bumped the churn over the threshold into the open yard. Last week, Garrick had braided new thatch for the barn. Three days ago, he’d fashioned a new hinge for the door of the henhouse. Yesterday, she’d come upon him cutting back the ivy which had begun to send roots into the castle mortar. That man had lived in this castle for two weeks. Already, he’d dripped more sweat into the earth than all of the other English lords combined.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, my lady,” the servant ventured, “he’s a better man than the others. Strong and hardworking. And he doesn’t snap and order us all about like the others.” She paused. “A pity he’s English.”

  “Yes. He’s English.” Maeve heaved the churn upright. “Mind you remember that today when he accepts the tribute and steals the life from all of us.”

  Maeve strode toward the sheep pens, jarring her heels with every step. Black clouds scudded across the sky, threatening another day of rain. A crafty one, this lord. For the price of a bit of sweat, he wins the admiration of a people used to crueler masters. How quickly their loyalty drifted. She kept wondering when he would give up this mockery and start acting like the lord he was, instead of the rough-handed, hardworking Irishman she’d lain with on All Hallows’ Eve.