Lord Of The Isle

Chapter Four

Only a light rain was falling by the time they reached the portcullis. It was raised to admit Hugh and Morgana, and closed behind them. She shuddered when the gate groaned as it was lowered. That was not a good sign.

The village streets were dark and narrow and fairly quiet. She silently searched each crossroad, looking for a postern gate at the end of the cobbled street that might give exit outside the town walls.

In the town’s square, there was some celebration occurring. Hugh spoke to numerous men who hailed him from the doorway of a tavern, but he didn’t tarry. Morgana clutched the dripping tartan to her shoulders, her eyes on the open avenue ahead, which ended at a stalwart portcullis barring entrance to the castle.

It looked more terrifying up close than Traitor’s Gate at Dublin Castle. Morgana’s heart rose to her throat. A Fitzgerald woman in Dungannon—that couldn’t be borne. Now, when it behoved her to faint, she couldn’t.

Hugh held Boru still, waiting for the portcullis to rise. As soon as it had, he guided the horse at a measured pace over the long bridge, crossing the lake into the fortress. Morgana’s fingers exerted incredible force where they gripped his forearm, which brought questions to his mind. How had she come to acquire her unusual and unwomanly strength? Was she a protegee of Grace O’Malley, piratess extraordinaire? More importantly, was she actually a Fitzgerald, as Kelly had claimed?

Torchbearers and grooms rushed to meet him. Hugh dismounted and surrendered Boru’s reins, then reached up to help the woman down to the cobblestones, saying to the servants, “Wake Mrs. Carrick and tell her to come to me in the round tower. Fetch hot water and clean cloths. Both my guest and I are in need of hot baths.”

“I can’t possibly go inside tracking all this mud and filth,” Morgana stammered, clutching at every imaginary straw she could think of to avoid stepping foot in the castle proper. Hugh dropped his hands from her waist, letting her stand on her own. The light from the torches showed how filthy and battered she was. Few hags had ever looked worse. He inclined his head in the direction of the open well in the bailey yard. “Would you prefer that I have servants douse you naked with water from-that well?”

“Of course not,” Morgana answered, without looking for any well. Her gaze was fixed past Hugh’s right shoulder. “I can’t go in there! I can’t!”

The desperation Hugh heard in her voice caused him to swing around to look beyond the wide-open doors of the great hall. A measure of pride filled him, for the well-lit, stately chamber, filled with dancing courtiers and elegantly dressed and coiffed ladies, gave proof of how hospitable and elegant his home was. The happy strains of melodious harp and lute accompanying a tenor’s sweet voice entertained a bevy of noble guests.

“You can’t possibly think I want anyone to see me looking like this? Isn’t there a side or a back door I can go through?” Morgana pleaded.

Hugh lifted a clump of muddy, matted hair from her brow. “What difference could your dishabille make to others who have never laid eyes upon you? To what would they compare your appearance? Can you not be thankful that you are alive?”

“That’s unfair.” She lifted her sodden skirts free of her soaked boots, trying to wring the water from her hems with her hands.

Hugh took hold of her hands, stopping her from continuing such a useless and futile effort. “Nothing can be done for these clothes you wear, Morgana of Kildare.”

He caught her chin, lifting it, to make her look into his eyes. The torches glittered back at him from pale irises. “Where is that courage you had in abundance a little while ago? No one will disparage you for the accident of being drenched in a flood.”

“Were it only a flood that caused me to be in such dishabille, I would rejoice.” Morgana stared back at his dark eyes, her pride surfacing in the upward thrust of her chin. “Very well, O’Neill. Let’s get this entrance over with. The sooner begun, the better done.”

“That’s the spirit.” Hugh’s eyes twinkled as he gave her his arm. He didn’t doubt for a moment that his elder sisters would have a fit when they saw this woman enter the great hall on his arm. But neither Susana nor Rachel would dare to cross him in his own house.

Morgana held her chin high, laid her hand on his arm and marched up the steps at Hugh’s side. They hadn’t taken too many steps inside the vast hall before the music stopped, the dancing ended and all heads turned to stare.

Susana O’Neill rose to her feet from her comfortable seat on the dais, alarmed by two things: young Hugh’s tardy arrival to hall and his attire in the rough garments of a kern. Their uncle, Matthew, rarely came to hall, so Susana was by all rights the lady of the manor, and most entertainments she organized suited her pleasures. Since Hugh had returned from England, she’d made many accommodations to please him, but he really didn’t care what sort of events took place in the great hall each evening.

“Young Hugh? What has happened?” Susana left her seat at the high table, rushing forward to intercept her little brother. “Who is this woman? What happened to the both of you? I expected you to hall hours ago.”

“Yes, do explain this.” Morgana challenged him before the woman, obviously great with child, came within hearing range of her voice. “I dare you, young Hugh.”

“Ah, you just proved something else to me, lady,” Hugh said under his breath. “You are a troublemaker.”

Morgana’s hand left his arm, reaching out to snatch her dagger from the sheath on his hip. Again Hugh kept her fingers from their prize.

He offered a soft warning. “Mind what you do, Morgana of Kildare. Tempt me not to make you officially my prisoner. Kelly did accuse you of being a Fitzgerald. That is reason enough to lose one’s head, isn’t it?”

Morgana’s hand clenched into a fist, which she dropped to her side. She turned her back to Hugh, waiting to meet the approaching woman. Several more trailed her, young beauties all, making Morgana feel even more disadvantaged. She heard water drip from her clothes onto the polished tiles at her feet, but she’d be damned from here to eternity before she bowed her head to look at the damage she was causing.

“Ah, good eve, my dear sister. Forgive me for interrupting your soirée.” Hugh smiled disarmingly and bent to kiss Susana’s fair cheek. “I’ve brought a guest to the house. You will see that she has had a rather troubling time on her journey. Morgana of Kildare, may I present my sisters, Susana and Rachel. Susana, Morgana will need some cosseting. The Abhainn Mor is a most rapacious river. I fear Morgana lost all of her possessions to the flood.”

“Sweet Mother of God, Hugh, you weren’t out crossing the river in this weather, were you?” Susana exclaimed, her alarm deepening. “And why on earth are you dressed like a kern? Have you forgotten that I invited Inghinn Dubh to be here this eve?”

“No, I hadn’t forgotten.” Hugh turned to another woman, trailing his sisters. He bowed to Inghinn, also, but did not favor her cheek with a kiss, as he had done with his sisters. “Inghinn, you are-looking splendid this eve, as always. Ladies, please, do not allow us to interrupt your evening. I’ll see Morgana settled by Mrs. Carrick. She’ll take her under her wing and see to everything, I’m sure.”

Hugh turned Morgana to the open stairs rising up to the minstrels’ gallery. Ignoring his sister’s gasp of shock, he led Morgana out of the gallery, to the supreme isolation of the round tower. It adjoined the castle itself at his mother’s solar, on the second floor.

Both the tower and the solar had been closed following his mother’s death in 1570. Five weeks ago, when he and Loghran returned from England for good, Hugh had decided to take up residence in the tower’s comfortable upper rooms.

He had decided that Morgana could be housed in the solar and the sleeping chamber adjoining it on the second floor of the tower. His gut told him to keep her nearby. She was English, therefore not to be trusted. Servants ran ahead of him, opening doors and lighting candles.

Morgana hadn’t missed the surreptitious look of alarm that had passed from Hugh’s sisters to the beautiful black-haired young woman named Inghinn Dubh. The women surely thought their young Hugh was bringing a doxy into their house. Had Morgana been standing in their shoes, viewing a ravaged and filthy woman in these tattered clothes, that would have been her assumption. So she couldn’t hold theirs against them.

Her feet were literally dragging on the last steps up a winding bartizan staircase that opened onto a lady’s solar in some distant quadrant of the massive house.

Mullioned windows lined the solar’s outer wall to the east, two of them partially open, letting damp night air mingle with the ripe, earthy scent of a peat fire in the hearth. Numb with fatigue, Morgana surveyed the solar’s elegant furnishings, cushioned chaises, tapestries, painted walls, coffered ceiling and beautiful ribbon-fold paneling.

The chamber didn’t fit with her preconception of what the inside of the clan O’Neill’s stronghold should be. O’Neills were barbarians, brutal killers, savages. How could such ignorant, uncivilized folk have produced any such beauty? Morgana’s mind was incapable of dwelling on that conundrum. She wanted to drop where she stood, and couldn’t, because a man named O’Neill remained with her in this impossible-to-comprehend chamber.

The peat fire in the solar’s wide hearth beckoned her. Morgana stretched cold, trembling fingers out to it. Hugh’s wet kilt slapped on his ankle as he put one knee to a marble hearth and wrestled a stout log onto the fire.

“You’ll be comfortable here,” he said casually, casting a sideways look over his shoulder at her. Morgana swallowed, mesmerized by the breadth of his left hand as he rocked the log back and forth, breaking apart the coals underneath it.

Smoke and flames stirred to life out of white ash and soot-blackened peat. Sparks shot up, snapping and crackling with the blue flames that licked the log, and tried to kiss his hand. A warm glow gilded his profile, highlighting his straight nose and angular jaw.

Morgana caught herself staring at his mouth. It looked out of place against his otherwise strongly masculine features. His mouth was too pretty and too gentle by half.

A wild impulse to run her fingers across that Cupid’s bow lower lip, to touch the cleft indenting it, just to make certain it was real, unnerved her. She restrained the urge by pressing both her hands tightly against the wet cloth on her thighs.

“Mrs. Carrick will be here momentarily. You may sit down, Morgana of Kildare. The chairs won’t melt if they get wet.”

“Perhaps not, but no one will thank me for ruining them with the filth covering me,” Morgana told him. She spread her skirts toward the fire, abhorring the dirt ground into the cloth. It was not the best gown she owned, but it hadn’t begun this day as a shabby rag, either. Disheartened, she let the cloth drop. “I may as well burn this as try to clean it.”

“With two sisters and their offspring to the house, I’ll have no difficulty replacing that with something more suitable.” Hugh rose to his feet, dusting soot off his hands.

Both his knees popped loudly, making him grin at the incongruity of his own clothing. Standing beside Morgana, he towered over her. She was uncomfortable, and he knew the reason why. His bare knees, her torn gown. No wonder Susana had regarded him with such shock in her face.

The earl of Tyrone had not worn a kilt in his castle since he’d returned home from England. A wild grin edged Hugh’s mouth. He hadn’t liked dressing in a kilt and tartan earlier that day just to prove a point to his men, but he rather liked the feel of the cloth now. It had certainly contributed to his enjoyment of the ride home with a half-naked woman seated on his lap.

He crossed to a silver service set on a sideboard, uncapped a crystal decanter and poured a generous glass of spirits. Hugh put the glass in Morgana’s hand, saying, “This might restore you somewhat.”

Morgana brought the glass to her nose, sniffing its contents. She was as wary as a wet cat. “What is it?”

“Whiskey.” His fingers remained at the bottom of the finely cut crystal, tilting the contents toward her mouth. “Drink it by little sips, not too much at a time. It’s well proved. At the least it will warm your bones, at the most loosen your reticent tongue.”

“What do you mean by that?” Morgana sputtered over the first taste. In her part of Ireland, whiskey was a man’s drink. She was more used to wine—and that only in modest amounts.

“What would you like me to mean by that?” Hugh’s back, which faced the fire, enabled him to study her more critically. In the hall he’d guessed her hair was as dark as Inghinn Dubh’s. Under the better light of his mother’s Waterford chandelier, he could tell that the wet, mud-caked mop wasn’t black at all. Under the river’s grime, that hair was redder than autumn apples.

Even filthy and battered, she was an attractive woman. Younger than he’d first supposed.

Morgana tried to hand him back the glass. “I’m not going to drink till I fall down in a drunken stupor, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.”

“I didn’t say you would.” Hugh helped himself to a glass of Bushmill’s finest distilled spirits. “In fact, I’ll join you. A dousing in the Abhainn Mor saps one’s body heat.”

“So does the bloody rain.” Morgana tasted another sip, grimacing over the burn at the back of her throat. “Does the sun never shine on this part of the island?”

“I seem to remember it doing so upon occasion, but I will admit it has rained repeatedly since I returned from England. Does Kelly actually have a warrant for you, Morgana of Kildare?”

“I doubt it.” She met the intensity of his dark eyes without flinching. “Nothing is too low for his kind, especially if it means he can steal from defenseless children or women.”

“Are you speaking from personal experience?”

“Aye, I suppose I am.” Morgana affirmed that much, but she deliberately clamped her mouth closed afterward, minding her tongue. She took another sip from the glass, swallowing purposefully.

Hugh sighed silently. He wanted her to open up and give him some reason to put his trust in her. “Kelly rarely picks on anyone his own size, but then, most bullies are like that. You still haven’t said what it is that put you on his list of enemies.”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

Morgana tilted the glass to her lips and finished it. She rather liked the whiskey’s immediate ability to start an internal heat. The ache in her jaw numbed, the back of her neck and her hip throbbed a little less ferociously. Her fingers trembled as she put the glass on the marble mantel.

“You will forgive me if I call you a liar to your face, then, won’t you, Morgana Fitzgerald?” She jerked when he said “Fitzgerald.” “A few years back, I had the dubious honor of attending Parliament when the latest writ of proscription against the house of Geraldine was read into law.

“More recently, Her Majesty insisted I attend the execution of an Irishman named Warren Henry Fitzgerald, as a lesson in prudent stewardship prior to my return to Tyrone. It is an act of treason to use the name Fitzgerald nowadays, isn’t it? Is that why you claim to be known as Morgana of Kildare?”

Morgana chose to say nothing. She turned to warm her back at the fire. A pair of burly servants toted a huge wooden tub into the solar. Hugh directed them to place it near the fire.

Both he and Morgana stepped back, allowing a stream of servants bearing steaming buckets to fill the tub. A short, heavyset woman supervised that work, and the laying out of towels, soaps and fresh clothing.

“We shall have to continue this conversation on the morrow, Morgana.” Hugh motioned the woman forward. “Here is my housekeeper, Mrs. Carrick, come to help you out of these wet clothes. A hot bath will soothe and restore you, though I do suggest you make a strong effort to stay awake after your bath, Morgana.”

“Why is that?” Morgana asked suspiciously.

Hugh brought his hands to her cheek and chin, touching the bruises on her face. With uncanny accuracy, he found a throbbing lump at her temple.

“People who sleep too soon after taking serious blows to the head sometimes have the ill fortune of never waking up. I shouldn’t want that to happen to you,” Hugh said firmly. “It would bode ill for the O’Neills to have another Fitzgerald woman die in this house.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Morgana lied with deliberate ease. “I’ve told you, my name is Morgana of Kildare.”

Hugh stopped himself from saying, And I’m Richard III. No good would be served by engaging in a verbal fencing match with her at this moment. She needed a bath and the cosseting of other women. The morning would be soon enough for her to answer his many questions.

Answer all of them, she would.

He realized then that he wanted to take this battered woman to the trial of James Kelly. Not because she could testify to Kelly’s boastful confession of killing Shane the Proud—the council of elders would consider that hear-say—but because under brehon law, rape was a capital crime, punishable by death.

Hugh’s corroborating testimony as a witness to that crime was enough to condemn Kelly. His kerns had also witnessed that crime.

Whereas Hugh had no proof that Kelly had murdered Shane the Valiant. He doubted they could elicit a confession before the council. The elder judges would not condemn Kelly without irrefutable proof that he had committed the murder. Rumors and gossip were not testimony.

Hugh turned to Mrs. Carrick, giving her instructions, and left Morgana in her care. He didn’t bother with explaining how the woman had gotten in the shape she was. Some things were not to be spoken of, to Hugh’s mind. Better that the women dealt with such things in their own way.

Morgana sagged onto a high-backed chair after the O’Neill departed. Without his presence in the chamber, she had no reason to continue to play the brave heroine while the last buckets were poured. She let her head drop to her knees and let go of all the worries and fears that had assaulted her from the start of this day to the end.

A babble of women’s voices crooning in Irish wafted over and around her, soothing her, taking her back to May-nooth, before it was razed to the ground and burned.

Her wet nurse and nanny had been Irish. Their language lay deep in Morgana’s memories of childhood safety, security and love. All that was gone.

Morgana had only her wits to keep her alive. She must get to Dunluce. She had time enough still. All wasn’t lost. Grace O’Malley had promised she would put into port at Dunluce on the tenth of May. No sooner and no later.

Morgana had every intention of being there when O’Malley’s ship, the Avenger, docked.

Chapter Five

Mrs. Carrick bent over the softly weeping woman to gently shake her shoulder. “Here, now, my lady. The tub is ready. Come. Let us get you clean. You don’t have to do a thing.”

It was good that the housekeeper felt that way, because Morgana couldn’t have done anything for herself. Now that she was out of the elements, aches too numerous to count had increased tenfold. She knew without having to look for confirmation that her body would be bruised from head to toe.

Mrs. Carrick coaxed Morgana onto her feet and moved her to the tub. Two maids helped her to gently strip away Morgana’s ruined clothes.

Morgana clung to Hugh’s tartan, refusing to let go of it. Wisely, Mrs. Carrick didn’t fuss over such a simple need. She let the poor dear keep the cloth clutched to her bosom.

A girl she was, Mrs. Carrick concluded after supervising the whole procedure of her bath. In Mrs. Carrick’s experience, no woman grown retained a coltish, leggy body for very long past maturity. Certainly she was old enough to be married—all girls were, once their menses had begun. But this lady was young. Mrs. Carrick was convinced the young woman was no older than ten-and-seven.

They had to change the water in the tub twice once they wet her hair. Black Abhainn Mor mud held the tangled coils close and flat against her head. Washed and rinsed until the water ran clear, that head of hair hung past the girl’s knees.

Mrs. Carrick suspected that when it was dry, it would be the color of winter’s Hogmanay fires. Her brows and lashes, and the soft down on her forearms, were as red as autumn apples. Morgana’s skin wasn’t prone to freckles. Unless in the past she had taken great care not to be exposed often to the sun.

A cup of tea and a scone settled the girl’s stomach when leaving the heated tub had made her woozy and dizzy-headed. The judicious use of a leech drained most of the blood swelling the lady’s blackened eye and went a fair ways toward removing the worst of the bruising on her face.