Chapter 13 Catherine
Catherine
We crossed the fields under a pale dawn, the sky crusted with clouds.
Sully kept my hand in his, his thumb working a slow figure-eight against the heel of my palm.
I could still feel the hay burns on my back and ass from the barn, could still taste his mouth in mine when I bit my lips, but all of that felt thin now, stretched over the cold fact of the world.
Each time I looked at him, I found his jaw set tight, the line of his neck cords drawn like bowstrings.
He squeezed my hand harder when he caught me looking.
Father Declan trailed after, a full five paces behind as if the devil might reach up and yank him underground if he closed the gap.
We’d caught him following us a short time ago.
His walking had gone uneven, every other step a hop.
The hem of his cassock was caked in mud, and the wind kept blowing it flat against his bad leg, exposing a patch of bandage already brown at the edge.
The fields sloped gently for a mile, then the land broke into thickets and hedgerows. Beyond that, a pale smudge of smoke where Kilkenny Castle brooded on its hill.
Sully stopped in a hollow, under a hawthorn tree stripped by the season to nothing but a few blood-colored berries. He put both hands to my cheeks and let his breath fog my face.
“You can still turn back, Cat,” he said. “If you want. I’ll do it alone.”
“If you do,” I said, “I’ll haunt your shadow until your dying day. So you may as well let me help.”
He gave a soft, broken laugh. “You always said you had the meanest ghost,” he said, and then kissed me hard enough that my lips burned even after he pulled away.
Declan slumped onto a fallen log and started unwrapping a cloth bundle from under his cloak.
Inside was a hunk of bread and a wedge of hard cheese.
He broke the bread in half, handed me the larger piece, then gnawed the cheese like a rat working a rind.
He didn’t offer any to Sully, who just shook his head and said, “Can’t eat. Not yet.”
“The castle’s changed hands six times in my lifetime,” Declan said, voice rough.
“But the stones are older than Christ himself. The dungeons run here—” He scratched a black line across a leaf.
“And the back wall is soft limestone, full of wormholes and secret passages. Even the guards can’t keep up with them. ”
Sully leaned over the priest’s shoulder, his thigh pressing mine. I could smell the old sweat in his shirt, the iron tang of blood dried under his collar. He pointed with a thick finger, the nail bitten to the quick. “Where’s the bridge? The river?”
Declan sketched a slow curve, then an X. “Here. If you get through the first gate, follow the wall. There’s a chute where they throw waste. It’s never watched, not unless there’s trouble. That’s your best chance.”
I studied the map, memorizing each twist. I’d never seen a castle up close, not outside of the church’s ruins. The idea of tunnels and dark holes was enough to make my skin crawl, but I nodded anyway. “Why do you know all this?” I asked.
Declan licked his lips. “Men like me spend half their lives hiding from the world, Catherine. If you want to survive, you learn where the secrets run.”
Sully kept staring at the leaf. “And the guards? How many?”
“Twenty at the gates,” Declan said. “More on the battlements. Some are Irish, pressed into service. The rest are English, or worse, Germans hired with English coin. They drink, but they’re not fools.”
Sully nodded, then turned to me. His eyes were cold but not unkind. “We need to move before too much light. If we wait, the patrols double.”
I looked at my hands, saw the dirt under the nails. I could still feel the leather ring he’d tied around my finger, a twist of cord darkened with both our hair. I rolled it between my fingers, felt the pulse under the skin. He noticed and gave a little tilt of the head.
“You regret it?” he asked, voice just above a whisper.
“Never,” I said, but I couldn’t keep the fear from my voice.
He squeezed my hand again. “We get them out, and then we run. Far as the roads go.”
“Who’s ‘them’?” I asked.
He went quiet, then said, “My friends. Moab, Scarlette, and Mama Celeste. The ones I came back to save. They’re waiting for me inside.”
I swallowed hard. It was one thing to risk my own neck for love, another to do it for strangers.
Declan capped the charcoal and tucked it away. “If you’re going to try the tunnels, you’ll need more than luck.” He looked at Sully, then at me. “The castle’s full of traps. Some are older than the guards. And the woman who keeps the dungeons—she hates our kind more than the English do.”
“Which kind is that?” Sully said, eyebrow raised.
Declan smiled, ugly. “The kind who don’t die when they should.”
I felt a shiver run up my arms, but Sully just laughed.
We started walking again, keeping low along the riverbank.
The grass was slick with frost, and I could hear each crunch underfoot.
The sun never really cleared the clouds; the day was a flat, blue wash.
As the castle grew near, its walls blotted out the horizon.
It was less a building than a wound in the world, its stones black with centuries of rain and ash.
We ducked under an old willow, its branches tangled like wet hair, and Sully stopped to peer at the fortress.
“There,” he said, pointing. “That’s where the chute should be.”
I squinted. From here, the wall was smooth as an egg, but a trickle of dark water ran down it, staining the stone. I didn’t want to think about what drained from inside.
Sully turned to me. “If anything happens, you run,” he said, firm.
“I won’t leave you,” I said.
He brushed a thumb across my cheek. “Promise me, Cat. Don’t be a hero.”
I nodded, but he knew I was lying.
Declan pulled his cloak tighter, then grunted as he shifted his weight. “We need someone who knows how to fight,” he muttered, eyes scanning the woods. “Else we don’t make it twenty feet.”
As if the words called them up, I saw movement at the edge of the trees—an arm, then a whole man, lean and hard as a skinned rabbit. He watched us with flat eyes, a knife in each hand.
Sully set his jaw. “Stay behind me,” he said, and I did.
Declan raised a palm, peace-offering style. “We mean no harm, friend.”
The stranger stepped out of the shadows, eyes flicking from Sully to me to the priest. He was maybe thirty, or maybe the kind of young that had been battered old by years of bad living. His nose was broken, set crooked, and a long scar chased his left cheekbone to the hinge of his jaw.
He spoke, and his voice was hoarse. “What are you doing out here?”
“Looking for a way in,” Sully said. “You?”
The man grinned, and it was not nice. “Same.”
Declan limped forward, not slow. “Scar?” he said, squinting. “Scar Delaney, is that you?”
The first thing Scar did was pull a knife on us.
Not a long knife, but the kind you could fit under a tongue or drive through cartilage in a pinch.
It was black at the edge, notched from years of finding bone.
He held it up against the last orange of the sky and said, “One of you steps wrong, I bleed the girl first.”
I almost laughed. The idea of me as a hostage—maybe once, but not now, not after the world had taken its shot and missed. I took half a step forward anyway, Sully’s arm barring my way before my foot hit the dirt.
Scar’s eyes flicked over Sully, quick and mean, and then to me.
I didn’t blink. His face was all planes and shadow, the mouth slashed tight as a scar itself.
There was something dead in his eyes, but also a fever, the kind you see in men who’ve made their peace with being monsters.
He wore the look of someone who never forgot a slight.
Father Declan spoke, voice low and steady. “We’re not here for trouble, Scar. We’re here to make a deal.”
Scar turned the blade in his hand, point dancing between us. “What kind of deal?”
Declan looked at him, hard. “You want in the castle. So do we. We’ll need your help. We have coin. And a cause.”
Scar eyed us, weighing it. “A cause?” He made a spitting sound. “You think I give a rat’s dick about causes?”
Declan smiled, a slow, cold thing. “No. But you care about getting paid. And you care about sticking it to the English. This is your chance.”
Scar’s mouth twisted. “Who’s the big one?” He jabbed the knife at Sully, who had gone stone still.
“My friend,” I said, before Sully could speak.
Scar laughed, and the knife dropped a hair lower. “He doesn’t talk much.”
Sully’s jaw flexed. “Enough when I need to.” He made the words sound like a threat.
“Good,” Scar said, tucking the knife into a slit at his belt. “Talkers get dead. Especially inside those walls.”
The woods pressed in close, every branch a finger poking at our backs. I could hear water gurgling somewhere below, and the wind had gone slack, as if even the weather didn’t want to see what we were about to do.
Declan unrolled the map leaf and spread it on the stump between us. Scar bent close, nose almost touching the charcoal lines.
“We take the chute?” Scar said.
Sully shook his head. “It’s watched. We go for the dead drop. But we need rope. And we need to time it with the guard change.”
Scar grunted, the kind of noise men make when they don’t trust a plan but have decided to see how it plays out.
“There’s a trick,” he said, tapping the edge of the map.
“The guards take a piss here, just before sundown. The German ones. They drink more than they can hold. If you time it right, you can catch both of them on the wall. Kill them fast, dump them in the river.”
Sully nodded, and for the first time, I saw respect in Scar’s eyes.
Declan looked at me. “Catherine, you stay here with the horse. If we’re not back by dawn, ride east. Don’t look back.”
“No,” I said, too quick. “I’m coming with you.”
Scar rolled his eyes. “No offense, but you’d slow us down.”