33. Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter thirty-three
Two days later
Aingeal entered the Great Hall, Reginald following, to find Ciarán, the steward of Rathmore, sitting at a wooden table with his hands wrapped around a cup he had not touched.
Road dust still clung to the hem of his cloak despite the rain.
His face bore the stunned pallor of a man who had come north carrying one grief and found another waiting beneath a false name.
As she approached, Ciarán set the cup aside and rose.
“My lady,” he said, and bowed. “I ask leave to take my lord home.”
The hall quieted around them.
Reginald stood two paces behind Aingeal, no longer guarded as he had been, but not free of attention.
Seamus stood near the pillar with both arms folded and a face that told every man present he would rather chew iron than trust easily.
Tomas had his wax tablet ready. Brennach waited in grim silence.
Father Cillian stood near the chapel passage, watching with the grave expression of a man who understood that burial could be as political as battle.
Around them, servants slowed their duties to listen.
Aingeal looked at Ciarán. “You mean Donal’s body.”
“Aye.” His voice roughened. “He should not lie beneath foreign earth while the man who took his name stands in the hall he meant to enter.”
Aingeal felt Reginald go still behind her, not the old stillness, not the guarded silence of Donal O’Raida. This was the stillness of a man accepting the full weight of what he had done.
“You are right,” Aingeal said.
Ciarán’s gaze shifted to her, surprised by the quickness of her answer.
She turned to Reginald. “Can you find the grave?”
“Yes.” His voice was low. “I know the place.”
“Then you will take us there.”
Seamus straightened at once. “My lady…”
“I will go,” Aingeal said.
“No.” Seamus came away from the pillar. “Not out past Ardglas. Not while the border still smolders and every man with ears knows this house has been shaken.”
Ciarán’s mouth tightened. “My lord’s body…”
“Will be recovered,” Aingeal said, before grief answered anger and anger answered grief. “But not carelessly.”
She looked to Brennach. “How many riders can we spare?”
“Eight without weakening the gate,” Brennach said. “Twelve if we risk it.”
“Eight.”
Seamus shook his head. “Then I lead them.”
“No,” Aingeal said.
The blunt refusal made him stare.
“You hold the gate. Brennach takes the eastern watch. Tomas remains with the accounts and stores. Father Cillian comes for burial rites.” She looked at Ciarán. “You will come because he was yours.” Then she looked at Reginald. “And he will lead us to the grave because he made it.”
The hall seemed to draw breath.
Reginald lowered his head. “Yes.”
Ciarán took one step toward him. “And his insignia? His ring?”
The ring had been locked away since the council. Evidence. Proof. A small circle of gold that had become heavier than any sword.
Reginald looked to Aingeal. “It should go with him.”
Aingeal heard the carefulness in that answer. He was not asking permission to restore what he had stolen. He was offering to be seen doing it.
“Yes,” she said. “It should.”
The road south of Ardglas was wet and raw beneath the hooves. Rain had stopped, but water still clung to the hedgerows and lay in shallow mirrors along the ruts.
Aingeal rode at the center of the small party, Brennach behind her despite her order that he remain at the eastern watch, Seamus at her left because he had ignored instruction with the righteous confidence of a man convinced disobedience was service.
Ciarán rode rigidly ahead, grief making his back stiff.
Father Cillian’s mule picked its way with quiet patience.
étaín had come too, wrapped in a dark cloak and riding with her chin lifted against everyone’s objections. She had silenced those objections by fastening her cloak with one look of bright, immovable certainty.
Reginald rode without banner.
No one spoke much.
Once, at a crossing where the road narrowed between two low stone walls, Seamus moved his horse close enough to Reginald that their knees nearly brushed.
“If this is a trap,” Seamus said, “I will put you down before your hand reaches steel.”
Reginald looked ahead. “If this is a trap, keep Lady Aingeal behind the wall and send two riders back before you strike. The ground slopes toward the marsh. Men will come from the left if they come at all.”
Seamus’s mouth tightened because the answer was useful, not defensive.
Aingeal heard it. So did Brennach. So did Ciarán.
Reginald led them to the leaning ash just past midafternoon. It stood beyond the high road, bent by years of wind, its pale branches lifted like an old hand against the gray sky. The earth beneath it had sunk slightly where rain had softened the grave.
Aingeal dismounted first.
Reginald did not. For one moment, he sat still in the saddle, looking at the place where Donal O’Raida lay because of violence and because of him. Then he swung down and crossed the wet ground without haste.
Ciarán followed, and the sound that left him when he saw the grave was not quite a sob. It was worse.
Reginald stopped at the foot of the mound and lowered himself to one knee. “I buried him as well as I could,” he said. His voice was rough. “I had no priest. No proper linen. No men to bear witness. I marked the ash because I thought someone might need to find him one day.”
Ciarán’s hands closed into fists. “You thought of witness, then. But not of name.”
Reginald lowered his head. “No.” The answer was bare.
Ciarán looked as if he wanted to strike him. Instead, the steward turned away and put one hand against the ash’s wet trunk.
Father Cillian came forward and spoke the prayers for the dead. The words moved through the cold air, low and steady.
Reginald remained kneeling through all of it, rainwater soaking the ground beneath him, mud darkening one knee. It was because of this knight that he had met Aingeal. He could not be sorry for that.
When the prayer ended, Reginald drew the ring from the pouch Aingeal had given him that morning.
The gold sat in his palm. Small. Beautiful. Damning. He held it out to Ciarán. “This was his.”
Ciarán looked at the ring as though it were a wound made metal. “You wore it.”
“Yes.”
“To enter her house.”
“Yes.”
“To make men believe you were him.”
“Yes.”
Ciarán’s face twisted. “Do you have any answer that is not yes?”
Reginald lifted his gaze. “No answer that improves the truth.”
For the first time, Ciarán faltered. He took the ring. His fingers closed around it with a tremor he tried to hide. “I should hate you.”
“You should.”
“But you also saved her people.”
Reginald did not look at Aingeal. “I did.”
The grave was opened with care.
Aingeal stood beside étaín and watched the men work. Watched earth lifted away from the dead. Watched Ciarán kneel when the body was raised and identify what remained of Donal O’Raida by clasp, bone, and grief.
Reginald helped bear him.
On the ride home, the body was wrapped in clean linen and carried between two horses. Reginald rode behind it, not at Aingeal’s side, not among the men where rank might have placed him, but where he belonged that day.
Behind the dead. Behind the deed.
When they returned to the castle, the yard had filled.
Servants stood beneath the arch. Boys from the training yard stood bareheaded despite the cold. The women from Fintan’s holding came with folded hands and tired faces.
Aingeal dismounted and turned to them. “This is Donal O’Raida,” she said, her voice carrying clearly over the wet stone. “He came north to bind our houses and was killed upon the road. He will be honored beneath this roof before he is returned to his own people.”
Then she looked at Reginald, who stood beside the bier with mud on his boots and shame on his face.
“The man who took his name has restored him to us.”
A murmur passed through the yard. Something shifted, because now the lie had a body, and the body had been brought home.
Ciarán stepped forward then, unexpected.
His voice was harsh but steady. “Rathmore will hear the whole truth. The theft. The false name. The grief brought upon my lord’s house.” He looked at Aingeal. “And this also: that Lady Aingeal gave Donal O’Raida honor when she might have wished his memory buried with her humiliation.”
Aingeal inclined her head.
Then Ciarán looked at Reginald. “And that FitzUrse carried him.”
Reginald’s face changed, only slightly.
Aingeal saw it. Truth had been given weight, lifted by human hands, and brought into the open.