Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Incorruptible Truth
Neave, May 1, 1565, Ulster, Ireland
As a result of my indefensibletransgression, my husband had ceased his visits to my chamber and disposed with every aspect of decorum into the bargain. The following day at supper, he ate berries from the bare cleavage of Ciara—or was it Fiadh?—while rampaging his hand beneath the skirt of the other. His men exchanged knowing glances, their wives shrugged and frowned, and the girls giggled, squealed, and slapped him playfully on the chest. Mercifully, all seemed to have forgotten about me.
It was midnight before Beltane when, after tossing and turning in my narrow bed, I fixed my gaze on the night sky through the window. The waxing crescent hung high amidst the clouds, small and fragile. A single star flickered, fading and shimmering, shrinking and growing. It peeked into my window and passed through the pane into my chamber. Sighing and groaning, it took human shape and stood at the foot of my bed, gray hair tangled, face creased with years, a thin line of scarlet glistening where her head had been severed. Fúamnach.
“He left me,” she whispered, unblinking silver gaze trained on me. “He cast me aside for a new plaything and brought her home to humiliate me.” Her shrill laughter turned my blood to ice. “But, oh how he loathed the bitter taste of my revenge. Never credit old tales; they’re full of falsehoods. Midir loved only himself. He had me killed for daring to take from him what he cherished so well—his new passing fancy’s young flesh. A winged insect is no match for a woman’s embrace.”
I sat up, swallowing bile. “Teach me your craft, Fúamnach, so I can turn the countess into a butterfly and blow her away.”
She pushed her raveled strands from her face, studying me with narrowed eyes. “You are the craft, foolish child. A thousand spells won’t right a selfish heart; a thousand storms won’t stay a disloyal soul. But Aedan O’Neal is no Midir, and your revenge is but self-indulgent folly.”
I woke with a start and lay without sleep until the break of dawn, struggling to make sense of Fúamnach’s words. But she must have grown mad with sorrow, for the Earl was Midir, and my revenge was all I had left.
In the morning, Tiernan O’Donnell entered my chamber with neither notice nor ceremony, a woman-servant in tow. In her meaty hands was a trunk, and on her thin lips, a scowl.
“Wife, you’re to accompany me to the Bringing in the May,” he said with a cold smile. “Bronagh will dress and coif you to my liking.”
I drew back with a suppressed gasp. The Beltane fires, attended by the chieftains to boast their wealth and vitality, would not be missed by the Earl.
“You might not love, serve, and honor me, woman—” My husband’s fingers dug into my arm before I could utter a word. “But you will obey.”
My tawdry gown of crimson taffeta had been made in the English fashion with a boned bodice, billowing yellow sleeves and underskirt, elaborate gold stitching at the cuffs and neckline, and a gold chain for a belt. After dressing me in hostile silence, Bronagh shoved my hair under a jeweled crescent-shaped headdress and covered it with a veil in the back. I glanced in the bronze mirror—a reluctant Irish counterfeit.
With a censorious click of the tongue, the woman placed a ruby-encrusted necklace on my dressing table. “These jewels belonged to Lord O’Donnell’s late mother.” She curled her lip. “The poor lady is surely turning in her grave at the notion of the O’Neal’s discards strutting it at the Beltane fires.”
I touched her arm with an icy smile. “You’d do well to mind the O’Neal’s discards are the consort of your overlord.”
My husband awaited me at the foot of the stairs as I descended, numb and mute in my gaudy costume. He’d styled himself as an English earl—another pebble for the O’Neal’s boot.
“Wipe that sour look from your face, woman,” he said with a glare of cold calculation and unconcealed disdain. “It’s fouling my silks and jewels.”
The celebration was in full swing when the O’Donnell clan arrived in all its English audacity, its chieftain radiating studied air of a tender newlywed with his arm laced through mine. The Maypole had been erected, the torches lit, the fires kindled, the wreaths and the garlands of fresh blooms woven. Young pairs had gathered round the fires. Some danced, quivering in the woodsmoke, some jumped the flames, their faces flushed with the thrill of anticipation. Which of them would wear the May royalty’s crown? The end of darkness, the beginning of summer. The revelry of light and love mocking the gloom and misery within me.
The O’Neal clan had settled a distance away in their usual place near the great ash. The Earl towered over his men and guard, feet anchored wide apart and arms at his sides—Belenus incarnate commanding his fires.
I held my breath as a crushing memory surged through me in a furious wave—I’ll prove you wrong. But he’d only proven me right. So why did he still dazzle and beguile with his blasted chestnut hair glimmering with auburn in the firelight and steel-blue eyes shining brighter than all the stars of the universe? How could he be more breathtaking in the flesh than even my most clandestine reveries of him? I bit the inside of my lip, dizzy with forbidden longing, sick with love that verged on idolatry.
What have you done to me, a chroí?
He pierced me with a blazing blue look before I could drop my gaze. Frantic, I jerked away—and froze at the sight of a woman I hadn’t noticed hitherto. She stood at his side—a girl, in truth—so slight, she seemed no older than I’d been when I swooned here nine years past. Not pasty and homely as I’d fancied, but delicate and lovely as a dove in her opulent English garb that ridiculed the vulgar mockery I’d been made to wear.
But she knew who I was! How she paled beneath my scrutiny, wedging her small, weak arm through his brawny one. How she burrowed her wee fingers into the saffron of his sleeve, pliant and trusting as a lapdog. I smirked at the foolish child. Save your falsehoods for the unenlightened. You find no pleasure in your husband’s wickedly large bed of silk cords and unrelenting chastisement—
The smirk died on my lips as she blinked and turned sideways.
Her belly.
Someone screamed as a log split in the blaze with an explosive pop, spitting fire. My head thundered with frenzied heartbeat as the axe crashed down, down, down.
Her. Belly.
Something braced my throat, bubbled to the top. I swayed on my feet. Like poisoned arrows, hundreds of eyes bored into me, hungry for the shameful display, the eternal public disgrace.
And through them all, the Earl’s gaze—wide and unblinking with its unwavering blue flame. Don’t, my Neave.
But I must have grown mad with sorrow to fancy such a thing.
“Are you daft, woman?” My husband gritted his teeth, steadying me with his arm round my waist. “Put a smile on your face and keep it there.”
I stared at him through the blur in my eyes, wobbling, slipping, plummeting off the cliff.
“Must I do everything myself?” He lifted me in the air and set his mouth to mine, his beard chafing my lips, fingers crashing into my ribs. “Smile, damn you,” he squeezed through his teeth as he put me down, eyeing me like I was the most wonderous thing he’d ever seen.
Someone touched my arm. “Neave.”
I turned, startled to find Maura a foot away: white kercher, green kirtle, laughing brown eyes.
O’Donnell jabbed his fingers into my waist, giving her a cold once-over.
“M’lord.” She dipped her head. “Would you object terribly if I stole my dear old friend from you but for a spell?”
My husband scoffed. “If the O’Neal is after my secrets, Lady O’Donnelly, he shall be sorely disappointed. My wife is kept in the perfect innocence of my affairs.”
Maura bestowed him with the warmest of smiles. “As am I of the O’Neal’s, m’lord.” Her smile widened. “Surely, you’ll not begrudge your wife a womanly chat with an old lady friend?”
O’Donnell clenched his jaw, wise to the hungry eyes latching onto him.
“Don’t be long, wife.” He spat, affecting a kiss on my cheek. “And mind your tongue with the O’Neal’s spy.”
I glanced at the ash tree as Maura laced her arm through mine. The countess had leaned against it, flanked by her waiting-women and the Earl’s men. The Earl was gone. I lifted my gaze heavenward, seeking the Fúamnach star. Would that I could turn her into a butterfly and send a great storm to blow her back to England for all time.
“You look well in your English dress, a dhlúthchara.” Maura squeezed my arm. “Let us walk a bit then, away from this clamor.”
Warm breeze rustled through the trees. The fiddling and the laughter receded into the evening. We walked stiffly along an uncertain path, too aware of our last exchange, too uneasy with the stares on our backs—the O’Neil’s marshal’s wife and his foe’s new consort, walking arm in arm.
We’d made some distance when Maura cleared her throat. “Does he mistreat you, Neave?”
I raised my brows and snatched my arm away. “Wherever do you get the notion! He loves me like the Earl never had!”
“The... Earl—” Maura shook her head. “He’s in a bad way—”
“Do not speak to me of him, Maura!”
I glanced back at the fires—they’d shrunk to small shiny stars.
“We’ve gone too far.” I halted. “We shall turn round.”
Maura grabbed my hand with alacrity, urging me forward. “Forgive me, Neave, I’ll not mention him again. Don’t turn round yet. Tell me—how is it in Tyrconnell? How many bedchambers has he?”
The air stilled in the falling darkness as we pressed on, stepping over tree roots and boughs. An anxious birdcall, a distant flutter of wings, a faint crunch of twigs underfoot. I didn’t care to speak of Tiernan O’Donnell’s bedchambers or hear Maura’s latest gossip. And neither did it hearten me to learn that Ronan hadn’t once asked for me, besotted as he was with his father.
“We’ve gone much too far.” I stopped before an ancient oak, stomach quivering like a butterfly’s wing. “What’s this about, Maura?”
She released a shuddering breath and glanced past me, pale and stiff. “What do you think, a dhlúthchara?”
I followed her gaze, digging my fingernails into my palms. The wood stood enveloped in darkness, save for the thin rope of moonlight. A burst of small birds flared from the oak’s branches, settled on a nearby yew.
“I am your most loyal friend, Neave.” Maura shot me a heavy look. “Never doubt it.”
I drew back, swallowing against a mounting urgency to flee, a wild yearning to remain. “How dare you, Maura!”
In a panicked way of a trapped rabbit, I lurched from the oak, but the Earl had already stepped from the darkness.
“Maura!” I flailed against the iron grip of his hands on my waist as her diminishing figure faded into the night. “Maura, come back!”
He turned me round in one smooth motion—his unendurable scent of horse, whiskey, and him. A new leather cord lay over his torque, its pendant concealed in the saffron of his léine. His chest rose and fell like a mad tide. His blood hummed like a harp string about to snap.
“Release me!” I struggled to yank free but only succeeded in swaying forth, drowning in the nearness of him.
“Never,” he breathed, his eyes dark coals in the moonlight. “Never again, my Neave.”
His thumbs closed on my navel, burning my skin to cinders through my dress. A house with no roof, a sea with no raft, a blaze with nothing to smother it. This fever hurt like a thousand daggers. How much pain could I endure?
I shut my eyes, and my mind slipped into a familiar place, free of pain and longing.
It was dawn there, sun rising above the unsullied world as he pushed me against the oak tree. His mouth took my breath, tasting of home, home, home. He lifted my skirts, reclaiming, possessing. Home. My hair caught on the tree bark. My English gown ripped; it fell away into the mist. His pace heightened as he rocked, rocked, rocked me in the perfect, innocent stillness. My Aedan, in this woodland where none would discover us. And they’d never find us at all, for we were no longer there, but at the Niall waterfall. A crash of water tumbled into the pool, and the golden sun sparkled on every blade of grass as he spilled his seed into me, giving me his child. My child. Our child. Then, we were galloping to a faraway land with no Tiernan O’Donnell, no Tudor queen, no wars, and no schemes. Just him and me, going home—
“Come away with me, a rúnsearc.”
His voice brought me back to myself. I opened my eyes, swaying under the heft of his gaze that betrayed minute knowledge of my ill-timed daydream.
“Come away.” His breath scalded my lips. “All will be as it was.”
My heart raced with the unsettling remnants of my reverie. My mind pounded a heavy drumbeat in my ears: he is the Earl, the Earl, the Earl.
I jerked away. “You overstep your bounds, my lord.”
But even to my ear, my voice, ragged and breathy, betrayed the incorruptible truth.
His hand was off my waist and on my wrist. “Tuireann awaits us round the bend, saddled and ready.” He glanced toward a small copse. “I’ll take you home, my Neave.”
I may have followed him in my treacherous madness, but for this timely misstep.
“Home!” I tried to wrench my arm free, to no avail. “The one with the Right Honorable Countess of Worcester in my bed? While I await your pleasure in my small bedchamber, painted and dressed in silks? Release me, my lord!”
He shoved me into him, into his hard ridges, with the flat of his free hand. “She’s no wife of mine.” His lifted brow mocked what had been—what would never be again. “But I’ll have you painted for my pleasure if you keep calling her so.”
I bit the inside of my lip, fighting a powerful urge to bring my knee to his groin and an all-consuming delirium to throw myself into his arms. I drew a long, steadying breath. It was the nearness of him undoing me so—his hands digging into my skin, eyes burning holes in my face, his arousal a sword, ripping through his léine and my husband’s taffeta. I swayed with longing, thick and urgent, my life’s blood pumping in my veins. Did he know he’d get no challenge if he took me now?
He nodded. “Come now, a rún.”
My heart thudded like a bodhrán. I’d go mad if he didn’t release me.
“I oughtn’t tarry,” I squeezed out. “My husband will be waiting for me. As will your wife.”
“She’s my ward.” His heartbeat drummed against my chest. “A lost child I intend to return home. Have you not read my letters, my Neave?”
My terrifying, unceasing laughter of madness pierced the night.
“Your ward...with a swollen belly!” Face hot, breath ragged, I couldn’t stop laughing. Brigid’s fire flared hot and bright in my hearth; Fúamnach’s silver eyes widened with sorrow. “I burned your letters...without opening! Every. Last. One!”
“What of the letter I delivered to you at Castle McConway?” His voice came forth low and strangled through my demented shrieks. His fingers bruised my wrist, unconcerned. “The one that was to reach you first?”
“Burned it!” I tipped my head back, savoring the death knell of the word. A twisted druidic rite—the executioner bleeding onto the altar of policy along with the sacrificed. This is what you get, a chroí. “Burned it all!”
He crushed me against his unyielding body, filling the night with his presence. Naught but him. Naught to replace him. I gasped for air, trembling in his power, twisting away from it.
“If you’d read my letters instead of burning them,” he growled against my lips, “you’d know it was staying wed to you and making you a widow or obeying the gall’s orders and returning to you alive.”
An owl hooted above, long and mournful beneath the flickering crescent. The last peals of my laughter faded into the night. I went still at the change in his face—a thundercloud, ready to burst.
“D’you...you take me for a fool...?” I dropped my gaze, a leaden quiver bracing my stomach. “Let me go!”
He twisted his fingers into my hair underneath the veil, forcing me to look into his eyes—black pounds filled with stygian gloom.
“If you have any sense left, my Neave, come to the abandoned hunters’ hut at noontide, a sennight hence.”
For a heartbeat, he buried his face in my hair. Then, he pushed me away and marched off into the darkness.
***
A long stare, a tightsmile, a cold kiss. My husband’s silence after I returned to the fires, pale and shaken, had been thick with contempt.
Back in Tyrconnell, we walked upstairs arm in arm, not a word uttered between us. My heart sank as he followed me into my bedchamber and shut the door. Would he wish to claim his rights now? Fast as a cat’s paw, his hand landed on the wood behind me, trapping me between him and the chamber door. He pressed his lips to my forehead: ale, woodsmoke, and a sharp tang of male sweat.
I stood frozen in place as he straightened, and with great care, removed his mother’s necklace from my neck.
He dropped it into his belt.
“I’m a patient man.” Slowly, he ran the tip of his nose along my jawline, drew in an inquisitorial breath at my throat. Winced. “But my patience is wearing thin, wife.”
Shoulders squared and back stiff as a board, he stalked out of my chamber.
I bolted the door and came face to face with my reflection in the bronze mirror. It scarcely resembled me: disheveled hair, fevered eyes, ghostly pallor, scarlet cheeks. English taffeta. Frantic, I ripped it off and threw open my trunk: léine and kirtles, kerchers and cloaks.
I ran a trembling hand over the indigo skirt worn long ago to one miserable feis. Eyes on fire, I took out the embroidered sky-blue gown I wore when the Earl came to ask for my hand. Then, the blue frieze skirt and saffron waistcoat I’d been clad in at our wedding. Next was my somber mauve gown, the first one I wore as a woman wed, the same one he removed as I stood before his great hearth. I buried my crumbling face in my hands. Was there not a thread in this trunk that wouldn’t call him to mind?
Danu, Brigid, Mórrígan...But Aine’s gods had abandoned me. They sent me the raving Fúamnach. I lifted my eyes heavenward. Father, why do you inflict this pain on me? If you love me as much as they say you do, grant me a sign.
I grabbed the remaining gowns, each one tied to a memory I couldn’t bear. They tumbled from my hands as I stared into the empty trunk. Not empty, not entirely. A crumbled-up parchment lay at the bottom, wedged into a corner.
My hands shook more violently than when I hurled it there after the Earl delivered it to Castle McConway. I held the scroll between my thumb and forefinger, its cool surface burning my skin. But I couldn’t read it for the wrinkles.
I pulled in my breath, sat on the bed, and smoothed the parchment in my lap. Like the filthy letter I kept concealed between the wall and the bed as my reminder, it was written in the Earl’s hand.
But it was written in Irish.
“A mhuirnín dílis, I pray this letter reaches you first. Another is en route—a filthy, obscene missive I had been forced to write with an axe over my head and a blade at my throat. I beg your forgiveness if you yet received it and beseech you to burn it outright as not a single word in it is my own. I would never write such filth were it not my very life at stake.”
The chamber swayed.
You had been right to warn me against this trip, a rún. I am a fool for having come here, for I am being held against my will, and the queen could hold me indefinitely. I am a guest, you see, visiting at her bequest. But she tells me different behind closed doors, my Neave. She shall release me when I sign treaties that would set Ulster back to the time of my father’s reign. All I had gained with Francia and Spain would be forfeited. I refused at the first, but I am willing now. I will do anything to return to Ulster, for my power wanes as I idle here. Already, I hear whispers of a new tanist election brewing. Yet, the treaties alone will not do. The spiteful daughter of a painted whore thirsts for my blood, for she demands...
I ran an icy, trembling finger over the parchment. I couldn’t make out the next few words for he seemed to have crossed them out with such rage, he’d made a hole.
“She also wishes me to...”
The rest had been made illegible with too many strokes of the quill.
“My Neave, I have learned here that for all my ambitions, life has no meaning without you. I will do anything to return home to you. Anything, my own. Please read that again, so you feel it in your heart of hearts. I have not made up my mind as yet, but it appears I shall be spared the necessity. Whatever I agree to, know, a mhuirnín, it will be with the sole purpose of returning to you. And if I do this vile thing, it is so we can be together again even if it would seem to the contrary. I give you my word I will set all to right upon my return. Wait for me, a rún. Swear on our love as you read this that you will wait for me no matter what you hear or read hitherto.
We’re wed in God’s sight, always and forever, my Neave, for those whom He has joined together, none has the power to separate.
-Your Aedan
This 5th day of January, 1565
The night closed in as I sank, sank, sank into its black pit. As if from elsewhere, I watched myself lay out the parchment on my lap, smooth it with my fingers, roll it into a neat scroll until I could roll no more, place it in the trunk, in the same corner, then fold in each of my gowns.
I closed the lid. Then, I took great pains to ease my body upon the bed, lest it collapse and bury me in the night’s bottomless void. There was a large pillow beside me, so I dug my fingers into it and buried my face in it.
Then, I screamed, punching the sides of the pillow until its shell popped, and the feathers burst forth, floating about in a suffocating white cloud. When there was no pillow left to wreck, I dug my fingernails into my palms until the pain made me gasp.
But it mattered not what I did now. None was here to hear my screams; none to tend my wounds. For I was surrounded by foes and wed of my own free will to my love’s bitter rival for the rest of my days.
Fúamnach shook her head. Foolish child, your revenge is but self-indulgent folly.
Eyes squeezed shut, I lifted my English shift and thought of my Aedan’s hands on my waist and his lips brushing against mine as he told me the incorruptible truth. And I thought of his body seeking mine against the rough wall of the abandoned hunter’s hut.
When I had finished, I rose from the bed, removed the letter concealed behind it, and held it to the candle flame until it burned to ash.