Chapter Thirty-Three
What I’ve Done to Us
Neave, May 15-16, 1565, Ulster, Ireland
An axe crashed betweenus, hacking at the growing chasm. I stared at the smooth ivory of Aedan’s chest, unblinking, too numb to even weep. How could he not know this meeting was our last?
“Will you come willingly then—” he murmured into my hair, oblivious, “or shall I bind you like a captive—the loveliest anyone has ever seen?”
The world crumbled round me piece by unyielding piece. But he couldn’t see my face, only the top of my head.
“You’ll share my bed, a mhuirnín.” He ran his fingers through my strands. “You’ll be the lady of the castle—my marriage be damned. The blasted Tudor bitch holds no sway over who I love.”
I oughtn’t have come here. I’ll not survive this. I held my breath to strangle a hoarse sob, to stay a frantic wail.
“What’s this?” He drew back, eyes widening. “I’ll do anything—anything, you hear?—wife or no. Severe penalties for anyone daring to speak a harsh word, to cast an unkind look. We’ll wed the day I divorce the lass. And all will be as it was, my Neave. It will, you hear?”
I dug my fingernails into my palms. “Our wee Aine,” I whispered, dying inside, “would become Tiernan O’Donnell’s hostage.”
He peered at me for a heartbeat, then dropped his head on the pillow, deathly pale. Very slowly, he covered his face with both hands.
“Aedan—” I pried one hand off and went still. His eyes shone bright and fevered—the look of a madman.
“Return on the morrow and bring the babe.” His voice came forth thick and low, a choked plea. His face hovered like an apparition through the blur of my futile tears.
“You’d have me bring a wee babe on horseback, my Aedan? I can hardly solicit O’Donnell’s coach.”
He sat up, carved a stiff hand through his hair. “Send her to fosterage with your father, then. I’ll deliver her to Benburb myself.”
It was no use, but he was too stubborn to see it.
“You’d have me send a suckling babe away to be fostered, my Aedan? She’ll not take another woman’s milk, and I’ll grow ill.”
“Bring her along for a visit at Castle McConway—” He clasped my hand with cold fingers. “I’ll mind the rest.”
I drew back, stomach hard as a rock. “D’you hear yourself, my Aedan? I’ll not make my father the target of Tiernan O’Donnell’s vengeance!”
His hand tightened on mine, heavy and implacable. “I’ll come to Tyrconnell with my gallowglasses and abduct you both in two days’ time.”
I jerked away, but his grip was iron. “I’ll not be the cause of a clan war. I’ll not, my Aedan!”
He stared, unblinking, a thick blue rope bulging on his neck. “Get on with weaning her, then. And return here a sennight hence. Swear to me you will.”
Would that make me an illicit lover or a whore? It mattered not, for I’d be neither.
I parted my lips but giving this voice was akin to ripping my own skin from my body.
“I’ll come one last time, my Aedan, to say farewell,” I whispered. “But no more after that, a chroí. I’ll not bring shame on myself, nor on my father. Nor on you.”
He pulled me close, so tight I couldn’t breathe. “You’re here now, with my seed in your womb. Are you shamed by this, a mhuirnín?”
His words were like a thunderbolt, the swollen belly of his wife materializing in my mind’s eye clear as the day I saw it.
“Your seed!” I pushed him away, venom coursing through my veins anew and flooding my head. “It took root in her womb from the looks of it!”
He compressed his lips and straightened. “My marriage is a damned sham. I’ve been trying to tell you since I wrote that filth with the English blade at my throat. But you’re the most ox-headed woman this world has ever seen!”
“A sham, is it?” I forced through my teeth, the images of him and the wee countess in my bed making me light-headed. “Yet you’d managed to get her with child! It takes time, don’t you think I know?” I buried my fingers in the pillow. “She’s young and comely—you take your pleasure, damn you!”
He wiped my tears with the back of his hand, smoothed my hair. “I’d gotten her with child at the consummation ceremony while she screamed like a mad bean sídhe.” He kept his gaze trained on me. “It was only thoughts of you that kept me from ending that depredation to face certain ruin. She sleeps in her own chamber, my Neave, and I make no visits.”
I clenched my jaw. I know you too well, Aedan O’Neal. Even if he wasn’t claiming his rights in his wife’s bed, he was doing so elsewhere. The harlot with my hair? I gulped. I didn’t know what was worse.
“I’ll rid myself of this ‘wife,’ but—” his breath quickened, “you cannot return now, can you? Tiernan O’Donnell has you for a wife and our daughter for a hostage.” The bed shifted in protest as he stood, glaring. “And this isn’t the handiwork of the English, is it? The chastisement you received is poor redress for what you’ve done to us.”
“What I’ve done!” I glowered, pressing the shreds of my kirtle to my chest. “How d’you propose to rid yourself of her now that she’s with child!”
He shot me a glance. “As I’d not abandon an expecting woman, I’ll divorce her and send her home after birth, and with means enough for them both.” His expression grew somber. “Does he treat you well, a rún?”
“Better than you did just now,” I muttered.
He reached for his homespun to hide a wince, and I gasped. Eight angry, overlapping gashes ran down his shoulders, bright scarlet bubbling against smooth ivory. Traces of it marred the coarse sheets—and the insides of my thighs.
“Aedan—” I stood and touched his arm, my words echoing his, “Are you in much pain?”
“I was.” He made to fasten my broken laces, but the damage was too great, so he wrapped me in my cloak instead. “I’m better now, but when I return to Benburb alone—” He pressed his face into my chest, dug his fingers into my waist. “I cannot bear it, my Neave... Tiernan making free of your body. By God, how can you be so cruel? D’you... Christ—” He lifted his eyes, dark and unseeing. “Does he give you what you...? God damn it all to hell!”
I took his breathtaking face into my hands—crushed and defeated, mad with helplessness.
“He shared my bed once,” I said, “and it was you I made love to, a chroí. I called him my Aedan at the end, and he loathed me for it, so he’s not returned. I doubt he will. I sought your punishment—” I dropped my gaze. “But I’ve only punished myself.”
He tipped my face toward him, the lines round his eyes tight as fiddle strings. “You’ve punished me plenty, a mhuirnín.”
“Forgive me,” we said in the same breath.
I wrapped my arms round him—tight, tighter, breathing him in for what little time remained. My stomach shrank to the size of a hazelnut. I had to ask this—a question that would close one purgatory shut and open another.
“How does my wee Ronan?” I whispered.
Does my son ask for me, or is he forgetting me?
Aedan studied my face before gathering me in. “He asks when you shall return, my Neave.”
A falsehood to spare me. An almsgiving to soothe me.
I bit my lip to steady my voice. “And what d’you tell him?”
“Soon.”
The sky darkened as we stepped outside, the clouds low and heavy with their endless tears.
He held me long and close. Then, he released me.
“I’ll find a way to set you free.” His gaze locked on mine. “But swear you’ll come here a sennight hence. And if you cannot, then a fortnight, a month—just come. I’ll be here, waiting for you.”
“Those whom God has joined together, let no man separate,” I breathed, the loss of him crushing and grinding me into dust.
***
Unluckily, I arrivedat Tyrconnell at supper time. Although I’d smoothed my hair and concealed my damaged garments under my cloak, I was met with raised brows and gaping mouths.
“I shall have to forego supper. My regrets,” I spat to O’Donnell’s concubines and the wives of his officers. “Been thrown by a horse and feel rather ill.”
A glance at my bronze mirror had stopped me cold. I looked a sight: hair tousled about in unseemly tangles, cloak flecked with straw, face streaked with remnants of caked mud.
After suckling Aine, I lay in my bed without bathing or undressing. My husband wasn’t expected to arrive for another three days. So I’d keep my beloved with me all night: his scent on my skin, his flesh underneath my fingernails, his blood on my thighs, his fading handprints on my backside, his seed in my womb—every corner filled with his presence.
Only a sennight until I see you again, my Aedan, my Aedan, my Aedan...
I startled from sleep at the abrupt clamor of men’s voices and laughter outside my bedchamber. It was past the daybreak—Tiernan O’Donnell returned two days early. But he wouldn’t set foot here, and what did it matter, withal?
I closed my eyes, listening—not to the loathsome din, but to my womb. Life, sure as the sun, coursed through it. I wasn’t certain when I felt this bright new spark upon conceiving my daughter, but I knew it now, same as Ida did—a wonder, pure and joyful, beneath my heart.
“Hello, a leanbh.” I pressed a hand to my belly, stroking my new babe. My Aedan’s babe.
The door opened, and before I remembered my ripped kirtle and straw-decked cloak, my husband strode inside. He studied me, expressionless, as I scrambled to cover myself, affecting disrupted slumber.
“Won’t you stand to greet me, wife?” He compressed his lips. “Or are you still sore from your... fall?”