Chapter 10 The Names Hidden in Wax Seals
Rain hissed against the thatch as Leif dragged Maeve through the low doorway of the peat byre. He bent nearly double beneath the lintel, one hand still locked around hers, and pulled the door shut before the pale winter light could betray them.
The byre smelled of damp earth, smoke, and cattle. No cattle remained. Only stacked peat bricks crowded the walls, their cut faces dark with moisture. Maeve’s shoulder brushed his chest as they crouched together in the narrow space between the stacks.
Outside, boots struck the wet ground.
Leif raised one finger.
Maeve nodded. Her breath touched his knuckles, warm despite the cold that had soaked them both.
Her black curls clung to her cheeks, and the torn halves of her cloak hung from their shoulders like a poor man’s curtain.
Only moments ago, she had kissed him before watching raiders, bold enough to make the lie seem true.
The memory still burned beneath his ribs, unwelcome and fiercely welcome at once.
A voice called from beyond the wall.
“Search the sheds.”
Leif leaned close to Maeve’s ear. “If they enter, stay behind me.”
Her gray-green eyes sharpened. “You cannot fight three men in a space where you cannot stand.”
“Then I will fight sitting.”
The corner of her mouth moved, though fear remained in her face. “A proud captain reduced to wrestling in peat.”
“A living captain is better than a dead one.”
The boots passed. Rain filled the silence they left behind.
Leif waited until the sound faded, then felt along the wall beside him. His fingers found a loose peat brick. Behind it lay a narrow hollow, black and dry. Something had been hidden there.
He drew out a small leather packet.
Maeve touched his wrist. “What is it?”
“Not ours.”
The packet was tied with waxed cord. Its seal had been pressed with a ring bearing three short cuts and a deep notch beneath them. Leif knew the mark. He had seen it on the tampered convoy sacks, and again on the demand for witnesses at the harbor.
Maeve’s gaze fixed on the red-brown wax. “That mark was meant to make us doubt your men.”
“It was meant to make everyone doubt everyone.”
He broke the seal with his thumb. Inside lay a narrow strip of scraped hide, a tally scratched in rows, and a folded scrap bearing a smear of black wax.
Maeve bent nearer. “The marks.”
“Counts.” Leif traced them with one finger. “Peat, grain, iron. Three loads received. Two sent onward.”
“Onward where?”
The answer came from a sound beyond the byre: a muffled cough, followed by the scrape of a boot against stone.
Leif closed his hand over the tally.
Someone else was inside.
He shifted between Maeve and the rear wall. A man lay wedged beneath a low shelf, soaked through and shivering. His hands were bound with thin cord. Blood darkened the side of his head.
Maeve started toward him, but Leif caught her sleeve.
“Wait.”
The stranger’s eyes opened. They were dull with pain, yet alert enough to measure them.
“You are the Norseman,” he whispered.
Leif crouched. “And you carried this.”
The man’s gaze flicked to the packet. “Burn it.”
“Who sent you?”
The messenger swallowed. “No names.”
Leif drew the small knife from his belt and laid it flat against the floorboards, within sight but not against flesh. Maeve’s eyes went to it, then to him. He could feel her judgment without needing to meet it.
“I will not cut you,” he said to the messenger. “But I will not let you die before telling me why my ship was broken and why my wife is hunted.”
The word wife struck Maeve silent.
The messenger’s mouth twisted. “Not your wife. A bargain dressed as one.”
“A bargain still sworn.”
“With a false witness list.”
Maeve knelt beside them. “Who forged it?”
The man looked at her, and something like pity crossed his face. “Your cousin.”
The rain drummed harder overhead.
Leif watched Maeve absorb the words. She did not flinch. Her hand tightened on the edge of her cloak until her knuckles paled.
“Darragh?” she asked.
The messenger shook his head. “Darragh Kavanagh carries the orders. He does not write them.”
“Eamon,” she said.
The man’s silence answered.
Leif’s temper rose, but there was no room in the byre for anger. It would only spend itself against the walls. He forced his voice low.
“Where did Darragh meet Eamon?”
“Not meet. Receive.” The messenger coughed, and blood touched his lips. “At the harbor. Eamon’s steward brought the first wax. Rourke marked the tallies.”
Maeve leaned forward. “Eamon Rourke?”
“Coastal steward.” The man’s breath rasped. “Keeper of the stores. Keeper of the harbor seals. He changed the counts, opened the sacks, sent word to the raiders.”
Leif looked at the wax mark again. Three cuts and a notch. Not a Norse sign at all, but a steward’s tally code. Three counted in, one held back, the notch for a debt unpaid.
“Rourke made it appear Norse,” he said.
The messenger’s eyes shifted toward the door. “He had help.”
“Whose?”
No answer.
Leif caught the man by the shoulder and pressed him back when he tried to turn away. Not hard enough to crush, only enough to keep him from slipping into the dark.
“Speak.”
Maeve’s fingers closed around Leif’s forearm. “He is wounded.”
“And he knows who ordered the reef knot.”
The messenger stared at them both. “The order came from Darragh. Eamon promised him the O’Clery lands once the oath failed.”
Maeve’s face went still.
Leif felt her withdraw by a hair’s breadth, though her hand remained on him. “What does Darragh gain?”
“Your death. Her disgrace. The feud begins again.” The messenger’s voice thinned. “Then Eamon steps forward as the only man able to restore peace.”
A bitter understanding settled over Leif. The false witnesses would make their marriage oath seem unlawful. The wreck would remove him. Maeve would be left isolated, blamed for inviting Norse blood into Irish soil. Eamon would offer rescue with one hand and claim her lands with the other.
“And the boys?” Maeve asked.
The messenger closed his eyes.
Leif’s grip tightened. “Answer her.”
“Alive when I left.”
“When?”
“Three nights ago.”
“Where are they?”
The man’s breath caught. His head rolled against the wall.
Maeve touched his throat. “Leif.”
He knew the look in her eyes. Not fear for herself. Fear for the children, and for what silence would cost them.
“Where?” he demanded.
The messenger’s lips moved. “Old salt house. Beyond Rourke’s quay. Darragh keeps the key.”
“Darragh has the boys?”
“He guards the door. Eamon chooses when it opens.”
Maeve rose too quickly and struck her head against the low beam. Leif caught her around the waist. She turned into him, her body warm through wet wool, and for one fierce instant he wanted only to hold her there, away from every oath and knife and man who had used her bloodline as a ladder.
Then the messenger made a choking sound.
Leif lowered Maeve and turned back.
The man’s bound hands jerked once. Foam gathered at the corner of his mouth.
“Poison,” Maeve said.
Leif cut the cord. “What did you take?”
The messenger clawed at his tunic. Beneath it hung a small iron token, stamped with the same three cuts and notch. He tore it free and thrust it toward Leif.
“The next tally,” he gasped. “At the old salt house. When the tide turns. The recipient - ”
His body convulsed.
Maeve seized his shoulders. “Stay with us.”
The messenger’s eyes fixed on her. “Do not trust - ”
His breath stopped.
For a moment, only rain spoke.
Leif felt the dead weight beneath his hands and knew the man had carried the answer as far as he could. He closed the messenger’s eyes, then took the iron token.
Maeve stood beside him, pale with fury rather than grief. “He was murdered for speaking.”
“He was poisoned before we found him.”
“And now we have half a map.”
“Enough to walk into a trap.”
Her gaze rose to his. “Then we do not walk blindly.”
He studied her face: the rain-dark curls, the gray-green eyes, the stubborn lift of her chin. She had every reason to fear his anger, yet she remained beside him. Not behind him. Beside him.
“The salt house lies under Rourke’s authority,” he said. “Darragh guards it. Eamon sets the hour.”
“And the final recipient?”
“Unknown.”
Her mouth tightened. “You said the boys were alive three nights ago.”
“They may still be.”
“That is not certainty.”
“No.”
She stepped closer. “You will not leave me here while you go after them.”
“I will not leave you anywhere.”
The words came too swiftly. They hung between them, more binding than he intended.
Maeve’s expression changed, but not into surrender. “You speak as though this marriage were already more than a shield.”
Leif’s thumb rubbed the iron token. “You kissed me to save us.”
“I did.”
“You held my hands when they were numb from the sea.”
“I did that too.”
“Then do not ask me to pretend I feel nothing.”
The byre seemed to contract around them. Maeve’s breath trembled once, though her voice remained steady.
“I am not asking you to pretend. I am asking whether you know what you feel.”
He looked at her mouth, remembering its warmth and the command in her kiss. “I know I would rather face a blade than watch you stand before Eamon alone.”
“That is protection.”
“It is more than that.”
She searched his face, perhaps for the captain who had once treated their oath as a weapon to be wielded. He could not offer her certainty. Not yet. The truth was too raw, too tangled with want and suspicion and the knowledge that she might still leave him when the temporary oath ended.
Maeve touched the notch in his eyebrow, gentle as the rain against the roof. “Then do not make promises you cannot keep.”
“I have kept every promise made before the oath-stone.”
“Not every truth.”
The words struck cleanly.
Leif lowered his gaze. She was right. He had suspected her cousin from the beginning and had not told her all he knew. He had feared that naming his suspicion would make her choose blood over him. Now the cost of that silence lay dead at their feet.
“I should have trusted you sooner,” he said.
Maeve withdrew her hand. “Yes.”
No forgiveness softened it. No easy comfort followed. Yet she did not turn away.
Outside, a horn sounded once from the dunes.
Leif rose, taking the packet and token. “They are searching the byre again.”
Maeve looked at the dead messenger. “We cannot leave him exposed.”
Leif wrapped the man in a dry peat sack and covered his face. It was little honor, but better than rain. Maeve helped him lift the body into the hollow behind the loose brick, where the dead would remain hidden until someone came seeking him.
Then Leif opened the rear vent, a gap no wider than his shoulders. Cold rain blew through, carrying the smell of salt and wet grass.
Maeve slipped out first. He followed, the iron token biting into his palm.
They had found Eamon Rourke’s mark, Darragh Kavanagh’s part, and the place where the next move would be made.
But the hand meant to receive the final message remained nameless.
Leif looked toward the unseen coast, where the tide was turning beneath the dark sky.
“Now,” Maeve said, “we find out who profits when our oath breaks.”
He closed his hand around hers again - not as captor, not as shield, but as a man asking her to walk into danger with him.
This time, she chose to stay.