Celtic Bride (2 page)

And
the visions…Something, Keelin wasn’t sure quite what, but
something
was going on at Carrauntoohil Keep. Her urgency to go back was no longer a mere yearning to go home. She was filled with a foreboding that would not rest until she returned the sacred spear to her clan and saw for herself that all was well.

“Listen to me, Keely lass,” Tiarnan said calmly, sensing his niece’s rising panic. She was young, a mere nineteen years, and though Tiarnan considered her second sight a gift, he knew it was difficult for her. The visions always left her weakened, distraught and drained, even if she tried to hide it from him. “You must take
Ga Buidhe an Lamhaigh
and go away from here before—”

“Nay, Uncle,” Keelin cried abruptly. “I will not leave ye.”

“Keelin—”

“The warriors have been thwarted for now. I’ll not be leavin’ this place without ye. I can pack us up,” she said quickly, “and you’ll ride in the wain when ’tis time.”

“Keely,” Tiarnan said, closing his eyes wearily. It tried his soul to know that he’d soon send the lass away, to journey on alone, but no amount of prayers to the Holy Virgin or any of the saints had availed him. His chest pained him something terrible, and the cough…Well, he had no doubt the cough would be the death of him.

Keelin’s clear green eyes were bright with tears that overflowed their bounds. She took both her uncle’s hands in her own and raised them to her cheek. “I will move us to another place, a safer place where—”

“Do
ye not understand, love?” Tiarnan said weakly, feeling her tears on his hands. “I am not well enough to travel, and ye must get away before it’s too late.”

“Nay, Uncle!” she cried. “There is time.”

“Keelin,” Tiarnan said, “even if there were time, ye don’t need an old wreck like me holdin’ ye back. Now, go on with ye. Start to pack up yer things and—”

Tiarnan paused and cocked his head slightly.

“What?” Keelin asked, alarmed at the way her uncle had tuned his ear to some distant sound that she could not yet hear. “What is it?”

“Someone’s comin’,” the man replied. “Horses…men on foot.”

“Oh, saints bless me!” Keelin cried, standing up abruptly from her perch. “How could I have been so wrong? They’re here?
Now?
”

“I doubt it’s them, darlin’,” Tiarnan said with the calm that comes with age. “But we’ve no choice but to wait and see, now.”

Keelin swallowed hard. They’d always kept well ahead of the Mageeans before. Never even got close to a confrontation. Yet here she stood frozen in her skin. She was barely able to move, unable to guide her uncle away from the cottage to hide. ’Twas no way for Eocaidh O’Shea’s daughter to behave, and she knew it.

“Do ye hear the voices now, lass?”

Keelin gave a slight nod, unmindful for the moment, that Tiarnan could not see her.

At least they would not find
Ga Buidhe an Lamhaigh,
she thought. ’Twas well hidden again, and she would never tell where to find it. Allowing the holy spear to fall into Mageean hands would be the worst possible calamity.

Rage
would not serve Marcus now. His desire to accompany Kirkham and his men as they chased down and killed the barbarians in the wood was great, but the need to get Adam to shelter was even more imperative.

With great care, Marcus carried the boy down the hill. The distance to the little cottage was a good deal longer than he remembered, perhaps because of the added burden of the injured boy in his arms. He tried to concentrate only on getting Adam to safety, to a place where his wound could be tended. Any other thoughts of the terrible moments in the wood would bring agony anew.

Four men of their party were dead, and another two seriously wounded. The others had minor injuries. As Marcus walked, surrounded by his men, he was aware that even now, a few of the Wrexton men were gathering the bodies of his father and his other fallen comrades, and would follow along shortly.

Why had they been attacked, Marcus wondered. He could not imagine any reason why foreign fighters would be on English soil, attacking a peaceful English party. It made no sense at all.

It had been fortuitous that Nicholas Hawken, the Marquis Kirkham, had arrived when he did to rout the attackers. As cocky and irreverent as the man was, Marcus knew Nicholas could always be counted upon in a fray. And without Hawken, the Wrexton party would have been utterly doomed.

One of Marcus’s men knocked on the door of the humble cottage, which was opened by a young woman who kept to the shadows of the interior. Marcus carried Adam into the room and, with help from one of the men, gently laid the boy on a bed. A white-bearded man lay silent on another bed at the opposite end of the room.

“I’ll need
hot water,” Marcus said as he drew out his knife. He started cutting away the boy’s doublet as he spoke. “And some clean cloths. Edward, hold his arms. Roger, take his feet while I pull the arrow.”

Keelin pitied the poor wee mite whose body was pierced by the arrow. Nevertheless, she sent up a silent prayer of thanks that it was not Mageean’s men upon them. She sensed Mageean’s presence strongly, and the turmoil and despair of these men. But no immediate danger.

Keelin stood near Tiarnan’s pallet and watched quietly as the English lord took care of his small charge and issued orders. The man was tall, and he’d had to duck as he entered the cottage. Even now as he knelt next to the wounded boy, his size seemed to take up half the room.

His hair was the lightest gold she’d ever seen. With deft fingers, the young lord quickly unfastened his tunic of chain mail, and one of his men helped him remove the heavy hauberk, leaving his broad shoulders loosely clothed in a sweat-dampened, but finely embroidered white linen tunic. He pushed his sleeves up and leaned toward the child lying on the bed, leaving his powerful forearms bared to Keelin’s gaze. Then he crossed himself in silent prayer and spoke quietly to the insensible boy.

“I’m sorry, lad, for what I must do,” he said steadily, “but we’ve no choice in the matter, and you must be brave.” And then he muttered under his breath, “As must I.”

Keelin’s heart went out to the young man who was so obviously shaken. These were the Englishmen she’d seen in her vision this morning, and though she’d not recognized their faces, she understood the measure of their sorrow, their terrible grief. She knew they had lost several of their comrades today, as well as one in particular who held a special place in their hearts.

She
could do no less than to help them.

Going to the corner opposite her bed, Keelin opened the small trunk that contained her things. She had a few linen tunics and an old chemise that could be torn into strips. Taking out the items she needed, she made bandages for the boy.

When that was finished, she sorted through her leather pouches and took out the dried plants she would need. She’d learned the healing arts so well from her uncle that she had no need of his advice in choosing her medicines.
Poterium Sanguisorba
to help stop the bleeding, and lady’s mantle to keep the wound from festering.

When Keelin turned back to the Englishman, the arrow was out. The boy’s back was bleeding freely as Keelin stood beside the lord and placed a white cloth onto the wound. She applied pressure. The child moaned.

“Adam…” the lord said shakily.

Keelin could feel the heat and strength of the man next to her. She looked up at his strong profile—the long, straight nose, his square jaw, and unwavering sky-blue eye—and wondered if there was a man in all Ireland who would give her the care and attention that this man gave to the young boy at hand.

Certainly there was, she reminded herself. The man to whom she was betrothed would care for her as none had ever done before. Eocaidh would have seen to it. Many a time had Keelin asked Tiarnan about her betrothed, but her uncle had always skirted the question, never quite answering her. Keelin had finally given up asking, for ’twas entirely possible he did not know. The council of elders had the final word, and they might not have included Tiarnan in their decision.

“’Tis
a good sign, m’lord,” Keelin said in a quiet voice. “His groanin’.”

He looked at her then, noticing her for the first time. He blushed deeply and his eyes darted away.

“E-Edward,” the golden English lord said to the knight who stood near the door, intentionally turning his attention from her. Then he cleared his throat and continued. “See if there is a physician in the v-village down the road and fetch him if—”

“I am a healer, m’lord,” Keelin said, spreading her leather satchels on the bed next to the boy. “And I have all I need to tend the poor wee lad.” She opened the pouches, pouring some dark powder into a small dish, then adding water. She mixed the two into a paste and then bid the English lord to lift the bandage from the boy’s back.

“Ach, ’tis a grievous wound,” she said as she spread some of the paste into the deep gash, “made ever more dangerous by its proximity to the spine.”

She didn’t tell him that the kidney was nearby as well, and that she hoped it hadn’t been nicked by the arrow. As it was, the boy would be lucky not to bleed to death slowly, from the inside.

Marcus could only stare at her graceful hands as they worked. In a few short moments, his life had been tossed upside down, his father killed dead in the field and poor Adam gravely wounded and lying in a peasant’s hut that was inhabited by an old man and a beautiful woman who was obviously no common peasant.

Nor
was she English.

Her presence here made no sense. It occurred to Marcus that she might be connected somehow to the vicious warriors who had attacked them in the wood. Were those men her personal army? Was that why they had attacked? To keep her safe?

He thought it odd, too, that she had not seemed surprised by his arrival with Adam and the others. Was this kind of occurrence commonplace in her experience?

No, he realized. It could not be. They were not so very far from Wrexton now, and Marcus was sure he’d have heard of a band of wild, foreign warriors guarding one small cottage.

But who was she?

The woman wore a simple, but finely made kirtle of wool dyed deep green, and her dark hair lay long and silky upon her back. She moved majestically, with grace and purpose, as she laid gentle, competent hands on his young cousin. She spoke softly to Adam, with her strangely musical accent, even though it was unclear whether or not the boy could hear.

She had the mien of a queen, yet here she was, in this place—this small cottage that was little better than a peasant’s hovel. And Marcus felt as tongue-tied and awkward as he’d ever felt in the presence of a lady.

“M’lord,” said the grizzled old man on the bed at the opposite end of the room.

Marcus turned and walked toward him, noticing that the old fellow still beckoned. It was then that he realized the man was blind.

“Ye must allow my niece to do what she thinks is best,” he said, his words accented even more thickly than the woman’s, “for you could ask for no greater healer on English or Irish soil than Keelin O’Shea.”

“Is
that who she is? Your niece?” Marcus asked, much more at ease now that he was not standing quite so close to the girl. He let out a slow breath as he watched her continue to stitch the wound in Adam’s back.

“Aye, Keelin O’Shea of Kerry, she is,” the old man said. “And me, I’m her uncle. Tiarnan O’Shea at yer service. Or I will be, once I’m up on m’ feet again.”

“Kerry…That would be…an Irish province?” Marcus asked, barely listening to the reply. He raked his fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. He was painfully aware that somewhere outside his father lay still in death, his body covered by a shroud and under the guardianship of his men.

Marcus was numb with grief and anger, and did not know how he would function, how he would assume the role of earl, and command these men. How would he get his father and the rest of his fallen knights back to Wrexton and into hallowed ground? And what of Adam? ’Twas obvious the boy could not travel, nor could Marcus leave him here with strangers.

“Kerry’s more a
region,
lad,” Tiarnan replied, oblivious to the young lord’s consternation. “A fierce and proud land of Munster in the southwest of Ireland, wi’ loughs and craggy hills galore.”

Marcus made no reply, for he was lost in thought. The old man took his silence for worry about Keelin and her handling of the wounded boy. “Truly, ye can trust her, lad,” Tiarnan said. “She’s got a gift for the healin’.”

“I can only pray you’re right,” Marcus said as he turned away and stalked out of the cottage. Roger and Edward remained within, and Marcus knew he could trust either man to come to him if further trouble arose.

He looked up at the sky and breathed deeply, wondering how such a beautiful day could have been destroyed so quickly, by such ugliness.

’Twas
years since Marcus had engaged in battle. Five years, to be precise, since he’d returned home from the French wars to find his mother ill and dying. After her death, he’d stayed on at Wrexton with his father, never returning to France.

Wrexton was at war with no one. The campaign in France had little bearing on what happened here, so far in the west country. There were no border disputes or skirmishes with neighboring knights to account for any violence. He and Eldred had developed good rapport with the Welsh who lived on the land adjacent to Wrexton, and Marcus had had no reason to expect a vicious ambush from foreign knights.

Knights?
If that’s what they were.

Not even the French were so barbaric. What armor these men wore was primitive. They were unwashed and unshaven, with hair pulled into thongs and hanging down the length of their backs. Their language was strange and guttural, and completely unfamiliar to him. He’d thought them Celts before, and now, knowing that the cottage woman and her uncle were Irish, he wondered what the connection was. There had to be one.

And God help Tiarnan O’Shea and his niece if they were in any way a party to the day’s hideous slaughter.

Marcus walked around to the far side of the cottage where the men had set up tents. It was there they would spend the night, where the wounded men would be tended. He did not know how many nights they would stay, or when it would be possible for Adam to travel to Wrexton Castle.