"Mama, I feel very well. Cuileann is behaving herself today. Please find a comfortable bench while I bring a comfort tea."
This was her first visit to our new holdings, and she looked around approvingly. "I see you are starting to make a real home, Caylith. I like the woven rugs, I like the wall hangings. And I admire the floors. Very beautiful. And fragrant, like a forest."
"Here is what I really want to show you, Mama. Come with me." Before she could sit, I took her by the hand and led her to the door that opened into our baths, and I ushered her inside. As she stood marveling at the mosaics and gazing at the pools, I said, "These baths are yours to use, too, Mama. Until your own are built."
"My own? Whatever do you mean?"
"The Feather clan is set to begin as soon as you say the word."
"Yes, Caylith. Oh, yes," she said with a slow smile, and she embraced me again. "How can I thank you?"
"By saying nothing, Mama. I love you."
Since that day, Mama had visited me every afternoon, and I hoped that when she had her own baths she would visit just as often. Of course she would, I thought, for by then she would have a grandchild to visit, too.
Liam and I had bathed there at least once a day, and always in the morning. Even now, when he had to carry me down the stairs for fear of my falling, every day we lay together in the hot pool and made love in the tepidarium, the warm pool, until my skin was creased like a sun-dried grape. Thinking about my new home, I nestled down even more into the animal pelts under my body, feeling like a queen and not at all like a woman who could bear her child any moment.
Persimmon had been steadfast in her resolve to stay with both me and Liath, our fragile treasure from Tory. Liam had made each woman a fragrant reed-and-herb bed in one of the adjoining rooms, and thus we had a solution to a problem that had perplexed me. How could we keep Liath well and improving, and how could we be sure that I had experienced help when my time of childbearing came?
The rest of the former captives were well on their way to complete physical health, cared for by more than a dozen well-meaning local women and by our new friends Bunny, Mari, and Akantha. They were housed, ironically enough, in the abandoned house of Ursus the slave monger while he lived elsewhere, under guard. His own former men, glad to keep their land and livestock, provided food, wood for the fires, and any task asked of them.
Liath was watched over not just by Simmi but by Silver Weaver, who visited every day, often with a spray of small flowers, always with his lute hung across his back with a leather thong. Even as I thought about Weaver, I heard the soft strains of a lovely air, dampened by the closed door but still full of unmistakable hope and joy.
I remembered back when I had first heard him play, the plaintive thrumming of a loveless wanderer searching for substance in his life. Now, it seemed, he had found it-even if the object of his quest was mute as a deep, dark pool in a sunlit forest.
I heard a light tap on the door and Liam came in. He stood by the bed a moment and then knelt beside it. I reached out my hand to him, touching his face, stroking his soft beard. He took my hand. "Cat, conas t t, a chuisle?"
"T me go maith," I rea.s.sured him. "Not ready, dear love. No baby yet."
He brought my hand to his mouth and began to kiss my fingers, one by one. "Cat, do ye feel up to...visitor tonight?"
"Of course, love. Who would visit me so late in the afternoon?"
"Someone...I think ye want to see. Someone special. I...wait downstairs." He leaned over our bed and kissed me gently. He smiled-with no trace of ironic humor-and then he was gone. I raised up on my elbows, curious about my mysterious visitor, and I was treated to a sight that made me cry out in sheer surprise.
"Murdoch! My friend! Come close."
Murdoch stood at the door a moment, looking at me, and his hesitation gave me a chance to gaze on him in return. His large frame filled the doorway, as Liam"s did, and I saw he was still wearing a traveler"s cloak. A hank of his straight, dark hair hung low on his forehead, and he unthinkingly brushed it back, much as Liam and his brother Torin often did with their own truant locks. Probably another family trait, I thought to myself, and I felt a welling up of happiness as I saw his dear face again.
"Come, draw up a bench and sit close to me, my friend."
I knew right away, as soon as I saw his face, that Murdoch was a different man from the one who had ridden out of Derry more than four months ago. There was something about the confidence in his eyes and bearing, the tilt of his chin, the barest suggestion of a smile, that told me he had good news to bring.
He carried my small, pelt-covered bench close to our large bed. "Please, Murdoch, pick me up. Lay me closer to the edge." He bent over and lifted me up gently, then laid me down as I had asked. He put the pillow back under my head and sat, leaning toward me.
"I know you have a story for me." I held out my hand. "If you hold my hand, I promise not to cross the boundaries of friendship."
That was a sly reference to our time together aboard the Brigid, when he asked me to hold his hand as he recounted the story of his troubled past. Now he threw back his head and laughed outright. That simple act told me more than any words could say, that he was whole again-or whole for perhaps the first time.
"But first, take off your cloak, Doch. I am surprised no one bade you remove it."
"I was, ah, not sure I would be staying very long," he said, and he removed the cloak and tossed it on the bench next to himself.
"Of course you are! Now take my hand and talk to me."
And so he did.
"Cate, my dear friend. Before I tell you about why I am here, let me tell you about my baile-my quest-and how I came to find the island called Tory...
"As soon as I arrived home to the Bay of Trawbreaga with Michael, it took us not long to decide how my father"s new brugh should proceed. I left him in charge, and I left NimbleFoot behind also. I had been reflecting as we traveled north, and I knew somehow that it was my quest to make, and that I should not expose the pony to any danger. Exposing him was somehow the same as exposing you, for at that time-muddled as I was then-the two of you were still mixed in my mind, as though each dig of my heel in his side was the same as hurting you.
"I left early one morning, my few supplies lashed to my back and covered with tarred cloth. I had decided to swim whenever I could not walk and to take a currach where I could not swim. It was a direct route, to be sure-but a very dangerous one, as I soon learned. The coastline became more and more jagged and rocky, the currents more and more swift, even in the small bays and streams that interlaced the great promontory of Inishowen.
"And still I walked on, almost in a stupor, like one drugged. I had but one object-to find the Isle of Captive Women. I slept little and walked much. Like my own father had done years before when he sought his father and his sanity, I dug for any cairn, watched for any vessel, talked to any soul, that might point the way. And little by little, I was able to piece it together, and to walk on the very strand where I could have sailed to Tory if I had a vessel.
"I heard the old tales, how the island was formed when the great G.o.d Eremon struck it with his bolt of lightning, loosening it from the rest of eire; how the mighty king of the Fomorians build his spires; how the greed of Fergus Red-Side destroyed everything-all but the tallest tower; and how Conand, son of the king, stands to this very day with his warriors, beating back the mighty sea itself in their resolve to defend their land.
"On my way back, not more than a few hours after I gazed out to sea, imagining the island, a storm struck. It was a storm I hope I shall never have to endure again. Scores of lightning bolts struck the rocks, the sea, the very ground near me, and I was. .h.i.t-perhaps by the lightning, perhaps by a loose piece of rock sheared off by the lightning.
"I remember only pain, and then darkness. When I woke, I was in a small shieling on a bluff overlooking the sea, the small lean-to of a simple sheepherder and his son, protected by a great overhanging rock. For almost three days I lay between life and death. Asking naught in return, they nursed me back to health. When I was recovered, I no longer thought about the island, or about you, or even about my beloved bay. What I thought about was-my father. How I had betrayed him, and abandoned him. And above all, how much I loved him.
"Cate, I can hardly explain what was happening inside me. It was as though I had gone on a quest to find an island and a way to your heart. And I found myself instead. My love for my father, so long buried, rose in my chest, almost choking me with its power. I knew I had to live to see him again, to start over with him, as though the past were dead and buried.
"And may I say now, before I talk further, that I thought about the woman you brought me to see-Persimmon, the beautiful, funny, talented, compa.s.sionate Simmi. I had left her behind with an incoherent promise of someday returning. And once back in the comfort of my family"s love, I realized that I would indeed return-to her, not to you. Although I return to you in the joy of friendship, Cate, I do not return in the frenzy of unreturned, pa.s.sionate love. Can you understand?"
I squeezed his hand very hard. "Oh, Doch, I cannot tell you how joyed I am at your words. You have told me everything I have longed to hear. Now both of us are freed from-from shackles we never deserved. Now we can truly be friends again."
He sat for a while, lightly holding my hand. "I also found out a few facts about the would-be Pictish savages who torched your home and took your mother."
Forgetting my former feelings of satisfaction, I felt my breath almost stop in my chest. "I am almost afraid to ask, Doch." I tried to sit, all the while grasping his hand.
"Do not fret. Lay back, Cate. Rest easy. They are the very same vile curs you brought back from Tory. They are but make-believe Picts. Men who used their low cunning to seem to be what they are not. I found their tracks here and there as I searched for Tory. I do not mean that I found their footprints in the rocks, Cate. But they had come ash.o.r.e a few times in the last few years, and always because of a leaking or damaged currach. They told their story to a few who managed to tell it to me.
"As far as I can fit the fragments together, they are a clan of outcasts from an island called Islay, one of the larger islands that lay partly in the lands of the Dl Riata."
"Where your grandmother"s people come from."
"Yes. They were no doubt low criminals even in their homeland, not allowed to share in the lands granted to their own cenel. So they decided to make their fortune in a most evil way-by smearing their bodies with a blue pigment like Picts and accepting payment to rob, pillage, rape, and take captives all along the coast of Britannia."
"Then they must have been paid by the duke of Deva to torch my old home and to kill or capture my mother. And Ursus knew them and kept them wealthy, too, making more money than he spent." I heard the bitterness in my own voice.
"Yes, Cate. That is the sad truth of it."
"When Father Patrick comes, I shall be sure to tell him the full history of these brutes."
"Where are they now?"
"They are being held at the garrison at Derryford-and Ursus, too. We call it the "Punishment Pit," but it is better than the filthy huts where they kept the women. Oh, Doch, I hope that Patrick will agree to have us deal with all of them here in our own moot court. Let the people they wronged be the ones to decide their fate. Even Liam now agrees."
The reminder of Ursus and the s.h.a.ggy, scabby pirates had made me start to tremble a bit, and I clutched Murdoch"s hand very tightly, afraid that he would notice.
"Cate, what is wrong? Oh, I have upset you-"
"No, Doch. No. It is just-"
And then it felt like a boulder was trying to roll around in my tiny body, and I gasped in sudden pain.
"Oh, G.o.d. Let me bring Simmi. Stay calm, Cate. Uh, lie back, stay calm."
If I had not hurt so badly, I would have laughed at his outright panic. And then great, heaving, rolling waves of pain overcame me. I cried out in spite of myself. "Time, it is time-"
And then the pain robbed me of all coherent thought, and I gave in to it, trying to think only of the rewards of motherhood.
I learned later that my childbirth, beginning with the pains that came more and more frequently, had lasted almost ten hours. I was aware of pain, then solace, as someone bade me drink a strong potion, then sleep, and then pain again, and the feeling that several hands were touching me in very private places.
"Push out, Cay, push," I heard Simmi"s voice imploring me.
"Liam? Oh, Liam-"
"Liam had to leave." It was Brigid"s dry tone, and I remembered how she had chased him out of the royal bedchamber in Tara when I had been very sick from morning nausea.
I was laughing and sobbing at the same time. "Push," I said, and I felt that I was trying to expel the same boulder that was rolling around inside. And then the baby emerged. I could feel it sliding out, as though it were now a fish. A very long, very stout fish, that just kept coming, struggling to breathe free. The notion was hysterically funny, and I could not stop laughing and crying.
And then I heard a tiny, whimpering sound, like a little mouse had gotten trapped in someone"s hand. And then it became a full-throated wail, the voice of a banshee. The next moment, there was a tug on my nipple, and I lay back, fully satisfied. "Drink, little Cuileann, drink," I said. Then, exhausted, I slept.
When I awoke, Simmi was sitting near me on the bench. "Liam. Where is Liam?" I asked her.
"We wanted to wait until you were awake, Caylith. The first time he sees his new family, you need to be there, too."
"Then we will see her together, for I have not yet looked. Thank you for delivering her to me." I held my hand out to her, and she took it gently. "Simmi, Murdoch is in love with you."
"Yes, Cay, I know." She tossed her hair, her face lit like a festival candle.
I smiled. "I love you, too, dear friend, and I pray for your happiness. Will you please bring Liam?"
She left, and I pulled the light cover down from my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and gazed on the slumbering miracle that Liam and I had made. And the full realization of what we had done suddenly overwhelmed me.
Liam walked into the room, now lit by several candles and bright flames from a brazier. He stood, ironically enough, in the same pose that Murdoch had stood hours ago. He was hesitating near the door, pushing a lock of hair from his face, almost afraid to approach.
"Liam. My astonishing, wonderful husband. I love you, a mo chuisle." I raised a little from my pillow, holding the cover over my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Come close. It is time to meet your beautiful daughter Cuileann...And your great strapping son."
THE END.
HTTP://WWW.BOOKSTRAND.COM/CAPTIVE-HEART.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
Erin O"Quinn is a pen name that reflects the author"s abiding interest in the language, culture, and history of wonderful, magical Ireland.
She was born and raised in a small town in Nevada and attended the University of Southern California, where she earned her BA (English) and MA (Comparative Literature) degrees. Her vocations through the years include selling cars to GIs in Germany, working in promotion and marketing in the newspaper business, and teaching college English.
Erin enjoys above all the company of her husband Bil and their several cats. The feline population keeps changing, depending on the romantic affairs of the porch cats; the indoor population remains stable. They all live on the outskirts of a small town in central Texas.
Also by Erin O"Quinn.
BookStrand Mainstream: The Dawn of Ireland 1: Storm Maker.
BookStrand Mainstream: The Dawn of Ireland 2: The Wakening Fire.
end.