Dawn Of Ireland: Captive Heart Part 11

Hearing the blunt words of desire, he plunged and moaned until, a few minutes later, we were both shouting our urgent need. The torrent of pleasure was hot and long lasting, and I pressed my groin hard against him until the tremors ceased.

Later, his mouth against my ear, Liam murmured, "Cat. Your b.r.e.a.s.t.s...getting bigger. Hardly room in me mouth."

"Really?" I was surprised, for they felt the same to me. "The child inside," I told him. "The child needs more."

"I need more, too, a Chit," he said, and he began to lick my ear.

I embraced him fondly. "Yes, oh yes. Later, my love. Let us go now to the river, and then to church."

Sundays were special for another reason. They allowed us to hear inspiring words through the mouths of either Brother Galen or Brother Jericho. We were fortunate that both men had a gift for expression and for stirring thought and wonder in their listeners.

This fine young summer day had brought our church to near capacity. I sat with Liam, my hand on his leine-clad thigh, admiring the way he looked in his handsome tunic, made of light wool and silk. It was blue as a robin's egg, and the trailing sleeves seemed to s.h.i.+mmer, all rose and saffron, in the light pouring through the open windows.

That was the tunic he had worn right here, last October, when we joined in marriage along with Michael and Brigid. Whenever he wore it, my mind replayed the wedding, the festive gathering afterward, and finally the release of all the desire that had built inside us from the beginning of our time together. As if reading my thoughts, Liam looked down at me, his mouth twisted in the little smile that told me he was deeply amused-and aroused, too. He placed his large warm hand over mine, and we watched our friend Brother Galen slowly approach the raised altar.

Brother Galen, born Seamas Gallagher, was a hillock of a man-no, a very mountain of a man. He wore no belt around his midsection, for the sheer size of his gut would have made any tie a mere decoration. He turned to face the gathering, and his tonsured head gleamed in the sunlight. Long, black curls hung from the area around his ears as though to make up for lack of hair on the top.

He seemed to roll his deep, dark eyes and his lively brows played on his face as he opened his mouth and addressed the crowd.

"The Lord greets ye and sends his love to enfold ye. He bids me talk this morning of something we all know, we all feel. But how often do we feel it when we think of the Lord?

"That word is love-an gr-the one word we think we know better than any other. For do we not love our wife? Our husband? Our children and our family? We all know that love is the emotion we feel that bids us to cleave one to the other and to obey G.o.d's call to go forth and multiply.

"But what of love for the Lord and from the Lord? What does it mean?"

He lifted his head and looked around the room as though challenging us to answer his question. The great room was so silent that we could clearly hear the call of birds as they dallied in the oaks outside.

"I will tell ye, in the words of the apostle Paul. For Paul wrote an epistle to the Lord's church in Corinth, a city of the Greeks. He was trying to teach the people to lift themselves from sin, to cleanse their souls, to be more spiritual. And he spoke of love, and these are his very words."

Galen's voice rose and boomed and resounded through the clay round-house, and everyone there sat forward tensely, waiting for the next word to fall.

Even if I speak with the tongue of men and of angels-if I have not love, then me tongue is dull as bra.s.s, me words as light as cymbals. Even if I had the gift of prophecy, so that I could understand all mysteries and all the world's knowledge, and even if I had so much faith that I could move mountains-even so, if I have not love, I am as nothing.

And what if I gave all I have to feed the poor? And if I gave my body up in sacrifice? If I have not love, then my acts hold no meaning.

What then is love? Love is long suffering and it is kind. It takes no pride in itself. It behaves not unseemly. Love thinks no evil thought. Love rejoices not in wrong doing but rejoices in the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

So these three gifts abide forever-faith, hope, love. Creidamh...dchas...gr. But the greatest of these is love.

"Put away Paul's words in your hearts, O me beloved friends. The next time ye think of turning your back on one less fortunate than ye-think of the love of the Lord. When ye seek for your haggard to hold more hay than your neighbor's, when ye feel pride that your leine is spun of finer wool, when ye lift your voice to revile another-think of the love of the Lord. For his love is not worldly, but spiritual. His love is not fleeting, but eternal. Ye cannot be G.o.d, but ye can seek to be as pure in his eyes as ye can possibly be.

"Let me end by saying, plain for all to see and hear. I love ye. Each one, every one of ye, with a sublime love that the Lord seeks to instill in me. And may ye in return love your fellow man, and love the Lord, forever and ever."

Then he bowed his head, and his last word was as heartfelt as the rest. "Amen."

After a long moment of silence, every soul in the room repeated the same word. Amen.

Later, after the holy ma.s.s, Liam and I lingered in the churchyard, exchanging words with our friends. Owen was not here, but Moc and Swallow walked up to us, and we all embraced.

Swallow drew me apart a little. "Oh, Cay," she said, "I feel suddenly small and humbled, thinking of the holy love of G.o.d. How will I ever fill my heart with an emotion so pure and unselfish?"

"We are mortals, my friend. We can only hope to try. I think my Liam is far beyond my own shallow ability to love. But I can watch him and learn from him." I thought of his humble reaction last year to Sweeney's hateful bile and his recent feelings about punis.h.i.+ng the savage defilers who had taken Mama. Those same feelings of love beyond love seemed to come naturally to him, and I was often left wondering at his capacity for forgiveness.

"I think Lugh is the same," she said, referring to Torin. "He seems to have a kind of-of honorable purpose that leaves me wondering, and even sometimes resentful."

I hugged her little shoulders. "We cannot be angels."

I looked up and noticed, at a distance, Luke walking with Quince. Next to them were Murdoch and Persimmon. I suddenly felt relieved, gratified that Murdoch had perhaps started to open up to another woman, and I found myself hoping for his happiness. Love rejoices in the truth. I said a quick little prayer to Father Patrick. "Please, Father, open his heart to real love."

Swallow leaned into my ear. "By the bye, Caylith, Magpie has asked me to invite you and Liam to visit her and Raven. Tonight, if you can come for supper. Lugh and I are also invited."

"Without the, um, rest of the family?" I asked, thinking of Mockingbird's ever-watchful eye.

"Yes." She giggled. "Magpie will be our only supervisor. And soon it will be only Uncle Jay and Uncle Crowe. I am sure they will let us at least kiss."

Mockingbird had allowed Torin to woo Swallow-but he could touch her only in the presence of her family. It was her way of enforcing a kind of ironic celibacy, yet at the same time it was an acceptance of Torin's intentions to marry her.

We rejoined Liam and Mockingbird, now standing also with Brother Galen and Brother Jericho. The young Jericho, a serious scholar, was also a Latin instructor at the school with Luke and Brigid.

I tugged at the sleeve of Jericho's plain white leine, and he inclined his head to hear me. "Brother, what would you think about going with me on another...ah, trip?"

"If you mean 'adventure,' young Caylith, I may have to be convinced my presence is necessary." The last time Jericho went with me, it was to serve as confessor to Mother Sweeney. And his presence had been the key to unraveling the mystery of Owen Sweeney, for his mother would speak only to a priest. His reluctance to travel, I knew, was intimately connected to the raw spots his horse created on his nether regions.

"I will come to you soon, O Brother. Please make plans to be away from your duties in about a month." I could think of no better person than Jericho to serve as spiritual comforter to the captive women-unless it be Father Patrick himself.

Claiming some long-ago kins.h.i.+p with the great feathered nation of birds, Jay's family never ate fowl of any kind. In fact, it was rare to see any food except succulent vegetables-and perhaps a variety of nuts and fruit-on the table of any member of the extensive Feather clan. And so it was that night.

Magpie's husband Raven was a master gardener. All food eaten by the family had been planted and cultivated by him and others in a large garden plot that, with nary a twinge of guilt, I envied wholeheartedly. Heaped on the table before us was an abundance of dwarf beans, swan-neck squash, parsnips, and turnips, carrots, onions and peas. I eyed a bowl full of tender strawberries and another of roasted chestnuts.

Magpie's kitchen was really the kitchen of her mother GoldenFinch, for she and Raven lived in Jay and Finch's part of the enclaves with their own set of bedchambers and other private rooms. Magpie had told me earlier that her mother and father had "retired" to another part of the expansive underground habitat, whether for their own aloneness or to give us three young couples a measure of privacy.

Tonight's supper talk was much lighter and more full of laughter than the one earlier with Moc and Sweeney. Whether it was the absence of Owen's brooding, dark eyes or of Moc's sharp, knowing way of seeing everything, we all felt a bit relieved as we lifted our wine cups that evening.

"Slinte!" Torin said, looking into Swallow's brindled eyes. "A toast to love. To Brother Galen's holy love, and to our own love as well."

They raised their cups to each other, and then to the company. And we all answered with our own metal cups raised to the glittering ceiling. "To love!"

I reached out to Liam's dear face and stroked his cheeks above the silken beard, my fingers lingering on the familiar smoothness of his skin. "Liam, what did you think of Galen's words today?"

Liam brought his hand up to mine and stroked it softly. As he spoke, I became aware that the others were silent, listening.

"I think this word love is very big. All the love I feel for ye, Cat...all the love of Torin for Swallow, an' Raven for Magpie...all rolled up together...not as big as love of the Lord. 'Tis a love of man an' woman, mother an' child, man an' country-but more. Too much to hold inside one heart. 'Tis no wonder the heart of Jesus burst."

He looked around the table, seeing all of us silent and thoughtful, and he smiled. "Love is joy. So we laugh." He raised his cup, and then he brought it to his mouth and swallowed it in one long draught.

Magpie, bless her heart, stood and did the same. "To love!" she said grinning at Raven, and she drained her cup. We watched the sun-petal wine run down the sides of her mouth, and the way she drew her sleeve across it, and everyone burst out laughing. Then each of us, one by one, stood and drained our cup, toasting our beloved.

I raised my cup to Liam. "A ghr mo chro." My heart's beloved. I sat down hard, and soon I noticed that the table had begun to move a bit. All the way through supper, I had to hold my hand at the edge to keep it from leaving altogether. By the time we all sat in the comfort room, the very benches were subtly changing position on the woven rugs.

"SoothTeller." The little wind-chime voice at my elbow filled my mind with birds and meadows.

"Yes, Mag?"

"I have made a small something for you to wear. On your upcoming trip."

"Um...what trip would that be, Magpie?" Only a few people knew about my secret plans to leave. In fact, even I did not know when I was going-or where I was bound.

"You know," she said with her impish grin, the freckles dancing in the dwarf dust that swirled around the room. "The journey to the island."

I looked at her closely, and her s.h.i.+mmering eyes seemed to hold a treasure of jade from far Cathay. "Thank you," I said simply, not knowing what else to say. She brought out a bundle from behind her back and presented it to me.

What I held up was so soft and beautiful that I felt my breath catch in my throat. It was a tunic-a hunting tunic, or riding tunic, perhaps even the kind of clothing one might wear on a trip to a mysterious island.

The tunic was made of deerskin, I knew that from the familiar look of it. But it was not the doe brown of the deer I was used to seeing in Britannia. It was a rich rusty red, even deeper red than the skin of a red fox, with a spattering of red-gold freckles very like her own. The skirt was rather full, and the top was softly gathered to hold my growing b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Fit for warm weather, the tunic had no sleeves, but a kind of fringe or cascade of small strings of plaited leather hung from the shoulders.

The other special feature of the new tunic was the feel of it. Instead of being rather stiff and slick, it had somehow been brushed and softened like a pair of dainty shoes. "Oh, Magpie, how did you make it so soft?"

"Ah, 'tis a cobbler's trick." She smiled. "The softness makes it more fit for a lady, does it not? I can hardly wait to see how it looks on you."

I stood and put my arms around her slender shoulders, feeling that I was holding a child. "And I can hardly wait to wear it," I told her.

At that moment, I felt a special kind of love-an gr spoken of by Brother Galen-begin to invade my heart. "I wonder, my friend, whether the Lord created freckled angels." We stood hugging each other in the dancing motes of rainbow light.

Chapter 15:.

The Farewell Five days after the memorable church service and the supper at the enclaves, I rode NimbleFoot to the construction site of my future home. During the past three days, the skies had been fretful and rain filled. The sudden squalls coming off the Sea of eire to the north were intermittent, but when they struck, the winds and heavy showers made it impossible even for the mighty Tris to practice.

The weather seemed to mirror my own mood, for I was restless and fretful myself. Three or more days of rain could only delay Michael's trip to Inishowen, for I knew he could not build a chariot or lay my floors in a downpour. I also knew that Owen and Moc could not travel along the muddy ox paths that the eireannach people called "roads."

Normally, I would have walked to the new brugh worksite, but NimbleFoot had not been exercised in days. Inactivity had made him, too, restive and moody. But the morning had started with clear skies, and I hoped the fine weather had returned. Everyone had a.s.sured me that June was not usually so stormy in this northern part of the island. Strangely enough, we lived where the weather was cooler in the summer and milder in the winter than in other, more southerly regions of eire.

I tethered my pony near the tall oat gra.s.s and stood watching Michael's men work. I saw that a large kiln that had been brought-probably by bullock wagon-and that the fire was just beginning to put forth good-sized flames and much billowing smoke. I also noticed right away that each window hole of the round-house had been covered with what looked like tarred cloth, similar to the stiff, water-resistant cloth Michael had used as a special vehicle for Nuala Sweeney on our trip from Limavady some months ago.

I followed a group of men who were carrying various-sized planks of oak into the house, and I stood well off to the side so as not to interfere with their work. Peering through the door, I was astonished to see that fully half the interior floor was covered with oak planks interlaced with fragrant cedar, and even at this early hour, four men were hammering brads and smoothing the wood as they worked.

A group of other workers were rolling the tarred cloth from the bottom of the window openings with an ingenious set of ropes. As they pulled the cloth from the bottom, it furled, and they tied the roll to the top of the window frames to allow morning light to flood the room.

"The gla.s.s making starts today." At the sound of Michael's voice I turned a bit guiltily, knowing that I was no doubt in the way.

"Um, Michael, I am sorry-"

"For what?" He was grinning, his blue eyes filled with a boundless humor. "Cay, ye have every right to be here. I blame ye not. In fact, I am eager for ye to see the chariot."

"The chariot?" I repeated dully. "Oh! It is completed?"

Michael stood, his arms akimbo, regarding me with wonder. "Young Cay, no one has ever called Michael MacCool a slugabed. Come, follow me."

I followed him to the lean-to I had noticed last week. Now, most of the planks for the floors removed, it had become the factorage for the most wondrous contraption I had ever laid eyes on.

Framed by strong oak, fas.h.i.+oned in the center with latticed wicker and strengthened in strategic places with forged steel, the chariot was about six feet wide, including the wheels, and it stood at least that high. From the center, like a tongue, there jutted a long, flexible pole attached to an axle. I knew the pole would be attached on each side to two horses, for it ended in a metal yoke.

The wheels were six spoked, the rims covered in wrought iron for added strength. I saw that the hubs were also metal.

I turned to Michael. "The wheels-so small-"

"Aye la.s.s, this is me own invention. The bigger the wheel, the weaker the wheel. An' the bigger it is, the heavier it is. So these are only about a foot or so high, an' spoked for added lightness. The metal hubs give it strength. What do ye think?"

"Ah, is Owen supposed to sit with his-his legs down, or spread before him?"

"Two people sit side by side, Cay, as if they sat on a bench. Ye see here? Their feet are protected by a board, an' they can sit with support for their back. An when they are tired, the back can be laid flat. They can enter and leave by the rear also."

I saw that the carriage itself-the "basket" that held the pa.s.sengers-was very lightweight, almost like the latticework of the clay-and-daub houses or the frames of Michael's currachs. At the joints, the lattice was interlaced with strong steel rings. I ran my fingers along the latticework while Michael talked. "The best part of all is the way the platform hangs free of the wheels an' the axle. If it hits a rut, the whole chariot does not jump an' dislodge the riders. "

Yes, that really was the best part. I could see, from the point of view of an ignorant observer, that this chariot would cause Owen no pain as it jumped and quivered along the rough countryside. In fact, he could ride like a very king. He could hold the reins, or Moc could be the driver.

"Michael, it is-beautiful. I can think of no better word."

"Go raibh maith agat. It tested me brain, an' the next one shall be better."

"How do you propose to remove it from this building, my friend?"

"Why d'ye think a lean-to is called a lean-to? I simply knock down one flimsy wall when we are ready to hitch up the horses."

We left the ramshackle building, and he followed me to where NimbleFoot was tethered. "Then when do you plan to leave?" I asked as we walked.

"Today an' tomorrow I show me lads how to pour gla.s.s and put in a few windows-starting with your sky window. Sunday is for church. So we leave Monday morning. I have already sent word to Owen, and I spoke with me cousin Muiredach just yesterday."

"That is only two days from now, Michael. I never expected it would be so soon-"

"The sooner gone, the sooner returned, a chara. An' the sooner your own plans can start to unfold, yes?"

"You mean, when Murdoch finds the island. If he finds the island."

"He will find it. He is a man with a purpose, undertaking a serious quest."

We stood next to my pony, and I put my hand on the pommel of the saddle. "I do not understand."