The Maiden of Ireland

“Of course. Your mother—St. Brigid the holy woman keep her soul—always planned the grandest of feasts. Now that she’s gone, ’twould be a sad and cruel thing for us to do less.”

“Daida, since the English burned our fishing fleet, we can barely feed our own folk. How can we—”

“Ach, musha, you worry too much. We be under the sacred wing of providence. We’ll feast on fresh meat, see if we don’t.”

Suspicion stung her. “What do you mean?”

He spread his arms in a grandiloquent gesture. “I’ve had Kermit slaughter that young bullock.”

Caitlin pressed her fists to her belly to keep her temper in check. “Oh, Daida, no! We needed that bullock for Magheen’s dowry. Logan won’t have her back without it.”

Seamus dropped his hands to his sides. “But won’t it be grand, the sweet taste of it and all our neighbors and kin toasting the MacBride. Think of it, Cait—”

“That’s just it, Daida,” Caitlin cut in. She had been raised from the cradle to honor her sire, but she had learned on her own to speak her mind. “You never think.”

She stalked off toward the stables. It was wicked to speak so to her father but she couldn’t help herself, any more than she could quell the impulse to run free along the storm-swept shores.

In the dim fieldstone stable, the black stallion waited in anticipation, muscles gleaming, nostrils flaring. Sunlight bathed his hide in gold as if he had been singled out by the gods to ascend to the heavens on wings of mist.

Caitlin walked between the stalls past the large strong-limbed ponies. For generations untold, Connemara horses had borne heroes to victory. But the stallion was different.

His velvet lips blew a greeting to her.

He had no name. He was as wild and free as the kestrels that combed the clouds over the mountains.

Black he was, the color of midnight, the shade of eternity, as beautifully formed as nature could manage.

“There, a stor,” Caitlin crooned, slipping a soft braided bridle over his ears. She used neither bit nor saddle. When she mounted him they became one mind, one soul, one will. Her bare legs against his bare hide formed a pagan bond of two spirits which, though as different as human and beast, melded into unity. The black needed no more than a touch of her heel to urge him out of the stable and across the rock-strewn fields.

The smells of the sea and of dulse weed enveloped her; the scent of greening fields should have reassured her, but didn’t. The Roundheads could, at any moment, swoop down and destroy the tender plants and subject Clonmuir to a starving winter.

Caitlin rode west, into the shattering colors of the sunset, toward the surging iron-gray sea. She let her hair fly loose, free as the mane of the black, free as the mist in a windstorm.

Her troubles lay behind her, an enemy she had left in her dust. Her swift rides renewed her spirit, made her feel capable of confronting and besting any problem that arose. So Seamus had wasted the bullock. She had faced troubles before. Despite the danger, she knew where she could get another.

The black’s gallop gave her the sensation of flying: a lifting glide that made the air sing past her ears. She abandoned thought and surrendered to the pulse of hooves, the rush of wind through her hair, the tang of salt on her lips.

They reached the coast where cliffs reared above the battering sea. Riding the wind, the black sailed over a ravine, then tucked his forelegs in a daring descent that made Caitlin laugh out loud.

On the damp sandy beach, she gave him his head. He arched his neck and leapt with breath-stealing abandon. He crashed through the surf, a black bolt of living thunder, full of the rhythm and mystery of Connemara’s wild, god-hewn coast.

The English claimed the coast from the shore to three miles deep. Caitlin scoffed at the notion. This land belonged to forces no human could claim.

The sun had sunk lower when the black slowed to a walk. Deep bronze rays winked like coins upon the water.

Caitlin dropped to the sand, the chill surf surging around her ankles. She patted the stallion’s flank. “Off you go,” she said. “Come back when I whistle.”

His tail high, the horse trotted down the strand. Tears stung her eyes at the sheer beauty of him. He was as full of magic as the distant lands of Araby, as handsome and noble as the man who had given him to Caitlin, the man who claimed her heart.

Alonso Rubio.

Come back to me, Alonso, she thought. I need you now.

“Sure there is a way, you know,” said a sprightly voice, “to summon your true love.”

Caitlin spun around, her gaze darting in search of the speaker. A chuckle, as light as the land breezes, drew her to a spill of rocks that circled a tangled, forgotten garden. Once this had been a place of retreat for the lord and lady of Clonmuir, a place of welcome for travelers from the sea. But time and neglect had toppled the rotunda where her parents had once sat and gazed out at the endless horizon.

“Tom Gandy,” she said. “Blast you, Tom, where are you?” Tidal pools were reclaiming the garden, and she stepped around these, lifting the hem of her kirtle. Crab-infested seaweed draped the stone blocks, and gorse bushes grew in the cracks.

A brown cap with a curling feather bobbed behind a large boulder. A grinning, leather-skinned face appeared, followed by a thick, squat body.

Glaring, she said, “You’re a sneak and a busybody, Tom Gandy. Cromwell would have you burned as a witch if you were worth the kindling.”

“No doubt he’d be after doing that if he could lay hands on me.” Tom climbed over the rocks and dropped beside a clump of briars near Caitlin. Even with the lofty feather, his head barely cleared her waist. Like the rest of him, his fingers were stumpy and clumsy looking, but he reached out and retied her straggling apron strings with the grace of a lady’s maid.

“Ah, but it’s a sight you are, Caitlin MacBride. Ugly as a Puritan. When was the last time you took a comb to that hair?”

“That’s my business.” She tossed her head. “Yours is as steward of Clonmuir, and you’d best see to your duties.”

“What duties?”

“Finding another bullock for Logan MacBride, to start with.”

“We know where to find plenty of healthy cattle, don’t we?”

She ignored the suggestion. “Perhaps I’ll banish you to Spain. I’ve heard King Philip employs dwarves as playthings for his children.”

“Then we’d both be playthings for Spaniards,” he observed, shaking his head. “Twenty-two years old and still not married.”

“You know why,” she said. “Though I still don’t know how you found out about Alonso’s pledge.”

“Pledge! You little oinseach—” He tilted his head back to gaze up into her face. “A hot young man’s promise has as much substance as the dew in summer. But we’re not here to discuss that. You wish for your true love—”

“How do you know what I wish?”

“—and I’m here to tell you a way to summon him.”

Caitlin regarded the little fellow warily. Some swore Tom Gandy was endowed with fairy powers. But not Caitlin. She had seen him bleed when he scratched his finger on a thorn; she had nursed him when he lay weak with a cough. He was, despite his extraordinary appearance, as human as she. If he possessed any gift, it was only the ordinary sort of magic that allowed him to come and go soundlessly and unexpectedly; his powers were those of a wise and wonderful mind that allowed him to see into people’s hearts as a soothsayer sees into a crystal.

“And how might that be?” she asked teasingly. “It’s the eve of a holiday. Have you a pagan sacrifice in mind?”

“Horror and curses on you, girleen, ’tis much simpler than that. And all you’ll have to sacrifice is... Well, you’ll find that out for yourself.” Tom swept off his hat and bobbed a bow. “Sure I’ve been furrowing my poor brain with great plows of thought, and I’ve found the answer. You simply pluck a rose at the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.”

“Pluck a rose, indeed!” She swept her arm around the tangled garden. “And where would I be finding a rose in this mess?”

A mysterious smile curved his lips. “You’ll find what you need in your heart, Caitlin MacBride.”

She rolled her eyes heavenward and spoke to the painted sky. “Such nonsense as that...” She looked down again, and her words trailed off. She stood alone in the bramble-choked garden. Without a sound, without a trace, Tom had vanished. A few moments later she saw the stallion vault back up to the cliffs, enticed back to the stables for a measure of fodder from Tom.