The Maiden of Ireland

She rushed down the long length of the hall, past the women at their spinning, past her father, past a group of children playing at hoodman blind. Not one of them, she knew, felt the pounding sense of trepidation that hammered in her chest.

She felt it for them as she always had. They never feared news from Galway, even in these dangerous times. In every sense save the formal one she was the MacBride, chieftain of the sept, and she wore their fears like a postulant wears a hair shirt.

A fast ride and a sharp wind had whipped up color in Curran Healy’s already swarthy face. He swung down from his tall, muscular pony and bowed slightly to Caitlin.

“What news, Curran?” she asked.

“I’ve been to the docks,” Curran said in a strained tone. He was but fourteen and lived in dread of his voice breaking.

“Devil admire you, Curran Healy, I told you never to stray to the docks of Galway. Why, if a healthy lad like you fell into the hands of the English, they’d geld you like a spring foal.”

He shuddered. “I swear not a soul marked my passing. I saw merchants—”

“Spanish ones?” she asked on a rush of air. Anticipation thrummed through her so sharply that it hurt. Months, it had been, since she had heard from him...

“English.” He rummaged in his satchel. “My lady, and the great God forgive the sin upon my head, but I stole this.”

She snatched the sealed parchment from his hand. “This is a bonded letter.” She whacked the youth on the chest with the packet. “Great is the luck that is on you, Curran Healy, for I should have you flogged for endangering yourself.”

He pulled at the pale sprouts of hair growing on his chin. “Ah, my lady, sure there’s never been a flogging at Clonmuir.”

Defeated by his logic and her own curiosity, Caitlin opened the letter. “It’s from Captain Titus Hammersmith to...” She bit her lip, then spoke the hated name. “To Oliver Cromwell.”

“What’s it say, my lady? I don’t read English.”

She scanned the letter. On feet of ice, apprehension tiptoed up her spine. I shall extend every courtesy to your envoy who is coming to solve this great matter...The covenant of this mean tribe of Irish is with Death and Hell! By the grace of God and with the help of this excellent secret weapon, the Fianna shall be as dust beneath the bootheel of righteousness...

“What’s an envoy?” asked Curran.

Fear tugged at her stomach. She forced a smile. “It’s something like a toad.”

“Can’t be. Legend is, that if you bring a snake or toad to Ireland by ship, the creature will flop over and die.”

“No doubt Cromwell’s toad will do just that.”

“And if he—it—doesn’t?”

She shook back her heavy mane of hair. There had not been time to plait it this morning. There was never time to behave like a lady. “Then the Fianna will have to ride again.”

“What of this talk of a secret weapon?”

She laughed harshly. “And who—or what—on this blessed earth could possibly defeat the Fianna? We’ll see that happen when the snakes return to Ireland!”

Two (#ulink_0dbaf65d-bda6-5d77-a04b-83adf14cafda)

“You’re one lucky man,” said a cultured, nasal voice. Very proper. Oxford or Cambridge. The clerics at Douai would be surprised to know St. Peter was an Englishman.

Wesley tried to lift his eyelids. Tried again. Failed. Exasperated, he used his fingers to pry them open. Blue sky and billowy clouds. Dull white wings stretched against the wind. Had he somehow escaped Satan’s horseman, after all?

“What’s that?” His voice rasped from a throat scoured raw by the hangman’s noose.

“I said,” came St. Peter’s voice, “you’re a lucky man.”

Wesley frowned. Why was St. Peter talking like a Gray’s Inn barrister? A cool shadow passed over him. He blinked, and the shape came into focus. A high-collared cloak, not an angel’s robes. A face he recognized, and it wasn’t the face of St. Peter.

“God’s blood!” he said. “John Thurloe! Are you dead, too?”

“I wasn’t the last time I checked.”

Wesley propped his elbows against hard wood and struggled to rise. Pain? No, pain couldn’t follow him into the light, where the sky shone blue and distant and his heart beat vibrantly in his chest. “By God, I used to hate you, sir, but now you’re as welcome as the springtime.”

Wesley heard a creaking sound, the groan of thick rope straining against old wood. Canvas luffing in the wind.

“Jesus Christ, I’m on a ship!” said Wesley.

Thurloe bent his legs to absorb a swell that rolled the narrow deck. “You must keep your popish confessor busy, priest, with all the swearing you do.”

The sin was minor compared to others Wesley had committed. “Last I remember, I was swinging from Tyburn Tree.” He touched his stomach and chest through the shirt he wore. The executioner’s sword hadn’t so much as split a hair.

Thurloe’s features pinched into a frown. “And your various parts would be spiked on Tower Gate and London Bridge if not for the tender mercies of myself and our Lord Protector.”

The cobwebs began lifting from Wesley’s mind. He remembered himself moving, as if he were galloping toward an eternity of regrets, of half-finished business. The terrible journey had taken him past the fair-haired child he had left behind, past words he should have said, past a crown he had tried to defend.

He asked, “Cromwell arranged a pardon?”

“A stay of execution.”

A memory flashed through Wesley’s mind: the hooded giant, the weeping masses, the jolt of the cart. His feet kicking at empty air, the wheel of green leaves and blue sky overhead, the burn of the rope around his neck.

After that, a muddle of pain. His body dragged to the block, the black hood looming into view, a blade glittering against the clear sky, steel slicing toward his bare flesh.

Then a shout: Hold thy stroke!

An ugly blur followed: horses’ sweaty hides, soldiers’ buff livery, clenched fists and muttered curses. Questions, protests, speculation spoken over his limp body. A dark robed man arguing with the sheriff at Tyburn.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked Thurloe. “You stopped the execution.”

“I did.”

“I can’t say I’m fond of your timing. You might have come earlier.” Wesley cocked an eyebrow at Thurloe. The wind plucked at his wispy brown hair arranged in a tonsure around the balding top of the man’s head. “Just a stay?”

“That will depend on you, priest. Or should I say Hawkins?”

Damn. “Who’s Hawkins?” he asked.

“Don’t be lame, sir. Several of the ladies present called you Wesley. Lucky for you, I quickly deduced the truth.” Thurloe spun in a shimmer of dark velvet and brass buttons. He set a hat on his head. Wesley recognized the tipped brim fastened with a palm-sized brooch. “Come with me.”

Wesley dragged himself up on wobbly legs. The ship strained at her cables. His vision swam, then resolved into a view of a narrow deck and an aftercastle rising beyond a web of rigging.