Sing Me Home Read online

  SING ME HOME

  By

  Lisa Ann Verge

  SING ME HOME

  Ireland, 1307

  Blessed with an angel’s voice, Maura of Killeigh escapes from a convent determined to join a band of traveling players. They’ll be her protection on the roads while she searches for the parents who abandoned her at birth. But once face-to-face with the seductive, sinfully handsome vagabond who rules the troupe, Maura wonders if she wouldn’t be safer traveling alone.

  Nothing but a hanging awaits Colin MacEgan at the end of his journey, but that doesn’t stop him from welcoming the lovely Maura into his merry band of minstrels. He needs her golden voice as entry into the noble house of the man he’s oath-bound to kill.

  But strong, wild-hearted Maura is the kind of woman this jaded warrior-poet has never known—a confident dreamer who believes in happy endings. He vows to keep the songstress safe … but can he protect her from himself?

  “[Sing Me Home] is proof that people can change, one man can make a difference, and that romance novels can be funny, and lusty, and still cross into deeper territory.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “I love Ms. Verge’s style. She scatters her puzzle pieces, then fits them into the most unlikely places. This one left me soaring.”

  —Rendezvous

  “Lisa Ann Verge is one of the best medieval writers today.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  Chapter One

  Killeigh, Ireland, the Year of Our Lord 1307

  When Maura finally found the man she was looking for, he was stretched across a woman’s lap, his fingers lost in her cleavage.

  She stumbled to a full stop outside the campsite, still hidden in the trees, and tightened her grip on the basket slung across her shoulder. She felt as if she’d just come upon the sort of scene painted in the pages of the Abbess’s Bible, full of wild-eyed demons and half-dressed women and long-tongued satyrs dancing around a woodland fire.

  Stop.

  Summoning her convent-training, she muttered a quick Hail Mary and then an Our Father. When she finished, she took a breath so deep that she felt her surcoat tighten across her breasts. Certainly the great wide world and all the people in it couldn’t be as dangerous or wicked as the Abbess insisted.

  She reminded herself that these people were simply performers, just traveling minstrels. The piper was playing the same reedy lilt that he’d played this morning. Another man was sucking on a bladder of ale, but in the village that same man had performed magic tricks that delighted the children. And the person she’d come looking for—the man now reclining on a woman’s lap—she’d last seen him laughing as he wrestled with the baker’s son while another minstrel took wagers.

  She gave herself a good shake. It was too late to turn back. She hadn’t escaped the convent only to lose courage now.

  She marched forward into the campsite. Swiping her skirt away from the flames, Maura rounded the campfire and stopped in front of the wrestler and his lover. As the man turned his head on its bed of fleshy breast, she tried not to notice that he looked like the very image of lustful sloth, sprawled out on the ground like that, his shirt untied so that the light gleamed on his chest.

  He asked, “What have we here?”

  The wrestler had a husky voice, as rough as she imagined his ill-shaven cheek would be. “My name is Maura,” she said, startled by the odd thought. “I have some business with you tonight.”

  The piper’s music squealed to a stop. The juggler’s knives clattered to the ground. The wrestler stopped twiddling with his paramour’s hair.

  “Do I know you, lass?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does know you,” someone interjected. “There isn’t many an Irish flower our Colin hasn’t plucked.”

  “Aye,” another man shouted, “I’d say there isn’t a girl from here to Wexford that Colin hasn’t deflowered. Tell us, lass, should we be worried about a father or a husband waiting in the woods?”

  “I have neither father nor husband,” she said, rattled by the sudden attention. “And I’ve never seen you all before you arrived today.”

  “Leave the girl be.” The wrestler called Colin glowered at the gathering men. “Have you no eyes? This one’s coif is as white as snow.”

  Maura’s hand drifted to the ties of her linen coif, still tight under her chin, which she wore to tame, somewhat, the wild curls of her pale brown hair.

  “Ignore the ravings of these jesters,” Colin said, drawing her attention. “They make fools of good men for their living, and don’t know better when to hold their tongues.” He gazed at her through half-lidded eyes that held the flicker of flames. “Still, it must be a dangerous sort of business that would bring a young woman to our camp, alone, after dark.”

  “Not dangerous,” she said. “I want to join your troupe.”

  Amid the minstrels’ surprised muttering, the man called Colin raised his strong, black brows. Easing off his paramour’s lap, he found his feet and unfurled to his full height. She arched her neck to look up at him, which was a rare thing, for she stood a half-head taller than most of the men in the village and all the brothers in the nearby monastery. But it was more than his height that made her suddenly catch her breath. His pitch-black hair was tugged back by the ragged end of a bootlace. A single lock fell from his brow to brush his jaw. She had an odd, powerful urge to sweep it behind his ear.

  The angel Lucifer was said to be beautiful, too.

  Stop. She squeezed her eyes shut and said another silent Our Father. She promised to do two more Hail Marys before bed.

  “So,” he prompted,as little crinkles sprouted at the corners of his eyes, “you say you want to join our troupe?”

  “I do.” She hated the tremor in her voice.

  “Do you have any experience, lass?”

  The other minstrels tittered but she ignored them. “I’ve never been a traveling performer before, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Then how do you plan to earn your keep?”

  “If you’ll allow me,” she said, “I’ll show you.”

  His half-smile widened, showing a glint of teeth. He spread his hands in welcome as the minstrels crowded around.

  Maura shifted her shoulder. The leather strap of a woven basket slid down to her elbow. She thrust her hand into the narrow opening and curled her fingers around the hunk of fur hiding within. She lifted her pet into the light. Nutmeg swiped his face with his little paws as he blinked his eyes open. She pressed her cheek against his soft gray fur, murmuring nonsense as she dragged a jingling length of bells out of her sack. She slipped the opening over his head. He chirred and blinked up at her.

  “You have a performing squirrel.” Colin rubbed his bristled jaw as if to hide a smile.

  “His name is Nutmeg.”

  He’d been her pet for years now. The Lady Sabine, a laywoman at the convent, had bought the squirrel from a traveling performer, and then gifted the pet to Maura when Lady Sabine realized the squirrel was chewing away at the bedposts. The squirrel, oddly, only understood French.

  Maura placed Nutmeg on the ground, and then, palming an acorn from a food sack hanging from her belt, she lifted it to get the squirrel’s attention. When she gave the command, debout! he stretched up on his hind legs and tottered, upright, in a small circle. With another command, danse, he hopped from one back paw to the other in an awkward sort of jig. With a loop of the leash he began to chase his tail, faster and faster and faster until he was a blur of gray fur. With a final tug of the jingling leash, he crouched down, shook his head as if he were dizzy, and then rolled over to play dead.

  She waited an awkward moment for applause that didn’t come. Then she tugged Nutmeg up so he would bob his head, as if he were bowing. She c
urtsied, as well. When she looked up, the troupe was still watching … waiting.

  “He does more than dance,” she said into the thickening silence. “He can roll a small barrel and ride on my head. And he has some other talents.” She crouched down to remove Nutmeg’s leash, and then she pointed at Colin. “Nutmeg, Vas-y.”

  The squirrel raced towards Colin and clambered up the minstrel’s hose. Colin’s paramour squealed, then scuttled back as Nutmeg poked his head in the sack hanging from Colin’s belt.

  “This could be a very dangerous trick,” Colin said, grinning at the bundle moving in the sack.

  “Nutmeg, Viens-ici.”

  The squirrel popped his head out of the pocket. In a flash he climbed down Colin’s hose and scampered to Maura’s side. The squirrel deposited a copper at Maura’s feet and stared up at her with a twitching black nose.

  Maura pinched up the coin. “Good pay for Nutmeg’s performance,” she said. “I thank you for it.”

  She popped the copper in her bag and eyed the man Colin in challenge, feeling a little tremor in her belly as the handsome wrestler eyed her back. As the moments passed and he said nothing, she wondered if her sleeve-laces were untied, if the night had frizzed her hair like it usually did, if the curls were at all contained beneath the white linen of her coif.

  Then Colin’s paramour sidled up beside him. The woman pressed her breast against his arm. Maura glanced at her, noting the brazen red hair, bright eyes, dark lips, and flushed cheeks. And suddenly, in her dull brown surcoat and common little coif, she felt as colorless and plain as the birds that pecked for crumbs outside the convent’s kitchen doors.

  “Enough of this foolishness,” the woman said. “You’ve had your fun, Colin. Now tell this girl to go back to the convent where she belongs.”

  “Convent?!”

  Staccato shouts of alarm stuttered through the campsite, as if the minstrels had all been doused with holy water.

  “She’s likely to get you all hanged,” the woman continued. “If she’s found here, they’ll say you abducted a nun.”

  “She hasn’t taken vows,” Colin mused. “Too much lovely hair spilling out over her shoulders.”

  “Looks to me like a fine, warm abbess,” one of the men barked, eliciting a round of chuckles.

  “She does have the look of an angel,” Colin said, “descended among us to wash us free of sin.”

  “Huh,” Maura barked, “and thus dirty the waters of the Shannon?”

  She winced at her own words. She was supposed to be gracious and subservient. After all, she was here to ask a favor. But they stared at her like so many crows, and that made her nervous, and when she was nervous she got prickly, even when she knew better.

  But the man called Colin only laughed, a sound that sent a not-completely-unpleasant tingle shooting up her spine.

  “I recognize that laugh,” a voice bellowed from a nearby tent. “Colin, what poor girl are you leading astray now?”

  Maura turned to encounter the roundest man she’d ever seen. Waddling out of the tent, he pinched the bone of some roasted animal between his thumb and forefinger. His black-eyed gaze assessed her as he approached.

  “Arnaud, we have a lady,” Colin began, gesturing to her, “who would like to join the troupe.”

  “Sacré, if we were only blessed with as many patrons as performers, we’d be rich men.” The oversized man twisted the bone in his hand as he assessed her. “Colin will give you a warm bed, but it’s me who’ll give you a place in the troupe, if you’ve got any talent.”

  Maura turned and narrowed her gaze on Colin. When she’d seen him fighting in the village this afternoon, so tall and brawny and full of chatter, she’d just assumed he was the leader of the troupe. He had such a straight-shouldered, confident look about him. Now she glared at him in accusation, but he just gave her a half-smile and a shrug.

  “The lady,” Colin said, gesturing to Nutmeg chewing an acorn at her feet, “has a dancing squirrel.”

  Arnaud shook his head. “We don’t need any more rats in this troupe, even trained ones.”

  “I’ve earned many a coin on my own,” she lied, her heart tripping, “playing Nutmeg for the children in the village.”

  “Children don’t have English coin. Or meat or ale to barter.” That black gaze, embedded in folds of flesh, made its way up and down her figure. “You’re a pretty one. What other tricks do you know?”

  She felt her face flame to the roots of her hair, and could only hope that the glow of the campfire masked it.

  “No swiving then?” The big man sighed. “A pity. You’ve the hips for it.”

  The fat man turned around and headed back to his tent and she felt her hopes slipping away. This couldn’t be happening. Nutmeg with his bell-dances and little blue shirts had been the joy of the convent and the center of attention whenever she’d visited cottages outside the walls. She had been convinced that these players would welcome her and Nutmeg’s talents—and do it without question. And they were minstrels, not exactly the kind of people overly concerned about who they kept company with.

  Yet she was being dismissed out of hand.

  Maura’s throat tightened. What was it about her that put so many people off? It must be like a smell, she thought, like the faint scent of onions which always clung to her hands. Maybe she’d emitted this odor since birth when her own mother had abandoned her.

  “Can you dance, Maura?”

  She turned to find Colin very close, his eyes upon her. Blue eyes, she realized, as blue as the summer sky.

  “Dancing,” she said, scooping Nutmeg back into his basket, “is the work of the devil.”

  “Can you tell stories?”

  “Aye, of the saints’ lives.”

  “We don’t barter in those. Can you juggle? Tumble?”

  A flush rose up her cheeks. She couldn’t help but glance at an acrobat by the fire slinging her own ankle over her neck, all but exposing her privates.

  He persisted, “Can you sing?”

  “What matter if I could sing?” Of course she could sing. She sang every day at the offices, at the Mass. Only a common dotard couldn’t sing. “You’re not the man I have to convince,” she said, jerking her chin toward the fat man tearing the last of the meat from a bone, hesitating at the flap of his tent. “He is.”

  “Arnaud’s belly is empty, and when his belly is empty, he doesn’t think clearly.” Colin touched her chin to turn her face toward his. “If you’ve any hope of joining us, lass, you’d best lift that voice of yours in song.”

  She blinked up at him, feeling the fascination of this man shimmer over her like the wash of rainwater during a sudden storm.

  This is a terrible, terrible mistake.

  She pulled away from his blue, blue gaze, her heart and her thoughts racing. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe she could still sneak back into the convent. It was almost Compline, when all the sisters would kneel in the chapel. That was no guarantee that the novices wouldn’t be twittering by the well, or whispering whilst they slipped through the gardens, or some other nosy creature would come out of the shadows to question her as to what she was doing, sneaking back into the convent after dark. She could still return to her home and escape this handsome man who looked at her as if he could see her naked.

  But what would happen if she returned to the convent? She would take her place in the kitchens where she’d grown up, go back to making the meals for all the sisters and the laywomen in the community, be grateful as they always told her to be for having such a fine position. She could go back and continue to ignore the insistence that at her age she must choose between the veil or a marriage to someone like the butcher’s son who kept finding excuses to wander to the kitchen door with slabs of meat she hadn’t ordered, fine cuts that he’d put aside just for her.

  Then Maura looked down upon the ring on her finger, twisting it, twisting it, twisting it, until it felt as tight as her resolve.

  “Aye,” she heard herself say.
“Aye, I can sing.”

  She put Nutmeg’s basket on the ground and ignored the minstrels who circled her in curiosity. She filled her lungs with the spring air as the first bit of drizzle began to fall from the sky. She closed her eyes and imagined herself in church with its echoing rafters. A song rose in her heart—Angelus ad virginem—The Angel’s Address to the Virgin, one of her favorites. The music swelled in her head. She felt it pour through her body.

  She opened her mouth and let it out.

  Chapter Two

  “Arnaud,” Colin said, chasing the leader of the troupe across the campsite, “you cannot let that woman go.”

  “If I took on every wayward girl you had an urge to prickle,” the Gascon said, shifting a plug of pork to the other side of his cheek, “we’d leave a trail as long as Ireland itself.”

  “She’s no whore.” That had been clear enough. “You’re a hard man, Arnaud.”

  “A hard man, you say? Haven’t I enough charity here?” Arnaud waved toward Matilda Makejoy, the dancer of the troupe, sitting sideways upon a cushion by the fire, her belly swelling under the high-slung rope of her belt. “As it is we look less like minstrels and more like Mary and Joseph on the way to Bethlehem. Must we take in an abbess, as well?”

  “Admit it,” Colin said. “In all your travels, you’ve never heard a voice as fine as that.”

  Colin still heard her voice, even though she’d stopped singing, even though she’d raced back into the woods as soon as Arnaud had dismissed her. He could hear it as if the sweet tones still vibrated under the arch of the trees. Her voice had pierced through him, pure and clear and tremulous, the kind of voice that brought wild men to stillness, that made lions lie down with lambs, that made sinners see the face of God.

  “Yes, oui,” Arnaud reluctantly confessed, “she has a fine voice—a singular voice—a voice worthy of the heavens. But is she to sing like that in an alehouse? She’ll leave our patrons with no stomach for Maguire’s riddles or the twins’ tumbling.”

  “I’ll teach her love songs.”

  “You’ll teach her love, I’ve no doubt of that, but a woman can’t sing with her quim.”