Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) Read online

  Long after the torchlight flickered and died, she lay quivering beneath him while the starlight blinded her.

  ***

  Morning nudged away the veil of night. Brigid nestled deeper in the cocoon of Conor’s embrace. In the woods around her, she sensed the stragglers of the Sídh rousing from their fern-canopied beds to stagger about like servants woken too early to work. Not until the coming of Samhain three months hence would the walls grow thin enough for human and inhuman to mingle so freely. The growing weight of the wall pressed against her like a fog, muffling the wavering voices until she heard them no more.

  Above, on the hill, the ashes of the Lughnasa fires simmered and popped. A single blackbird cawed to its mate. In the distance, Brigid’s cow lowed mournfully.

  She blinked her eyes open. Conor’s chest stretched out before her, rigid muscle covered by battle-scarred skin. Her husband. In the growing light of day, she dared what she’d no sense to do last night—she let her gaze linger upon the form of the chosen one, keeping still so as not to wake the sleeping giant. He was as naked as a newborn but for the folds of cloak twisted across his loins. Any other man would look vulnerable so exposed, aye, but not Conor—broad-beamed, thick-thighed, his body rock-hard even in slumber. She’d never known the like of such a man. It was a wonder he’d not broken all her bones with his passion last night.

  Her skin grew hot at the memory. She tilted her head against the ball of his shoulder and glanced up at his face. In slumber, he wore the laziest of smiles. Brigid’s own lips twitched. In the cool light of morning, this king of kings had the look of a boy who’d outplayed all the others at hurley.

  In the distance, her cow lowed again, a broken sound—a pleading cry to be eased of the weight of her udder. There was no more hiding within this sacred circle. Carefully, she slipped out of Conor’s arms. And winced. She supposed there was no avoiding the price of pleasure. Cringing, she eased up to her knees, and then straightened. She walked gingerly to her cloak, pooled on the grass where she’d first dropped it.

  “Nay, lass.”

  His words were but a whisper. She turned to look at him as she gathered the cloak from the ground. His smoky eyes, heavy-lidded, watched her from behind the veil of his lashes. She had a suspicion that he’d been awake all along.

  “Leave the cloak, wife. I like the sight of you better without it.”

  She wound the wool around her. “You’ve gotten an eyeful already.”

  “Aye, that I did.”

  Heat flushed her face. In the rage of their passion last night, she hadn’t had a moment for shyness. Now in the light of morning she remembered that her body was thin and her breasts small, not much to look at for a king who’d undoubtedly slept with a hundred thousand softer, fuller-bodied women. But when she sidled a glance at him she saw a slow, lazy grin spread over his face.

  “There you go.” The words tumbled out of her. “Grinning as bold as a cock.”

  “It’s a strange man who wouldn’t grin on the morning after his wedding. A stranger one still, to be morose with such a woman standing naked before him.”

  “Now that we’re wed, will I have no privacy?” She fisted the slipping folds at her throat. “You’re leering at me as if I were a haunch of mutton.”

  “I’m pleased to see you up and walking about.”

  “I can’t be lying about at this hour.” She searched the flattened grass for the glint of her brooch. “There’s food to prepare and a cow to milk—”

  “There’ll be no more milking cows for the Queen of Morna.”

  The title gave her a tingling thrill. “Well then.” She found the brooch and swept it up. She jabbed the pin through the folds. “Are you offering up yourself, King Conor, to ease that poor beast’s pain?”

  “I can be bribed. Come barter your charms for the price of milking that cow.”

  “I’ll be doing no bartering today.” She swept a brazen glance over the half-naked length of him. “Of the two of us, it seems it’s I who fared the better. You’re still lying on your back like an old hound.”

  “Does this have the look of a man too tired to love you, lass?”

  Conor jerked the cloak off his loins.

  “I see you’re all puffed up with pride again.” She lifted a teasing brow. “A soul would think you’d have more dignity, a man of your age, a king, thrice-wed.”

  “Last night was my first wedding.”

  “You’ve two other wives, don’t I know it.”

  “The others don’t matter anymore.”

  A teasing rejoinder died in her throat. He was a warrior, too hard-skinned to ever utter sweet words to a woman—she knew better than ever to expect such a thing from him. This was the closest she’d ever get to a declaration of love.

  He held out his open palm. “Come here, wife.”

  Another day, another time, she might buck at the command in his voice—she was his queen, not a bondswoman to be ordered about—but now she craved his embrace. She opened her cloak like the wings of a great bird, and let it billow over them as she sank into his arms. In the end, she knew, they would both be slaves to one another.

  His fingers swept into the tangle of her hair, lifting it up, weighing it in his hands. His fingers tightened in her hair. “You have two days.”

  She lifted her head from the snug cup of his shoulder, not understanding. He slipped one of his hands between them. He’d barely parted her nether lips before she jerked at the soreness.

  He rasped his lips over hers, wiping away her wince with his kiss. “Two days to heal, no more,” he said, removing his hand. “It should be enough, for the best healer south of Cruachan. But after that, I warn you: No more reprieves.”

  She released a throaty laugh. He kissed her again, deeper, until he pulled away with a mumbled curse.

  In the distance, the cow lowed anew.

  “I must go to her now,” she said. “It’s cruel to leave her so.”

  “We’ll ride to the beast.” He rose with her and gestured to where his horse stood, head-bent, amid the mists. At her look of surprise, he added, “Aye, a horse, lass. Did you think I’d have the Queen of Morna walk into her own ring-fort the day after her wedding?”

  “Morna?”

  “It’s where we’re going after you milk that wretched cow.” Conor fetched his tunic from the ground and elbowed his way into it. “You didn’t think the king and queen would live in a hut in the midst of the woods, did you?”

  She watched Conor as he tugged on his boots and swept his cloak over his shoulder, kicking around the flattened grass in search of his brooch, wondering how he could act so calmly, when he’d just set her whole world to rights again. If they were off to Morna . . .. The hope she’d almost not dared to hold burst into bloom.

  “Da . . . my father,” she whispered. “He blessed the union, then?”

  Conor’s vision darkened. “No, lass.”

  The tender bubble which had swelled so swiftly in her chest exploded, spearing shards into her heart.

  “He denied you, Brigid, there’s no softening the truth. He wants none of you.” His eyes shot sparks like the pounding of a blacksmith’s anvil. “Damn your father to the fires of his own hell.”

  She stared blindly at the crushed reeds beneath her feet. What a fool she had been, hoping for the impossible. It seemed that nothing had changed with the passing of the years. Her father’s heart had hardened to stone instead of softening with time.

  “It’s because of the priests,” she stuttered. “They always had such power over him—”

  “Don’t blind yourself. It was your father who cast you out—no other.”

  She turned away and seized the shaft of the torch. Conor could not understand. He knew neither father nor mother. He knew not the strength of the bonds of blood. Nor had he witnessed the tears upon Da’s face—the priests flanking him like ravens—the day she and Ma were exiled from the clan. Conor would have her shut Da out, but love was not to be tamed so easily. Love bound her to b
oth men. Perhaps, someday, Conor would come to understand the futility of fighting it.

  She mocked a careless shrug as she yanked the torch out of the ground. “It’s the aged branch that’s hardest to bend, I suppose.” They would be in Morna but a short time, and then she’d be rid of the place and the man. “I’ll set my mind on Ulster, and Tara hill. No doubt I’ll find a better welcome there.”

  “You’ll find welcome enough here.”

  “I hope not to stay long enough to wear it through.” The torch furrowed a trail in the grass as she headed out of the circle of oaks. “The O’Neill will want their champion back.”

  “The O’Neill will find another champion.” He seized the torch, forcing her to spin around to face him. “This is my home. And yours. We won’t be running away from it.”

  She shook her head in disbelief. Surely he didn’t think he could bring her back to the same people who’d cast her out, to a father who still denied her, and expect her to find happiness there?

  “I am king here,” he said. “In this place I will build a clan of my own: The O’Conor. This is what I have fought for all these years.”

  Something heavy sank inside her, dragging her spirits deep into fear and foreboding. She should have known, she should have seen. Deep within this warrior’s heart hid a yearning for family. He knew it as a lust for kingship.

  “Surely there’ll be other kingdoms you’ll want to conquer—”

  “And it will be done from the ring-fort I build for you on the hill overshadowing your father’s.”

  Conor, are you blind, blind, blind to the ways of humankind? You cannot force men to stare into their own fear.

  She whispered, “I cannot live there.”

  “You are the daughter of the King of Morna. I am his over-king. You are now the queen. This is where you belong.”

  “Talk cannot turn a poisoned mind.”

  “I’ll hear no more of this, woman.” He threw back his powerful shoulders, and the expression on his face was that of a king who would get what he wished—and of a man who’d never been thwarted. “Today I bring a queen to my people.”

  Six

  Brigid kneaded the wool to coax more thread through her pinched fingers. Her wrist cracked with stiffness and cold as she rotated the spindle to turn another length around its swelling middle. The first howl of winter prowled outside the circular hut she and Conor shared within the ring-fort he’d built atop the drumlin. A gust blasted through the plugs of moss in the wattle, buffeting the fire. She shrugged deeper into her mantle and squinted over her work.

  Suddenly she started upright. The spindle clattered to the paving stones, trailing a winding, red river of wool across the floor. She stood up and rounded the carved wooden screen that separated the sleeping area from the main room.

  “Stoke the fire,” she said to the dark-haired bondswoman bent over the cauldron, who started up like a hare caught unawares by a fox. “We’ll be needing food. Fetch two of the moorhens caught this morning, and put them on to boil. Mead, also—plenty of mead. And bring some barley cakes and honey.”

  Brigid checked that the spits and ladles and other cooking utensils hung neatly on the wall, that none of her weaving or sewing lay about the floor. She toed the rushes for freshness. The bondswoman tilted her head toward the gape of the smoke-hole, her mouth slack, painstakingly figuring the time of day by the slant of the cold, gray light.

  “Don’t be counting the wattles,” she said. Couldn’t the foolish girl sense his approach? Couldn’t she feel the rumble in the earth? Even Brigid’s own pup sensed it, for he lifted his head, sniffed the air, then sprang up and nosed his way out the door. “We’ve no time for idleness. The king is returning.”

  Brigid reined in her impatience as the girl stood scratching her inner thigh, her head cocked for the sound of Conor’s approach. Brigid thought it must be like blindness to be without the Sight. For her, it was as if the grass itself stiffened to greet Conor, and yet this woman still stood, hearing nothing but the bleating of the penned sheep and the curses of the workers as they wove blackthorn bushes atop the hurtle fences which ringed the fort. Conor had been gone for six nights, battling Leinster cattle thieves on the southern border, and aye, he was not expected until the waning of the moon—but to Brigid, only a deaf person couldn’t hear him galloping across the fields toward home.

  Brigid seized two sticks from a heap against the wall and tossed them beneath the boiling cauldron. “Off to your tasks now. You can’t cook a moorhen by boiling it in your mind.”

  The girl set to work with a frown creasing her brow. Och, how the people of Morna mock their queen, Brigid thought, as she slipped behind the screen to don a clean tunic. She’d been served by a dozen bondswomen since Conor first brought her here, but the only one who had dared to remain was this girl-child, as thick-headed as a mule.

  But she wouldn’t think of that, not now. She wouldn’t think of the deafening loneliness of being an outcast in the midst of a lively village. Conor would be here soon to fill this dark place with light—to push back the stench of fear. She clutched a comb carved from the antlers of a king stag and tugged it through her hair until the tresses crackled. Six days. It was the longest he’d been away since their marriage. Already she felt her heart lighten.

  As she slipped the last copper ring on her finger, the wolfhounds in the fort began barking. Soon after a cry went up among the men.

  “The king! The king!”

  Brigid rounded the screen in time to see the bondservant splatter a long-handled spoon into the cauldron. The girl turned on her, her mouth slack, a vague crease on her brow. Brigid did not look away. It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that the Sight would come upon her unawares. She would not have Conor come thirsty and hungry into a cold house simply to halt the frightened whispers of these people.

  After a clatter of hooves, the door burst open. Conor strode in. Firelight flashed off his sword, off the gold arm-bands encasing his biceps and the thick torque around his neck. Rainwater dripped from his dark hair and ran in rivulets over the tight weave of his purple tunic. He shook himself off like a great shaggy dog, swept his hair off his face, and grinned . . . and it was as if the winter melted away under the brilliant sunshine of Beltane Day.

  In two strides he was before her, hefting her up by the hips.

  “They’ve been feeding you well, wife.” He shifted her weight in his arms and cast his gaze over her. “You’re growing as sleek as a young mare.”

  She smiled, secretly. “A mare grows lazy and fat when her stallion is away.”

  “There’s more of you to hold on to, I’m thinking.”

  “By the gods!” The wattle-woven door battered in the wake of Aidan’s entrance. “I should have known it when I saw you galloping up the hill as if you were chased by the Morrígan herself. And alone, no less, with not a man at your back! Begorra, man! Are you mad, riding through these lands unprotected?”

  Conor did not glance at his second-in-command. His smoky gaze lingered over her face, her hair, her lips. “Is there something you want, brother?”

  “A bit of dignity would be welcome.” He stomped around the fire to glare at his king. “Your sweat doesn’t have time to dry upon her skin before you’re back, with your sword up and ready again.” When Conor didn’t release her, Aidan waved his arms in a violent circle. “Have you no sense, man? Put away your plough and come into the mead hall. A king sees to his house before warming the queen’s pallet.”

  Conor waggled his brows at her, never turning his attention. “Foster-brother, has there been trouble in my absence?”

  “Nay, not a bit of it, and if you doubt it, there’s an empty stretch of mud outside that’s begging to be beaten by my boots—”

  “Then I’ll see to my king’s duties later.”

  Conor slid his hands further over the curve of her rump until his fingers pressed intimately between her buttocks. She gasped—and then managed a husky laugh when he buried his lips
in the hollow of her throat.

  “By the gods.” Aidan gestured to the half-wit bondswoman cowering against the wall. “She’ll be off with tales before you get your woman to bed, and the poets have no more need of fodder, I’ll tell you that.”

  Brigid started. She, too, had heard the songs the visiting poet had composed, rising from the mead hall in the wee hours of the morning; but there was no reason Conor must know of them, not while that poet and his attendants still lodged in the fort. Conor was too proud and too hot-tempered to suffer such insolence in his own house—and the murder of a poet was a sacrilege beyond measure.

  So she turned her face away so her husband would not see her flash Aidan a look of warning. “Must you stand there like an angry old goat whilst a man makes love to his wife?”

  Then Aidan did what men rarely dared. He thrust his shoulders back in defiance and glared straight into her eyes.

  “You won’t silence my tongue,” he said, “not while poets sing songs of scorn about my king.”

  “So the poets dare to mock me, do they?” Conor interrupted, lifting his head. “Let them. Their words cannot dull the blade of my sword. Nor cast a shadow on my triumphs.”

  Aidan took a step toward them. “I’ll tell you something for nothing, Conor—”

  “Do you think I rode my horse through a storm to be standing here dripping wet talking to you, my brother?” Conor gestured toward the door. “The men follow, with fifty head of cattle we stole back from the Leinstermen. They’ll be hungry and cold. Be off and see to your duty.” He turned back to her, his voice dropping low and husky. “And I’ll see to mine.”

  Brigid felt her cheeks burn with the anger of Aidan’s gaze, but she did not glance at him in triumph, as she knew she very well could. There was no triumph in discord between the two people who loved Conor the most.