He paid close attention as Caitlin introduced some of the others, rattling off names like a general calling roll. Liam the smith, as wide and thick as an evergreen oak; young Curran Healy whose eyes spoke the hunger of a boy longing to be treated as a man; a surly villager called Mudge; and a host of others united in their loyalty to Clonmuir and their suspicion of their English visitor. In addition, there were wayfaring families who huddled around the fire and ate with the avid concentration of those who had known the ache of hunger.
Wesley told them he was a deserter from Titus Hammersmith’s Roundhead army.
The men of Clonmuir told him they were fishermen and farmers, shepherds and sawyers.
Wesley thought they were lying.
They thought he was lying.
“Our visitor’s got a thirst on him,” Conn O’Donnell announced with a wolfish grin.
To Wesley’s surprise and pleasure, it was Caitlin herself who held out a mug. Their fingers brushed as he took it. The contact sent a shock of heat through him. He sought her eyes to see if she, too, had felt the quick fire.
Her momentary look of confusion told him she had. She drew her hand away, tossing her head as if to shake away the spell. “Drink your poteen, Mr. Hawkins.”
He sniffed suspiciously at the contents of the mug. “Poteen, is it?”
Taking a mug of her own, she dropped to the bench beside him. An almost-smile flirted with her lips. “It’s not usually fatal to drink the poteen.”
Still Wesley hesitated. “What’s it made of?”
“’Tisn’t polite to be asking,” she retorted, taking a slow sip from her cup. Her lips came away moist and shiny. “Just barley roasted over slow-burning peat and distilled. Savor it well, Mr. Hawkins, for you English have burned the barley fields since we brewed this last batch of courage.”
Goaded by the reminder and by the gleam in her eyes, Wesley lifted his mug and drank deeply.
The liquid shot down his gullet and exploded in his gut. A fire roared over the path the poteen had taken. Tears sizzled in his eyes. An army of leprechauns bearing torches paraded through his veins. “Barley, you say?” he rasped.
“Aye.” All innocence, Caitlin took a careful second sip. “Also pig meal, treacle and a bit of soap to give it body.”
Wesley quickly learned the art of judicious sipping. Avoiding questions, he took supper in the hall, then retired with a cup of tame ale to the hearth. The meal of stale bread and something gray and soupy he dared not inquire about cavorted with the poteen in his stomach. He thought longingly of the sumptuous suppers he had enjoyed with England’s underground Catholics and royalists. White-skinned ladies had delighted in teaching Laura her table manners. His former life had been fraught with danger, but he had known occasional comforts.
As the men spoke of an upcoming feast, Wesley expected Caitlin to withdraw to the women’s corner. But she stayed at the central hearth, staring from time to time into the glowing heart of the turf fire as if she saw something there that no one else could see. Wesley wondered what visions lurked behind those fierce, sad eyes. Someday he would ask her.
* * *
“What are you looking at, seonin?” asked Rory. He and Wesley stood in a thatch-roofed outbuilding at Clonmuir. Rory held a broken cartwheel in one hand and a vise in the other.
“Your arm,” said Wesley, eyeing the intimidating bulge of muscle beneath Rory’s tan hide. Lord, they grew men big and tough in these Irish parts. He wore a broad silver armlet engraved with Celtic knots. From elbow to shoulder ran a long, shiny scar. “How did you hurt yourself?”
Rory tried to work a stave around the wheel. The iron hoop slipped. Patiently he set it back in place. “I cut it while sharpening a plowshare.”
And my mother’s the Holy Roman Empress, thought Wesley, propping his elbow on a stone jutting from the rough wall. It was a sword cut if he’d ever seen one, and he had seen plenty, some on his own body. He must remember to ask Titus Hammersmith if he recalled wounding one of the warriors of the Fianna.
Rory Breslin was certainly big enough to make a formidable fighting man. But Wesley doubted he could be their fabled leader. Though strong as a bullock, Rory was also as simple as one of the shaggy beasts that used to graze over the hills of Ireland. He didn’t possess the guile to lead men into battle and out so successfully, time and time again.
“Why don’t you drive a nail into the stave to hold it while you secure the other end?” Wesley suggested.
Rory’s thick eyebrows lifted eloquently. “I’ll not be needing your English advice.”
“I wonder,” Wesley said carefully, “why you and the men aren’t out fishing. It appears Clonmuir could use the food.”
“Because the Sassenach burned our fleet,” Rory snapped. “Every vessel’s gone save a curragh and the leaky hooker.”
Hearing the pain in the big man’s voice, Wesley flinched. “I don’t hold with such practices.”
Rory gave a dissatisfied grunt and went back to his work.
“Why aren’t you at prayers with the rest of them?” Wesley inquired.
“You ask a lot of questions, English.”
“Very well, I’ll leave you to your chores.” Wesley stepped toward the door.
“Wait a minute. I’m supposed to be—” Rory broke off.
“Keeping an eye on me,” Wesley said with a breezy grin. “Don’t blame you a bit, my friend. Seems you’ve ample cause to distrust an Englishman.” He gazed out the doorway. Beyond the walls lay the tiny village of thatched huts clustered shoulder-to-shoulder around the church, bleached white by the wind. Behind them the land rose up, hills scored by deep clefts and clad in budding heather.
No one had invited Wesley to prayers. They assumed that he, like most Englishmen, protested the Catholic faith.
They had no priest to sing mass. He wanted to ask where the cleric had gone, but wasn’t certain they knew. Admitting he was Catholic and had studied at Douai would have wrung some sympathy from the Irish, but Wesley held silent. Something sinister was happening to the priests of Ireland; all he needed was an overzealous bounty hunter after him.
The church bell clanged with the dissonance of aged iron. A few minutes later, Caitlin MacBride and her entourage streamed up the road toward the stronghold.
The sight of her struck Wesley with a fresh bolt of yearning. His hand gripped the door frame, and his eyes devoured her. She wore a clean kirtle and apron. Her loose blouse and skirt molded a form similar to those he had heard described in the confessions of notorious skirt chasers. Suddenly he felt every minute of his three years of self-imposed celibacy.
She walked beside an exceedingly pretty girl with sleek blond hair and pale skin. He remembered her from the night before; she had been sulking in the women’s corner.
“Who is that with Caitlin?” he asked Rory.
“’Tis Magheen, Caitlin’s younger sister.”
“So there are two MacBride sisters.”
“Magheen’s not a MacBride any longer. She wed not long ago.” Rory scowled in disapproval. “She came back home because Caitlin failed to make good on the dowry.”
Wesley eyed the voluptuous younger sister, a blooming Irish rose who lacked the savage appeal of Caitlin. “What man would turn such a beauty out?”
“You’ll see.” Rory returned to his chore.
And Wesley did see, later, at the feast. People swarmed to Clonmuir from the countryside. They came on foot or crammed into carts, or by sea in pucans and curraghs—large, loud families who brayed greetings to one