The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(80)

He managed, just, and when mounted subsequently managed to shift Liadan so she lay cradled before him with her head in the crook of one arm. Kicking his horse into movement, he was glad to see Maisie aware enough to follow.

As they went through the outer gate, Stephen heard Dane call, “Tell Ailis and her clan that the English will have Ireland. If we have to kill every last Irish native to do it.”

—

It was a ride Maisie would never remember clearly. The world itself seemed flat, as though pressed from the leaves of a book. The only thing not black or white or gray was the blood on her hands and dress and even on the ends of her long braids that had slipped over her shoulder. She knew they rode and stopped and rode again. Stephen forced bread down her throat, and cheap wine that made her sputter. At one stop he wrapped Liadan’s body in the cloak she silently offered him. Neither of them spoke a word.

Diarmid and several of his men were waiting for them three miles outside Cahir. Maisie heard the hisses of shock and kept her eyes fixed on the horizon. She would not let herself be caught by anyone else’s sorrow.

But she could not avoid hearing Stephen’s sharp voice. “Don’t touch her.”

Then she did look, where Diarmid and Stephen faced each other on horseback. The Irishman was quick enough to recognize the fanatic resolve in the Englishman’s expression and did not force the issue. To fight over Liadan’s corpse would be a final insult.

They rode in procession together. No one seemed eager to carry the news ahead of them to Cahir.

Even without being warned, Ailis was waiting for them. She must have had men watching from the walls. With the distance she could not yet be certain…she would have counted the riders…but Maisie was practically the same size as Liadan, and suddenly Maisie reached up and pulled off her hood. Let the watery sunlight catch the gleam of her white-blonde hair so Ailis would have the slightest moment of preparation…

She didn’t know why she thought that might help. There was no preparation that could matter. When they were still a hundred yards away, Ailis came running straight at Stephen. The riders pulled up and Diarmid swung down to put his arm around Ailis, which she immediately shook off. Maisie wanted to look away from her awful, stark face as Ailis realized…but she wouldn’t. The least she could do was bear witness.

This time, Stephen did not protest when Diarmid reached for Liadan. Gently, he let her down into the other man’s arms. Ailis threw herself at them both so they ended on the ground, the mother stretched over her child, the peculiarly Gaelic keening that Maisie herself had produced earlier coming now from Ailis.

One of the other men helped Maisie down. She didn’t know what to do. Stephen seemed in the same dilemma. He took a hesitant step toward Ailis and stopped.

This was a moment for clan only. Neither of them were wanted—or even noticed. So Maisie did the only thing she could think of to express her compassion. She walked away.

Without thinking, she ended in Liadan’s chamber, where she had spent so much time. It was dreadfully, devastatingly empty. Everything was just as it had been that last night—was it only the night before last?—when Dane strode into the chamber and demanded they get up and get dressed quick and quiet. Maisie stared at the bed, the crumpled linens waiting for Liadan to return, and could not bear it.

She simply sat down where she was on the floor. There was a shoulder-height chest next to her and she leaned her head against it and began making tactical calculations in her head.

It might have been an hour later, or two, or only ten minutes when she felt something cold touch her face and she blinked herself back into her body. Stephen knelt before her, washing the blood and dirt from her cheeks. Then he moved to her hands, where the blood had cracked and dried and soaked so far into her skin Maisie would carry it with her always.

That was when she began to weep.

—

After seeing to the horses—not only Dane’s, but those Diarmid and his men had ridden—Stephen did not know what to do. He could trace the rise and fall of the women’s wailing and wanted to shut his ears or run away. Barring that, he expected to be secured in the chains left empty by Dane, but it seemed even the men of Clan Kavanaugh were lost in grief for a time. He could have left then, if he’d wanted.

Finally, he remembered that there was at least one person in Cahir as alone as he was this night. He found Maisie sitting on the stone-flagged floor next to Liadan’s bed, knees hugged to her chest, still wearing the gown soaked with the child’s blood. He didn’t know what to do. Looking desperately around the chamber, he saw the washing bowl with water that had no doubt been sitting there since they’d vanished. He grabbed a piece of cloth and the bowl and set it next to Maisie on the floor. He could at least clean her face.

The moment he touched her, he realized she’d had no idea he was there. He was almost sorry to have broken the balance that had kept her quiet, for almost at once her shoulders began to shake. Helplessly, Stephen put an arm around her narrow shoulders and then the sobs began in earnest.

He could remember his mother holding Kit as he’d sobbed, sometimes in sorrow, other times in rage. Kit had always been extravagant in his emotions. Just like his mother had back then, Stephen curved over Maisie protectively and she ended half on his shoulder, half in his lap, as Liadan herself might have done. Stephen’s own throat was so tight he could hardly swallow.

When the storm had gentled a bit, he realized there were words with her tears. She kept saying something. To him. “You called me Mariota.”