CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Tugging a plain tunic over her head, Caitlin hurried into the hall. The women sat around the table breaking their fast with Brocach beef and small beer.
“Where is Wesley?” she asked.
Aileen Breslin gave her a motherly smile. “This be the first morning you’ve even thought to ask about your husband. I’m after thinking it’s about time. Praise the blessed saints, both the daughters of Clonmuir are happily wed.”
A blush stole to Caitlin’s cheeks but the sensation pleasured her, for the warmth echoed the splendor she had felt in the dark moments of the night, when Wesley had held her close and whispered that he loved her.
“Well? Have you seen him?”
The women looked at one another and shrugged. Caitlin frowned. “Then where are the others?”
“Sure they’ve all gone off to fetch back the island stallions for the breeding,” said Aileen.
Caitlin pursed her lips. She had always enjoyed taking part in the annual rite. Each spring, they swam Connemara ponies to a high green island for grazing on the rich salt grass. Later, they brought the stallions back to breed with the mares. The process was exciting and dangerous, and Caitlin loved it. Yet after last night nothing could dim her pleasure in simply being alive. “Even Daida?” she asked.
Aileen nodded. “Aye, even himself.”
Caitlin wandered out into the yard to check the weather. A fine warm rain misted her face. Feeling a presence beside her, she saw that Brigid had joined her.
Caitlin smiled. “Soft day,” she remarked.
“Aye.” Brigid chewed her lip. “My lady?”
“Yes, Brigid?”
The girl stabbed her bare toe into the damp ground. “You know how I’m always wont to be sleeping in the loft over the stables?”
“Aye, you’ve a fine affection for the ponies. You put me in mind of myself when I was young.”
“Well, my lady, just before dawn I did be hearing something that wasn’t meant for my ears.”
Caitlin smoothed back the girl’s glossy black hair. “And what might that be, my girleen?”
Brigid took a deep breath. “Well, ’twas your husband and Rory talking together. They argued some. Your man didn’t want you taking part in the swimming of the horses today.”
A cool shadow passed over Caitlin’s heart but she laughed, discounting the premonition. “Sure he’s playing the typical husband. Much too protective. I shall set him right when he returns.”
Brigid’s thin shoulders relaxed. “Aye, my lady, I’ve no doubt you will.”
Just then, Logan Rafferty galloped through the gate. A wrathful expression darkened his face.
Caitlin ran to meet him. “Logan, what’s wrong? Is it Magheen, or—”
He waved a hand to silence her. A purse of coins jingled at his belt. “Magheen’s fine, and the fright of Brocach for her biting tongue.”
Caitlin cast her eyes down, thinking of the cattle raid. “Then what is it?”
“Where’s your husband?”
His taunting tone touched off a shiver of nervousness. “He and the men are off collecting the island stallions.”
Logan tossed his large head, his eyes shining and his hair an ebony mane. “I do think myself that your husband has betrayed you.”
As Logan explained his suspicions, the shadow over Caitlin’s heart hardened to black ice.
* * *
“You’re sure this will work?” Rory, Wesley, and the men of Clonmuir climbed over a spill of rocks at the edge of the island.
“No.” Grim apprehension pervaded Wesley, and he forgot the aching burn of his muscles. He had given himself no time to recover from the initiation, and still less time to enjoy the new sense of peace he had found with Caitlin. “We could lose the stallions and our bloody lives as well.”
Rory scratched his thick red beard. “Then why gamble?”
For Laura, thought Wesley with a lump in his throat. Fighting to hide his gnawing sense of desperation, he scowled. “Because we have the chance to take Hammersmith prisoner and acquire an English ship as well.”
“We should’ve brought Caitlin into this,” Rory grumbled. “She knows the ways of the Sassenach.”
“She’s also my daughter, and a hothead where the Roundheads are concerned.” Seamus MacBride drew himself up to his full height. “I agree with Wesley. She’s better off not knowing until the deed is done.”
The men squatted in a circle around Wesley to review the plan. He sketched an outline of the island in the dirt. “The frigate will anchor here, where the cove waters are deepest. They’ll lower a ramp to bring the horses into the hold. We’ll swim the horses out to the ramp and drive them aboard.”
He glanced up, studied the circle of rough masculine faces—the faces of men he longed to hear call him friend. Rory touched the hand ax strapped to his thigh. Liam the smith flexed his thick right arm, which Wesley had broken in battle. In his silent way, Liam seemed to offer forgiveness. Conn and Tom busied themselves with inspecting the blades of their daggers. Father Tully and Seamus held their spiked steel maces with obvious distaste. Curran laboriously counted out the round stones he had collected for his sling.
He’s only a lad, Wesley thought. Misgivings bored deeper and deeper into his spirits.
“And after the boarding?” Rory prompted, jabbing Wesley in the ribs.
“After that, we’ll have only our speed and our fighting skills to rely on.”
“Who’ll be after nabbing Hammersmith?” asked Tom.
“I will.” Wesley touched the knife tucked into his belt. “The rest of you will subdue his men—the soldiers first, for they’ll put up a fight. As for the sailors, they’d sooner take our bribes than our steel.”
A fierce smile slashed through Rory’s beard. “’Twill be high sport, nudging all those tight-pants bastards overboard.”
An answering grin appeared on Wesley’s face. “And then we shall sail for Clonmuir with our own horses in the frigate.” And Hammersmith as his bargaining chip. A prisoner to trade for Laura.
Anticipation of seeing Caitlin’s face warmed his earlier sense of dread. Soon there would be no more secrets, no more guilt. What a prize he would bring her.
* * *
Caitlin prayed she would not be too late. The swift black stallion, galloping with breath-stealing speed along the beaten road to Galway, assured her she would be on time.
The haziest of plans occupied her thoughts, and a cache of gold provided by the most unlikely of sources weighted her pocket. She almost smiled, remembering Logan’s downcast eyes, his clenched fist as he held out the heavy purse and said, “Magheen has convinced me. This is long overdue.”
Caitlin would buy or steal a dory and row out to the frigate. Then she would set fire to the ship and pray to God she escaped before the Roundheads detected her.
She had scuttled Commonwealth ships in the past. But the Fianna had always been there to help her. Now they were busy helping Wesley.
Helping him hand over Clonmuir horses to her sworn enemy.
Why?
Logan had not been able to help her puzzle that out. Wesley must hold some threat over their heads, something to do with her. Some stitched-up tale; she had let herself forget what a smooth liar he was. Why else would her own men betray her?
Her mind shied like a skittish yearling from thoughts of the night before. She could not bear to remember how completely she had surrendered to Wesley—heart and mind, body and soul. In the arms of her enemy she had found rapture; she had whispered that she loved him. It was unthinkable. She should have learned her lesson from Alonso’s treachery.
Sweating in the armor she wore beneath her surcoat, she stopped at the Claddagh, a fishing village at the outskirts of the city. A family watched her fearfully from the doorway of a thatched stone house. Living in the shadow of an English-held town had dampened the natural hospitality of the Irish.
Speaking in Irish, she held out a gold coin and said, “I need to board my horse.”
An elderly man, his face bearing the weather-beaten stamp of the fishing trade, edged out into the yard, snatched her coin, and gaped at the amount.
“I’ll give you this much again when I return.” Caitlin pressed her palm to the stallion’s damp neck, then handed the reins to the fisherman.
The horse bridled, his rolled-back eyes glaring at the stranger. The man took a cautious step back.
“If I don’t return, take him to Castle Clonmuir—for another reward, of course. The girl called Brigid will see to it.”
She sent a last look at the black, then walked the rest of the way to Galway. A short time and several silver shillings later, she brought her curragh alongside the frigate in Galway Bay. With the hood of her tunic concealing her hair and face, she prayed that she resembled a lone fisherman.
She had just lit the first bog pine torch when she heard a thumping sound. A grappling hook snagged the hull of the curragh, tearing into the leather as two sailors pulled the line taut.
With the sharp taste of fear in her mouth, Caitlin sawed at the thick rope with her knife. But within seconds, a swarm of Roundheads had descended, dragging her up a rope ladder and depositing her on the deck of the frigate.
Titus Hammersmith came running. His hand shot out and captured her arm, his thick fingers biting into her flesh. She tried to wrench away, and her hood fell back.
“Well, well,” he said, relishing every word, “’tis young Caitlin of Clonmuir come for a visit.”
* * *
“He’s taking a long time with the anchoring,” whispered a voice beside Wesley.
“Shut your trap, Tom,” snapped Rory. “Noise carries across water.”
Wesley gripped his teeth. He heard the grunting of the stallions tethered at the shore. Half wild from their freedom on the island, the horses had made the capture an exhausting affair.
His hands rode at his hips, his fingers toying with his hidden knife. “Make sure your weapons are concealed,” he reminded the men. “If we rouse their suspicions, things will go ill with us.”
Rory shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Faith, but I don’t like the feel of this mace near my tender parts.”
Tom Gandy rotated his shoulders, wincing at the tightness of the leather straps that bound his crossbow to his back.
With a grinding of heavy chains, the ramp of the frigate lowered into the water.
And then, resplendent in his Roundhead livery and flanked by two armed guards, Titus Hammersmith appeared at the top rail. The Roundhead’s glorious curls bobbed in the orange light of the sunset. Triumph wreathed his cruel, handsome face.
The urge to attack leapt up in Wesley. He forced himself to wave calmly.
“Well done, Mr. Hawkins,” called Hammersmith, eyeing the skittish horses. “I knew you’d come through for the Commonwealth.”
“My pleasure.” Wesley forced a grin.
Hammersmith’s gaze raked the gathering of Irishmen. “So many of you,” he remarked.
Wesley shrugged. “These itinerant Irish aren’t as efficient as the Fianna. It’ll take the lot of us to swim the horses out.”
“Carry on, then,” said Hammersmith.
Each Irishman mounted, cursing at the nipping and bucking of the half-wild stallions. They took the bridles of the others and waded the horses until the water deepened and they were swimming. The chill Atlantic swirled around Wesley, but he ignored the discomfort and set his sights on reaching the ramp.
His horse’s hooves thumped against the submerged portion of the ramp; then the animal lurched clumsily up the wide, notched incline. The smells of salt water and horse pervaded the air. With water streaming from his chest to his feet, Wesley dismounted and hauled on the tethers of the animals he led.
Soldiers waited to stable the horses in the hold. With a vicious snapping of teeth, a burr-infested skewbald shooed back the nearest Englishman.
“They have spirit.” Wesley reached for Gandy’s hands to help the small man up the ramp. “It’s from being in the wild all spring. ’Tis best you hood them for the stabling.”
Cursing vividly, the soldiers called for rags to bind the eyes of the unwieldy horses. Each moment was an agony as Wesley helped bring the rest of the animals aboard. Rory came last, struggling up the ramp while the chains groaned ominously under the weight of the warrior and three horses.
Their eyes met; Wesley gave the slightest of nods. Rory drew a Spanish stiletto from his belt and jabbed the slender blade into the rump of the last horse.
An equine scream ripped through the air. The horse’s panic infected the others, and within seconds, the hold rocked with terrified animals and cursing soldiers.
Ducking past a shrieking stallion, Wesley mounted a series of ladders to the top deck where Hammersmith stood.
The Roundhead captain turned at the sound of Wesley’s squishing footfalls. A knowing gleam lit his eyes.
The eyes of a chess player about to say checkmate.
A cold finger of apprehension caressed Wesley’s spine. Ignoring it, he lunged. Swift as lightning, his arm shot out and crooked itself across Hammersmith’s windpipe.
A clutch of soldiers ran forward. With a lurch of his stomach, Wesley recognized Edmund Ladyman.
“Not another step closer,” Wesley snapped out, “or your commander waters the deck with his blood.”
Swords drawn, the guards stood still.
With a gasp of shock and an oath of rage, Hammersmith butted his elbow into Wesley’s ribs. Wesley pressed the edge of his knife to Hammersmith’s throat, just above the plate gorget. The very place where the rope of Tyburn had once burned Wesley.
“There now,” he said with quiet finality. “I’ll have none of that.”
Hammersmith held himself motionless. “I suppose we should hear what Mr. Hawkins wants.” He spoke with admirable composure, but tiny vibrations of fear thrummed in his voice.
Aware of his captive’s strong body, Wesley held fast with a grip of steel. “I want you to follow some simple instructions, Captain. First, evacuate the ship. And then pray to God I don’t kill you as my friends and I sail off with our horses.”
“Sail off? You’d abandon us on this island?”
“Your men, not you. The men will soon become as wild and rangy as the horses. It might do the comfort-loving bastards some good. But you, my friend, are coming to Clonmuir with me, and you’ll stay there until Cromwell meets my demands.”
As stiff as a stone column, Hammersmith asked, “Why? For God’s sake, Hawkins, you’re an Englishman.”
“No.” Wesley raised his voice over the thumping hooves and cursing men. The truth flamed in his soul. “I am not Irish by birth, but by conviction.”
Hammersmith motioned to the guards with his eyes. “You know what to do.”
The soldiers hurried off. Moments later, they reappeared. Ladyman held a loaded musket.
The other man held Caitlin.
Biting blue oaths streamed from her as she struggled. The evening wind whipped the tawny banner of her hair. Ladyman aimed the musket at her head.
“My God.” Wesley blinked, then shook his head as if to banish the vision. The deck listed from the force of a swell.
Hammersmith gave a tight smile. “Now, about your knife…”
Wesley dropped the weapon. A dizzying blur of action wheeled around him. With bellows of rage, a tide of angry Irishmen came roaring up from the hold.
Hammersmith pivoted, slicing the air with his sword. Wesley ducked, feeling the wind on the back of his neck.
Ladyman’s musket went off. A cloud of yellowish smoke enveloped Caitlin.
English and Irish filled the deck. The gut-deep explosions of muskets mingled with roars of pain and the clash of steel. Moving through a fog of rage and sulphur smoke, Wesley found Tom Gandy’s loaded crossbow on the deck. Gandy was nowhere in sight.
An ax in one hand and a hammer in the other, Rory fought two Englishmen on the ladder between decks. A musket ball slammed into him with a wet slapping sound.
Out of his mind with fear, Wesley raced toward the bow where he had last seen Caitlin.
A shout stopped him. Hammersmith appeared at the rail on the high afterdeck.
Cold to the very heart of him and aware that all was lost—Caitlin, Laura, life itself—Wesley took aim with the crossbow.
* * *
Choking and half blinded by the smoke of musket fire, Caitlin twisted in the arms of her captor. He laughed and squeezed her breasts. He was used to women who did not know how to fight.
She kneed him in the groin. Hard.
He fell, gasping and puking, to the deck.
She jumped over him, shoved aside Ladyman and his spent musket, and stumbled across the deck. Her ears rang from the exploding shots. A foul cloud of yellow-gray fog enveloped the deck. Arrows whined through the rigging, thudding into wood and sometimes into men. Ducking low, Caitlin fought her way over coiled ropes, intending to leap over the aft rail to freedom.
Fury and regret blazed in her heart. Fury at herself, for not trusting Wesley, and regret that her husband had not confided his plans to her.
She reached the high afterdeck. The smoke was thick here, rising from the deck. She reached for the rail.
And found herself once again in the grip of Titus Hammersmith.
* * *
Wesley emptied his mind as he prepared for the kill. The Roundhead captain made a perfect target. Screaming commands from on high, his buff coat flapping around him and smoke billowing up from the decks, Hammersmith was a fat roebuck.
Filled with cold purpose, Wesley pulled the trigger of the crossbow. In the same tiny slice of time, Hammersmith’s arm shot into the mist. He yanked something—someone—toward him.
Caitlin!
“No!” screamed Wesley. “No! Jesus God, no!”
The crossbow bolt thudded into her chest. She reeled back and dropped out of sight.
“You sorry fool,” Hammersmith barked in triumph. “You killed your own wife!”
* * *
Night sounds rose in a screeching, croaking chorus over the island. The pop of the campfire punctuated the eerie sounds. Rory Breslin groaned and swore. He had pried the musket ball out of his shoulder but the wound had become inflamed. The others lay about, exhausted, none wounded so badly as Rory. The overwhelming numbers of English had driven them overboard and they had swum to the island.
Wesley stared unseeing into the heart of the fire. His body felt stiff and his mind agonizingly alive. Punishing himself like a flagellant, he relived the scene over and over again.
The sharp bolt triggered by his own hand, driving through the smoke-filled air. Caitlin bursting through the thick fog, straight into the path of the bolt. The deadly missile embedding itself in her chest. The look of utter shock on her face just before she fell. Titus Hammersmith’s taunt, Wesley’s own screams of rage and denial. The impassioned curses of the Irishmen, swimming for their lives in a hail of musketry. Their cries of rage and impotence as the English set sail.
Now here they lay, still weak from the shock of seeing Caitlin killed before their eyes.
How could everything have gone so wrong?
Wesley tried to pray. Failed. Praying was for men who still believed, who still hoped. All hope had died in John Wesley Hawkins.
Faintly he heard snatches of conversation among the men. Seamus MacBride’s voice trembled with grief. “Aye, my Caitlin was too good for this world. Sure and the great God carried her to heaven on wings of light.”
Murmurs of sympathy rippled through the gathering. Someone asked, “Where could Tom have got his wee self off to?”
“Sure no one’s seen him since the start of the battle.”
“I’m after thinking he’s dead, too.”
Rory nudged Wesley. “’Tis a shock to be sure, but we saw how it was, all that smoke and us as wild as berserkers and the Sassenach shooting off like crazy. May God forgive you, for it was a pure and natural accident.”
Wesley continued staring into the fire, seeing the color of Caitlin’s eyes in the golden flames, the gloss of her hair in the glowing embers. He heard her voice in the keening of the wind and the shush of the waves on the shore. He felt her touch like the ghostly echo of a dream, and deep in the heart of him he couldn’t accept that she was gone.
He moved through the task of hauling out their hidden curraghs, and the men murmured their admiration for his stoicism. But Wesley knew better. The rage and sorrow inside him brimmed higher and higher, and soon he would not be able to contain himself. Soon the fury would burst forth with fearsome strength, wreaking vengeance without mercy upon the race of men who had been responsible for Caitlin’s death.
* * *
Driven by the rage that ruled him, Wesley threw himself, heart and soul, into revenge. He had no room in himself for softness. He could not smile at a posy offered by a shy child. He could not pray during Father Tully’s night-long vigil for the souls of Caitlin and Tom. He could not commiserate with Magheen who, as soon as she heard the news, came to Clonmuir and sobbed out her grief until she lay weak and spent on the chapel floor.
Instead, he coldly plotted campaigns designed to kill and maim and plunder.
He felt a flash of some feeling—he wasn’t sure what—when Logan came to fetch Magheen. Rafferty was uncharacteristically subdued, guilt in his shining jet-colored eyes as he offered money and food to the refugees who still streamed to Clonmuir.
The first week, the men rode out in a daring raid to the heart of English-held Galway. Wesley felt a cold relish when, through the slit of his antique visor, he saw the astonished fright of the Roundheads, surprised in the dead of night. Crossbow bolts whirred through the darkness and thumped into English flesh.
Sometimes the fighting became a blurred dream. He would find himself holding a bloody sword, but with no memory of killing. At these times he caught the men regarding him with something like wonder. And afterward, he reached for a rosary to put himself into dreamless sleep with the clicking of the beads.
During an ambush on the road between Galway and Lough Corrib, Wesley captured an Englishman he recognized from Hammersmith’s household. Before slitting the man’s throat, he learned that Hammersmith had gone to England.
Now there was truly no hope of getting Laura back, either. The knowledge did not throw him into paroxysms of fury, for Caitlin had taken all his love and tenderness into eternity with her. He had nothing left to give Laura now.
He could not let himself think of his daughter, clad in Puritan black, laughing in Cromwell’s lap.
The second week, a fisherman from the Claddagh arrived with Caitlin’s beloved black stallion in tow. Wesley was in the yard, pacing up and down as he planned another raid.
The visitor stopped and stared. Wesley saw himself reflected in the man’s apprehensive face. His hair unkempt, his half-grown beard straggly, his clothing dirty and his eyes wild, he knew he made a formidable sight.
The man handed over the horse. “She said there’d be a reward.”
Wesley jerked his head toward Seamus, who sat beneath an alder tree poring over his book of hours. “See the MacBride.” The visitor hurried away.
The high gloss of the stallion’s blue-toned coat gleamed in the afternoon sun.
And Wesley, who had not shed a tear since seeing his wife fall from the shot loosed by his own hand, buried his face in the magnificent horse’s neck and wept. The sobs rose from a bottomless well of sorrow inside him, erupting with a violence that made men remove their caps and children dive for their mothers’ skirts.
But the great outpouring brought Wesley no comfort. A sound of rage tore from his throat. He vaulted onto the horse and savagely kicked its flanks. Having no handhold save the inky mane, he bent low over the neck and rode at the horse’s caprice.
They streaked across fields and fens, jumped stone fences and thundered along the strand, sand and surf flying up and stinging his face while he worked the horse into a high lather.
He came to the forgotten garden where he and Caitlin had first met. Tumbled rocks and spiny green brambles formed ugly bracelets around the tidal pools. Breathing fast, he dropped from the horse and let it wander away.
It was what Tom Gandy would call a clarion day, the sun bright and the sky hard and clean. And still the place seemed to pulsate with enchantment. Magic hung in the very air he breathed. Secrets wafted on the voice of the wind.
Wesley sank to his knees and dug his fingers into the damp sand. “No,” he bellowed. “Caitlin, you cannot be gone!”
But she was, borne to heaven where she would no doubt strike fear into the hearts of the angels.
The day stretched into evening, and evening into twilight. He lay on the sand, pondering the hopelessness of his lot. Hammersmith was gone to England to report Wesley’s treachery to Cromwell.
Wesley remembered the Lord Protector’s gentleness with Laura, the way the implacable eyes softened and the murderous hands soothed. Deep inside Wesley lived the certainty that even Oliver Cromwell would show mercy and give Laura a gentle upbringing. The Puritans were a harsh lot, but they looked after their own. And Cromwell, so recently deprived of his favorite grandson, clearly considered Laura his own.
All that was left to Wesley was the fight. Only in the teeth of a life-and-death struggle did he feel himself truly alive, pulsing with a lust for revenge.
The stars came out, and the brightest one burned its incandescence deeply into his mind, rousing memories of the day of Caitlin’s inauguration. Then, the MacBride had seemed eternal. And surely she was! She could not be gone. She had only been transformed into a higher state of existence.
Like the brightest star.
* * *
London, August 1658
“Oh, my dear, this simply won’t do at all.” Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell strode into the cell of the Brick Tower, overlooking the moat on the north side of the Tower of London. He crossed the room to stand beside the leather-sprung cot. “You haven’t touched your supper. You haven’t eaten for days. I took such pains to have delicate fare sent to you.”
The cot creaked as Caitlin stirred to life. She struck out with her arm and swept the laden tray to the floor.
“I’ll not be after choking myself on your English pig swill!”
Unperturbed by her outburst, Cromwell waved back the huge, blond-haired man who had stepped inside behind him. “Mr. Bull, bring wine for the lady and me.”
Caitlin caught the giant’s eye. Thaddeus Bull had delivered the meal, and with it a blown glass vial which she fingered in the pocket of her apron.
Moments later, Cromwell poured pale yellow sack into two pewter goblets. Drawing a stool to the cot, he set the cups on the table. She drew back her hand to fling the cups away.
“I wouldn’t, Mrs. Hawkins,” he said. “You might find you’ll need a drink.”
I might at that, thought Caitlin, her fingers tightening on the vial. She lowered her other arm.
“You sorely try my patience,” he said. “My daughter Bettie is not ten days in her grave, and I’ve been making myself ill with all the travel between Hampton Court and London.”
Caitlin’s view of the Lord Protector was colored by hatred, but she noted the gray lines of grief framing his mouth, the slight tremor in his voice as he spoke his daughter’s name. So, she thought uncomfortably, the monster had a heart, after all.
“My condolences on the death of your daughter,” she said through stiff lips. “But you’ll not have my pity on your illness.”
“I’m not asking for it,” he snapped. He looked past her, and his eyes softened. “God’s will be done,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “At least I have Laura.”
Caitlin had no interest in the man’s mutterings. “Why are you here?”
“You were duly tried today.”
His words cut a swath through her control. “Tried, was I?” she demanded. “And what manner of justice is it that puts a body to trial, and she not even present to give a defense?”
“The same manner of justice you showed to the English you murdered,” he shot back. “Are you interested in hearing the outcome?”
Caitlin tried to resist her sudden longing for the wine, but the lure of the sack proved too great. She snatched one of the goblets and took a sip while Cromwell did the same. “Go on.”
“The High Court of Justice has convicted you of treason, murder, theft and the practicing of the outlawed popish faith.”
Caitlin took another sip of wine. The smooth Spanish sack failed to thaw the frozen wasteland of her heart. “I cannot be guilty of breaking your laws, for I do not claim England as my sovereign country.”
He shrugged, the chain of office moving on his shoulders. “The Council decrees that you are to be hanged, drawn and quartered.”
Horror erupted in her brain. “You cannot harm me! You signed a statement protecting the kin of John Wesley Hawkins.”
“He broke faith with me!” Cromwell burst out. “I’m no longer under any obligation to him.”
“Faith, faith, faith,” Caitlin burst out. “I do not understand the word anymore. Whose faith, yours or God’s? And which God, yours or Wesley’s?”
“You add blasphemy to your crimes, woman!”
Caitlin stared implacably at the Lord Protector, noting with distaste the bulbous shape of his ruby nose, noting with a tremor of fear the bright cruelty in his eyes. Yet her mind wandered far away.
Back to Ireland. Back to Wesley.
She should have trusted him. She should have believed her own heart that told her he would never, ever betray her.
During the long days of the voyage to London, she had pieced together the truth. Wesley never meant to give the horses to Hammersmith. He and the men of Clonmuir had planned an ambush.
The raid would have worked if she had not interfered and gotten herself captured.
Wesley, why didn’t you tell me?
Because she would not have trusted him. Too late, she knew the truth. Too late, she knew she loved him. Had loved him from that first spellbound moment when she had wished for him on a white rose. She adored him with a painful, pitiless intensity that mocked every naive idea she had ever had about the love between a man and a woman.
Now their love would never have a chance to flower. And that was the greatest tragedy of all.
Her hand came up to touch the healing bruise just below her collarbone. Wesley’s arrow had struck the breastplate beneath her tunic. The impact had knocked her off her feet but the injury had been slight.
No doubt Wesley believed he had slain her. Another tragedy that would never be resolved.
“…no reason at all to delay carrying out the sentence,” Cromwell was saying.
Caitlin dragged her mind to the present. “When?” she forced herself to ask.
“Tomorrow.” He refilled both their wine cups.
Caitlin’s fingers sneaked again into the folds of the rough shift she wore. She felt the vial and remembered Bull’s words.
You won’t want to endure the torture, he had whispered, his large, blunt-featured face alight with a twisted compassion. Spare yourself the agony with Dr. Bate’s remedy. Bull had instructed her to dissolve the powder in a cup of liquid. One sip alone would rob him of his duty.
Her soul recoiled at the thought of taking her own life. But the brutal alternative brought her to a decision.
She dropped to her knees in front of Cromwell. “Please, Your Highness,” she pleaded, although the words tasted as sour as vomit in her mouth. “I beg you, spare me!” She pressed the hem of his cloak to her lips. “For the love of God, please!” She caught at the chain of office that spanned his shoulders.
He shoved her back. The chain came loose and fell to the floor. “Groveling ill becomes an Irish chieftain. Sit down!”
She meekly obeyed.
He bent to retrieve the chain.
She unstopped the vial and dashed the contents into her wine cup. Her unsteady hand made the vial clink against the rim of the cup. She winced, certain he would notice. But as he groped around on the floor, the powder fizzed briefly; then the granules disappeared. She tucked the empty vial back into the pocket of her apron.
Cromwell straightened, scowling at the broken link of the chain. “Hawkins should have heeded me, by God. Now he’ll lose all. All!” Gaining control of himself, he feigned a regretful look. “Pity about the child, though.”
Shock slammed into Caitlin’s chest. “Child? What child?”
“Did he not tell you about Laura?” A mysterious smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I must’ve scared him more than I thought.” He rubbed his chin. “Still, that would be like Hawkins, not wanting to use her to manipulate your sympathies—as if there were any such thing in your heathen soul.”
Swallowing back apprehension, she asked, “Who is Laura?”
“Why, his poor little daughter. Nigh on four years old, she is, darling mite. In his preaching days he dragged the child on his treacherous errands, passing her off as an orphan and himself as a priest, when his true purpose was to incite the people against me. Poor little motherless mite. When Hawkins was arrested, he entrusted her to a godly woman who had the wisdom to bring the girl directly to me.”
“Arrested?” The information was coming too fast at her. For a moment she forgot the dread contents of her wine cup. “Wesley was arrested?”
“Aye, and sentenced to death. Funny, but he was to die as a priest, and he never really was one. He very nearly did die, but I found a way for him to serve the Commonwealth.”
Suddenly all became clear to Caitlin. Shadows of doubt and mistrust were swept away by brilliant rays of truth and comprehension. “To stop the Fianna,” she concluded bitterly. “That was why he obeyed you. Because you held his daughter hostage.”
Filled with fresh misery, Caitlin buried her face in her sleeves and pressed hard to hold back the tears. Wesley had been pledged to the Church. And yet he had fathered a child.
Motherless, Cromwell had said. But who had the woman been? Wife? Mistress? Had he loved her? More mysteries, thought Caitlin. More unanswered questions.
She heard Cromwell lift his cup, then set it back on the table. Remembering her purpose, she raised her head from her arms. “And what,” she asked cuttingly, “do you have in store for the child? Torture for her as well?”
“It suits your narrow view to see a monster in me,” Cromwell shot back. “I, who brought order to chaos.” He clasped his hands as if wrestling his own anger. “In truth,” he began calmly, “I’ve taken a liking to the babe. The good widow Clench is raising Laura up properly now. Now that Bettie’s gone, I shall have to think further about Laura’s place in my life.”
Dear God, thought Caitlin, I have cost Wesley his child.
She grabbed the stem of her goblet. She was about to commit the ultimate sin, the sin for which there could be no redemption—to condemn her own soul to eternal damnation.
No. Damnation was giving in to Oliver Cromwell. Damnation was never being able to tell Wesley again that she loved him.
With a strange smile on his face, Cromwell lifted his goblet. “A toast, is it?” he asked, his voice full of irony.
Caitlin smiled back. “If my soul doesn’t go to heaven, then at least may it come to rest in Ireland.”
Cromwell laughed. “I’d sooner burn in hell.” He drained his glass.
“More’s the pity for you, sir.” Caitlin clasped an image of Wesley to her heart, said a silent prayer, and drank to the bottom of the goblet.