“So you gave my position away, then, for a piece of horseflesh? Good thinking, man. What if this had been the justiciar, Lord Grey’s, vanguard, bringing siege to Dungannon’s abbey? Did you turn your back on Shane as you just turned your back on me? Did you leave Shane vulnerable? Here at this bridge? Send him alone to his slaughter the last time the English tried to bring Tyrone to its knees?”
“Nay, Lord Hugh. I didn’t.” Macmurrough’s grizzled face broke out in sweat. “It was winter then. You were in England. I was at Tullaghoge. Shane ordered all of us to stand down for Epiphany.”
Seeing that Lord Hugh did not believe him, Macmurrough fell to his knees, his empty hands up, beseeching Hugh’s forgiveness. “My lord, I swear to you on the souls of my five sons, we knew nothing of the attack before it happened. I loved Shane. He was my heart, my blood brother. I’d have given my life for his, if I could have done. I swear on my sainted mother’s soul, I’ll never fail you again, O’Neill. I’ll carry out every command you give me, trusting you as Abraham trusted God. Hail, Hugh O’Neill!”
The kern’s hands clasped Hugh’s. He kissed Hugh’s battered knuckles and the signet ring of his earldom. Donald the Fair strode forward and extended his sword to Hugh, hilt first, as he, also, dropped to his knee in salute.
“I, too, am your man, O’Neill. My soul and my sword lie in your hand, to command as you will.”
Loghran O’Toole’s eyes misted as he watched sword after sword being placed in Hugh’s strong hand as each kern knelt before Hugh O’Neill, giving him a solemn oath of fealty. Loghran had gone to England, gillie to the baron of Dungannon’s son, the only Irish influence in Hugh’s long sojourn at the queen’s court. It was abundantly clear to O’Toole that the queen of England’s court had failed to breed the Irish out of Hugh O’Neill.
Loghran’s heart swelled with pride, loving Hugh O’Neill as the son he would never have. Now, at five-and-twenty, his charge had all the qualities necessary to become the next O’Neill—leadership, intelligence, compassion, courage and fierce loyalty.
One by one, they all came, twelve men and one boy, pledging their lives and souls to Hugh’s hand. Hugh was stunned and humbled. Before tonight, not a one of them had trusted a kinsman raised in England as far as he could throw him.
These twelve were not all O’Neills. Numerous and varied kinsman, cadres and families made up Tyrone. The trust and loyalty of all the others remained to be gained by Hugh at some future date. But these twelve were Hugh’s men now, and Hugh belonged to them. It was a start.
Hugh turned to Macmurrough and bade him run down the soldiers’ scattered horses and transport all seven, and the Arabian mare, to Dungannon. He ordered Kermit to gather the dead soldiers’ weapons, and any wealth or valuables they carried on their persons. Bounty was forever the tribute of war. Whatever was gathered would be divided fairly, each to his own needs.
Donald the Fair and Shamus Fitz volunteered to bury the remains. Loghran O’Toole handed Hugh back his sword, cleaned. He took out his breviary, stole and rosary, saying he would recite the Te Deum over the bodies and consign their souls to God’s eternal judgment.
Satisfied that all was done that should be done, Hugh O’Neill unfastened his plaid from his shoulder and went to the woman’s body. As he opened the cloth to spread it over her and cover the gaps in her gown, it occurred to him that he might never know who she was.
That, he thought, would be a great pity. A woman with her courage should be remembered, immortalized in the bards’ songs and revered in the ages to come. Hugh closed his eyes, remembering the sight of her kicking Kelly in his naked arse, sending him sprawling facedown in the mud. She might have been murdered, but her spirit hadn’t been broken.
Bending his knee to the ground, Hugh gently pried her swollen, cold fingers from the handle of her knife. He tucked it inside the sheath holding his dirk for safe transport. Then Hugh gave her other hand and her neck a cursory examination for identifying jewels or ornaments. She wore none.
Rain had washed some dirt and blood from her damaged face. Matted curls clung to her cheek and clumped in the mud underneath her. He could not help looking at her full breasts. They were exquisitely shaped, heavy and firm, the kind of flesh that filled a man’s hands with pleasure and joy in the touching. Her soft white belly gleamed like fine porcelain beneath the mud smeared across it.
Before he covered her with the plaid, he thought to close her gown and return some dignity to her.
Her flesh was still very warm to the touch, resilient and supple as his knuckles passed over it to draw the rent cloth closed. She’d been wearing a stomacher over a rather finely woven linen kirtle. The laces of that close-fitted outer garment had been cut, though the buckramed garment itself was whole and could be relaced. He loosened the lacing of his doublet and pulled it free, thinking to thread the stomacher at least partway closed.
He had no sooner begun that difficult task than he felt that soft, malleable, womanly flesh move against the backs of his knuckles. Hugh jerked his hand back, stunned by the sensation of feeling a nipple pucker.
Her kirtle slid back off that plump mound of flesh. It was full dark. There was no moon. His sight was good. She’d looked dead to his eye from the distance, even this close a moment ago. He laid his palm over that breast, certain that a woman’s nipples should have no reaction to any touch after death occurred.
As he gently formed her pebbling nipple between his fingers, definitely feeling it react to his touch, he brought his right ear close to her open lips, cocked to catch any sound of actual breathing.
“My lord Hugh!” Owen Roe shouted. His bare feet made squishy sounds as he ran down from the river. “Shamus Fitz says we best cross the Abhainn Mor with all due haste. It will crest any moment now.”
“Be quiet!” Hugh scolded him. “I think the woman may be alive. Stand still and let me listen.”
He dropped his ear to her breastbone, listening for sound inside her throat. Positive that he heard something, Hugh slid his arm under the woman’s shoulders and lifted her. Her head dropped back on his arm, moist lips flexed open and parted. Both breasts spilled out of the kirtle, full and luscious and splendidly beautiful, lifting quite high as her lungs inflated with air.
“Splendor of God!” Owen gasped. He dropped to his knees, his eyes as perfectly round as the gold sovereigns minted at the Tower of London. “Please God, make her alive.”
Hugh shot the boy a quelling look and hastily spread his plaid where he should have some time ago. He felt the woman’s ribs contract, completing the cycle of breathing. Hugh spread his fingers across her exposed throat, easily finding a steady and even pulse. “She is alive.”
“What are we going to do with her?” Owen Roe wanted to know.
Hugh’s mouth twitched over the boy’s inclusive and decidedly possessive pronoun. “We are going to take her to Dungannon, do you fetch my horse to me.”
“But, my lord Hugh,” the boy said, confused, “do you dare to take her there? Doesn’t she have to be cast out by all the clans, now that she’s a whore for the English?”
Hugh blinked, so stunned by the nine-year-old’s assessment of Irish custom that he didn’t notice the woman had roused. His tone was severely reprimanding when he did speak. “She is the victim of a crime, nothing more. That doesn’t make a woman a whore, Owen Roe.”
“Shall I sing hallelujah that you’ve said that?” Morgana asked, her voice a rasp, as she took a firm hold upon the sodden cloth laid up to her throat.
Startled, Hugh jerked. The woman regained her strength all at once, twisting away from his supporting arm. “Milady,” Hugh sputtered, reflexively tightening his arm across her back, “Be careful.”
