The Irish Warrior

But come she had. After she was wed, after there were children whelped and homes to keep, Elisabeth left Gerald de Valery and came to Rardove. To the Indigo Beaches. The promise of crafting the legendary dyes apparently proved a greater temptation than heart and home.

Temptation, passion, craving. Fatal weaknesses for the family. The mother: dye making. The father: gambling. Senna appeared to be the strongest branch on that family tree.

A shadow suddenly appeared at the door. The baron didn’t look up. The soldier peered nervously between Pentony and Rardove. Pentony waved him in.

Armored from heel to neck in plate and mail, he glittered dully in the flickering candlelight. He strode to the front of the table where Rardove slouched, his gaze riveted to some invisible spot on the far wall.

“My lord, we found a man who may be Red.”

Rardove’s spine unbent as he sat up, looking at the soldier, then behind him. No six-foot Irishman lurked in the shadows. His gaze came back to the fore. “Where is he?”

The soldier stared intently at the wall directly above Rardove’s head. “At the abbey.”

“What? What is he doing there, and not here?”

“She…kicked us out.”

“She?”

“Mother Superior.”

Pentony was shocked to find his lips twitching into a grin.

“She did what?” Rardove repeated, incredulous. “Kicked you out? She’s a woman,” he sputtered, waving his hand at the soldier’s belt. “You have a sword.”

The soldier cleared his throat. “Aye, my lord. But she has God.”

Rardove’s face went absolutely unreadable. It looked like he didn’t best know how to explode. His face turned slowly, like an autumn oak leaf, into a bright, flaming red.

“Get out!” he roared. The soldier skittered backward and fled the room before the echoes faded.

Pentony rose and began assembling the sheaves of parchment scattered across the table. “Ireland has become quite a hotbed of treason of late,” he observed mildly. “You, O’Melaghlin, Red.”

There was no verbal reply, but it felt as if a towering presence had suddenly built in the room, like a stack of storm clouds. Pentony looked over his shoulder. Rardove was staring at him. Pentony stilled, sheaves of paper in hand, while the strangest combination of amazement and…joy dawned on Rardove’s face, as if Pentony had beautiful, naked women dancing behind him. How terribly odd. Or perhaps just terrible, for no reason he could name.

“God. Damn,” Rardove exhaled.

Uneasy, Pentony dropped the scrolls and let them roll over on themselves, like small flat creatures nesting.

The baron got to his feet. “Goddamn, you’re goddamned brilliant, Pentony.”

God had been damned quite enough in the past minute, even in this place of sin. Something was amiss.

Pentony was surprised by the cold, wavy sensation moving through his chest. Was that nervousness? Worry? It had been too long to know for certain.

“My lord?”

Color was flooding back into the baron’s face, florid, healthy, disturbing. He snapped his fingers. “Sit. Write.”

Pentony did neither. “Write what, my lord?”

“Write about treason,” Rardove retorted, almost gleeful. “As you said, terrible treachery abounds in Ireland. The Irish have grown far too bold, and this intrigue with Red proves it. ’Tis time to crush them.”

“Crush them?”

The soles of Rardove’s boots cracked against the wood planks beneath the rushes. “This alliance between Red and the Irish threatens the king’s peace along every shore of his realm. Edward will not like to hear of it.”

Pentony had a flash of understanding. Hear of this, rather than of the fact that Rardove had both found and lost a dye witch, all without mentioning it to his liege. Putting out the hue and cry on someone else was an excellent way to deflect attention from one’s own crimes.