Conn shrugged. "What danger could a girl child be? What weapon could she wield save the beauty of her face? Once the babe is born, I will send her off to a nunnery, where the sisters shall raise her as if she were royalty. When she grows to a woman, I will call her back to court and wed her to a man strong enough to ward off any curse."
Grief and gratitude warred in the faces of Fintan and his wife.
"But to surrender our babe!" Grainne sobbed. "I cannot bear it!"
Fintan gathered her in his arms, his voicerough with grief and resignation. "It is a gift Conn has offered us. The child's life. Love, there is no other way."
Three days later, screams rose from the chambers of Fintan, the hands that had cast countess spears clinging to his wife's as she brought their babe into the world. For one night, the beautiful child lay in her mother's arms, her father's fingers stroking her silky cheek.
At dawn, Fintan gathered his daughter in his arms, strode from the chamber of his grief-stricken wife. In the shadow of the druid's hut, the warrior faced Conn. "Your word she will be safe."
"Do you doubt me? They call me the Ever Truthful," Conn said steadily, hiding the tiniest flicker of triumph. This time he was the one who held Fintan's fate in his hands.
Fintan surrendered his child to the horseman waiting beside a standing stone. "Her name is Caitlin," Fintan said, his voice rough with grief. "Caitlin of the Lilies, for she is lily fair."
Disbelieving, Conn leaned over to peer at the girl child's face. He froze, staring at the most beautiful babe he had ever seen, a child otherworldly, like the Christian angels he had heardabout or the fairy maids who had enchanted mortals, luring them to their distant kingdoms.
For an instant, Conn quailed, fearing that the girl had her own brand of magic. But he shoved the thought aside. No, she was but a mortal child. A mere girl. No threat to a chieftain cunning as he.
Conn watched as the rider and child disappeared into the dawn. Problems such as the one this girl presented must be handled delicately, he mused. He needed Fintan's strength and skill to gain his own place in the annals of legend. And even a high chieftain dared not challenge the fairy magic. Let the child live, for the present. Then, the instant Fintan's usefulness was past, Conn would know what to do.
Conn glanced at Fintan's face, sightless eyes following the daughter he would never touch again, the warrior's rugged face streaked with unmanly tears.
Aye, it would be simple enough to unravel this coil in the end, Conn reasoned. Even legends had to die.
Chapter 1
The Irish hills seethed like a giant's cauldron, a baffling mixture of rugged stone, green meadow, and mist broken by patches of sky blue as a fairy's wing. Even the trees seemed human, digging their roots like fingers into earth pulsing with the passion and pain of a land at war with itself.
Legend claimed theTuatha de Danaan, the fairy folk who had once ruled the island, had lost a great battle. But in the end, they had defeated their mortal enemies by melting into trees and hillsides, stones and streams, fleet red deer and the most cherished reaches of peoples memories.
Now, another battle was being fought for Ireland—a war between druid gods of earth andSaint Patrick’s God in heaven. Yet, though Caitlin of the Lilies had been raised within the holy confines of the Abbey of Mary of Infinite Mercy, and though she loved the sisters there, she understood a truth they could never comprehend.
No matter how many saints hallowed Irish ground, Ireland would always have a pagan heart.
She could feel its steady throb no matter how determinedly she bent her head in prayer, the voice of the land calling to her, wild and sweet.You can never be like the rest of them, Caitlin of the Lilies, for you belong to me.She had fought that indefinable something that made her different from all the other women. Sometimes she had feared it, trying to fit herself into the practical world of the nuns. Yet never once in twenty years of life had she been able to deny that it existed.
The spell cast upon her the night she was abandoned at the druid altar was real. And she had never felt its pull more strongly than she did today. Her day. The anniversary of the day twenty years ago when Reverend Mother had found her, a newborn babe wrapped in the robe of a chieftain.
Caitlin glanced back at the walls of the abbey, knowing that there were plenty among Reverend Mother's pious flock who disapproved of heryearly pilgrimage to the block of stone with its ancient writings. They implored Caitlin to spend the day fasting and in prayer. To resist her shameful link to things heathen. Yet how could she do as they bade her? It was the one time in the year she had something to hold, something to touch, to assure herself that the voices in her dreams were real.
She shivered in anticipation, her bare feet light on the cool moss as she raced through the trees, certain the yearly offering would be there. She could almost feel it—the cool stem of one perfect lily between her fingers. She could nearly smell it, the fragrance whispering sweet possibilities. The precious knowledge that someone beyond the abbey walls still cared for her.
Whoever had abandoned her had not forgotten her. Somewhere in the wide world Caitlin had never seen, a mother, a father, a whole family might wait to claim her.
She could not suppress a sting of guilt, a sense that she was ungrateful. No mother, real or imaginary, could have loved her more than the mistress of the abbey. Yet, had not Reverend Mother been the first one who guided her steps along the path to the druid stone? Hadn’t the nun’s mist-gray eyes been shadowed with a wistful sorrow,as if she knew that this was where Caitlin belonged, no matter how much Reverend Mother might wish otherwise?
Caitlin felt a twinge, but she promised herself that after she delighted in the lily and the imaginings it always brought, she would go to Reverend Mother's cell, show her the perfect flower. She would lean against the older woman's knee as she had every night since childhood and wrap herself tight in real love that never faltered. Love that should be enough, a voice inside Caitlin whispered.
Nay, she would not tarnish this day with regrets or self-recriminations. Reverend Mother always wished her to feel joy on these journeys. From the beginning, she had understood the questing spirit in Caitlin, the restlessness of a young girl who had never seen the wonders that lay beyond the abbey.
How many times had those prayerful lips curved with indulgence as she told Caitlin her own memories of the outside world? The great fortress where she had grown up, favorite daughter of a mighty warrior. The thrill of cattle raids, the adventures spun by bards about the hero Cuchulain. She had said other things as well, confided her regret over the heartbreaking riftbetween her and her beloved father when she had refused to marry any one of a dozen suitors, choosing instead the life of a nun. Reverend Mother had hinted at different dangers other nuns spoke more plainly of, wickedness and sin, horrors so unspeakable the women had fled to the abbey to escape them.
Yet, in spite of all the tales she heard, Caitlin had fashioned the Irish wilds into a world where all women were brave and every man a hero, and each year a perfect lily drew her closer to that magical realm.
Caitlin grimaced. Not that she had had much success imagining the bold, handsome heroes. From the beginning, the abbess had told her it was possible that one day she would leave the abbey, that marriage might be her destiny.
Yet the only example of a man Caitlin had ever seen was Father Columcille, a wrinkled gnome with rheumy eyes she had watched with great interest as a child, certain they would pop out of their sockets at any moment.
