CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Rory McGuinness sat on the straw on the floor of the shed he was tossed into the night of his arrival at Hucknall with O’Donnell. He piled some of the mildewing straw up to create some insulation against the increasingly chilly nights. He knew he must smell of the mildew and worse.

O'Donnell had not sought satisfaction from him while on the journey. Perhaps he might have to be discreet while in camp. It was three days since their arrival where O'Donnell had only his trusted men with him. He wondered why O’Donnell did not send the guards to drag him to his chamber. Had Rory mistaken his purpose after all? If so, what was the reason he was here?

The shed was built of vertical pieces of local wood lashed onto a wood frame and thatched with what was now damp straw. Being a storage place, no effort was made to stop up the gaps with moss or mud. Rory pressed wet straw in the worst offenders. There was no window, of course, for which he was grateful, but he could see enough of the fortress through the places where the wood slats did not come together. A bucket served for his waste, and he was fed daily what looked like the soldiers’ same supper. Most of the time, he sat in his warm corner trying to hold in his body heat.

Several times Rory noticed O'Donnell among the figures that moved about outside his prison. He saw him glance with an unreadable expression over towards him, but avert his face and hurry on his way. Rory wondered when O'Donnell would finally press his desire, wondered what he himself would do. Would he submit in order to survive? Alternatively, would he refuse and no doubt die? Would he have any warning and be able to prepare himself?

Master Ishaq was discreet, but Rory, as any soldier, saw men together and had a good idea what men did when making love. He honored love in all its forms. Ishaq had nurtured what was already in the boy's heart, instilled there by a loving and generous mother. He could not imagine wanting to make love to a man, and he could not call being forced any kind of love. He knew he would not be able to respond. What would O’Donnell do if he couldn’t return lovemaking in kind? Or, might he not feel the need for an active lover?

Would the man take what he wanted, even if Rory refused? It happened to women all the time. It happened to Rory’s own sweet mother when he was a young child. The raiders killed her afterwards. The image of her lying alone and broken on the path after they left her came to his mind, though he himself did not see her. Somehow the scene was etched on his memory, her golden hair loosed from its binding, her limbs twisted, the look of horror and anger frozen on her dead face. Why would it not be so with this sort of man as well, to take what he wants by force? Rory tried to close his mind to the images that filled it.

When, soon after, the soldiers came to empty his bucket and give him his meal, a third man followed them into the doorway of Rory’s shed. Though silhouetted against the light, Rory recognized the shape of a man he had seen watching his shed from the door of the hall. The man waved a hand at the two soldiers and said in a Scots brogue, “Leave me with him. I will call when I need you to unlatch the shed. Leave me the light.” The men bowed and went out, shutting and latching the door.

Rory stayed in his corner on the ground, watching the man whose face he could see in the lamplight. He squatted to speak to Rory on a level with his own face.

“So you are the beautiful Rory McGuinness that O’Donnell has told me of all these years. You do not look so beautiful at the moment.”

Rory reached up to the growth of beard on his chin. “These are hardly the conditions for stayin’ clean.”

“I know. I wish I could do something about that. O’Donnell bade the men feed and slop you but nothing else, and no visitors either. You are shivering. I will try to find a way to get you a cloak or blanket.”

“No visitors? How came ye here? Ye know me name, but will ye tell me yours, me lord?”

The man laughed. “Not lord, not anywhere near lord. I am Roddy MacDhui. I am O’Donnell’s chief lieutenant.”

Rory nodded acknowledgement. “Well met, MacDhui. I have seen you watchin’ this shed of mine. Were ye that curious to see me ‘beauty’?” he asked mockingly. “I am thinkin’ ye know more of me history with the man. Do ye?”

MacDhui sighed. “Aye, that I do.”

“Mayhap ye can tell me something.” Rory stared frankly into MacDhui’s face.

“What he wants with you?” the Scot replied.

“Not so much that as why he has not sent for me ere this.”

MacDhui scratched his beard and looked up towards the thatched roof. “You might well ask that, my friend.”

Rory waited for the answer.

“How do I say this? He will need to work himself up to confronting you. You do not know how intense his regard is for you. You are the one person I have e’er seen confound him. In fact, methinks he will have to get rather drunk ere he, ah, sends for you,” MacDhui said, a wry look on his face.

“Will I be warned ere he does send for me?”

The Scot chuckled. “Warned? ‘Tis not all that bad.” He looked at the Irishman candidly. “In fact, it can be quite wonderful.”

Rory shook his head. “Ye are…as well?”

MacDhui chuckled again. “In fact, I am the man’s lover these many years.”

“But he…?”

“And I suppose you have never known any other man who shares his lover with others? You cannot tell me that Saxon king is encamped lonely in his bed.”

Rory’s eyes flashed. “He is completely true to his lady.”

“Well, be that as it may be, if it is true, I would hardly be the only person in the world who must bear rivals in my bed.” He looked hard at Rory. “This is different. I think you could supplant me. He is that much in love with you.”

“I am not in love with him, nor could I e’er be. I am not so drawn,” Rory stated evenly. “Tell me, if I may take your place why are ye here talkin’ to me and offerin’ me kindness?”

The Scot shrugged. “’Tis that ye are not one of us that stirs me to help you. No one should be forced. I am afraid Finn is not so considerate.” He shook his head thoughtfully. He looked back up at Rory. “You asked how you may know when the time comes. You will know, for someone will come to shave you and clean you up. However, ere that you will hear O’Donnell shouting and singing as he swallows as much fortitude as he can. May I ask you something?”

“I will not betray the queen…”

MacDhui quickly said, “Nay, nay, ‘tis not that. I want to know. What you will do when he sends for you?”

“I don't know,” Rory said miserably. “Common sense would say to endure it and live. However, I am pledged to someone. I don't want to make love with the man, and I don't want to be untrue to her, the lady I love.”

“Interesting dilemma,” MacDhui said ironically. “I can tell you that resisting will, in fact, be fatal. I know this man, and his pride will not brook rejection. We have to find a way to get you out of this.”

"Why would you help me out of this?"

MacDhui's face was pensive. "Why? I have my reasons. Several in fact. I've told you more than I wanted to already."

Rory stared past MacDhui through a rather large gap in the wall. “O’Donnell is out there.”

MacDhui looked up. “I will cut this short. ‘Twould do you nor me any good should he know how long we talked. I will find a way to get you a blanket or a cloak. In addition, I will try to be near when he calls for you. However, I will not die for you, nor shall I let him be hurt or killed. Remember that. You are not the only one who honors a love oath.”

Two days later as the dusk turned to twilight, guards opened Rory's prison and led him to an outbuilding where a soldier shaved him and a serving girl bathed him in icy water. They gave him clean clothes to put on, richer than any he had ever worn. They put a large horn of mead into his hand to drink. He could hear O'Donnell singing and shouting in the hall. Rory felt chilled, as much from fear as from the bathing.

The guards conveyed him through the door of the great hall. He found himself in a large, open room with a blazing fire, the air thick with smoke that struggled to fit through a hole in the thatch. The hall was dim away from the fire. He could make out that a cluster of men sat at the far end of the hall. The soldier who brought him in gave him a shove with the butt of his spear and chuckled lewdly, "Have a good night, me lad."

The second shove when Rory did not move forward was sharp and painful, so to avoid another poke with a spear point he went to the far side of the room where he could see O'Donnell with MacDhui and several other men. They all seemed quite drunk besides MacDhui, who was sitting stony faced by O'Donnell. O'Donnell himself was expansively telling the others in English of his days in the clan wars.

When O'Donnell caught sight of Rory before them, he stopped and looked him up and down, his eyes full of admiration and desire. He lifted his drinking horn and called out in slurred words, "Ah, here he is, the poet, the bard, the teller of tales. Why don't you give us one, McGuinness! Tell us about how Cuchullain got his name!"

The other men echoed the request, all but MacDhui who gave Rory the slightest of nods. Rory took a stance near the men and started in with the tale of the Irish hero, using his customary dramatic and ornate language, baying for the hound, boasting for the hero, and pleading for the bereaved master. The company laughed and cheered. They lifted their drinking horns in salute. One called for a song after the tale. Rory was grateful for the delay and nursed a faint hope this would be all that was required of him this night. Rory supplied three rousing war anthems.

O'Donnell looked more seriously at the tall singer and asked in a low voice, "How about a love song?"

The other men averted their glances as Rory studied O'Donnell. He cleared his throat and sang one about Diarmuid and Grainne. It was a tragic love story, and Rory's audience was somber and sentimental. That is, except for O'Donnell, who stared fixedly at Rory.

"Leave us," he commanded the others. They coughed and rose, bowed to the high commander and left him with Rory and MacDhui. O'Donnell shot a look at MacDhui that said, "What are you waiting for?" The Scot bowed his head, turned and left.

"Sit down," O'Donnell commanded Rory. "No, here, next to me."

Rory did as he was told. He sat stiff on the ledge around the walls of the hall, looking out towards the fire. O'Donnell leaned back, appraising Rory. "You have a fine voice. You tell a story well. Ishaq would be proud of you," he said in Irish.

"Thank you, sir," Rory replied in the same tongue, without looking at the man.

O'Donnell reached out one hand and touched Rory's hair. "You do not have any idea how long I have wanted this. You were a handsome boy, but oh, how beautiful you are. I think you may actually be perfect." He curled locks of Rory's hair around a finger. "I saw you in camp during the war. I told you before that you took my breath away. It was more than lust. That is easily slaked, even for men like me. It was a desire that went much further. I wanted you, but I wanted your heart and soul as well as your flesh. I wanted to master you, and I wanted you to give yourself to me of your own desire."

O'Donnell sat forward and reached to the cord on Rory's borrowed shirt. He pulled it loose and reached in with his hand to caress Rory's neck and shoulder. He let his hand slide up to cradle the side of Rory's finely sculpted jaw. Rory closed his eyes and clenched his teeth.

O'Donnell asked humorously, "Is that tension from resisting me, or to resisting your own desire for me?"

Rory said plainly, "I do not and cannot desire you, Finn."

O'Donnell's face hardened. "You may think so. I may be able to change your mind." He slid closer to Rory and put the hand that caressed Rory around his neck. He reached with his other hand to caress Rory's chest and belly. "You are such a fine mixture of muscles and softness." He leaned to Rory and started to kiss his face. Rory felt his hot breath and smelled the drink in it as he moved his lips from Rory's forehead to his cheeks. He put his lips against Rory's, who sat, unmoved and unmoving. He had decided to let his body choose what it wanted, waiting for either repulsion or a stirring in his own groin. He felt his body push the man away.

O'Donnell, feeling the rigidity of Rory's mouth, pulled his own face back to look him in the eye. "You know, you do not have to want this. I can take you. I can hurt you terribly, so you will never be the same. I would rather you came to me in desire, but I will still have you even if you do not."

Rory returned O'Donnell's gaze. "You will have to do that, for I am pledged and will not be with you willingly, nor do I want you, never wanted you, and shall never want you. Even if I was drawn that way, I would never want a man so crude and savage."

O'Donnell reared his head back and slapped Rory's face hard. "You want savagery?" the older man demanded. He grasped Rory's hand and put it on his bulging manhood. "Feel that? You will be feeling that many times and many ways tonight. It will tear you up inside like any sword."

Rory started to pull his hand away, feeling the man's erection turgid against his palm, but stopped. He forced himself to relax. He flexed his hand and gently clasped O'Donnell's phallus. He started to stroke it.

O'Donnell looked at him, astonished, then smiled. He half closed his eyes. "I knew it, I knew it, you would want me, want me as much as I want you." He sighed as Rory's hand began to rub his cock with a firmer grip. O'Donnell opened his eyes to feast on those of the man who was making love to him at long last. He moaned with pleasure.

Rory slipped his hand under the man's tunic and grasped his naked member. O'Donnell gasped, first with pleasure, and then with pain as Rory grabbed his bollocks and squeezed them with all his might. O'Donnell's gasp turned into a howl of pain, a scream of rage. Too soon not to have been right at the door, MacDhui rushed in with his sword drawn. Reaching Rory, he put the point of the blade to his throat. Rory withdrew his hand.

O'Donnell choked, his voice constrained to a squeak, "Take him away. Put him in that shed. I will deal with him as he deserves."

MacDhui glared fiercely at Rory, whose face betrayed only resignation. He grasped the bard by the arm and pulled him out of the hall. Soldiers rushed towards them, looking to the Scot for an explanation. "Get back to your posts or pallets!" he commanded in a voice that would brook no questions. He waited while a guard unlatched the shed door and tossed Rory in onto the floor. "You have a death wish, I see," he hissed. "If you have done him lasting hurt, I will kill you myself ere he has a chance to."

Rory did not look at him but sank into himself, knowing that he would be lucky if O'Donnell simply killed him.

MacDhui slammed the door shut and latched it. Outside his expression changed to anguish. He rushed back to the hall, to O'Donnell, to take the rage on himself, and do whatever he could to help him out of his pain.

The next time the shed door was thrown open men with clubs rushed in. Rory quickly curled himself into a tight ball. It did him no earthly good. The next hours -- or was it days? were full of neverending pain and misery.

Rory lay in his prison curled up on his side in the filthy, damp straw. He could not move for the agony. He knew that at least two or possibly three of his ribs were broken. His face was swollen and he could barely open his eyes. His lips split and he could still taste blood on them. His groin was pure fire. Knowing his nose was broken and his face lacerated, he thought how O'Donnell had remarked on his beauty. He started to chuckle and groaned with the pain when his chest muscles moved.

He thought about his impending death. He wanted to make his peace with God over all he had done and been in his life. He thought about Josephine, the woman who won his heart utterly but who, even if not married, was too far above him for any chance at love. He was glad he kissed her at Bealtana. He gingerly reached one hand to his face and touched his swollen lips, trying to remember that brief soft touch before she had jerked away in shock.

He would die for her. How many times had he sung of a lover's dying for his sweetheart? He thought of Josephine and how she would know he sacrificed himself for her sake. He prayed she would be able to think of it as a sign of his love and be warmed by it, not wracked with guilt and grief.

Resigned never to have a real love in his life, it chilled him to realize that with his death that prophecy would be fulfilled irrevocably. His face smarted where it was cut as the salt tears ran out of his eyes. Neither wife nor children... He wanted children. However, all he could look forward to was a violent death of some kind. Like his mother, he thought. Raped and murdered on the path. At least he hoped that with God's grace he would see her again.

Shannon. How would Shannon handle Rory's death? Would he even know? Poor, fragile Shannon. Rory bore the agony as his body shook from sobs thinking of his friend and how desolate he would be. He tried to pray for him, but he could not still his grief-stricken mind long enough to murmur the words.

Finally, God or someone like Him took pity and let him sleep.

Rory was able to pull himself up to a sitting position with his back against the cushion of straw he had erected. The shed was rank with the smell of blood and his waste. All he could do is sit huddled for what little warmth he could manage and wait for what would happen next.

When he heard shouting, footsteps outside, and the latch slipped on his shed door, his heart raced, waiting to be dragged out and killed. He murmured a Pater Noster and let the tears come again. The door opened, full sunlight coming in and blinding him. He felt hands roughly grasp the arm he held to shield his eyes and the other which hung at his side protecting his broken ribs. He screamed with pain when they hoisted him and dragged him out into the courtyard. Someone dumped a pail of ice-cold water over him. He gasped and spluttered, groaned as his muscles tightened in surprise and the ensuing coughs.

The guards dragged him to the hall. He froze with fear. He took in everything happening without any thought or reflection. He found himself released to fall face first on the ground at O'Donnell's feet. He could not see O'Donnell's expression of grim satisfaction, nor the wince on MacDhui's face from where he stood at one side.

"Pull him up so he is on his knees," O'Donnell commanded his guards. Rory, cringing at the pain, was hoisted and left kneeling, his head bowed. He did not want to see the man's face.

"You look like shit," the chief commander said, unmistakably amused. "I wager you feel considerably worse. How are your balls, my friend? Do they burn? I hope so." He walked around Rory and inspected how well his men carried out his orders. "Very good, very good."

Rory tried to speak. "What was that terrible noise?" O'Donnell taunted.

He tried again. "Are you going to kill me?" he croaked in Irish.

O'Donnell stopped his circuit and stared down at Rory. "Do you want to die?"

Rory feebly shook his head.

"Do you want a second chance?"

Rory paused, shook his head again.

O'Donnell kicked him hard in the ribs. Rory cried out but managed to stay in a kneeling position. Behind him, MacDhui averted his eyes.

"I will let you live if you will crawl and ask my forgiveness." O'Donnell continued more quietly in Irish, "I wouldn't want you anyway. Look at you. You are hideous. You will never be perfect again. I am ready to make that a certainty." He drew his belt knife and held it to Rory's face menacingly.

Rory shook. He looked up at last at O'Donnell's face and saw the repulsion and hatred there. He closed his eyes and said a prayer. "I will do it… I will beg your forgiveness."

O'Donnell grinned and sheathed his knife again. "Excellent. Make it a sincere plea." He stood in front of Rory with his hands on his hips, relishing the whimpering and groaning as Rory started to come forward slowly on his knees, making every bone and muscle cry out. Rory came forward, the tears streaming, a desperate and agonized look on his upturned face. He stopped immediately before the gloating man and, weeping, started to beg.

"I beg ye, please, for the love of God, for all the saints," he pled in Saxon, knowing O'Donnell wanted a very public humiliation for him and victory for himself. "I am sorry I hurt you, I was stupid and cruel and cowardly to do it," he wept,"and I beg you to forgive me."

O'Donnell shook his head. "Not good enough. Grovel."

Agonized, Rory threw himself down at O'Donnell's feet. He writhed on the rush-strewn floor, and continued to beg forgiveness. He put his arms around the man's ankles, put his cheek against his shin, and wept. He kissed O'Donnell's ankle.

"None of that fool!" O'Donnell admonished in Saxon. In Irish he added, "It's too late for that, and I will kill you here if you do anything like that again."

Rory turned his swollen face up to the man and pled for his mercy. He climbed up his legs with his arms as he begged for his life with passion. When his arms came around the man's waist, red-faced, O'Donnell tried to push him away. "That's quite enough! I will give you your life."

Rory let go. As he sat back onto his haunches, he reached out with all the speed he could dredge up, grabbed O'Donnell's belt knife out of its sheath, and stabbed up at his belly. He made contact but the leather brigandine the man wore stopped the blade from reaching his flesh.

MacDhui was on him instantly, pulled him back and knocked the knife away. All sympathy in the Scot's face evaporated. O'Donnell screamed with rage and kicked Rory in the face hard, breaking a cheekbone and sending him reeling back onto the floor where he could only lie twisted and moaning.

"Take the bastard to the town and tell the reeve he has a hanging to prepare." O'Donnell spat on Rory and whirled and left the hall.

"You stupid god-damned dog of an idiot," MacDhui shot at Rory. "Well, you want to die and you will have your wish."

Several guards grabbed Rory. He passed out from the pain. He woke to being thrown over the back of a horse. The motion of the horse's quick pace sent him senseless again. He found himself dragged off the horse in the town of Hucknall by two of the reeve's men. MacDhui issued instructions to the reeve to get ready to hang Rory for spying and sabotage at dawn the next morning.

"He'll have to share the guardhouse. We have a thief who is to be hanged as well," the reeve said. "It does not look like this one will disturb the man's peace at all. We'll be lucky if he lives to be hanged." He laughed cruelly.

Between grief and pain, Rory hardly felt the passage of time in the stone chamber where he lay on the floor at the feet of a tall man who already was nursing the stump of a severed hand. Someone talked to him incessantly. He had a sense of others coming and going. He thought he heard low voices, one with MacDhui's brogue, in some sort of negotiation. He felt the floor becoming colder and colder against him until he could no longer feel the arm that lay under him. He thought he heard someone crying, pleading, and wondered if it was himself.

Mostly he lay senseless. From time to time dreams would come, brief and insubstantial. Faces. His mother's, loving. Shannon's, jesting. Josephine's, as it had looked the moment after their kiss. O'Donnell's, full of tender desire and hopeless pleading.

He thought he detected the darkness of night. He thought he saw the sun on his closed eyelids. Instead of being dragged to the tree and pulled up with a rope around his throat to hang until he flailed and choked and died, it seemed the dawn came and went and the sun was higher in the sky. He thought, "I must be dreaming still."

He started awake as rough hands picked him up. "Now I will die," he said conclusively. He felt himself carried out and put in a wagon. How odd that a blanket and straw were being placed to cover him. He heard MacDhui's voice again, the clink of coins on a palm, the sound of a sword being unsheathed. He thought he heard a carter urging a mule forward, the cartwheels bumping on an uneven path. He opened one eye when he heard many voices and looked up through the straw at a man hanging by the neck from a tree limb. A hood covered his head. Rory thought that perhaps the hanged man was himself. "Ah," he thought. "That wasn't so bad."

Blessed unconsciousness enveloped him again as the cart lumbered out of the town gate and onto a country road.

MacDhui quietly passed into O'Donnell's chamber in the Great Hall. The big Irishman sat at a table drinking mead, clearly already drunk. "Is it over?" he asked in a grim voice.

MacDhui went over to put his hand on O'Donnell's shoulder. "Aye, he is gone." He pictured the small cell the thief and Rory occupied and the negotiations with the reeve and the other prisoner. The thief agreed to stay silent when he was taken, hooded, to the gallows tree in exchange for a mercy blow at the last minute of the hanging. The threat to make it last longer instead made up the man's mind for him. He thought of the reeve with his toothless grin as MacDhui handed over gold coins after the man substituted the thief for Rory before the hanging. He saw in his mind the fear on the reeve's face as he pressed his sword blade to the man's throat and said in no uncertain terms that if he revealed the ruse, he would die painfully. He saw the cart as it rumbled away with Rory concealed.

"I want to see him," O'Donnell cried drunkenly. "I want to see him. He was so beautiful."

He started to rise, but MacDhui pushed him down again. "Nay, you do not want to see him. A hanged man is a terrible thing to see. Worse than any sight you have beheld in war. Let your memory of his beauty be unclouded by that sight, my love."

O'Donnell looked up at MacDhui's face and nodded sadly. "I did love him, Roddy. I really did. I did not want to kill him. I would do anything, anything to take back what I have done. I wish you stopped me. Oh, why didn't you stop me? I loved him so."

Roddy MacDhui held the man's head against his belly and stroked his hair. "I know, Finn, my love. I know."

Author's note:  This event is captured in song with "Ballad of Rory McGuinness", recorded by Celtic artist Druidsong. 

[The complete novel, ISBN 1-4196-5669-4, can be purchased here, in either paperback or Kindle versions]

      

 

Wilde Oats is published three times a year, in April, August and December. Click here to be automatically informed of new issues when they are published.

The hall was dim away from the fire. He could make out that a cluster of men sat at the far end of the hall. The soldier who brought him in gave him a shove with the butt of his spear and chuckled lewdly, "Have a good night, me lad."