With a smile, Cormac went to him.
“A good tune, minstrel! Have you a name?”
“Most likely. An ye go to the next cross-street and turn by your right hand-not left, right-and walk past three crossings, ye’ll want to be asking someone for the Inn of the Flame Lady.”
“All this I’ll be wanting to do? And why?”
“A certain caustic maid we both know, and her no street-slut, has desire to see yourself again, foreigner. Whence come ye?”
“Ulster; Partha mac Othna my name.” Cormac’s heartbeat had speeded and the sun seemed to have grown warmer. “Ye mean-”
“I mean that though it makes me none too happy and she knows it, it’s herself would have been here for all to gawp at and remark upon, did I not agree to send ye along.”
“Partha!” that from one of the other waiting Blueshirts.
He half-turned waved a hand. “Go on with ye, all. I’ll not be going your way; it’s business this minstrel and I have.”
“And him male!” This was followed by laughter.
“He has a sister,” Cormac called, and that brought laughter and hoots, remarks and a whistle along with a stallionish whinny. Then off the others went, not without Lugaid the Fox’s asking whether she had a sister. Cormac turned back to the minstrel. “What is she to yourself, minstrel?”
“One I hold in esteem,” the young redhead said very seriously, and Cormac heard warning and admonition. “We are not, however, lovers.”
“I hear ye. It’s in your debt I am.”
“Partha: you are. Begone; ye be not good enough to keep her waiting.”
That grated sufficiently for Cormac to tarry: “My father commands a stronghold rath for Ulster’s king, and is of clan-na Morna.”
The nameless minstrel snorted. “In truth,” he said, and it was neither a statement nor a question but an entirely neutral tone, unimpressed.
Cormac started away. “Ah-friend minstrel. How is she named?”
“Breotigernd,” the minstrel said, and Cormac laughed; the name was the same as that of the inn: Flame-lady.
“What else!” he called and went happily the way he’d been bidden.
Soon he was aware of why the minstrel had repeated that he was not to go left; that way he’d gone yesterday. The street to the right led him into better environs. After he’d made three crossings of other streets, he asked directions to the bruidean called Breotigernd. The flower-pedlar pointed, and Cormac sadly told her he had naught with which to buy a blossom. Then he turned leftward and walked past an armourer’s and meat-seller’s. The third building was hung with a yellow sign emblazoned with a stylized red flame outlining a naked woman. Cormac entered.
He was disappointed. Of Flame Lady’s nine patrons, none was the girl of the Blue Shamrock; indeed, none was female. The brughaid came to him, fast as he of the Blue Shamrock. Far from sure of himself or what he was doing, Cormac quietly asked a question. The innkeeper became visibly happier and more hospitable.
The lady awaited in a privy chamber behind the tap-room, he said, and led Cormac thither. The wary youth entered.
Cormac was astonished. Here was a board laid out with savoury viands and not ale but good mead. And here waited she, in a green gown cut closely to her slender body, and hardly so lowly as her attire of the previous day.
She smiled. “Close your mouth, huge boy. Even though flies are not yet abuzz in Carman, ye might dehydrate your tongue.”
“I… it’s the same I am as on yester day, and my hair the same. What… what means all this?”
“It means we eat together. It means I make apology for my display of temper at that inn of mesca and mocci, and that “ I thank your fine strapping self for coming to my rescue as though I were a lady. And it means I bid ye be joining me.”
Cormac shook his head in incomprehension. “And… who else?”
“None other! And would ye be shutting the door? I’ve no fear on me of yourself, huge boy. Look here, where we met on yester day a girl must be known to be able to take care of herself. I showed that. Now-none will join us here. I but remembered your great height and the thickness of your arms, and made sure there’d be food aplenty. What have ye been at since last I saw ye?” With a flash of white arms, she poured mead gurgling into a jack, which she extended.
“Fighting.”
“I’d not be doubting it!”
Cormac laughed. He took the jack, made a tiny bow, and drank off half its contents. “This is good!”
“So I thought, when I tasted it for us. Fighting. And winning, o’course.”
“Aye. But this was practice-the Royal Army’s practice,” he added, pridefully. “Most of the morning. Six men I was made to face, for one in command has no love for me.”
“Six men at once?”
“Singly. Two at once. In the mud.”
“Ah. Do sit down. Mightn’t I be persuading ye to remove the weapon-belt and leather jack? It is most handsome-but the leather creaks so. New?”
“New.” Gods of my fathers, but she’s so sure of herself, so full of sophistication! It’s a buffoon I am indeed. And he drained his cup.
“More?”
“Aye.”
“There. My name isn’t really Flame-Lady.”
“It’s what I’ll be calling ye.”
“Then ye’ve no need of knowing my real name!”
“What is it?”
She laughed. “Aha!” she cried, and he knew he’d been successfully teased. “Aine. And do you have a name?”
He was surprised to discover he wanted to tell her his real name; he did not.
“Partha,” she repeated. “A good enough name; I know it or not. Ulster and Leinster are hardly neighbors.”
“Strange that names should be so different though, betwixt kingdoms, isn’t it? He laid aside his weapon belt. “Now ‘aine’ is in use all over Errin, surely.”
She shrugged. And the jiggle that movement brought about within her bodice made his head go light while warmth came upon him. She was the most attractive member of her sex he’d ever been with. Indeed, he’d been alone with none, not this way… none under twoscore years of age, at any rate.
“Aye, it’s such a common name,” she said. “It’s Partha I’d rather be.”
Cormac laughed. “Or Drolleen?”
Aine looked unpleasant, then smiled, then laughed; the sound, he thought, was that of a happy brook in the hills. “Do see that ye never call me that. Or filly, either!”
“Memory will be on me till the end of my days, Flame-lady; I make vow by the gods my people’s people swear by. Aine. Aine. It is a pretty sound. Ye be of Carman?”
No, she told him, she was a merchant’s daughter from Ailenn, come down to Carman with her father for goods. They talked of that, and of trading, and they ate, and talked too of names, and springtime, and Carman, and other matters. She was bored with this self-conscious capital city, Aine told him; she preferred her Ailenn. When she asked about him, he mixed truth with necessary lies and made all as sketchy as possible. She filled his mug a third time and he told her that he was far ahead in the quaffing. She pointed out that he was much bigger-and then drank off hers and filled her cup and drank most of that, and filled it to the brim again. How was it no green eyes he’d seen afore had been so beautiful, so… green; no red hair so firelike, so beautiful?
They compared ages. She claimed to sixteen years. So did he, shy a month. Ah, he said, lifting his cup, an older woman! And he but a poor foreign-boy all alone in the great city. And they laughed, and drank.
“And why did Othna’s son Partha leave Ulster and travel even across Meath, all the way down to Leinster?”
“Oh… a matter of a woman,” he said, with an airy wave of his hand.
They smiled, exchanging looks; they drank. She leaned close with her eyes on his, and Cormac, staggering at the brink of those green wells, asked why she’d been in such a place as the Blue Shamrock.
Looking suddenly not happy with him, Aine straightened. “I told ye. Boredom’s one me here, with my father ever busy at the dickering. I… wander.”