The Collector 3: Cauldron Read online

  She batted him on the arm. “Okay, it was weird, but I’ll confess it was enjoyable. That still doesn’t answer my question, Matt. Why is Connacht significant?”

  “Because in this time it’s ruled by the wildest and horniest of the legendary Irish queens ‑‑ Maeve.”

  Chapter Five

  “Oh, great!” She cocked her head. “Y’ know, I really don’t think I want to take part in this. If the universe decides it wants to go on a really bad acid trip, it can count me out!”

  “So what do you suggest we do?” he asked.

  “That’s a no-brainer!” She pointed to the hummock of the barrow. “We go in there and see if it’ll take us back to our world.”

  He looked at her with a half-smile on his lips. “You could be right, but remember what we did that got us here?”

  Shuddering, she closed her eyes. “Oh, that’s just great! Are you saying we have to do that to get back?”

  “Maybe.” He touched her arm. “Look, we’ll go back and see. Maybe it ‑‑ whatever it was ‑‑ is still working. Maybe it doesn’t need us to ... to ‑‑”

  She shook her head. “Fuck, Matt. You can say the word, you know.”

  “Okay, granted. Maybe whatever magic opened that portal is still working. We’ve been here for less than thirty minutes.”

  “If it isn’t, we’d better find Colm,” she muttered.

  He laughed and shook his head. “Don’t be such a pessimist! Come on.”

  They headed back to the barrow. She was struck by how new it seemed. The turf was plain turf, but the stones were less worn, and the whole had an air of having been completed only recently.

  When they rounded the corner toward the entrance, they had a serious shock. A large stone block sealed the opening. Not believing the evidence of her eyes Kate walked over and stooped, pressing her hands against the sun-warmed stone.

  “How?” she asked, looking up at him. “How can this be sealed?” She felt all over the surface, questing, trying to find some key to the mystery. “There’s no fucking way anyone could’ve done this in so short a time!”

  “Magic,” he said.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up!” she raged, turning on him. “Don’t be so accepting of all this! You sound as if you wouldn’t mind being trapped here ‑‑ where or whenever here is!”

  “Maybe I don’t.” He shrugged and looked around. When he turned back to her, she could see the animation that had lit his face. “This would be a dream opportunity, Kate! We’ll be able to see and experience things no one from our time can have any concept of.”

  “I would rather have my life back!” she snapped, tapping her chest. “I’m not cut out for this! There could be all kinds of dangers out there, and what the hell do we have to fight them with? A few second-hand, brass-tipped spears and whatever we have in our pockets!”

  “They’re bronze spears, and I didn’t say it would be easy,” he muttered.

  She picked up a clod of earth and threw it at him.

  They headed back to the scene of the fight. “What do we do with the bodies?” she asked, looking at the human wreckage.

  “What can we do?” he said.

  “That’s callous, isn’t it?” She waved an arm at them. “They may have been bandits or whatever, but they were still human!”

  He frowned. “Kate, I’m not being callous! It’s a matter of practicality. We can’t bury them; we’ve nothing to dig a hole with. The barrow is sealed, so we can’t put their bodies in there.”

  “We’ve got to do something.”

  He looked around. “There’re plenty of stones around. The best we can do is drag the bodies together and make a cairn over them. At least it’ll keep the wild animals off them.”

  They worked for a solid hour, picking up and carrying stones to pile over the pathetic heap of bodies. Kate’s nails split, and her hands developed blisters, and she was soon aching in every muscle of her shoulders and back, but she kept going. Having raised the issue, she was determined not to back down and quit.

  Finally, they had raised a good-sized cairn over the bodies. Matt lifted his hand. “In nomine patrie, et fillii, et spitu sanctii. Requescant in pace.”

  She applauded lightly. “Oh, very good!”

  “A Catholic education is good for something,” he said with a wry grin. “And I’m sure some last words over the grave are more than the bastards under those stones would’ve given us.”

  “Good point.” She looked at the cairn, and found she was indifferent to the fate of the men. Why am I so uncaring?

  Them or you, kid. Them or you. The inner voice was loud enough to make her think it’d been spoken. She looked around and shivered. From a scrubby bush some yards away, a beady-eyed crow watched her. It took to the air and flew off eastwards. For some reason, the sight disturbed Kate. “Okay, let’s go. I want to get out of here.”

  * * * * *

  “The main road was over this way.” Matt strode toward the crest of the rise, using a captured spear as a hiking staff.

  Kate trailed behind, the blanket containing their haul slung over her shoulder. “Thank fuck for that!” she said. “Maybe, just maybe, you’re wrong, and the road’s there, and we can get a lift. Don’t forget that bandit left this way.” She looked around. “There’re plenty of bushes he could be hiding behind.”

  “The way he was running, I don’t think he’d stop until he reaches Dublin.” He stopped on the crest and looked down. She came up and stood beside him. “This is one time I really wish I were wrong,” he said.

  A road of sorts was there, but it looked worse than the bone-shaking drive up to Maria Byrne’s cottage. It was nothing more than a pale slash of earth worn into the springy turf, and Kate could follow its course for miles in each direction. There wasn’t a sign of a car, or a house, no telegraph poles nor power lines.

  She stared. “Oh, fuck!”

  “My thought exactly.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We need to reach a settlement.” He shaded his eyes and peered away to the south-east. “Galway is an ancient city; there’s bound to be a settlement on the site in this time. Whatever else we need, we need to find people and discover what time we’re in and what the situation is here.”

  “The situation is we’re lost.” She sighed, sitting down and plucking blades of grass.

  “And we could be in the middle of a war, or a tribal raiding area, or anything.”

  “Look on the bright side, why don’t you? I thought you were excited to be here.”

  “I am. This is an historian’s dream! As for looking on the bright side, I’m trying to. Look, like it or not, we’re stuck here until we figure out what’s going on and how to get back. We may as well make the most of it.”

  “Do you really think we should move away from the barrow?” she asked. “That entrance could open, and the portal could switch on again any moment. If it does, and we’re not here, we could be screwed!”

  “Do you seriously think that?” he said, looking around the hills that made up the northern horizon. “We can’t stay out here, Kate. We need food, water, shelter; all those good old primary requisites to sustain life.”

  “Aw, shit, I guess you’re right. So, do we head back to Galway?”

  “Yes, but not today.” He glanced up at the sun. “I figure it’s around mid-afternoon. Galway is around twenty miles from here. We can’t make it before dark, even on foot. We’ve got some food and drink now, even if it is basic stuff.”

  “I saw exactly what food we got,” she said. “Hunks of cold pork, some kind of black bread and a smoked sausage only the gods know what it’s made from. It’s a good thing I’m not vegetarian!”

  “You got to admit the drink isn’t bad.”

  “No, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t think we ought to drink that beer too much. It tastes pretty strong to me.” She adjusted the set of the blanket on her shoulder. “Okay, let’s go back to the barrow. If the thing does decide to open up again, we’ll be on
the spot.”

  “What about Colm?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. We last saw him in the barrow. There’s nothing to say he came here with us.”

  “Are you sure about that?” She glanced around. “Remember he said thank you after we ... after we.”

  “Fucked; you can say it aloud, you know,” he said with a shit-eating grin.

  She glared at him, but subsided and gave him a rueful smile. “I deserved that. Okay, fair point about Colm, but could he have meant thank you for bringing him here?”

  “Why would a fisherman from Galway know about this place, and why would he want to come here?”

  “He’s probably fished along this coast all his life. Maybe he found the barrow.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe he came from here originally and wanted to get back.”

  “Something else comes to mind,” he said, scratching his chin. “What if your grandfather came here too?”

  That thought stopped her cold, and she gaped at him. The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Except ‑‑ “There’s one snag; if sex is needed to open the way here, how did granddaddy manage?”

  “Good question. Maybe Maria Byrne volunteered to help him? She admitted they’d gone into the barrow together. If we come across him, be sure to ask!”

  “Cute!” she snapped. “Like, you’d ask your grandpa about his sex life?”

  “Well, no.” He rubbed his chin. “Even so, Maria sure seemed reluctant to go anywhere near the barrow. She told us she’d paid her dues. Something must’ve happened to make her that way. Maybe she and Thomas did find how to open the portal and she was left traumatized by the experience.”

  “I’m not so sure. It was freaky, yeah, but we’re okay. Anyway, if Maria and my granddad got it on, how come she was left in our time?”

  “Maybe the magic worked for him but didn’t work for her and she was left behind.”

  “Maybe. We may never know what happened.” She looked at the countryside and gestured to it. “Besides, Thomas disappeared thirty years ago. He could be anywhere by now, or dead.”

  “But if we’re in the past,” he pointed out, “then he could’ve arrived here yesterday.”

  “Huh?”

  “The past is fixed; done with. It’s like looking at a movie reel instead of the movie. You see the frames one at a time. If you had the means to travel back in time, you can pick a frame and drop into it. If the frame your grandfather came in is one before we arrived, it’s quite possible we may meet him.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that. If I ever meet the old goat, I’m sure going to say a few things to him! How come Maria Byrne knew when to take the journal to the bookstore?”

  “Something else we’ll have to ask.”

  They set off back up the slope. “You’re a pretty fit guy for a geek, Matt.”

  “When I was growing up, I was encouraged to be fit.”

  “Yeah?” She fell in beside him. “So how come a guy who should’ve been a nerd in high school turned out to look like a jock?”

  He blinked and thought about her question. “Now you want to know all about me?” he asked.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “You choose your moments.”

  “You’re not going to turn antsy on me, are you?” She bristled, and he was reminded yet again how sensitive she was.

  “No, I’m not. It was a fair question, Kate, and I’m sorry. I was a studious kid, always with my head in a book. My dad was second-generation Irish, working the docks in Boston. He was typical of his kind.”

  “Was?”

  He glanced at her and saw the sympathetic expression. “Yeah. He died of a coronary two years back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m fairly sure it wasn’t your fault.”

  “Thanks. At least there’s something you don’t blame me for!”

  He laughed. “Okay, I confess, my bolts have been screwed in too tight since we left the Collector’s place. I know I’ve been a pain in the ass, haven’t I?”

  “No shit.” She biffed his arm. “Never mind; you’ve loosened up since we had to fight those guys. You did pretty well back there.”

  “Thanks to my dad, I guess.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. He was always picking on me. ‘Get your head outta that goddam book, son! Ya want folks round here to think you’re a faggot?’ He forced me outside to play ball and enrolled me in the Athletics League when I was old enough to box. Farther Mulroney ran the show back at Saint Osyth’s. He could see I was more studious than most kids my age there, and thanks to him I was able to find time to study as well as work out. He was a big believer in mens sano in corpus sano.”

  “Good for him.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “You played football?”

  “Some; up to when I left high school anyway.” He felt his face grow hot, and he stared at the trail ahead. “Dad was having health problems about then; he wasn’t so domineering. I was able to go my own way for the first time in my life. Thanks to Farther Mulroney, I got excellent grades and won a scholarship to Harvard.”

  “Where you tried to become the archetypical Boston Brahmin?”

  He looked down at her and glared. “That was uncalled for.”

  “I know; my turn to apologize.” She looked up at him, and he could see the genuine contrition in her hazel eyes. “Matt, I know what it’s like to be an outsider. You found the need to conform. It’s natural; most of us do it.”

  “Okay, I guess I did. It’s hard to be among those old-money types when you’re a kid from the wrong side of the tracks in Boston.” He shrugged. “Luckily they make us tough in those parts. I had the usual barbs flung at me, but being built the way I am, they weren’t anything more than that.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Kate gave Matt a dazzling smile, and he did indeed feel pretty good just then.

  Colm watched from amidst the furze on the hill across the valley as the couple stumbled up the hillside and over the crest. He nodded in satisfaction. Matt was carrying a spear. Although his dress was outlandish for the times they were now in, the spear and his sheer height and build would command respect. As for Kate; well, a woman of color was practically unheard of in this land. The strange was always mysterious, even frightening. It would mark her as someone to be wary of, and she had the Power inside her. He waited until they were well down the trail before he got to his feet and moved in a low crouch through the furze and over the ridge. He hoped she would find how to use that power and quickly; they would need it where they were going.

  The chariot waited over the brow of the hill, its driver leaning against one of the wickerwork sides and eating a chicken leg. He was deep in enemy territory, yet showed not a care, and Colm grinned. The ponies, one black, one white, cropped the grass. Colm waved, and the charioteer tossed the bone aside and came to meet Colm. Immediately the ponies raised their heads and whickered a welcome to their master.

  “It’s good to see you, Laeg,” Colm said, looking at his driver’s plain but honest face with affection.

  “And it’s good to see you, Cuchulainn,” Laeg responded with a smile, and looked him over. “It’s good to see you even wearing those outlandish clothes!”

  Cuchulainn looked down at the tattered fisherman’s jersey and denims. “Ah, yes. Have you got my clothes?”

  “I have.” The charioteer reached into the cart and passed him a bundle of clothing. “We’d best hurry. The men of Connacht have grown very bold these past few months. We’ve been hard pressed since you left.”

  Cuchulainn got changed. “Worry no more, old friend. I’m back and here to stay.”

  “Good.”

  “And did the woman get back safe?”

  “She did ‑‑ although I think her adventures here left her touched in the head.”

  Laeg shook his head. “Ah, that’s a shame. But most important of all, did you find those you sought?”

  “I did.” He grin
ned. “With luck and the blessing, they’ll succeed in the task. Then it would be worth my foray into that strange land for all those months.”

  Laeg climbed into the chariot and Colm/Cuchulainn stepped up into his rightful place behind and to one side. “Where to?” the charioteer asked.

  “Gaillimh,” Cuchulainn said.

  Chapter Six

  A cold wind began to blow off the Atlantic as darkness fell. Denied the dubious shelter of the barrow Kate and Matt sought protection from the weather on the lee side of the hill. A huge boulder thrust out of the grassy slope, a deep cleft in it offering shelter which they improved by judicious use of branches and bracken to form a rudimentary hut. Moss grew in profusion around the base of the boulder, and it only needed their captured cloaks spread out to make comfortable beds.

  “Do we need to stand guard or something?” she asked as they made the finishing touches to the shelter and crawled inside.

  “I think we’ll be okay. We seem to be well away from the populated areas.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “There’s no sign of any habitation around here for miles. Besides, those bandits wouldn’t hang out where people would be likely to find them.”

  “Guess not.”

  “Still, we’d better not light a fire. There may be someone out there we’d rather not meet.”

  “Don’t think of huddling together for warmth,” she said with a smile to take the sting from the words.

  “I wouldn’t dare suggest it,” he said.

  She felt for his hand in the dark and squeezed it. “You’re an okay guy, Matt. I’m really sorry we got off to a bad start.”

  “Me too. I seem to have the happy knack of upsetting people.”

  “Oh, you’re not so bad.”

  “Thanks ‑‑ I think.”

  She took some of the dried meat they’d scavenged from the bandits, divided it and handed him a portion. “Thanks again. So what about you, Kate? I know you’re an actor, born in Florida, but that’s about it.”