The Golden Queen Read Free Page A

couple of days from home.
    “Heavens, boy!” Father Heany said. “Why, your reputation has already traveled farther than your foot ever wandered. Every highwayman in the county will clear out in a week, and no one will need escorts anymore! Why, you’re your own worst enemy!”
    Seamus nudged the priest with an elbow, cleared his throat. “Ah, don’t give the boy a fat head. He’s not that good!” He turned to Gallen. “But, to tell the truth, Gallen, I do want to contract your services. My son’s gone ahead to tell Biddy that I’ll be home later, but I’m not half as drunk right now as I want to be in an hour, and I’ll pay you two shillings if you get me home alive.”
    “Two shillings?” Gallen asked. It was a low price for a bodyguard, but then it was late of the night-too late and too rainy for robbers to be about. Gallen would only have to escort Seamus over the hills from Clere to the village of An Cochan, a distance of four miles, making certain that Seamus didn’t fall off his horse. “Give me four and it’s a deal.”
    Seamus grimaced as if he were passing a kidney stone. “What? Why you’ve got an inflated notion of your own worth! You’re so hot to become a landlord, you’re already evicting imaginary tenants!”
    “Five shillings,” Gallen said. “Four for my services, and one for insulting me.”
    “Three!” Seamus said with finality.
    Gallen held his eye a moment, nodded agreement. The only sound was the wind howling outside and the paddles in the butter churn. The scullery maid, a sweet sixteen-year-old girl named Maggie Flynn, normally churned fresh butter every dawn, but with the stormy night and so many travelers passing through town, she was trying to get a head start. She had dark red hair and darker eyes, a patina of perspiration on her brow. She caught Gallen looking at her and shot him a fetching smile.
    Seamus winked at Father Heany and said, “Ah, Father, it doesn’t get any better than this, does it? Lazing about after a fine dinner.”
    “No,” Father Heany agreed. “Not much.”
    “No, not much better at all—unless,” Seamus said, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke, “you were in your own house with your own sweet wife sitting on your lap while you were smoking your pipe, and your dear wee children all tucked into bed.” Seamus cocked an eye at the priest, as if daring him to disagree—what with the priest being celibate—but Father Heany just sucked on his pipe thoughtfully, seeming to take a cue from Seamus.
    “Ah yes, a wife.” Father Heany sighed. “‘Tis a fine thing, I’m sure.”
    “Now, if I were a young man like Gallen,” Seamus said, “just moving back to town, getting ready to settle down, I’d be looking for a wife. In fact, I’d almost think it my duty to find some fine County Morgan girl and marry her.” Gallen wondered what Seamus was hinting at. Seamus had a couple of young daughters out on his farm, but the oldest was only fourteen. And while it wasn’t unheard of for a girl to marry so young, Gallen couldn’t imagine that Seamus would be talking about “duty”—unless some boy had filled one of his daughters with a child and then run off into the yonder and now Seamus was desperate to find the girl a husband.
    Father Heany must also have been trying to fathom where Seamus was leading, for he said, “Now that you speak of it, there’s that Mary Gill down in Gort Obhiann whose husband got kicked by a horse last summer, leaving her with three strapping little boys, all of them fatherless. If I were looking for a wife, I’d certainly pay a visit to Mary. A beautiful girl! Beautiful! And she’s guaranteed not to leave you childless.”
    “Ah, she’s pretty enough all right,” Seamus agreed. “But dumb as a pine cone, I hear. Like as not, she’ll fall in a well or catch a cold from standing in the rain too much, then leave her husband a widower.”
    “Hmmm?” Father Heany asked, cocking a brow.
    “Now, there is Gwen Alice