Free Sing Me Home by Lisa Ann Verge

back to O’Dunn-pig and his wife-weasel. The music swelled in her throat until she could no longer hold it. She dropped her head back to open her throat and sang the song until it vibrated in the smoke-filled rafters.
    ***
    Colin lagged behind the troupe on the road to Tuam, watching the way the sunlight reflected off a certain linen coif. Since Maura’s triumph at the O’Dunn's—a triumph that had filled their pockets with groats—his little innocent had been honored like a pet among the minstrels. Maguire Mudman kept slapping a skin of ale into her hand. Padraig piped his own special sort of joy, making up words to a song about a lovely young songstress. The twins, twittering like larks in their guttural tongue, wove a garland of wildflowers to drape around her neck. Even Arnaud had stopped muttering and complaining.
    He watched all this from a distance and told himself that he was content. His innocent little songstress had learned her lessons well. She was a minstrel now, and Arnaud and the others would take care of her long after Colin was captured and hanged.
    So when they passed a certain huge oak stump by the side of the road, Colin hung back. This stump was all that was left of the tree that had been struck by lightning years and years ago. Beyond it, there lay a shallow stream that led to a crescent-shaped pond that he knew too well.
    When the troupe rounded a bend, he stepped off into the woods. He strode through the all-too-familiar hills until he reached the little pond cut into the crease of two hillocks. There he paused. He listened to the calls of morning birds, the crackle of old leaves, the breath of a light breeze while in his head came the roar and clash of memories.
    Greenery now feathered the branches, screening the scars of lances and swords that had once slashed these trunks. Saplings sprang from the dark earth where blood had once pooled. Wandering around the banks of the pond, he wondered how long after the battle it took for the blood to dry. He wondered where his men were buried. He stopped now and again, wincing as some combination of light and shadow, some knotted limb or tangle of branches loosed a dark memory.
    He’d done a fine job trying to forget. The castles of Gascony, the hamlets of Normandy, the narrow winding streets of Paris, the well-beaten roads of England—good places for a man to lose himself, almost as good as a bladder of ale, a horn of wine, dancing and music and laughter—or the soft white arms of a willing woman. He’d thought he’d found what he’d gone looking for: The truth that life was happiest when it consisted of intervals of joy, strung one after another, like a rope of luminescent pearls wound in a woman’s hair.
    Now he crouched at the edge of the pond, splashing the water over his face, slicking his fingers through his hair. A man’s path was blazed by so many little decisions, one after another. The last time he’d gazed into this water, he’d been little more than a youth with a bloody sword. Now what lay before him, reflected in the surface, was a mangled distortion of his own father’s face. Same dark hair, same eyes. Yet so different in temperament, it was as if they were not kin at all.
    Ten years of exile. Maybe he’d finally become man enough to fulfill the vow he’d made to his dead father.
    He stood up abruptly. The toe of his boot disturbed the edge of the water, shattering his reflection. He told himself that this was nothing but a pond. The sound of sword-stroke had long faded, the last drop of blood had long sunk into the earth.
    I can still turn away.
    He girded his belt and walked away from the pond, thinking how easy it was to believe his own lies.

Chapter Seven
    C olin lifted a square of blue silk and waved it at the crowd around him. Men and women spilled out the back door of the alehouse to watch. A baker, his black hair flecked with flour. A butcher, his leather apron marked by blood. A candlestick maker, his hands swollen by