Sing Me Home by Lisa Ann Verge

not?”
    “Is that wretch bothering you still, Maura?”
    Matilda waddled her way toward them. Her girdle lay right beneath her breasts now, to make room for the belly distending her tunic. Her boots lay tied together across her shoulders, and she’d pulled her hair away from a face pale of rouge. Without her silks, Matilda looked like the dairymaid of the Tuscan countryside that she’d told Maura she had been before Arnaud had lured her into the troupe.
    Maura linked her arm with Matilda’s, to give the woman someone to lean upon, though Maura dodged Matilda’s brown eyes full of sympathy.
    “Save your riddles for the fair of Kilcolgan,” Matilda said, setting her eye on Maguire. “Not all of us need show off our wares between towns.”
    “You’re jealous, Makejoy, that I can work my wits and still earn a penny by it.” Maguire darted over and gave her belly a pat. “What man wants to climb a mountain for the mounting—and find the cave well filled?”
    “A man with a spade hard enough to dig, Mudman, and not a limp tatter of a spoon like yours.”
    The growing sound of a horse’s hooves coming up the road put an end to the sparring. They paused to watch as a man on a large palfrey appeared around the bend. Maura and the other minstrels skittered to the edge of the road to make way for him, but he rode past and then stopped, barring the way.
    Maura wondered if he were a toll-collector, a common sight wherever the English had settled, until Matilda draw in a sudden breath and gripped her forearm.
    The man shouted a question to Arnaud. Maura heard the name Colin, and her blood went cold.
    “A bard you say?” Arnaud stepped up and pinched the flesh beneath his chin in contemplation. “You’re looking for an Irish poet?”
    “He was masked,” the man said, “and disguised among a group of minstrels much like yourselves.”
    Her blood rushed. Colin had escaped!
    “He was last seen in Tuam.” The rider spoke a usurper’s English. “Have you been to Tuam?”
    Maura eyed the rider. His hood was pulled low, covering most of his face against the spatter of rain. There was no doubting the authority in the set of his shoulders, or the richness of the studding on the horse’s harness, or the sure grip of his hands on the reins. But a man such as this, traveling alone, made her think he wasn’t English law.
    Perhaps O’Kelly had put a reward on Colin’s head. She wondered how many other lone riders searched for Colin in the woods of Ireland.
    “Ah,” Arnaud said, “I know of whom you speak. He was in our troupe not too long ago.”
    Maura sucked in a breath. Did Arnaud have no sense of honor at all? Did these minstrels betray their own so easily?
    “ Oui, I know him,” Arnaud repeated, planting his fists on his hips. “He has caused us all more trouble than he’s worth, I’ll tell you. He’s a stubborn, reckless bête without a bit of sense in his head. He has dragged us into his battles but tells us nothing, and then leaves us scurrying out of castles like rats.”
    The rider asked, “Where is he now?”
    “I don’t know and I don’t care. If you find the bastard, string him up too high for even the ravens to find.”
    Rich laughter rumbled out from beneath the hood. The rider dismounted with a snap of his cloak, then shoved the hood back upon his shoulders.
    Colin’s grin lit up the world.
    Maura stood, dumbfounded as the troupe rushed him. The minstrels’ laughter filled the air. Colin embraced a snarling Arnaud in a bearish hug. Padraig slapped him on the back. Matilda fixed his face in her hands and kissed him flat on the lips. The twins tumbled and hopped like children begging for wafers.
    Maura covered her mouth with both hands, staring. She’d imagined him hanging by the neck from a tree on the side of the road, denied a good Christian burial. But his black hair gleamed on his shoulders, his eyes crinkled in laughter, and his face was marred with no more bruises and cuts than usual.
    He