Celtic Mist

Chapter 6: Scent of a Lass

Over the next few days after the incident on the sofa, Declan and Sophie went about their usual activities. Every now and then the lively damsel gave him a coy smile or wink, at which Declan came over awkward, uncertain if she knew what her shapely calf had wrought in his breeches.

Following the revival of his body's spirit, Declan found himself consumed anew by thoughts of Aoife. Visions of her permeated his dreams...as ethereal as mist...her pale face with its handful of freckles and eyes the color of a robin's egg...surrounded by a halo of wild red hair. During the day, his eyes roved the streets for her, occasionally falling upon red-haired lasses, but none were she: the hair was too dark, too light, too curly...the figure was too tall, too plump, too thin...and the face was not the one he loved.

In the wee hours of the following Sunday morning after a busy night in the tavern, Declan at last retired to the garret and undressed. He pulled on the nightshirt that Mrs. Murphy had given him; she had offered him a few items of her son's clothes that she had stored away the past several years. Most of the garments had been too small on him, but he had gratefully accepted the nightshirt and a wool cap. In the cold room he was again appreciative of the additional layer of warmth.

He knew not how much time had passed when he was awakened from his sleep by a noise.

The door to his room was slowly swinging open, and he was momentarily blinded by the glowing sphere of a lit candle. He sat up, his eyes adjusting to behold a strangely shaped object approaching. It soon resolved itself as the barmaid Kate in a nightgown, carrying a large bundle of fabric. Confused, Declan swung his legs over the side of the bed and pulled the quilt over his lap. In the candlelight, the red of her unbound hair made his heart twist. "Kate? Is all well?"

Smiling, she said softly. "Aye, so it is. I was after thinking ye might be cold up here, so I brought you another quilt." She approached and held it out to him.

Declan reached for his candlestick and lit it from hers, attempting to diffuse with additional illumination the charged atmosphere lent by her presence in his bed chamber in the middle of the night. He set the candle upon a crate that he used for a bedside table. She did the same with hers, then eagerly shook out the quilt upon his bed, climbing onto the mattress to spread it out.

"Ta," he said. Watching her over his shoulder, his eyes pensively absorbed the evocative combination of the red hair, nightgown, and bed. The mattress shifted suggestively with her motions as she crawled about, tugging the corners of the quilt outward then kneeling back up. Soon she tripped herself, giggling as she flopped down upon her belly on the bed. Propping her chin upon her hand, her green eyes sparkled up at him. She lifted her feet, bending her knees...the gown slid down from her ankles, revealing her pretty, arched feet and well-turned calves.

Declan stirred uncomfortably at the sight of this fair maiden reclining upon his bed wearing naught but a nightgown, waving her bare feet --- but he maintained his seat on the edge of the mattress. Clearing his throat, he said, "Aye, it does get cold in here. 'Tis sweet of you to think of it."

Kate scrambled to her knees, then sat next to him, her thigh pressing against his through the quilt, her feet dangling alongside his. "Do you think you'll be warm enough?" she murmured, gazing up at him. The candlelight on the other side of her shone through the thin fabric of her gown, showing the outline of her torso underneath...Declan's eyes traced the protuberant contour of her full breasts, grateful for the cover of the quilt across his lap.

"Sure, 'twill be grand now. Thank you..." He faltered as she placed her hand upon his thigh atop the quilt.

"Oh, but you're shivering, ye are." Her hand moved back and forth upon his tensed muscle.

"Nay, 'tis nothing. I'm fine." His gaze traveled over her curved hips and thighs molded by the limp fabric of her nightgown, then lifted to the illuminated top of the garment to watch the silhouette of her breast jiggling with the motion of her hand. Swollen with libidinous need, he sat helplessly as she rummaged in his lap for the edge of the quilt and pulled it aside. Then her small hand reached for the pole that was tenting up his shirt. Declan moaned as her greedy fingers explored his rampant steed.

"Oh!" she whispered, her eyes widening and lifting to his. With a voluptuous squeeze, her hand stroked up and down his organ...then she hastened to push the quilt completely away and draw up his nightshirt. "Oh!" she repeated. Without relinquishing her hot, tugging grasp on his sweetly tormented staff, she turned and swung her leg over him so that she straddled his lap.

With a series of jerks with her free hand, she pulled up her nightgown...Declan had a glimpse of the light reddish-gold hair of her cunny before she threw her arms about him. He embraced her instinctively as she squirmed upon him panting, his cockstand pressing against the luscious, wet flesh between her legs --- together they strived to achieve penetration. His heart pounded...

...his fingers twined in her not-quite-right red hair...and that was his undoing.

He froze, holding her tight to him and stilling her wriggling hips. For several moments he remained motionless, then he stood, lifting her and setting her to her feet. "Kate...sweet Kate," he sighed. "I canna do it. You're a fine, lovely lass, so ye are. But I lost me heart to another afore I ever met you."

She looked up at him solemnly. "What happened?"

He gazed past her shoulder at the flickering candle flames. At length, he said, "I lost her." When she touched his hand, he looked back down at her.

"I'm sorry," she said, squeezing his hand. He returned the pressure with a dismal smile. After a moment, she turned to collect her candlestick. Pausing at the door, Kate looked back at him. "Well, she was a right lucky lass, so she was...to be loved by ye."

Declan stood for a while after she left, his body as hot and agitated as the dancing candle flame. Within the space of a week, he had been most remarkably presented with the opportunity to fuck two bonnie lasses...but had declined. His heart was beguiled by the wild, wounded faery maiden, and 'twas his heart that had the mastery of his body. Glumly he doubted that Aoife would attribute any connection with him to good luck.

With a sudden thought, he crossed to the dormer where he had set his knapsack and sorted through the contents to at last draw out the shirt and breeches that Aoife had worn. Back in bed he stretched out, arranging the shirt over his torso and the breeches over his legs, imagining her still in them and her warm body lying atop him. He lifted his head and pulled the collar closer, rubbing his nose along the fabric and inhaling deeply to detect the faint scent of her.

*****

Girls smelt different. Declan had been living on the streets for a couple of years when he started to notice the intriguing differences between lads and lasses. There was a subtle scent to lasses his age and older for which he could not account, but he knew 'twas something he liked very much indeed.

He was in a largish town --- he had arrived a week or so ago and had managed to keep himself fed from random tasks performed about town. One evening as he leant against a building watching the passersby, he noticed a wee lass wandering along the street, peering at the beggars. By her ragged garb and dirty face, she was doubtless another homeless urchin herself. She looked to be about his age, and despite her circumstances was quite pretty with wide blue eyes and fair hair, albeit matted. Declan stepped forward and asked her if she were looking for someone.

"Aye, me brother and sister," said she.

"I'll help ye," he offered.

She described her little brother and sister, and they began searching together. As they walked, she told Declan her tale. Her family had been evicted from their farm several months ago after her father died. Her mother had been with child when the family lost their home, and when, two months later, she gave birth in a field, both she and the bairn died. Maeve, for that was the lass's name, had been trying to keep herself and her wee brother and sister fed upon the streets. The three of them had arrived in the town earlier that day, and she had lost track of them during the busy market on the square.

Declan and the lass trudged through every street and alley in town twice over but saw neither hide nor hair of the two weans.

Being well acquainted with life on the streets after two years as an orphan, Declan could only suppose that some calamity had befallen them...but he kept his misgivings to himself as he tried to comfort Maeve. By and by, Declan found a doorway in which to rest. He offered her bread that he retrieved from his knapsack, and they sat eating and gazing out at the dark street. There was enough room to curl up on the doorstep, and he let her have the more sheltered spot deeper in the nook, whilst he lay down on the outer side, closest to the street.

The next day they searched again and made inquiries among the other beggars, to no avail. Maeve stayed near him as he earned a couple of pennies unloading baskets of shorn wool at a weaver's shop. Again, they shared the simple vittles he was able to buy, and eventually curled up, back-to-back, in the doorway.

In the middle of the night, Declan was jolted from his sleep by a sharp blow to his belly --- he grunted in pain, then his eyes opened to see the dark, scuffling shapes of men's legs directly before him. As he scrambled to his feet, he heard a smothered gasp from Maeve. Two men had seized her and were carrying her off!

Declan launched himself at the broad back of the nearest man, punching at his neck and trying to trip his legs. The man let go of Maeve and turned to swing a fist at him as the other restrained the struggling girl against him with his hand over her mouth. Declan fought valiantly against the assailant nigh twice his size, even smashing the man's nose with his fist, but at last he was knocked to the cobblestones. The dark street spun as he tried to crawl after the retreating kidnappers.

Over the following days he searched for Maeve...in vain. 'Twas a devilish business this...her brother and sister vanishing, then her. Could some distant relations have appeared to collect them? But that surely would not account for Maeve's violent abduction, would it? In dread, Declan considered another possibility...a horror that the street urchins whispered about: the child stealers who forced their victims into a life of begging, oft inflicting injuries upon them to enhance their pitiable appearance and encourage sympathetic alms...all of which were pocketed by the kidnapper.

He redoubled his search efforts, but never found Maeve nor learnt her fate...his failure to protect her haunted him for years after.

'Twas not long after this episode that Declan became cognizant of another troubling fact of life on the streets.

Working as a street cleaner in a town, he one day chanced to see a group of gaily dressed young ladies trooping from a carriage into what appeared to be an elegant private residence. Six comely lasses, they were, accompanied by a burly man of about thirty who was garbed in plain, but well-made garments. As Declan stood watching --- his broom paused --- one of the lasses looked over her shoulder and winked at him.

He completed the day's work in a state of distraction. Later that evening, his curiosity still brewing, he asked an older street lad, Brian, about the house.

"The place with the blue shutters? 'Tis a bawdy house."

"What's a bawdy house?"

Brian proceeded to enlighten him, then teased, "Why? Are ye wanting some company?" He grinned at Declan. "Even if ye have the coins, I dinna think they'll let ye in...'tis a right fancy academy."

Having lived on the streets and farms, Declan naturally knew the essential facts of life...knew that what Brian was referring to was the act of procreation. But even with this explanation, Declan could not understand why a man would pay to perform with a stranger the act in which married people engaged for the purpose of making a baby.

*****

Over the ensuing years, Nature worked her craft upon his mind and body, turning him from a boy into a man.

Declan came to understand many things that had seemed impenetrably confusing before. His attraction towards females grew in intensity, and he could scarce pass a minute without an innocently lewd thought possessing him --- innocent not in content, but in what the longed-for acts would feel like in actuality, for he had no experience of his own upon which to rest his imaginings.

How he longed to put his arms about a lass and kiss her...to see a lass unclothed and admire her charms to his heart's content! Aye, he grew to well understand the urges of a man...to understand why there were whores and bawdy houses. No desire had he to procreate, but he desperately wanted to lie with a lass. Unconcerned with decorum, his insistent cock answered only to Nature, ever rising to remind him of its growing need to go into a lass's cunny.

Declan came to appreciate that lasses were the guardians of a treasure that males singularly craved, and in that role possessed the power to thwart or grant a lad's fondest desire. As he reasoned it out, there were three potential means by which a man might get at said treasure: by mutual agreement (marriage or concordant desire), by buying it, or by force. Only the first option was congruous with his conscience...by concordant desire, that is, for he was in no position to offer marriage.

The matter of lasses selling their favors was a quagmire of conflicting emotions for him. Over the years, Declan had in indignation witnessed the abuse heaped upon the doxies of the streets, even at the hands of those in equally destitute circumstances. 'Twas unjustified. How many of those living by their wits on the streets had not done something desperate to feed themselves? Stolen? Betrayed someone? Committed acts of violence? Set aside their principles to work for masters of reprehensible character? Lasses were already at a disadvantage, being the weaker vessel, why shame them for using their last resource to stay alive?

For this very reason, no matter how overcome he was by his rutting instincts, he could not on principle indulge his desires with a lass forced into the whoring life --- he could not abide the thought of obliging a lass to engage in sexual acts that she did not in her heart desire for herself --- simply because he offered her money.

Whilst his reluctance thus arose fundamentally from misgivings as to the lass's true acquiescence, another objection had more to do with his own feelings. He did not want to engage in carnal acts with someone who was willing to provide them to any man for the right price --- he wanted to experience amorous congress with someone who wanted to share it with him, Declan, for no remuneration at all. But then he worried that eschewing their merchandise would only make their situation more desperate.

Aye, when it came to the lasses, he oft felt befuddled. Pondering his heart's powerful reaction to Aoife, Declan endeavored to make sense of the course of his life before Kilmaedan Castle, recalling as he did so the intermittent milestones of Nature's instruction.

Many of his treasured memories involved the daughters of the families on whose farms he had lived during planting and harvest seasons. He had not necessarily been more romantically inclined in the country, but the knowledge that he had a meal and bed waiting for him at the end of the day eased the unrelenting burden of self-preservation present in town --- allowing him more leeway for diversion. 'Twas also easier to be alone with a lass in the country, easier to find secret places where two might be unobserved. And perhaps there was something about the fresh, fertile panorama of Nature that stirred him more acutely than the rank-smelling cobblestones in town.

His first kiss was with a brown-haired lass named Mary. Summoned by the agitated barking of the family's dog, he had found the fair maid in a pasture with her foot pinned under a pile of stones. A wall had fallen on her whilst she was trying to climb it to retrieve an errant lamb. Declan lifted the stones off and helped her up. Fortunately, there was no serious injury. They lingered in the pasture for some time...there had been an unspoken communication between them for several weeks. Always in the company of her family members, there had never before been an opportunity to be alone with her.

Mary asked him if he didn't long to travel to faraway lands, perhaps imagining that because he lived a roving life, he was a lad of more lofty aspirations. Declan gazed down at the wild, verdant landscape that stretched before them, thinking no faraway land could ever look so fine to him as Ireland. Curious it was --- the difference in perception. He supposed that always living on the farm, she had grown insensible to the beauty that surrounded her.

Their hands were resting upon the same stone, and he slid his over to take hold of hers. She returned his grip with a soft squeeze, and her eyes met his. Leaning towards her, he kissed her cheek.

The next experience of note occurred the following year. He was working on a different farm, again upon which resided a lass near his age. Dervla her name was, and she had long reddish-gold braids. For some two weeks they had been exchanging secret looks behind her family's back. One night, her mother sent her to fetch water at the nearby stream, and Declan volunteered to assist her.

They had only starlight to illuminate the path across the pasture. Upon filling the buckets, they paused in the dark and looked at each other...surrounded by the primordial sound of flowing water. The next moment, they stepped closer together and their lips touched...and tarried.

'Twas then that the girl's father encountered them. With the sound of the stream, they had failed to hear his approaching footsteps.

The farmer swore and roughly took Declan to task with his fists. By reflex, Declan defended himself, and the match fell in favor of Declan. It was an empty victory indeed, for he was thrown off the land that night. The tender moment he had experienced with Dervla, however, he cherished in his wistful daydreams.

By the fall of that year, he made his way to another farm in different county, where he was hired for the harvest season. Here he dug praties with the farmer and his two older children, Conor and Grace. Sweet, fair-haired Grace with her lilting voice...she would sing to herself in Irish as she worked. To Declan's confusion, he understood most of the words...how did he come to know Irish?

Grace used to question him about his travels...then teased him by pretending to disbelieve his tales. "Och, that canna be true! You must be bouncing," she would scoff, rolling her eyes.

Declan would grin at her. "If ye dinna believe me, then dinna ask."

The entire family --- parents, Conor, Grace, and the younger children --- one evening attended the Harvest Fair in the nearby village. Here to the music of a fiddle, pipes, and drum, Declan took the opportunity to dance with Grace, his heart beating with happy vigor as he whirled her round among the other couples...her skirts swirling and her eyes aglow. The rest of the family was scattered about in the busy square when Declan and Grace slipped away...wordlessly taking each other's hands when they found themselves out of sight of the square. No words were necessary either when, by and by, they wandered off the path to climb among the stones on the riverbank.