Sing Me Home by Lisa Ann Verge Page B

composing verse to be chanted to the strum of a harp. He remembered the feel of the strings beneath his fingers, the coaxing of the music from his mind, the thrill of simple composition.
    “ ‘A hundred thousand times farewell, yet stay awhile …’”
    Those days felt like a hundred thousand years ago. It must be the woods that brought back such memories. In a vague way he remembered this place, the roll of the land and the slant of the starlight through the trees. He could have passed through these woods ten years ago and not remarked upon it. They were not far from Connemara now, not so far from the salt spray of Galway Bay.
    He imagined he could smell brine on the wind as he sang the last verse, ‘No—I shall cry no more. No, I shall cry no more.’
    Maura stood in silence for a few moments after he was done. “Is that the whole song then?”
    “Aye.”
    “It’s a simple love song. If I’d sung something like that yesterday instead of you and I playing that farce in front of the church, I can’t imagine I would have gathered half such a bag full of farthings.”
    “You were very good in front of the church yesterday, but this will bring in coin from the ladies instead.” He stepped away from the oak and approached her. “You need to memorize the words, Abbess.”
    Once again he spoke the words, line by line, making her repeat them until she could recite them alone. He watched her lips as she mimicked the melody. The hollow of her throat quivered. Her voice had a strange quality to it, stranger all the more for how she could turn it, in her fury, to a screech harsh enough to shave a man’s beard.
    “Do you think you know it now?” he asked, when she’d repeated the words twice.
    “It’s simple enough.”
    “Then I’ll hear it again, with feeling, lass.”
    She launched into the song just as the moon peeped out behind a cloud. Her voice was ephemeral—weightless, yet as powerful and invasive as sunlight through water. He’d heard many a voice in all his years of traveling. A fine Italian songstress he’d known had once brought the whole court of Toulouse to tears. Maura’s voice had such a quality to it—an undefinable thing, elusive and infinitely engaging. This was no ball-and-cup trick—she had real magic in her throat. But now he noticed that her voice carried only a shadow of that magic.
    In the silence after her rendition, he clucked his tongue in disapproval. “Where’s my songbird of Angelus ad virginem? You won’t be pleasing the O’Dunns using your little girl voice.”
    She hiked her hands onto those magnificent hips. “Are you complaining, Colin?”
    “You have an Irish harp of a voice, Maura, but just now you plucked it like an untrained boy.”
    “That crunching gravel you call your voice is better?”
    “I never claimed to be a singer. But I know what you are capable of.”
    “ ‘Angelus’ is a song worthy of the effort.”
    “And this isn’t?”
    “It’s just a simple love song.”
    “Love, my lass, is never simple.”
    “No doubt you’ve taught many a poor woman that lesson.”
    A shadow crossed her face and she took a step away from him, but it felt like she’d stepped back a hundred leagues. Indeed, he couldn’t deny it. He’d had his fill of women, too many faces in too many places. For the past ten years he’d drowned his sorrows in what pleasure there could be had. Strange that standing before this innocent, he couldn’t remember the look of a single one of them.
    Then he remembered that, raised as cloistered as she was, Maura had likely never had a kiss.
    “You know nothing of love.” He heard her breath catch. “Don’t deny it.”
    “What difference does that make?”
    “When you sing ‘ Angelus,’ you’re singing about a devotion you understand.”
    “So you’re saying I must know love to sing about it?”
    “It helps.”
    “You’ve years of wantonness on me, Colin. If that’s what it takes, I may as well stop trying right