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 bee stings. Clean-shaven faces, close-cropped hair. No multicolored cloaks here. No flowing mustaches, no braided culans hanging over the men’s shoulders. Beyond the flax of the alehouse thatch, he glimpsed the stone cylinder of the castle—the forbidding spike the English had planted in Irish ground to claim it as their own.When he was last here, Tuam had been only a summer ring fort, a small mound of earth used by the O’Manns for hunting in the nearby woods. Now it was full of Englishmen—Englishmen and at least one treacherous Irishman by the name of O’Kelly who’d passed the troupe on the road, riding proud on his palfrey, his long mustache flowing, heading straight to that English castle.Tonight, Colin thought grimly, he would remind O’Kelly of his treachery.And so it all would begin.Colin snapped the scarf by a corner, then balled his hand and tucked the end in the tunnel formed by his fist.
