Nigel Bateson dug his heels into the flanks of his horse, urging it to keep pace with the girl riding alongside him. The wind rushed past his cheeks. It was a wind from the sea tossing below, a wind laced with salt and the smell of the unknown. Nigel was 16 years old, dark and wiry, his muscles hardened from working alongside his father, his heart yearning for adventure.
Beside him, the girl laughed and edged her own horse ahead of his. She rode nearest the cliff. She always insisted that it was so, and when he protested about her safety, she would always point out that she was the lady and he the gamekeeper’s son. It was the only time she ever pulled rank on him – these moments when she wanted to coerce him into some new activity.
They’d grown up together as children, and in many ways they still were. She was only a year younger than him, wild and carefree, her long red hair hanging loose about her shoulders, her leg flung over to ride astride on the horse, her skirts gathered up nearly to her knees and her clothes in disarray.
“Maggie,” Nigel called to her. “You should slow down. The valley is ahead.”
The ‘valley’ was what Margaret Somerville had teasingly named the sudden drop ahead where the cliffs made a sharp cut inwards to allow for a quiet inlet far below. It was easy enough to re-route the horses to go around the upper edge of the inlet, but Nigel knew they were coming to the dangerous spot far more quickly than was safe. He looked over and saw that the girl had heard him and chosen not to heed.
She gave a wild laugh and kicked her horse gently. The beast was like her mistress, eager for speed, and needed little encouragement to surge forward again. Nigel felt a stab of fear mixed with something deeper, something his young heart didn’t fully understand. He had always been protective of Margaret, but this feeling was more than care and companionship. It had been a few years now that he had felt he preferred her company above all others, that he missed her terribly whenever she was gone and craved her companionship so much sometimes that it pained him. Yet separation was imminent.
He pulled up his horse, hoping that his good example would encourage her to slow her own mount, but she drove on until his heart was in his throat for fear of her safety, until her horse was sending pebbles skittering over the side of the cliff. Only then did she rein in the creature and turn around to stare at him triumphantly, the strong sea breeze carrying her hair aloft as though she was underwater and it was floating, suspended, about her.
“You look like Queen Medb,” he said with a smile, riding up to her.
She smiled back, and the expression lit up her face, all the way to her grey eyes. “The Queen of Connacht had pale hair if I remember the stories correctly. And it is not altogether a compliment to tell a woman of England that she is like a queen of Ireland.”
He pulled up his horse near her, relishing this favourite place they had shared since they were children, the overlook with the waves crashing against the rocks far below and the scrub grass running up to the edge of the rocky cliffs.
“It would not be a compliment for any ordinary woman of England,” he said with a shrug. “But I happen to know about the little volume of Ulster myth you keep tucked between your study books. Your governess may think that you have got over your fascination with the wild and strong-willed warrior queen. But I know better.”
She laughed, a full and clear sound completely different to the tittering giggles of the village girls Nigel kept company with.
“There is some belief that Queen Medb was the inspiration for the fairy Queen Map found in Shakespeare’s work,” she said primly, imitating her governess. “And therefore, I can hardly find fault with a little outside study as long as it augments our current interests.”
Now it was Nigel who laughed. “You do a fantastic Miss Barlowe,” he said. “Although it does her no favours.”
Margaret reached up and tucked several strands of hair behind one ear, looking out away from Nigel and over the sea. Her eyes had a faraway look in them. Nigel watched her, jealous of the sea for holding her attention. It