The Making of Tawny: Part Two.
Aingeal and Cormac were married some seven months before it became apparent that he was impatient for an heir. During all this time Aingeal did not conceive and Cormac began to observe this failure openly. He was not rude or accusatory, but he made mention of it by observation so much after a time, that Aingeal considered doing him harm by a poison more powerful than her unhappiness.
In addition to this, Cormac was spending her fortune almost daily. Aingeal was glad of it at first, for Cormac was generous and liberally blessed the lives of his workers, but as he continued to spend it, he made less and less of an effort to include her in his decisions. It was, of course, not a deliberate act to shun her from his affairs. He was simply too busy of late to consider her feelings on the matter, and she being a woman, he simply assumed that she wouldn't care.
These two daily injuries combined against Aingeal's pride, and by the time they had been married a year, she was as secretly bitter as any woman might be, despite the relative comforts of her life.
Life continued this way. Aingeal did not conceive, and more than this, she didn't want to. The more it troubled Cormac, the more Aingeal enjoyed his disappointment. At first, she thought herself barren, and thought herself the better for it, for Cormac was sometimes on the sea and she might be made a widow and she would be free to marry again. She didn't hate Cormac enough to wish him dead, not exactly, but the idea was ever present in her mind, fueled by her disappointment. She simply could not regain what she felt she had lost, though she admitted to herself in more sober hours that she was probably exaggerating this idea, for she could have done far worse. Still, she romanticized her role in her own imaginings and found comfort in the fact that she might escape if he were to tragically die, leaving her the beautiful, pitiful heroine of her own story.
Then something worse happened.
One day she was at the market, listlessly going about the business of buying some unimportant things for her household, when she chanced to see Cormac walking in the lane. As she was in a doorway, and not in a particular mood to speak with him, she stepped into the shop and out of his view. From this vantage point she witnessed something she had not considered. Other women were watching Cormac as well.
"God in Heaven." she whispered to herself, for not one but several women observed his passing with a forwardness that she did not like.
It was in this moment that she realized something she had not considered. She had always known that Cormac was passing fair for a simple man, but now his fortune was also passing simple. She herself had supplied him with wealth and position above his previous station, and owing to a good business sense on his part, he was expanding that wealth exponentially. He was, in a phrase, a man about the town. He walked as had before, but with an added uprightness which drew attention from everyone about him, including, to Aingeal's horror, the fairer sex.
For the next few days she dwelled in a strange and heady fear, as if she had discovered this threat to her position almost too late. If she had understood Cormac at all, she would have known that it was near impossible for him to consider putting her away for someone else, though given time even he might drift. Still, she was panic stricken for several days as she imagined herself cast off from all and left penniless in a man's world. The once wife of a fisherman, left behind barren and forgotten. This fear altered other plans in her heart, for she was so intent on not conceiving, that she had even considered harm to herself to make conception impossible. Now, she travelled near and far to seek out every herb, medicine, concoction, and devilish charm to be had in an effort to bear fruit. She frantically sought after every bit of advice that might see her pregnant within the month, much to the delight of sympathetic associates and neighbors, that took her unexpected awakening for that of a motherly crusade.
Cormac himself was not unhappy about the matter, for her earlier affections had returned. Her begrudging intimacies were now ones of desperate passion. It was heady stuff and he found himself home at earlier hours and sometimes at mid day. Their love seemed to have revived and he was glad of it, for he genuinely cared for her despite what she thought of him. For her part, she couldn't have cared less what he might imagine of this sudden change. A storm had blown over her life and she wanted a lifeline more secure than his love. Women were now her mortals enemies as much as men. She had always berated small minded women, hating them for being small and compliant, but now she hated all, content to be utterly alone in a man's world surrounded by traitorous women.
Once in church a women deigned to smile too long and openly at Cormac and it took all of her self control to keep her seat among the pews. She imagined herself putting out the woman's eyes with a hot candle from the vestibule. She wanted to cram the woman's smile full of hymnal pages and set her alight. They were not the thoughts one should have in church.
Then it happened. Somewhere between desperation and copulation, she conceived.
Cormac was thrilled beyond measure and thanked God daily on his feet and on his knees. Aingeal was not so grateful, and spent her time kneeling elsewhere in abject nausea. She never once thanked her maker, and had not done so for over a year. God was but one more man she never spoke to if she could help it. She might have said thank you, secretly and shamefully, somewhere in the recesses of her heart, but it was a prayer to the void. It quieted her immediate fears to be with child, but only for the moment.
Those first few weeks of relief soon gave over to old hatred, old despairs. She found herself wondering a mantra silently to herself and then aloud. "What if I bear a son? What if I bear a son?"
Strangely enough, Cormac never once made mention of the gender, but to speculate what he might call the child if it were a boy OR a girl. In fact, Cormac gave the matter of gender equal time, speaking about both possibilities whenever the subject arose. Aingeal seemed not to notice this equality of consideration, choosing instead to hear every other man's opinion on the matter, for Cormac's friends would use the word 'son' at every opportunity. They said it so casually, that the word vexed Aingeal, and she could not imagine hating a word more. She understood that a son would secure her place permanently in the world, but Aingeal had become a sad, second-guessing and suspicious creature and could not be dissuaded from her place as a martyr. The more she waxed in girth, the more she sank into a miasma of fear, apathy and sad acquiescence.
Then, on February 12, 1666, Aingeal brought another man into the world.
David Tenille was born small, as is the case with most newborns, but even then he was smaller than most. He was a frail child, but apart from this he was well proportioned, of a healthy color, and fixed with a surprising amount of fine, blond hair. He cried little, choosing to whimper instead, puppy-like.
Cormac loved him immediately and easily, as fathers do with sons. Cormac was surprised and delighted to love so much a thing so small and new, and Aingeal loved him more then, for the look in his face, then she had ever loved him before. The love she felt in that moment was so bright that it eclipsed everything she had previously experienced in her life, but it lasted but a few brief minutes. It might have been the difference between a good life and a fabulous life, but Aingeal had learned to hate too much, and it took but one jealous pang for her to poison that wellspring with a life altering choice. She took that one bright, pure moment of love that might have changed her life forever and carefully set it aside. It was as if two children had been born in that moment. David, the whimpering innocent, and her one opportunity to forget all of her misgivings and maligned experiences. Both pure and innocent. Both beautiful. Both fraught with possibilities grand and everlasting, but it was not to be. While Cormac hefted his beloved son, Aingeal, cold to the idea of ever giving in to anything, beautiful or not, smothered that second child of future happiness as effortlessly as wringing the neck of a Christmas goose.
"Let us name him David, for my Father." Cormac said, beaming.
"And Tara, for my mother..." she amended, with a look on her face that Cormac took for joy.
"Then David Tara Tenille it is." Cormac agreed, and the smile which spread upon Aingeal's face was so sharp that she might have cut his throat with it.
