Epilogue
A nd so it came to pass that on the morning of the shortest day of the year, Samhain, Angus and Birdi stood in Blackstone’s great hall and signed the great ledger, then all hustled to the chapel where they pledged to love, honor, and obey ‘til death did them part before a traveling priest and the entire MacDougall clan.
After the ceremony, they all rushed back to the great hall where they raised their tankards to the newlyweds. Duncan, standing before a crowd anxious to start their feast, raised his tankard. “Ladies and gentlemen, to the bride and groom.” Cheers rang off the rafters and fists thundered on tables.
He raised his tankard again. “To Laird Angus MacDougall of Donaliegh and his lovely wife, Lady Elizabeth Birdi MacDougall.”
Birdi preened. Aye, she’d finally chosen a name.
Angus, jaw slack, took the offered scroll and the keys from his liege’s hands. “But ye said…”
Grinning, Duncan threw his arm around his best friend’s shoulders. “All I ever wanted was for ye to find a woman worthy of ye, Angus. One who would love ye as much as my Beth loves me, and ye did.”
As everyone ate, drank, and laughed, four stout men rushed the priest along, then hustled him into a boat and took him to Dresmoor, where they handed him a fat purse and then slapped his pony’s rump. Hard.
In the great hall, the pipes, lutes and flutes began to play and the clan danced until the sun began to set. They then marched down Blackstone’s quay and got into their boats. The entire clan made their way across Drasmoor bay and up into the hills to the sacred spring, where Auld Maggie, the shrine keeper, waited at the bonfire. Angus and Birdi again pledged their love then having circled the fire and well multiple times, they drank from the sacred spring, joined hands and jumped over the fire and into their future.
A week later, Duncan loaned Angus five stalwart soldiers to take with them to Donaliegh, since he didn’t know the number or battle readiness of the forces there. Angus tried to trap Wolf in a cage for the journey, but the beast would have no part of it, and in the end followed as he chose on foot.
Donaliegh Castle was all Angus and Birdi could have ever hoped for and all the work anyone would ever want to face in one lifetime, huge and rundown as it was.
Once the family was settled and the food stores and arms put away, Angus fashioned a leather collar for Wolf. Birdi painted it to match Angus’s shield and attached it to Wolf’s neck so all would know he belonged to her. The clan was told not to harm him and bring any complaints to their liege.
While Angus and the men labored over stone and mortar, Birdi raised chickens, which she turned loose in the high hills above Castle Donaliegh where Wolf roamed.
Then on Beltane Day, Mistress Charlotte Rowena Prudence Katherine MacDougall—Birdi wanted to be sure the child never lacked for a name—came into the world with a lusty cry in Donaliegh’s warm solar.
She had her mother’s black curls and dimples and her father’s deep blue eyes, which pleased Birdi no end.
The babe grew as any healthy bairn should and played as any bairn might. Birdi and Angus were thrilled beyond measure that she could see as well as any and showed no sign of being highly sensitive to anyone’s pain but her own.
All was as it should be until, at the tender age of two, Wee Charlotte toddled out the great hall and fell down the stairs leading to the bailey. What made the event so unusual was the fact that Birdi—she now had spectacles, the lenses having been made by a friend of Duncan’s in Italia—and Angus both plainly saw that the staircase door was closed and latched when their bairn disappeared through it.
Wee Charlotte suffered only a few scrapes and bruises, but her parents have yet to recover.
The End…until next time.