Chapter Eleven
After Anders went off about his business, Finlay walked out into the morning light to watch the Gallowglass at practice.
He told himself he but wanted to get a feel of them, perhaps garner some inspiration to enhance the march already in his head. In truth, part of him felt attracted to the sounds of practice, to the immediacy of it, the ordered crash and clang.
He was still part warrior, so it seemed, deep inside.
How was it that he remembered? He remembered everything, and yet Katrin did not? He’d been sure—or at least he’d hoped—that once she heard his stories, the memories would come flooding to her.
To his dismay, that had not happened. He could tell by the way she looked at him, polite and courteously interested, that she did not recall what they were to each other.
All, and everything.
Watching the Gallowglass at practice, it felt as if his own past lay before his eyes. The future?
Unknowable.
He longed to capture it. But life on this particular turn of the wheel did not look to be so kindly or straightforward.
He took himself off for a walk away from the clamor and down to the sea. A glorious morning it was, with the long combers clawing at the shore and the sky out over the islands reaching for eternity.
Much about the settlement had changed since he’d last known it—and he did not speak of his visit here as a harper’s young apprentice.
The keep was larger and better fortified.
The huts and cottages had more than doubled in number and now stretched away north to where once there had been a Norse encampment.
More cottages and farm plots dotted the higher ground where once had been naught but heather and bracken, and a tracery of drystone walls marked the land like jeweled necklets.
But the bones of the place—ah, those could not change.
The coast trail still wended away southward—now, indeed, more a road than the rough path it used to be. He followed it, his feet feeling for the familiarity of the ground, past a few more cottages until the land climbed and became wild again.
When he reached the headland he stood and gazed out, his eyes filling with beauty. Och, his heart had ached for this place almost as much as for her. He doubted he could get his fill of looking.
The wind felt stronger up here. It blew his hair and swirled his cloak back from his sides. It blew away the years. Almost, so it came to him, he might stand so in any time. Any life.
He could not but wonder again—what was the meaning of it? Why did it come about that he remembered it all, to the last detail, but she did not?
He was a man who dealt with words, wove them to entertain, please, and beguile. But if the stories he brought her had failed him, he did not know any other ones that might convince her.
Life after life had been hard in the past, had separated, then joined, and ultimately separated them again. It had taken him near thirty years to find her now. Would it be only to lose her once more?
He closed his eyes for a moment, shutting away all that beauty, and saw her face instead. Her face as she looked now.
The wide, pale eyes. The broad forehead where he longed to plant a kiss. The strength of the chin, the proud nose. The ashen hair. How could she fail to know how lovely she was?
He could not walk away from this. He could not, without her remembering.
Know me, he said to her, to the earth and the sky, and opened his eyes again.
The world wavered before his eyes. He saw not the scene he expected but another, in Ireland.
A wide swath of green turf with a river twining through it, silver beneath a serene sky. A familiar place, well known and well loved, and yet—and yet he carried anxiety in his heart.
And he felt—och, had he the words for it? Aching in his bones. Stiffness in his limbs. The burdens of old age.
He looked down at himself. He wore a kilt of plain gray wool, his limbs well wrapped beneath in leggings made of hide.
A tunic and cloak, and a belt from which hung a stout long-knife and a leather pouch, into which he thrust a scarred hand.
He drew out a fistful of herbs—bright green—he had collected in the hills.
Enough to save her?
He blinked and the scene vanished, replaced by what should be there. MacMurtray’s land, the stretch of shore and the islands. Eternity beyond.
Aye, there were meetings and partings. He needed for the wheel of life to stop turning a wee while.
Long enough for her to know him.
*
In the kitchens, situated in the bowels of the keep, all was confusion. Following breakfast, Katrin found herself trapped there, trying to calm Cook, who was shaken by the advent of the Gallowglass, thinking she would eventually be required to cook for all of them.
Katrin did her best to reassure the woman, for her agitation was contagious and she had all her staff in a dither, the girls and lads who worked for her growing clumsy and dropping things.
“How,” the woman wailed to Katrin, “am I to manage if I need to provide for so many—so many great soldiers?”
“I tell ye, ye will no’ have to,” Katrin reassured her even as she wrapped the hand of wee Philip the spit boy, who had burned it only moments before, in clean linen. “The Gallowglass will feed themsel’s. I ha’ already arranged for their leader, Master O’Hanlon, to have the supplies they need.”
O’Hanlon. She’d regarded him far differently since their training session. How soon would he be willing to work with her again?
Her whole body hurt after last night’s session, a constant reminder whenever she moved. And Master Finlay was not the only one who had remarked on the grazing to her hand, where she’d accidentally received a bashing.
Master Finlay. Something—something profound lay in his green eyes. When he looked at her…
But nay. That was pure fancy. She barely knew the man. It merely seemed she did, when she listened to his music. Because of all those tales and the intimacies they contained.
Anyway, she had no time for men of any ilk. Was she not as busy here as she could endure?
No wonder she dreamed of running off to battle.
Cook was complaining at her again. “Och, nay, mistress. The chief has told me, stand ready to feast the entire troop o’ them yet, when word comes they are to march out. To gi’ them a braw send-off, like. I do no’ ken when. And am I to be ready at the drop o’ a feather?”
“Aye, so my father said that?”
“He did.”
“Well, we shall manage it. We ha’ the supplies.” She hoped. “We will sit down now and plan a set o’ courses that ye may prepare wi’out too much trouble, should the need arise o’ a sudden.”
Thus she remained trapped in the kitchen long, though her very spirit cried out to up and fly away. A new restlessness had come upon her, not unlike what she’d known in her youth when she’d begged Geordie to train her, or at least run off with her to the hills.
Were her feelings now prompted by working with O’Hanlon? If so, she might be better stopping with the lessons. For she found this hard to bear.
Longing for something one could not have was always hard to bear.
She missed out on a noontime sup while making sure everyone else had what they needed, and then became caught up in a crisis at the laundry, where a leaky tub drenched her from the waist downward.
By the time she ran up to her own chamber to change, it was nearly time for her to begin worrying about supper.
Where has the day gone? she wondered as she reached her door. Where did all the days go? She seized the door latch and froze.
The door of the next chamber along the passage, Geordie’s chamber that was, stood ajar. The harper was at practice there. Notes spilled through the narrow opening and caught her ear. Caught her.
An old song, it seemed to be, perhaps an ancient one. It twined up and down with beguiling brilliance, the notes like a language understood by her heart alone. The impact nearly sent her to her knees, and she remained so, not moving, barely breathing as emotions tore through her.
She knew that tune.
Aye, surely she did. He had doubtless played it while he told all those tales, for they had been sprinkled with songs, entwined with them. So hearing this now made her feel…
Och, as if she were back, almost, in the midst of those stories.
The man had magic in his hands. Och, aye, he did. What would it be like if he touched her with those hands? For her to lie naked beneath them. At once safe and vulnerable and cherished.
Madness.
She could not possibly feel that kind of desire for the harper.
She tiptoed to his door and stood looking in at him. A shameful thing to do, peeping and spying, since he did not know she was there. She simply could not help herself.
She could just catch sight of him sitting near the window embrasure with his harp on his knee.
Such a beautiful instrument it was, but at that moment no more beautiful than the man.
He had his head bent to the strings, his hands flowing over them, pricking out those sad, plaintive notes like water dropping.
Did he play of a far-off place? A far-off time?
He did not see her, for his eyes were closed.
Lost in his own music, which just as surely pulled her in.
She did not want to stir from that place. She could have stood there forever, transported by grief and joy and the edges of memory.
By love.
What would it be, to be loved by such a man as this, who had so much wistful loving in his heart and enchantment at his command? She would never know.
Silent, she tiptoed away to her own chamber.