Chapter Forty-One
The season wore on as Katrin and her band traveled, each day blending into the next, borne on the necessity of continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
The farther they moved from the borders, the more they relied on the generosity of their countrymen and women.
Householders continued to gladly lend them a roof for the night in exchange for no more than an account of the distant-to-them battle, and provided what food they could.
Once, at the cottage of a widow, they stayed three days while helping the woman prepare for winter, but Katrin dared not linger longer. Da yet clung to life, but no more than that. His fever raged, and sometimes he was out of his head.
Twice, he asked for Geordie. “My son—I want to see my son before I die. I maun leave Murtray in good hands.”
“Da, ye are no’ dyin’.” But Katrin knew she lied to him, as did everyone in their stalwart little group.
He had no hands in which to leave the clan, but hers. Which at the moment were battered, and burdened, and filthy. She need only get him home.
Offsetting the hospitality they received, the way grew more difficult.
They covered less ground per day, and on a few mornings, while sleeping out, snow fell.
Katrin slept curled around her da in an effort to keep him warm, the clansmen on either side of them.
Sometimes she dreamed of Finlay standing before her in his fine green cloak, his gaze compelling on hers.
Sometimes she did not dream at all, her heart too weary.
At Oban, they met the sea. Da was seen by another physician there, it being a sizeable town, and the man bent to charity.
He merely shook his head over Da’s condition.
“The wound is filthy.”
“I ha’ kept it as clean as I could.”
“Ye will lose yer father to the fever, I do no’ doubt.”
“Can I get him home first?” It had become her one goal, with Finlay gone.
Do not think of that.
The physician, a Master Roderick Campbell, gazed at her long. She thought he would answer harshly, for he seemed that sort of man. But to her surprise, he softened.
“Ye travel farther north?”
“Aye, to Murtray.”
“I ha’ a client wi’ a horse and cart who might take ye part o’ the way. He is himsel’ going home fro’ a consultation wi’ me.”
“I ha’ a party—”
“At least your father may ride.”
When she went out from the physician’s house, though, she discovered she would soon not have a party. Rannie and his mates very apologetically told her they had found a ship they might take over the water to Skye.
“We ha’ just arranged for it,” he confessed with regret in his eyes. “I hate to abandon ye here—”
He held out his hand, but she went into his arms instead, giving him a fierce hug. “We would no’ have got this far wi’out ye. I will be forever grateful. Ye maun do as ye must.”
“Aye, but how will ye get home?”
She told him about the physician’s offer.
“Ye be a courageous lass,” he declared in parting, “and I am that glad I met ye.”
“And ye, all o’ ye”—she included the others in her glance—“are men o’ honor.”
She shed tears at that parting and blessed those who went from her. Then she, Rabbie, Davey, and Da awaited the physician’s client, hoping against desperate hope he would appear.
He did. It was snowing when they set out north and homeward.
Truly homeward now, for was not the sea there beside them just the same as at Murtray?
Snow covered the ground before they’d traveled half a day, and when their benefactor, called Andrews, reached his own home, he offered them a roof for the night.
They accepted and slept warm by the fire.
Once again, Katrin dreamed.
A strange and terrible dream was this one, and no mistake. For she dreamed she awakened affrighted in a dim and dark place, one she did not immediately recognize. She rose from a bed as at some signal given, with haste. Trouble. There was trouble at hand.
Not alone. A man arose also from the bed beside her. She turned to look at him, and it was as if she saw him twice—once with the discerning gaze acquired over the course of a long life, and again with the eyes of love.
He had aged, this man, this husband she adored.
Ach, when had that happened? While they tumbled through the years living and loving together, so comfortable that she had not heeded the passage of time?
But ja, many the years had been. His mane of auburn hair had turned silver.
His beard also, and the hair upon his chest with which she was so familiar.
The feel of him—the feeling remained the same.
From beyond this chamber they shared, she could hear voices calling, footsteps pounding past. Men crying the alarm. Hurrying for weapons.
Attack. Their holding here on the edge of the sea fell under attack. They would go forward to fight and possibly to die.
Standing there beside the bed they had shared so many years, she drew a breath.
“Norse,” she said. “Again.” It had been a number of seasons since they had fallen beneath the eye of the wolves from the sea. She was Norse, ja, but so long had she lived in this Scottish stronghold with him, she very nearly failed to remember it.
Ignoring her need to dress, clad only in her sleeping gown, she walked around the bed to him. Her hair hung over her shoulder in a braid, the fair strands now liberally mixed with white.
“Quarrie, husband, do not go out to battle.” Surely she had said these words before, in another time? “Let Airlee”—their son, their firstborn—“lead the fight.”
Her husband’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “I will be more than glad, Hulda, to let Airlee lead the fight. But”—his eyes hardened to granite—“I will be there. I will stand for this place I love.”
Her stomach tightened into a knot of pure pain. Not this. Please, by any god who listens. Not this again. She could not bear it.
“Husband”—she reached for him, put her hands to either side of his face—“I have a bad feeling for this. What if I asked you keep from going out?”
“Wha’ if I asked ye the same?”
“Then I would hold back.”
“Would ye?” Clearly he did not believe her, thought she would lie to him if she must.
She pressed her body up against his. “I fear—”
“Stop wi’ fearing, wife. Ha’ ye learned naught? We always return to one another, aye? No matter wha’ comes between.”
“Ja, but the between hurts. It hurts so.”
“Hulda, ye ken I would do anything for ye. Aught but lay aside my sword.”
“Quarrie, if we are to be parted now, if we do manage against the tide of time and fate to meet together in another life—will you promise me one thing?”
“What more to promise than that I will return to ye? I will find ye, Hulda. Always.”
“And when you do, in the next life, let it not be as a warrior. Because I cannot endure this fear upon fear of losing you in battle. Even after all this time, I cannot.”
“And wha’ else should I be, than wha’ I ha’ been?”
“I do not care. A smith, a trainer of horses, a builder of boats, a carver of stone—any man who does not march out to die.”
“A harper?” He said it lightly, as if in jest, but his eyes were serious, holding her gaze, holding her soul.
“Aye, that. A harper to play sweet songs for me and tell all the old tales. Give me those ancient songs and I promise to fall right back into your arms.”
“Ah, Hulda.” A glimmer of a smile touched his face. “Ye would fall into my arms anyway.”
She would. But she said, “It is a promise, then. You will return to me as nay warrior but a bonny harper instead.”
And she kissed him, kissed him to seal the pledge, and so he could not say what she suspected he must—that a man was who he was, whatever time and fate made of him.
When the searing kiss ended, she whispered against his lips, “For love of me, husband. Keep this vow for love of me.”
Katrin woke from that dream shuddering with cold and shivering in the dawn, a hollow place opened up inside her. She—she had been Hulda, aye. Finlay had also been an habitant of the tale, one Quarrie MacMurtray. And—
He had done as she had asked.
He had done as she had asked.
And it had not mattered, for she’d lost him anyway.