Chapter Forty-Eight
“I must leave ye,” Finlay told Molly with real regret, as he stood outside her door in the sunshine.
He wore his pack already on his back, and though he owned little besides the shattered harp, she had tucked some goods inside for his journey.
Foodstuffs she could ill afford, and her husband’s plaid.
She stood looking up at him, for she was a small woman for all her strength, and tears glittered in her eyes.
“Come wi’ me,” he said impulsively. “If I mak’ a place for mysel’ at this holding to which I journey, there will be one for ye also.” She had been like a mother to him, more of one than he had ever known.
“Dear lad. Bless ye for asking, but I would delay ye on yer journey, for I could only go slowly.”
“Then,” he said, despite the all-consuming urge that possessed him, “I will go slowly also.”
“Nay, and nay. For ye go to begin a new life, all the dreams now flown back into yer head. And am I no’ near the end o’ mine? I belong here where my man does rest.”
Finlay understood that, but sorrow touched him as he bent and embraced her. “Ye saved me,” he whispered. “I swear, ye did.”
“Go wi’ God,” she bade him.
They both wept when he started off up the track, away from her tiny bothy. Away from the comfort she offered when only confusion had beset him. On into the light.
As he went, he relived the old stories in his head, all he had told of them in Murtray’s hall, stories he had cherished the way he did his acquired tunes, gathered in his time tramping the roads and byways of his world.
For did a harper, a bard, not harbor tales to please and delight those who offered him hospitality?
He’d felt a great pull for what he’d learned of Murtray’s history and had attributed the meaning of that pull to her. The woman who seemed to have somehow been with him from birth, who had belonged to him again and again, life after life.
He could not say why, during this life, he remembered all they had been to each other, though she did not remember also.
He knew only that it had become more important than aught else for him to reach her and, if she did not remember who he was, to remind her.
To convince her she was his alone. That in the wide world, as promised, he had found her.
He’d never had a way to know then that Murtray was his own place of blood, of belonging. That he was a lost son of that tribe who had wandered and wandered, and now journeyed home.
The wonder of it inspired and uplifted him. He told himself he should have known. For did not memory travel in the blood? Even the things folk forgot they knew.
But doubt beset him also. Aye, old Pádraig—with his vast knowledge—had heard of Anders MacMurtray’s death and that his daughter had reached home. That they were a clan without any leader other than she.
To his mind, they needed no other. A woman of strength was Katrin, and devoted to her clan.
But what if she still did not realize who he was and what they had in the past been to one another?
What if her advisors refused to accept him when he turned up at their door, naught but a wandering harper?
He had no real proof of his lineage, only a tale told by an old man.
Somewhere around day five of his journey, he decided there was naught he could do to convince others. He could only cast himself onto the breast of fate, keep the ancient promise he had made to the woman he loved. She would accept him as she might. They would battle together as they must.
Step by step, he journeyed home.
*
Katrin had taken to walking up the rise to the place where her da was buried, each and every day.
Usually she went in the afternoon, when pressure from all that beleaguered her made the need for escape irresistible.
The patch of ground was quiet, with a magnificent view of the sea. No one ever bothered her there.
She fell into the habit of speaking to her da, only a few words at first, as one would murmur a prayer, and then floods of them. Words she could say to no one else.
“I do no’ want to wed wi’ Oran MacGill. Or wi’ anyone, to be honest. I will love only one man until I die.” And he lay cold already, somewhere. All the beauty of him, all the magical warmth and music, lost with him.
Where had Finlay been buried? It bothered her that she did not know, and bothered her even more that his body, the same she had cherished, might have lain uncared for in the open, naught more than food for carrion.
“Da, it is my fault he was lost.” That confession brought hard and painful tears.
She crouched beside her father’s stone-covered grave and wept like a soul forsaken.
For if Finlay was lost, she was also, and the only hope she had was for a life beyond this one, whenever the fates might be kind enough to bring them together again.
In that she had to believe that they would—och, please by all the powers—meet again in some future existence.
“How will I ever forgive mysel’?”
Ye will do yer duty, daughter, she seemed to hear her da say.
Aye, she would do her duty even if that meant living out her life alone. She would do aught she could to lead this clan with strength and mercy, anything save wedding another, lying with another—even if that meant Murtray would have no heir. Aught else, she would do for this place she loved.
Not that.
Forgive me, Da. I ha’ a duty, aye, to Murtray. And a far older one to my own heart.
She was not a woman who countenanced despair, and she fought it now on a daily basis, finding her best comfort there among the graves. For her da’s was not the only one. Geordie lay here too, and her ma, her grandparents, and everyone else from lost bairns to her most distant ancestors.
Her ancestors.
Were they buried here beneath the plain stone markers, those whom she knew so well?
Those she knew because she had walked through their days, lived their lives.
Bradana, who would surely be laid beside the grave of her gray deerhound.
The Caledonian princess, and the Norse warrior maiden.
Did they all lie beside the men they had loved?
That thought near took her to her knees. She did not know which piles of stones were which. Some had been battered and broken down by weather over the centuries. But she wandered among them, and she felt, in the pieces of the past—in their inevitability—a far deeper comfort.
As if, out of the past, her own self whispered to her.
Ye ha’ been with him, this man ye adore. Ye will be again.
On this one afternoon, an afternoon hinting at the first breath of spring, she lingered long, feeling the strength of the past like a wave buoying her up. She stood gazing out to sea, past the waves that boldly kissed the shingle, past the islands lying like sleeping dragons.
From here she could almost see Ireland. The place where it had all begun, where lay the very roots of her love.
Have faith. Believe.
She waited till the light began to fade before she went down to take up her duties. Just above the keep she paused and gazed southward along the sea trail. And saw a flicker of movement.
Nay, but surely her eyes played tricks on her. No one was there, lest it was a member of the guard. And this traveler—he did not move like a member of the guard.
Her heart began to pound, high and hard beneath her breast—as if had not beat since she’d watched Finlay throw himself to the wolves for her sake, back in England. Nay, and nay, it could not be…
Yet conviction seized her, claimed her, a kind of knowing that came from far beyond herself. From long ago and far, far away, bringing its own certainty.
The thrill of it stole her breath. Lifted her spirit on a cresting wave that knew nothing of possible or impossible. Her eyes might wonder—but not her heart.
Faith it was that made her catch her breath and run.
She nearly stumbled over her own feet half a score times. The folk she passed stared at her. One or two called out.
“Mistress!”
“Mistress Katrin?”
Aye, she was Katrin. She was Liadan, and Bradana, and Darlei, and Hulda, all flying through time, flying toward the man she loved.
How he could be here, she did not know. How he could be alive, when she had left him standing poised to face death itself, a harper with a sword.
I will find ye, always.
*
Finlay’s feet knew the stones of the trail, for he had walked it more times than he could count. His eyes knew the set of the land, the rise to his right, the broad sweep of the sea on his left.
Home. He was nearly home.
Here the rough trail turned to a path in earnest as it left the headland and sloped downward. He paused an instant, for from here he could see the keep. Murtray.
There, once, had stood a roundhouse. Over the centuries it had become a fortified house and then a keep, expanded to the proud fortress it was now. Generations of people had put their hearts and souls into it. Their love.
Emotions rose up and nearly choked him. A long while, it felt he had roamed. But had the ending ever been in doubt?
His feet marked the paces as he walked on. Here had he and Darlei strolled together. He and Hulda, so many, many years later.
The light began to fade, the kindling-spring day winding down. Here, where sea met land, where past met present, the light gathered on the breast of the water, just enough to show him the figure of a woman, running—running to him.
She flew to meet him, his love, his alanna, his dearest wife. In whatever guise, it no longer mattered.
For she brought all that was love to him.