Chapter 21 #2
In a weak moment she turned back, catching and swallowing a sob that threatened to escape her lips, and she took a step toward the entrance, where there was moonlight and fresh night air.
At that moment she heard the hollow echo of his running footsteps deep down the tunnel and she moved away from the safety of the entrance, cautiously touching the damp walls only to keep her balance on the stone and uneven rocks underfoot, telling herself she was not afraid.
But it was a lie. Her fear was tangible.
She rounded a bend in the walls and stepped back quickly.
At the far end, light shone down from an open trap, revealing the carved rungs of a wooden ladder.
She took five slow breaths, then ten, and edged around the corner just was the trap door snapped closed and the tunnel was bathed once again in darkness.
Before long she stood at the top of the ladder, feeling for the door.
She counted to twenty before she opened it--not wanting to come face to face with Montrose--barely enough to see and she panned the grounds, then flipped open the trap and climbed out, kneeling down to quietly closed the trapdoor.
For a sweet moment she just breathed in the cool night air and composed herself and her fears. She was outside in the open air. No more dark, dank-tasting tunnel. No imaginary adders under her next blind step.
Around her, the castle was eerily abandoned, with debris covering overturned wagons and the remnants of animal troughs, the gate from an old pen and pieces of burned walls still sitting atop stone bases, all covered in old, broken pieces of burnt wood and years of weeds and dead leaves.
As she moved, she could mark buildings that had been, the stable, stalls broken and charred, a large center building that had crumbled, caved in from the sides, with pieces of stairs piled upon each other, and another building nearby with a tall stone fire hearth like that used by a village smithy.
A cross hung at an odd angle over the lone door in the midst of a small burned out chapel; that was where she spotted him, standing at what must have once been an altar, the raised stone dais covered in debris starting at the very toes of his boots. He looked as if he was unable to go any further.
She watched him for a long time, soaking in any clue she could from studying him. Before long, she could almost feel his sorrow, palpable and like the waves of the sea coming at you. Whatever this place was, it was painful to him.
He seemed so far away, a tragedy standing raw and open, his hands open and out in front of him as if in supplication, and she understood she could see him this way only because he believed he was completely alone.
She had not known that such emotion and pain could be found merely in a man’s posture, but there she saw a crushing sense of isolation so clear, as if he were in another world…alone, deserted, adrift and looking lost, the emptiness of which she understood all too well. He was a man at Gethsemane.
The overwhelming need to reach out to him came to her, but she felt if she did so, somehow she would violate him when he was already wounded.
Watching his pain made her belly turn and she placed a hand over it and closed her eyes.
If only she could know what was wrong, perhaps she could find a way to help him.
Before long watching him in such a state and saying nothing was too difficult.
She felt if she stood there longer, she would have to pull him from the depths of that black place he inhabited, so she decided to leave him alone with whatever demons he possessed.
She took a deep breath that turned into a sigh, and he spun around, his face hard and his eyes moist, glaring at her as if she were a rude awakening.
“What are you doing here?”
Caught, she had no out so she looked him in the eyes and admitted, “I followed you.”
“I can see that.”
Now, without the need for excuses, she walked toward the altar and looked down, where he had been cutting away the weeds and brambles when she first spotted him.
There before him lay two old graves—one covered with a square stone plaque carved with a man’s effigy, and the other a cairn--a crude piling of old rocks. “Who are they?”
He was stonily silent, unwilling to let her in.
There were moments, she noticed, like now, where his solitude was like a shield he forced between them and his response was strong enough to make her believe he would gladly turn that shield into a weapon and wield it like some battering ram on anyone who tried to save him. “They are my ghosts.”
“Not any longer,” she said lightly, bending and gently pulling more of the weeds from the cairn. “I am here.” On her knees, she dusted off her hands and glanced up at him. His expression she could not read.
“Uninvited and unwelcome,” he said.
“Nevertheless, you must deal with me.” She continued to pull the weeds from between the rocks. “Why is it secret?”
He was weakening. His hands gave him away; they were in fists at his side.
“I will not leave until you tell me,” she said.
Still, only his glare and silence met her unwavering and calm gaze. Let me help you.
He looked away from her, away from the graves and up to where some rooks were perched ominously on the highest part of the burnt wall, where a half of an old carved cross still hung. She looked from him to the graves set into the altar like those of ancient kings.
“And you call me stubborn.” She brushed the leaves and grass from the stone carving of a man’s face. Sitting back on her heels she looked up at him and said, “He looks like you.”
It was a long time before he spoke. “ ‘Tis my father.”
“And the other?”
“Malcolm, my brother.”
She frowned and stood, then looked around her and at the ruins. “These are your lands?”
“No!” he said sharply.
She stepped back as if his voice slapped her. In that single word, she heard the sound of a dark soul.
“I draw strength here. As I stand before these graves I do not forget.” With a deep concentration she could almost feel, he stared off at some distant memory and time.
Both elements hardened his features and it seemed as if he was somewhere desolate and vast; he looked as if he what he carried was insurmountable. “You cannot understand.”
The rooks suddenly cawed and flapped away, one flying after a darting sparrow. When he did look at her, she caught a swift glimpse of emotion she could not name—something fragile and breakable behind the hard mask he wore and his often harsh manner.
Then it was gone, lost in a slim moment of a time, and he said coolly, “We should leave this place.”
The part of her that loved him could not ask him to explain the deaths; she could not ask for more from him.
He had needed to be there and she accepted that.
But not even to satisfy her natural curiosity could she make him stay where he was a wounded soul, open, bleeding. “Aye. We should leave,” she agreed.
His expression held a hint of an apology and something else, another kind of sorrow, perhaps the same emotion she couldn’t read before. She held out her hand to him.
At first he stared it at as if touching her would be a mortal sin.
Waiting for him felt natural to her, as did walking by his side when he joined her, and as did the feel of his warm palm against hers, and the silence cloaking them not in awkwardness, but one of those moments where words spoken aloud were unnecessary.
Each was a little puzzled by the other and lost in the curious darkness of their own thoughts and, hands still clasped, they walked out of the castle ruins together.