Chapter 20 #2
“But how did I get here?” She did her best to walk, her chilled legs shuffling slowly. “Why did you bring me here?”
“First things first, child.” Lonan patted her hand and guided her to a squat stone building.
The small size, low ceiling, and enormous hearth declared its sole purpose to be heat.
He steered her to a large leather chair by the fire.
She sat, mesmerized by the flames, dancing tall and warming her to the bone.
“But how did you find me?” she asked, as he slathered a foul-smelling paste on her extremities. She shuddered to think what sort of rancid animal lard was currently warming her through. “I hid in the bushes.”
“Yes,” he said, and Magda had to avert her eyes from his grotesque smile. “You dragged yourself under cover, leaving a path in the sand like a turtle up from the sea to lay her eggs.”
He slowly wiped his hands on a rag tucked in the rope of his belt.
Using a pair of crude tongs, Lonan began to pull strips of heated linen from a cast-iron pot and laid them out along a blanket by his side.
“If this is how you hide, my child, I count you doubly blessed. It’s a wonder you made it here at all. ”
“What about the painting?” Magda struggled to keep her emotions in check as all of her questions and fears and worries of the past weeks boiled to the surface.
Lonan looked up at her with a kindly smile. “What about the painting, child?”
“The painting. You know.” She pulled her feet out from Lonan’s hands. “You were the one who did that portrait of James. How did you do that? I don’t understand why I’m here.”
Lonan tsked. “You’ll injure yourself further, child. Your feet are shredded and in need of warmth and cleansing.”
He tenderly took her feet back in his hands and, cupping her heels in his palms, said, “All in good time, Magdalen. You will understand all in good time.”
Maybe it was her exhaustion, but although she wanted to protest further, she found she trusted the old man.
Magda let him finish in silence then, watching as he bound her feet with the soothing linen bandages, transfixed by his age-spotted hands and knobby fingers covered with patches of wiry white hair.
Despite herself, her own mind gradually grew quiet.
“Ah,” Lonan said, as he tied off the last of her wrappings. He’d been kneeling in front of Magda, and as he rose creakily to his feet, she prepared to catch him if he toppled.
He took a small handkerchief from his pocket. “Lest I forget.” Unfolding it, he produced a small square the color of seafoam. “This is for the wound under your skirts.”
Wary uncertainty flashed in her eyes.
“There’s no shame about it.” Lonan pressed it into her hand. “I smell the blood, child. This is a natural styptic. It will speed your healing.”
She stroked it between her fingers, and it was cool and spongy, with a lush velvety texture only possible in nature. “What is it?”
“It’s merely touchwood, dear.”
She shook her head, confused.
“If I tell you it’s a fungus that grows like a shelf from the sides of trees, will you still place it between your legs?”
“Certainly not.” She stiffened her back, trying to muster the picture of robust health.
“Well,” he said, amusement quirking his features, “then I suppose I mustn’t tell you that.”
Relief at her successful escape had loosened something in her belly, and she laughed.
Lonan joined her, and his scar once again deformed his features, one half of him joyful and the other misshapen into a grimacing mask.
Magda forced herself to hold his gaze, though she had to fight herself from flicking her eyes to the left side of his face.
“You’re wondering what happened.”
She raised her brows in mock innocence, and he met her charade with patience.
“To my face, child. I can see you’re wondering what it is that befell me.”
“Well, I . . .”
“Do not be ashamed. Wonderment is what drives men to more and greater things. ‘It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.’”
Magda looked baffled.
“Aristotle’s words, not mine. I am not nearly so circumspect.”
Lonan eased himself into a chair by the hearth and began.
“’Twas the Battle of Glenlivet, many, many years ago.
I was just a lad yet. I’m a Gordon by birth, you see.
Perhaps that is why, to this day, despite being a forgiving man of God, I have no affection for Clan Campbell.
But that is a tale for another day,” he added ominously.
“It was my first battle, and I bore a virgin sword, as it were. Yet, unlike the other lads, more fascinating to me than any war play was how faith was enough to gird two thousand men and lead them to triumph over an army ten-thousand strong.
“Though many men were heroes that day, to me the greatest champion was my uncle. I’m no crusader,” he confessed in a lighthearted tone, “and the lion’s heart of my youth has faded into something closer to the lamb’s, but those questions of battle, why men fight and what gives them courage, those are questions of which I’ll never tire.
"I was injured that day—gravely, as you can see—and though I know now it was the frenzy of battle that numbed me to my wounds, at the time I felt certain it was God’s hand at work. That the cross hanging at my neck and the holy water dampening my shirt was the only armor I needed.
“You could say I found God at the edge of a sword.”
Lonan lifted his hands to the fire, and Magda could see the pain in his joints writ on his face.
“I’ve since that day devoted myself to scholarly inquiry that I may better understand we human animals.
I’m a bit of a mendicant, I confess, but other holy men are always happy to take me in, sharing books and food in God’s name, in places just like this.
” His hand shook with age as he gestured to the room around them.
“So where is this?” she asked.
“Do you ask of this island, or of this time?”
Magda froze at his implication, and Brother Lonan continued without pause.
“First things first, the island. But”—he handed her a tin cup filled with golden liquid—“I insist you drink this, child. It will help.”
Skeptical, she brought the cup to her nose and inhaled a smell like peat fire and the sea, biting through her senses. She took a tentative sip, and it was like liquid smoke slipping down her throat. It curled through her body and warmed her, uncoiling muscles in its wake.
“What is this?” She sipped again, deciding that the flavor was toasty, and faintly salty.
“I once made my tonics by mixing pink centaury with whisky but, in my age and wisdom, I have simplified it. Magdalen,” he said, pouring a measure of liquid into his own cup, “you have before you a dram of whisky. And, may I say, it calms the nerves as efficiently as any herbal tincture.
“Slàinte mhath, child,” he added, raising his cup to hers. “I bid you welcome to Inchmahome Priory.”
He sipped for a time in silence, and Magda let herself enjoy the pleasant buzz that hummed through her. Leaning her head back, she unclenched her jaw and slowly allowed herself to consider the pain between her legs, the ache in her bottom, and the stiffness between her shoulders.
“That was the Loch of Menteith you just swam. Most simply choose to arrive by boat.” An amused appreciation played on the right side of his face.
“Robert the Bruce himself favored Inchmahome. He came often. ” Lonan gestured to the walls around them. “It’s in disrepair now, as you can see.”
She glanced up at the ceiling arching low overhead. The claustrophobic feel was only intensified by the thousands of stones used for bricks, their thin, irregular rectangles pressing down from above, seeming ready to crumble at any moment.
“Once the province of Augustinian monks,” Lonan spoke, pulling her attention back to him, “Inchmahome welcomes all scholars, including the occasional wayward Dominican,” he said, gesturing to himself with a smile.
“Some say that a spit of land on Menteith’s southern shore was built by fairy folk.” He shrugged with a hint of condescension.
“I see,” she said, the whisky giving ease to her voice. “You only believe in time travel. Nothing so preposterous as fairies for you.”
Her attempt at humor was met with sternness.
“Time travel is a law of physics, not an abomination to Christianity, ” he said, alluding to the old Celtic beliefs.
“The nature of time is as intertwined with the universe as the beat of the tides. It is in the service of God and His people that I apply my scholarship to it, as I would to any other course of study.”
Lonan considered her as he would a child, and he softened. “But I demand too much of you. Come.” He pulled himself to the edge of his chair and slowly stood. “I will show you your room. You and I have much time together yet.”
And, with that ominous statement resonating in her, Lonan walked Magda to the small cell she would call her own.
The men had long returned to Castle Gloom and their furious chief, short a wench and one stud horse.
The lace was the first to rise, tickling the surface of the lake with its tattered, stained fingers.
Gradually the green plaid rose to meet it, the wool thick with water and moving sluggishly, like some angry spectral body exhumed from the deep.
It bobbed there for a time, on the choppy waves, until it disappeared again, pulled slowly back to the bottom.