Chapter Twenty Nine
“Are you expecting someone, Grandmother?”
Smiling, her grandmother nodded. “Aye, my wee lamb should be home soon. He is my great nephew.” She smiled and squeezed Joanie’s hand.
“Yer cousin. His mother died birthing him.” Margaret closed her eyes.
“Mira was such a kindhearted lass. God rest her soul.” She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
“Mira’s mother, my own Bradana, passed away just last spring, and so Matthew became mine.
He’s an uncanny lad. Ye’ll see,” she said with a wink.
“Anyway, what were we discussing? This mind of mine wanders.”
“You were telling me about when my father first came to Saint Gabriel.”
“Aye, now I see why I tried to forget. If I could erase Drogo forever from my mind I would. I’ll tell ye, Joanie, I knew from the very first moment I laid eyes on him that he had a dark soul.
He was the youngest son of a knight. His brothers became soldiers for hire and were eventually knighted, or so yer father claimed.
But he chose a less honorable path. What I’m about to tell ye, I gleaned over the years, listening to his drunken babble.
Drogo refused his father’s help gaining a commission, and so he was given a modest fortune from his father’s earnings to make his own way.
As ye can very well imagine, he drank his way through the money easily enough and started running with a band of outlaws, eventually fleeing England a wanted man, which is how he came to discover St. Gabriel. ”
“If he was so awful, how could my mother have agreed to marry him, an outlaw and a drunk?”
“My Gavenia was too young to mind his deeds over his words. Also, in his youth yer father was a handsome and charming man. When he came here, no one knew his past. With his pockets lined with stolen coin, he beguiled his way into the hearts of many here in the village. Before anyone knew it, he had cheated them all, and worst of all, he had convinced my Gavenia to run away with him. Trust me, Joanie, I tried to reason with yer mother, but she was already under the spell of his blue eyes and fine smile.” Her grandmother shook her head sadly.
“He came to her like Lucifer himself, beautiful to look at but wicked to his core.”
“How did ye learn of their plan to run away?” Alec asked.
Tears stung Margaret’s eyes. Her hand flew to her chest against the pain of remembering.
“I overheard them,” she said weakly. “Gavenia could not be swayed. Bradana was already married then and to a good man. And so, I left her and Saint Gabriel behind and followed them. I had known men like Drogo before. I knew the vile deeds he was capable of. I wanted to do everything in my power to save her.” Her faded blue eyes, glistening with tears, locked with Joanie’s. “But I couldn’t. Nor could I save ye.”
Joanie squeezed her grandmother’s hand. “What happened to you? What did he do to you?”
Margaret swiped at her tears. “Well, as ye know, I was ill. While ye were working at the tavern, he stuck me in the back of a wagon and drove north for several hours. Then he dumped me on the side of the road.”
Joanie gasped, her hand to her heart.
“By the time I made it back to ye, ye were gone. He had sold ye.” Margaret grabbed both of Joanie’s hands. “I searched for ye for years. I lived off the charity of convents and searched every village I passed through. I...”
Joanie pulled her grandmother close. She stroked her curved back and whispered soothing words. “None of that matters anymore. It can’t. He will win in the end if we don’t let the past go.”
Her grandmother pulled away and smiled up at her. “I never dreamed I would see ye again. And it does my heart good to see ye so well and happy,” she said, turning to pat Alec’s hand.
Alec smiled. “All is just as it should be,” he said, and then he straightened in his seat. He had sensed the lad’s presence the instant before the cottage door cracked open.
Margaret smiled and clasped her hands together. “Here’s my wee lamb now.”
A small boy of seven or eight years silently stepped into the cottage and shut the door behind him, then darted to Margaret’s side, burying his face in her neck. “His name is Matthew.”
“Good morrow,” Joanie said.
Margaret stroked his sandy hair. “He doesn’t speak. At least not yet. I think he can. I just don’t think he has ever found something he thought truly worthy of saying.”
Alec felt an immediate kinship with the lad. He stood and circled around the old woman and squatted down in front of Matthew.
“Aye,” Margaret said, knowingly. “He is like ye. So too was my sister. The sight runs in our blood.” She winked at Joanie.
Alec held his breath as Matthew turned and looked up at him. A jolt shot through him. The boy had one blue eye and one brown, and a scar ran down the side of his face.
“He got that when he fell off a wagon last summer.” Margaret said.
Matthew held Alec’s gaze without wavering.
Then slowly he reached his small hand toward Alec’s face and pressed his fingertip onto Alec’s forehead before he closed his eyes.
Alec could only wonder what the boy saw.
Suddenly, Matthew’s eyes flew open, and a knowing smile shaped his lips.
He clasped Alec’s hand and pulled him toward the door.
“Where is he taking you?” Joanie asked.
Alec lifted his shoulders. “I do not ken.”
“Well, that’s a first,” Joanie shot back.
Alec followed the boy through the narrow village paths, passing cottages and a series of long thatch and clay huts, which he assumed housed their stores. Then the pathway opened to the village green, and on the opposite side, Alec once again saw the wooden effigy of Saint Gabriel.
Matthew dropped his hand and raced across the green and stopped in front of the angel.
Alec followed and joined him. The carved saint was massive up close.
Alec only came up to his chest. He stared up into the angel’s face.
Wooden tears coursed down his carved cheeks.
Alec had never seen an angel depicted as crying, but when he looked beyond the effigy at the dozens and dozens of small wooden crosses rising out from the earth, he knew why.
“Forty-nine blessed wee souls were taken,” Margaret said, coming up behind him with Joanie at her side. “I remember those dark days all too well. Two of my own are buried there. Matthew knows. He likes to sit on my Timothy’s grave. He visits him every day, some days for hours.”
Alec had to fight the despair that seemed to seep from the very earth beneath his feet. Then a small, warm hand slipped into his, and he looked down into Matthew’s mix-matched eyes. Immediately, clarity reclaimed his senses. “Show me,” Alec said.
He followed the lad into the cemetery until he knelt in front of one of the crosses.
“That is my Timothy’s grave,” Margaret called.
To Alec’s surprise, Matthew began tearing away at the sparse, dried bits of grass and cold earth.
“Nay, ye mustn’t—” But Alec swallowed the rest of his admonishment when Matthew uncovered a piece of stone with writing carved into it.
Suddenly the stone around his neck came to life as never before, searing his skin.
For the first time, the heat was unbearable.
He whisked the cord over his neck and glanced at his skin, which was red and blistered where the stone had lain.
Straightway, Alec dropped to his knees and helped Matthew uncover the stone. Swiping his hand across the writing, he fell back, struck to his core and stared at the words. Alba gu bràth.
Slowly, he straightened and leaned over the stone.
Warmth caressed his face. Life pulsed around him like a beating heart.
With his own heart racing, he dug his fingers into the earth, searching for the edges of the rock.
It was more than three hands wide and nearly as long and thin like slate.
He pried his fingers beneath it, lifting it away, revealing another stone.
Alec raked both hands through his hair as he stared in amazement at a large purple stone.
His eyes narrowed on the broken corner. He seized the shard from the ground and slid it into the break — a perfect fit.