Chapter 4
The peal of the meetinghouse bell rolled across Ardlussa Bay, each strike reverberating through Calum’s chest. The sound dragged him back through time.
The last time he had heard its measured ringing was the day of his flight—the day the clan gathered to receive their tànaiste, and he’d taken his stand instead.
Ten years since that moment. Ten years since he’d stepped onto the slip and shoved his skiff into the tide.
Over three thousand days since he had last stood on this shore, and yet here he was again—home, though it felt as strange and foreign as it did familiar.
Nils MacLean emerged from his father’s boathouse, his wobbling gait slow but steady.
To Calum’s surprise, the greeting that left the auld wherryman’s lips was not in their Norse-Pictish tongue, but in Scottish.
Calum answered in kind, masking his hesitation.
He knew he’d changed in a decade—marked by war, a tamer style of dress, and exile—but he had not expected Nils to fail to know him.
The ancient wherryman squinted, his weather beaten stare lingering on the sea-colored tartan draped over Calum’s arm, the folds pleated to conceal the wolfhound beneath. “Come from Lochbuie?”
Murdoch leaned down, producing their orders, his head tilting toward Calum. “We’re here on orders of the king.”
Nils studied the seals, his bushy gray brows shooting up. “Ah. Important business then. Suppose you’ll be looking for the chieftain.”
Calum only nodded, faintly amused that the man failed to recognize him despite the seven summers he had once worked in that very boathouse.
With a wink, Nils tied off their skiff and pocketed Murdoch’s silver groat. “Aye, it’s the meetinghouse you’ll be wanting, then. It’s Friday’s eve, day of the gathering. Hear them bells?”
Murdoch slung his pack onto his shoulder. “I reckon Somerled himself can hear them from his grave.”
Nils barked a laugh. “Aye, that he can. Now, take the path in the grass up the hill past the chieftain’s cottage—that’s the one on the rise yonder.
Keep on through the bowed firs and across the wee burn that runs south.
You’ll come to Thane MacSorley’s house at the top.
Stone cutter, he is. Low fence marks his land—follow it to the end and you’ll see the clearing. Meetinghouse sits there.”
Murdoch’s brow furrowed as he tried to follow. “Wait—follow the fence through the trees?”
“Aye,” Nils said with a wag of his finger, “but dinnae cross over the fence. Thane MacSorley’s got an awful temper about his land. Just follow it.”
Calum’s thoughts drifted as auld Nils rambled on, his words whistling through the gaps in his teeth.
His eyes lingered over the auld bay—the thick forested hills, the scatter of cottages and longhouses, the sweep of the familiar shore.
It was the place where he’d once felt most himself… and the place he no longer belonged.
“And when ye come to the third boulder, the one shaped like a puffin, turn left. You cannae miss the meetinghouse. Largest building on the eastern shore. Somerled’s auld place.”
Murdoch blinked, his face more creased than ever. “A puffin?”
“Aye,” Nils said, nodding as if it were obvious. “A puffin.”
Eager to be done with the exchange, Calum pitched his voice low, giving his best imitation of Iain MacLeod. “Think a’ve go’it. Thank ye kindly. D’no if we’ll find it, but we’ll give it a go.”
Murdoch’s mustache twitched as if he were biting back a laugh.
“Good luck to you, then,” Nils said cheerfully. “Come back if ye get lost.”
They began the climb up the steep hill past the chieftain’s cottage.
Murdoch finally snorted. “What was that performance?”
Feet steady on the stony path, Calum let the air of Jura fill his lungs—moss, brine, pine, all of it. “Seemed unkind to disabuse him of the notion I was a coigreach…not after he’d gone that far in.”
Murdoch chuckled as they turned along the stone fence. “Ah. That’ll be Thane MacSorley’s house, then?”
“Freya’s father, aye.”
Calum’s eyes studied Freya’s home, wondering if she were already at the meeting.
No feminine touch softened it. Unlike his parents’ home—where Michaelmas daisies still bloomed in purple mounds by the door, washing fluttered in the breeze, and a floral motif curled around the lintel—Ragnall’s house stood bare.
Its bowed-in walls, plain and unadorned, looked less like a dwelling than a wrecked ship run aground in the middle of his field.
“You know I’ve heard the story of how you came to Mull many times, but ye never mentioned the lass.”
Beneath his tunic, the pouch thumped against his chest, the small gold ring pinging somewhere inside. He’d never talked of Freya to anyone. “That part was so ugly I could never bring myself to recount it.”
Murdoch held back a thick branch from the path, his brow arched. “I’d like to know what I’m in for. Birdy thinks you were lovers.”
Calum paused, irritation flaring. “It wasnae like that. Her father was my father’s fiercest enemy.
I never thought she’d risk casting her lot with mine.
But when my father cast me out, I ran—and Freya followed.
When she caught up, she didnae hesitate.
She helped me shove my boat into the water, tossed me a purse with all her coin to aid my escape.
I tried to bring her with me, pulled her into the skiff to save her from the tide. ”
He steeled himself, the memory raw. “Our eyes met…and for the briefest moment she smiled. I’d never seen her smile before.
And in that instant I wanted—God help me, I wanted to see her smile all her days.
But her father dragged her back. The last glimpse I had was of her held beneath the surf, while my parents tried to save her. ”
Calum’s voice caught, his eyes blurring as the heart-rending memory surged—the bolt of feeling that had struck him then, still binding her within his heart. “I begged God to save her. To keep her safe until I could return.”
Murdoch’s voice was gentle, but pointed. “So that’s why you wanted to come back. Not just because you dinnae trust Rory to handle the mission, or to see to the defenses. But because of her.”
Calum strode ahead, unwilling to linger on the thought. “I need to make amends with my father. I need to find the bard. I need to be sure Jura’s safe. And…” His throat worked. “I suppose I want to know that she is safe.”
They turned at the puffin-shaped rock, and the meetinghouse revealed itself in the clearing, vast against the falling dusk.
Murdoch stopped dead, jaw slack. “Joseph, Mary, and all the holy saints be venerated.”
Calum frowned. “What is it?”
Doc stepped forward in staggered paces, his eyes wide. “I thought your meetinghouse was a small, moss-choked shack, a lopsided ruin cobbled together centuries ago. Not—” he swept a hand toward it—“that. The thing must stretch a hundred feet.”
Calum grinned, taking in the towering columns of pine that bent to form the walls, the turf climbing halfway up the sides, the massive eaves and posts, the roof soaring like a cathedral over the clearing.
“All those years of teuchter1 insults coming back to haunt ye? Hard to believe I’m no’ a dirt-eating, empty-headed heathen? ”
Murdoch tilted his head back, admiring the height of the beams. “Aye, to be honest, it is hard to believe. That’s no’ a meetinghouse—it’s a king’s hall.”
Calum’s smile thinned. “To this island, Da is a king. A god.”
“Were you raised there?”
He shook his head.
“How no’?”
“My father was. But a chieftain is expected to fill his hall with sons and daughters. I’m my parents’ only surviving child, despite thirteen births.
Just as my father was the only one of his.
The MacSorleys say it is our curse.” He exhaled through his nose.
“Maw always said the great house mocked them for what they couldnae give it. Da gave it up for the good of the clan the summer before I was born—at Ragnall MacSorley’s ‘helpful’ suggestion. ”
Murdoch grinned. “If only they’d held out one more year.”
Calum gave a faint nod, hardly registering the jest. The longhouse loomed before them with an air of ancient power, pressing on his chest like a hand.
His heart drummed in time with the centuries-old bond to this place, the weight of his family’s legacy, the magnitude of the prayer he had prayed to return.
They climbed the earthen steps into the hill and halted at the towering double doors. His gaze snagged on the lantern still hanging crooked above the lintel, its glass cracked from the shinty ball he’d smashed against it in his fourteenth summer.
Murdoch rested a hand on his shoulder. “Are you ready?”
Calum filled his lungs until his cuirass groaned against the strain. “I’ve been ready for a long time.”
The vestibule was unchanged—low-ceilinged, wood-scented, a threshold into history—but the faces were not. Where once his father’s oldest retinue had stood, now two younger guards in Juran plaid leveled their eyes on him. “What business have you?”
Murdoch stepped forward, holding out the king’s missive and nodding toward Calum. “We come on orders of the King—and of Chief Hector.”
Gunnar’s eyes narrowed on Calum, his brows knitting as if dredging up a memory—perhaps the summer they’d stolen Douglas MacSorley’s cow.
Yet, like the others, he showed no sign of recognition.
He returned the documents with a curt nod.
“Keep quiet, and stay in the back row. When Cù Ceartas opens the floor for clan matters, then you may step forward.”
Calum accepted the orders with his clean left hand and dipped his chin in acknowledgment. The inner doors swung wide, and he and Murdoch slipped through.