Chapter 25
The letter came with the first ship of the spring.
Samira broke Murdina's seal at the kitchen table while Thora kneaded bread beside her. The message was short, the way all of the Abbess's letters were.
Come to Saddell before the lambing is done. There is someone you must meet. Bring your husband.
Samira folded it and pressed a hand flat against her stomach beneath the table. The smell of the dough was turning it again. It had turned every morning for a month.
She had not told Torstein. She had meant to tell him at Yule, and then at the feast after it, and then some quiet night by the fire.
Each time she had pictured his face, and then his hand closing over hers, and then his voice telling her she would not so much as step into a boat until the babe was born.
So she had said nothing, and now there was a letter.
Torstein came in from the yard with the wind at his back and Murdina's letter in her hand caught his eye at once.
"Saddell Abbey?" he asked.
"The Abbess sends for me. For both of us."
He sat down across from her. She watched him choose his words, and she loved him for how carefully he did it.
"Do you wish to go?"
"Yes."
"Then we go," he said. "I will have the ship ready within the week."
She let out her breath and smiled at him, and he smiled back, and neither of them said another word about it.
That night, when Samira had gone up to bed, Torstein sat alone by the hearth and drew a second letter from inside his tunic. It had come by the jarl's own messenger that afternoon, sealed with the same mark, and it was addressed to him alone.
Your wife is with child. She will not tell you, because she knows you will forbid the crossing. Bring her to Saddell regardless. My sisters will see her safely through these first months, and there is a matter of the Order that cannot wait. Say nothing. Let her think she has managed you.
Torstein read it twice. Then he laid his head back against the chair and laughed quietly at the smoke hole, so as not to wake her.
He was going to be a father.
And his stubborn, beautiful wife was going to cross the sea to hide it from him.
He folded the letter away and did not say a word.
***
Saddell Abbey
THE CROSSING WAS CALM. Samira was sick over the side twice and told him it was the swell. Torstein held her hair back both times, agreed that it was a very bad swell, and kept his face perfectly straight.
They rode up from the shore on a bright cold morning and through the abbey gate. Sister Eithne led them to the private courtyard, where the sun fell across the cloister and a young woman sat on a stone bench with a very large Highlander beside her.
The Highlander looked up. His expression went sour.
"Torstein Hagansson," he said.
"Kieran MacKenzie." Torstein's hand drifted to his belt out of pure habit. "Have ye come to spit on something?"
"Only a grave. And I was told I cannae." Kieran looked him up and down. "Ye look well for a man who is about to be skinned alive by his wife."
Torstein narrowed his eyes. "What do ye know of it?"
But Samira was no longer listening to either of them. She was staring at the woman on the bench, who had risen and was staring back at her.
"Naomi?" Samira said.
"Samira!" Naomi crossed the courtyard and took both of Samira's hands. "You are well. I prayed you had found your way."
"I did. And you. Did you remember to eat?"
Naomi laughed. Then her hand went to her own belly, still flat beneath her gown, and her eyes went bright. "For two, now."
Samira's breath caught. Without thinking, her own hand moved to the same place.
Naomi saw it. So did Kieran. And so, Samira realized far too late, did her husband.
She turned slowly.
Torstein was standing in the middle of the courtyard with his arms folded, looking at her hand on her belly. He did not look surprised.
"You knew," she said.
"Aye."
"How long?"
"Since the Abbess wrote to me. Before we sailed."
"Before we sailed." Her voice rose. "You let me lie to you across the whole of the sea!"
"I wanted to see how long you would keep it up." A grin was breaking through now, and he did not try very hard to stop it. "You are more stubborn than I thought, wife."
"And you are a fool!"
"I told ye," Kieran said to Naomi, loud enough for everyone to hear. "He's a dunderhead, and she's too stubborn for her own good."
Naomi elbowed him in the ribs. "Hush."
"I'm only saying."
Samira rounded on Torstein. "Why did you say nothing? You promised me on the road you would always ask."
"I did ask. I asked if you wished to go, and you said yes." His voice gentled. "I did not want you to cross the sea believing you had to hide from me, Samira. But I wanted you to know you could have told me. That I would not have stopped you. I would only have held your hair a little sooner."
She stared at him. Her eyes were suddenly wet.
"You are not angry?"
"Angry?" He crossed the last of the distance between them and laid his hand flat over hers, over their child. "I have been waiting for this for years."
Samira made a sound that was half laugh and half sob, and hit him once on the chest. Then she let him pull her into his arms.
Behind them, Kieran sighed with enormous satisfaction. "Well. At least they didnae kill each other."
"There is still time," said a dry voice from the cloister.
Abbess Murdina stood in the archway with her hands folded, looking entirely pleased with herself.
***
IN MURDINA'S SOLAR, the Abbess set a small bundle on the table and unwrapped it. The pendant lay on the cloth, blue-green stone in old gold.
"Hold it," she said to Samira.
Samira glanced at Torstein. He laid his hand over hers, and she lifted the stone.
It woke at once. Across the table, Naomi gasped and pressed her hand to her breastbone, where something that was no longer there had once hung.
"I feel it," Naomi whispered. "Here. As if it were calling."
"It is," Murdina said quietly. "The stone that finds hidden treasures, and the amethyst that compels the truth. They were made to know each other. And so were the women who keep them."
Samira looked across at Naomi. She remembered the fire beneath the ground on the road to Tarbert, and the warmth of the pendant against her skin, and what she had seen in it that night.
"That is why you sent for us," she said.
"The Brotherhood has not stopped hunting either of you," Murdina said. "One day you may need each other. And one day, your children may too." She looked from one belly to the other, and for once her voice was soft. "I wanted you to meet as friends before you ever had to meet as allies."
Samira did not put the pendant down.
The stone was still warm in her palm, and something in it had not finished with her. She closed her eyes.
"There is a third," she said.
The room went quiet.
"A blade. Long, and old, and buried a very long time." Her brow drew down. "It does not lie alone. There is a stone set beside it, carved over with runes. Row upon row of them."
"Norse runes?" Torstein asked.
"I do not know." She turned her head slightly, as though listening to something behind the wall. "Whatever is written there has not been read in a hundred years. Perhaps longer. There is a curse bound up in the words. In the reading of them."
"Where?" Murdina asked.
"South of here. Inland." Samira frowned harder, and the name came to her the way the others had, from somewhere outside herself. "Kilmarnock. Near Ayr."
Kieran sat forward sharply. "That is Boyd land, or near enough to it."
"Aye," Murdina said. "It is."
Naomi had gone pale. "A curse on whoever reads it?"
"On whoever wakes it." Samira opened her eyes and let go of the stone, and the light died away. "That is all I can see. It sleeps. But it will not sleep much longer. It will come to light soon."
"Aye," Murdina said. "It will."
"You knew of this."
"I have heard of it. I have never known where it lay." The Abbess folded the cloth over the pendant with great care. "Now I know, and I find I liked not knowing rather better."
"Then send no one," Torstein said. "Let it lie."
"If I could, I would." Murdina looked up. "But the Brotherhood hunt relics the way other men hunt deer, and sooner or later they will turn over the right stone. I need someone who can read them," Murdina corrected him. "Before anyone else does."
"And do you have such a person?" Samira asked.
For a moment the Abbess almost smiled.
"Not yet," she said. "But the Lord has never yet sent me a lock without a key."
***
THEY STAYED AT SADDELL a fortnight, until Samira's sickness eased and the sisters declared her fit to sail.
On the last night, Torstein lay beside her in the narrow guest bed with his hand resting on her belly.
"I will ask you now," he said into the dark. "Will you stay off the ship until the babe is born?"
"No."
"Will you stay off the ramparts?"
"No."
"Will you let Thora carry the water?"
Samira considered this. "Perhaps."
He laughed softly and kissed her hair. "Then I will take perhaps."
She turned into his arms and put her hand over his, over their child.
"Morag said four sons," she murmured.
"And two daughters."
"Then we had best not waste time arguing, husband."
Torstein smiled in the dark. One, he thought.
Five more to come.
***