by Ria Cantrell
“Mine will nay, either, but the Ancients have nay guided me.”
“Ah, dear one. But they have. Yer’ heart will heal, my lad. The Ancients are already weaving their healing threads around yer’ brokenness. But yer’ story is not yet to be told.”
Ruiri hated when the Old One spoke in riddles. He also did not believe he had much of a story to be told. He had given up his hope when Caitlyn had been killed nine years hence. He shrugged off Morag’s prophetic ramblings and he asked simply, “Where is my brother going? I will know the truth of it, Morag. At least tell me that.”
“He is going to Iona.”
“Iona? That is impossible fer ye’ to even know.”
Morag raised one eyebrow and said, “Ye’ can doubt me. I knew about the lass returning before even Jamie could. I tell ye’ Jamie is on his way to Iona. Like our namesake, St. Columba, Jamie will journey there and he will be tried, sorely, I am sad to say…but with his trials will come great healing.”
“I did nay go to Iona when Cait…when ye’ know....after that terrible day.”
“I know. Ye’ were nay Bound with the lass. Her soul is destined for greater things. That I can promise ye’ for I have seen much in visions that I canna’ speak of. Jamie was Bound to Sinead. The Binding only was barely set when she was taken from him. T’is the decision of the Guardians now.”
Ruiri let go an ironic laugh and he said, “The Guardians should have decided before my woman was taken and before Sinead was lost to Jamie.”
“Lad, we dunna’ know the minds of the Ancients. We canna’ understand their ways. We need only honor them as best we can.”
Ruiri grunted his answer and said, “Hmph, well it seems to me that Jamie did honor them by taking the Binding and he was repaid thusly.”
“Hush, lad, dunna’ speak so.”
“Why, Morag? I have nothing left of me for them to take.”
“Have ye’ not? Ye’ best think again, lad, for there is much for them to bargain with ye’.”
Ruiri would not have it. It was bad enough he had lost Caitlyn, who he vowed never to speak of again, but now his brother had been lost because of his honor of the Sacred Ways. He nudged his horse forward and reached out to help Morag up onto the beast. At least if she was there to help explain, perhaps the news would be more bearable to his da’. Ruiri knew it was the cowardly way out of the predicament, but Morag had answers he could not even think to understand.
⌘⌘⌘⌘⌘⌘
Dubh MacKenzie roared with anger. “What do ye’ mean the bitch is nay in the tower? Where is she?”
The man at arms who had been assigned to guard her door had broken down the barricade in the tower room only to find the lass gone. He was mystified as her gown lay crumpled on the floor and the door had been barred from the inside with the desk, but the lass was nowhere to be seen. There were no secret passageways or means of escape. There was only the single door; one way in and the same way out. The girl had simply disappeared. Throwing his hands up in defeated confusion, the man at arms said, “She is not there, m’lord. The door was locked from the inside. I broke it down to get in and she was gone.”
Dubh threw down his gloves and he grabbed the man by the throat.
“Ye’ mean ye’ have allowed her to escape.”
“Nay, she was in there when, well after she ran from the hall.”
Dubh unconsciously cupped himself and he mumbled, “Dunna’ think to remind me of that. I want her found and dragged down here. She will pay for her offenses against me. Find her. She must simply be hiding.”
Thrusting the man away from him, Dubh took a tankard filled with ale and sat down with a thud. He was in a horrible humor and now he had to find that venomous bitch.
The man scrambled to his feet and hurried off, but he knew that the woman was not hiding. She was gone with no explanation. No amount of searching for her would procure her.
⌘⌘⌘⌘⌘⌘
Sinead woke. She looked around. She was in the Cloister library and she murmured, “Was it just all a dream?”
Holding out her hand, she saw the ring that had been given to her by Jamie during their Binding. So it was true. She had married Jamie and promised him her undying love and she had left him.
“To save him,” She whispered to herself. “I did it to save his life.”
The leather bound manuscript was at her fingertips and she quickly leafed through it to read what she had written. Only, when she came to the part about Jamie, there was not much written at all.
“No, it can’t be. I wrote this. I remember now! Oh Jamie…what became of you?”
Sinead felt hot tears welling in her eyes and the realization of what she had done was almost too much for her to think about. Jamie was dead. She may have saved his life, but by now, he was just a memory of a man who held her heart through the centuries of time. All she had left of him was the ring.
In the end, Time was the great reaper. Sinead could not protect Jamie from that. Burying her head in her hands, Sinead wept with a sorrow that was so profound, she was certain she would never recover from it. She understood about the Binding vows even more now than when she had spoken them. Without him, she was no longer whole. She was bereft of the part of her that was Jamie. As her tears dripped onto the manuscript, and the words blurred, she sobbed. They were the sorts of sobs that wracked her entire body and fat tears fell with cold splats against the ancient pages.
After a very long time, Sinead could not even tell how long, she felt drained and exhausted. She raised her head, startled to find her parents and her boss, John O’Rourke standing behind her. What the hell was going on? Maybe she was just dreaming after all.
She tried to wipe the tears from her face, but they continued to fall, like never ending rain. Why would she still be weeping if she thought it was a dream? Sinead knew the answer in her broken heart. It was because it was not a dream. She had lost Jamie, or rather she had given him up. Through hiccupping sobs, Sinead asked, “What are you all doing here?”
Her mother put a hand on her shoulder and she said, “It’s time we had a long talk, Sinead.”
“A talk? I can’t even begin to talk about anything and even if I could, you would not believe me.”
“What would I not believe? That you were in the fourteenth century?”
Sinead’s head whipped around and she glared at her mother in disbelief. “But how…how did you know that?”
“Your father and I were waiting for the right time to explain things.”
“Wh-what do you mean? Explain what things?”
Sinead’s mother moved the manuscripts over and she sat upon the edge of the desk. Her father came to stand beside her and he took her mother’s hand in his. Sinead, tried to dry those errant tears that continued to fall unbidden even as her mother began to speak softly.
“Sinead, your father and I know about your gift because we share it.”
“What? How could you not have told me about this? Instead you were off traveling to Europe or wherever, while I was being raised by nannies and au pairs.”
“We were not exactly jet setting, although I know that is what we led you to believe.”
Sinead felt betrayed and that only seemed to cut deeper into her already wounded heart.
“Perfect. You two are unbelievable!”
John put his hand on Sinead’s arm and he said, “Take a breath, girl. You need to listen to what they have to say.”
Sinead looked at John and she said, “You, too, John? You’re in on this too?”
“I was sent to see that you found your own way, love.”
“Sent? Are you kidding me? Who sent you?”
“Some call them the Ancients. Some call them the Guardians, some call them Angels.”
“Oh, them! They are not what we have been taught. They are manipulators of mankind and they dangle us like puppets for their pleasure.”
“T’is not so, love. I suspect it feels like that now. I gather something monumental happened whi
le you were finding your gift.”
Sinead snorted, “Ha, monumental. You could say that.”
She held up her hand and pointed to her ring. She said, “Do you know what that is? It is the ring Jamie MacCollum gave to me on the night we spoke the Binding Rites in honor of the Ancients.”
John looked at Sinead’s parents and a shocked expression came onto all of their faces. John stammered, “Did you say you spoke the Binding?”
Sinead nodded forcefully and said, “Yahhh, the Binding. If you know about your precious Ancients, you know what that means. I only now realize the magnitude of what the Binding means. I will never be whole again. I am cursed to live out my days alone because I can only love one man. And that man is dead for at least six centuries.”
Sinead was starting to unravel. She had never shouted at her boss or her parents, but she felt like they were all in on some cruel trick that had been played upon her and on Jamie as well.
“Alright. In light of this it is understandable that you are upset, but we can help you now. You just have to listen.”
“I don’t want to listen. The time for listening would have been perhaps before I was thrusted into Medieval Scotland only to find a man I should have never met, let alone fallen in love with. The time for listening would have been better to have warned me before I lost my heart and part of my soul.”
“Love, we could not tell you. We did not know if you carried the gift. It seemed like you did not. John knew that if it were to reveal itself it would be before you turned 26 and he thought if ever it would, Winter Solstice would be the night. And it appears that it was.”
“So, you and dad both...can do what I did?”
“We are gifted with the ability to walk through time. And now it seems that so are you gifted with that fantastic and magical skill.”
“I wish I never had it.”
“Don’t say that, love, for only the most precious are chosen by the Guardians to do it.”
Sinead shook her head, tears pooling in her lovely eyes again. John was really growing concerned. He had known her a long time and always had experienced her toughness and strength. She was falling apart and he understood why.
“I don’t want it. Tell your precious Guardians to take it back. And while you’re at it, tell them to give me back my heart. Let them banish the memory of Jamie from me forever because I can’t think about what my life will be like without him.”
John answered softly, “You don’t really want that, love. You would be far more empty to not remember him. Besides, you have to remember him. You’ll understand soon enough.”
Sinead stood up abruptly, practically turning over the chair in which she had been sitting. She pushed the manuscripts off her desk in anger, not even caring about their fragile state.
“Enough with the riddles. I need to understand now! I need you all to explain everything to me now. I’ve had enough mystery and riddles to last me a lifetime.”
“John, would you be so kind as to get us a cup of tea. I would like to speak to my daughter privately for a few minutes. Brendan, dear, you wouldn’t mind helping John, would you?”
Sinead’s father kissed her mother and said, “Of course.”
He and John went off to the staff’s kitchen and break room and her mother stood up and went to Sinead. Taking Sinead into her arms, she hugged her daughter and said, “I know your heart is broken, but you have discovered your gift. You are not bound by time, now. We can help you hone it so that you will be able to go back at will if you choose. Now, it seems that you can only wait for the Universe to align but once you embrace this gift, we can show you how easy it is for you to travel.”
“Mom, you don’t understand. I did not get pulled back to the present. I begged to come back. I pleaded with the Guardians.”
Her mother held her at arm’s length to look into her eyes and she said, “Why? I thought you said you were Bound by the Ancient writ? You would only do that if you were completely in love with the man.”
“I am completely in love with him. I did it to save his life. Because of me, a trap was set for him and I made certain he knew I returned to my time so he would not try to save me. I did it to spare his life. I did it for him. Don’t you get it? I can’t go back or he will be killed.”
Sinead’s mother was silent for a few moments and she said, “Daughter, sometimes there are worse things than death.”
“What did you just say?”
Jamie had said that very thing in the dream Sinead had before she made the decision to return. She also remembered Morag saying something quite similar.
Meredith MacDougal picked up the fallen manuscripts and she opened them up to the page that bore Sinead’s tear stains. The blurred lines seemed changed and she pointed to the words. “Read it, Sinead. Read it and understand.”
“I don’t need to read it. I wrote it. I got it. I figured that out when I was locked in the tower of the man who wished to murder my husband.”
“You wrote what you thought would be…but your escape back here changed things. Read it.”
Sinead read the words. There was only a brief mention of Jamie. The part where he had been killed during the ambush had indeed changed. There was nothing about Morag. Sinead shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand. There was this amazing woman who became my friend. I wrote about her. Her story has to be told because she is this wonderfully gifted and wise old lady. She is the clan’s healer and she shares our gift as well. I wrote about her. Why is her story not here?”
“Perhaps more of her story needs to be told. Perhaps you are the one to do it. Perhaps that is why you are needed to go back.”
“I can’t. I can’t watch Jamie die a horrible death to save me. I gave him a chance to live and carry on his line.”
“Keep reading.”
Sinead read the words again. All that it said about the Great Laird’s son was that he slipped into obscurity. He never married, nor took his father’s place as Laird. There were no records of offspring. In fact there was not much about him at all.
“No, he had a destiny. This can’t be right. The whole time I was there, I kept thinking how so many people who lived seemingly ordinary lives, had remarkable stories that should be told. I wanted Jamie’s story to be told, but he has slipped among the many whose saga will never be recounted. Mom, this is not how I wanted it to end.”
“But it didn’t end, Sinead. It lives on with you. You see, Death is not always the worst that can happen to a man. Life without love and family is by far worse than death.”
“But if I go back, he may die.”
“And if you go back, he may live and have the love that he believed in when he spoke the sacred Binding with you.”
“Then help me get back now. I need to fix this.”
Meredith sighed heavily.
“It doesn’t work that way. Your actions set courses in motion and they have to play out. You are untrained in the Gift and you need to learn the rules and how to use it. Your father and I can help you, but it can’t happen overnight. I am sorry that it ended this way, and I do sincerely wish we could have better prepared you, but we have rules of our own we are sworn to abide. Do you understand?”
“Will I ever see Jamie again?”
Meredith smiled and said, “I think that is a definite possibility.”
“Will he remember me? What if I accidently go back to before he met me?”
“We can help you with that, too. Though it is not an exact science by any means, we can help you be more precise as to where you want to go. Just know this. The man you left will be greatly changed by your decision. You must be prepared to face the consequences of your choices, even though you believed you were doing the best thing for him.”
Sinead nodded and said, “Mom, I love him. I don’t care what he is like when I return. He will always be the man that holds the other part of my soul.”
As tears ran down Sinead’s face anew, she sobbed, “It breaks my heart to think that he had
no one and that his lineage ended with him.”
Meredith hugged her daughter and she said, “It didn’t.”
Sinead once again broke free of her mother’s embrace and she said, “Mom, you can’t mean….”
“Can’t I? That’s why I wanted your dad and John to leave. Jamie’s lineage lives, Sinead and not just because you can write his story.”
Chapter 43
The winter had taken its toll on the land. It had been colder than Jamie had ever remembered. Living amid the sequestered monks of Iona was as hard a life as that of any field warrior, but that was alright with Jamie. It mattered not if life was hard or easy. In fact, not much mattered at all. He had been living on Iona for months now and though Spring should have heralded its way there weeks ago, Winter still maintained its hold on the Isle with a death grip.
Jamie had tried not to think too much of his life before. He had abandoned all that he knew in the hopes that he could wash his memories away like those ascetic hermits who had committed their lives to God. But God was unforgiving to a man like Jamie. Even if his heart was his to give, he would not be able to devote himself to God and so Jamie knew that redemption would be slowly granted, if granted at all.
He had failed his family and he had failed her. He had forced her hand to do what she thought she must. If only he had been stronger and more careful. He certainly was not fit to lead his clan. That role was better suited to one of his younger brothers, perhaps even to Ruiri. He had proven he was not fit to be a husband and so Iona seemed like the perfect place to bleach his memories.
The monks had accepted him and they did not press him into divulging his story. Many of them had come to Iona for reasons of their own and few had actually come because God led them to do so. Jamie was certain that the majority of the men who resided in the beehive shaped huts had run from something. As he was not questioned, so too did he not pry into the lives of his neighbors.