His father’s true identity, hidden from him for so long, was finally unveiled. The revelation that his father was an English aristocrat who had likely enjoyed his time with Callan’s mum and then left without a backward glance filled Callan with resentment.
Resentment for the man who had been absent from his life, curiosity about the person he never knew. The conflict raged within him for years, a stormy sea of emotions.
An onslaught of memories flashed through Callan’s mind in the cold mountain air. He saw again the day the awful truth had first come to light, when their clan had finally discovered the evidence of his mother’s affair, when they’d said how she’d sullied her honor and reputation.
When his mother had discovered she was with child, a widower in the clan married her, knowing she carried another man’s child. She let him believe it was a man from a rival clan who had been killed in battle before they could marry.
Yet as Callan grew, he looked nothing like his parents, with his aristocratic jaw and nose, the piercing green eyes and black hair. His mother and her husband had auburn hair and browneyes, the man slight of build and short, while Callan stood over six feet tall and broad of shoulder, and so the rumors grew louder.
When the man he thought was his father fell ill, he confessed all to the priest, who immediately told their chieftain.
Callan had been a lad of six years, yet he still recalled every vivid detail, from his mother’s ragged sobs as she, once proud and fierce, cowered beneath the hateful blows and words.
The searing pain that cleaved him in two when they were cast out with nothing more than the clothes on their backs left to struggle and starve, all because she fell in love with the wrong man. The accusations still rung in his heart, leaving wounds that had yet to fully heal.
Mist rolled in across the hills as Callan carefully tucked the letter away so it would not get wet.
A black rage spread from his heart through his body as he slammed his fist against the unforgiving rock, fresh pain splitting across his knuckles. Three drops of blood dripped from Callan’s fingers, falling onto the rough stone. His chest heaved, breath escaping in ragged gusts that formed white plumes in the cold air.
If his stepfather hadn’t confessed to the priest, or if his mother hadn’t spurned the chieftain’s son when she was sixteen, their lives might have been very different. Joan, his mother, would have married the chieftain’s son. She would have held a place of respect amongst the clan, though Callan, as he was now, would not have been. But instead, they became the lowest outcasts.
Why had she never left the highlands? He’d asked, but she’d only look out across the sea and say she needed to be here. He understood now. She’d been waiting for a man who would never return.
Yet in all those hard years, she had smiled, a smile tinged with sadness as she made a life for them in a small abandoned croft they’d found, far away from clan lands. She’d protected him at any cost, her only regret leaving him alone when she passed, knowing the clan would never accept him.
Callan was thirteen when she passed from a broken heart. Alone, he’d learned to survive, never to trust, to do whatever he must to make his own way.
Now, a man of a score and two years, he found he needed answers, wanted to meet the man who had ruined their lives so many years ago.
“Who am I?” Callan’s voice, raw and filled with unspoken questions, was carried away on the wind.
Dusk fell across the windswept highlands as he stretched, stiff from sitting for so long.
Callan turned from the looming mountains that marked the farthest reach of his world.
In that moment, as he strode across the land, he made a choice.
The air turned cold as he walked. He had left the croft years ago when his mother passed, sold the few animals and meager belongings, and lived rough, finding shelter in caves or sleeping under the stars. He cared not.
With a talent for fighting, he made his way in the world, not caring who he fought for or why, only that he had coin for his future.
As the last light faded from the sky above, Callan gathered fallen branches and started a small campfire. With each snap of dried wood and the crackling spark of the flames, memories of a life forever left behind whispered through his thoughts.
Lingering questions still plagued him, gaps in his history that only one man might yet illuminate. To find the missingpieces, he decided he must seek out his father and ask why he had so ill-used his mother, why he had never returned for them?
And then? Then he would find somewhere new to make a life, somewhere where no one knew his name or his lineage, for no longer would the past bind him. Now he had a purpose and perhaps in time he might even find peace.
CHAPTER 8
The morning sunstreamed through the window slit, awakening William. The sennight had passed much too quickly. He rose from the bed, stretching his arms overhead before quietly padding across the stone floor to peer outside.
Forty miles to York and as of this day, it might as well have been four hundred. Loathe to leave Lucy when there was sickness in the village, William looked upon the rocky cliffs and endless sea, thinking.
Nay, he could not incur the king’s displeasure by delaying, not with winter coming, and the king, impulsive as always, might decide Blackford would be of better use under another lord’s purview.
William glanced at his still-sleeping wife. Lucy’s hair fanned across the pillow, her lips parted slightly as she dreamed. He ached to return to bed, take her in his arms and spend the day together, but alas, duty called.
After washing and dressing, William bent to gently kissLucy on the forehead, smiling when she murmured in her sleep, before he slipped from their chamber.
