But on that same night when he stood with his father, something else happened. Perhaps it had been the tone of his father’s voice when he spoke that night. Perhaps it was the way his father hunkered down and pointed in the distance, his arm on Lyall’s shoulders as if he were not just a lad but a man grown. Perhaps it was because Lyall had been born there, and his destiny was bloodand bone of the place—the parts of a man that made him hollow and dead if you took them away.
On that night long ago, Lyall began to understand the rite of passage between fathers and sons, rings around the moon, the traditions in a man’s life, and the reverence of a man for the lands that gave him worth and defined him. As his father showed him all the places that marked their borders: the granite rock shaped like an angel’s wing; the distant hills, two in row, camel-like in their twin humps; the hook in the river where the wild aspens grew—what became clear to him, even as young as he had been, was that Dunkeldon and the ground upon which it was built, was the passion that fueled Ewan Robertson’s lifeblood. When Lyall turned away from the passionate light and pride in his father’s eyes to look out past the light of the moon, in the path of the stars over the trees and the river and grasses he had seen a thousand times and never thought twice about, he saw and felt something else. What it was, he did not truly understand, but felt deep in his bones the very seeds of something important to his measure.
He understood it all too clearly when it was too late, when he buried his brother in the chapel next to father, when he walked over that drawbridge and saw the traitor’s flag, when the stars misaligned and he had to turn his back on his father’s legacy, Malcolm’s and his own. The gift they could have given to their sons was suddenly gone with the first snap in the wind of a vile yellow flag.
So under the night’s moon with a ring around it, Lyall sat back on his heels in the clearing in the forest and studied the sky, watched the colored edges as they deepened into almost black, the bright spots of starlight some claimed were small holes in Heaven that shone down to mortal men the merest glimpses of its bright light.
Lyall found that fable of Heaven unlikely, but then he did not believe in much anymore. Life and years had changed him. He had lost his belief in the alignment of the stars and the warm,fate-changing glow of magic trees, and even his belief in the goodness of man.
Away from the vastness of the night sky, he glanced at the river. Glenna was gone. Where was she? Her horse was still there by his. He moved swiftly, calling her name. At the river’s edge, he found one of the water skins in the thick grass alongside one of her shoes.
Had she fallen in?He cupped his hands about his mouth. “Glenna!”
There was no sound but the rush of water over some rocks downstream. A hot wave of panic swept over him. He shouted, “Glenna!”
No response.
His vest hit the ground and he stripped off his tunic and boots. A heartbeat later he was in the river. “Glenna!” he called out, standing in the water with his feet wide apart to counter the current, and he looked around him and off towards the blackest edges of the water, where the moonlight was blocked by the shoreline trees stretching out along the opposite bank.
He saw nothing and his heart pounded, his panic grew.
“Glenna!”
“I am here,” she said calmly and came striding through the water easily around a small bend, pulling herself along by exposed tree roots along the river’s edge, seemingly unaware he wanted nothing more at that moment than to strangle her. She stopped when she was a few paces away.
Fortunately for her…out of his reach. He stood chest deep in cold water and glared at her, overcome for a moment with relief made his chest ache strangely as if bound by tight ropes. He took a long breath and wiped his wet face in frustration. “You could not find your voice long enough to answer my callbeforeI jumped into the water?”
Her back was to him as she tossed the water skin she carried onto the grass near the bank and spun in slow circles, lookingdown to search the water around her and completely unaffected by anything he said. “I’ve lost my shoe.”
“You have what?”
“I was filling the skin, and it slipped, and I reached out to grab it and fell in the water, and so I caught the skin, but now I cannot find my shoe.” She faced him frowning, clearly annoyed—she, who could not find her voice a moment earlier.
He spotted her shoe caught in the roots to her left, and next to what looked like a fat cluster of river mussels. He waded closer, took out his knife, cut the mussels away, and tossed them on the bank. Then he found another cluster under the waterline. Now they had food. He put away his knife and faced her. “This shoe?”
“Oh! That is quite wonderful. You found it. I was certain I was going to be riding around in a boot and shoe.” She grinned, her eyes bright. “See? There was a reason you jumped in.”
“Aye. I wanted to freeze to death tonight.”
“Cease your grousing, Montrose. ‘Tis not all that cold and you were beginning to smell like your nameless horse.” She paused. “Do not glower at me like that. I speak the truth. I would know since I had to ride downwind of you. And I…I smelled of that pit,” she said viciously as she shivered slightly and grabbed a handful of roots to pull herself up the bank.
“Wait! Glenna...do not move.”
Of course she turned around, and her movements sent a strong ripple over the surface of the water. “Why?”
It wasn’t enough she had disturbed the water. She also had to speak. Standing still as a stone, he swore under his breath and said evenly, “Do. Not. Move.”
“Why can I not move? You said yourself the water is cold. You do not have to—“ She shut up as he tossed a large, spotted trout high over her head and well onto the bank, where it flopped and twisted in the grass, its scales sparkling like jewels in the bright moonlight. “Good Lord in Heaven.…” She turned and looked at him, stunned.
He stepped closer and used his knuckle to close her open mouth. “You might catch waterflies, love.” In a blink he picked her up and plopped her on the bank, then jumped up and joined her, both of them soaked and dripping water, and he looked down into her amused face and said, “I assume you are as hungry as I.”
She laughed. “How did you do that?”
He shrugged. “It swam into my hands. There would be two fish had you merely obeyed me and ceased your talking.” He stood then and water dripped down his chest and onto her head and he bent to gather up the mussels. “All your chattering frightened the other one away.”
She picked up the fat fish and followed him, a slight smile on her lips. “We have mussels to eat and this fish. Looks to me to be plenty for both of us,” she chattered.
21
