But then the real sounds of night invaded her sense: the chirping song of the insects, the distant rush of river water over rocks and small falls, and the pounding of her own foolish heart.
“I am bewitched,” he said. “And destined to hell. Why do I care about you when I dare not?” His voice was real and it was heavy with emotion when it drifted off. “I cannot…I will not.” He cursed in a low voice and walked away, his footsteps swift and growing distant.
She opened one eye, then turned over just as he disappeared through the trees. Kicking aside the blanket, she knew there was no way she would let him walk away from her after what he’d said, whether or not he'd spoken only because he believed she was asleep.
Up on her feet, she slipped on her shoes and moved stealthily through the woods, staying back far enough for the moon tolight his shadow. The woods grew thick, then opened up. When the roots of a giant, old yew tree almost tripped her, she placed her hand on the bark to steady herself and almost cried out, looking down at her hand as if it were suddenly burned. She stared at the tree, almost expecting to see a handprint where she had touched it.
Carefully, tentatively, she reached out and then touched it with one finger. No burn. The tree was cool, the bark rough, like every other tree in the woods.
Still, her hand throbbed, and she stared down at it expecting to see something like a slave brand, but her palm appeared perfectly normal. Yet something…there was something. She stared at the tree, then shook off the strange thoughts that made gooseflesh of the skin on her arms. Silliness. With no time to dawdle, she rushed on to stay in sight of Montrose, who was moving again and even farther away.
Eventually, he stopped at the top of a rock ledge and stood looking into the distance, his strong profile, sleek nose and square jaw limned in the moonlight like the effigy of an ancient god. She hung back, unable to see past him or the woods and tall fir trees flanking his sides. The vision he made reminded her of him poised on the prow of the ship the morning after the storm, and made her breath catch. She could not have looked away had lightning come down and flashed right there before her eyes.
Suddenly swinging his arms out into the air, he leapt down to the forest floor with a soft thud and a whoosh of breath, and he began to run. She moved swiftly to the ledge, which she found was perched at the forest’s edge, where a short, gentle slope rolled down into a small clearing.
There, she spotted his dark figure running across the field towards a sight she never expected. In the distance, the dark, burned out ruins of a castle stood atop its motte, looking like the island’s Celtic stone rings: staggered, jagged and great, black against the iridescence of moonlight that shone down turning the field a silvery white, almost as if it were not a night on thecusp of the end of summer and beginning of autumn, but a night in the height of the coldest winter. She moved down from the ledge and onto the slope.
Around the castle was a wall of thick bushes and brambles and brush, and he ran to a spot that sloped downward into the wall of weeds, and he disappeared. She moved fast, running breathlessly across the silver field, keeping her eyes on where he had gone and once there, she moved down where a small cave-like tunnel, a black hole really, shone where its weeds were freshly torn aside and its bushes trampled.
Without hesitation she stepped inside and all light disappeared. She froze. Chills ran up her arms. Inside, it was as black as the pit and to her horror it smelled the same. Her skin crawled and she shivered, looking for courage which had disappeared the moment she stepped into the tunnel.
In a weak moment she turned back, catching and swallowing a sob that threatened to escape her lips, and she took a step toward the entrance, where there was moonlight and fresh night air. At that moment she heard the hollow echo of his running footsteps deep down the tunnel and she moved away from the safety of the entrance, cautiously touching the damp walls only to keep her balance on the stone and uneven rocks underfoot, telling herself she was not afraid. But it was a lie. Her fear was tangible.
She rounded a bend in the walls and stepped back quickly. At the far end, light shone down from an open trap, revealing the carved rungs of a wooden ladder. She took five slow breaths, then ten, and edged around the corner just was the trap door snapped closed and the tunnel was bathed once again in darkness.
Before long she stood at the top of the ladder, feeling for the door. She counted to twenty before she opened it--not wanting to come face to face with Montrose--barely enough to see and she panned the grounds, then flipped open the trap and climbed out, kneeling down to quietly closed the trapdoor.
For a sweet moment she just breathed in the cool night air and composed herself and her fears. She was outside in the open air. No more dark, dank-tasting tunnel. No imaginary adders under her next blind step.
Around her, the castle was eerily abandoned, with debris covering overturned wagons and the remnants of animal troughs, the gate from an old pen and pieces of burned walls still sitting atop stone bases, all covered in old, broken pieces of burnt wood and years of weeds and dead leaves.
As she moved, she could mark buildings that had been, the stable, stalls broken and charred, a large center building that had crumbled, caved in from the sides, with pieces of stairs piled upon each other, and another building nearby with a tall stone fire hearth like that used by a village smithy.
A cross hung at an odd angle over the lone door in the midst of a small burned out chapel; that was where she spotted him, standing at what must have once been an altar, the raised stone dais covered in debris starting at the very toes of his boots. He looked as if he was unable to go any further.
She watched him for a long time, soaking in any clue she could from studying him. Before long, she could almost feel his sorrow, palpable and like the waves of the sea coming at you. Whatever this place was, it was painful to him.
He seemed so far away, a tragedy standing raw and open, his hands open and out in front of him as if in supplication, and she understood she could see him this way only because he believed he was completely alone.
She had not known that such emotion and pain could be found merely in a man’s posture, but there she saw a crushing sense of isolation so clear, as if he were in another world…alone, deserted, adrift and looking lost, the emptiness of which she understood all too well. He was a man at Gethsemane.
The overwhelming need to reach out to him came to her, but she felt if she did so, somehow she would violate him when he was already wounded. Watching his pain made her belly turn andshe placed a hand over it and closed her eyes. If only she could know what was wrong, perhaps she could find a way to help him.
Before long watching him in such a state and saying nothing was too difficult. She felt if she stood there longer, she would have to pull him from the depths of that black place he inhabited, so she decided to leave him alone with whatever demons he possessed. She took a deep breath that turned into a sigh, and he spun around, his face hard and his eyes moist, glaring at her as if she were a rude awakening.
“What are you doing here?”
Caught, she had no out so she looked him in the eyes and admitted, “I followed you.”
“I can see that.”
Now, without the need for excuses, she walked toward the altar and looked down, where he had been cutting away the weeds and brambles when she first spotted him. There before him lay two old graves—one covered with a square stone plaque carved with a man’s effigy, and the other a cairn--a crude piling of old rocks. “Who are they?”
He was stonily silent, unwilling to let her in. There were moments, she noticed, like now, where his solitude was like a shield he forced between them and his response was strong enough to make her believe he would gladly turn that shield into a weapon and wield it like some battering ram on anyone who tried to save him. “They are my ghosts.”
“Not any longer,” she said lightly, bending and gently pulling more of the weeds from the cairn. “I am here.” On her knees, she dusted off her hands and glanced up at him. His expression she could not read.
“Uninvited and unwelcome,” he said.
