At first she’d found monastery life startlingly rigorous, but as the weeks passed, Magda grew to find great comfort in the daily routine. So much so, she wondered if that weren’t part of some greater lesson Lonan was teaching her.
The cycle was the same every day: up at dawn for matins, close each day with vespers, with every hour in between rigidly accounted for. Brother Lonan had stressed to her the importance of numbers in the order of life, and the monks put a premium on such precision.Primestood for the first hour and for those prayers said at 6 a.m.Terce, the third hour, meant psalms at nine.Sextwas the sixth-hour contemplation at noon, and so on.
Magda tried to feel some greatersomethingsurrounded by all this worship, and though she didn’t think she’d be signing up for the convent any time soon, she did find an inner calm that had eluded her since Peter’s death. Admittedly, facing her fears in the lake had done much to open her to the experience, but somehow the simple rhythm of life at Inchmahome Priory had thrown her old world into greater relief.
She had chided herself that a couple of kisses from some handsome Scotsman, and she was ready to forsake the modern world and live in the past as if it were some sort of living history book. But now Magda saw some kernel of rightness in the desire to stay. She was grateful to Lonan that his reticence had forced her to put out of her mind life as she knew it, to face instead life as it came to her in the moment.
Her old world had been so caught up in trivia, things that, at the end of the day, held nothing for her soul. Her family’s never-ending pursuit of status. The rush of life in Manhattan, where she was surrounded by millions of people, not one of whom she could call in a crisis. And even her job. She loved the art she worked with, and yet it hadn’t been about the paintings in so long. If she truly looked inward, she had to admit that her work had come to serve other purposes: pursuing a raise, jockeying for invites to the right openings, or—and this shamed her—keeping a sharp eye for possible mistakes made by her peers to save as fodder for some later advantage.
She’d lost sense of herself when Peter died and realized now she hadn’t known whothatMagda was, the Magda who was an empty shell of herself, walking through her daily grind at work, returning to her tiny studio every night. The Magda who would clearly drop everything at a chance for life. Being pulled back in time had been her excuse—she’d told herself it had been beyond her control, that life was something that happened to her.
But now it was time for Magda to wrest back her lost control. She pushed up the long draping sleeve of her borrowed cassock, trying to knot it at her elbow for what felt like the hundredth time that morning, and stirred the great pot of boiled oats in earnest.
As it turned out, the room where Lonan had bound her feet on that first day was one of the few with heat. The kitchen, though, was another, and that had become her primary refuge, even though the only culinary skills required by the monastery involved stirring oats and cleaning fish. Striving for simplicity, the monks ate poached fish and those godforsaken oats at every meal, and she fantasized now about any number of exotic foods, thinking with a smile that, at this point, she’d even be game to try black pudding.
The monks all played a part, each as he was able. Scholars like Lonan spent their days at tasks like illuminating manuscripts or maintaining the library. Most other men managed the physical labor of the island, gardening, fishing, repairing. The list of things that needed doing was endless.
Many of the men had taken vows of silence, and Magda had become accustomed to their language of gestures that, in many ways, was much easier to understand than the thick brogue of the old Scots.
Magda had assumed that all monks were like Lonan, inspired to monastic life from some quiet conviction, or to pursue a life of contemplative study. But she’d been shocked to hear that some families donated a son in return for blessings. Though, seeing the carnage wrought by men like Campbell, she thought perhaps that wasn’t such a bad fate.
Lonan stood in the doorway. Magda didn’t know how long he’d been there, silently watching her. His appearances were rare so, tapping her wooden spoon at the side of the pot, Magda set aside her current task to visit with him.
“Our time grows short, child.”
By now, she had a good enough sense of Lonan to know that such ominous pronouncements weren’t to be taken lightly. In their weeks together, Lonan had not yet once discussed the nature of time, Magda’s appearance, or, for that matter, the part Lonan played in it all, having painted the portrait that had been her portal into the past. She’d long stopped pressing him on it. Seeing the somberness on his face now, though, Magda thought perhaps the moment to ask him just one more time had arrived.
“I found your journals,” she ventured.
“I know.” A mischievous light wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “I left them for you, after all.”
She gave him a quizzical look and was met only with placid silence, so she continued, “You wrote something like,time abides. What did you mean by that?”
“Time doesn’t flow like a river, child. It simply is.”
Magda raised her brows. Now that he was finally willing to talk, she wanted more than just this abstruse explanation and hoped she wasn’t going to have to pry every sentence out of him.
He sighed. “Everything man needed to know was within his grasp thousands of years ago.” Lonan pulled a three-legged stool from along the wall and eased himself onto it. “The nature of time, astronomy, mathematics, these are things that were mastered millennia ago. The Indus Valley civilization, the ancient Babylonians, Hittites, Mayans, Persians. Magda, you have studied these peoples, their symbology.
“Despite the rigid exterior you present to the world”—he smiled fondly—“you are raw to it. Art is the soul of the universe, and your study has opened you to its ebbs and flows. This is why I think the portrait pulled you through.
“No,” he said firmly, in answer to her silent question, “I did not pick you, Magda. I merely etched symbols on a canvas, then painted the image of our James.”
“Why him?”
“Aside from the fact that we share a common enemy?” he asked, a devilish light in his eyes. “A monk I might be, but I’ve not forgotten the battles of my youth. My uncle, though a man of God, was ever a man of his clan. And we Gordons harbor no love for the Campbells, this brute in particular.”
“But why choose to paint James,” she pressed, “and not the king, or some other clan chief?”
“I am surprised that you need ask that, child.” Lonan tilted his head knowingly. “You of all people recognize the heroism and charisma that is the marquis. But I will spell it plain for you. Few truly great men have walked this earth. Sometimes the Fates need a nudge, to lend these men aid, to empower them.”
“But for what?”
“For some later, greater purpose,” he answered mysteriously. “You see, child, our James has this capacity for greatness, for great success. But there is also the possibility of great sacrifice. And it’s upon this latter path James finds himself, marching inexorably toward tragedy. That is, until you crossed it. The moment you laid eyes on his portrait, history came to a crossroads and the universe near vibrated with it.”
“But I lived hundreds of years after his death.”
“I told you, child. Time is not some fugitive, racing in a straight line ever forward, discrete moments never to be experienced again. Think of time as a circle. It merely is, and you, Magda, you found yourself at the center point of that circle.”
