“Well, my good brother, that is a point which we’d like to discuss with you.” James took and held her hand under the table.
“Yes,” she added, looking at him for strength. “We . . . we’d like to be . . .”
“Handfast?” Lonan smiled. “I know, child. I’ve readied the chapel for you.” Magda and James exchanged perplexed looks, but the brother merely looked innocent, chafing his hands over the coarse sleeves of his cassock. “And I dare say the chill there will be more easily borne on a full belly. We’ll proceed the moment we finish our meal.”
“So soon?” Magda asked. She wanted this handfasting, was ready to pledge herself to James. Felt, in fact, that she already had. But there was a part of her that thought there might have been more ceremony around it. She knew it wasn’t to be her real wedding, but still, she wanted at least to wear something other than modified monk’s clothing. She didn’t even have a proper mirror with which to prepare herself.
“Aye, this soon,” Lonan replied. “For you’ll be off to Perthshire, if I have the right of it.”
“Is that where we’re going?” Magda looked to James. With all that had happened in the past hours, she hadn’t thought to actually ask him where they’d be off to next. She realized a part of her had hoped they’d return to his home in Montrose.
"Old man”— James shook his head—"some day you’ll show me how you do that. Aye, hen. Perthshire it is.”
“But . . .” She turned to Lonan. She was about to pledge herself to James, and yet was she ready to say good-bye to her time, forever? “What if I need to find my way back . . . back to my own home?”
“Then you have only to find me once more. Don’t fear, child.” He put down his spoon and reached to cup her cheek. “I’ll not be far when you need me.”
“But I never found out what I’m supposed to do.” A hint of panic pitched her voice. How was she to know what to do to help James?
“Magda dear, all you need remember is this.” Brother Lonan gently took her hand. His grip was cool and dry, but firm, with knuckles bulging knobby with age. “It is only in letting go of our fears that we come to know the heart’s true path.”
“Who said that?”
“Lonan Gordon.” The monk smiled broadly. “For once those aremywords, Magdalen. And you may quote them yourself.”
The wind howled outside, fingering its way into the chapel despite the modest stained glass rosettes serving as windowpanes. The day was overcast, but light shone in from the west, throwing muted golds and blues onto the wooden altar. Magda studied the patterns in the glass above and wondered at the effort and cost that would’ve been needed to bring such a measure of luxury to this remote a place.
James took her hand, and she turned to the man she was to bind herself to. He’d told her this was a sort of union, that they’d have a proper wedding when a more suitable time presented itself.
She glanced down. Lonan had strewn a handful of wildflowers, tiny blue buttons, to brighten the old timber planks of the aisle. Magda nudged them with her toe, battling a sudden wave of melancholy. She’d been so swept up in the passion of it all. Reuniting with James again, seeing him safe before her, had overwhelmed her. Her need to hold him had been the only real thing last night. Making sure he was real, and whole. The frantic need to kiss and touch in the dark.
But now, in the light of day, she thought about what she was doing. Did this mean she was forever forsaking her world for James? She thought of her parents. What would they think? How would they handle it? She’d simply disappeared. Would they think she’d been kidnapped? Were they out there somewhere gathering funds even now, waiting by the phone? Or would they think she’d just run away, that she’d met a man and eloped to some exotic and faraway place. She hoped so. The last was actually not too far from the truth.
Her parents’ response to her disappearance was almost too painful to think about. They might not have been close, but the prospect of losing two children in one lifetime was too much to bear.
She turned her mind to Walter instead. What would he have made of all this? She glanced around, at the old crucifix over the altar, the hammered bronze chalice. She smiled a little. He’d be in heaven surrounded by so many artifacts. What had he thought when she didn’t show up that Monday? Her smile faded. How long had he waited to call her parents? Or would he have called the police first? There’d been a day when people wouldn’t have thought twice about calling her brother, but she’d had nobody that close to her since his death. She blinked back the haze of tears clouding her vision.
“Are you still certain of this?” She felt James’s breath at her neck, his voice a low whisper in her ear. “Certain of me?”
She looked at him. Truly looked at this man who wanted her, only her, by his side. He stood tall beside her. The dust of travel still clung faintly to his blue and green tartan. Though clean, his shirt was worn, with faded stains at the cuffs. If she strained, she recognized her musk, faintly overlaying the scent of trees and sea that was so distinctly James. His hair had grown a little since she’d last seen him, the color of flax and earth resting along his broad shoulders.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat and said more loudly, “I’m certain.”
“A fine thing that.” Lonan’s voice echoed up the aisle. “And are we ready then?”
The brother stood before them and, as they nodded, he began to wind a red cord about their joined hands. “In this binding, I join you. Under the eyes of God, in the eyes of the Holy Kirk, and so too by the ancient Gaelic law oflánamnas foxail, do you pledge your troth to one another, and so bind yourselves as handfast spouses?”
“Aye.” James held tight to Magda’s hand.
“I . . . yes.” In the rush, they hadn’t discussed the wording, and she found herself stumbling over the unsaid phraseI do.
“And James, shall you keep and maintain her with meat and drink, and find and keep her in all necessary garments and ornaments?”
“I think I can accommodate that, aye.” She heard his quiet chuckle at her side.
“And so, James Graham and Magdalen Deacon, do I declare you pledged to one another.”
Magda heard the words and wondered if she was married. It had been so brief, so businesslike. She didn’t quite feel married. She knew it was just a handfasting, but still, she’d expected more. Perhaps it was that her parents weren’t there. She’d always thought her father would be there to give her away. And her mother. How crushed her mother would’ve been to know her only daughter had been married and she’d not had the opportunity to plan it. And what an eventthatwould’ve been. Magda should’ve been amused, but she just felt a little sad.
