“Adair.” She spoke his name.
Adair. He was Adair MacMurtray, come from Erin.
Even as Pádraig’s daughter slid a mug of warmed ale beside his elbow, he told the old man sitting opposite him, “I begin to remember. All the things that have been scattered since the battle. They come in pieces and I maun fit them together.”
Pádraig leaned toward him, his dark eyes bright. “Then remember this.”
*
Finlay spent thenight with Pádraig and his daughter, tucked into the corner beside the fire with a borrowed blanket. For aye, he knew now thatFinlaywas his name.Ardahl? Well, Ardahl had been his name also, once upon a time. As had Adair, Deathan, and Quarrie, each in its turn. Did it matter, a man’s name, so long as a single flame burned in his heart?
Pádraig, with a world of knowledge in his head, knew many things. The history of all the western clans and much about their lineage. He told it simply even as Finlay might relate a tale, and helped to slot many of the pieces into place in Finlay’s mind.
“The current Chief of Murtray—or he who was Chief of Murtray, for I hear that man has since died—had a great-grandfather, and that man had twa sons. They quarreled, so ’tis told, which is an old habit among members o’ that line.”
“So it is,” said Finlay, remembering.
“The quarrel was a fierce one, and the younger son took himsel’ away to forge his own path in the world. They say”—Pádraig’s lively gaze met Finlay’s—“he traveled south even into Wales, where he married and had a son of his own. He then returned north, for no Scot can keep awa’ fro’ Scotland for long.”
“Nay.”Alba, land of magic that had taken him to its heart.
“And his son, they say, won a place as master o’ arms for a chief out in the islands. For the blood of warriors was still strong in his veins. But he died in a battle and his good wife from an illness not long after, and his son was passed to others to raise. And that son might have been a warrior also, like so many of his ancestors, and indeed, ’tis said he did start training early, but he abandoned the pursuit. For the harp.” Pádraig’s dark gaze met Finlay’s.
“Me. Ye be speaking o’ me.” Finlay went breathless, as if struck a blow to the heart. “How d’ye know these things? How, when I do not?”
“Am I no’ a scholar? And ha’ I no’ been collecting such knowledge all my life?” Pádraig leaned toward Finlay. “’Twas fate that sent ye here, lad, to me.”
’Twas the turning of the wheel that created his life—life after life.
He struggled to draw breath. “Ye are saying I am a descendant of Murtray?”
“Aye, how else could it be?”
How else, indeed? For he remembered being Ardahl the warrior, and Adair the exile, Deathan the second son who loved a princess, and Quarrie who wed a Norsewoman. The pieces of the past shattered by the violence of the battle fitted together so he remembered not only the pieces, but how—and most of all—why they fit.
Ah, did not memory travel via the blood?
“By God,” he whispered.
“Murtray lacks a chief, having left none but his daughter, Katrin,” Pádraig told him.
Katrin. The name whispered like music in Finlay’s mind.
“And ye be that man they are wanting. I suggest ye get there promptly and claim yer place.”
Finlay, as chief? Ah, he cared not for the place of chief, though he would fill it if he must. Had he not always been good at fulfilling his duties?
What he wanted was the place at Katrin’s side.
He rose the morning after Pádraig told him all this and, with many thanks and expressions of gratitude, took his leave. Outside, beside the tiny stone church in the cold air, he gazed upon a world reborn. High above the hills the skies cleared, yesterday’s snow showers flown. Sunlight shone through in racked beams, ladders of light reaching northwestward. Leading him where he needed to be.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Imust leaveye,” Finlay told Molly with real regret, as he stood outside her door in the sunshine. He wore his pack already on his back, and though he owned little besides the shattered harp, she had tucked some goods inside for his journey. Foodstuffs she could ill afford, and her husband’s plaid.
She stood looking up at him, for she was a small woman for all her strength, and tears glittered in her eyes.
“Come wi’ me,” he said impulsively. “If I mak’ a place for mysel’ at this holding to which I journey, there will be one for ye also.” She had been like a mother to him, more of one than he had ever known.
