Outside the hall, he clambered off his horse, helping Beth down to the ground. “This is it,” she said.
“Aye,” he replied, saying no more.
The building site was empty. Andrew had told all the workers they would be paid for the day but they were to stay away. He was still working out how he was going to pay to get all the work done.
There was not enough spare money to go around. Even the work on Pluscarden abbey had slowed to almost nothing. At this rate, his hall might be built by next winter but the abbey would take until the day of reckoning itself.
Beth walked over to the pit where the cellarium had been built. A rough wooden bridge had been built over it to the door at ground level. “Will it happen here, do you think?” she asked, turning to face him. “Or the bedroom itself?”
“I dinnae know,” he said, hoping it wouldn’t happen at all, wishing once again that she would stay with him. He would never see that beautiful face again, those eyes that shimmered like sparkling dawn light on a crystal clear loch.
“I will never forget you,” she said, holding out a hand to him.
He didn’t take it. He couldn’t. He might not be able to let go again.
“Goodbye then,” she said.
“Farewell, lass. I thank you for all you’ve done.”
“Look after this place, won’t you?”
“I will that.”
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek, a tear rolling from her eye as she turned away and walked through the doorway.
Nothing happened.
She spun around, looking back at him. “I’m still here.”
“Aye,” he said, hope rising in him. “So you are.”
“It must be the bedroom door after all.”
She walked into the hall, along the low stones that marked the corridor. It was beaten earth and covered in snow but when finished it would be tiled or flagged depending on what he could afford.
He followed her, stopping by the one remaining part of the original building. The doorway into the bedroom where he was born.
“This is it,” she said, looking at him and starting to cry.
He couldn’t look at her any longer. She was going and he would never see her again. He looked down at her feet, frowning as he spotted something. It had been hidden under the snow until she walked by, her foot revealing something that sparkled in the light.
“What’s that you’re looking at?” she asked, looking down where his eyes were fixed. She gasped, leaning down and grabbing the object from the floor.
“What is it?” he asked. “What have you found?”
She held her hand out for him to see. It was a silver locket on a long thin chain. “This was my mother’s,” she said, opening it to reveal an image of a baby so real, Andrew was shocked.
“Who can paint so well?”
“It’s not a painting. It’s a photo of me.” Her fingers curled around the locket. “Do you know what this means? It means she’s here. She must have come through time after all.”
“If she is here,” Andrew said, wrapping his hand around hers. “We will find her.”
