by Susan King
She leaned her cheek against the cool stone tracery of the window frame, and gazed at the sea below the cliff, praying for a solution to make itself clear.
The day was clear but gray. Rain clouds hung heavy in the sky, far out to sea. From her high vantage point, Michael could see a group of seals sleeping and playing on rocks near the base of the cliff. She watched, blinking back tears, as a few smaller seals swam away from their elders. They climbed onto a large jagged rock and made a kind of game of flipping in and out of the water like mischievous children. Watching them, her attention was suddenly caught.
The smallest seal climbed to the highest point of the rock and fell, unseen by the others. Michael leaned forward, narrowing her gaze, and saw the little seal floundering on a slippery ledge. It was clearly hurt, unable to crawl on its belly toward its companions. The other seals slid, one by one, into the sea and swam toward the older seals as if on some signal, leaving the little one hovering unseen on the ledge.
Michael realized she was holding her breath. When the tide swept in toward the cliffs, the little seal would drown. She thought about about Sorcha’s songs of the seal children, and her poignant conviction that she thought of her lost babes as tiny selkies, magic mer-children lost to her, but happy out there.
Tears came to her eyes as she watched the seal’s dilemma. She could not turn away and go about her day. She had to help. Turning, she caught up her cloak and walked past Sorcha.
“Rest, dear,” she said. “Dream of the child to come. I must go outside for a bit.” She needed to clear ter thoughts. Sorcha nodded and curled under the covers as Michael opened the door.
As she ran down the corridor, she saw Mungo coming up the stairs. She grabbed his wrist and turned him to follow her. “Mungo, you must take me out in a boat,” she said.
”Ach, I cannot,” he said. “You were the sickest girl I ever saw the day we came here.”
She pulled him along the lower passageway toward the sea entrance. “But you must row me out to sea!”
“Shall I row, or hold your head?”
“Mungo, please,” she begged, running ahead of him.
“Something tells me I will regret this,” Mungo grumbled as he came along behind her.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Michael nearly regretted it herself. Once the boat glided out of the cave entrance and cut through the rolling swells, she grabbed the side of the boat and fought an onslaught of nausea and dizziness.
“Your face is green,” Mungo muttered, as he pulled on the oars. “I knew I would regret this. Dunsheen will have my head if he finds this out.”
“This is my decision,” she said. “I will not be ill.”
“Luck to you, then,” he said, “for you surely look as if you are losing that vow.”
Michael took in slow, even breaths and trained her eyes on the far horizon, determined to maintain control over the dipping world and her protesting stomach.
Mungo shook his head. “All of this bother for a seal. Young seals are injured all the time around the rocks, from falls and from fights with larger seals. Their own kind leave them when they are badly hurt. Your heart is too tender. Fishermen club the creatures for their skins, for they fetch good prices in trade. That seal will die a more gentle death now than if he lives to be an adult.”
“We must rescue him,” she insisted, facing the direction of the rock that she had earlier showed him. “There! Do you see him on the ledge?”
Mungo glanced over his shoulder and sheered the boat toward the small shadow on the rock. When the boat drew alongside the surface of the huge boulder and knocked against it, Michael leaned out, reaching toward the seal.
“Hold on, mistress. You are impatient and soft-hearted both, I think,” Mungo said gruffly. He tossed a looped rope over a jagged part of the rock to secure the boat. Then he helped Michael climb out and stepped out with her. They moved cautiously toward the seal and squatted down.
The small pup had a mottled gray and black coat, large black eyes and a round face, and seemed to Michael to be but a few weeks old. It lay prone on an outthrusting shelf of the rock, its tail flapping, its fat body swaying as it tried in vain to drag itself toward the water.
“Poor thing,” Michael crooned as she crouched low. “Look at all the blood. Its left flipper is torn and he cannot use it to crawl to the water.” She stepped down, and the pup squealed and bleated as she came near.
“Careful,” Mungo said. “You do not want a cow to come after you for touching her pup. They can be mean creatures, for all the pretty tales of mer-folk that you’ve heard.”
Michael looked toward a cluster of boulders several hundred yards away, where the rest of the colony slept and played and fished. One cow barked repeatedly as she sat alone on a high point of a submerged rock.
“If that is his mother, I think she will not mind if I help her pup,” Michael said calmly. She reached down and felt along the flipper carefully. “I do not know anything about their anatomy, but there are bones inside here that feel almost like a hand,” she said, as she touched gently. The seal barked pitifully, nudging her. Michael felt the bony structure under the flipper wobble oddly. “Ah, a break,” she said with sympathy.
“He has not tried to get away.” Mungo sounded astonished. “You have a gift, to be able to touch him like that.”
She smiled. As a child, birds and animals had always let her handle them when no one else could come near. “Little one, we will get you back to your mother, but first we must tend to you. Mungo, there is a lot of bleeding here. I will need a needle and silk thread to stitch it up.”
He blinked at her. “You are going to stitch up a seal?”
She nodded. “Help me get him into the boat.” She cupped her hands under the little animal’s round, flaccid body.
Mungo sighed and helped her, lifting the pup easily and depositing it in the boat. He took the oars again and looked at her. “You cannot mean to bring it into the castle,” he said.
She frowned. “I had not thought about it. Can we take it to the sea entrance? Will Ranald’s guards trouble us?”
“Probably. I have an idea,” Mungo said firmly, and began to row toward the cliff. Within minutes, he drew toward a black shadowed crevice, out of sight of the main sea entrance.
“The smugglers’ cave!” Michael breathed as they entered.
Mungo nodded. “Ranald is gone, and no one will come here. You will be safe here while I go up to the castle and fetch what you need. But you must promise to let the seal go back to its mother when you have finished mending him, no matter if he becomes another of your devoted patients.”
“I will. The pup needs to be with his mother,” she agreed, then looked up in awe at the high cavernous walls as the boat glided silently through the channel of water. She noted the barrels stacked in the shadows, and saw the large shapes of the two birlinns at the far end of the cavern. “Leave us on that ledge, please, and go up to my bedchamber,” she said. “I have a leather satchel with some medicines and instruments. I need needles and silk thread, and some bandages and ointments.”
“Well, at least it is not a wooden chest you are sending me after,” Mungo said as he handed her out of the boat.
Michael laughed and sat on the ledge while Mungo lifted the seal out and laid him partially, heavily, in her lap. “Thank you, Mungo,” she said. “I seem to be always in your debt.”
”Ach, well, it is a good place to be,” he said. “I do not ask for much in return. And I would do anything for you, Mistress Physician.” He sat and took the oars in hand.
She tilted her head curiously. “Because of Angus?”
He smiled. “You did save my father’s life, years past,” he agreed. “But also because Dunsheen loves you dear as life, and charged me with your care in his absence. Whatever you want, that I will do. Dunsheen wants it that way.” He pulled heavily on the oars, sliding the boat back toward the entrance.
Michael felt the sting of tears in her eyes. “Mungo!” she cal
led. He looked up. “Bring me something to eat. I’m starved!” She smiled through her tears, and he waved as the boat disappeared through the narrow opening.
Dunsheen loves you dear as life. The words repeated like a refrain, warming her. She dangled her legs over the ledge, her toes just above the water, and looked down at the pup in her lap. He lay strangely calm, perhaps suffering some shock from the injury and loss of blood, she thought. He looked up at her, his large round black eyes as tender and expressive as any human’s.
“You are scared, little one,” she whispered, stroking the warm, silky coat. “Do not be. I want to help you. I want you to be healthy and whole, and able to swim with your mother.”
The seal bleated, a tiny, infant-like sound that firmly caught her sympathy. She bent close and whispered to the animal, stroking its coat. Blood stained the front of her black gown, but she did not care. Her fingers reddened further as she examined the gash across the little flipper, gently probing to determine the severity of the break. Without knowing the anatomy, she could not be certain what was wrong.
Closing her eyes, she let her hands guide her. The inner structure felt very much like a human hand, and she tried to map what she felt in her mind. She probed the healthy flipper to compare, and returned her seeking fingers to the injured one.
Then, almost as if she saw a picture of the bones bared before her, she saw the break clearly in her mind; much like a child’s fracture, ragged at the ends, but with time it would mend itself. Astonished by the easy clarity of the mental image, she placed both hands around the injured flipper and held it, speaking soothingly to the restless seal.
The seal nosed its whiskered snout at her hand as if asking for more petting. As she stroked it, sensing its nervousness, she remembered hearing that seals loved music of any sort. She began to sing one of Sorcha’s seal songs.
She did not have Sorcha’s gifted voice, but the sound echoed like small bells inside the high-walled cave, blending with the incessant rush and lap of the water. The seal seemed to listen to her in fascination, staring at her as if it understood the story told in the song.
When Michael finished, the seal nudged her arm.
“Ah, little one,” she said, stroking its head. “If only Sorcha were right about her little lost ones. How wonderful to know that they might be living and happy with your kind.”
She leaned her back against the cave wall. The water shushed higher, wetting her feet. Feeling a moment of nervousness, she drew her legs up onto the ledge and folded them beneath her. The expanse of water was more threatening to her than it was peaceful, but she knew that Mungo would come soon. And she was determined to make certain that the seal recovered.
She stroked the seal and closed her eyes, listening to the hushed roar of the sea as it entered the cave. The rhythm was soothing, for she felt safe on the ledge. Beneath her hands, the animal’s body was warm, its sides expanding and falling with rapid breaths.
She took off her veil and folded it over the flipper, applying pressure, hoping to discourage the bleeding that still continued. The warmth produced beneath her hand grew and spread.
Soon she noticed that her palm felt as if she held it near a hearth fire. Then, before she had time to wonder, she felt the sweep of a lost power enter and fill her in the space of an indrawn breath.
Tingling, swirling, the stream of heat flowed like poured sunlight. The darkness behind her closed eyes turned to a rainbow brilliance, and the warmth in her hands became fire. She felt as if she floated, brimful, as if she was a golden cup spilling over with light and loving nourishment.
She knew the moment that the blood seeping from the wound slowed to a trickle. An image of true clarity told her that the tiny bone inside the flipper had begun to mend.
Beneath her hand, the seal remained still and silent. Michael opened her eyes and met its dark, oddly knowing gaze. The tales of the selkies were not so far from truth, she thought.
“There,” she whispered, stroking the small head. “It is done, then. You will be fine.” She felt weak but clear, filled with peace, knowing that the gift of miraculous healing was still hers; she had lost it along the way, but had found it again.
She remembered, suddenly, a moment as a child when she had picked up a small wounded dove in the courtyard of Gavin’s castle. The bird had made no protest as Michael held it, and she had closed her eyes and felt the same sense of deep love flow through her into the bird. Then she had opened her hands to let the healed dove fly away.
That had been the moment that Gavin had discovered that she, too, had the strange power that he had, the mysterious gift that ran through generations like a vein of gold. Their mother had possessed such clarity of power that some had called her a saint. She had never known her mother; her father had been a gruff English commander, and her birth illegitimate. Gavin and her adopted mother, Christian, had nurtured her like true parents, and had allowed her to use the gift openly....
In Italy, however, she had discovered deep prejudice against her gift. The accusations, the trial, the awful terror that followed—she drew a shaking breath as she stroked the little seal. Ibrahim had been there for her then. His wisdom and his influence had saved her and sheltered her. And when he had asked her, in the interests of her own safety, to abandon what came so naturally to her, she had agreed out of loyalty, and out of fear.
Shunning the gift, she had tried to rely on scientific, practical applications of her medical training. By the time she had wed Ibrahim, she was sure that the true fire of her power had drained out of her, leaving but a sad flicker behind. She had secretly mourned its loss. And then Diarmid Campbell had come into her life, insisting on a miracle.
She felt the warmth of the seal beneath her hand, and thought of another moment of pure healing, a day when she had knelt on a misty battlefield. The compassionate, capable young surgeon she had met there had stayed in her thoughts for years. Her love for him had begun there, not in Perth, or at Dunsheen. The realization hit her with a gentle force, humbling her. She sat straighter, her hands stroking the young seal.
More than healing had been intended in the heavenly design the day she had met Diarmid. He had unknowingly led her to become a physician. And fate had brought her full circle to him again, where she had belonged all along.
Sighing, she leaned back her head, feeling the comforting warmth of the little seal, now asleep, in her lap. Daylight spread inside the cave entrance; the walls and water glittered like the inside of a dark, luminous green jewel.
She wondered how much time had passed since Mungo had left her here. The slow, steady movement of the tide had lifted the level of water in the cave considerably. Now the seawater lapped close to her folded legs, wetting part of her gown where it draped over the rock. Soon the ledge would be awash, and she would have to find another place to wait with the little seal.
She glanced around the cave. The high, irregular walls provided several niches; she could climb up there with the seal if she had to do so. But surely Mungo would be here soon.
The water rushed higher, closer, and she shuffled sideways along the inclined ledge toward a higher spot. She had sat so long with the seal, lost in her thoughts, however peaceful, that she had not noticed that the change in the tide level. Her sense of well-being rapidly diminshed, replaced by cold fear.
Water had ever been her bane, the greatest source of fear she had ever known in her life. To go from a moment of safety and bliss to this sheer fright stunned her, shocked her. She drew a quivering breath and watched the encroaching tide.
“I am pleased that you have come to visit after so long,” the prioress said to Diarmid. She was round, pink-cheeked, and so short that he felt awkward looking down at her. She smiled up at him, her hands folded serenely. “I had hoped that when you came to peace with this, you would come here again.”
“Peace?” Diarmid asked. “I came to visit my wife.”
The prioress nodded. “Of course. Come this way.” She led him through the stone c
orridor and out a small door at the back of the convent building. He followed her through an herb garden and past a walled orchard, where a few fruit trees stood lacy-branched against the wide gray sky.
Heavy clouds hung to the west, the wind was high, and the sea that surrounded the little isle was dark and restless. His oarsmen awaited him now on the beach. He did not expect to stay long; he had a request to make of Anabel, and little else to say.
He hoped that she would listen to him fairly, but he did not expect her previously haughty, bitter attitude to have altered much. His own feelings toward her, having swept an intense range over five years from love to hatred, had finally faded to neutrality, as if she were an acquaintance and not the woman he had wed, or the woman who had betrayed him so painfully. He had not totally forgiven her, but his anger, at last, was gone.
The prioress opened a gate in the walled orchard, passing through it into a small cemetery, with stones set on a low hill that swelled above a white beach. Diarmid followed, looking around, puzzled. There was no one else here to meet them.
The prioress stopped by a smooth gray stone, cut with a Celtic cross and embedded in the turf. “Here she is,” she said quietly. “Her cousin Ranald MacSween had the cross made just after her death last year.”
“Last—last year?” Diarmid stared at her, dumbfounded. She nodded, obviously certain that he had known about Anabel’s death.
Anabel’s death. He stared at the stone and read the Latin inscription: Anabel, he translated, beloved, age thirty years in the year of our Lord 1321. Rest in peace.
He drew in a ragged breath, then another, trying to quell the cold shock that ran through him. Anabel was dead. He rubbed a hand across his eyes in confusion, and looked at the prioress.
