by Susan King
She stared at him. He looked away, rain and water washing over his contorted face.
Moments later, one of Ranald’s oarsmen shouted as he grasped and held the writhing loop that crossed from the other birlinn. Several men scrambled to help him hold the line.
A small hope of salvation, fragile and unsure, sparked within her as she watched the men struggle. She moved away from the mast as they wound the rope to its base. Falling to her knees, she crawled toward the stern to hold on, and watched, through mist and rain, as Diarmid’s men pulled and strained to draw them out of from the grip of the current.
A crest of water surged upward and flung the galley back, closer to the other boat, so blessedly close suddenly that both hulls knocked together for an instant. Michael could almost reach out and touch the prow. Behind her, a few men stumbled over to join her, but then shouted for the others to stay back. The galley was beginning to tip, her prow rising high, her stern dipping.
Diarmid’s birlinn bumped theirs again. She turned, saw him, and cried out. He was so close that he could have grabbed her, but the two hulls kept sliding apart. He tossed another line over the gap. Michael leaped for it herself, missing it.
Ranald and Domhnull came toward the stern, Ranald’s weakness so severe now that he could barely stand upright. He fell to his knees on the slick deck and looked at her silently, his eyes wild, his face gray. She laid a hand on his shoulder as the men around them worked to release the galley from the hell of the whirlpool.
Another rope whipped out and Domhnull caught it this time, his massive strength sufficient to draw them nearer yet to the other boat. Diarmid leaned over the side, arms extended.
“Michael!” he yelled. “Michael!” He reached toward her.
The vortex roared then, impossibly louder, and a new blast of wind tore between the two boats. Domhnull lurched, strained, held on as if he were made of oak. Diarmid’s oarsmen did the same, but the current threatened to devour them all.
Ranald grabbed Michael’s arm with surprising strength. She looked at him, terror resurging. The prow of the other galley slammed against their stern, swept away, slammed again. Diarmid reached out, shouting.
Ranald lifted Michael and dragged her toward the undulating, uncertain gap between the two boats.
“Go!” he screamed. “Go to him! I owe you this!”
He held her legs until Diarmid’s hands closed around her. When he grabbed her under the arms, Ranald let go.
She fell against Diarmid, gasping. His arms closed around her like a benediction, a moment of inexpressible bliss. Then he released her and turned back to help the others.
Michael stepped out of the way and fell hard to her knees as a wave rocked the deck. She stayed low and watched as Mungo and two other oarsmen crowded into the bow to help the others come over the side. The lines that anchored Diarmid’s boat to the rock creaked and stretched, and the ropes connecting the two boats tightened, while the whirlpool sucked and screamed. But within minutes, men crowded the deck of the galley.
“The ropes are dragging us into the eddy!” Mungo shouted. “The mooring to the rock will not hold against the pull!”
“The rock will not let us go,” Diarmid replied calmly. He turned back toward the deserted ship as Michael watched. She gasped when she saw Domhnull still standing in the stern with Ranald lifted in his arms.
Michael bolted to her feet and pushed through the cluster of oarsmen. “Come on!” she yelled. “Come on! Domhnull! Ranald!”
Domhnull looked directly at her as if time and the furious vortex were no threat. “He is dead.” She barely heard him over the roar of the black, bottomless well. “He is dead.”
She sagged downward in sudden shock, grasping the side of the boat, staring in disbelief. Diarmid moved swiftly.
“Push him toward us!” Together, between his strength and Domhnull’s, Diarmid pulled the limp body of his kinsman into his arms. He laid him on the deck and turned to Domhnull, grasping his wrists to yank him forward. Domhnull leaped, fell to the tipping deck, and rose to his feet.
Michael felt dazed and empty, without thought, without sensation. She watched as Diarmid and another man cut the ropes, watched as Ranald’s birlinn spun away and disappeared, prow first, into the mouth of the whirlpool. Diarmid watched too, then turned away quickly to test the strength of the ropes that held fast to the rock. She staggered to her feet and moved toward Ranald’s body, limp and drenched on the floor of the boat.
She sat beside him and lifted his cold hand, so pale, drained of blood and life, and sat with him as if in vigil. He had been grateful for his new daughter; Sorcha would want to know that. And she would want to know that he had saved Michael at the cost of his own strength. The change in his withered heart had been profound, and too late. She felt hot tears slip down her cheeks. Someone tossed a cloak toward her and she covered him with its damp folds.
Around her, men pulled at the oars, strained on the ropes, drawing the galley ever backward toward the steadfast rock, until the lip of the vortex released them at last. She watched in mild astonishment as Mungo and Diarmid emptied casks into the water, and heard them shout victoriously as the birlinn edged around, veering, dipping, turning. Finally, the prow faced outward. Diarmid ran toward the two lines that anchored them to safety and sliced them through.
He shouted orders to row and sat down to grab an oar and pull mightily with the others. Full forty men now worked together to free the boat from the wild grip of the water.
Michael sat beside Ranald, oddly feeling no ocean sickness, no fear. As the wind tore past her and the rain lessened around her, she bowed her head and put a trembling hand over her face.
A pair of hands, strong, scarred, loving, took her then, lifted her. Diarmid wrapped her in the circle of his arms and held her fiercely. He murmured words she did not catch, his lips warm and infinitely gentle where they touched her brow, her cheeks, her mouth. “You taste of salt,” he said, half laughing.
She lifted her face and held onto him, her rock, her comfort, her joy. The sorrow and bliss that mingled within her was complex, poignant, beautiful; unable to dissect her feelings with inaccurate words, she stayed silent and held him tightly. His hands dipped and swirled over her, pulling her close. She she rested her head against him with a sigh.
Finally she spoke. “Ranald...Ranald saved me. He was arrowshot through the gut. I cannot bear to think—”
“You did not cause his death,” Diarmid said. “He gave his life freely for you—just as I would have done.”
She sank against him, moved beyond words, and held him.
“Come, my girl,” he said after a moment. “If you are not too weary, I have a task for you.” He took her hand and led her toward a chest beside an unmanned oar.
“I think it’s time you learned a little of rowing,” he said, and sat her down on the chest. “Just now we need every hand at work to take us home.”
She eyed the oar doubtfully, and placed her hands around it, pulling. It hardly budged. “Can I do this alone?” she asked. “Is there a skill to it?”
Diarmid sat down beside her. “Try,” he said. “That is the skill. Just try.”
She pushed, then pulled, and felt the paddle shove through the water slightly. She smiled, pleased, repeated the motion.
“Good,” Diarmid said. “You will be my finest sailor yet.”
She laughed outright at that. Diarmid rounded his long fingers over the oar and pulled with her. “Together, now,” he murmured. “Always together, and we can do whatever we must.”
She smiled and moved in an easy rhythm with him, and the boat surged toward home.
EPILOGUE
“A wedding,” Michael said, “is joyous enough, but to have three of them together with a christening and the New Year—it is almost too much happiness to bear!” She laughed in delight and looked up at Diarmid.
“Too much, Michael mine?” he murmured, taking her hand. “Not at all.” Too much and not enough, he thought, watching h
er; never enough. The sparkle in her summer-sky eyes, the moonlight glint in her hair, made the gleam of the gold and jeweled brooch at her shoulder seem dull indeed. He would never have his fill of looking at her, touching her, loving her.
“A wedding on New Year’s Day is said to bring great luck to the couple,” she said, pressing his hand with her slim fingers.
He reached out and touched the golden circlet pinned to the shoulder of her indigo surcoat. “You once told me that this brought you luck, too.”
“It has,” she said softly, watching him.
He smiled, a contented quirk of his lip, as he sat on the bench beside her and watched the happy chaos around them. Glas Eilean’s walls had never hosted this kind of celebration before, he was sure. Not only had he and Michael stood before a priest that morning to take solemn, binding wedding vows, but Gilchrist and Iona, and Mungo and Sorcha, had joined hands and spoken their own marriage vows as well.
After that, the priest had christened Angelica, who had fussed in Michael’s arms and spit up on her silk swaddling clothes. Then she had christened her adoptive father in turn by wetting his new shirt. Diarmid grinned at the memory of the laughter that had accompanied Angelica’s formal welcome into the world, so different from the moments that had surrounded her birth.
He tightened his hand over Michael’s and felt the gentle vibration in her body as she tapped her foot in time to the music of Gilchrist’s harp. His Dunsheen kin had arrived by birlinn a few days earlier: Gilchrist and Iona, Arthur, Angus, Lilias and Brigit, and Mungo’s children Eva, Donald and Fingal, were all at Glas Eilean now, eager to celebrate the new year, and the joining and welcome of their loved ones. Little mention was made of the small, quiet funeral that had been held at Glas Eilean a few weeks earlier. Sorcha had insisted that prayers be said for Ranald’s soul at the wedding mass this morning, and a long, respectful silence had been given him.
Now, hours later, they laughed and teased one another, danced and ate and listened to music, while Diarmid sat apart, content to watch them. Michael had joined him a few moments ago, sipping from his wine as if it were her own, picking at the leftover bits of the honeyed oatcake on his platter in a familiar manner that pleased him somehow. He reached out and rubbed her shoulder lovingly, lazily.
“They want you to dance with them,” Michael said, leaning toward him. “Look, Brigit is waving to you, and still you sit here. You are in a solitary mood, for a man who is at his own wedding supper,” she teased.
He smiled, a little crooked pull of his mouth, and waved to Brigit. “She knows how to dance without me,” he murmured. Brigit waited for Diarmid, and when he would not rise from his seat, she slowly began to sway and turn in a dance of her own making. Stiff-legged but upright, shuffling one foot more quickly, dragging the other, she followed her own rhythm.
Gilchrist changed the cadence of his song to a softer, slower beat as Brigit swirled and turned. She laughed, her golden curls flying outward, and nearly tipped over. Righting herself with Arthur’s willing hand, quickly thrust out to catch her, she beckoned to Diarmid.
“Go on,” Michael whispered.
But he sat, smiling at Brigit, watching her spin, sway, move her arms gracefully like a rosebud opening its petals. He wanted her to have this moment alone. Then he would twirl her until she was dizzy if she wanted it.
“She has come so far,” Michael murmured.
For a moment, Diarmid’s throat tightened as he continued to watch his niece. Her legs were stronger, her muscles better developed, her pain less and less each night. Diarmid had sailed to Dunsheen just after Ranald’s death to meet with Arthur and Gilchrist, and to convey a message to the king. When that was done, he had brought Brigit back with him to Glas Eilean, with the others’ promises that they would follow soon.
Michael and Diarmid had worked together with Brigit each day and each evening since then, rubbing her legs, helping her to stretch and move and walk, placing her in hot, soaking herb baths. And every night Michael sat with her and let the magic, as Brigit called it, come through her hands, warming, soothing, healing.
“She is much better,” he agreed. “We have seen little miracles with her, bit by bit, each day a new one.” He lifted Michael’s hand, safe in his, to his lips and kissed her fingers. She glanced at him silently, smiling, her eyes brimful of tears, and looked back at Brigit swaying like a flower in a garden.
Diarmid saw Mungo standing in a shadowed corner, watching Brigit with a tender expression on his face. Sorcha walked over to him and he put his arm protectively around her as she held her infant daughter. They stood together, so different in appearance and yet somehow the same, a quality of kindness and peace shared between them now that their love could grow at last.
Both devastated and touched by Ranald’s heroic death, Sorcha had made a quick recovery from widowed grief as well as childbirth. She had confessed to Diarmid that she felt released from years of unhappiness. She began to spend more and more time with Mungo, talking with him in private corners, walking with him on the cliffs, rowing out to watch the seals at play. Diarmid had not been surprised when they had announced that they, too, would wed at the New Year with Diarmid and Michael.
“Why waste the priest’s visit?” Mungo had reasoned. “He will not be back this way for months and months.” Diarmid was glad that Sorcha did not wait long to claim happiness for herself, and he was pleased that she never wore black.
Michael had cast aside her black gown, and her widow’s pleated veil and chin-shrouding wimple, in favor of a soft rainbow of colored silks and wools that suited her far better. He liked best to see her in blue, which added a sparkle to her eyes, or in mulberry, which glowed in her cheeks. He liked her even better in nothing at all, or cream silk, but he had kept that opinion to himself, not wanting to spoil her sweet delight in a changed wardrobe.
She glanced at him now, her cheeks flushed and lovely, her gold-tipped lashes fluttering down over vivid blue eyes. “We have had so many miracles lately, Diarmid,” she murmured.
“When I decide I want a miracle done, believe me, it gets done,” he said, and grinned slowly.
She laughed and touched a fingertip to the corner of his mouth. “I love the way you smile,” she said. “Do you want to hear about two more miracles that are going to happen?”
He blinked. “Two? Are you a prophetess, as well as a healer? What are they?” He pinched back a smile. “I think I know what one might be.”
She tilted her head. “Now you are a prophet. What is it?”
“You, my wife, have been unable to set foot in a boat for the last two weeks,” he told her, touching the tip of her nose. “Your stomach cannot take even the slightest rocking on the water, with or without dried ginger. You nap every afternoon. I am a trained healer, and I assure you that this will be cured,” he said, “in several months.” He grinned as her blush deepened.
“Ah,” she said softly. “And then what will happen?”
He leaned toward her. “And then I expect to have my shirt christened by a new Dunsheen Campbell,” he said in a low voice.
“With a crooked smile,” she added.
“Undoubtedly.” He kissed her languidly, sliding his fingers into the silk of her hair, wanting to lose himself in her sweetness, in the wonder and joy that her body held. He lifted his lips from hers reluctantly, and looked at her.
“What of the second miracle?” he asked. “Who else among us will be adding to our clan?”
She smiled, shook her head. “I have been spending some time with Gilchrist. I thought you should know—”
“I have seen the two of you together often in the past few days, playing at the harp,” he said. “I thought you were learning new tunes from him. What else could it be but that?” He felt no twinge of suspicion, and never would, knowing that his wife’s loyalty and love were beyond question.
“I have convinced him to let us do surgery on his leg.”
He frowned. “Us?”
She nodded. “It i
s a simple procedure of rebreaking the bones in the same location, and resetting the break to straighten the leg.”
“Simple? Have you ever done this before?”
“Ibrahim did it,” she said.
“Breaking a man’s leg bone takes enormous strength and accuracy.”
“You can do that. A small iron hammer is used, and padding to cushion—”
He twisted his mouth at her scientific eagerness. “Such a procedure would be incredibly painful.”
“I have soporific sponges, soaked in small amounts of henbane and opium, kept dry and sealed in a jar in my chest. The patient breathes through the moistened sponge, and goes to sleep for at least an hour.” When he tipped a brow skeptically, she nodded. “The sleeping medicine truly works, and much more reliably than a sheep’s bladder full of uisge beatha. Although it is not a medication which can be used often,” she admitted.
He scowled mildly. “He could come out of such a repair more lame than he is now. Did you explain that to him?”
“I told him there was a chance of that.”
He still frowned. “Then why did he agree?”
“Because he trusts you, Diarmid.”
He glanced away. “We do not know the nature of the original break. This is too risky.”
“I can tell you just where the scars are on the bones. I can, Diarmid.” She smiled. “I held his leg in my hands yesterday, and I am sure of the problem inside. I can show you now if you like. It is just here, with a jagged angle that goes this way—” she bent to show him on his own leg.
He watched her hands circle his shin, heard her explain in detail what she knew about Gilchrist’s old injury. She was a wonder, and he was nearly defeated in spite of himself. He was all out of protests but one.
“Michael,” he said softly. “I cannot do this.”
She looked at him, her eyes wide, blue, deep as heaven. “You can,” she breathed.
He flexed his left hand where it lay on the table, shook his head mutely. Michael touched his hand, took it in her own, turned it to look at the ugly scars across the wrist and thumb.
