Page 3 of Here in Your Arms
Margaret.There was more, a surname perhaps, but the ink had originally been too heavy, and now appeared only as an old stain, a blotch, one letter blending in with the next so that Rose could not decipher Margaret’s full identity.
Turning another page, the next thing Rose read was the date,Anno Domini 1298.
Delicately, her fingers traced the first few lines. The handwriting inside was uneven, delicate but uncertain, as if the writer had been unused to the pen. The first few lines, though faint with age, were still legible.
Rose murmured the translation aloud.
“The walls of this place are high, and though the sisters call it sanctuary, I do not feel safe within them. The air is thick with candle wax and damp stone, and the silence is heavy, pressing down on me. They say I should be grateful, that many youngwomen would envy the chance to dwell so near to God. But I would rather be near my mother, my father, my brothers who have gone to war. I did not cry when my father left me here, nor when the great oaken doors shut behind me. But now, alone in this small chamber, with only the dim shimmer of tallow light to keep me company, the tears come, and I cannot stop them.”
Rose blew out a puff of breath, her pulse hammering. This was incredible. It was not just any journal—this was a woman’s personal writing from the thirteenth century. That alone was unheard of. Most personal records from medieval Scotland had been lost, burned, or never written at all. Women, especially—sadly—left almost nothing behind.
Holding her breath, Rose turned the page.
“The nuns say I must quiet my heart,”Rose read,“that longing for the world will only bring sorrow. But how does one forget home? Each morning, I wake to the bells, the call to prayer, the endless psalms. My hands are chapped from the cold, my knees sore from kneeling. I do not mind the reading—I have always loved the written word, and here, at least, there are books. They say I am fortunate to learn, that many women never will. Perhaps that is true, but I would trade every page for a single night by my father’s hearth, my mother brushing my hair, my brothers teasing me. I have written to my mother thrice. She has not written back. I pray God will bring them safely through this war. I pray He will not let them forget me.”
The ink whispered across the centuries, pulling her in. Rose’s fingers tightened around the edges of the journal, her excitement growing as she turned another page.
“A traveler came today, a merchant seeking the abbess’s blessing. He spoke of battles fought, villages burned, men lost. He did not say their names, but dread coiled in my belly. I wanted to ask if he had passed through my father’s lands, if he had heard word of my family. But I did not. The nuns wouldnot have approved. Instead, I gripped my quill too tightly, ink blotting the page. Each day, my mother’s face fades, my father’s voice grows distant. And I am afraid.”
Rose reread the passage, awe overtaking her. The room was utterly silent, except for the distant tick of the office clock. The building around her was suddenly eerily still, the air thick with something she couldn’t name. She shifted, putting her elbows on the table, pulling the book closer beneath the lamplight.
She turned another page, then another, her heart pounding. The more she read, the more real Margaret became. She could almost hear the woman’s voice whispering from the pages, soft but urgent, trapped in time.
“Anno Domini 1302,”she continued reading,“I have been here so long now that I know the seasons by the way the light falls through the high windows. Winter comes when the sun is pale and weak, its rays barely reaching the stone floors. Spring comes when the mornings are golden, and the air stirs with the scent of damp earth. I should be accustomed to this life. I should be at peace. But I am not. I have not seen my mother’s face in four years. My father’s letters are fewer, and though he writes that they are safe, that the war has not reached them, I wonder if he spares me the truth.”
Rose had translated enough by now to piece together the shape of Margaret’s story, though much of it still remained a mystery. Margaret had been sent to a convent as a young woman, tucked away behind thick stone walls for her own protection. The war raged beyond, though it was a distant thing to her, spoken of only in whispers by those who came and went. She wrote of sorrow, of feeling abandoned. She lamented the loss of the world she had known—the rolling green hills of her home, the warmth of her mother’s hands smoothing back her hair, the booming laugh of her father. But she never named them.
Rose found that peculiar.
The entire journal so far was deeply personal, rich with longing and carefully guarded emotions. And yet, Margaret never mentioned a single name. Not her father’s. Not her mother’s. Not even the names of the nuns who surrounded her every day. Rose frowned, carefully flipping back through the pages, searching for even the most casual reference to a name. There was nothing. Margaret referred to her father only asmy father, her mother asmy mother, and even the abbess remained onlythe abbess.
Very odd, Rose decided.
Just as she was considering what that might mean—whether it was deliberate or simply a peculiarity of Margaret’s writing—her eyes caught on a passage further along in the book, one she had not yet read. Carefully, she traced her finger along the faded ink, murmuring the words aloud as she worked through them.
"I was a girl when last I saw him, and he but a boy. The world was different then. Softer. There was laughter in his voice, warmth in his eyes. But that was before the war, before he became something else. He does not write to me. I know not if he remembers me at all."
Rose’s breath stilled.
A name appeared in the next line, stark against the page as though written with a firmer hand.
Tiernan.
A shiver prickled down her spine.
This was the first name Margaret had mentioned in all of her journal entries. Why? Who was he? The way she wrote of him—it wasn’t the way one might mention a father or a brother. There was a wistfulness in her words, a sense of distance, of something lost.
Rose turned the page again and again, scanning the delicate script for another mention of Tiernan. She happened upon the first passage she’d read, toward the last third of the diary.
"I should be joyful to leave this place, to return to my father’s house. And yet, I do not wish to go.”
Rose glanced at the clock, surprised to find that it was almost midnight. But she couldn’t stop now—she had to know more.
“Word has reached me that my father is preparing my dowry. The convent walls, once a prison, now feel like shelter, and I fear what awaits me outside them. Tiernan is home. My father says he is a man of great renown now, feared and respected. But I do not wish to fear the man I must wed. I should pray for courage. I do pray. But there is a voice within me that whispers, what if I do not wish to marry him at all? What if I would rather remain here, among my books and prayers?"
She read on, finding Tiernan’s name littered multiple times across the next few entries.
“Anno Domini 1304, The First Days of Winter. I have returned to the world at last, though I find I am no longer certain it is the world I left behind. I stepped through the gates of Druimlach today, and the cold met me like an old enemy, creeping through the seams of my cloak, biting at my skin. It is colder here than I remember. Or perhaps I have forgotten what it is to feel the wind against my face after so many years behind convent walls. The keep is grander than I had imagined it, taller, darker. The stones are black with age, the walls thick and silent. It does not feel welcoming, not yet. Nor does Tiernan. He stood at the gates when I arrived, standing tall amidst his men. They call himmormaer, and he bears the title well, his shoulders broad beneath his great cloak, his stance one of quiet command. I knew it was him before he spoke, but it took my breath away all the same. Tiernan. The boy I hadknown is gone. He was always taller than me, always strong, but there was a lightness in him once, a wildness, a laughter that belonged to the hills and sky. That laughter is gone. He did not smile when he greeted me. His voice was low, rough as the wind over the sea. He bid me welcome to Druimlach, and for a moment, I thought he would say more. But he did not.”
