Page 25 of A Constant Blaze

A headache had begun to plague her on the journey, and now the patter of the rain on the hall roof seemed somehow ominous. Dismissing her women, she sank into the throne-like chair on the dais and closed her eyes. Finally, in the hope of soothing away both headache and groundless fears, she sent for Muiredach, her harpist.

A few minutes later, she heard his quick, distinctive footfalls on the hall floor, and opened her eyes.

Muiredach was a rare being in Ross—a man of birth and education who was neither soldier nor priest. Rumor said he was a king’s son come from Ireland as a child slave in some raid or other. Muiredach himself never said so. If he’d ever been a slave, he was a free man by the time he’d walked into her hall ten years ago, a wandering harpist, offering to play at her Easter feast. He’d been here ever since, for she had never heard anyone play the harp as he did. He made it sing and weep and laugh. He made it do everything she ever asked and more. He told stories, too, of great heroes, Scots, Irish, and Norse, always with variations to suit his company.

“Will you play for me, Muiredach?” she asked. “My head is throbbing and needs to be soothed with soft, gentle music.”

Muiredach bowed and walked at once to his large harp. He was a graceful man, tall and handsome. It was still a wonder to Halla that no woman had yet ensnared him into marriage. Into her bed, perhaps, for he was a charming man, but nothing of even a semi-permanent nature seemed to bind him to anyone but her. If she was honest, she liked that about him. He’d become necessary to her, a cross between a companion and a priest, his unspoken devotion a balm to her own secret loneliness.

As always, he found the music she needed, playing to suit her mood. She should never, she reminded herself, take Muiredach for granted. Leaning her head against the chair’s high back, she closed her eyes once more and let the music in, comforting the tangle of fears and crude, coursing desire that had plagued her since the others had left to bring Malcolm and Donald home.

Most terrible of all was the fear that she would no longer love her husband. What man had he become in prison? Could her exuberant, quick-witted, handsome young husband, who fought like ten devils, even in play fights and training, have grown into a whining, dull, middle-aged man, fat, perhaps, or sick through neglect? Mairead had always reported him as fit and well, but Mairead had never known him before.

Mairead. Mairead, whom she’d never met, had brought something of him back to her in recent months, at no little personal risk. There had always been gratitude and guilt over that. And jealousy.

None of which she ever had or ever would reveal to another living soul. With yet more guilt, Halla recognized that Mairead, too, could be imprisoned or killed for her part in this. The entire plan depended on her.

She opened her eyes and turned to Muiredach. Although his fingers glided across the strings, making their magic, his deep blue gaze rested on her face. This attention no longer bothered her. He always watched her for changes of mood and expression, his guide to what and how to play.

“Have you ever met the Lady Mairead of Kingowan?” she asked him on impulse. After all, he did have odd, mysterious absences, usually, if not always, sanctioned by her in advance.

He shook his head while his fingers played on. “No, I never have.”

“She must be a very brave young woman. I wonder, sometimes, if she does it for love of my son or my husband.”

“Does it matter?” Muiredach asked.

She shook her head. “No, not to me. Although it might matter to her.”

“Perhaps she does it because she believes the cause is just,” Muiredach suggested. The music intensified under his clever hands, without increasing in volume. “Why do you fight on? Why did Malcolm mac Aed want to be king in the first place? Was being a great earl not enough for him?”

Halla smiled. “No, that was the curse of his family. Whatever they had was not enough. Certainly, Ross was never big enough for Malcolm. Even Scotland wasn’t. To become King of Scots was merely a stepping stone to the larger world, which he could then meet on something like equal terms. He was full of ambitions and ideals and even the imagination to resolve the two.”

She paused, her smile of memory dying. “Of course, there was also the smaller matter of avenging his grandfather King Lulach, who had not been killed in a fair fight, whatever was said to the contrary to excuse the act. And the persecution of his mother and his uncle by King Malcolm Canmore. And although he rarely spoke of it, because it hurt him too much, there was the death of his elder brother Angus at Stracathro. He needed Angus’s death to count for something.”

Her eyes refocused on Muiredach to find his own unreadable.

“He is a restless spirit,” he observed.

“He was,” Halla agreed. God knew what he’d become now. His letters, short and formally affectionate, with just a hint of the old humor, had given little real clue. All she had was the distant memory of those few short years together. Marriage, love, war, adventure, motherhood, and tragedy, all squashed into a little less than four years.

But now, the long, long wait was almost over. As Muiredach’s strings quietened, she imagined the distant thunder of drumming hooves and running men, bringing him home. She could reach for it now, with utter longing, because talking of him had brought back more than Malcolm’s turbulence. She’d remembered his patience and his companionship. However long the parting, however deep the changes, enough of him must remain to build a new life together. And, right or wrong, she realized she was trustinghim—not Adam or Cairistiona or Mairead, but Malcolm himself—to bring Donald home.

The hall door sprang open, and Gormflaith ran in, white-faced with excitement.

“They’re coming.”

*

Mairead of Kingowanhad left the MacHeths in Fife.

“Come with us,” Malcolm had urged as if he’d understood. “There is no need for you to go back, except on your own terms. Unless you wish to.”

She didn’t really. Leading her double existence had provided all the meaning in her court life, in her married life. Part of her wanted to keep going north with the MacHeths, into Ross, just to be with him, and to meet the famous, seldom seen lady who held Malcolm MacHeth’s heart. But she didn’t think she could bear that.

No, she would go back to Kingowan, hopefully, while her husband was still with the king. Sooner or later, she would return to court, and there, perhaps, she could still work on the MacHeths’ behalf. And on Somerled’s.

And so, she’d parted from him without looking back, refusing all escort, and had ridden alone to Dundee where, as planned, she waited for her own trusted people, her maid, Grizel, and her men-at-arms, and made the final leg of her journey in perfect propriety and in the style expected of her rank.

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