“Aye, Grandfather, I will.” Bradana smiled at the old man in the bed. “And I will bring my harp.”
*
She and Adairwere given a sleeping place together, proving that Morag did indeed understand the nature of their relationship. Full as Bradana’s mind was when they retired to it, she did not think it would take her long to succumb to the comfort of such a place after their days of sharing a ragged blanket on the ground.
Indeed, she could ask very little more than to be lying in the dark beneath a secure roof with a full belly and Wen stretched out beside her—holding Adair’s hand in the dark.
Yet for a short while, she could not stop talking. She told Adair about her encounter with her grandfather and lamented the misfortunes here, the death of her uncle and his son that rendered the holding all too vulnerable.
“If my grandsire dies—whenhe dies,” she corrected herself carefully, “I do no’ doubt Mican will move in. ’Tis what he is waiting for, no doubt.”
Adair said nothing, just lay with his fingers laced through hers.
“Grandfather told me my grandmother’s sire was a shanachie in Erin. And she played the harp, just like me.”
“Well, is that no’ a wonder? A gift, the things that come down through the blood.”
“Just what I thought.” Bradana turned her face to him there in the dark, even though she could not see him well. “Did ye mean what ye said back there, to Mistress MacFee?”
“What did I say?”
“That if she would give ye the lend o’ a boat, ye would be awa’ back there, to Erin.” She could not keep the agony from her voice. “Would ye leave me?”
“I saidwewould be awa’ to Erin.”
“But Alba is my home. Its music runs through my blood.”
“Love, I did no’ say we would stay there forever. Just to take refuge for a time, until the strife here may die down.”
And if he returned to the land he loved, would he ever agree to leave there again?
He raised the hand he held to his lips and planted a kiss there. “Do no’ fret for it now. Let us take some rest while we may.”
He gathered her in his arms and she melted against him, unable to resist the warmth of the emotions that united them.
But a black cloud remained hanging on her horizon.
Chapter Thirty-Six
In the daysthat followed, Adair grew familiar with the small holding perched on the edge of the cold sea. His wound healed steadily under the hands of MacFee’s healer, and with sufficient food, his vigor began to return.
He could not keep still and so walked the settlement while Bradana sat with her grandsire, often playing on the harp for him. Wen came at his side, still limping but seeming just as unwilling to be quiet.
Adair became acquainted with members of the guard, who told him tales of Bradana’s uncle and cousin, both of whom had fallen battling to hold their lands not against the native Pictish, but against Mican and the now-perished Earrach.
To a man, they lit up with approval when they learned Earrach—universally detested—had fallen to Adair’s blade, and they swiftly adopted him. They wanted to hear of Erin, from whence their ancestors had come.
Indeed, Adair spent much time thinking of Erin, standing down on the shingle of the shore and staring out in the direction of home. No clear sight line here, for a number of islands lay offshore, huddled like half-submerged, green-backedcirein-cròin. But he knew he could find the way home.
He did not mention the longing to Bradana. She was fully occupied with her grandfather’s plight.
She believed he would not live long. Whatever illness ate at him had him well in its jaws. When they were alone together at night, she needed Adair’s reassurance, not somewhat else to worry on.
So he held his tongue and bided his time, and learned the bones of the place. A settlement in decline, it had once been much more prosperous and could, Adair felt, become so again. With a great deal of work, and a will to defend.
One night as they lay in the sanctuary of their sleeping place listening to Wen’s deep, peaceful breaths, Bradana said, “Grandfather does want to meet ye, no doubt because I speak o’ ye so often. But though I ha’ asked permission again and again to bring ye to him, he does no’ wish ye to find him in his sickbed. Instead he insists that tomorrow he will rise from it and come out to the great hall, where we shall”—she hesitated—“feast.”
Adair frowned in the dark. Most of the friends he’d made among the guard said they did not expect their chief ever to rise from his bed again. As for a feast—he knew all too well the holding had little means to provide one.
