Ceanna knelt beside her and whispered that everything would all right, that she would refuse to give her up. Vanora peaked at her with one eye.
‘What is troubling you, Ceanna?’ Sandulf asked in a low voice.
‘He locked us in.’
‘We were not planning on leaving.’
‘Someone reached here before us.’ Ceanna put her hand on Vanora’s neck. ‘They were sent, in case I made it here alive. And if not, the story would be that I acted in a headstrong manner and brought ruin on myself. I was not supposed to make it here. I was supposed to become one of the disappeared, vanishing into the mists, never to be seen again.’
Sandulf pursed his lips. ‘It looks that way.’
‘You don’t seem surprised.’
‘I saw what happened to Urist’s group. I suspected they might take precautions. Urist might even have said that you were taken by a Northman.’
Her mouth dropped open. Sandulf had anticipated this, that someone would arrive before them. ‘But you didn’t think to warn me? We could have found a way to travel faster. Walked at night. Found horses. Something.’
‘Would it have made a difference if I had? You were determined to come here, to be a holy maid. No other alternative, you said.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘Where would we have found ponies? Other than Mother Mildreth, we barely saw a soul. Your stepmother likely dispatched someone as soon as she realised you were missing—before the ambush.’
Ceanna balled her fists. She had been certain her stepmother would not dare admit her scheme to the abbess of marrying Ceanna off to Feradach. It had been an arrogant assumption. Of course her aunt’s abbey was the most logical place for her to run to. She needed to come up with a plan quickly, something to convince her aunt that she should stay here. She paced the room. Would explaining about her profound vision at prayer be enough?
Vanora shook her head at Ceanna’s agitation and pointedly went to sit beside Sandulf. She settled with a long-suffering sigh, as if she knew the last place Ceanna wanted to be was here.
‘Goodness knows what tale they have told my aunt, then. Probably that I might arrive here with some wild story about my stepmother. They are very manipulative, my stepmother and her lover.’
‘You’ve said.’
‘You do believe me. I’m not given to fantasy or headstrong behaviour as Brother Malcolm implied.’
‘I saw what happened to Urist and his friends. I’ve come to know you, Lady Ceanna. You don’t run to flights of imagination. The opposite, in fact. You possess a purely practical frame of mind.’
‘Practical and pragmatic. Good for being a nun.’
Sandulf stroked Vanora’s ears. The dog leant into him. ‘Something like that. I’ve little experience with nuns. They spend much time on their knees in prayer and I’m uncertain if that actually helps.’
‘Good for the soul.’ Her laugh sounded strangled to her ears. Her stomach knotted. Being here reminded her of all the reasons why she had initially considered becoming a nun would not suit her. But it had been a choice between living under her aunt’s thumb and death. She froze. What if there was another way?
She regarded Sandulf. They were friends. Might he help if she asked? She’d only get one chance to ask.
‘What do you anticipate will happen next? Will your aunt take you in?’
‘I leave foretelling the future to others, but I know going back home will mean my death. As I said, I heard them plotting.’
‘Will your aunt believe you?’
Ceanna stopped mid-stride. Her aunt’s devotion to the need to secure Dun Ollaigh’s future was only second to her devotion to the church. If she considered Ceanna’s vocation was less than sincere, or didn’t believe her tale about the plot to end her life, then she might put it down to a case of pre-wedding nerves. Her aunt had not favoured her as a child after Ceanna had once asked her when her wings were going to sprout. She remembered hearing about girls her aunt had sent back to their parents after branding them unsuited to the contemplative life.
‘I once overheard—’ She stopped and glared at him as he sought to hide a smile. ‘What is amusing you? Please share the joke.’
‘You do seem to overhear a lot.’ He shrugged. ‘That is all. It reminds me of when I was young. My cousin always seemed to be the one overhearing things. He constantly raced around to tell everyone, but the trouble was he kept telling the wrong people. None of us ever cared for him. Me in particular as our mothers kept trying to make us play together and I wanted to be with my brothers.’
‘I never had a cousin. And my father kept me away from my aunt after my mother and younger brother died in the flood. She looked far too much like my mother for his grief. She and my father rarely agreed, but she respected my mother’s right to marry whom she chose.’
‘What does your mother have to do with it?’
‘In the absence of a son, under Pictish law, the inheritance goes to the eldest daughter. My grandfather did not have any sons. My aunt wanted the church after her husband died, so my mother had to marry.’
‘Does your father have any sons?’
‘My brother died with my mother. With my father’s current state of health, I fear it is beyond him to get any more children.’
‘You’ll have to marry if you wish to keep your lands safe from raiders. Your stepmother was right about that.’
Ceanna hugged her arms about her waist. The people at this monastery, they couldn’t lift swords or fight. Back in her great-great-grandfather’s day, the monks of Iona were trained in war, but not the ones at St Fillans. ‘Once my father goes, I’ll be dead within the week.’
‘How ill is your father?’
‘My father was very healthy until my stepmother’s lover arrived. Then the wound he received when he
