to Inbhir Ness.'
Niamh halted on the path. 'You
'As I have told you.'
'Or, if you cannot get a place on one of the ships,' she added.
'Mother,' answered Murdo with gentle, but firm resolve, 'we have talked about this a hundred times. I am no pilgrim. I will not fight. I mean to find my father and bring him home. That is all.'
'And your brothers,' added Niamh.
'Of course.' He gave a gently exasperated sigh.
Niamh halted on the path. 'It's just that you are the only one left to me. If anything should happen to you, Murdo, I do not think I could -'
Embarrassed to be overheard by Ragna and her mother, he turned and quickly reassured her. 'Nothing is going to happen to me. I am not going alone. I will be travelling with a large warband, after all. Nothing will happen. I promise.'
They started walking again. 'I will be home again before you know it,' Murdo said, trying to lighten the sombre mood settling around him. Now that the moment of leaving was upon him, he was far less eager for it than he had been even the day before. Indeed, after his night with Ragna, he wanted nothing more than to stay in Orkneyjar and for the two of them to remain together always.
If he stayed, however, that would never happen. The way Murdo saw it, his only hope of making a life for himself and Ragna was to regain possession of Hrafnbu. The only way to do that was to find his father and bring him home.
If his zeal for the journey had waned, these thoughts reminded him that there was even more at stake than recovering stolen property, his future happiness was at risk so long as intruders held their lands. So, Murdo put iron to his resolve and set his face to the sea.
His mother continued to offer advice and elicit his promises to be vigilant and careful, but Murdo was no longer listening. The sooner he was away, the sooner he could return, and his heart was set on a swift returning.
Upon reaching the shingle, Murdo turned at the water's edge and thanked Lady Ragnhild for her continued care and hospitality of both himself and his mother, and thanked her, too for the fine new clothes he was wearing-a handsome red-brown cloak of wool; a pair of sturdy breecs of the same cloth and colour with a wide belt and soft boots of new leather; and a long siarc of yellow linen. He also thanked her for the money she had given him to aid his travels, and promised to repay it at the first opportunity.
'It is nothing I would not do for my own blood kin,' Ragnhild told him; her emphasis on the last words, along with the lift of her eyebrow and not altogether approving gaze gave him to know that Ragna must have told her mother what had passed between them during the night. 'Your mother and I are more than sisters,' Ragnhild continued, 'I do welcome her company, all the more so with the menfolk away. We will be safe here, never fear. Look to yourself, Murdo, and God speed your return.'
He then embraced his mother for the last time while Ragnhild and her daughter stood a little apart, looking on. When Niamh had finished her farewells, she moved aside and Ragna stepped quickly before Murdo and kissed him chastely on the cheek. 'Come back to me, Murdo,' she whispered.
'I will,' he murmured, longing to take her in his arms again, and crush her willing body to his own.
'God speed you, my soul,’ Ragna said, already moving away. Before he could reply, she had rejoined her mother. There was so much he wanted to say to her, but that was impossible with everyone looking on. So, pressing his hand to the dagger beneath his siarc, he silently pledged his love to her; she saw the gesture, and answered him with her eyes.
Promising yet once more to return with all haste, Murdo stepped into the sea and waded out to where Peder was waiting at the oars. He pulled himself up over the rail and took his place at the prow, while the two servingmen turned the boat in the water and gave it a push to send it off. Murdo shouted farewell one last time as Peder plied the oars and the boat moved out into the bay. He did not take his eyes from the figures on the shore, but stood and watched them dwindle away to mere coloured flecks against the grey rock of the cove.
Presently, Peder called for him to raise the sail, which he did. When he turned back, the cove had disappeared behind a rocky shoulder and the watchers could no longer be seen. Still, he lifted his hand in a final farewell, and then returned to his work.
BOOK II
January 12, 1899: Edinburgh, Scotland
I was born in the Year of Our Lord 1856, in the tidy industrial town of Witney in Oxfordshire, to parents of good old Scottish blood. My father, who had left his beloved Highlands to further the family interests in the wool trade, eventually put the business on a solid footing, hired a manager and moved back north to 'God's ane countrie,' as he liked to call it.
Thus, on the cusp of my sixth year of life, I was yanked, roots and all, from the humming bustle of a prosperous Cotswold town, and transplanted to a rude hamlet in what to my inexperienced eye appeared a drizzly, heather-covered moor in the remote Scottish wilds. Surrounded by sheep and gorse, I began my education in the tiny village school where I found both the teachers and my fellow classmates not only brusque to the point of rudeness, but incomprehensible. I spent the whole of my first year's lessons in a state of teary agitation, vowing at the end of each day never to return to that accursed school.
It fell to my patient grandmother to soothe my schoolboy woes. 'Niwer fret, laddie buck,' she would say. 'All will be well in God's good time.' She was right, of course. I finished my schooling and graduated from St Andrews University, having pursued a double course of study in History and Classics.
Favouring a life of professionary indolence over the blustery routine of a work-a-day wool purveyor like my father, however prosperous and thriving, I hastily signed on as a clerk at one of Edinburgh's reputable legal firms, and was plunged straight away into an amiable, yet tedious, drudgery copying drafts and opinions, writs and grants and summary judgements, for my learned superiors. After a few weeks of this occupation, I began to suspect that the life I had chosen did not suit me as closely as I had imagined. I began to drink-only in moderation, and only after hours with others of my ilk-frittering away my evenings with good talk, cheap whisky, and cheaper cigars in one of Auld Reekie's many excellent pubs-which would have horrified my dear old Gran no end.
Still, I was young, unattached, and reckless. My needs were simple, and easily met. One of my fellow scribes and imbibers, it soon transpired, was an inveterate walker who thought nothing of sailing off down the road to one distant destination or another with nothing more than a stout stick and half-a-sixpence. He was a true Son o' the Heather through and through, and gloried in the name Alisdair Angus McTavot. A splendid fellow, Angus-he detested the name Alisdair and would allow no one to use it in his presence-possessed an absolutely infectious enthusiasm, and I soon found myself tramping around the damp countryside with him at week's end and holidays.
We spent many a squall huddled in the doorway of a cow byre waiting for the rain to move off, and as happens on such occasions, we began to speak of our families. It turned out that the McTavot clan enjoyed some tenuous connections with the lapsed Scottish aristocracy. His father was a baronet, whatever that is, and though the title was no longer a sinecure for great wealth, there was yet a modicum of prestige to be wrung from it. If nothing else, his uppercrusty heritage had given Angus a taste for pomp and tradition of an obscure kind. He revelled in all manner of old fashioned notions, and indulged a penchant for the arcana of Celtic history, especially as it touched primitive royalty.
It was through Angus that I was introduced to the Ancient and Honourable Order of the Highland Stag- otherwise known as a gentleman's club. In its prime, the Old Stag as it was affectionately known to its intimates, boasted such illustrious members as Cameron Brodie and Arthur Pitcairn Grant, and such notorious brigands as Drummond 'Black' Douglas, and Judge Buchanan. Sir Walter Scott was an honorary member, as was Robert Louis Stephenson, and Captain Lawrie of Krakatoa fame. Although still eminently respectable, the club had come down somewhat in latter years and no longer attracted the blue-bloods and patricians in the numbers it once boasted-
