“You’ve been here before,” she said.
He nodded. “Some nights, I have dreams. Mostly dreams I don’t want. I started riding at night to fill up my mind so that when I did sleep, I’d dream only of the ride and the adventure.”
“Did it work? Did it stop you dreaming?”
“No. You don’t choose your dreams. Your dreams choose you.”
They sat down on the smooth rocks where the tree roots embraced the earth. The wind off the loch was steady and cold. Neither of them noticed it. Both seemed willing to sit there forever.
“William,” she said, “I wondered so many times what had become of you. Where you had gone. What you were doing…” She looked out over the loch. They say no one can see the wind, but she could see it, moving over the surface of the water, making tracks where the windwaves caught the moonlight. “And if you would ever come back.”
He nodded. “I’ve come back,” he whispered. No one could have heard them, there was no other soul for miles. But it was as if he had too much voice in his throat, and all he could do was whisper.
“When you gave me the thistle… That you saved it…” She couldn’t make her words come together into a whole sentence. “I understood then… You, too. You… had thought about me, too.”
“Aye. Oh… aye.”
“You’ve had learning. That uncle of yours, the one you went to live with—my father said he was an ecclesiastic. He must have taught you so many things.”
William nodded.
“I… I don’t even know how to read.”
“You can learn. I can teach you.”
She was silent for a moment, knowing he had just opened the door to the inner room of his life. “But, William you’ve been out into the bigger world. I’ve never been far from home. No farther than this spot right here, right now.”
He stared off, beyond the distant mountains. “Murron, I’ve traveled in my body only as far as the home of my uncle Argyle and his shire. But he has shown my mind worlds I never dreamed of. I want to share those worlds with you.”
He was looking at her now.
She took his hands in hers. “William, there are scars on your hands. You’ve done more than study.”
“Aye. I have fought. And I have hated. I know it is in me to hate and to kill. But I’ve learned something else away from my home. And that is that we must always have a home, somewhere inside us. I don’t know how to explain this to you, I wish I could. When I lost my father and john, it hurt my heart so much. I wished I had them back; I wished the pain would go away. I thought I might die of grief alone; I wanted to bring that grief to the people who had brought it to me.” His words were coming fast now. Slow to get started, they had become impossible to stop. “But later I came to realize something. My father and his father had not fought and died so I could become filled with hate. They fought for me to be free to love. They fought because they loved! They loved me. They wanted me to have a free life. A family. Respect from others, for others. Respect of myself. I had to stop hating and start loving.” He squeezed her hands so tight. He reached with trembling fingers and combed her wind-blown hair away from her face, so he could see it fully. “But that was easy. I thought of you.”
They kissed—so long and hard that they tumbled off the rocks. They rolled on the soft heather between the trees and devoured each other.
“I want… to marry you!” he said, gasping.
“I… accept your proposal!” she gasped back.
“I’m not just saying it!”
“Nor I!”
“But I won’t give you up to any nobleman.”
That caused her to stop. “You scare me.”
“I don’t want to scare you. I want to be yours, and you mine. Every night like this one,” William said.
“This night is too beautiful to have again.”
“I will be with you, like this. Forever. And I will never share you with any man.”
And all of their fears and all of their sorrows became but old dry logs in one great bonfire of love.
18
ONE MONTH LATER, MURRON SLIPPED OUT OF HER WINDOW and ran silently across the soft ground to the distant line of Calendonia trees, where a horse stood tethered and waiting. She fetched a bundle hidden in the crook of one of the trees, loosed the horse, and led it further from the house. When she was sure she was far enough away that her mother and father would not hear the hoofbeats, she mounted and rode off.
At the base of the precipice beside the mountain loch stood the ruins of an ancient church. Two horses were already tethered outside when she rode up. Peaks of the stone walls that once had supported a roof now caught yellow flecks of candlelight from within the windowless shell. Murron tied her horse beside the other two and, carrying her bundle, pushed herself through the crack of the old door, its hinges rusted in place.
Up by the altar, lit by three candles, knelt William in prayer. He turned to look at her as she made her way in, and with a smile he lifted his eyes to heaven as if to thank God that she had finally arrived. Beside the candles stood Uncle Argyle.
Murron had seen the old man only once, when she was but a child and he had appeared as such an imposing, commanding figure. Now, in the candlelight of the church, with the stars bright in the unobstructed sky above their heads, he seemed no less a manifestation of the awesome hand of God. His hair was all gray but still long and wild. His shoulders were broad, like William’s, though perhaps the old man had grown a bit thicker around the middle. Yet it was a sign of wisdom and prosperity that any man could live so long and have enough to eat through every season. Argyle’s face still bore the same fearsome expression she remembered, enhanced by the wild business of his eyebrows, the aggressive jut of his chin, the fierce squint of his eyes. But when he moved down the aisle to her and lifted his great head and touched it to her hair, she felt not only blessed but loved.
She stepped into the confessional booth, still intact at the back of the church, as Uncle Argyle returned to William, who resumed his prayers.
Murron emerged; she had changed into the wedding dress she had made from the cloth she bought. William rose from his knees and watched her float down the aisle, and on his face was an expression that said his whole life was worth this moment.
Together, the two lovers turned to Uncle Argyle.
The old man cleared his throat and said, “You have come to pledge each to the other before Almighty God. You have brought symbols of your vows to each other?”
From within the folds of his fresh woolen wrappings William withdrew a strip of cloth woven into the checked pattern distinctive to his family. He passed the cloth to Uncle Argyle, who held it at both ends and lifted it up toward the star-cluttered sky and stretched it out before the universe’s Creator. He prayed in silence; William would later explain to Murron that Uncle Argyle sometimes prayed with no words at all, feeling those silent prayers were the purest. Not yet knowing that, she watched the old man in this holy moment and felt as if her heart was being held up to heaven to float there as pure and timeless as a star.
Argyle lowered the cloth and fixed his fierce eyes upon William. “William, do you swear on all that is eternal that you will love Murron with all your heart for all your life?”
“Aye. Oh, Aye.”
“Then tell her.”
“Murron, I will love you with all my heart for all my life.”
“And Murron,” Uncle Argyle said, “will you pledge the same?”
“William,” she said softly, “I will love you with all my heart for all my life.”
“Face each other, and stretch out your arms,” Uncle Argyle commanded.