Page 10 of The Splendor of Fire
Léo sat in silence, listening to the fire, Moira’s food warm in his belly. Every time he’d ever dared hope, those hopes were crushed. Dare he hope that God would deliver him? That there was more to come in life than these four walls? Than death and captivity?
“I don’t know what you’re preparing me for, but all I want is to see my son. Please, God, if this is you, let me see my son. He is the onlything that matters to me. I want to hold him, to kiss him, to tell him I love him…” Unable to continue, he took the Psalter in his hands, holding on for dear life. “I’ve endured many things in this life, but please, I cannot lose my son.”
The fire popped, shooting a spark across the dark cell and landing beside Moira’s sketch of the Cuillin Hills, illuminating her name.
Remain in me. You will see your son.
Still wanting to doubt, Léo took a deep breath and opened the Psalter.
Chapter 4
BREACAIS - MAY 25, 1384
Moira’s leather slippers pounded against the earth, forest air seeping deep into her lungs. Counting blessings, she ducked under branches, over fallen logs, and launched onto a low branch. Wild as a weed, free as the clouds above her, her leather-wrapped hands gripped the rugged bark, her arms and shoulders pulling her higher and higher within the towering branches of the fir tree. Climbing as high as she could go, she swung her legs and tucked a knee over a branch, using her muscled thighs to pull herself to the top.
One hundred feet in the air, she took in the sight of Loch na Beiste below her. Arms outstretched, she gripped the branch with her thighs, lifted her palms to the sky, and pushed air between her wetted lips, mimicking the fast trills and twitters of the linnet. Here, it was just her and the Lord in His creation. Here, she was a bird.
Birdy. The nickname Maw had given her not long after she lost her voice and learned to mimic the whistle, trill, and rasp of the whinchat. She had become so good at mimicking the sound Maw thought there was a bird in the rafters. Moira smiled at the memory, drinking in the delicious sunshine on her face and whistling praise toward the heavens. She could not sing to God, but she could still mimic birdsong.
Lowering her arms, she marveled at the sight of the loch, purple inearly morning sun, and breathed deep again, savoring the smell of damp pine moss. Away from the cottage, away from the village in Breacais, high above any man, she finally felt the freedom she craved. Scooting backward, she settled against the rough trunk, bringing the bag she looped around her neck to her front, and removing charcoal, paper, and her thin board.
Mornings sketching at the loch were her favorite pastime, and her eyes traveled over the rippling water, searching for a point that connected with her soul. Her fingers spun the charcoal between them and she waited for inspiration.
Léo’s sandy brown hair, flopped to one side, curling against his chest as he folded his arms watching me.Abruptly, her eyes sprang open, horrified that she was again daydreaming of the last time she’d seen Léo.The donkey.
Her eyes trained on the edge of the harbor rock, white waves breaking at its base.Léo’s noble chin, the perfect arch of sandy eyebrow—No. Stop it.Forcing herself to stop being such an empty-headed, lovesick lass, she recalled his insult delivered in his accented Gaelic and it pushed her warmth away.Uncommon eediot.
…Léo’s cracked lips against mine, his hands in my curls.She groaned and propped her cheek against her knee. Why did her first kiss capture her heart so completely? And why did that kiss belong to the world’s biggest scoundrel?
Why, Lord?Despite his bold liberties with her, his rudeness, his insults, the desire in her heart for him had not abated by even the smallest fraction in four long months. There was something about him that her heart refused to overlook, but oh how she wanted to forget.
Moira snorted in disgust. Instead, it was quite the opposite. In every spare moment she found herself praying for him. Praying! And even more pathetically, she found herself remembering every detail of his countenance day and night. She’d restored the armor she’d ruined his first day at Cràdh, conditioned it, polished it, and sometimes…
Her cheeks heated. Sometimes she’d put her arms around it and pretend he had come to take her away. It was pathetic, and lovesick, and…and…embarrassing. Yet, she couldn’t shake him. The warmth in his eyes, the deep resonance of his voice, the quirk in his eyebrow. From themoment they’d been alone together in his cell she was utterly, completely lost to him.
Since January she’d done little but moon over him, and had found subtle ways to ask after him every week. Father didn’t seem any the wiser about the growing affection in her heart, but every now and then he would remark, “You haven’t asked about our Léo this week.”
Moira had done her best to play along and pretend he’d slipped her mind, but Father must have known the truth. And so, in March, when Father decided to tend a new prisoner and asked her to come along and check on Léo’s healing, she’d been thrilled. This was it. The moment he would see into her soul, as he did the day he kissed her.
She’d worked for days on his bundle, thinking of things she herself might want in a place so hopeless—a clean and comfortable set of clothes, a window to the outside world, and a Psalter to provide her hope and consolation in the long hours of solitude.
After their passionate kiss, her mind had imagined high-born manners, courtly love, tender words. She had taken extra care with her hair, taming it into perfect tendrils. She wore her best light blue leine, the one that matched her eyes, hoping that it would please him.
When he’d said, “It’s you,” a shiver ran up her spine. He remembered her. He remembered their kiss. Their tale of love was about to be written. And then it all fell apart.
The sun rose higher above the horizon and she watched it without sketching, giving herself over to the problem that had haunted her for weeks.
Soft in the head. Uncommon idiot.The insults heaped upon her all her life, now lobbed at her by one she cared for. Words that had almost stomped the love and fantasy out of her heart. Almost.
Adjusting her grip to the end of her charcoal, she sketched the broadness of his forehead, the slip of his cheek toward his inviting lips. She tightened her grip and moved inward, recording the details of his countenance. Her eyes closed and she remembered the angles of his face.
The tenderness in his eyes, the arch of his eyebrow that lent him the look of a wise ruler. The two short wrinkles that accentuated the beginning of his right eyebrow, posing a permanent question of those around him. The smoothness above his left, a longing to trust.
The charcoal flew over the paper. Mustache above the peak of his upper lip. Beard beneath the fullness of his lower. Shadows and firelight against the pores of his skin. Skin unmarred by wounds and bruising.
She stopped and examined the page. It needed something. Returning to his eyes, she filled in the sultry darkness, the stars of honey around the edges of his iris, the amber flecks beside the pupil. Somewhere below a whooper swan honked out for its mate.
She studied the drawing. It was him. The way he looked to her, in the treasured corridors of her heart. Her finger traced along his pointed chin. How she longed for him.
