Page 65 of The Speed of Lightning
Chapter 17
LEALT LINN, JURA - NOVEMBER 12, 1386
The question of the Storyteller had haunted the team for weeks. Now Calum knew—and the answer was unthinkable. His wife was the source of the tales compromising the safety of the Isles. Worse, the riddle of Freya’s feelings for him was solved as well. It was only an arrangement. A bargain of this for that. Her devotion no more than obligation. And it stung like mad.
Now he crouched in the brush at Lealt Linn, waiting. The stocking hung from the loose stone in Ragnall’s fence since the night before, set under cover of darkness. All day he’d gone about his duties as if nothing were amiss, sharing the plan only with Murdoch. When dusk came, instead of returning home, he kept away. Wounded, he’d sent Doc to fetch a bag from Freya with a change of clothes—he would need them when he sailed for Lochbuie before dawn.
Facing her was impossible. He needed time to lick his wounds, to decide how best to protect her, how to explain the truth to the king without condemning his clan, his father, or his wife. Time to pray on the mission he thought God had set before him.
Nothing seemed clear. He had believed he was called home to serve as tànaiste. Believed that he and Freya were bound by divine love. Believed he would help turn the tide of faith on Jura. But the more he pressed forward, the more he seemed to flounder, drifting further from the finish with each passing day.
After only a few hours of waiting, his father emerged from the trees, just as Freya had said, giving the low, eerie call of the owl. Calum answered with a soft, haunting hoot of his own, then stepped from the brush into his father’s sight.
If he had expected surprise, contrition, horror—none of it showed on his father’s stoic expression. They stared at one another, neither saying anything, neither speaking an explanation.
Da was the first to break the silence. “I was expecting Freya.”
Calum’s grip tightened on the arrows he’d gathered from the forest floor. “You mean the Storyteller?” He flung them down at his father’s feet. “An archer hunted her last night after she told her tales at Fraser’s house.”
In the dim moonlight, Calum saw the blood drain from his father’s face as he stooped to collect the arrows. “What archer?”
Arms crossed, fury swelling, Calum ground out, “I dinnae ken. I searched the woods ’til dawn and never found him.”
“Is she?—”
“Aye, she’s hale. Her dress torn from hiding, but thank God that’s all. The chief must be told.”
Da nodded, his face resigned. “I’ll go with you to explain.”
“I think you had best explain to me first. How could you have done this? How could you have letherdo this? Encourage her, when the cost could be so dire? Do you hate the MacSorleys so much you’d put her at risk for the sake of my reputation?”
For the first time, Da’s face twisted in anger. “Mind your words and handle them with care. I assure you, Calum, that I care more for that lass than any soul on this island—includingyou. Have done since she was three summers auld. Since the day this all began.”
Calum stepped closer, irritation rising at being left in the dark yet again. “What are you saying?”
His father’s voice cracked with a desperation Calum had never heard. “The day her mother died. The day Ragnall began to hate his daughter. The day that changed everything in this clan.”
A chill worked through Calum’s fury. The tremor in his father’s tone unsettled him more than the arrows at their feet. “Explain.”
“It began in the harvest of 1359. Ragnall met a woman on Iona while there for work. He took her for himself and brought her back to Jura, handfasted as his wife. You ken some of it from the betrothal.”
Calum nodded slowly. “A little. I know Freya was born on Iona while her mother was on pilgrimage. Was her mother a nun?”
“A scribe,” Da said. “Ragnall forced her to live by the Norse ways under threat of her freedom. She wouldnae yield, so he kept her under house arrest. Much as he later did with Freya. That was when I first began to suspect something strange about the union. It was unlike Ragnall MacSorley to even speak with a coigreach—let alone wed one. Beautiful or not. I began to think there was more to it than he ever told.”
Stunned, Calum sank onto a wide rock. “What do you mean?”
“The woman began to show with pregnancy only a few days into their marriage. I began to suspect that perhaps that was why Amie agreed to marry him. That perhaps?—”
He broke off.
Calum leaned forward. “Perhaps what?”
Da met his eyes, grim. “Perhaps Freya was never Ragnall’s.”
He snapped his mouth shut, the question dying on his tongue. It couldn’t be true. Freya had been recorded as illegitimate on Iona, but never had it crossed his mind that this was why Amie agreed to wed a heathen. He’d thought Ragnall had simply stolen her.
“Why did you no’ tell me weeks ago?”
