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  The guard did not meet her gaze. ‘We serve at the Regent Giric’s pleasure, my lady, not anyone else’s. Recent intelligence indicates the culprit might be returning.’

  Ceanna and Sandulf exchanged glances. ‘Recent intelligence? How recent?’

  The guard’s gaze narrowed. ‘I’m not sure I should be saying such things to strangers, particularly not Northmen.’

  ‘I’m from Dun Ollaigh,’ Ceanna said. ‘And Mother Abbe will be pleased to see me. I am her niece, Lady Ceanna.’

  ‘I have no idea who you are, my lady, but you can speak Pictish as if you were born to the language.’

  ‘Because I was. In Dun Ollaigh, on the coast.’

  Sandulf held out his hands. ‘King Aed died before I ever entered this country.’

  The guard appeared to consider both statements. ‘I’ll take you to the monastery. That way neither of you can get into mischief.’

  ‘I can assure you that neither of us plan any sort of trouble,’ Ceanna said firmly.

  ‘For Mother Abbe’s sake, I hope you are who you say you are.’ He glanced down at Vanora. ‘Mother Abbe is not overly fond of dogs, but then I suspect you know that, being her niece and all.’

  Sandulf merely raised a brow at the guard’s tone. Vanora slunk next to Sandulf and gave a low growl. Ceanna concentrated on the cobblestones and tried to keep her temper in check.

  The last time her aunt had encountered Vanora, it had not gone well. Perhaps she’d been optimistic in bringing her dog with her, but there was no way she would have left her behind.

  ‘If my aunt objects to Vanora, will you...?’ she said in a low voice to Sandulf.

  ‘Stop borrowing trouble,’ he replied. ‘All will be well. I have promised to see you to safety and I will.’

  ‘To Nrurim, that is what we agreed.’ She hated that her voice caught on the final word.

  ‘Until you reached safety is what I agreed.’

  ‘Am I not safe here?’

  ‘We shall see, my lady. We shall see.’

  * * *

  When they arrived at the bustling monastery, a young friar hurried towards them. ‘Lady Ceanna? Is that you? You probably don’t remember me—Brother Malcolm? I had the honour of giving you a tour of the scriptorium the last time you were here. We’ve been so worried.’

  Ceanna froze. Why should they be worried about her? ‘Were you expecting me?’

  Brother Malcolm drew himself up like a startled hen. ‘A message reached us two days ago that you’d been kidnapped. Your aunt feared you’d become one of the disappeared, taken by raiders from the North because of your headstrong behaviour.’

  Ceanna ignored Sandulf’s swift exclamation. After they had escaped Urist and the false ambush, Sandulf had predicted something like this. Her easy assurance that her stepmother would never dare contact her aunt because she would oppose the proposed marriage tasted like ash in her mouth.

  ‘The messenger was mistaken.’ Ceanna tried for a reassuring laugh. Behind the friar, various nuns stopped tilling the soil and stared open-mouthed at her. When she looked back, they rapidly dropped their gaze and started labouring with great intensity. The austerity about this place pressed down on her soul. But it was just nerves. This place was home now, not Dun Olliagh. But already her soul longed for the sound of the sea and the wind which pervaded every part of Dun Ollaigh, the way the sunlight danced on the waves of the harbour in the early morning and the coolness of the stones against her feet—things she’d never encounter again. ‘Very much mistaken.’

  ‘Was he?’ Brother Malcolm queried.

  ‘You can see I’m perfectly well. Ever since I left Dun Ollaigh, I’ve been travelling towards here of my own free will. I haven’t taken a detour or escaped from some botched kidnapping. And my reason for travel remains serious.’

  Brother Malcolm tugged at the neck of his robe. ‘And your companion? He looks fierce with that dog of his.’

  ‘The dog is mine.’

  ‘Mother Abbe is not fond of strange dogs, but I suppose since it is yours... I take it your visit will not be long in light of these rumours?’ Brother Malcolm held his robes away from Vanora’s inquisitive nose.

  Ceanna pressed her lips together. Her aunt’s dog smelt and tended to be sick on the rushes after her aunt fed it too many sweetmeats from the table. Blurting out her new vocation to Brother Malcolm would not be a good idea. She would wait until she saw her aunt.

  Brother Malcolm lowered his voice. ‘Has your companion come to raid or to pray?’

  ‘He’s hardly a raider! Why would he bring me here and protect me, if he intended kidnapping me and selling me across the seas?’

  Brother Malcolm tucked his hands into the sleeves of his robe. ‘Tales can get tangled in the telling. That much is true. You’re here now. Praise all the angels and saints in heaven.’

  ‘Lady Ceanna intends to stay,’ Sandulf said.

  ‘You are going to remain here!’

  Ceanna glared at Sandulf. ‘I wish to discuss this with my aunt first. Her views are paramount.’

  ‘Mother Abbe. Good idea.’ Brother Malcolm started to scurry away. ‘I see. I wasn’t told about that. I thought you would return to your home immediately, to the safety of your family, if you actually arrived here.’

  Return. Ceanna’s heart sank. Someone had indeed been here, sowing the seeds of her destruction. Immediately the difficulty of her task increased. What was worse, this place held little appeal. She kept thinking about the reasons why she had detested it the last time she had visited.

  ‘Allow me to see my aunt,’ Ceanna called after him. ‘She will want to see my miraculous arrival for herself. See that her prayers were answered.’

  The friar’s shoulders twitched. ‘You had best wait in the guests’ antechamber. It would be more seemly.’ He looked Sandulf up and down. ‘You and your companion do understand that singular honour?’

  She knew if she caught Sandulf’s eye, she’d dissolve into highly inappropriate laughter or, worse, frustrated screaming. She covered her mouth and regained control of her emotions before she threw away any lingering chance of being a holy maid. ‘Of course, Brother, of course we do.’

  ‘A heathen here, at St Fillans,’ Brother Malcolm muttered. ‘I know it was foretold, but will wonders never cease. I never believed Brother Mattios’s predictions before, but I must now. I shall let him know when he returns. I’ve become a true believer.’

  ‘Well?’ Sandulf asked. ‘Will you do as Lady Ceanna requests or will you explain to her aunt why you have prolonged her agony, instead blathering on about predictions from a missing monk?’

  The colour drained from Brother Malcolm’s face. ‘I didn’t realise men from the North could speak our language so well. And the Mother Abbess’s great confidant, Brother Matthios, is far above the average monk. He is a learned man from St Benedict Biscop’s Abbey in Jarrow where St Bede wrote his famous histories.’

  ‘It’s amazing what people, even if they are heathen, can learn, isn’t it?’ Sandulf retorted in perfect Pictish.

  ‘Wait in there, both of you...and that creature.’ Brother Malcolm ushered them into a small antechamber and left them. Ceanna heard the lock turning. Vanora immediately settled, putting her head on her paws.

  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 fought off raiders fifteen months ago refused to heal. In recent weeks, he grows worse, despite my stepmother’s devoted attention. He barely recognised me when I whispered goodbye.’ She banged her fists together rather than giving in to tears over her father and how she might never see him again. Her heart grieved for the man he’d been before her mother and brother died. ‘I won’t be sacrificed on the altar of my stepmother’s ambition.’

  Sandulf raised his brow and Ceanna belatedly realised that she’d been shouting. She continued in a calmer voice. ‘I hoped to persuade my aunt to accept me as a young woman who knows her own mind, someone who truly does wish to take the veil instead of a silly girl who ran away from an important strategic alliance.’

  ‘You fear your aunt will see through the ruse immediately.’

  The weight on Ceanna’s chest lifted. ‘I don’t fear marriage in the abstract, Sandulf, but I do fear losing my life.’

  ‘You remain under my protection until you reach a safe haven.’

  ‘Why, my gallant warrior, are you making an offer of marriage?’ she teased with a strangled laugh, hating how her heart leapt. They were friends, not lovers. He’d made that perfectly clear.

  His eyes slid away from her. ‘It won’t come to that.’

  ‘No, it won’t.’ Ceanna’s heart sank. He had a life elsewhere, a family, dreams, ambitions, to which he would return after he completed this quest to find his sister-in-law’s murderer. He’d been her companion for the journey, not the hero who was going to save her future. ‘I’ll manage, Sandulf. I’ll find a way.’

  He put his hand on her arm. Warmth radiated through her. She turned to move away, but tumbled into his gaze instead. ‘What do you need me to do?’

  She wet her parched lips. What she needed was his touch. ‘My desires are not important; only my life. This place must be more congenial than it appears to my nervous eyes.’

  He raised a brow. ‘The friar seemed less than keen about Vanora.’

  At the sound of her name, Vanora thumped her tail. It sounded like a drum in the all-pervading quiet of the room.

  ‘My aunt will find a place for her once she understands how useful Vanora is.’

  He shrugged. ‘You’re the one who knows her. I have some misgivings, but I’m willing to be wrong.’

  Something was clearly going on and she was beginning to doubt whether fleeing to her aunt had been a good idea after all. Could she beg him to take her away from here? Where could she go? But instead all she said was, ‘My aunt will do what is right. She is a stickler for order and tradition.’

  ‘And here I was, thinking you delight in creating chaos. How will you get on here?’

  ‘That is unfair. What chaos have I
created?’

  ‘You’ve turned my life upside down.’

  ‘Normally I’m very restrained and orderly. Ask anyone.’ His answering smile warmed her to her toes. ‘But I stand a far better chance of seeing my next birthday here than I would at Dun Ollaigh. Being alive means that some day I might have the chance to fight back against my stepmother’s machinations.’

  ‘Do you want to spend your life in this place where you will be under the control of your aunt, where you will be on your knees day and night, no freedom to come and go as you please?’

  ‘Every corner of this abbey hums like a beehive,’ Ceanna said to his chest. She knew it wasn’t an answer, but bringing herself to voice her sudden disquiet was beyond her. Out in the garth she had seen a handful of women toiling in the soil and being chastised for speaking and it made her blood run cold. She knew, despite her earlier bravado, being a nun was the last thing she wanted. ‘Even if it is an awfully silent hive.’ She sighed, but turned abruptly when the door was suddenly thrust open.

  ‘What is going on here? Ceanna, why are you here, instead of at Dun Ollaigh where you are supposed to be?’ her aunt’s voice thundered from the doorway. ‘The marriage alliance between you and Feradach is of the upmost importance to this family’s continued prosperity, according to your lady stepmother.’

  Chapter Nine

  At the sound of her aunt’s voice, Ceanna jumped away from Sandulf. Her cheeks burned as if she had been standing in front of a hot cooking fire. Ceanna rapidly straightened the folds of her gown and tried to concentrate. Her aunt’s words confirmed her worst fears. She had failed.