Forty-one

Three days later, Sophia saw Cathal again for the first time.

After they’d both been carried away to separate beds, Sophia had slept, truly slept, for a day and a half, then woke to Donnag’s wondering ministrations, Alice’s brusque relief, and her weight in bread, butter, and honey, with a fish stew afterward.

Alice’s ankle was recovering, but she still could do no more than hobble a few feet on crutches. It hadn’t improved her temper at all—“I’m glad you didn’t gravely injure yourself while you were gone,” was the first thing she’d said after she’d embraced Sophia and they’d both wept a little—but she’d occupied herself with writing down the songs and legends she’d learned at the castle. “I’m thinking I’ll become a wandering scribe,” she said. “It can’t possibly be any worse.”

When Sophia reached the part in her story about staying in the inn with Cathal and skipped straight from there to her decision to hunt Albert in dreams, she knew she blushed, and she knew Alice could read her face. That hadn’t changed. But Alice looked at her silently, smiled, and asked, “What happened then?”

Sophia told her. Alice shivered over the description of the castle, made properly repulsed noises at Albert’s appearance, and shook her head at the end of it all. “Vile excuse for a man. I agree with Lord MacAlasdair. The world’s better for not having him in it.”

“Yes,” Sophia said sincerely. She felt the weight of her deeds on her and suspected she ever would, that she would carry the memory of his screaming dissolution to her dying day. That was right. Albert had been a person once, and even good deeds shouldn’t happen lightly when they involved human life. But she meant what she’d said, and it was a comfort to her in itself.

She’d discovered a potion, and she’d pared away a bad part of the world. In doing so, she hoped, she’d made life better for Gilleis, Harry, and the frightened people of their lands as well. Whoever inherited could be no worse than Albert. Plenty of people had accomplished less in their lives.

Yet what she’d told Douglas was still true. Whatever came later, Sophia still had one great task immediately in front of her, and it was no trifle.

When she could leave her bed, she went to the laboratory. There, at the proper hours, she distilled and recalcified, measured and ground. There, at the proper hours, she prayed. There, in her brief free time, she ate and slept. Except for servants with trays of food, none disturbed her. “Douglas gave orders,” Alice said when she intercepted a servant and brought food. “And I wouldn’t defy that man for all the riches of the Orient.”

“I don’t need the riches of the Orient,” said Sophia, who was beginning to think of a few matters on which she’d risk Douglas’s displeasure.

* * *

Douglas’s orders were one of the reasons she was surprised to come out of her laboratory and find him standing there, calm and still. “Are you finished for the moment?” he asked. “I would speak with you.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, “though not inside… The mixture’s at a sensitive stage. Is Cathal all right? I know his method of coming to my aid was an unfamiliar one, and if there’s anything I can do—”

Douglas held up a hand. “No. That is, he’s hale enough to plague those nearby. He’s not a man for idleness, my brother. Though not a man for the wars these days either, I’m suspecting.”

The direction he was going was obvious. Sophia considered saying that Cathal hadn’t told her of a decision one way or the other, then thought that his proposal likely counted, then wondered if he’d expect her to come on Crusade with him. All the while, remembering both the proposal and the circumstances surrounding it had her blushing fiercely, and she settled for just asking, “My lord?”

“Ach, for heaven’s sake. Marry the man.”

“I—”

“If he’s not asked yet, tell me and I’ll beat him until he finds the courage. I know damned well he wants to. The entire castle knows it.”

Sophia bit her lip. “He has, my lord. I told him I wanted to, but I wished to give us both time to think. Him especially. It was…a situation in which I didn’t know that we were thinking clearly,” she said, feeling quite able to boil water on her face, “and I know that he has many duties.”

“Ha,” said Douglas, rolling his eyes. “He’s done more of his duty in the last five years than the rest of his life combined. If he marries a girl with a sound head and a good spirit, I’d call it a damned miracle. The castle will be in good hands, should he leave,” he added, and went on before Sophia could speak in Cathal’s defense, “and I’ll talk Artair around. Not that I’d imagine it’ll take much. The youngest child’s hand in marriage is generally the prize for services like yours in tales…but you’re not getting half our lands. They’re small enough as it is.”

He turned then, a man who’d discharged one duty on a list of fifty that day, and left Sophia stunned and blinking.

The next day she woke at dawn to the bath she’d requested, then to a white linen gown that was doubtless another of Agnes’s castoffs. Sophia didn’t bother taking this one in, simply rolling up the sleeves and kilting the skirt before she went back to the laboratory. She stopped a page on the way.

“Tell Sir Cathal he can expect me a little after noon,” she said, barely noticing how the Gaelic came from her lips now. “Assuming, of course, that nothing goes amiss.”

Sophia knew that he stared at her, and that he kept staring after she left, but the knowledge was remote and immaterial. The possibility of amiss worried her a good deal more, but she didn’t dare dwell on that either. She focused on the details instead: each breath and footstep, then the weight of mortar and pestle or the circulation of steam.

This time she was more careful of the angle when she poured the topaz into the potion, but it turned out that she didn’t need to be. The flame stayed low and spread out, covering the mouth of the goblet from edge to edge, and its heat wasn’t as fierce as the other had been.

This is right, she thought, knowing it as she’d known that this potion, altered so and thus, was the way to reintroduce Fergus’s soul to his body. Such knowing had been easier ever since she’d come back from the aether—no mysterious certainty, but rather as if she were a seamstress considering a dress, knowing that the line she wanted required such a set of the sleeves.

She wondered if that was how Cathal felt about battle. She wanted to ask him. There was, Sophia was finding, no end to the things she wanted to ask him.

When she carried the potion into Fergus’s room, Cathal’s face was briefly the only thing she saw.

Soon enough her mind recalled itself to her purpose. She looked to Fergus, pale and unconscious on the bed, and she thought of Douglas and Sithaeg waiting a few yards outside the door, just far enough for probable safety. Sithaeg had darted one look upward as Sophia passed. Her eyes had been frozen rivers, torrents forcibly held in abeyance.

Sithaeg’s expression was enough to damp the giddiness uncurling within Sophia’s chest, but only barely. Had she doubted, it might have hit harder, but she came to Fergus’s side with the cup in her hands and the craftsman’s certainty of his masterpiece.

It didn’t make her careless. She knelt slowly and smoothly. The potion rippled with her movements, and little waves hit the sides of the goblet, but not a drop spilled over. On the other side of the bed, Cathal propped Fergus up with equal concentration. Their movements took on a rhythm, a call-and-response. The narrow bed and the man within it became the center of a ritual no less formal than any official rite.

A wedding, for instance.

Sophia didn’t blush to think about it any longer, nor did she instantly reject the notion as impossible. The thought was there, and there it sat, while she tipped the goblet carefully forward, felt the potion’s weight shift within it, and watched Fergus’s throat to see that he swallowed and didn’t choke.

Halfway through, that all became much more difficult.

The warmth Sophia remembered from the first potion bloomed in the air around Fergus then, and the chord without a source filled the room. Neither ended this time, but grew until the heat was almost unpleasant and the beauty of the sound nigh unbearable. Mortal frames were no more meant for such joy than fragile glass was meant to hold hot liquid. There would come a moment of breaking, regardless of goodness or courage on either part.

Sophia held on. She saw Cathal’s hands, tight around his friend’s shoulders. The sight helped her will steadiness into her own arms, and she had the sense that it went both ways, each of them giving strength to the other.

A glow like sunrise unfurled itself just over Fergus’s heart. It swept over him, giving radiance to every inch of his wasted body and all the pale skin that showed over the bedclothes. Where his arms and legs had been solid but withered from disuse, they gained flesh, until he looked no worse than a winter of idleness might have left him. The light moved upward, giving substance to his neck and face, settled in pools onto his closed eyes, and finally covered the top of his head.

All the room was still. Stillness was all. Either word or act was unthinkable, though Sophia yet retained enough idle curiosity to wonder if the whole world had gone quiet. It felt possible, and if it were so, fitting.

The chord swelled and faded. The glow died. Both were swift, yet gradual, not the abrupt end of an unfinished process but a due conclusion to all that had come before.

Fergus opened ruddy-brown eyes, more than a trifle dazed but as full of life as Sophia’s own. He blinked up at Sophia, then at Cathal. “Christ’s wounds,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “You did it.”

“She did it,” said Cathal. “I helped a bit.”

He sprinted to the door, and Fergus turned to Sophia, moving slowly and awkwardly, yet not with the impediments she would have expected from a man so long inactive. “I saw you. Here, once, but also…wherever he had me.”

“Yes,” Sophia said. She put the empty goblet down on the nearby table. Soon, she’d clean it with all due reverence…or as much as one mostly ignorant human woman knew how to provide. She was beaming; she didn’t think she could stop. “He’s gone.”

“I’d bloody think. Who are you?”

“Sophia Metzger. I came here from France, while you were—” She gestured. “I’m an alchemist. And a sort of magician now, perhaps.”

Fergus shook his head, but never got to say what was on his mind. Sithaeg rushed through the door then, moving like a woman half her age, and threw her arms around her son.

The time for explanations was past, or yet to come. Sophia slipped through the crowd and out of the room, making her way to the small door that led outside.

* * *

Winter’s chill yet lingered, and the rising sun hadn’t had much time to warm the air, but Sophia stood on the battlements and could feel spring approaching. The breeze that ruffled her wimple was gentler, lacking the knife-edge of winter days, and she could see a few brave leaves unfurling on the trees below her.

Come spring, Loch Arach might actually be rather beautiful.

Fergus would live to see it. In time, Sophia would tell him how, or Cathal would. For the moment, she was minded to let him have the moment: the reunion with his loved ones, the simple joy of living once more.

The landscape in front of her blurred, and she wiped her eyes—on her sleeve, as she’d not had the foresight to bring a handkerchief, but nobody was there to see.

A strong arm sliding around her waist proved her wrong, and so did a kiss on the back of her neck. “My love,” Cathal said, “just say the word, and I’ll take you home.”

She turned and laid her head against his shoulder, welcoming the shelter of both his body and his cloak. Spring was coming, but her gown was thin. “Would it be home for you too, if you did?” She was bold enough to ask it on that morning of triumph. “I do love you…but, or perhaps so, I’d not bind you to one place if you’d rather wander again.”

Cathal rested his head on top of hers. “Lass,” he said, “the place where you are is home enough for me. And being with you is journey enough as well.”

Light filled her until she could have floated with it, or sung songs of praise to the four corners of the earth. To avoid alarming the guards, who stood a fair distance away but probably would have still heard her, she settled for practicality. “My parents’ home, then, for a start,” she said, thinking that—if all went well—they’d have many years to travel too. More than any human would have been gifted. “When the roads and the seas are better. It would alarm the city to have you fly in, you know, and I don’t know how Alice would feel about such a journey.”

He laughed, joyous as a youth. “We travel the mortal way, then.”

“Well…” Sophia remembered the night clear and blue around her and the stars almost in her reach. “This time.”

Cathal pulled back just enough to let her see his smile. He leaned down and kissed her then. Breathless, she put her arms around his neck, and they stood there for a long time, with the spring morning rose and golden behind them.

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