CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nine White Candles

The coffin rested on a dais before the altar; nine white candles burned around it. Phemie knelt on the flagstone floor, hiding her fate in the linen cloth that covered the dais. "If dyin' would give her life, how gladly would I die."

Sick at heart, Jacobus attempted to do his duty as a priest. "There has to be a good reason far this, or God would not have allowed it to happen. If it were not better for her ladyship to be gone, she would still be here."

Phemie spat back at him. "Go away wi' yer nonsense, ye dinna expect any reasonable mortal to believe the like o' that." She rocked back and forth. "Oh, she's away, an' she has taken more o' my heart wi' her than she left ahind her."

His throat was dry and tight; each word had to be choked out as he reached down to pat her bony shoulder. "This grief will pass in time, I promise. You will forget the sadness, and remember only the happiness. Remember all you told me of your mother's faith."

"Women o' Strathclyde ha' long memories. I'm no good at forgettin'. None o' us are. My mother was na good at it either." She buried her face once again in the linen cloth: the battle raging within her was fought out in silence.

A distant noise caught Jacobus' attention. His face drained of color and he gave up his pitiful attempts at consolation. In the past weeks, he had come to respect Lady Catherine's maidservant as a woman of strong sense, a wolfhound of the old Scots breed. He spoke to her not as a mourner who required sympathy but as a companion in strife. "Listen. The Norsemen and the men-at-arms of Sir Wallis are attacking the castle. Can you hear the screams, and the crash of the battering ram against the main gate?"

Phemie lifted her bead a little. Her eyes were swollen shut with weeping. "Aye, I hear it, but what care I for such rabble."

"Your grief must be put aside if we are to survive this assault. The kitchen wenches and serving women can do nothing but shriek. You must rally them to help our own warriors. The men fighting on the battlements will need healing potions, linen bandages, ale to keep up their strength. Lord Alistair is on the ramparts now, commanding the fighting men. I am asking you to take command of the women within."

Roused by his tone of authority, Phemie raised herself up. She set her teeth and once more Jacobus was reminded of a great lean shaggy wolfhound. "I heed ye, sir. As ye ha' put such a trust in me, ye'll never ha' cause to regret it." A sob burst from Phemie despite her resolution, and she stroked the closed lid. "I seen her face afore they put the lid on, an' she smiled so sweet-like, an' looked as bonnie as the white lilies that grow in a convent garden. Oh, but I'll no win over this sorrow for a while I'm afeared. "

"None of us will," be assured her. Angrily he began to rip down from the wall the evergreen garlands that gave the chapel a wedding air. He was supposed to accept every occurrence as the will of God, but sometimes it wasn't easy. He would have to twist his conscience to see this as a blessing. As far as he was concerned. God had been on sabbatical since the monastery on Iona was set afire.

Phemie lurched out the door. wiping her eyes on her sleeve, just as Vincent came in.

He was breathing in great harsh gasps, as if he had been running. "I was at the far end of the secret tunnel when I felt ..." He saw the coffin then and the words died in his throat. It was as if his body had received a frightful blow. Never on a living man had Jacobus seen a face so white.

"My lad ... my boy ... " Jacobus dropped an armload of evergreens and limped hurriedly toward rum, appalled. Vincent had the look of a man who has taken a death­blow straight through flesh and bone, and lives only long enough to look annihilation in the face. "We don't know what happened. Phemie found her. It is barely dawn, you must not be here."

"Where should I be." There was a pause between every word, as if he had to force himself to breathe. "Where should I be, if not with her." He was so blind, so stunned, with the sudden change from life to death, that he could scarcely see Jacobus, didn't notice the candle that was knocked aside as he approached the dais.

Desperate with panic for him, Jacobus repeated, "You must not stay here. There will be men of Clann Eóghain killed on the battlements, the bodies will be brought here, you'll be seen."

Vincent did not hear him at all. He touched the coffin tentatively, as if unsure of its substance. The blow was so cruel and so unexpected that he could hardly take it in. "I do not have anything but what she gave me. I am nothing but what she made me. Can you understand that? Can you understand that I have nothing else, that I have never had anything else in all the years that I have lived?"

The reality of the loss exploded within him. His head bowed lower and lower until his whole body was bent in agony over the coffin. He slid his arms out along the lid and rested his forehead on the thin wood. Nothing existed but pain, ripping him inwardly until he was bleeding to death. "She said I love you. To me. She said it to me."

A blasphemous thought burned through the mind of Jacobus, though he tried to push it aside: that the cruelest road to Hell leads past the gates of Heaven. ­

As if he had sensed the thought, Vincent said, "Catherine. How could even God endure a world without you. He shouldn't be able to bear it."

He hadn't known until now how much he had hoped. There was no more hope, it was over, and the darkness of the past thirty years would descend on him once more, only that the darkness would be more dense, more unbearable, because of having lived for a little while in the light.

As he sank down across the coffin his soul seemed to sink down with it into bottomless depths of grief, where no light had ever been. This was the finish of everything: the strivings, the hopes, the fears, the love and laughter.

"Why was I given this love for you, this crying out, this reaching out of heart and soul and body to you? Why? If this was to be the end -- why?" His hands that gripped the thin wood were clenched and trembling. A single dreadful sob broke from him: he caught his breath and held it rigidly until his whole body was shuddering with the effort to hold it back.

Jacobus looked on mutely until he could bear it no longer. "Ah, don't! Let it come. It will be easier to bear afterwards."

Vincent shook his head. After an endless moment almost inarticulately, he answered, "It's no good crying out. It's got to be endured until the end." A terrible convulsion went through him as he pushed back from the coffin. He looked as good as dead himself.

Cautiously Jacobus touched his sleeve, as if he feared that Vincent might lash out. Instead, he turned away from the coffin and strode purposefully out the door, with Jacobus in pursuit.

Down the passageway ran Phemie; she was ripping up linen sheets as she ran. Bandages fluttered from her hands. To Jacobus she panted, "Lord Alistair has taken an arrow in the belly. Come directly, ye're wanted."

Two loyalties were tearing Jacobus apart. "Vincent, I beg you, tell me you're not going to go out to do battle. There are two enemy armies and the clan warriors out there, and any one of them will slay you on sight."

Vincent did not look back as he began to descend the dungeon steps. In a detached, impersonal fashion, out of the depths of his despair, he wondered how Jacobus could imagine that his warnings had any importance. Nothing in the world could matter after this.

On the threshold Jacobus pleaded with him. "You've always had the courage of half a dozen men. You told me how you leaped on the horse's back and galloped across the countryside and jumped the hedge. Can't you strengthen your heart for one more jump, and get over this?"

"I shall get over it, but it will be to reach the other side. She died without ever knowing how I love her. If her spirit still lives somewhere beyond the stars, I will meet her again, and kneel, and tell her everything. If there is nothing beyond, I will never know it. Either way, there will be peace."

***

All was still within the castle, though sounds of warfare echoed from the battlements above. In the chapel, eight candles cast a halo of light around the coffin; the toppled one had flickered out. Slowly, quietly, the chapel door opened. Sitric, as stately and proud as a valkyrie, glanced around the small dank room with contempt. None of her gods would have accepted such a miserable hovel as a dwelling place. The gods' shrine in Gamla Uppsala was entirely covered in gold, and the trees around it dangled with sacrifices of dogs, horses, cattle, and men. That was a shrine worthy of a god.

She flicked the coffin lid open and stared impassively down at the colorless face of Lady Catherine. The woman had been small -- too small to bear healthy sons. She had been slender, light on her feet, and joyous. She had no majesty, no dignity, such as befits the wife of a ruler. And yet her fleeting charm had swayed the desires of the lord for whose sake Sitric had renounced her own kinfolk.

Sitric reached into the coffin and lifted Lady Catherine out. The limp form drooped across her strong shoulder, leaving her one hand free to drop the lid shut.

It was the work of a moment to kneel behind the altar and pull from the wall the one loose block. She dropped her burden crawled through, and then reached back to drag out the still form of her former rival. She glanced back up to the ramparts as she stood straight and tall: the woman was no weight.

The battle seemed to be centered around the main gate, on the far side of the castle. In any case Sitric had no fear. A dagger was pushed through her apron strings. Besides she would only be seen as a mourner retrieving a dear one from the battlefield.

Lady Catherine's unbound hair dangled almost to the ground. Her arms and legs swung limply; Sitric tightened her grip. Shifting her burden a little, she set off with long strides across the heathery hills.

***

Vincent shoved the fist-shaped boulder back into its hollow, concealing the tunnel entrance, and stood up straight. He felt a faint pang of surprise that he still lived. He had never imagined it was possible to suffer such pain and still go on breathing. A sob stuck in his throat like a shard of a knife. He swallowed and was surprised he did not start to choke on his own blood. But this was not the time to give way to grief. There would never be a time, if he fought and fell as was his plan.

For the first time he saw the summer sky blue and pure above his own island. Before, he had seen it only spangled with stars. Sounds of battle clashed from the ruins of the village beyond the wheatfield. He guessed that men of Clann Eóghain had poured out through the castle gate to drive back the invaders to the sea. The clansmen, most of them, were fishermen, though; farmers and artisans. Outnumbered two to one, how could they win over Norse berserks and battle-hardened men-at-arms.

They were his kinsmen, though they acknowledged him not. To die fighting for them ... there would be some meaning in such a death. He had no fear of dying as he strode toward the village; if he had any fear at all, it was of surviving. The darkness inside him could not be lightened any longer by a sight of the blue sky. She was gone, and he carried his own darkness with him.

As he neared the village he heard the clang of metal and the thunder of horses' hooves. Shouts of defiance and fury drew him to a sheepfold, where two towheaded Scots lads were backed against a fence, fighting gamely with pitchforks against a mounted knight whose mace was already stained with blood. The legs of the horse were splashed with red to the knee. From Vincent there came a sound, half cry, half roar, as he loosed the animal rage that lurked in the deepest part of himself. The horse reared, screaming: Vincent seized the knight and dragged him from the saddle, slashing with his clawed hand at the man's face and chest. His strength was let loose, and the man was a corpse before he struck the ground.

The younger lad, cringing against the fence, whispered, "Mercy take us, Peadair. It's the legend."

Gripping a wounded leg, Peadair gasped, "Well done, creature, well done. Ye got him beat."

From the demolished church burst a half-naked Viking, dragging a village woman by her plaid. He spied Vincent, tossed the dead woman aside, and swung up his battleaxe. Vincent ducked under the weapon, grabbed his bare shoulders, and ripped downwards as a lion might rip a rabbit. In a fountain of blood the man sagged to the heart.

Peadair and his brother pòl watched through the fence, cheering. "He's gotten his licks!" That'll tell them Clann Eóghain has been here!"

Screaming with mindless feral rage, Vincent grabbed up the knight's sword. He leaped up the low roof of one of the stone huts and held the sword high: all across the glen, clansmen and foes turned to see. His purple plaid blew like a war banner and the sword in his hand pierced the sky as he threw his head back and screamed the war cry of the clan: "Buaidh no Bàs, Victory or Death!"

Hoarse yells answered the rallying cry: Vincent leaped from the roof and ran, sword in hand, into a knot of four men-at-arms who were beating an old man down with their wooded shields. It was old Raonull, who had taught a song to Lady Catherine. The memory fired him with grief and rage.

A whirl of the sword cut through the spine of one mercenary and pierced the chain mail coat of a second. The swordpoint jammed in the metal links; he threw sword and corpse aside and attacked with his own weapons; flashing teeth, ripping claws, speed, and strength. Without hesitation or thought he lunged at both men-at-arms, hurling one to the hearth. The other, reeling but still on his feet, raised his blade for a two-handed thrust down through Vincent's body. a barrage of rocks caught him in the face and he staggered backwards: the aim of the two lads was deadly and accurate.

Yelled Pòl: "At him creature, ye're doin' fine!"

Vincent seized the ankles of the remaining mercenary and shattered his leg with his teeth. As he tottered, howling with pain, Vincent leaped up and swing with all the strength of his arm. Chain mail tore like parchment and the dead man landed on the grisly heap of his companion.

Old Raonull knelt, trembling. He was face to face with the legend of the dungeon, and it was fighting on the side of the right. "Òg-ghaisgich a's gruamach snuagh, Dia do bheatha! Young hero of the frowning face, welcome!"

All around him clansmen were rallying to beat back the invaders. Inspired by the sight of a being they thought supernatural, they fought with hope of victory, swinging scythes and fishing spears against the swords of heir foes.

He fought mindlessly, with reckless courage. From the first break of day the battle had raged; now, at midday, it was at its height. Islanders and Norsemen were knotted in one mass as the charging war-bands encountered. It was a conflict fought hand to hand, weapon to weapon, life for life. Three battle flags surged back and forth: a red bull, a hammer of Thor, a snarling otter. Though again and again a standard bearer fell, yet ever the standards were raised again before the flag could sink in the enemy's sight. Every warrior that lived kept his life by sheer, breathless, ceaseless, hand to hand swordplay, hewing right and left, front and rear, without pause.

It was bitter, stifling, cruel work; Vincent threw himself into the deadliest of the carnage. His plaid an shirt had been torn aside and his chest was bare; he was drenched with blood, not his own; and his face and hands were caked. He could not see a yard in front of him. he could not tell how the day went anywhere. save that his clansfolk took his presence to be supernatural and went with him into the hell of battle, into the jaws of death. surging about him striking and thrusting. When they could not see his face his voice reached them roaring the clan's war cry. "Buaidh no Bàs!"

Mounted men-at-arms and screaming berserkers closed in on every side, hemming in, beyond escape, the outnumbered islanders. Vincent leaped a huddled, stiffened heap of dead men and heard a cry from a rider. "Surrender, we will show mercy!"

A tow-headed lad shook a pitchfork in the air. "Have we shown ourselves cowards, that ye think we shall yield?"

A cheer of wild delight that broke from the clansfolk was echoed by the battle­mad roar of Vincent. One purpose bound them into a wall of weapons that broke through the ring of horsemen and opened the field beyond.

The village was behind him; ahead rose the bluff and the sea where a high­prowed longship and one merchant vessel rode at anchor. Wounded men sprawled atop the ridge: as he ran, Vincent saw one rise, lurch, and fall again, pierced by an arrow. Red-bearded Ceannaideach the fletcher and his son Cléireach perched in a pine tree, taking aim through the branches.

He leaped over the fallen body of a standard bearer, and grabbed up the flag. Torn and bloody though it was, it would hearten the fighting men. He reached the long pole up into the pine branches: Cléireach understood, took it from him, and fastened it to the topmost point of the tree with his belt. The flag billowed out and seemed to be answered by the faint wail of bagpipes from the distant castle ramparts. Fraoch Eilean.

The clang of weapons came to him from the beach beyond the ridge. He whirled to climb the slope -- and then felt something odd. Unexpectedly he sensed a tug deep within himself, like the tightening of a responsive cord. He put one hand over his chest, as if to guard it, and waited without breathing. A faint awakening pulled again at the fibers of his innermost self.

A thrown spear grazed his arm but he did not heed it. His whole being was concentrated on that slight pulse. For an uncertain moment he felt as if be had two hearts.

"No. Please. Don't let me be mistaken."

He let his hands fall to his sides and opened himself inwardly, leaving himself vulnerable, ready with everything that was in him to respond to that resonance. Oh, if he could only speak with her across the narrow river! If he could only make her shadow hear, and tell her how he loved her.

A berserker thundered down the ridge, wheeling a sword over his head and howling like a wolf. Vincent saw him, saw his own death coming, and instinctively spun to defend himself. With a snarl he raised a clawed hand.

It touched him again, that tremor that vibrated through his blood; and his upraised arm sagged, leaving him helpless. The blade aimed at his throat mattered less than that brief reunion.

The point stung his throat; with a horrible groan, the berserker collapsed to his knees and toppled face down, an arrow protruding from his shoulderblades. Ceannaideach waved an acknowledgement from his perch in the tree. As in a dream, Vincent put a hand to his neck and felt a smear of blood, then completely forgot the scratch. Nothing existed except that faint and wavering vibration.

The pain of hoping was destroying him. In despair, he threw the whole force of his agony into the connection that had once been so strong. "Catherine, my blessed love. is it you?" If she could only come back, only for an hour, a moment, never again should she have cause to doubt the love that was straining even now to reach her beyond the grave.

As if in answer, a wave of stars swept through him and flickered out. He couldn't judge whether her spirit had heard his cry or if the momentary glimmer of the bond was an illusion fostered by unbearable loss.

Vincent had reached the end of his endurance. One sign was all he needed, one assurance that his own soul, freed by death, could rise to hers. He willed the bond to become a pathway, and dropped all his defenses to pray to her angel-spirit. "Don't vanish, I'm coming, hold the gate open."

His bitter cry was answered, but in a way he did not expect. Stronger, deeper, and truer, the resonance began to throb. He dropped back his head and braced himself, accepting the pulse-beats into his deepest self. The star-path widened to a current that flooded him like a river of light, fathomless and real, carrying to him a sense of her presence that grew in tenderness and power until it filled his whole body with brilliant conviction. Such a strength of feeling could not be coming from the world beyond. She was…

He gripped his chest with both hands, trying to hold himself together. The sounds he uttered weren't human. The flood of emotion surging through the connection told him she was alive. It couldn't be true but he couldn't doubt it, for the bond was crashing through his body like an ocean tide, carrying to him the pulse of her feelings; healing his dying heart with the touch of her life.

She was alive.

Someone was screaming; it might have been himself as he stumbled a few steps in the direction of the castle and then staggered again toward the sea. Crazed with frenzy, he lost all sense of direction. He tripped over the dead man, fell, and lurched to his feet again, still screaming like a madman. "Catherine! Catherine!"

Falling to his knees, he thrust both arms high into the air. The roar that ripped from him was wordless - there were no words - the bond had to carry the message: Tell me where you are!