“It’s the date you set yourself, ma’am,” Ila broke in. She had appeared from nowhere, a stack of linens piled in her arms. “And Ms. Leezie would be quite upset if you moved it.”
Leezie had declared tomorrow’s date fortunate by some arcane calendar she had found. Three priests had come to the blackhouse village, and she’d used most of her spending money to buy a tiny statue of a frowning saint from an exotic country to the south. The saint statue was supposed to grant safe passage over water, which they would need to get to Eilean Glan.
“You don’t all have to stare at me like that!” Elinor exclaimed, color coming into her cheeks. “I just lost track of the days!”
As Merida hurried out on her way to check the kitchen supplies one last time, she exchanged a grateful look with Ila.
They were going. They were really going. One last journey. One last triplet. One last season before autumn rolled into winter and Christmas came with its doom or salvation.
It was a wild last day and night. Aileen made a grand going-away feast. Fergus gifted Elinor a fine new cloak for her jouney, lined with shiny black fur. Elinor gifted Merida a third dress to replace her dress worn at the elbows from shooting. Hamish played his new harp without stop. There was no sign of the slump-shouldered, uncertain triplet when his long fingers were on the harp. This was the boy who had saved his father as the world crumbled beneath him.
Old friend, Cennedig had called his harp.
Merida had no doubt Hamish had just met one of his own.
Later that night, after Merida had checked and double-checked and triple-checked their preparations, she’d settled down into bed for her last sleep in a good bed for many days. She lay there in her bedroom, listening to the mice have their way with her things under her bed, looking at the familiar shadows of all her childhood things, wondering if her mother was still going to back out at the last minute. She thought about getting up to find a cat to quiet the mice, but then she thought about how she would have to find something to quiet the cat. And then she thought about the trip some more.
And in the midst of all that, out of nowhere, as she ran out of things to think about, she realized the harp had to have been Feradach’s doing.
She felt stupid at once for not immediately putting it together. Feradach knew Hamish wanted to be a harper, because he had come to see her directly after their return from Kinlochy. He’d had an entirely different proof of ruin to show her, which he’d altered after seeing how upset she was; the trip to Cennedig was clearly an improvisation, hence the delay in his return and the need to borrow a horse. Why take her to Cennedig of all people? Yes, the harper’s story was a kind one, but in retrospect, of course he had meant for her to secure an apprenticeship for Hamish. And now, freak flooding had directed this harp right to their door just the day before she left. When had merchants ever accidentally found themselves at DunBroch? It had never happened before.
The hand of Feradach was all over the situation, minus the visible handprint.
Put together, it made sense.
But it also didn’t make sense.
Feradach hadn’t done a thing to save those dying people in Kinlochy. But he’d moved rivers to make sure Hamish’s change was well and truly complete before Merida left for Eilean Glan.
Why?
But deep down, she knew why. Just as clearly as she remembered the horrors of Kinlochy, she remembered Feradach’s shock when he saw her there at Kinlochy. His downcast face as she’d shouted at him on the wall. He knew what she could bear seeing and what she couldn’t, and he’d tried his best to shield her and failed.
What could he have said to Merida to change her feelings about how it had all happened?
Nothing.
But Feradach could do his part to help save one of her brothers. From him.
It was an odd little gift from an apologetic god.
IN THE end, Elinor astonished all of them.
All those days of planning on Merida’s part, all her worries that Elinor would back out at the last minute, all her preparations to hopefully keep Elinor comfortable enough to forget the woes of traveling—it turned out to be for nothing.
Because when Merida, Harris, and Leezie assembled to leave the following morning, they discovered that the courtyard was absolutely full to madness. There were horses, people, and carts everywhere. Soldiers milled. Women hurried by with supplies. Aileen bellowed orders.
And at the helm of this ship of moving parts was Elinor, queen of DunBroch, looking as effortlessly regal as she did while doing anything else. Only what she had done in this case was, for the past several weeks, quietly put together an enormous retinue of the shape and quality that would be appropriate for a royal traveling through the countryside.
This was not Merida’s slow trundle through the winter countryside with a pony cart. This was not Fergus’s off-the-cuff trip with two of his children. This was suitable for diplomacy, for looking at from the outside.
Elinor had assembled a contingent of soldiers to protect them from bandits and neighbors who might mean them ill (these were the soldiers who’d kept Merida from her game field). She’d hired a group of hunters to protect them from wolves (why hadn’t Fergus done that!). She’d had Aileen coordinate a mobile staff of women to carry and prep food. Stable boys stood at alert beside the pack ponies and the supply carts. Laundresses and their apprentices finished pressing the tools of their trade into rush baskets and wooden crates. An entire cadre of scouts had saddled up to check out the way ahead and set up the sleeping tents (tents! What luxury while traveling). There were ponies to carry heather mattresses and ponies to carry heather ale. Ponies to carry all the things they wanted to take with them and ponies to carry all the things they might want to bring back. At Elinor’s side during all of these preparations was catlike Ila, smiling her private smile and holding Elinor’s journals and ledgers for her.
Merida would have been more put out that all her own effort was for naught if she hadn’t been so impressed. She didn’t think there were that many people still even living in DunBroch. All the hustle-bustle in front of the newly renovated DunBroch made the entire castle seem brand-new.
Ardbarrach could not call this the work of a rural pretender, she thought.
She hadn’t known her mother could be like this.
“That’s my traveling queen,” Fergus said. “Don’t get into trouble.”
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Elinor said. She looked not at all like Merida was used to seeing her, but rather pink and flustered and excited. “And you’ll have Hubert back here in just a few days, just in time for the Hunt for the Unnamed.”