Steam from the mash had thinned to a soft fog; bones were neatly piled; the lantern made a little sun in the blue mat-box. Feet pointed inward over the warmth, backs to the walls, Sheepy asleep across the doorway like a furry bar. Strong was a boneless weight on Anna's lap, heavy with trust, his Hulk towel a small green flag.
Sir Eòghan cleared his throat. He did it gently, as men do in church.
"My queen," he said, hands folded, voice low so as not to startle the sleeping babe. "I would no' break the feast—but may I speak?"
Anna blinked, cheeks full of roll, then swallowed and sat a little straighter. "Yeah. You can speak. It's fine."
"Thank you, maistress." His eyes flicked around the circle—Braveheart, the women, the men whose armor was stacked outside in obedient heaps—then back to Anna's paper crown lying beside the lantern. "Ye told us it is the year one thousand nine hundred and eighty-nine." He weighed the number like a stone. "How comes it then that our queen is sae young—and lodged here? Where stands thy castle? Are ye deposed? Or hidin' in this hedge frae the city?"
Heat rose to Anna's ears. Everyone was looking at her now with the kind of polite attention she'd never had at home, not even on birthdays. Her "castle" was a tent. Her throne was a crash mat. She wasn't a queen—she just… decided to be, and everyone had agreed, which was maybe worse.
She opened her mouth.
Braveheart lifted a hand, careful as a man moving a candle near silk. "Forgive the interruption," he said, eyes on Sir Egg, tone light with respect. "The matter touches a tender place with our… soon-to-be queen. She comes of Hope blood—good stock—but she is no crowned sovereign. No Scot is, now."
A murmur ran through the circle: a soft tightening, like shields kissing rim to rim.
"There is a reason," Braveheart went on, "but before we speak of it—before we seat heavy talk on a child's shoulders—tell us your Scotland, Sir Eòghan. The land you left. How you marched. How you died. Let Anna hear the road that carried you to this hedge. We'll set our world beside yours and measure the difference together."
Sir Egg's jaw worked once. He did not love being steered; he did love order, and the sense in what Braveheart asked. He glanced to Anna.
She nodded, grateful and a little breathless. "I want to hear," she said. "Please."
"Fine," Sir Eòghan said at last, and the word softened as it left him. "Though thy English runs sae far from ours, I ken thy meanin'." He set his palms on his knees, old habit, as if a scribe were about to write. "We'll speak it plain—how we were born Scots and free beneath our ain king; how the cross called us east; how we fell as men should—backs thegither, faces tae the foe—and how the Little Lord plucked us from dust and set us here."
He looked around the ring—the women, the men, the zealot with eggnog, the child with a sleeping god against her heart—and then back to Anna, who was trying very hard to be brave.
"With thy leave, maistress," he said—voice going ceremonial without meaning to—"I'll begin."
Anna tucked Strong closer and nodded once, queen-serious. "You have my leave… or permission, or whatever you mean."
Sir Egg inclined his head. The lantern burned steady. The mat-box hummed with breath. Outside, the river flowed in the dark, and a light snow began to fall. People slid deeper into their sleeping bags for warmth and listened as Sir Eòghan began.
He folded his hands on his knees. At first his voice had that old edge—stone and kirk-door—but as the tale deepened, what we heard was the thought of him: clear, steady, unadorned.
"Since ye asked for the whole of it… I was born not far from Edinburgh—north of the city, on a rise that looks over good fields and the Forth. My father held Craigies by right and service to his lord; my elder brother would have it after him. I was the spare—and that is a freedom, when a man keeps it clean.
"They raised me justly. Church on Sundays, work on the other six. I learned the sword before my hands were big enough to love its weight; the shield after, when bruises taught better than any master. I learned to count rents without cheating, to weigh a bushel, to judge a lamb by the look in its eye. Harvest teaches you the temper of heaven—too much rain, not enough, and still you make do. I hunted a little, fished a little, rode a great deal. My horse—Gull—was grey and quick. I lost him later. I still look for him in dreams.
"I loved, too. A wife with wheat in her hair. Children like candles—the room brighter for them, and the dark outside a little less bold. Life was good. Scotland was good. The lion flew, and there was peace enough to raise a family, free folk in a free realm. A few quarrels, aye—there's always some fool with a boundary stone in the wrong place—but no war fit to break a nation. We'd heard of the Great Revolt long past—1173—and gave thanks it lay behind us, our elders having borne that weight. The harvests were kind. Folk smiled with their faces and not just their mouths.
"Then the preaching rose. Crosses set on shoulders. The Pope's word came like a drum. The Holy Land called again. I was the second son—needed, but not necessary. My brother kept Craigies well; my wife and bairns would be kept by my brother and our youngest. I felt the pull—duty, not only to my house but to Christendom. How was it fair that we lived in peace while other Christians did not, with raids gnawing at their borders? So I went. A little ambition in it, too—to lift my family's name, to see the place of Our Lord's birth with my own eyes, to put the name of Craigies in a book God might read.
"I believed—simple as bread—that Our Lord's land is Christian land; that Rome once held it, long before there was any such creed as Islam, and so their claim was the claim of conquerors. And Byzantium—Christianity's eastern shield—if we were bold and God was kind, perhaps it would rise again and hold the line as it once had…"
"So I set the farm in order, kissed my wife, held my children, and called for volunteers. Not hirelings—kin by work and winter. Osbert with the big hands. Hob with shoulders like a yoke. Jankin, who could bind a barrel tight enough to hold a prayer. Morag with her herbs. Ysabeau with a butcher's knife and that small mark in her lip that made her look forever on the edge of a joke. Adam, Malcolm, Tamhas, and the rest—good souls who trusted me more than I deserved. We were not perfect, not all forged for war, but we believed. We were willing. We swore our oaths, and together we went.
"The Fourth Crusade was a knot of roads and sins—nothing we'd dreamt. We skirted quarrels that weren't ours. When men took the wrong city for the wrong reasons, we peeled away and kept faith with the path to Acre. We fell in with Count Simon de Montfort's company—zeal and iron together. We headed for the Holy Land proper because that was the vow, and vows are not umbrellas you open only when the rain suits you.
"How we died?" He breathed once, even. "As men should. We were ferrying wounded up a dry gully north of Arsuf when the world narrowed—sand, sun, the hiss of arrows. We set a schiltron at the mouth—shields touching, spearpoints like winter reeds. Father Cormac walked the ring with the pyx and had no fear in him. I planted the banner-staff in the earth and leaned my weight on it. The first wave broke like surf on rock. Then the next. Then the next, with horses in it.
"I remember small things. Morag's hands slick with blood binding a belly, cursing softly so the man would laugh. Ysabeau's last arrow sliding into a visor at arm's length; she smiled like she'd threaded a needle and then sat without quite meaning to. Hob snapped a spear off in his thigh and fought on with the stump like it owed him money. Osbert dragged a wounded lad into the ring and caught two shafts for the privilege. Adam's knuckles white on the banner because my hands had other work and I could not spare them for cloth.
"My mail turned aside more than it let in. I took a man's arm—clean—and his head after, because he kept coming. I put steel where steel belonged and said no more about it. Then the sky darkened. Arrows thudded in me like rain. One under the gorget. One through the meat of the shoulder. One… I lost count. We were still standing, backs touching, when the staff in the earth felt like a second spine; when the psalm in my mouth ran out of words and became breath. We went down one by one, neat as a coin dropped into dust.
"That's the last of the daylight I remember."
He paused. The lantern ticked.
"After that—God forgive me if I speak nonsense—there was a city in the far glance. White shores, a mild sea, and beyond that a great country of wheat like gold. Walls white as bone, high as a king's thought, gates with their own sunrise. At the center, a tower casting light as if from a well. From that light came warriors like angels—armored, innumerable, fierce and fair. Colonnades like old Greece, tunics white as cloud, guards in gold with spear and sword and bow. A mighty host—terrible and beautiful. I thought, we've made it. Then it all went soft. Something tugged. Time stacked itself like cards. I slept without sleeping.
"And then—" He looked at Strong in the green cartoon towel, at the tiny fist half-curled by Anna's arm. "—a voice tugged again, within: your time on earth isn't done. A child's cry called me to protect. A ledger blinked in my skull. Then I was here. A hedge. A tent. A world of smooth blue cloth and tame thunder. My body—" he flexed his hand, still surprised—"whole. No scars. No rot. No ache in the old breaks. As if God reset the bones and said, 'Up, man. You're not done.'"
He drew a breath. "I find myself here. Breathing. Wondering if the lion banner still flies over a free Scotland… or if the English have seen to our knees again."
Sir Eòghan looked to Sir Braveheart, then to Anna. "Well. That's my tale. Farm to banner. Banner to sand. Sand to light. Light to hedge. I left a wife and children in the Lord's keeping and a brother who can keep a roof dry. I took good men and women east. I brought none of them home. I aim to do better with the ones the Little Lord has given back.
"If you say bide in this bush and build—we build. If you say march—we march. If you say slay the enemy—whomever they are—we'll do it. If you say fall upon our own swords, we'll do that too; without you we would not be, and so our lives belong to the Little Prince Strong—and to you, my queen."
He lifted his gaze to Anna, steady and obedient. "My queen, I am at thy service. That is the whole of me."
Silence held for a breath—respectful, full. The lantern's warm circle touched every face; outside, the river turned a black page.
Anna swallowed and nodded, eyes bright. Braveheart's mouth pressed to a line, as if words had edges. Strong slept on, breathing small and even, while the world adjusted itself around a story that had climbed out of a grave to sit at a child's feast.