Flann rushes out

Of course Osh had heard Paul’s prattling from as far as the road, and of course Paul had heard his father and announced their arrival beforehand.

Still, Flann found it queer that Osh should open the door himself and stroll directly in, as if they were still occupants of the big house and not guests – as if they had only stepped out for a walk, when in fact Flann had not stood in this hall since she had run away to be wed.

“Look at my girl!” Cat squealed. “Peeking out of her Da’s cloak like a wee white owl!”

Since she had run away to marry, Flann felt she had been rushing through another woman’s dream. She only wanted her days to seem ordinary again – even if it was to be a new ordinary, and she another woman.

She took a calming breath and began working up a tart way to tease her sister: to declare that she might as well have stayed at the castle, for all the attention she would be paid when Liadan was nigh. Cat would scoff and pause in her auntly adoration to kiss her, and Paul would take her cloak, and thereafter all would be as it had been before. Ordinary.

Then she saw the Abbot.

At the abbey she had held her eyes so close to his that she had seen the spidery spokes of green and brown in the depths of their watery blue. Those eyes had said what his voice had not: “There will be no crossing back over for you.”

At the length of her sister’s hall his eyes were dim and vague, more black than blue, but from this distance she could take in the entire tragedy of his gaze. “Now you are on the other side,” it said, forlorn, though he himself had been the one who had bundled her into the boat and shoved it away from the shore.

Flann tottered hesitantly towards him, never thinking of her muddy boots on her sister’s bearskin rug, so surprised was she to find she could come nearer to the Abbot at all.

He stood where he had been standing since she had come in – perhaps since he had glimpsed her through the window. His body was not stiff, but it did not move. His arms hung limply at his sides. Nevertheless he seemed to be drawing her towards him, as though he had left a rope tied to the little craft and longed to pull her back again.

“Look at Mama eyeing the good Father, all afeard!” Cat cried. “When’s the last time you confessed, darling? Since your wedding day? Since your wedding night?” she cackled.

“Not at all unless it was to Father Matthew,” Osh supplied.

“Father Matthew! Fie!” Cat laughed. “We would all be knowing it if she had, for Paul could have heard the wailing of him from here: ‘Kiss-​​ing!’” she squeaked, startling a wheezy laugh out of Liadan. “‘During Ad-​​vent!’” she and Paul cried together.

“That is only the start of it, my children,” Osh said mildly.

“Thank Heaven you’re here, Father!” Cat laughed. “Just in the nick of time!”

Father Aelfden turned his eyes from Flann’s face only long enough to mutter, “I see no particular urgency, Catan.”

“No time like the present time!” Cat said brightly. “Best to be getting that out of the way so you can be starting fresh again tonight! Eh, Osh?” she snickered.

Osh sighed mightily, but contentedly, Flann thought.

The Abbot ignored the unchristian aspects of Cat’s suggestion and simply said, “Whenever she is ready.”

His gaze flickered off Flann’s face for only a moment while he spoke, but when his eyes looked into hers again, she thought she saw a question lurking in their depths.

“I’m ready!” she declared, throwing up a false courage in the form of brazenness, as she always had. “I’d best not be waiting too long, or I shall be needing to wet my throat once or twice to get through the telling!”

Cat shrieked with wicked laughter, making innocent Liadan laugh along. “And here I thought ‘throat-​​wetting’ was something I ought to be confessing! Is that what you’re calling it, Osh? You sly thing!”

Paul finally guessed what his wife meant and gasped, “Cat!”

“During Ad-​​vent!” Cat squealed. “Sister!”

But Flann had already slipped past them and was rushing up the stairs.