Christmas in the City - Jill Barnett Page 0,86
air was cool. Land ended here. The great wide sea began and went on and outward to the very edges of the world. Clusters of black and white puffins bobbed on the water beyond the surf, and seals lay in brown lumps upon the coastal rocks, barking and squalling at nothing but the air and sea.
Her dog raced ahead of her, through the shallow water, so she pulled off her wooden shoes, tossed them on a rock, and chased after him along the golden crescent of damp sand, where blue-green saltwater foamed and the tide pulled at her bare ankles.
“Fergus! Fetch!” Glenna called to the hound and walking out toward deeper water, she threw a rope of knobby kelp. He barked and dove at it, his head popping up out of the water, kelp rope between his teeth. He looked as if he were grinning at her. She laughed at him before a wave knocked her under and she came up spitting saltwater and searching for her footing.
A piece of bleached wood drifted past on swell. She tossed it high in the air for him. The two of them played with the stick for a long time, stopping to paddle together in the calmer sea between waves, until they both were soaked and cool and breathing hard. She trudged through the water toward the shore with the tide pulling at her clothes, before stopping in the sand to pull up her tunic and tighten the wet rope drawstring on her sodden peasant trouse.
On the northern edge of the cove, the huge granite rocks were warm from the bright sunshine, and she climbed atop a flat one without a seal stretched out on it, and laid back, hand over her eyes. A nearby seal barked, but didn’t deign to move when Fergus jumped up next to her, circling twice before he hunkered down for a nap, shaggy wet chin resting on his enormous paws. Soon she drifted off.
What woke her she could not say, but Fergus’ head shot up with her and he gave a low growl. A horse and rider came around the far southern end the cove, where there was a small, less rocky trail from the far cliffs down to the sea.
“Come, Fergus! Quickly! Down!” Glenna rolled over and went down behind the rock, climbing back and around so she was hidden between the seals.
Who was this man?
She and her brothers lived on the western edges of the island, far, far from the only village on the east side. Even the Norse on the northernmost tip stayed clear, so beaten and gaunt was the terrain here. There was no value to the land or what little grew on it, so they lived in complete isolation, which her brothers claimed was what their battle-weary father had wanted, to be hidden at the end of land where no one would call him to war or had a reason to come within even a day’s ride.
To her chagrin, her belt with its knife lay next to her bed in the cottage. A fool’s mistake to leave her weapon behind. Slowly she eased up between a group seals to keep her eye on the stranger, then quickly shoved Fergus’ head down when he decided to follow her lead.
“Stay down,” she whispered to him, and he whimpered and put his snout on his paws, clearly unhappy with her.
As the man rode closer and along the edge of the water, she could easily see his rank as a noble warrior dressed for protection in a padded jack gambeson of leather and mail covered his legs. He rode with no troop of men, and she glanced up at the cliffs to see if there were others above, but there was no one. She looked back at him as he drew closer. A shield emblazoned with a rampant golden lion on an azure field hung down from his pommel and soon the sun caught the glint of his sword and she spotted several large stones the size of crabapples inlaid along the scabbard strapped to his hips. His wealth was evident; his horse was one of the finest animals she had ever seen, head high, perfect arch of the neck, black mane and tail flowing. And she watched, somewhat lost in the beauty of the two them; the horse and man cut an exquisitely handsome figure through the wet sand, sea spraying up behind them and turning into rainbows in the glare of bright sunshine.
He dismounted,