Free Thorn in My Heart by Liz Curtis Higgs Page B

disagreeable taste and spewed them out. “Stick to your bannocks,” he muttered, tossing the berries aside and brushing off his hands. He settled onto the plaid and made do with the provisions in his sack, trying not to think of the flagon of ale he might have had at House o’ the Hill nor the soft heather mattress in the rafters. Nor the rocky grave beneath him.
    He thought instead of the terrible days events, of his father's face when he'd served the old man goat meat for venison. Before they parted, son and sire had forged a tenuous truce, and his father had extended a second blessing on him—this time on purpose. But all the grand words in the world could not erase the ones spoken earlier: “You have brought shame to Glentrool this day, James McKie.” Even now, that shame pressed on Jamie's chest like an enemy's shield, forcing him to his knees.
    He would not presume to pray. How could he possibly ask Almighty God to listen to the prayer of a sinner such as he? Yet another burning coal to add to his head: There'd been no hour of family worship that night, not after his brother and he had turned the kitchen into a batdeground. Every night but this one the supper table would be cleared and the family Bible lifted from its timeworn box by the hearth. “Let us worship God,” the elder McKie would say, his tone solemn, his intentions clear. The household servants would join them, quietlytaking their seats on wooden benches along the far wall. When his father lined out a psalm with a tuneless voice, they'd respond in unison with the familiar words from the Psalter: “Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God.”
    Hope.
Jamie had litde hope left. Evans threat was not an idle one. His brother longed to kill him and soon—before Jamie could marry and produce a son who would inherit Glentrool in his stead. Leaving was a necessity, and so was a hasty marriage.
    The LORD of hosts is with us.
His father's favorite prayer from Psalms echoed in Jamie's heart.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
    Refuge.
Hiding among stones, running for his life. An odd place for the laird's newly blessed son to find himself. There was naught to be done but sleep and hope the
morns morn
might bring some relief from his guilt. Jamie unbuttoned his waistcoat and tucked his traveling pouch inside his voluminous shirt for safekeeping, then wrapped himself in the plaid, his cocked hat put aside for the night. He would sleep only a short while, intending to leave before dawn.
    Unless Evan found him first.
    With a stone beneath his head and a tawny owl hooting
too-whit, too-whit
from a neighboring tree, Jamie shifted on the granite slab until he felt reasonably comfortable. “Let me sleep the sleep of the dead,” he murmured as his eyes drifted shut and his body relaxed into slumber. Beyond the dark circle of stones, a rowan twig snapped in two.

Ten
     
    And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted dreams,
And into glory peep.
     
    H ENRY V AUGHAN
     
    G od help me!” Jamie bolted to his feet, awake in an instant, his pulse racing. He pressed a hand to his chest, willing his heart to calm and his shallow breaths to lengthen. What had awakened him with such a start? A dream, he decided, struggling to recapture the last threads of it.
    The morning sun had yet to show its face above the eastern hills, but already the air was clear. Jamie rubbed the grit from his eyes and shook his head, trying to loosen the strange visions grip on his imagination. But the dream—if it
had
been a dream—refused to be dislodged. A staircase figured into it somehow, taller than any mountain in Galloway. Not a mahogany stair, like the one at Glentrool, this one was bright and shining as a full moon in a midnight sky. Winged creatures moved up and down the stair. And the voice he'd heard! It had rumbled like thunder and roared like the sea.
    Even now