Free Return to Rhonan by Katy Walters Page B

coming disaster. 
    Alice wailed, ‘This cottage has been in my family for over two hundred years; it is all I know, Muriall – all I know. We can barely scratch a living, but it is ours even though the rent is high.’  Muriall clung to them both, as Alice put her head on her husband’s chest and sobbed. It did not seem possible that this small cottage had been a place of childhood joy, chasing each other through the heather, milking the ld cow, lying sprawled on the baked earth floor listening to stories from old Patrick, Alice’s father. 
    Alice in a strangled voice, said, ‘Where – where will we go?’ So many have starved there; others drowned in the cruel waves cutting the kelp.  The bairns are so little but cut the kelp they must. Oh dear God save us.’
    Muriall whispered. ‘It is the Coast – Duncan fought hard, but he lost Alice – he lost.  However, don’t despair, it is not far from us. We will make sure you have food, and we will help you build a cottage.  I promise you Alice, we will not forsake you.’
    Robert lifted his head, looking at the children, as he said, ‘They have not broken us, and they think they have broken the clans, destroyed our Chieftains but the spirit is still there.  Tis a different world we had Muriall before Culloden, a world of sharing, of compassion, and love.  The land belonged equally to all the clan from the eldest to the youngest. The Chieftain too shared all.  This would not have happened in the days of the clan. It was a hard life, but a life the clans lived for thousands of years.   We ate together we starved together, each a brother, a sister.   A different world Muriall – lost in the hardened hearts of these greedy landlords. 
    Muriall wiped her eyes and lifted her head, ’But another world will come Robbie, a world that will not forget what happened to the brave Highlanders.  They will mourn Robbie – somehow in my heart, I know that. And those that write of these days will weep for us e’en though we are in our graves.

 
     
    CHAPTER 1 4
     

PRESENT DAY - JESSICA
The dream                          
    As Douglas closed the door, Jess frowned, he was so like Duncan, the man in the locket. She tried to think of it as a co-incidence, many people had a double.  Crossing to the bed, she lifted the duvet and bottom sheet to examine the mattress, her hand sinking into the plump softness. Ah yes, deep memory foam, as were the pillows.  She’d sleep okay here.  Once undressed, she pulled on a robe and on a whim went to the balcony to take another look at the lake. Stepping onto the balcony, she saw the woman was back, looking directly at her.  Frowning, Jess took out a digital camera from her handbag and moving out of view, took a photo of her. She was intrigued; the woman could have been her twin. Another co-incidence.  A shiver  ran through her body, things seemed a little unreal.  Maybe it was the tiredness.    
    She felt that familiar heaviness of her eyes pulling her into sleep, that tug of her body that forebodes of something more than a dream. 
    Earlier, she’d had that sense of déjà-vu when the cab drove up to the Manor, but it was fleeting.  Rubbing her eyes, she felt she was entering Muriall’s body again.  As always, it was a strange sensation.  She wondered if Muriall had any idea what was happening, whether she too felt the same weird sensations as Jess’s spirit slipped into her body, her mind.   Really, it was time she and Dinah investigated whether this was a Past Life experience. She still felt that guilt, of being a voyeur, but she was helpless to stop the dream happening. She was also anxious about Muriall. Shaking her head, she smiled, why should she be so worried for someone dead over two hundred years? But, the dreams were so real. Anyway, dead or not, the woman ran such risks.  She certainly had guts, having a love affair with a distant cousin-in-law . In those times, it was