MacKinnons' Hope: A Highland Christmas Carol Read Free Page B

thick to speak, and yet he tried. “Do they have enough—” clothes, food, what else — “to last the winter long?”
    Eleanore slowly shook her head.
    “What will they do? What happens now?”
    Without a word Eleanore swept her hand along the landscape, and suddenly they were standing in the same field at twilight. The hillside fell silent; no laughter echoed through the meadow. He had the sense that many years had passed. The landscape was much changed. Like Aldergh, the castle on the hill stood no more. Stone by stone it had been dismantled, until all that remained was a stone footprint upon the hill, guarded by half turned stones. The land was barren, overgrown with thistle. The barns were gone. No more peasant homes remained.
    Were their fates somehow tied to his?
    Hugh reconsidered the gravestone upon Chapel Hill—and then, as though he’d conjured it, he was standing over the tombstone once again, with Eleanore flickering like a candle by his side. He shivered beneath a gentle snowfall. A single flake fell upon his beard. Beside him, his pale dead wife wept a crystal tear. It fell to the ground, melting into the snow. Hugh peered down at the tombstone lying disfigured at his feet, one corner lopped off as though someone had taken a hammer to the stone. The words it bore finally brought him to his knees…
    Etched in soft stone—not even deep enough to endure the years—was carved: Here lies Hugh FitzSimon, last heir of Aldergh Castle. The year engraved upon the stone was 1135, the month, December.
    Eleanore spoke softly beside him. “ Knowing is my gift, Hugh. While there is breath there is yet hope…”
    Panic seized him. “What must I do? Tell me!” He lifted his hands in supplication. “Anything, Eleanore, please tell me what to do!”
    Much diminished now, Eleanore’s light appeared weaker. She touched his shoulder gently, so delicately that Hugh might have mistaken her touch for a snowflake.
    “Before the fire burns low in the last hour of the last day before the winter solstice, you must change your heart, Hugh FitzSimon.”
    “’Tis already changed, Eleanore! I am changed. Which fire? Please! Tell me, please?”
    Eleanore spoke softer yet as she began to fade away. “Unattended, love is like a flame, burning lower day by day.”
    “Eleanore,” Hugh pleaded. She was barely visible now. He reached out, trying to catch her to him, but his hands fell away from her translucent form.
    “You will know love when ’tis returned,” she said, her voice drifting away.
    And then Hugh was kneeling in the cold dark corridor of his home, left wretchedly alone. His wife was gone. Stricken with grief, he rose quickly from his knees in the empty silence of his hall and bolted into the solar.
    Despite that he had already blown it out, the candle on his desk sat burning still, smoke curling up toward the ceiling as the tallow burned dirty and low.
    What day is this?
    Hurrying to the desk, Hugh pulled the newly delivered parchment from his belt, unrolled it swiftly and peered down at the writing, drafted in the studied hand of a Godly man. Illumined by the candlelight, the text changed before his eyes, as though written by some unseen hand. It now read:

    “ I n the name of the deceased, lady ELEANORE OF ALDERGH Baron Hugh FitzSimon, dead this SIXTH twenty-second day of December in the year of our lord 1135…”

    W as this a waking dream ?
    Behind Hugh, the hearth fire raged no longer, but there upon the floor laid the charred remains of his cloak. Proof that he was not mad. A sudden gust, like a ghostly sigh, lifted the ends of his gray mane and the candle on the desk flickered softly. Hugh hurriedly cupped his hands about the flame, protecting it from going out.
    Before the fire burns low in the last hour of the last day before the winter solstice, you must change your heart, Hugh FitzSimon.
    “Do not forsake me, Eleanore!”
    He had so much to do, and so little time to do it!

Chapter 1
    Chreagach Mhor,