Wild Highland Rose (Time Travel Trilogy, Book 2) (37 page)

"Well, if I remember correctly, there are some who can perform a tracheotomy, but none that can do it with accuracy and success.  'Twill be more than four hundred years before the procedure is perfected and another fifty or so before it is standardized."

She spoke quietly, almost to herself.  "And quite truthfully, I'd have probably used that bit o' bagpipe."  She pointed in the direction of the abandoned instrument.  "It was too big and might have damaged the vocal cords, but I'm no' sure that I'd have thought to use the wee pipe."  She trailed off, turning her face to the fire.

Marjory frowned, things suddenly coming clear.  "You're more than a healer aren't you?"

Grania nodded, without answering.

Marjory pressed forward.  "The pump, Bertram didn't bring it from England did he?"

"I never even knew Bertram."

Marjory felt dizzy as revelations came faster and faster.  "Never knew Bertram?"

"Nay, I came after he died.  Your father found me wandering in the woods.  Yer sweet mother just assumed I was Grania.  I saw no need to tell her the truth."

"Are you from Cameron
'
s time, then?  Is that how you know about pumps and trach-e-o-to-mies?"

"
Aye. 
'
Tis true,
"
the old woman admitted in a whisper hardly loud enough to hear.

But Marjory heard, her head spinning with the impact of the words. 
"
Then you
'
re a physician, like Cameron?"

"No' any more.  There is too much I've forgotten, but once, a lifetime ago, I was a surgeon, too."

"You've traveled across time?"

"Aye."

"And nobody else knows?"

"Nay.  Cameron has guessed I think, but I've ne'er told a soul."

"Why no'?  You must have been so confused and afraid."

Grania smiled.  "All of that and more, but unlike Cameron, I had my memory and so I knew without a doubt who I had been.  And I knew, too, that there was no one here who would have believed me.  I wasna willing to take the risk of exposure, and in time, I grew content with my life here.  I found a peace that I
'
d ne
'
er felt before."

The women sat in silence, their hands still joined, each lost in her own thoughts.  Marjory tried to make sense of it.  All these years she had lived with Grania and never even noticed that she was different.  She'd merely thought her gifted, perhaps a bit eccentric.  Seen from this new light, however, Marjory was amazed that she'd never guessed.

She almost laughed.  Until Cameron's confession, the thought would never have entered her mind.  Now it seemed there were two time travelers at Crannag Mhór.

Unable to deal with the enormity of that thought, Marjory concentrated on Cameron.
 
"He's remembered, hasn't he?"

"'Twould seem so, or at least a part of it.  Amnesia is a funny thing.  'Tis often the result o' the mind trying to protect itself.  I think Fingal's trauma forced Cameron to remember who he was.  As to whether he remembers whate'er it was that caused him to forget in the first place, I canna say."

"Do you think…" Marjory whispered the words, praying for the answer she so desperately wanted.  "Do you think that he might stay, now that he knows who he is?"

"I canna say, lass."

"But you stayed."

"Aye, that I did, but I came to realize that the woman I'd become was a far better one than the woman I had been."

"Maybe Cameron will come to the same conclusion."  Her words sounded empty even to herself.

"It could happen, but ye have to remember, child, that a man is very different from a woman.  His identity is everything to him.  In the world Cameron comes from, the worth o' a man is often based solely on his profession.  Physicians are revered, especially surgeons.  'Twould be a hard thing to let go of.  Dinna be misled by my words, 'twas no' easy, even for me."

"Did you try to get back?"

"Aye, that I did."  She smiled with the memory.  "But I couldna remembe
r where it was that I arrived. 
I wandered about for quite a while before yer dear father found me.  There was no way o' knowing where it was I first awoke."

Marjory felt her stomach lurch with dread.  "Cameron knows the exact spot where he arrived."

"I know."  Grania turned away from the fire to face Marjory, placing her free hand over their entwined ones.  "Marjory, sometimes the hardest thing to do is to let go of the ones that we love.  If you really love him, then you may have to face the fact that he'd be better off in his own time.  He has a life there.  Perhaps even a family."

Marjory felt tears slide down her cheeks.  With an angry hand, she wiped them away.  "'Twould seem 'tis my lot in life to have to let the ones I love go.
"
  She pulled back her hands and rose from the bench, intending to go, but she stopped, seeing the older woman's face in the firelight, wet with tears.  Somehow she'd never thought that blind people could cry.

"Grania?"

The woman turned in the direction of her voice.

"What was your name?  I mean, your real name?"

For a moment Grania looked startled by the question and then, with a smile that lit the chamber, she answered.  "My name was Eileen Donovan Even."

Cameron leaned his head back against the cool stone wall, and closed his eyes, letting the silence surround him.  The room was dark and more than a little cold, but any discomfort was more than made up for by the serenity it afforded.  He'd never thought of himself as a particularly religious man, but he'd always believed.  And even in the fifteenth century, it seemed a chapel was a place of peace.

His thoughts flashed, briefly, to a trip made as a child.  A trip to New York City.  His father had taken him.  A special holiday for a lonely little boy recovering from the loss of his mother.  It had been a short train ride from Boston to New York, but to an eight year old boy it had been a grand adventure.

Among other places, they'd gone to a museum full of religious artifacts from the middle ages.  Not exactly the sort of place favored by growing boys, but there had been something magical about it.  He frowned, trying to remember the name.

It was one of the Rockefeller museums.  The nunnery or something like that.  He struggled with the name and then smiled at the sheer joy of trying to remember something as routine as the name of a museum.

The Cloisters.  That was it.

It had been a surprise to him.  Quiet and subdued, unlike any other museum he'd ever been to.  There had been one room, an arched vault of sorts, empty save for some rustic benches.  He shifted uncomfortably on the real life version.

He'd sat in that room much as he was doing now, and more importantly, he'd found peace there.  After his mother's accident, he'd felt alone, deserted in many ways.  His father had tried in his own gruff way to help him, but he hadn't been a demonstrative man, and Cameron had continued to feel isolated, devastated by the loss of his mother.

Then suddenly, in that room, at the Cloisters, he had felt comforted.  As though God himself had reached down from heaven to embrace him.  The moment was as real now as it had been twenty-five years ago.  And here he was again, only this time the chapel was the real thing.

He waited in the dark, waited for some kind of sign, for comfort or release, but there was only silence.  He sighed.  He'd probably had more than enough miracles in one lifetime.  He winced.  Make that two lifetimes.

"I thought perhaps I'd find ye here."

Cameron turned toward the sound of the voice.  The shadows of the chapel hid the owner, but he recognized it nevertheless.  "You can drop the accent.  I know who you are.  Or should I say, who you aren't."

"The accent is real.  As real as I am.  Dinna forget that I've been here for many years.  Whoever I was, she is only a part of the distant past now."

"Don't you mean future?" he asked dryly.  He heard her begin to make her way across the room.  "You should have a light, it's dark in here."

She chuckled and he immediately recognized the error of his words.  "I've no use o' a light, lad."  Grania stopped in front of him, resting a hand on his shoulder.  "I've been worried about ye."

"
Really?  And what exactly are you worrying about?  The fact that all the inhabitants of Crannag Mhór think I'm a sorcerer?  Or perhaps you're concerned that I now know definitively who I am?  Or maybe you're worried that I've discovered who you are?"  He paused, shocked at the bitterness in his voice.

Grania moved slowly around the bench and settled beside him, a hand comfortably on his arm.  "I do care, ye know."

"If you cared so much, why didn't you tell me who you were?"

She sat for a moment and then answered, her voice trembling a little.  "I dinna tell ye because I've never told anyone.  Old habits die hard, I guess.  And you never gave me reason to believe ye knew you were no' from this time."

What she said was true enough.  He'd purposefully kept his knowledge of the twenty-first century from her.  He felt some of his anger slip away.

"Do ye know who ye are then?"

He sat forward, threading his hands through his hair.  "Yeah.  I do."

"All of it?"  Her voice was at once soothing and probing.  "Do ye remember what happened to bring you here?"

He sighed.  "No.  I have memories from as far back as when my mother died, but nothing at all about what happened to bring me here."

"Your mother died?"

He sat back again, closing his eyes.  Somehow, it seemed easier to talk that way.  "Yeah, when I was eight."

"I'm truly sorry."  She patted his knee.  It was comforting in an abstract sort of way.

"It was a long time ago.  I've learned to live with it."

"Have ye other family?"

"No."  He paused, trying to think how to frame his next words.  He'd spent the past few hours dealing with his guilt and he wasn't sure he wanted to share it with anyone else.  "My father's dead, too."  There, he'd given her the truth, to a point.

"Ah, no siblings I take it."

"Nope.  Just me."

"I had five."

"Siblings?"

"Aye, four brothers and a sister.  My folks were Irish Catholic.  I'm surprised there weren't more."

"It must have been a lively family."  He wondered what it would have felt like to grow up with other children.  A hell of a lot less lonely most likely.

"I think it probably was.  I dinna know really.  I ran away from home you see.  We were poor and there was always more work to be done.  I wanted more for myself and so I left one day and never looked back."  There was a wistful note in her voice.

"But you miss them now?"

"Aye, that I do.  The folly of an old woman, no doubt."  She laughed gently.

"Is that when you came here, after you ran away?"

"Oh, heavens no.  I went from home to college, and from there to the home of a wealthy widower."  She paused, her voice tinged with embarrassment.  Cameron was almost glad the shadows hid her face.  "He helped me get into Harvard Medical school."

"And then?"

"Pretty straight forward really.  I graduated with honors and decided to be a surgeon."

"Did you specialize?"

"No.  It was the fifties.  I was lucky to find a general practice that would take me.  Women doctors were still pretty much an oddity and in surgery they were definitely a rarity."

"Did you marry?"

"I'd call it more of a business merger.  We each needed the respectability of marriage."

"Sounds like my family.  My mom was a doctor, too, and my dad was a lawyer.  He came from a prominent Boston family.
"
  They sat for a moment enjoying the shared intimacy. 
"
Did you have children?
"

Grania was silent for a long while, and when she finally answered, Cameron could hear the agony in her voice.  "Aye, I had a son."

He wondered what it would feel like to live in a world where your son hadn't even been born yet.

"Do you miss them?"

"I dinna think of my husband much.  He was a good man, but we never shared anything more than a desire to make it big in the world."

"And your son?"

She sighed, the soft sound heart wrenching.  "I miss him
every day
.  I regret that I wasna much o' a mother to him.  I was too involved with my career.  I'd give my soul to have a chance to set things right."

Uncomfortable with her obvious pain, he tried to find words.  "I'm sure he remembers you fondly."  The words sounded trite.  He wasn't good at comforting people.

She squeezed his hand.  "I hope yer right, but I'd imagine 'tis more likely he doesna remember me at all."

"Was he young when you…" His voice trailed off.

"Came here?  Aye."