A Coward's Escape

There is a hand pressed against my skin, warm and soft, stroking my cheek. It passes lightly across my lips, tracing the contours.

“Muirghein, wake up, darling,” a voice whispers beside my ear, the breath caressing my skin.

I don’t wish to wake—this never-ending night is blissful, and I feel as though I am floating on the ocean.

Ocean. That feeling returns, the crushing pain, and suddenly I cannot breathe again. This was what he felt, I know, this pain, as he succumbed to his empty fate.

And now I’m choking, with water filling my lungs, and I can’t cough it out.

“Muirghein! Muirghein, wake up!”

I bolt up. “Jamie!” The room spins, and I reach out, for anything stable.

“Jamie!”

His face swims before my eyes, freckled by the sun, weathered by work and wind, but with eyes that could ignite a fire. And he’s there, his arms around me, heating my skin in a way that I have longed for.

Don’t go, don’t leave me here alone.
I’ll return as soon as I am able.

Our lips meet, and it seems like lifeblood—I can breathe again, and I can feel heat spread its sparks through my body.

“Muirghein,” the voice whispers, and it is not Jamie’s.

“Quillan.”

“What is this?” Cillian demands from the doorway, loudly. Quillan jumps away from my bedside, and I recoil against the headboard.

“Brother!”

“You will go now,” Cillian orders, his voice dangerously low. “And you will not lay another hand my fiancée.”

Quillan leaves in silence, and Cillian steps to my bedside. “I am sorry, Muirghein, that you were part of a large number of unfortunate circumstances.”

“Perhaps you should have a sword fight for my honour,” I suggest.

To my surprise, Cillian laughs. “Perhaps I shall. But then, my dear, I have been told it is a ghost I must truly fight, for your heart.”

“A fight you cannot win, I must admit.”

“Yet another battle I refuse to lose.”

I stand. “Your brother meant no harm.”

“You are ill, you ought to stay in bed,” he protests, attempting to push me back into the pillows. “You have been asleep for two days. And my brother took advantage of your state, for which he not only will never be forgiven, but will also never regain the honour he lost.”

“It was a kiss, Cillian, not a love affair.”

“It was wrong.”

“Help me into my dressing robe. I wish to go see my son.”

***

“What are you thinking of?”

“Only my love for you.”

He lifted her shirt over her swollen belly and kissed it. “And how is my son today?”

“Temperamental.”

“Well, he has to inherit something from me.”

“Then I hope he has your heart, my love.”

Jamie smiled. “Just as long as he gets my dashing good looks, too.”

“He will be a heartbreaker for sure.”

Jamie sighed. “Am I breaking your heart, Muirghein?”

“You know you are. Jamie, please, don’t go, don’t leave me here alone.”

“I’ll return as soon as I am able, but the expedition pays well, and we need the gold.”

“I need you here when our child is born,” she corrected desperately. “And I need you here to help raise him. There are other ways to make money, Jamie—far less dangerous ways, and much closer to home!”

He hushed her with a kiss on her lips. “Calm down, love, it isn’t good for the child.”

“Jamie, you stayed in Ireland for me without my needing to ask. Now I am begging you to stay close to home for my sake.”

“I am leaving for us, Muirghein.”

“You are leaving for you, and I will not take second place to your idiotic penchant for reckless adventure!”

“You are first in my heart, and that is all that matters. You told me that, a year ago, when we stood at your parents’ door.”

“I told you that when there was no other life to consider. I will not raise this child alone, Jamie, and damn you if you leave me tomorrow!”

“I have given my word, and I will not go back on it.”

“Then I hope you find happiness wherever you end up, because there will be none if you return.”

***

He is the image of perfection, my bonnie little man, with his ginger hair and freckled nose, and eyes of cerulean blue. He gurgles happily and waves his hands at me when I pick him up from his cradle. Cillian watches over my shoulder.

James is the light of my life, my connection with the love I have lost. I would do anything to protect him, and it is the reason I will give my hand to Cillian.

James bites down on my finger, his little teeth cutting into the skin.

“He is truly a beautiful child,” Cillian whispers, and my heart swells with pride.

“His father’s son.”

“I will be proud to call him mine.”

Perhaps I should feel gratitude at this, that he is willing and prepared to accept James and I as his family. Instead, the thought of Cillian calling James his son, pretending that they are the same flesh, the same blood, makes me feel ill beyond belief. But I choke out a thank-you, and Cillian lays a hand on my shoulder, the other reaching over me to stroke James’s cheek.

“I shouted at him,” I whisper, looking out the window at the ocean. “The night before he left.”

“No doubt he knew it was out of love.”

“Such harsh words--”

“Are often born of the deepest passion,” Cillian finishes. “I only hope that one day I might inspire such a feeling in you.”

A worthless dream, though I would never tell him as much.

“I don’t regret him,” I say, moving closer to the window. “I don’t regret meeting him, or loving him, or even how selfish I acted, in obtaining my desires.” The waves are so hypnotizing. They dance in front of me, coming and going against the rocks with a sound that begs me to cry. Cillian, his hand resting again on my shoulder, asks what I do lament. After tossing the answer around silently in my head, I decide that my remorse is for the knowledge that there will never be a day when I do not hear his voice, or see his face, or feel his touch. Never a day when he will not occupy my heart.

“The pain will lessen, Muirghein.”

He must believe this, for his own sake. No man wants a wife who is devoted to another, and Cillian’s pride will not let him be defeated by the memory of a man who passed through my life like a wave touching the sand--there for a fleeting moment, scrambling frantically for purchase in the slippery bank, and then gone with a final tug, the call of the ocean bringing it back. It leaves nothing but an imprint, a shadow, on that which it caressed.

And Cillian is the gull on the rock, which sits patiently, watching from above until the wave departs, and then swoops in to devour the debris left behind.

Darkness sweeps deftly in on us while we sit in the nursery with James. He has long since fallen asleep, but I cannot bring myself to let go of him.

***

The moon had risen, and its silver beams of light bounced off the black, capped waves that were licking the shoreline. The cold, sand-dusted rock felt good in the hot summer’s night, icing the sweat on the back of her neck and cooling the burn.

“I thought I would find you out here,” Aisling said, climbing up to sit beside Muirghein. “What are you thinking about?”

“I promised I would go with him—before the baby. I promised that if he left, I would go with him.”

“He won’t be gone forever, Muirghein.”

“My head knows that.”

***

I wake the next morning alone in my own bed, staring at the ceiling. The sun is just breaking the sill of my window, and I can see the ocean, glowing a strange combination of pink and orange.

I leave my room in favour of the cliff in the garden, looking out at the scene before me with a sense of wonder. It is peaceful today, the waves barely tickling the shoreline before falling back into the emptiness.

There is a gull circling off to the left of my vision, watching over a whale that is surfacing for oxygen. The beast sprays a golden mist of water into the air, and I watch it fall, hypnotized. It seems far to go, but the drops ripple so gracefully that it is hard to imagine that they have plummeted great lengths.

A breeze slips in through the window, bringing with it a sense of déjà-vu as my hair flutters back behind me. I was standing in this exact spot when they came to tell me about Jamie.

Mrs. Alexander, I’m very sorry to have to inform you that there was a storm.

The numbness washes through me the way it did upon hearing those words, for I knew what they meant.

The ship never arrived at its destination.

It feels as though my dreams are burning all over again, and this is a flame that the ocean cannot put out.

There was no body found.

I remember that I felt a spark of hope at that revelation. Jamie, the sea-faring soldier, could swim better than any man I knew. He was strong, and determined, and had more reason to live than any sailor on that damned ship. And so I was hopeful for a while, thinking that maybe he had found his way to shore and would return to me.

But summer and winter passed without a word, and eventually I resigned myself to the knowledge that I am alone, and that he lies in the company of his friends and crewmen in their watery grave.

Strange though it may seem, I envy the poor souls who were able to join him on his final journey, for it was to me that the promise of eternity was given. The desire, the need, to be with him again makes my whole body ache. And as I stand on the cliff, I realise that the thing I fear may too be my saving grace. It would be so simple to let the ocean claim my troubles the way it has my guilt, my past, my love and my devotion. I could give in to its summons, bear the crush of the depths, and find that for which I long.

The idea tempts me to the brink of the precipice, and I stare down at the rocks and surf below. Muirghein. The wind whispers in the tone of his voice, begging me forward, demanding that I honour our promise. My heart hammers in anticipation—what will it be like to see him again?

Muirghein. The wind is more demanding now, pushing me onward. My toes slip over the edge of the grass for a moment, and then I take a step back, gathering my nerve. It will be agonizing, but only for a moment, I tell myself. Then the dreams that have tormented me for so long will become my reality once again. I inhale, preparing for my own final journey to the ocean’s floor.

“Muirghein!” The voice comes clearly from behind me this time, corporeal and strong. I turn to find Cillian only paces behind me, his unfeeling eyes for once showing the shadow of an emotion that I cannot place. “You must come inside,” he tells me. “James is crying for you.” He returns to the house, leaving me alone once again.

James. Duty pulls my thoughts back to the life I will be expected to lead: the dutiful, gracious, mother, wife and woman, who is content with her husband and the privileges he may offer her. I will suffocate in a life such as that.

True though this well may be, I walk away from the cliff, feeling weak and cowardly. What kind of wife am I, that I cannot keep a simple vow to my husband?