Thomas nodded. “I—my . . .” He stopped, unable to locate the knowledge. Where was the name of his family, his town? What was that neighbor’s name that had just been in his head?
The man must have read confusion or terror in his expression. He patted Thomas’s shoulder. “Well, let’s be up, then. This ground’s soggy after the rain.” As he stood, he offered his hand. Thomas took it and the man drew him upright, not letting go until it was clear Thomas could stand unaided. “Odd that you’re not soaked from it. Ya can’t have lain there long.” He lifted the cord of his satchel over his head and onto his left shoulder with the satchel resting on his right hip. “Can you share at least your name, then?”
“Thomas.” He said it without thinking, then skried the name as if it would reveal the thoughts he couldn’t find. When that failed, he walked straight past the man to where the green fire had been.
“And lovely to meet you, Thomas, my own name’s Alpin Waldroup,” the man said as if still conversing with him, adding in a singsong voice, “‘Oh, and that’s grand, sir, thankee for not leaving me on the wet ground to rot.’”
The jibe was lost on him. He muttered, “Onchu?” and waved his hands in the air as he stumbled around in a circle.
Alpin Waldroup shook his head, picked up his torch, and walked over. “Boy,” he said.
Thomas dropped to his knees, pushed his palms across the rough ground. “Where are they? They’re gone, just gone.” Looked up. “Where are they?”
“Thomas, lad.” He reached to squeeze Thomas’s shoulder reassuringly, but the touch jolted him. He lurched to the side, where he sprawled on his back, arms and legs windmilling wildly.
“Horses but not horses, knights but not men!” he cried out. “The Queen took all through fire green! Say their name!”
Waldroup had drawn back from the flailing limbs. “What fire you talkin’ about?” he asked, but Thomas’s eyes were rolled up in his head, his back arched. He clawed at the dirt. Then, as quickly as it began, the fit ended, and Thomas sighed shakily, blinking and confused. Spit and foam trickled from the corner of his mouth. Waldroup repeated his question.
“Green fire,” he answered. “A ring of it right here.” He pointed to the empty night.
For the first time, Waldroup looked worried as he cast about them. The heap that was the abandoned abbey seemed to move and shift at the edge of the torchlight. The eye sockets of the skulls carved on the stones seemed to look their way. He hauled Thomas upright again. “We’d do well to quit this place, I think.”
“But, Onchu—”
“Onchu’s not coming back, lad.”
Thomas looked to where the fire had been. “It should have been me, not him.”
“Be glad it wasn’t. Come now, come on.” He lifted the torch and strode forward. Not wanting to be left behind in the dark, Thomas hurried after.
They walked through the black night, the torch throwing just enough light to reveal a few yards of the path they trod.
“Listen, then,” said Waldroup. “I think we should give you another name for now. Maybe no one will come looking for you, but it’s best if we don’t assume anything. So, what would you like to be called?”
“Don’t know.” He had only just become Thomas.
“Let’s call you Fingal, then, since you’re a stranger even to yourself.”
“Fingal,” he repeated, trying it on.
“Now, we’re heading for the Abbey of St. Mary that King David’s having built. You know of it, yes?”
Thomas turned the words over, finally shook his head in defeat. “I don’t remember anything but me and Onchu and Baldie.”
“Baldie, eh? Well, your memory’s improved by one. You didn’t remember him the last time.”
“He drowned. In the river.”
“Hey-o. Well, he won’t be looking for you, anyway.”
They walked on. It was a two-mile trek on the path. Waldroup said nothing more and Thomas strained to remember more, but the memories he sought remained just out of reach. Moments did rise up before him—the reeds and catkins, a silhouette against the sun, lifeless Baldie floating away.
Eventually a light flickered in the distance. At first he took it to be a reflection of the torch, but it grew ever larger until it became a campfire surrounded by various lean-tos and half a dozen small huts. The wet night was warm but men and boys sat near the fire, where a set of three upright poles supported two bowed crosspieces from which hung a large ceramic pot.
One of the men, holding a wooden bowl, watched them approach. “Thought maybe you’d fallen in the quarry, Waldroup. What you got there? Another apprentice?” He pointed his large wooden spoon at Thomas.
“Runaway, name of Fingal. Needs work.”
“You try to pass him off as a carver, I’m leaving.”
“You’d do best to pack now, then, Seumas McCrae.”
“You’re having me on.”
“I am, and you’re doing all the work.” The men around McCrae laughed.
Waldroup wove a path through them to the largest hut. A man with stringy gray-and-black hair leaned in the doorway, watching their approach. He wore only a linen tunic, apparently ready to sleep, but was chewing idly on a yellow-flowered stem of tansy. Behind his hut, a pale wall full of arched windows and chimneylike buttresses stood out against the black night. To the right stood an odd, immense framework with a treadwheel in the center of it.
Impossible how much had been built. Why, surely not a month earlier, only the cloister and nearby priory had been finished. The monks had new dwellings but little else stood here. How did he know this? Onchu had led him past here repeatedly to fish in the . . . the Tweed. That was the river. They’d seen these men and the structures at a distance. No more than a week earlier, there was hardly anything erected here. How had this happened? Waldroup put a hand on Thomas’s back, shoved him forward, which brought him back to the moment with this man eating the raw flower. “Lachlan Clacher,” Waldroup said, “this is Fingal.”
Clacher took the stem out of his mouth, then spat. “You digging up boys at the quarry now, Alpin?”
“One more for the quarry. And we could still use a few.” He gestured at the four boys seated by the fire.
“He’s all sinew,” Clacher complained.
“So was I once.”
