The little boat had carried her safely to the shingly beach near Rona’s cottage. But she could not leave it on the shore; that would be as good as leaving directions for finding her. Nessa scrambled over the side into hip-deep water. She scarcely felt the cold; there seemed nothing left but the weight of her grief, like a hard stone lodged where once her heart had been. She holed the boat’s hull, ripping her knife through the tarred skins that stretched across its light frame of wattles. Kinart would have been outraged. From this small craft, he had drawn in many a harvest of fine cod and sweet mackerel; he had made the curragh himself over the nights of a long, dark winter, and its neat form, already slipping down beneath the sea as Nessa waded ashore, bore his love for the ocean and its bounty in every tightly fashioned seam, in every finely curved rib. Kinart could not see his boat destroyed. Kinart was dead. They were all dead: all but Nessa. Her uncle had held her to a promise, and she had lived.

She wished she had not promised. She wished they had planned better, or not so well. They had not been unprepared for attack. If it came, Nessa was to take a small bundle and run straight to the hidden cove, below the Whaleback’s southern flank. If things went badly for them, she would take the boat and make her escape. Engus had refused to listen to her protests. He had put it quite bluntly. If anyone were to survive, it must be Nessa. She knew why. So he made her swear, and when the worst came to pass, she had kept her promise. There had been other parts to the plan: men designated to defend the causeway, to guard the hall, to protect the women. Women to watch over children, hide treasures, herd away stock. None of them had trusted Somerled’s talk of sending messengers and waiting for answers. But to choose today, the very dawn after her mother’s passing, to attack in time of deepest mourning, this betrayal had caught them quite unaware. Nessa had woken abruptly, heart pounding, not knowing what had startled her; all seemed quiet outside, yet it was as if someone had screamed her name, as if some power outside her body compelled her to run to a place of hiding now, quick, before it was too late. Yet nothing stirred. She could hear gulls passing, crying, and the soft song of the sea. She rose, thrust feet in boots, grabbed a cloak, woke the other women in the hut. She ran toward the hall, where the men still lay sleeping on the benches, worn out by the long night’s solemn ceremony, senses dulled by exhaustion and strong ale.