The Black Rood by Stephen R. Lawhead

toward me across the board. “When he returned from the pilgrimage,” she said, “your father vowed that neither he nor any of his family would ever again journey to the Holy Land. You have gone against him in this, and I fear the outcome.”
    â€œI am sorry, Mother,” I replied. “But I knew nothing of this vow.”
    â€œI wish you had said something, son. I could have told you.” She regarded me with sad eyes. “Is it so important, this pilgrimage?”
    â€œMy lady, it is,” I replied earnestly. “It is all I have thought about since Rhona died. I believe God has put the desire in my heart, and he alone can take it away.”
    â€œAnd if you go, it will kill your father,” Ragna pointed out. She frowned again and reached out to squeeze my hand. “Believe me, Murdo could not stand the torment of your leaving.”
    â€œThe torment would be mine,” I said sharply, “not his.”
    Lady Ragna shook her head gently. “No,” she said, “because he knows—even if you do not—what lies before you. He has been there, Duncan, and he knows the dangers you will face. He could not live with the hardship and suffering that would befall you.”
    â€œIf God has put it in my heart to go, and I do not go,” I replied, “what am I to do then? How am I to live with that?”

EIGHT
    I LEFT BANVAR WITHOUT speaking to my father again, and the regret of that bitter leaving pains me still. Believe me, Cait, I would give the world and all its treasures to have departed with a blessing from the one person in the world whose approval alone would have sustained me through the trials I have faced. But Murdo was implacable in his opposition. He refused to speak to me until I repented of my plan. This I could not do.
    I have since had many occasions to wonder what he would have said if he had known the true purpose of my pilgrimage? Would it have made a difference?
    Who can say?
    Know this, my soul, and remember it always: I have no fear of death. For me to leave this life is to enter the next in triumph. But the thought that I will die in this foreign land without ever seeing the faces of those I have loved best in life fills me with grief so strong it does take my breath away.
    Even so, I bear my lot patiently for your sake, and pray the caliph tarries yet awhile so that I may finish what I have begun.
    It is a most curious captivity, I declare. I am given the best of food and drink; my modest needs are met without the humiliation that so often accompanies captivity. I even have a servant to attend me and, in many ways, I am treated as an honored guest with all courtesy and respect. Even so, I accept all I am given with gratitude, knowing it could so easily be otherwise.
    The Muhammedans are a noble people, never doubt it. If peace were ever possible, I think we should find ourselves brothers under the skin. Alas, too much blood has been shed on both sides of the battle line for it to be forgiven. There will never be peace between our peoples until our Lord Christ brings it at his return. This I most heartily believe.
    Now I will tell how I came to Marseilles.
    On the morning I took the boat, I asked Sarn to accompany me. I did not tell him where I was going. I had made my farewells the night before—not that anyone knew it—and rose at dawn and went down to the bay to rouse Sarn out of his nest of oars and sailcloth. In warm weather he always slept in the hut beneath the cliff on the strand.
    I let him think we were going fishing, until we had made the headland, and then I told him to sail for Inbhir Ness. It was then he looked at the pack I had brought aboard. “Where are you going, lord?” he asked.
    â€œI am going away for a while,” I told him.
    â€œIt is the pilgrimage, so?” A sly expression passed over his open, honest features, giving him a look of mild imbecility.
    Of course, everyone in the realm knew about