‘When will I see you again, Alan?’
It was a while since either of them had spoken, and David spoke so low and softly now that his words seemed almost part of the silence. Nor did he pause in the gentle trailing of his fingers over the bare skin of Alan’s upper arm, which for Alan was part of the silence too. Alan sighed, and shifted his head against David’s shoulder, and let David’s quiet breathing count out a long space of further silence before he gave the only, the best answer he might: ‘As soon as I can. Ye know that.’
It was the last night of a visit at the house of Shaws snatched, as their visits usually were, between Alan’s business in the Highlands and the ship that was to carry him back over to France. Perhaps on another night they would both have been asleep by now, but to-night Alan so wished to tarry that he begrudged even sleep these dear moments, and held them back jealously; and for a while he could believe in something other than their fleetingness. As he lay here in David’s arms, these fine sheets, this soft candlelight that just gently picked out the carved wooden bedposts and left the rest of the room in gloom, and above all David’s warm body and dear beating heart, did not seem brief or fragile things—rather the contrary.
‘Alan?’
This time David’s voice was accompanied by a slight change in the movement of his hand: he did not quite grip, but more definitely touched Alan’s shoulder, and stilled his fingers there. Alan turned his head to look up at him.
‘Do you remember when we were on the run in the heather, and we’d sleep together under your great-coat?’
‘Ay,’ said Alan, ‘that I do.’
‘Sometimes, those nights, I felt—and mind, Alan, I was a young lad in love for the first time, and scarcely half understanding it yet, so you’ll forgive me being a little fanciful... sometimes I felt like it was all the world under that coat, in the warm and dry, and with you there so close to me, and everything else—the red-coats after us, and the rain, and all the weary miles we had to go—wasn’t real at all.’
Alan had begun by smiling at the memory and David’s description of it; but now he raised his head, struck by the concordance between David’s thoughts and his own.
‘It’s something like the same thing here, you see,’ finished David softly.
‘Yes, I see,’ said Alan; and then, ‘Davie,’ nestling back down against David’s neck. David kissed the top of his head, and the pity and the wrong of their parting stabbed through Alan like a dirk.
For it was not true, that fancy. The world beyond their little shelter was all too real, and was not forgotten or shut out utterly even now. The tiny draught that made the candle-flame flicker and the light and shadows shift on the skin of David’s neck and breast was the same wind that blew outside their window, down the Firth from the Queen’s Ferry to the pier at Leith; at this moment, perhaps, it blew through the rigging of the ship where it lay at anchor; and soon enough it would bear that ship away, out past the Berwick Law and the last sight of the coast, to the fields of France where men were gathering once again to go to war.
Alan had never liked the sea-voyage, that was true; but it did not daunt him, and would not while his duty lay on the other side of it. And he would keep his word to the King of France, and would serve his own King truly and loyally for as long as the King should want him; and when once he was back among the proud flying banners and beating drums and gleaming swords, then the old joy of fighting would come back upon him too, and he would forget all else—or seem to—for a while, and he would be the man he always had been. But all was not just as it had been. Years ago, in the midst of it all, he had swung himself onto the deck of a ship sailing off the coast of the Highlands, and found enemies ready to do battle—and found also the friend who had turned his life over, and who now drew his heart always back to shore and peace and home. Nay, kept it there, every moment he was away.
Now Alan raised his head again. The little world round about him was as it had been—save that the candle had burned slightly lower—and David was watching him with a sort of solemn smile. It was a look Alan knew well, for it was characteristic of him.
‘Davie,’ said Alan, ‘you will see me again. I promise ye that.’
The smile softened—and that Alan knew well too. ‘I know,’ said David, and gathered Alan closer in his arms.
And Alan had never been so determined on anything in his life as he was now that this parting would not be for ever, and that one day he and David would meet again, never to part any more.