No Fury

Now: Sixty

Despite his bravery and relative good humor, I know Harry's leg tortures him horribly. I know the confusion tears at his sanity.

He rarely sleeps for more than a couple hours at a time, and when the pain is at its worst, James makes him tinctures that help the pain, but keep Harry drowsy, in his bed.

I stay at his side, unable to breathe in the moments Harry is lost to his pain or grief. It is easy to forget, when he is happily talking with me, or reading quietly, that he has truly lost everything he knows.

He gets it back, little by little. Each morning, he remembers our names. He remembers his way around the cottage, and small details of his life that we have fed him: he is King, there was a war, we were victorious, though he was captured. He knows he is married to the Queen, and that she is alive in the castle. But we have not yet given him more detail where Maria is concerned.

And I begin to understand James' method. He does not want Harry to try to absorb details of the war and Maria's treason until he has regained his sense of leadership. Until he hungers for it.

Because truly, without such a hunger, the prospect of facing it all would be daunting.

So, instead, we answer only the questions he thinks to ask. In our answers, we repeat names of people in his life: James, Catie, Liam, Niall, even Douglas. We do not give him more than he asks for, because when I did once — happily rambling on while cooking about Mary, and the ale house, and Mother and Da as if he knew them — he grew frustrated, quietly asking me to stop.

It was too much, too soon.

Nearly all day long, he bids me to stay nearby, and prefers me to be the one tending to his bandage and bringing him food. He can't seem to help it, apologizing for asking it of me.

"Is it improper," he asks in a sheepish whisper, "to always want you so close by?"

"I assure you, I do not want to leave your side," I answer, honestly.

"How can you stand it? How can you stand the sight of my leg? The depth of my confusion?"

I smile and make some teasing remark. But with my eyes I tell him, I stay because you are mine, and I am yours.

~~

Most days, James takes Anne out in a pack on his back to pick herbs for medicine and greens for dinner, or while he hunts rabbits and fowl.

Harry and I spend the days reading to each other, fixing meals, laughing.

It truly is like having a best friend who knows nothing about me, and everything about me all at the same time. He knows the faces that make me laugh, how I like to be teased. And despite how lost he must occasionally feel, Harry seems freed without the burden of responsibility. In some, small ways, I dread when he remembers it all, because I want it to always be like this: the four of us in the cottage, sharing a life. I do not want to return to a life lived separately, a love expressed only covertly.

My little girl begins crawling early, and at home when I let her loose, she invariably scoots her way over to Harry, tugging on the hem of his trousers until he bends to pick her up.

I am her mum, but he is her favorite.

"She loves you," I tell him, after dinner one night when James has retired to bed, and we sit together in front of the warm fire.

Although I blush at the ease at which these words fall from my lips, Harry doesn't appear shocked by the endearment.

"Aye," he says, bending to kiss her chubby cheek. "She thinks she belongs to me."