Alasdair awoke again, lying on rough sheets over a thin and poky pallet, aching as though he’d fallen from a cliff. Perhaps he had. His hands had scrapes on them (not terribly different from normal) and he could feel bruises and knots forming all over. His eyes felt a little swollen; he hoped he hadn’t broken his nose yet again. He shivered, trying to wrap the blanket (one blanket, and rough wool at that) tighter around himself. Worse still, he was totally naked, once again without his awareness of the matter. Where were the clothes he had been given? Where was he? He looked about for his belongings, but none were found.

The surroundings were unfamiliar–the ceiling was thatch, the walls and floor rough-hewn stone, and–it was cold and dark, lit only by a candle perilously close to the straw and some light from a door, if it could be called that, some distance away; it was made of rough planks, open at top and bottom. He could see a cross hung on the wall, with some kind of prayer-book on a low table below it, but there was otherwise no ornamentation or other signs of a person living there.

He was reminded of the sheilings on his cousin Matthew’s estate, although this building was much smaller than any he’d seen in his youth. It was more like one of those round prison-cells found in the south. But the ‘door’ was definitely not meant for a prison-cell; he could have crawled out through the gap at the bottom if he was less sore and disoriented.

“Foolish, to leave a candle burning like this,” Alasdair said aloud, if only to reassure himself that he could still speak. “I could have turned and knocked it over.”

At this, the door swung open; Alasdair flinched and blinked at the blaze of light. A man in a monk’s robe entered and made his way to the pallet; he was speaking in some very strange variant of Gaelic, by the few words Alasdair could make out. There was a buzzing, itching feeling in his ears, making him dizzy, and he screwed his eyes shut and leaned back on the pallet for a moment. And suddenly, he understood what the man was saying, with another wave of vertigo and buzzing.

“...you’re awake, praise be to Saint Colmcille, I was sure you were dead when I found you…” He had a gap in his teeth that made him lisp a little, and the stubble on his tonsure was somewhat overgrown. Alasdair was unsure whether being in a monastery was a good sign or a bad one.

“Who are you? Where am I?” he asked.

“I am Caedmon, the hermit of Innis Breacaimsir,” the monk said. “Although I suppose I’m not such a hermit anymore now that you’re here. Even if I’m supposed to live in seclusion, I can’t very well ignore someone washed up half-dead on my beach!”

“You’re a hermit,” Alasdair said, feeling his stomach drop. Outside of men hired to live in rich landowner’s follies, or perhaps Robinson Crusoe, he’d never met a real hermit before. As far as he knew, there hadn’t been a religious hermit in Scotland since after the Reformation. And where was Innis Breacaimsir? He’d never heard of such an island.