The room they now occupied was not so different from his own cell on New Kells. A half-dozen paces square. A pitcher of water and a bowl atop a decaying set of drawers. Bathroom and toilet down the hall. Of course the gray walls of stone had been bright, rich-grained wood on New Kells. And rather than a view across the courtyard to the crystalline golden lake with its leaping blue and magenta fish, their window looked across a narrow alley at another stone wall. And then there was the second bed. His monk’s cell had only had one bed.
That it contained a woman was bizarre beyond his imagining. The strangest change in his jumbled up life. Even after a week on Iona and ten days on the road, sometimes huddling together through the night for warmth, it was still disconcerting to share a room w
