regshoe

Oh, well-spotted that it could as easily have been Keith's prayers as Alison's -- yet another parallel between the two of them. The bit in 5.1 about Ewen's wedding night being holy, which is also how he describes the night in the shieling, is another one, I think.

And I said much earlier in rot13, so I'll say it again here: it's a beautiful bit of writing to have Ewen traveling the same route Keith did. Not only as an exercise in contrasts between how the two characters see the landscape, but it ALSO beautifully sets up Ewen's escape. Broster didn't just randomly declare that you can't see the bridge from the road, exactly where it would be most convenient for Ewen's escape: she materially demonstrated it for us right back at the very beginning of the book. Beautifully, elegantly done, that.