The great Buchan castle stood in the elbow of the River Ythan, the beech trees around it swaying lightly in the breeze. From the road, in the pale dawn light, they could see the river, broad and fast-flowing between sandy dunes.
In the meadow below the castle walls there was a great blackened circle in the grass.
For several moments they stood staring down at it.
‘We’re too late,’ Morna whispered at last. Her hands were white on the leather rein of her horse, her face almost transparent with exhaustion. ‘Blessed Bride, we’re too late!’
Wordlessly, Eleyne kicked her horse on. They crossed the river and rode up towards the castle gatehouse, intensely aware of the raked, blackened circle by the water. Above them rooks circled in the beech trees, cawing in the silence which reigned over the castle. There were none of the usual noises: no horses, no cheerful clanging from the blacksmith, no shouts of children from the courtyard, and yet, above the central keep, the Buchan standard with the golden wheatsheaf rippled cheerfully beneath the high mackerel cloud.
‘The Countess of Buchan will receive you in her solar, my lady.’ The servant who came forward as they rode into the courtyard bowed gravely. Eleyne breathed a silent prayer of gratitude. So, Isobel at least was safe.
Almost too tired to stand, but spurred on by their terror, she and Morna followed the man up the long staircase to the second floor of the keep. There they found not Isobel but the dowager, Elizabeth de Quincy. She raised an eyebrow austerely at the sight of Eleyne.
‘Please sit down, you look exhausted.’
‘I am exhausted.’ Eleyne remained standing, her back ramrod straight. ‘Where is Isobel? And where is her nurse, Mairi?’ She heard Morna give a small whimper beside her, like an animal in pain, but Eleyne held Elizabeth’s gaze.
‘The woman Mairi was condemned as a heretic,’ Elizabeth said coldly, ‘and she died a heretic’s death yesterday morning.’ She broke off as Morna let out a piteous wail and collapsed on the ground.
Eleyne fixed Elizabeth with an icy glare. ‘This –’ she flung out her arm – ‘is Mairi’s mother.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Elizabeth said without a trace of remorse. ‘You should not have brought her here.’
‘We came to see justice done,’ Eleyne said softly. ‘To find out the truth. To save her life. Was there no appeal? Was there no time to reconsider? Was there no talk of clemency?’
‘None.’ Elizabeth walked slowly to a chair and sat down. ‘The woman was guilty.’ Her head shot forward aggressively. ‘She helped my son’s wife prevent conception – a mortal sin – she helped her to kill the child she carried and she worshipped the devil!’ Her mouth closed with a snap.
Morna looked up, her eyes huge and black, the tears pouring down her cheeks. ‘That’s a lie,’ she cried. ‘A terrible lie!’
‘Mairi would never do such a thing,’ Eleyne whispered in horror. ‘And you know it. How could you have allowed it to happen? Where is your son? And where is Isobel? What have you done with Isobel?’
Elizabeth smiled. ‘Oh, Isobel is safe. She is going to learn how to be a good wife at last. My youngest son, William, who is as you know provost of St Mary’s at St Andrews, has taken charge of her punishment and her penance, while her husband is helping to run the country. When she has learned her lesson, no doubt she will return to us. Until then, she must remain where she can do no more harm to others or to herself.’
‘And where is that?’ Eleyne demanded.
Elizabeth gave a supercilious smile. ‘Somewhere suitable,’ she said in a tone which implied she would brook no further questions. ‘Now, may I suggest you take that woman away. It will only be distressing for her to remain here. We’ll find fresh horses for you immediately.’
Morna was rocking silently back and forth on her knees, her arms clasped across her chest, her mouth working in a frenzy of grief.
Eleyne looked at Elizabeth once, despising her for her inhumanity, then she stooped and tried to raise Morna to her feet. ‘Come, there’s nothing we can do here.’
Morna rose and walked obediently to the door, then she snatched her arm from Eleyne’s grasp and turned back.
‘Where are her ashes?’ she cried. ‘What have you done with my daughter’s ashes?’
‘They were thrown into the river. By now I should imagine they are in the sea.’
Morna gasped. She took a step towards Elizabeth. ‘May God curse you and your sons forever!’ She pulled off her veil and threw it on to the floor, then she pulled the pins from her hair and let the yellow-grey locks fall around her shoulders. She spat on the heather floor covering. ‘May your house be barren; may all its children die before they draw breath! I curse you, Elizabeth of Buchan, and I curse the sons you bore in your poisoned womb!’
BOOK SIX
1304–1306
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I
KILDRUMMY CASTLE Spring 1304
The night Morna hanged herself Eleyne dreamed again of the fire. She could hear the roar of the flames, smell the smoke; her eyes streamed and she awoke choking and gasping.
Bethoc, still half-asleep, dragged herself out of her bed and went to her. ‘My lady, what is it? What’s the matter?’
‘The fire!’ Eleyne pointed at the hearth, still dazed with sleep.
Bethoc turned. The room was lit only by a rush lamp. A small fire smouldered in the hearth. As they watched, the wind blew back down the chimney and a puff of bitter smoke strayed into the room.
‘It’s getting stormy, my lady. The wind must have woken you.’
The west wind roared in the chimneys and they heard the trees in the Den thrashing their new leaves. ‘I’ll call for turves to damp the fire down.’ She pulled the bedcovers over Eleyne and tucked them in firmly, but Eleyne pushed them back with shaking hands. ‘Something’s wrong, I know it.’ The dream had been so real, so vivid. She had dreamed it a dozen times in the two years since Mairi died, but each time she had remembered nothing but the fire.
Wrapping her nightgown around her, she lowered her feet to the floor with a groan at the stiffness in her joints and, reaching for her stick, walked slowly to the hearth. ‘Build it,’ she commanded suddenly. ‘Build it into a good blaze.’
Bethoc summoned the sleepy page who went to call the log boy and within ten minutes a blaze had been achieved.
Eleyne sat looking at it, her thin body wrapped in the scarlet silk and velvet gown, her feet pushed into velvet slippers, her hair in a heavy plait, hanging over one shoulder. In the flickering firelight her face looked young again. Watching her surreptitiously, Bethoc sucked in her cheeks and shook her head. The expression on her lady’s face was strange. She had raised her head as though listening to something far away and then she had smiled. Bethoc shivered violently and crossed herself before she turned away.
The picture in the flames was clear. She saw the man walking through the crowds and she heard the roar of their acclaim; she saw the scarlet lion of Scotland thundering triumphantly in the wind beside the silver saltire of St Andrew on its azure ground, and then she saw the woman, tall and slim, a flame herself in a scarlet gown, and in her hands a crown …
‘Mama!’
She started violently as Gratney put his hand on her shoulder. ‘My dear! I didn’t hear you come in.’ For a moment she was disorientated, far away, not wanting to lose the vision. But it had gone. With a sigh she looked up at her son, scrutinising his face in the firelight, wondering why he had come to her chamber in the middle of the night. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
‘I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to tell you this. It’s Morna.’
Her eyes held his steadily. ‘She’s dead.’ So, she had chosen the moment to walk through the door and end her loneliness.
He nodded.
‘How?’
‘She hanged herself.’ He looked away, unable to bear the agony in her eyes.
‘It’s my fault.’
‘No, mama, how could it have been your faul
t?’
‘I sent Mairi to Isobel.’
‘You weren’t to know what would happen.’
‘Wasn’t I?’ She stood up. Her stick slipped to the floor, but she ignored it. ‘Blessed Virgin! Am I to have no rest from blame? How many deaths must haunt me?’
‘Mama – ’
‘Please leave me, Gratney.’ Her narrow shoulders were tense with pain.
He hesitated. Then he nodded slowly.
For a long time after he had gone she sat unmoving, her face in her hands, then at last she looked up.
‘Where are you? Why don’t you take me?’ she cried out loud. ‘Alexander?’
The great solar remained silent. She rubbed her face, trying to deny the tears which channelled down her cheeks, but they would not stop.
‘Goddamn you, Alexander, why don’t you show yourself, now I need you? Why don’t you speak to me? Why don’t you come any more?’ She stared around the room. ‘You showed yourself to her. Why not to me?’ She clenched her fists. ‘Isn’t it my turn to die? You wanted me enough before. Am I too old now, even for you?’ She pushed herself to her feet, leaning on the chairback for support. ‘Or don’t you exist at all? Were you just the imaginings of a lonely, frustrated woman? That’s it, isn’t it? You were nothing but a dream! You don’t exist! You’re dead! Like Morna. Like Mairi! Like Donald –’ Her voice wavered and she began to sob out loud. ‘You never existed. You died on Kerrera. You died!’
Outside the door a page was waiting, his ear pressed to the door. He leaped to his feet guiltily as Kirsty appeared at the top of the stairs behind him.
‘Lady Mar! I’m sorry, I thought perhaps the Lady Eleyne was ill. She was shouting – ’
Kirsty waved him aside. Pulling open the heavy door, she went in and to his intense disappointment closed it behind her.
‘Mama?’
Her mother-in-law was staring down at the fire, tears coursing down her cheeks. She didn’t seem to hear.
‘Mama, are you all right?’ The room seemed very cold. Kirsty went to put her hand, almost timidly, on Eleyne’s arm. ‘I’m so sorry about Morna.’
Eleyne sighed. She groped for her handkerchief and shook her head. ‘I’m being foolish, Kirsty. For a moment I felt I couldn’t take any more.’ She blew her nose firmly and managed a watery smile. ‘But of course, one does. I’m sorry, my dear, it’s old age. It gets harder to hide the pain. I must pull myself together and arrange – ’ Her voice broke for a moment and she had to fight to continue. ‘I have to arrange for something to be done with her body.’
‘There is no need. It was Ewan the miller who found her. He cut her down and the villagers have taken care of her. They loved her too, mama. She did so much for them.’
‘She wanted to be buried on the brae below the sacred spring – we discussed it once.’
It had been the October before when Edward of England had appeared once more at Kildrummy, checking on the building works, letting it be known once more that he was Scotland’s overlord. Eleyne, forewarned, and vowing that never again would she bow the knee to Edward, had slipped down the glen to Morna and stayed there alone in the bothy by the gently flowing river until her cousin had gone. The two women had talked then, long into the summer nights.
‘She wanted no Christian burial. They won’t know what to do – ’
‘They know what she wanted, mama. They’re burying her exactly where she wished, and I have already ordered flowers for her grave.’ The two women were silent, each lost in her own thoughts. Then at last Kirsty looked up. ‘I only hope I can be as brave as you when it’s needed,’ she said. ‘May I tell you a secret to cheer you up? Even Gratney doesn’t know yet.’ She took Eleyne’s hand and led her carefully to her chair. When she was seated, Kirsty knelt at her feet. ‘Mama, I’m going to have a baby. I thought I wouldn’t be able to bear it when Robert took Marjorie away to live with him and his new wife, I was so lonely, but after all these years of hoping and praying, after all the offerings I have made at my chapel, it has happened.’
Eleyne gazed at her incredulously, then she smiled. ‘So. An heir for the earldom at last. Oh, Kirsty, I’m so pleased, my dear.’
‘If it’s a boy, I shall call him Donald and if it’s a girl I shall call her Eleyne.’ Kirsty smiled, pleased to see the unhappiness leave her mother-in-law’s face.
‘And your husband gets no say in the matter?’ Eleyne asked, half scolding.
‘None at all!’ Kirsty laughed. ‘Mama, things will get better, I know they will. You mustn’t despair. Poor Morna never recovered after Mairi died. You must allow her her choice to be with her daughter. That’s what you believe, don’t you? You don’t believe either of them has gone to hell.’
‘Not if there is any justice in the firmament. If the hell the church speaks of exists, it must be reserved for the truly evil.’ Eleyne stared down at the fire again, lost in thought. ‘Morna said it was like going through a door,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s what she’s done. She has stepped through a door.’
‘I have more good news, mama,’ Kirsty went on. ‘Robert and Nigel are coming to Kildrummy.’ She fell silent, thinking about her two eldest brothers. ‘While father was still alive, Robert felt he couldn’t act. He was hamstrung because papa did not want the throne. But when papa died in April Robert made one or two decisions about the future.’
‘Did he indeed,’ Eleyne said ironically, ‘and about time.’
‘I know he seems to be at King Edward’s beck and call again.’ Kirsty’s voice took on a defensive tone. ‘But he couldn’t afford to show his hand too soon, and there are still obstacles. John Balliol and Sir William Wallace, for instance …’
‘And his new wife, the daughter of one of Edward’s supporters.’ Eleyne could not keep the tartness out of her voice. ‘I shall have a few things to say to your brother when he arrives, not least about the high-handed way he took Marjorie away from you when he married that woman!’
If Kirsty’s intentions had been to distract Eleyne from her sadness with the news of Robert’s imminent arrival, it worked and when he reached Kildrummy with his brother Nigel, she was waiting for him.
‘So. Just what game are you playing now, Robert?’ she asked tartly. They were alone in her solar on her instructions.
He grinned. ‘A waiting game.’
‘And just how long do you intend to wait?’
‘As long as it takes.’
‘And meanwhile you fight for Edward?’ She was tight with indignation.
‘In the meantime, I stir the pot.’ He smiled. ‘Now, are you too angry with me to do me a favour?’
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘So, your visit is not a social one?’
‘Of course it’s social.’ He grinned again. ‘I came to see my sister – the beautiful and enceinte Countess of Mar. I came to see my most favourite mother-in-law,’ he paused, ‘and I should like to see her great-grand-daughter.’
‘You know that’s impossible!’ Eleyne’s hand whitened on the handle of her walking stick. ‘Lord Buchan took Isobel to France with him when her so-called penance was done after Mairi died. You know very well he is one of the Scots envoys at the French king’s court.’
‘And I know it was your idea that he take Isobel; and I know it was you who persuaded him to release her. I know how much you love her.’ Robert took Eleyne’s hand. ‘And now he too has made a temporary and expedient peace with King Edward and they are back at Slains.’ He walked towards the window and then swung back towards her restlessly. ‘I need to know what the King of France’s views are on our situation in Scotland.’
‘And you want Isobel to tell you?’ Eleyne raised an eyebrow sharply. She held Robert’s gaze challengingly. ‘Do you remember once you told me that Isobel was trouble, Robert,’ she said softly. ‘Is that still true?’
He looked down uncomfortably. ‘So, you know. I’m glad.’ He paused. ‘I wrote to her while she was in France. She has information I need and I can hardly ask Buchan himself. May
I send one of my most trusted men to fetch her? No one would question an invitation to Kildrummy to visit you. She would be in no danger.’
‘And I would be condoning anything that happened between you,’ Eleyne said thoughtfully.
‘Nothing will happen, I promise.’ He smiled. ‘Or nothing that you need know about!’
II
Robert’s henchman, Gilbert of Annandale, brought Isobel of Buchan to Kildrummy three days later.
Isobel stood in the doorway of her great-grandmother’s solar and the two looked at each other for several seconds. Isobel was very thin, but she looked far better than when Eleyne had previously seen her and her face, lightly tanned from the sea voyage from France and the ride through the mountains to Mar, glowed with happiness. She was undeniably very beautiful. Eleyne sighed. How could she blame Robert – or indeed any man – for loving such a woman? She held out her arms. Together they sat in the window embrasure, where they could be sure of privacy.
‘It’s been so long, child! Come, tell me about France,’ Eleyne said, ‘and then, if you wish, tell me about the rest.’
Isobel talked for a long time. At first she spoke in short stilted sentences about her time in France at the court of King Philippe. Then she spoke of the endless weeks at Dundarg Castle in the far north of Buchan, where her husband had sent her to repent of her long list of sins. Finally she spoke of Mairi and at last the tears came. ‘It was because of me she died. He wanted to punish me.’
‘To punish you for losing your baby?’ Eleyne prompted. She put her hands on Isobel’s veil as the girl sat at her feet, her head in Eleyne’s lap.
Isobel shook her head wordlessly, choked with sobs, then at last she looked up, her eyes bright with tears. ‘That was the excuse they used, that she helped me get rid of the baby.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘Even though it was his fault it happened. He hit me and I fell … No, he did it because I was seen.’ Two tears hung on her eyelashes, then dropped and ran down her face. ‘I was seen with Robert.’ Her whisper was so faint Eleyne had to bend her head to hear at all.