Child of the Phoenix

  Driven by panic to one last effort, she pushed again, groping in the emptiness with desperate fingers, and suddenly she touched something soft. The sensation was so unexpected that she let out a whimper of fright. Then she remembered. Eleyne had always wrapped the pendant. Cautiously she hooked her fingers into the object again in the darkness and slowly, carefully, she managed to draw the wisp of silk towards her.

  VII

  KILDRUMMY

  Sometimes they rode together, exploring the neighbourhood, and sometimes, when Donald was occupied with the affairs of the earldom, Eleyne rode alone, realising how much she had missed her solitary rides with only the dogs for company. Gradually she extended her range, beyond the crofts and the tofts around the township and up the broad river valley, following the meandering course of the River Don and into the mountains beyond, feeling immediately at home, although these mountains were unlike those of Eryri. These were rounded shoulders, humped massively from the great backbone of the Grampians beneath a vast north-eastern sky.

  It was here, in a lonely glen where she had ridden with only the dogs for escort, that she met Morna. The woman was gathering flowers by the river as Eleyne stopped to let her horse drink. She straightened to look at Eleyne, her face solemn, her eyes direct, showing no shyness as the Master of Mar’s wife slid from her saddle. The two women looked at each other with the strange empathy that brings immediate liking, though neither had spoken a word.

  Eleyne smiled. ‘Good day, mistress.’ The woman, whom Eleyne judged to be only a little younger than herself, was heavily pregnant.

  She nodded gravely in return. ‘You’ll be wanting a drink too, perhaps.’ Her voice was low and musical. She glanced at the horse and Raoulet and Sabina, and Sabina’s son, Piers, as the animals drank greedily from the cool brown water. There was no need to ask who her visitor was. Word of Lord Donald’s wife, with her silks and velvets, riding her horse unescorted like a man, followed by the three great hounds, had spread for miles around.

  ‘I can drink with them.’ Eleyne dropped the horse’s rein and pushed up the sleeves of her gown.

  The other woman smiled. ‘I have something you might prefer: there’s blaeberry wine in my house if you would care to follow me, my lady.’ She set off without looking back, the withy basket full of flowers on her arm.

  Her house, set back from the shingle bank of the river, on the side of a small hill, was a small stone-built bothy, roofed with turves. She led the way inside and gestured Eleyne to sit on the rug-covered heap of heather which served as a bed. The place was spotless, swept with a heather besom which stood against the wall, furnished sparingly with a rough oak coffer, a girnel kist, a table and two stools and by the fire a polished bannock stone. The cup in which she offered the wine was a finely chased silver. Eleyne took it without comment. Such was the woman’s dignity it did not occur to her that it was out of place in such a poor hut, and that it might be stolen. She sipped the wine and smiled. ‘This is good.’

  ‘Aye.’ The woman nodded. ‘It’s the best you’ll taste in Mar.’ Her hand to her back, she sat down gracefully on the floor, her ragged checked skirts swirling in the dust of the dry earth floor.

  ‘Is your husband a shepherd?’ Eleyne looked around the hut.

  ‘I’ve no husband, lady. I prefer my own company. The bairn – ’ The woman put her hand on her stomach with a possessive gesture of affection. ‘Well, maybe she’s a child of the fairies.’ She gave a humorous scowl, and shook her head in mock despair. ‘I’m Morna, my lady. I’m the spaewife, or so the cottars call me.’

  ‘I see.’ Eleyne smiled. ‘Yes. I’ve heard about you. The people of the castle think very highly of your powers.’

  She was much loved, this Morna of the glens. Eleyne had heard her name repeated often with tales of healing and magic and love spells. She leaned forward and set her cup down on the ground before her. ‘Perhaps you could help me.’

  ‘You want to know your fortune?’ The woman sounded incredulous. ‘Usually the lasses come out to me to know the name of the lad they’ll marry. You already have your husband.’

  ‘But will I give him a son?’ Eleyne wasn’t aware how desperate she sounded until the words were out.

  The woman leaned forward and took Eleyne’s hands in hers. She turned them palm up and looked at them. The only sound in the bothy was the high trickling song of the skylark, lost in the brilliance of the sky above the glen, and the small murmur of the river outside. Eleyne found she was holding her breath. Her hands grew hot in the woman’s cool grasp. When at last Morna looked up, she was smiling. ‘You will give your husband three sons.’

  ‘Three!’ Eleyne echoed in astonishment. She laughed, half in disbelief, half in delight. ‘I had suspected I was past the age of childbearing. I still have my courses, but it’s nine years since I conceived. If you are right, I shall be the happiest woman in the world.’

  ‘I hope so, lady.’

  ‘When? Can you see when it will happen?’

  The other woman nodded. ‘You already carry your first son.’

  Eleyne stood up. She walked outside the small house and stood staring down towards the river numb with shock.

  Morna followed her. ‘Why do you ask me all this? You have the Sight yourself.’

  Eleyne shook her head. ‘I see other things: visions of the past and of the future, but never for myself. I’ve tried to learn, but I can never understand; never see clearly.’

  ‘Perhaps you try too hard.’ Morna folded her arms across her stomach. ‘You have lived too long in the castles and courts of the south. If you want to see, the mountains of Mar will teach you. All you have to do is listen and watch with stillness in your heart.’

  VIII

  It was another six weeks before Eleyne was sure in her own mind. Only then did she tell Donald. Solemnly he undressed her and kneeling before her he kissed her stomach. Then he gave her a twisted rope of sea pearls.

  ‘Don’t tell your parents, Donald.’ Suddenly she was afraid.

  ‘Why?’ He pulled her on to his knees, ‘They’ll be delighted.’

  ‘Suppose something goes wrong?’

  ‘It won’t.’ He touched her belly again, gently stroking it, ‘Nothing could go wrong now.’

  It was an idyllic time. The long summer drowsed over the hills. She and Donald made love as often as before, though he was more careful with her now, watching in wonder as her breasts and belly grew. Sometimes they rode together into the hills and he would undress her there, on his cloak, spread on the heather amongst the wild marjoram by the burns, surrounded by clouds of butterflies.

  She would still ride out alone though not so far now. More often than not she went to visit Morna, taking gifts for the woman and her coming baby, and they would talk for a long time, companionably, sitting by the babbling river or, if the soft highland rain poured down, by Morna’s fire. Morna’s knowledge of the magic of the hills was vast; Eleyne found herself listening enthralled to her hostess’s tales, and then almost without realising it she was talking too, about Einion and his prophecies, and about Alexander.

  She still feared sometimes that he would return, suddenly while she and Donald were together. But it had not happened; he had not come to Kildrummy.

  ‘Perhaps he could not follow me here,’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps he has forgotten me at last.’

  Morna was watching her closely. ‘If his love was as great and as deep as you say, he will never forget you,’ she said slowly. ‘He will love you through all eternity and through all ages.’

  Eleyne was silent.

  ‘Did you love him as much?’ Morna asked.

  Eleyne nodded. ‘He was everything to me, but he turned his back on me. If he had really wanted, he could have had me as his wife, but he chose not to. He chose not to make our sons legitimate. He put Scotland’s honour before mine.’ She considered for a minute. ‘Malcolm of Fife killed so that he could have me as his wife. Does that not make his love the greater?’

  ??
?Do you measure love in bloodshed and honour?’ Morna’s voice was sharp. ‘Has Malcolm returned from the grave to make you his own again? Would Lord Donald?’ She was stern. ‘Has not the king crossed the greatest boundary there is, for you?’

  ‘You sound as though you would make me choose between Donald and a dead man,’ Eleyne replied, ‘and there is no choice, not for me.’

  ‘Perhaps it is not up to you – one day the gods will decide: ghost or mortal; king or man.’

  Eleyne went white. ‘There is no choice,’ she repeated. ‘Donald is my husband. You are frightening me.’

  Morna was apologetic. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. Of course Donald is your husband and you belong to him. Perhaps the prophecy your Einion spoke of will yet be fulfilled. You have four children and another on the way. One of them may be a king or the father of kings.’

  ‘Can’t you see?’ Eleyne sat forward.

  ‘I have no powers like that. I see who is to fall in love with whom, in the hills; I look into a woman’s wame and see how many bairns she is to carry. I don’t see people’s destiny; I don’t see their deaths.’ Morna touched Eleyne’s hand. ‘Forget your king; forget the past. Live now, for the present, for your child, and be happy.’ She smiled fondly. ‘Now, go back to your lord. He is waiting for you full of anxiety because you have ridden out alone and he dares not reprimand you.’ She laughed.

  Donald and Eleyne rode back to Kildrummy late on a hot August evening when they had been alone together in the hills. Donald had taken her on his horse before him and held her in his arms, Eleyne’s palfrey following loose behind them. They rode back along the slow Don, made shallow by the hot summer, past the lonely monastery of Cabrach, its stone buildings dozing in the late summer’s warmth, and turned in at last under the gatehouse and into the courtyard of the castle. It was crowded with horses and wagons and milling crowds of people.

  Donald reined in his horse and looked around, his heart sinking. ‘My mother!’

  ‘Oh no.’ Eleyne turned in his arms, appalled.

  ‘It is. See, her standard, and the carts bear her coat-of-arms.’ He slipped from the horse and lifted Eleyne down.

  ‘You told her about the baby!’ she said accusingly.

  ‘I didn’t, my love, but you can’t expect people to keep it a secret forever.’ He looked fondly at her thickening waistline. ‘Come, let’s find out what she wants.’

  The Countess of Mar was in the great hall. She wore a cloak and gloves in spite of the heat of the evening, and stared in horror at the sight of her daughter-in-law’s loosely knotted hair and tanned face and arms.

  ‘So, it’s true.’ Her eyes travelled down to Eleyne’s belly. ‘You do carry my son’s child. I can see it’s just as well that I came.’ She turned to Donald. ‘I hear you have been using the earl’s chamber. Please give orders for it to be cleared for me. You and your wife can sleep elsewhere. I suggest, madam,’ she addressed Eleyne, ‘that you dress yourself decently and cover your hair. I cannot imagine what my household think of you. I hear, Donald,’ she swept on, ‘that you have been neglecting the running of the estates, just as you have been neglecting the affairs of the kingdom. Now I am here, you can turn your attention back to both. I shall look after your wife.’

  Eleyne could not believe Donald would allow his mother to speak to him like that, but he said nothing. Sheepishly he asked, ‘You won’t mind moving to another chamber, my love?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said as coolly as she could. ‘I shall give orders at once. Please, excuse me, Lady Mar. As you say, I need to change my gown.’

  She bowed to Elizabeth and walked from the great hall. Donald did not follow her.

  ‘No one forbids me to ride, Lady Mar,’ Eleyne said coldly to her mother-in-law who had walked into the bedchamber the following morning and dismissed Eleyne’s servants from the room.

  ‘Then you should forbid yourself, madam.’ Elizabeth sat on the chair near the hearth. ‘If you value your child’s life. Surely I need not point out to you that at your age it is scarcely suitable to be galloping around the country in your condition. You should rest.’

  ‘I do not need to rest.’ Eleyne reined in her temper with difficulty. ‘I am accustomed to riding and I assure you it will not harm me. I rode in all my pregnancies until the week of my delivery.’

  ‘And you lost two children, as I recall.’ Lady Mar looked her in the eye.

  Eleyne blanched. ‘Neither died as a result of my riding I assure you.’ She changed the subject. ‘Do you intend to stay at Kildrummy long?’

  ‘It is my home. I intend to live here, and to run the estates.’ Elizabeth’s eyes gleamed with triumph. ‘You may have been accustomed to running the Fife lands, madam, and you may have learned to expect your own way, but here from now on things will be very different, I think you will find. You are not the mistress of these lands or this castle; I am. Here, you are nothing but the wife of the heir.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I

  FALKLAND CASTLE Summer 1266

  Colban sat at his father’s desk looking blankly down at the empty area of oak in front of him. ‘All you have to do is give the order, boy,’ Sir Alan Durward had said. ‘Do it now.’ He had walked from the room, leaving Colban staring unhappily at the servant standing just inside the door. Colban cleared his throat and took a deep breath. ‘Please. Fetch the Lady Rhonwen here,’ he said. His voice slid and squeaked uncomfortably from tenor to falsetto and the servant, hiding a smile, bowed and turned away.

  Still upright, still slim, her hair white beneath her coif, Rhonwen entered slowly. She was, she calculated, in her sixty-sixth summer, like the century.

  Seeing Colban standing so formally behind the desk, she smiled to herself. He had done well in his efforts to step into his father’s shoes. He missed Lord Fife and she knew he had been devastated by what he saw as his mother’s defection, but he had not showed it. He had turned his attention to Anna and to his son and concentrated on learning how to run the Fife estates. If he resented the overbearing interference of his father-in-law, he gave no sign.

  ‘You sent for me, my lord?’

  He nodded and she saw him swallow nervously. ‘Lady Rhonwen, I’m sorry, but Sir Alan and Lady Durward feel – that is, I feel – that it’s time someone a little younger ran the nurseries here.’ She could see the sweat breaking out on his upper lip. ‘I shall of course give you a pension. And I shall always love you –’ that bit was not part of the speech he had prepared and he blushed unhappily – ‘but I think it’s better if you go.’

  Rhonwen was not surprised. One by one Eleyne’s personal servants and companions had been demoted and sent to remote castles in the earldom. It had only been a matter of time.

  As it happened the decision suited her plans very well. ‘I’m glad you told me yourself, cariad bach. I shall be sad not to see to the growing up of little Duncan and I shall miss you and your brother, but, as you say, I am growing old.’ She shook her head ruefully.

  ‘What will you do, Rhonwen?’ Suddenly he was a boy again. He ran round the desk and took her hand.

  ‘Why, I shall go to your mother, of course. She’ll look after me.’

  ‘My mother.’ Colban turned away, shoulders stiffening, his eyes unhappy. ‘She has forgotten us; she never writes to us.’

  ‘She hasn’t forgotten you.’ Rhonwen’s voice was gentle. ‘Have you ever wondered if perhaps her letters don’t reach you?’ Surely the boy could see that Durward would never willingly let Eleyne contact her sons. ‘Remember how she loves Joanna and Hawisa, even though they determined to shut her out of their lives. Don’t ever do that to her, Colban.’ She reached out and touched his shoulder, feeling the unhappiness in the boy’s rigidity. ‘You’ll be your own master soon, cariad, then you can visit her as often as you like and you’ll see she still loves you.’

  ‘But why did she go with Donald of Mar so quickly?’ He looked bewildered. ‘Why didn’t she wait and say goodbye properly?’

&
nbsp; Rhonwen knew the answer to that. She had fled because otherwise she would not have had the strength to fight Alexander. ‘She went quickly because too many people wanted to stop her marrying. If she had waited they would have succeeded, and your mother thought that would make her unhappy.’

  ‘And is she happy now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her fixed smile betrayed her true feelings. ‘I hope so.’

  II

  KILDRUMMY CASTLE August 1266

  Elizabeth of Mar summoned her son to her side whilst Eleyne was out visiting Morna. ‘You are happy with your wife, Donald?’ she asked doubtfully.

  Donald stiffened. ‘You know I am. Eleyne is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.’ He straightened his shoulders, unconsciously preparing for the attack he knew to be coming. His mother always made him feel like an unruly child and he hated her for it.

  Elizabeth could read her son like a book. She concealed a smile as she seated herself on the chair nearest the fire. ‘Perhaps your father and I were wrong to try to put you off marrying her. For all her age, she seems a healthy woman and she has brought a good terce to the marriage as her dower from Fife. Her ladies tell me she carries the child with ease.’ She paused. ‘Because of that you do not seem to have realised just how delicate a woman in her condition is.’ She watched him mockingly. ‘I am sure she is anxious to please you in every way she knows, but for her sake you must leave her alone. I am surprised that you have not realised that yourself. You cannot continue to share her bed.’

  ‘That is none of your business – ’

  ‘I think it is. Obviously she hasn’t the strength or the wit to tell you this herself, so I have to do it for her. It is customary for a man to leave his wife alone in the later stages of pregnancy. Amuse yourself elsewhere. Bed that pretty red-haired wench who eyes you constantly in the hall. Your wife will understand. All she will ask is that you do it discreetly. She will be nothing but relieved that you have freed her from what must be a dreadful ordeal for her.’ She paused. ‘What you have been doing, Donald, is a mortal sin.’ She hissed the word at him without warning and was gratified to see him flinch as though she had struck him.