‘My lady, we can’t leave you!’ Sir Duncan was horrified.
‘Why not? No one will harm us here. We have my daughter-in-law’s great dogs to protect us. Build up the fire and leave enough wood to keep us warm and unpack the food and bring me all the rugs and towels from the litter. Then go. I have no intention of bathing with a dozen men ogling through the bracken.’
Sir Duncan appealed to Eleyne. ‘My lady –?’
‘Do as I say!’ Elizabeth cut in sharply. ‘I have to be alone and I have to bathe in the moonlight. It’s part of the cure. She can stay and seek her own blessing from the water, but no one else. No one at all.’ She staggered slightly, her hand to her breast. ‘Go now.’
Eleyne closed her eyes in despair, wishing fervently that she hadn’t come. The wild look in her mother-in-law’s eyes frightened her. ‘Surely, if Sir Duncan and his men wait out of sight,’ she said, ‘that will be good enough. Then they can take us back.’
‘No!’ Elizabeth cried in a frenzy. ‘They have to go. I have to wait for the moon. It’s my only chance. My only chance,’ she repeated through gritted teeth.
‘You had better do as she says,’ Eleyne said softly to Sir Duncan. She glanced at Elizabeth. ‘The Blessed Virgin and St Bride will protect us.’ And so will the old gods who watch here, she added to herself silently. Whose power is still strong in these hills; whose watch over the sacred springs has never lessened.
With one final anxious glance at Eleyne, Sir Duncan did as he was bid. The rugs and towels were piled in the chapel, the fire built up and a neat stack of firewood fetched from the copse at the foot of the rocks; dried rowan and pine and birch and even sharp, prickly thorn were heaped in the corner, then the escort left and they were alone.
Eleyne and Elizabeth watched as the horsemen rode down the hillside, then Elizabeth turned to her. ‘We’ll eat while we wait for the moon to rise,’ she said.
The two women sat before the fire in the deserted chapel as the dusk, coming in from the east, threw purple shadows across the glens. The light was dying fast. Through the open door, Eleyne looked up at the sky. It had turned to an opalescent aquamarine, remote and cold, streaked with carmine cloud. Between the mountains the shadows grew black and soft, folded in secrecy. From somewhere far away there was the howl of a wolf. Eleyne saw her dogs’ ears flatten. The hackles on their necks had risen, but neither animal moved from its watch by the door.
‘You’re afraid.’ Elizabeth’s mocking voice was loud in the silence.
Eleyne clenched her fists. ‘I’m afraid for you. Supposing you were taken ill – ’
‘I won’t be taken ill. I’ve come here to be cured and as soon as the moon has risen, I shall bathe in the pool.’ Elizabeth shivered suddenly. ‘Throw some more wood on the fire and put the towels to warm.’ She made no effort to move as Eleyne heaved herself awkwardly to her feet and did as she was bid. Her back was aching so much, she could barely move as she threw some branches on to the fire. For a moment she hesitated, staring down into the flames, seeing them beckon, then she forced herself to look away. Wearily she reached for the towels and spread them across the stone ledge.
‘It’s nearly dark.’ Elizabeth sat forward. ‘The moon will be up soon.’
‘I’ll go and see.’ Eleyne went slowly out into the wind. It was cold outside. The red was nearly gone from the west. Cloud, shredded and black, streamed across the darkening sky. In the east she could see the glow of the rising moon behind the hills. In a few moments its silver rim would float clear of the clouds. The water behind her was black as velvet, bubbling quietly from the deep centre of the mountain.
‘Is it time?’ Elizabeth’s husky voice behind her made her jump.
‘The moon is nearly up.’ Eleyne turned. She caught her breath in surprise. Elizabeth had removed her gown. Dressed only in a white shift beneath her cloak she was like an apparition in the darkness as the silver moonlight slowly spread across the mountainside.
Kicking off her shoes, Elizabeth began to walk, slowly and with laboured breath, towards the smooth flat rocks. Eleyne followed her, taking her arm as the woman stumbled. ‘You can’t mean to bathe completely. It’s ice cold!’ she protested.
‘Hold my cloak. It’ll serve to warm me when I come out.’ Elizabeth groped with the fastening at her throat.
‘Splash yourself. That will be enough.’ Eleyne tried to hold her back. ‘Here, let me get some water for you – ’
‘Leave me!’ Elizabeth’s voice rose sharply. She pushed Eleyne away and took the last few steps to the edge of the pool.
Moonlight flooded the dark water as the heavy strips of cloud scudded west, and Elizabeth paused, catching her breath as the pool turned silver. Cautiously she stepped into the shallow rock basin. The icy water clung to her shift, soaking her ankles then, as she took another step, her knees. She could hear her heart beating; her head was full of the sound. The moonlight filled her eyes. Slowly she raised her arms towards the sky.
On the bank Eleyne watched, a dog on each side of her. She saw Elizabeth move cautiously to the centre of the pool and she saw her raise her hands towards the moon. She smiled ruefully. So this woman too, descendant as she was of the ancient Celtic line of the Earls of Buchan, remembered earlier gods. Eleyne shivered, huddled in her cloak as the wind freshened across the mountainside, wincing as the child in her belly moved sharply, as if sensing her unease. Preoccupied with her thoughts of the impatient life within her, it was a moment before she saw that Elizabeth had fallen to her knees in the pool. She took a step nearer, peering into the moonlit dazzle from the water.
‘Help me!’
She barely heard Elizabeth’s call over the trickle of the spring. Dropping the woman’s cloak she ran to the edge of the pool. Elizabeth had slumped forward in the water, her arms flailing, her face contorted with pain.
Sabina got there first, bounding into the water with a fearful splash, dragging at the woman’s gown. Eleyne reached her seconds later, scarcely feeling the cold on her legs as she caught Elizabeth’s arm. The woman’s head was lolling out of control. Gritting her teeth, Eleyne felt Elizabeth’s weight sagging against her as she began to drag her bodily from the water, half helped, half hindered by the dogs.
A pain knifed through her back and she gasped, nearly dropping Elizabeth back into the water. She took a deep breath and, with a groan, put her hands beneath Elizabeth’s arms, pulling her step by step towards the edge of the pool. Though thin, Elizabeth was a tall woman and with her shift soaked with water she was enormously heavy. Eleyne heard herself sobbing as she gave another heave. She was shaking uncontrollably, the pain in her back arcing through her belly.
At last she pulled Elizabeth halfway up the bank. She sank to the ground next to her, struggling for breath before she reached for the woman’s cloak and tucked it around her gently. ‘Are you all right? Can you hear me?’ she gasped. She took one of the cold limp hands and began to chafe it. ‘Can you hear me?’ Her voice broke into a sob of pain.
She stared up towards the moon, taking deep breaths, trying to calm her heartbeat. Her whole body had contorted suddenly with agony.
‘Blessed Bride, help me.’
She was alone on the empty mountainside with a sick woman – and her baby was coming.
Elizabeth, scarcely conscious, looked up at her. ‘What is it?’ she murmured. Through her own agony she had at last realised Eleyne’s distress.
‘My baby. It’s going to be born.’
‘You shouldn’t have helped me.’ Elizabeth grimaced. ‘I’m sorry.’ She closed her eyes, her breathing harsh and irregular. ‘Leave me. Get into the warm,’ she muttered. ‘Go on.’ She reached feebly towards Eleyne with a clawed hand. ‘God bless you’ – She paused. ‘Daughter.’
Eleyne stared down at her. ‘Don’t die!’ She gritted her teeth as another wave of pain hit her. ‘You can’t die, you’ve bathed in the pool. You have immortality.’ She clutched at Elizabeth’s hand. ‘Please, don’t die!’ It was a frightened ple
a.
Elizabeth’s head rolled sideways and her eyes opened slightly, but the life in them had gone. After the harshness of her breathing, the silence was even more terrifying. Eleyne dropped her hand and stared around in a panic. The mountainside was deserted. The night was silent. Only the silver moon watched the stricken woman as she knelt beside her mother-in-law’s body, and the only sound now was the gentle bubbling of the spring.
She found she was shaking uncontrollably again and, after a moment’s hesitation, she pulled the cloak from Elizabeth’s body and wrapped it round her own. She dragged herself to her feet and staggered towards the chapel, the dogs pressing themselves against her anxiously as she sobbed out loud as each new pain took her. In the doorway she looked back at the dead woman sprawled on the soft bed of fern and moss by the side of the spring and for a moment she envied her peace.
Painfully she built up the fire and spread blankets on the stone bed before she collapsed on to it, clenching her teeth against each new onset of pain.
The dogs seemed to know what was happening. Raoulet remained on guard by the door, staring out into the night, whilst Sabina lay down beside Eleyne. It was the bitch’s tongue on her face which revived her as she drifted in and out of consciousness, her shaggy coat to which Eleyne clung as spasm after spasm of agony knifed through her body.
It was just before dawn.
In a short lull between contractions, Eleyne pulled herself up slightly on the bed. The fire was dying; she had to put on more logs. Somehow she managed to do it, and to finish her preparations for the birth. She had torn strips from her shift to wrap the baby and had plenty of rugs to keep it and herself warm. She unpicked threads from her hem to tie the cord. Morna had borne her child alone; it was better that way, she had said. No fuss, no gossiping cronies taking the opportunity to poke around her house. At this moment Eleyne would have welcomed anyone poking around her house. At the end of the chapel, almost beyond the angle of her vision, the flat slab which acted as an altar carried a small carved Celtic cross, crude in its design. There were no statues in this deserted place. And no prospect of any pilgrims arriving to help her in her hour of need. She had to keep calm. Her baby’s life, and probably her own, depended on it. She must think back to her previous births and cope on her own.
The first rays of sunlight were falling pale and cold across the floor when at last the child slipped free of her body and lay whimpering feebly. It was a boy. Eleyne did what was necessary. Gathering the last reserves of her strength, she tied the cord and nipped it with her teeth, then she dried the baby carefully in one of the towels, wrapped the tiny scrap in the piece of her shift and then a rug against the cold beyond the fire, and put the baby to her breast. Sabina whimpered in her throat and Eleyne smiled across at the dog. Moments later the contractions started again. She lay back, cuddling the baby to her. Once the afterbirth was passed, she would be free of pain. But the pain did not go: it grew worse and she became frightened. She looked down at the baby, which had fallen asleep in her arms, and laid it beside her. When were they coming back? Noon, Elizabeth had said and it was only just morning.
Beside her Sabina nuzzled the swaddled baby. ‘Guard him, Sabina, guard him well,’ Eleyne murmured. ‘Take care of him for me.’
As the pain built again, she began to drift away. Her spent body tensed and fought the waves of agony and she slipped in and out of unconsciousness, to be awakened by renewed spasms of her contorted muscles as a second child was born. Somehow she found the strength again to tie off the cord and wrap the baby in the rug which lay near her, then she fell back exhausted.
Sabina sat up. Head to one side she looked down at the second baby lying at Eleyne’s side, where it had slipped from the crook of her arm. The baby whimpered miserably and gently the bitch nuzzled it. Not swaddled like its brother, it waved its arms, dislodging the loosely wrapped rug, and as the small body began to grow chill it let out a feeble cry.
Sabina nudged it, agitated, then she began to lick it, her rough tongue covering every inch of the small human, working as efficiently as when she dealt with her own puppies. Satisfied at last that the baby was warm and dry, she stood up, shook herself and looked enquiringly at Eleyne. When there was no response from her mistress, she looked down again at the two babies. The smallest was crying weakly and the sound worried her. Leaping up beside the babies on to the stone bed, she curled her great shaggy body around them, nosed them gently and settled down to sleep.
Next to her Eleyne drifted further and further into blackness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I
‘They told you to return at noon?’ Rhonwen confronted Sir Duncan in the great hall. ‘And you left them alone?’ She stared at the man in complete disbelief.
‘Lady Mar ordered it,’ he said crossly. ‘She said they had to be alone.’
Rhonwen put her hand to her head. ‘For the love of pity, they have been out there all night! A sick woman and a woman only weeks from giving birth!’
Outside the trees bent before the wind, their branches streaming, leaves whirling in vortices on the ground beneath. Above the castle, great patches of purple shadow raced across the hillsides.
Rhonwen took Agnes and Bethoc with her as she rode stiffly on her roan palfrey beside Sir Duncan. He guided them unerringly up the track, threading his way across the mountain until they came in view of the spring and drew up abreast at the edge of the holy place.
‘Blessed Virgin!’ Sir Duncan stared, appalled, at the body sprawled on the edge of the pool, one foot still trailing in the water. The ravens and kites had already begun work on her face. There was blood on the rocks and on her shift – the black slow blood of death. There was no sign of Eleyne.
At first Raoulet would not let them pass, but Rhonwen coaxed him out of the doorway so that she and Bethoc could get in.
‘Holy Mother!’ Bethoc’s eyes got used to the dark in the windowless cell first. Eleyne lay half wrapped in a blood-soaked cloak, her face white, her eyes closed. Beside her the second great wolfhound had curled up with the two babies cuddled up in her fur. They were clean and warm and both very much alive.
Rhonwen and Bethoc were speechless, then at last Rhonwen spoke. ‘Twins! And one is Alexander’s child,’ she breathed. ‘Sweet lady, it’s a miracle!’ Her voice rose in triumph. ‘Donald of Mar’s son had to make room for his sovereign’s child!’
Bethoc stared at her in bewilderment. She crossed herself, her face white. Then she tiptoed across the floor. ‘Is my lady alive?’ she asked in a whisper.
Rhonwen took Eleyne’s hand and chafed it gently. ‘She’s breathing, but only just. It’s a miracle this place stayed warm.’ She looked across at the dying fire and shuddered. ‘But there are great powers at work here; great powers to guard over the birth of a king’s son.’ She stooped and reverently picked up the baby which had been wrapped in the torn shift. ‘This is he. The first-born. Lord Donald’s child was not important to my lady. She did not even bother to wrap it.’
Bethoc gave a superstitious shiver, then she scowled. Deftly she caught up the second baby and wrapped it warmly in her own cloak. ‘Whoever fathered these children, it is for us to take care of them, and of their mother,’ she scolded sharply.
Rhonwen nodded. She could not contain her sense of triumph. At last, Alexander had his son!
II
‘I swear before God they are both your sons!’ Eleyne was terrified at the fury in Donald’s face.
‘How can they be! Everyone knows that twins are born only to women who have lain with two men. My mother warned me, and I didn’t believe her!’ He slammed his fist on the palm of his hand. ‘God’s bones! I should have listened to her!’
‘Donald, please!’ Eleyne was still too weak to get out of bed. It was three days since Elizabeth’s funeral in the parish church in Kildrummy village; seven days since the twins had been baptised in the castle chapel by Father Gillespie. On Rhonwen’s instructions they had been named Duncan and Alexander. Neith
er Donald nor Eleyne was present at the christening. Nor was Rhonwen.
‘I swear I have not lain with another man. I swear it! I have been faithful to you.’ Tears trickled down her cheeks and she clutched at his hand. ‘I swear it, Donald.’
He moved to look down at the two cradles. ‘Then it was Alexander,’ he said quietly. ‘Rhonwen is right. One of them is Alexander’s son.’
‘No!’ Sobbing, Eleyne reached out towards him. ‘How could it be? He was no more than a figment of the imagination! I haven’t seen him or thought about him or dreamed about him since we came to Kildrummy. I swear it!’
Donald turned away. ‘That’s not true and we both know it,’ he said softly. ‘And the fact remains, you have given birth to twins and you called one of them Alexander.’
‘I didn’t call him Alexander, that was Rhonwen. Rhonwen!’ She pulled herself up on her pillows and pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘Donald, you must believe me. I will swear on anything you hold holy. On the relics of the Blessed St Margaret. On the children’s heads! Look at the boys, see how like each other they are. And they are both like you. How could they have had different fathers?’
Donald looked down at the babies. They were indeed alike and he had to admit they were like Gratney too. His eldest son had no qualms at all about his little brothers. He adored them and spent long hours with his nurse gazing at them in awed silence.
Donald turned back to the bed. ‘You would swear on holy relics?’ he asked uncertainly.
‘I would swear on anything you like.’
He still looked doubtful. ‘Mother was so sure.’
‘Your mother was mistaken.’ Eleyne’s voice, though still weak, took on a firmness which he recognised. He smiled in spite of himself.
‘I think perhaps she was.’ He sighed. ‘As she was mistaken about her illness. The physicians have told me she brought her death upon herself. The shock of the cold water on top of the exertion of the journey stopped her heart. There was nothing wrong with it until then.’ He looked questioningly at the two cribs. ‘But you have given birth to twins. How did it happen?’