Child of the Phoenix

  Eleyne gave a tight unhappy laugh. ‘How do you think, husband mine? We made love too much, that’s how. I’m surprised it didn’t happen when Gratney was born as well!’ She raised an eyebrow at him provocatively and was relieved to see an answering light in his eye.

  III

  ‘I want the phoenix!’ Eleyne fixed Rhonwen with a furious stare. ‘How dare you hide it from me!’

  ‘The king told me to hide it,’ Rhonwen repeated stubbornly. ‘He wants it near you, so that he can reach you.’

  ‘I could have this castle torn apart,’ Eleyne said slowly. ‘And I’ll do it. Rhonwen,’ she appealed, ‘I thought you loved me.’

  ‘I do love you, cariad, I love you more than life itself. That’s why I serve the man who is your destiny.’

  ‘Donald is my destiny – ’

  ‘No, cariad.’ Rhonwen raised her voice. ‘He is an obsession – a passing passion. He is nothing. Einion Gweledydd knew. That is what he tried to tell you …’

  ‘No – ’

  ‘Oh, yes, cariad, he knew. Donald of Mar is no one. So much thistledown, tossed on the wind.’ She snapped her fingers in the air. ‘And now you have the king’s son, Alexander, a child of royal blood – ’

  ‘No!’ Eleyne raised her voice at last. ‘I forbid you ever to say such a thing again, ever. Sandy and Duncan are both Donald’s sons. Donald’s, do you hear? Now give me the phoenix.’

  Rhonwen shook her head.

  Exasperated Eleyne took a deep breath, her anger mounting. ‘Rhonwen, I have loved you for a very long time. I have stood by you and helped you when you have caused me nothing but heartache and trouble. You have not done me any favours by claiming all over the castle that Sandy is a dead man’s son. My husband doubts my faithfulness and half the household think I am a whore or a witch or both. Now, give me the phoenix.’

  ‘I haven’t got it any more.’ Rhonwen stared at her defiantly. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘You think I’d believe that?’ Eleyne’s voice was hard. She folded her arms wearily.

  ‘Believe it or not, cariad,’ Rhonwen said slowly, ‘it’s the truth.’

  She curtseyed with only the smallest hint of mockery as Donald walked into the room and then she fled.

  Eleyne stared after her in helpless fury.

  ‘You look tired.’ Donald’s voice was gentle but there was still a certain constraint between them.

  ‘I am tired.’ Eleyne wanted to go to him, to touch his face, to feel his arms around her, but she sensed his distance from her. ‘Rhonwen continues to make trouble.’

  ‘Why don’t you send that mad old baggage packing? Back to London? Didn’t you say Mistress Luned had offered her a home?’

  ‘It would break her heart.’ Eleyne sat down at the table. She put her face in her hands. ‘She won’t give me the phoenix.’

  ‘So.’ His voice was bleak.

  ‘We can fight him, my love.’ She looked up at Donald pleadingly. ‘Just as we have always fought him. Please.’ She held out her arms.

  ‘Has he come back to you?’ Donald did not move.

  She shook her head.

  He shivered. ‘Yet I feel him. He watches over you all the time.’

  ‘No.’ She went to him and put her arms around his neck. ‘I am yours, Donald. Gratney, Duncan and Sandy are your sons. I have sworn it and I will swear it again.’

  She reached up to the neck of her gown and pulled it open at the back, slipping the dark green velvet from her shoulders. She saw his eyes go at once to her heavy blue-veined breasts. He had begun to breathe deeply. ‘Lock the door,’ she whispered. She let her gown and then her shift fall slowly to her knees. He hesitated, then walking like a man in a dream, he did as she bid, and she opened her arms.

  At dead of night in the cold moonlight she had traced a circle of protection around the castle walls: phoenix or no phoenix, Alexander was outside it, in the darkness. He could not come near her or her sons.

  IV

  FALKLAND CASTLE 1268

  The visit was not a success. Bethoc, Agnes and Rhonwen had remained behind to look after her three sons at Kildrummy, but Eleyne missed the children desperately. Colban and Macduff were reserved, though polite; Anna was hostile; Eleyne’s grandson, Duncan, did not remember her at all. On her last evening at Falkland, Eleyne followed Colban to his father’s countinghouse, set in the thickness of the grey wall which overlooked the Lomond Hills.

  ‘Are you and Anna still content?’ She put her hands on his shoulders and held him at arm’s length, forcing him to meet her eye.

  ‘We rub along well enough, mama.’

  ‘And your brother, is he happy?’ After greeting her happily enough, Macduff had disappeared. He had not been present at supper the night before.

  Colban shrugged. ‘I think so. Don’t worry, mama, we’re grown men. In two years I come of age. You worry about your new family.’

  She held his eye a little longer, overwhelmed with love for her proud, independent boy, then she looked away. ‘I love all my children equally, Colban, but there is always a special place in a mother’s heart for her eldest son.’ She smiled. ‘I’m very proud of you.’

  He looked embarrassed, then at last he put his arms around her and gave her a quick, tight hug.

  From Falkland they rode to Dunfermline, where they spent some time in private with the king. When they left, Eleyne had letters for her nephew, for they were to ride on south to Wales.

  She was torn: she badly wanted to go back to her boys, but the chance to go south again to Wales, the chance to show Yr Wyddfa to Donald was a temptation hard to resist. And the king’s orders were clear. As his father had before him, he wanted her to be his go-between, his royal messenger, riding south on the pretext of visiting her family to discuss a Welsh–Scottish Celtic alliance with her nephew.

  V

  ABER June 1268

  By Midsummer’s Day, Eleyne was once more home at Aber.

  ‘Well, has it changed?’ Llywelyn, resplendent in the talaith, the gold coronet of the Welsh princes, stepped down off the dais in his great hall and hugged her.

  She gazed around and shook her head. ‘Yr Wyddfa is still there, and the strait and beyond it the island. I can still smell the mountains; I can still hear Afon Aber in the valley.’ She looked at Rhonwen, who had cried as once again they crossed the border into Wales. Ostensibly it had been a last-minute act of kindness to send for Rhonwen before they set out, so that she could visit her native Gwynedd again, but Eleyne had two other reasons: she did not want the old woman left in charge of the nurseries at Kildrummy; especially she did not want her near Sandy. Also, she wondered secretly whether she could prevail upon her nephew or one of her remaining sisters, Gwenllian or Margaret, to keep Rhonwen in Wales.

  Llywelyn grimaced. ‘You loved it here as a child, I remember. Whereas I spent most of my childhood as a prisoner!’ He sighed.

  ‘Tell me about Isabella.’ He had only said that she had died.

  He shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to tell. She had a wasting disease.’

  ‘And you were with her when she died?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Did she speak of me at all?’

  ‘No,’ he said abruptly.

  She watched him thoughtfully as he walked away from her, aware of a slight shiver down her back. She did not question him on the subject again.

  VI

  ‘Donald.’ She shook his shoulder gently. ‘Donald, are you awake?’ They had made love long and passionately the night before and now he slept heavily, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed. Smiling fondly, she crept from beneath the bedcovers. The servants on the truckle beds were all asleep; it was barely light.

  Pulling on her shift and then her gown and cloak, she tiptoed to the door. Nodding at the dogs to follow her, she let herself out on to the dark stairs. Meg opened a sleepy eye and watched her, debating whether to get up, but Eleyne was already outside. No doubt her lady was going riding. Had she wanted a companion she would have wok
en someone, not tiptoed from the room like a lover off to a secret meeting.

  It was a long time since Eleyne had slipped from the prince’s hall, through the gate, past the night guard and out down the hill past the forge and the church and the mill and out through the village. With a rueful smile as she thought of all the years which had passed, she walked along the river, the dogs gambolling at her side. She was not tempted to go to the horses after spending the last three weeks in the saddle. All she wanted was to walk quietly along the river, watching the cold colourless early morning suffuse with light. And she wanted to think; think about the past and the people who had gone. Her father, her mother, Dafydd, Gruffydd, both buried with their father at Aberconwy, even Isabella.

  She wandered out of sight of the village, following the valley. The air was cold beneath the trees, rich with the scent of rotting wood. The path, though well trodden, was deserted.

  Behind her, Rhonwen paused, keeping well out of sight. She shivered in the cold dawn, and looked up through the trees at the slopes of the hillside which were still covered in mist. Almost, she decided to turn back.

  Eleyne walked on, slowly and dreamily, smiling as she saw the blue flash of a kingfisher beneath the trees. She stopped, peering at the place it had vanished, and for the first time she realised how cold it was in the shady ravine. She pulled her cloak round her more tightly, and looked behind her. The mist had advanced through the trees, drifting closer, lapping around the gossamer-hung bushes, curling among the old rotting vegetation which hung over the path. Both dogs had disappeared, eagerly exploring the scents of the morning. The birds were silent, the mist drifting closer, and with it came the cold, suffocating aura of menace.

  She hesitated, then firmly she walked on a few steps and stopped again. She pulled her cloak tighter still, glancing up at the hillside. The earlier patches of thin sunlight on the high western flanks of the mountain had gone – all she could see was the mist.

  Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. The mist was all around her, touching her face, soaking her clothes. Someone was near her, but she could see nothing. The silence beat against her eardrums.

  ‘Who is there?’ She spun round, holding out her hands in front of her. ‘Who is it?’

  But already she knew. She could feel him trying to speak, feel the frustration beating round her head, feel the cold air vibrating against her mouth, her eyes, her ears.

  ‘Einion?’ She turned round and round on the path, her feet slipping on the mud. ‘Please leave me alone.’

  A wind had arisen from nowhere. The air was alive, and near her the trees began to bend and creak, their branches thrashing the water, whipping it into spray, shredding the mist.

  She had lost the path now. She could feel brambles catching at her skirts; nettles whipped across her face, and a briar wound itself around her arm, tearing her gown and leaving a long bleeding scratch. With a scream she lost her footing and fell on her knees among the flat pebbles on a shingly strip of beach where the low summer river had left the margin dry. The wind was still tearing at her head; she felt the hood of her cloak fall, felt her hair pulled free, tangling. Desperately she closed her eyes and crouching down she wrapped her arms around her head.

  It was then that she saw him: tall, his white hair blowing in the wind, his eyes a piercing fury in his head. ‘My prophecy was true!’ The words exploded in her mind. ‘It was true! The child. The child. Your daughter. Your child …’ The words were fading. ‘Your child …’

  ‘No!’ Eleyne screamed. ‘Leave me alone!’ She flailed out desperately. ‘Go away.’ Frantically she tried to regain her feet, sobbing. ‘I don’t believe you, I don’t want to know. Go away, leave me alone.’ Her feet kept slipping on the pebbles as, blindly, she tried to find the steep bank. Her hand closed over a tree root and she tried to pull herself up. She was panting, unable to catch her breath. Clawing at the soft earth, she found a foothold, then another, and, hampered by her skirts, she pulled herself up on to the path once more. The mist was thinner there. Stray rays of sunlight filtered through the trees and she could see a figure running towards her.

  ‘Cariad!’ Rhonwen’s breath was rasping in her throat, her hand pressed to her side. Behind her were the two dogs. ‘I heard you scream! Dew! I couldn’t go any faster. What is it? What’s happened?’ She stared in horror at Eleyne’s torn stained clothes and her tearful face. ‘What is it? Did you fall?’ Rhonwen looked down the bank at the shingle. Wisps of mist still floated over the river between the trees. Somewhere nearby a dove had begun to croon, high in a treetop where the sunlight was suddenly strong.

  Eleyne seized her arm. Her teeth were chattering. ‘Einion!’ she gasped.

  ‘Einion?’ White-faced, Rhonwen peered around. All she had seen was the silent white mist drifting down the hillside until it enveloped Eleyne and she had vanished from sight. ‘What did he say?’ She put her arms around Eleyne and held her tightly.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t understand. He said the prophecy was true. He talked about a child.’ She was crying.

  Rhonwen could feel her whole body shaking. ‘You must look in the fire, cariad, you will see the future there. Yours and little Alexander’s. You never look in the fire now. You avoid it. I’ve seen you. You keep away from it, even when the east wind blows at Kildrummy.’ She tried to smile. ‘Almost as though you were afraid of it.’

  Eleyne shook her head. ‘I don’t want to see the future. I don’t want to know what happens next.’ She bent and put her arms around Sabina’s neck.

  ‘Oh but you do, cariad. All your life, destiny has marked you for her own. Whatever is to happen to you, you are special. You must have courage, you must look.’

  Eleyne shook her head again. Sunshine shone obliquely over the shoulder of the hill and caught the water, setting diamonds amongst the shadows. ‘I used to think Alexander was my destiny,’ she whispered. ‘That I would marry him and be a queen … When he died, I wanted to die too. I couldn’t bear to live without him.’ She was talking to herself.

  ‘And you didn’t have to,’ Rhonwen said softly.

  ‘Then Donald came,’ Eleyne ignored the interruption, ‘and the shadows receded and I no longer thought about destiny. Our love was too strong to question. No other man could have been my destiny, only Donald.’

  Rhonwen shook her head. ‘No. Lord Donald stole you from the king.’

  ‘No one stole me, Rhonwen.’ Eleyne was feeling calmer now. The sun’s beams had strengthened, and she could feel the heat of one striking through the soft leather of her shoe on the path.

  ‘Oh, but he did,’ Rhonwen insisted. ‘Alexander was your destiny and somehow, something went wrong. Your life and his did not run parallel; destiny was out of line. And now the gods are trying to put things right. Lord Einion is their messenger. How can you still be happy with Lord Donald, when you think of the grief he has caused you?’

  ‘That’s over.’ Eleyne was still trembling. With her hand on Sabina’s head, she turned slowly back towards the village. ‘Now his mother has gone, it will be different. We are happy again. He won’t leave me any more.’

  ‘I hope you are right.’ Rhonwen walked ahead slowly. ‘Because if ever he makes you unhappy again, I swear I shall kill him and give you back to your king.’

  Eleyne stood still, staring at Rhonwen’s retreating back. She was cold with horror at the flat note of certainty in Rhonwen’s voice and, as if she heard them for the first time, Malcolm Fife’s words rang in her head. It was your nurse that did it. She’s a killer by instinct.

  ‘Rhonwen!’ Her voice was sharp.

  Twenty yards ahead of her along the track, Rhonwen stopped and turned.

  ‘Did you kill Robert de Quincy?’

  Rhonwen smiled. ‘Oh yes, cariad, I killed him. For you.’

  VII

  The August sun was unremittingly hot. The mountains baked; the earth dried and cracked. Grass and crops shrivelled and the trees began to shed their leaves as though it were autumn. In the lush orc
hards of Aber the trees carried small hard apples, red before their time on branches crackling with dryness. The air was heavy, laden with dust and carried the acrid scent of a hundred scrub fires.

  Donald and Eleyne lay together in their bedchamber after lunch. They were both naked. They had made love then slept. The whole world slept. The servants who usually shared their room had made their way to the hillside behind the castle where the trees and the bracken shaded them and a slight breeze blew from the strait.

  Eleyne awakened suddenly and lay looking at the tester above the bed. She had been dreaming about Colban, and tried to recall the dream, but it had gone. Leaning on her elbow, she gazed down at Donald. At twenty-eight he was, if anything, more handsome than he had been at eighteen. His face had matured as his body had hardened and the small laugh lines at the corners of his eyes gave promise that he would grow more attractive still. Smiling secretly to herself, she kissed him lightly on the mouth and felt her body respond with instant excitement as, still half-asleep, he reached up and pulled her down.

  The letter for him came that evening. He read it sitting at the high table beside the Prince of Wales, and at his exclamation of horror and anger Llywelyn turned to him.

  ‘Bad news from Scotland, my friend?’

  Eleyne leaned forward. ‘What is it, Donald? what has happened?’

  ‘Father!’ Donald slammed the letter down on the table amongst the trenchers. ‘He has remarried.’

  ‘Your father is still an active man,’ Llywelyn said. ‘Surely you wouldn’t deny him the comfort of a wife.’

  ‘Who is it, Donald?’ Eleyne put in. ‘Who has he married?’

  ‘Muriel, Malise of Strathearn’s daughter.’

  Eleyne forced a smile. ‘I’m glad. She’ll be good to him.’

  Muriel of Strathearn was several years younger than she was.