A Cruel Courtship (Margaret Kerr Mysteries 3) Page 2

  But now James must delay. What stayed him from disobedience was the possibility that Wallace and Murray might have changed their plans and he might be following discarded orders. So be it. Margaret must wait. He had, at least, presented her with a gift. A Welsh archer had arrived in town after escaping from the Hospital of the Trinity at Soutra Hill, an Augustinian establishment that stood on the main road from the border between England and Scotland. The English were using it as an infirmary and camp for the soldiers. The archer had news of Margaret’s brother, Father Andrew, who had been sent to Soutra as a confessor to the English. Margaret had seemed comforted to hear he was well.

  Whence comes the knowledge of dreaming when one is dreaming – for a fleeting moment Margaret wondered that, but her sleepy, thoughtful mood quickly turned to dread as she recognised the dream space in which she stood, behind a once unfamiliar kirk, familiar now that she’d dreamt of it so often. It sat on a rocky plateau beneath a great castle that stretched high above on an outcrop. Here below, the kirk was dark except for a lantern over the east door that was for her but a twinkle in the distance; the castle was lit by many torches that danced in the wind of the heights, making the stone walls shimmer against the heavens. At the edge of the kirk yard her husband, Roger, stood atop a huge, scrub-covered rock that rose four times Margaret’s height, looking up at the castle. She stood far beneath him in the rock’s shadow, terrified because she knew what was to come. I pray you, Lord, let this time be different. Spare him, my Lord God. But the cry came, and then Roger came falling, falling, his head hitting the uneven, stony ground with a terrible sound. Margaret knelt to him …

  An owl’s screech rent the fabric of Margaret’s dream, letting the true night reach through and waken her. Rubbing her eyes, she rolled over to find her maid, Celia, sitting bolt upright with her hands to her ears, staring into the darkness of the curtained bed in Margaret’s chamber. Shivering, Margaret asked her if she’d shared her nightmare.

  ‘It was the shriek of an owl that woke us,’ Celia whispered, as if fearful the bird might hear her. ‘My ma always said such a visitation was a forewarning that the master of the house is to die.’ She crossed herself. ‘Master Roger is in danger.’

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, keep him in your care, Margaret prayed.

  ‘What should we do, Mistress?’ asked Celia.

  Waking a little more, Margaret realised that Celia had not shared her dream, but was speaking of the owl on the roof. It seemed a silly worry compared to her nightmare. ‘Visitation? Owls hunt at night, Celia, and I’m sure they often alight on roofs. Surely they cannot always mean to warn someone.’ Margaret spoke loudly to drown out the chilling rustling of the bird’s talons in the thatch.

  ‘This one shrieked and woke us, Dame Margaret.’

  When she was a little girl, Margaret recalled, she, her father, and her brothers Andrew and Fergus were out late one night in the water meadows downriver from Perth. A shadow gliding across the moon had frightened her, and she’d screamed as it disturbed the air above her head. Her father had picked her up, and she’d buried her face in his neck. It was but an owl, he had said, and already far away. It is but a bird, Maggie, a bird of the night.

  So, too, might be the owl this night. ‘If God means to warn me, I should think He would send a clearer message,’ said Margaret. Such as her dream? ‘Roger is safe in the infirmary at Elcho Nunnery – the same guards who injured him will do so to any others who arrive unannounced.’ She prayed that was true. Turning away from Celia, Margaret settled back into her pillow with a loud sigh that she hoped would silence her maid.

  ‘Can the Sight come to you as an owl?’ Celia asked.

  Could she not be still? ‘In faith, I know not,’ said Margaret, ‘and I am too weary to wonder about that now.’ Second Sight – several of the MacFarlane clan, her mother’s kin, were afflicted with it; her mother had nearly been destroyed by it. All her life Margaret had resented the suffering it brought to her family and for years had been thankful that she had not been so cursed. But that had changed of late. ‘Go to sleep, Celia. You can conjure more worries in the morn.’

  But the damage had been done, for Celia had touched on a subject of much concern to Margaret of late. She shivered as her thoughts turned to the possibility that her mind was opening to the Sight. Celia must be cold, too, because as she rolled and tossed seeking a comfortable position she brushed Margaret with an icy foot. The jolt of cold was like the chill Margaret felt when her surroundings grew strange and time past and future fused with the present. Of late, she might be kneeling in the garden tending the beds when without warning the earth seemed to drop away from her and she would gasp for breath, suddenly somewhere else and possessing frightening powers – hovering over people as she listened to their thoughts. They were often strangers and yet she knew them.

  ‘Shall we light a cruisie and talk?’ Margaret said to Celia’s back, suddenly wanting the reassurance of her pragmatic company.

  ‘It’s still night,’ Celia murmured, ‘time for sleep.’

  She had a talent for sleep – the blessing of an untroubled soul, Uncle Murdoch would have said. Troubled or untroubled, that did not seem to matter for Celia.

  Margaret both resented and envied Celia’s slumber as she herself lay in the dark weighing the possibility of God’s moving one of His most unsettling creatures to cry the darksome warning that her estranged husband was marked for death. His injuries had not seemed mortal, but wounds could so easily fester and then so quickly kill that even the most skilled healer might lose a patient. Indeed, Margaret had based her confidence in Elcho’s infirmarian on little information. But the recurring dream of Roger falling to his death made her question her judgment.

  She lay in the dark full of remorse for neglecting him. He was her husband in the eyes of God regardless of their estrangement. She did not wish him harm.

  The difficulty was that she had promised James that she would wait for him in Perth and then ride with him to Stirling. He had a mission for her, one that she had begged him to entrust to her, and he had particularly asked that she not involve herself in anything that might prevent her from leaving Perth when the time came. James’s opinion of her meant a great deal of late. If something were to come of their relationship over and above their work for his kinsman, she wanted James to have the memory of her courage in successfully completing a mission so that he would never look upon her as Roger had done, as a woman to be installed in his household and then largely ignored, never to be a confidante.

  That she was thinking of James in a romantic way would puzzle her Uncle Murdoch, who had introduced them in Edinburgh. They had not seemed destined for friendship, let alone anything deeper, in the beginning; in fact, James had threatened her and she had suspected him of being a sadistic murderer. Even now she tried not to think of the events that had led her to believe that of him. She understood that war changed the rules. She tossed in bed, uncomfortable with her acceptance of that. Losing her heart to someone other than her husband embarrassed her here in the dark of the bed she’d shared with Roger. Eager to be of some use, she had vowed to do all in her power to help James in the effort to restore his kinsman John Balliol to the throne of Scotland. Desiring James had not been part of her plan.

  She trained her thoughts on the owl’s visitation, returning to the question of whether Roger was safe at the nunnery. It was not a small thing, to go to him there. With the English, who held Perth, closely watching the countryside around the town and considering no wanderer innocent, she had little room to manoeuvre. She prayed that her mother might also have premonitions of Roger’s danger and warn him. It was because her mother bided in Elcho Nunnery that both Roger and her father were there. Her mother had retired to the nunnery when Margaret was wed. Her father had been pleased for her to do so at the time, but he’d recently returned from abroad determined to coax her back into living as man and wife. Roger had accompanied her father to the nunnery, apparently hoping to convince her mother
to give him details of a vision she’d had of Margaret standing with her husband and child watching the King of Scotland arrive in Edinburgh. Roger’s chosen lord, Robert Bruce, was understandably keen to know whether he was that king. James, too, was keen, but hoped the king was his kinsman. That they had all arrived at Elcho on the same evening had been an unfortunate coincidence – two boats stealthily arriving on the riverbank had thrown the guards into a panic that resulted in injuries to Roger, his companion Aylmer, and her father.

  Although the English soldiers left Elcho Nunnery in peace as a favour to her mother, who had to her shame done them an inadvertent service, Margaret feared she might not be included in her mother’s protected circle. It was possible the English knew of her connection to James Comyn, and thus to William Wallace and Andrew Murray, who were fighting to return the throne to John Balliol. She should not risk the possibility that the English might be waiting for her to leave the town and the protection of her neighbours so that they might take her for questioning without raising an alarm. But she had agreed to help James, and so she must wait for his escort.

  Margaret’s resolution unfortunately did nothing to help her sleep, for she had a wealth of worries awaiting her attention. The owl’s visit was only the most recent one. She had hoped to enjoy some quiet after the storm of familial troubles that had brought her back to Perth from Edinburgh. She must have been mad to think there would be any peace for her when all her family were involved in the struggle between the Scots and King Edward of England. The immediate danger was a fresh English army approaching the southern border. Margaret had thought the summer’s end would be relatively peaceful because King Edward was in the Low Countries, but apparently his presence was not necessary for an attack. Worst of all, the army would be marching across Soutra Hill, the site of the spital where her brother Andrew was confessor to the English soldiers. His assignment there was a condemnation, for as he was a Scot he would never be released now that he had heard the confessions of the enemy – which is precisely why his abbot had sent him there.

  Worries upon worries, cares upon cares. Yet despite it all Margaret must have drifted off because suddenly the dawn shone softly through the bed curtains that Celia had parted as she slipped out.

  ‘I must go below,’ said Celia, noticing that Margaret stirred.

  ‘Tom can see to the kitchen fire,’ Margaret assured her.

  ‘He can’t manage everything,’ Celia said. ‘If we overwork him we’ll lose him.’

  The new servant was a young man with whom Margaret was mostly delighted; he was efficient and energetic, though she did wonder why he had not chosen a side in the struggles and gone to fight. Celia believed that a man might be just as reluctant to fight as any sensible woman would be. Indeed Celia worried that Margaret’s hovering might frighten him off when there were so few young men to help with the heavier work.

  Falling back on the pillow, Margaret immediately resumed her inner debate about whether Celia had been right about the owl and she should go to warn Roger. But she had no idea what to warn him about. It had been his choice to risk his life and his property, knowing full well that as Robert the Bruce’s man he would be considered a traitor by the English. And the owl might simply have been hunting.

  Margaret spent the day in her garden, arguing with herself about her responsibilities while cutting down the spent plants, weeding, hoeing composted leaves from the previous year into the soil. It was good work for anger, and she had the garden to herself while Celia was at the river with the laundry.

  This was not a time to put her own feelings first, especially since she had coaxed James into allowing her to take on this mission. Wallace and Murray needed news from Stirling Castle and the lad who’d been providing it had been failing them. News from the castle was critical because in order to regain control of their country the Scots must control the crossing of the River Forth, which was guarded by Stirling Castle – now in the hands of the English. Therefore they must wrest control of Stirling and its castle from Longshanks’s army.

  She’d wondered why they’d left it so long. It had seemed foolhardy for them to focus so much of the summer’s fighting at Dundee when holding the bridge over the River Forth was so crucial to the protection of the north. She imagined that merchants concerned about their shipping were buying some of Wallace’s and Murray’s wits, pressuring them to keep the port open. Now, with English forces approaching, the two needed as much information about the English plans as possible, and as soon as possible. Margaret could not allow her concerns about Roger to distract her. She could not jeopardise the mission she’d fought for by rushing off to Elcho.

  Certainly Roger had not put aside his work for Robert Bruce in order to pay attention to her. And therein lay the crux of their marriage’s failure. Roger had disappeared the previous autumn, promising to return by Yuletide, but he had not returned until early August, lying his way back into their conjugal bed by swearing that he’d not meant to desert her, but rather he’d been caught up in the struggle against Edward Longshanks and then judged it dangerous to communicate with her. Margaret had been cautiously happy for a time, particularly with the bed sport, but once she’d learned the extent of Roger’s lies she could no longer trust him; nor could she see how they could peaceably bide together while supporting competitors for the Scottish crown. She wished he might have come round to her way of thinking.

  Margaret did not understand how Roger could believe that the Bruce, who had until very recently supported the invader, King Edward Longshanks of England, cared a whit for the people of Scotland. Two powerful Scots families had made claim for the empty throne, and Longshanks, invited to advise, had chosen the Comyn claimant, John Balliol. Now Robert Bruce, the young heir to the other claimant, was gathering supporters. Roger argued that Robert Bruce was the country’s only hope against Longshanks, that he’d proved steadfast in his defence of Ayr against the English troops in weeks past. That he had not surrendered despite being overpowered was proof of his loyalty to his people. As punishment for his rebellion Bruce was to deliver his daughter to the English as a hostage. Margaret had said a prayer for the daughter, but she’d reminded Roger that Robert Bruce had been defending his lands, which was no more than his duty. When Roger further argued that John Balliol had failed his people and would never regain their confidence or even more importantly that of the nobles, his argument had fallen on deaf ears, for Margaret was convinced of the opposite, that the nobles, including Robert Bruce, had failed Balliol, their king.

  Their warring loyalties and Roger’s lies had created such a rift in their marriage that Margaret had finally suggested to Roger that he use whatever influence and wealth he had to annul their marriage. But it seemed he’d belatedly decided their marriage was salvageable.

  She slept poorly again that night despite all the tiring work in the garden, plaguing Celia with her tossing, eventually falling into a brief, exhausted sleep at dawn. Waking with the indecision still gnawing at her, Margaret pushed back the covers and pulled aside the bed curtains. Sunlight streamed in the open windows and filled the room with a delicious heat. She was grateful for the warmth of the floor as she slid out of bed. She might think it a glorious day had there been no owl a night past. But it had kindled a sense of guilt she’d struggled to ignore, and now she thought that because she’d been anxious to escape Roger she’d not questioned the level of care he would receive at Elcho if she were not there to supervise.

  She struggled into her simplest gown, impatient with her awkwardness. She’d become too accustomed to Celia’s assistance in dressing. She was muttering to herself when a darksome thought stopped her in mid-motion: Celia believed the owl portended the death of the head of the household – not a possibility, but a fact. There was nothing she could do to avert his fate. Nothing … She rejected that idea as she slipped on her shoes and went off in search of Celia. Margaret could not think that God would be so cruel as to warn her if she was powerless to prevent her husband’s death. God
was good. God was love. God was at least reasonable or mankind was doomed.

  But should she not at the very least tell Roger of her fears? In the eyes of the Kirk she should honour her marital vow above her vow to James Comyn. She should go to Roger at Elcho Nunnery. It was only a short distance downriver. Besides, James was away, somewhere between Perth and Dundee conferring with Wallace and Murray – he might be away for a long while. She would leave a message with one of his men still in town asking that James meet her at the nunnery and continue to Stirling from there.

  In the kitchen, drawing Celia away from the capable Tom, Margaret proposed her plan – the woman was not only her maid, but her trusted confidante, although she had told her nothing of the visions or the recurring nightmare.

  Celia listened, hands on hips, never one to let her small stature give the impression of timidity. As soon as Margaret had presented her case, Celia rejected it with a shake of her head, her straight dark brows joined in a forbidding frown. ‘I fear you’re thinking with your heart, not your wits, Mistress. Master James instructed you to bide here until he returns, and you did promise.’

  Margaret threw up her hands. ‘Then what am I to do about the owl that so frighted you the other night? It’s not like you to defend James – you do not trust him.’

  ‘But neither do I trust Master Roger.’

  ‘So I’m to say nothing to my husband?’

  ‘Perhaps a messenger could be sent?’

  Margaret imagined asking someone to risk their life to tell Roger that a bird had warned her that he was marked for death, and it made her wonder at her own wits for having given it any thought at all. Still, it had forced her to face her unease about his welfare.

  ‘Dame Margaret?’ Celia awaited a response, her brows knit in concern. ‘Are you unwell?’