Candace Robb - A Cruel Courtship

He wished he might ignore the summons from Wallace and Murray — he knew what his assignments were. He’d prefer to begin another journey that was critical to the cause, escorting Margaret and her friend Ada de la Haye to Stirling. He’d agreed to give Margaret a real mission. He hoped he wouldn’t curse himself for telling her that the messenger who’d been carrying information from Stirling to the farm of James’s comrades down in the valley below Stirling had grown unreliable.

‘In fact they’ve not seen him in a few weeks. I need someone to find out what has happened.’

‘You’re leaving for Stirling?’ she’d asked.

He shook his head. ‘I can’t go. I’m known to too many of the English and the Scots in the town.’

‘I’ll do it,’ she said, fixing her eyes on his.

‘Maggie, that is not why I mentioned it. You can’t go.’

‘Why not?’

‘With the English holding Stirling Castle and town it’s a dangerous place. I would not risk you there.’

‘As a young woman unknown to anyone in Stirling I would be scrutinised no more than the other townsfolk.’

‘But all are scrutinised.’

‘That is also so in Perth.’

James could not deny that.

By the following day Margaret had recruited her friend Ada de la Haye, also keen to help the cause, as part of the scheme. Ada had a town house in Stirling where they might lodge. Both women were ready to depart at a day’s notice.

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.