Candace Robb: A Cruel Courtship

Returning to her mother, Margaret knelt and kissed Christiana’s parchment cheek. Despite the mounds of bedclothes her skin was dry and cold. A month ago she had still been lovely, indeed had seemed more vigorous than in recent years. Now her eyes were shadowed, her hair greyer.

‘How is Ada?’ Christiana asked.

Margaret wondered whether her mother had been told about her arrival or whether she had foreseen her visit. She did not ask. ‘Ada is well, Ma. And you? Are you eating? Resting?’

Christiana stopped the questions with a cold finger to Margaret’s lips. ‘I am as you see me, as the Lord hath made me.’ She fumbled about. Marion hastened over to hand her the basket of tablet weaving. ‘Can you untangle this, Maggie? It’s snarled and needs your patient hands.’

Glad for the distraction from her mother’s condition, Margaret took the basket and sat down on a high-backed chair that Marion had placed close to the bed. The work was far more skilled than anything Margaret could recall her mother doing. The pattern puzzled her for a moment, but after some study she recognised the outstretched wings and the large, round heads. ‘Owls,’ she whispered with a shiver of dread.

‘The work helped me stop thinking about the men who died,’ said Christiana. ‘But one night the head on which I worked became a man’s and I saw that he was tumbling from Kinnoull Hill — one of the men I betrayed.’ She gave a sob and turned away from Margaret. ‘I could not bear to hold it.’

The Sight was a curse. Her mother had received no joy from it, her marriage had been ruined by it, her children had suffered. A cold panic numbed Margaret’s fingers. Dear Lord, not me .

‘Marion,’ Christiana called out, ‘I would sit up in my chair now.’

Margaret glanced up from her work and involuntarily winced as she witnessed how Christiana clutched Marion’s arm and struggled to rise from the rumpled bed. Beneath the wool tippet her mother’s thin gown hung loosely. Her hands were claw-like in their fleshlessness.

‘How long have you been fasting?’ Margaret’s voice cracked with emotion.

‘You know when my penance began,’ Christiana said. ‘You tire me with such questions.’

Marion held firmly to her too-slender mistress, helping her shuffle to the cushioned chair near the bed. Christiana held Marion’s hand as she turned and sank down, and then the maid quickly tucked a lap rug about her. All was done with practised efficiency. Such quick deterioration bespoke a severe fast. As Marion straightened she gave Margaret an apologetic look and shook her head. Margaret did not blame the maid. Her mother would be far worse if she were not in Marion’s loving hands.

Christiana studied Margaret with fevered eyes. ‘Did Malcolm send for you?’ Her voice was surprisingly stronger now that she was sitting up.

‘No, Da did not summon me. I came here to see how Roger was healing before I go on to Ada’s house in Stirling, but I’ve learned he left a few days past.’

Closing her eyes, Christiana slowly nodded, and tears began to fall. Bowing her head, she crossed herself.

Margaret’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Ma, what is it?’

‘I fear for him,’ Christiana whispered.

‘What have you seen?’

Christiana shook her head. ‘I did not need the Sight to ken his condition. He has not recovered enough to travel. He limps so, he will be unbalanced in the fight.’

‘What fight?’ Margaret asked. ‘You must have had a vision.’ Not to mention that it was not her mother’s wont to be concerned about the consequences of another’s affliction.

Christiana’s pained expression suggested an affection of which Margaret had not been aware.

‘What have you seen, Ma?’

‘I told you, I saw how he limps.’ Christiana looked at the tangled yarn and tablets in Margaret’s lap. ‘Oh, put that aside, Maggie. I haven’t the strength to work on it anyway.’

Margaret persisted, finding the painstaking unravelling calming. ‘Did you see Roger often?’

‘I asked after him daily. When he was able to walk along the gallery he came to see me at least once a day. He is a good man, Maggie, a kind man. He told me you spoke of annulling your marriage. Did you?’

Margaret was confused by her mother’s sudden approval of Roger, whom she usually disliked. ‘You know of our troubles,’ she said. ‘Some things cannot be mended.’

‘But you came now to see him?’

‘I loved him once,’ Margaret said. ‘We are still man and wife in the eyes of the Kirk.’

‘Indeed you are, and he means to keep it so. Pity. You are only nineteen and so pretty — we might have found you a more worthy husband.’

‘But you just said he is a good man.’

‘Did I?’ Her mother looked at her with an expression so blank Margaret thought it must be sincere.

‘Ma, do you know where was he going?’

Christiana averted her eyes, but not before Margaret saw a shadow fall across them. ‘He did not say.’ She shifted in her chair and fussed with her sleeves. ‘Why are you for Stirling? What is there for you?’ Her voice trembled.

Margaret could not confide in her mother; in her state she could not be trusted to practise discretion. ‘I have been lonely. Ada has invited me to her home in Stirling for a while. There is nothing holding me in Perth, so I am accompanying her.’

‘If only you’d had children. They give a woman purpose.’

Margaret agreed. But God had not yet granted her children.

‘Would that you had the Sight,’ Christiana murmured, then shook her head fiercely. ‘No, no I did not mean to curse you with this wretchedness.’

This wretchedness . Margaret shivered. ‘Why did you choose to weave a border of owls, Ma?’

‘Aunt Euphemia said owls had the wisdom of women and lived in the moon’s cycles, as we do. I feel the need of the owl’s strength.’

‘Celia told me that her ma believed that when an owl alights on a roof and wakes the household the master is marked for death. Have you ever heard that?’

‘I recall something like that. There are no roofs in this border.’

Not wishing her mother to read anything in her eyes, Margaret kept them lowered and tried to focus on the matter of her mission to Stirling.

But what came to mind was David, the Welsh archer James had brought to her in Perth, the man who’d deserted the English army at Soutra, intent on finding William Wallace and fighting for him. He’d brought news of her brother Andrew.

She remembered how shocked she’d been by the archer’s condition. ‘But you should be abed,’ she’d said to David, looking askance at James. It was inhuman to push this man to speak to her when he was so ill. He was sweating and obviously weak with fever, and his hands and face were disfigured with a crimson rash. Margaret tried to keep her gaze from it after expressing her sympathy that the brothers at the spital had been unable to ease it.

David had lifted his hands, turned them over to reveal oozing scabs on his palms, and shaken his head. ‘It was not for this I was at the spital, Dame Margaret. It is the price I paid for my freedom. I escaped by crawling out of the infirmary drain, which carries away the blood and offal.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘Freedom to choose for whom I fight — that is not so easily won. When I heard that you were Father Andrew’s sister I asked to come to see you.’

Celia brought cushions for the one chair with back and armrests and Margaret invited David to sit. She took a seat on a bench, James beside her.

‘Andrew is well?’ Margaret asked.

‘He is,’ said David, ‘and respected by all the men. All trust him and find comfort in his presence, which is as it should be with a priest, I’m thinking.’