Candace Robb: A Cruel Courtship

‘We’ve got to live, you stupid boy,’ Evota cried. ‘You were paid good money by Father Piers. We depended on that. Your sister had to go whoring because Johanna rejected you and then you’d have naught to do with her. You good-for-nothing lovesick ass!’

Andrew looked up at Maggie. ‘Do you understand what they’re talking about?’

‘Yes.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Poor Johanna.’

Andrew took the wounded woman by the chin and held her so that she must look at him. ‘Did you beat a woman to death?’

Evota whimpered. ‘All I asked her was to favour Archie, sleep with him — she’d slept with all the soldiers at the castle, why not my son? Then he would go back to work as a messenger.’

‘Selfish cow,’ Archie shouted. ‘Johanna wasn’t like that.’

‘She wouldn’t agree?’ Andrew asked quietly.

‘She hit me. Hard. On the mouth. And she said she’d tell Father Piers and wouldn’t use Archie any more. They’d find another messenger. My son wasn’t good enough for her, the whore. He wasn’t English, that’s what she meant.’

Andrew let her go and drew away from her, sickened by the hatred in her eyes, her voice. The young man was sobbing. When Maggie looked up, her face was wet with tears, too.

‘What should we do with them?’ Ada wondered aloud. ‘I don’t want them here. Who is the law in the town now?’

Andrew shook his head. ‘There is none.’

Celia had brought a bowl of water and some rags, and now knelt to Evota, who stared at the ceiling wide-eyed, breathing in a laboured wheeze.

‘Go for Dame Bridget,’ said Maggie to Sandy. ‘I don’t know what to do for Archie’s leg.’ She rose and joined Andrew and Ada.

‘Had you any sense of her guilt, Maggie?’ Ada asked.

‘When she was startled to see a priest here in the hall, I wondered, but anyone might have,’ said Maggie.

‘Was this Johanna the woman over whom Peter and Archie fought?’ Andrew asked.

Ada nodded. She looked spent.

‘Was she a friend of yours, Maggie?’ Andrew was still trying to grasp all the implications of what had just transpired.

‘She was the source for the messages Archie carried to James’s men, which is why we met.’ She explained about Johanna’s English lover. ‘When she met me, I knew she was in danger, but I didn’t know whence came the threat, and I didn’t know what to do.’

‘Of course she was in danger,’ Andrew said. ‘But if anyone was responsible for that it’s James Comyn, using her as he did.’

‘He’s forced no one to fight for his kinsman, Andrew. Johanna wanted to do something for the cause.’

‘So why do you feel guilty?’

‘I told you, I kenned she was in danger, but I didn’t know what to do with the knowledge.’ Her voice had risen and she pressed a hand to either side of her wimple as if trying to close her ears to some noise. ‘I don’t understand how to use the Sight.’

‘My God, Maggie.’ Andrew reached her in two steps and laid his hands gently on hers. ‘The Sight? Tell me you’re not accursed with it.’ But he knew by the suffering he sensed in her and the fear in her eyes that she was.

‘I pray it’s God’s gift,’ she said. ‘I pray He’ll show me how I might use it for good.’

Ada had gone over to the wounded woman. ‘Take her home, John. Let her daughter tend to her. We’ll get no justice for Johanna by hanging this woman. Dame Bridget will advise us where Archie might go. I’m sick of them.’

Maggie broke away from Andrew. ‘The war has done this to them, Ada. They would have done none of this if Longshanks hadn’t torn apart their lives.’

‘You don’t know that, Maggie.’

Maggie turned back to Andrew. ‘You must feel you’ve walked into a house of madness.’

‘How could this town be otherwise, trapped between the castle and the camps?’ He put his arm around her. ‘How long have you known about the Sight, Maggie?’

‘Not long. Only you, Ada and Celia know. And Ma, I think. I’m going to Great-Aunt Euphemia, if I can. I want to learn about it, not let it destroy me like it has Ma. Let’s not talk of it any more today.’

’Thank God. Andrew did not think he could bear more.

Far off shouts and shrieks rendered the late September day the tinge of horror, as Margaret sat in the backland with Ada and Andrew. The delicate brandywine did little to ease the tension and chill that lingered after John led Evota away and Archie was moved out of the house to the kitchen. Celia was supervising the removal of the bloodstains in the hall, but no one could ever erase Margaret’s memory of Johanna’s suffering. She doubted Archie would ever forgive his mother; at least he had been spared the sight of what she’d done to his beloved.

Andrew’s encounter with the guards below had frightened Margaret. She prayed that James had managed to outwit them. She prayed for him, Fergus and Hal, and William Wallace, whom she’d found a kind, noble man. She wondered what the future held, what defeat might mean to all of them.

What had begun as a happy reunion was now not ruined, but subdued. The town was very quiet, though now and then she and her companions lifted their heads as folk who’d been watching the battle from the heights wandered home loudly sharing the hopeful, yet horrible news that the English were being slaughtered and being left to die in the carse, and their survivors retreating.

‘Is it possible?’ Margaret asked Andrew.

He looked drained by the confrontation between mother and son. ‘Nothing is impossible, Maggie. It is God’s to choose the outcome, though it is mankind’s sorry way to play it out by killing their own.’

‘I know that this is an important battle,’ said Ada, ‘but Longshanks has never been a man to accept defeat. I fear for us even if we win the day.’

Margaret looked to Andrew, who looked away.

‘Tell us about the journey from Soutra Hill,’ Ada suggested. ‘Are the fields ready for harvest?’

‘It was a ghost land,’ Andrew began, but the clatter of horses out in the square distracted them, and all three hastened out to the street, fearing trouble. Most of the household were already there. In fact, townsfolk lined the square.

Andrew craned his head to see the approaching troop. ‘That’s Sir Marmaduke Twenge,’ he said, pointing out a man who was clad in armour and riding a destrier.

The soldiers riding and walking behind him were bloodied and wore expressions that were a mixture of exhaustion and defeat. One dismounted in the market square, looking around at the houses as if uncertain where to go, and then approached Margaret.

‘I bear a message for Ada de la Haye.’

Ada stepped forward. ‘I am Dame Ada.’

The soldier bobbed his head to her. ‘Sir Simon Montagu sends greetings. He requests that if his son returns to Stirling you tell him that his father has ridden south and will not be returning.’

‘Simon survived,’ said Ada, crossing herself. ‘Is the battle over? Did- Who won?’

The messenger looked around, and seeing none of his fellows within hearing, said, ‘We are routed. The Earl of Surrey has raced south. Sir Marmaduke says the day went badly because some men are fools. Sir Hugh Cressingham, the Treasurer, was torn to pieces and many, many Englishmen lie dead in the swampy ground across the bridge. Pray for us.’ He bowed to her again and turned his horse towards the castle.

‘May God grant them eternal peace,’ Andrew said.

‘God speed,’ said Ada.

Margaret did not think she meant the messenger.

‘Why have the English gone to the castle?’ Celia asked.

‘If the bridge is lost to them, they can at least hold the castle as before,’ said Andrew. ‘This is one battle won by our side, not the war.’