Candace Robb - The Fire In The Flint

She did not believe him.

As if he read that in her silence, he asked, ‘Did you search my things, too?’

‘I did,’ she said.

He groaned.

‘I cannot help but wonder what has kept you from me and your responsibilities here all this time,’ she said.

‘But I’ve told you.’

She rose up to face him. ‘Yes. And if we were merely friends, perhaps even brother and sister, it would be enough. But you share my bed, Roger, and my body, and I can’t go on without knowing your heart. I thought it was enough for me to love and serve you, but all the while you were away I felt so betrayed. I can’t go back.’

He was losing his temper, she could tell it by his breathing.

She rolled over and refused to respond to his angry questions.

Some time in the night Mungo woke Celia with a low growl. A lamp burned dimly by the front door. She tried to calm the dog, stroking him between the ears while she peered into the darkness, staying low. A person was sitting on a bench beside the lamp, pulling off their boots she guessed by the movement and the sound of something dropping. Mungo’s behaviour suggested it was Aylmer. And as he rose and stiffly bent to pick up the boots, then lifted the lamp, Celia saw that it was indeed Aylmer who now moved towards his chamber. He paused as he neared Mungo. The dog growled.

‘Damned dog,’ Aylmer said, ‘you belong in the stable.’

Celia thought she saw a bruise on his face and stains on his shirt, as well as a torn sleeve, although the shadows from the lamp might be tricking her eyes. She must have moved or made some noise to call attention to herself, for now Aylmer saw her.

‘What are you doing in the hall?’ he demanded.

‘I’m trying to keep the dog quiet so my mistress can sleep the night.’

Mungo growled and barked once.

‘Now look what you’ve done.’ Celia held Mungo back. ‘Go off to bed and leave us.’

With a curse, Aylmer stumbled off to his chamber.

Celia’s heart pounded. It was a long while before she slept again.

The crackle of fire and a murmur of men’s voices entered Fergus’s awareness and for a moment he forgot the gripping pain in his belly and tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids stuck together and the effort made him cough. He sank back and waited for the spasm in his throat to stop. When the pain had eased a little he tried again to open his eyes and succeeded, only to be blinded by the light of a campfire. But he fought tears long enough to see that a man sat near him, facing the fire.

‘Where am I?’ Fergus asked.

‘In the camp of friends,’ the man said, his deep voice matching Fergus’s fleeting impression of a large man. ‘Are you thirsty?’

Fergus moved his tongue around his mouth, identifying the salty, metallic taste of blood. There was little moisture.

‘I am.’

He struggled to sit up, blinking furiously. His nose began to run. The man assisted him, then held a cup to Fergus’s mouth. Cool water washed over his teeth and tongue, but as it trickled down his throat he began to cough again, and worse, for his stomach joined in the spasms. The man helped him bend over to retch. It felt as if he’d been knifed in the gut. He straightened slowly.

The man still sat beside him. ‘I don’t doubt you’re in pain,’ he said. ‘But you’ve no mortal wounds that I can see.’

‘I remember someone grabbing me by the shoulder and then nothing but pain,’ Fergus said, his stomach cramping as he recalled that the man beside him was a stranger. But he had been too kind to be the one who had beaten him.

‘One of my men came upon a pair of Englishmen hurrying away from a clearing, looking over their shoulders as if they might be followed. He retraced their steps and found you in a faint and your goodbrother’s companion bent over you. Both of you looked beaten up, and he guessed the man was gauging how badly you were hurt. But then he rose, gave you a kick that might have killed an older, weaker man, and departed. What did he seek?’

‘Aylmer?’ Fergus whispered.

‘That’s the name,’ said a new voice. ‘He’s one of the Bruce’s men.’

‘He attacked me?’ Fergus asked. Beside the first man knelt a second, a travel-worn friar with an untidy tonsure. A deep cleft in his chin teased Fergus’s memory.

The friar nodded.

They helped him ease back against a rock, and he found his voice again. ‘He had no cause to search me,’ Fergus said.

The one who had helped him drink was taller than Fergus and broad-shouldered, with large, calloused hands. A warrior, no doubt of it, though by his speech Fergus had first guessed him to be if not English, a well-travelled merchant. But he wore his red hair longer than a merchant, and his beard was rough.

‘Who are you?’ Fergus asked. ‘I must know who to thank for delivering me.’

The friar chuckled. ‘You must be the only young man in these parts who does not recognise William Wallace.’

‘God have mercy,’ Fergus breathed. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, though nothing could make him look presentable or erase his humiliation.

‘I am glad not all know my face,’ said Wallace.

Tongue-tied, Fergus looked away, noticing perhaps a dozen men sitting a little away from the fire, heads together. A few horses neighed. ‘Are we at Kinclaven?’ he asked.

‘Is that where you were headed?’ the friar asked.

Fergus closed his eyes. ‘I had not come nearly so far.’

‘Where were you headed?’ the friar repeated.

‘I couldn’t decide. Aberdeen, Kinclaven, back to Perth …’ He shrugged.

‘Aberdeen,’ Wallace said softly.

‘You see?’ the friar said to Wallace.

Wallace nodded. ‘But not at once.’ He turned back to Fergus. ‘Friar James will escort you home. We’ve none to care for your wounds here.’ Strong brows shadowed his face in the darkness.

Some time after Mungo’s bark in the night sleep claimed Margaret. When she woke, Roger was sitting by the window in his shirt, the shutters opened to a sunny dawn. Rumpled from sleep, his bare legs sticking out of the bottom of his shirt, he looked his age, and weary, yet he sat straight. Both of them had changed in the past year, in many ways for the better. If only there were a way to erase all that had come between them.

Roger noticed her movement and returned to bed, sitting down beside her with his legs bent, outstretched arms propped on his knees. He steepled his hands and seemed to address them.

‘Are we to war with one another from now on?’

Margaret’s heart fluttered at the question so like that in her own mind. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

They said nothing for a while. Margaret searched for something honest she might say to patch the rift.

But it was Roger who spoke first. ‘I regret laying hands on you last night,’ he said.

‘You did not injure me.’

Another silence ensued.

‘Mungo barked in the night,’ Margaret finally said. ‘I wonder whether it was Aylmer returning from his watch at Da’s house.’

‘I didn’t hear the dog after Celia went down,’ Roger said.

‘Why would Aylmer leave his watch in the middle of the night?’

‘We don’t know that he did.’ Roger sighed. ‘Aylmer is not your enemy, Maggie.’

‘He thinks, as you did, that Fergus took the letters. And worse, he believes Fergus has stolen the money that Ruthven and the others are demanding.’

‘That does not make him your enemy.’

Margaret turned to Roger. ‘I fear for my brother with that man searching for him.’

‘Aylmer would not hurt him.’

‘Why not, if he believes him guilty? What is to prevent him? There’s no law now, what would stop him?’

Roger began to speak, but looked away.