Candace Robb - The Fire In The Flint

A sweet-faced sister woke Margaret, who found that the exertions of the previous day had brought stiffness throughout her body. She sat up more slowly than usual and glanced over to see that Roger still slept.

‘You have had a difficult time,’ said the sister.

She handed Margaret a mazer of honeyed almond milk. It did little to fill the emptiness of her stomach, but Margaret savoured it.

The nun settled on a stool beside Margaret, her hands already moving along her paternoster beads.

‘You are not the sister who dressed my husband’s wounds last night, I think,’ said Margaret.

‘No, I have no such gift. That would have been Dame Eleanor. I am Dame Bethag, and I’ve come to ask a favour. I hope you will break your fast with your mother this morning.’

‘I thought to eat here, with the others. I would see how James fares this morning.’

‘The one disguised as a friar?’ asked Bethag.

‘Yes.’

‘He is yet asleep. Only your father is awake. And gone to your mother, which will anger the prioress.’

Margaret was not surprised. She had guessed he had come to beg Christiana one more time to leave with him. Yet it did not explain the presence of Roger and Aylmer. ‘Do you wish me to fetch my father away?’

Bethag shook her head. ‘I would not be so bold. My concern is your mother’s grief over the man killed on Kinnoull Hill, and the ones taken. She blames herself overmuch and has neither eaten nor slept since she learned of it. She will not be comforted, not even by our chaplain. But the vision came to her as she stood before the English captain. It was not quite the vision she had composed at Dame Agnes’s request. Surely God inspired her.’

‘The prioress requested a vision?’

Dame Bethag explained the purpose.

Margaret was incensed. ‘What right had Dame Agnes to so use my mother?’ she cried then, remembering where she was, she checked that Roger still slept.

‘The scheme was ill-advised,’ said Bethag, ‘but the Lord used it for His own mysterious purpose.’

Margaret did not know what to think. ‘I came here to speak to Mother of the tragedy her words caused, not to comfort her, but … You say she is neither eating nor sleeping?’

‘She is inconsolable.’ Bethag regarded Margaret. ‘You blame her for delivering God’s message to the English captain.’

‘Do you believe this vision came from God?’

‘If not, whence comes such knowledge?’

‘I don’t know,’ Margaret confessed. ‘I’ve feared that her visions were from the devil. Or that pagan spirits possess her.’

Dame Bethag leaned over and patted Margaret’s hand, smiling kindly. ‘You need not worry, I have seen the light of God’s grace in Dame Christiana’s eyes.’ She sat back. ‘But you must do as your conscience tells you, as well as your daughterly intuition of your mother’s needs.’

Margaret did not know whether the nun’s assurances were comforting or disturbing.

Roger stirred.

‘I’ll break my fast here,’ said Margaret, ‘then go to Ma.’

Bethag took the mazer from Margaret and, with a whispered blessing, departed.

‘Don’t listen to her,’ Roger said weakly from his pallet across the way.

Margaret went to him. He looked exceedingly pale and the veins in his forehead pulsed angrily.

‘I would help you drink, but I am afraid to put my arm beneath your chest to help you sit.’

‘Slip another pillow beneath this one,’ he suggested.

She did so, and though he gasped at the pain he thanked her. She held a cup of watered wine to his lips. His breath was foul with suffering.

‘Why were you by the river?’ she asked.

‘I ask you the same. Did you come from Murray or Wallace?’

‘James Comyn brought me here, and for his pains he was injured.’ She thought it sufficient information.

‘Him?’ Roger coughed. ‘He would be with them for certain.’

She sat carefully on the pallet. ‘He is a good friend from Edinburgh.’

‘No doubt. He followed you here?’

‘I have questions for you, Roger.’

He closed his eyes and took a few breaths.

‘I don’t like the sound in your chest,’ she said. The questions must wait. ‘Will you try another pillow?’

‘Why are you attending me? You brought Comyn here to have his wound tended.’

‘His was not so …’

‘Mortal?’

‘Disabling. You will live, Roger. The sister who dressed your wounds seemed skilled.’

‘What would she know of battle wounds?’

‘She was confident in her ministrations. No one is truly cloistered while Edward Longshanks’s army is on our land.’

Margaret slipped another pillow beneath the others.

‘Holy Mother!’ Roger groaned, a hand hovering over his dressing.

‘I’ll fetch Dame Eleanor.’

Roger caught Margaret’s hand. ‘Not yet. I mean to tell you all in case …’ He paused for breath. ‘I do not share your confidence in a cloistered nun’s skill with sword wounds.’

‘Roger, I pray you-’

‘That night in Murdoch’s undercroft,’ he said, ‘Old Will discovered us. I saw his state of drunkenness and guessed he merely sought a place to lie down out of the cold. But Aylmer would not hear of it. Before I could reach the old man, the deed was done. Once he was mortally wounded, there was nothing I could do for him.’

‘Aylmer,’ Margaret whispered. She had no difficulty accepting his guilt. ‘Did he take Old Will back to his rooms?’

‘I insisted.’

‘How kind.’

‘Maggie.’

‘You might have spoken out against Aylmer.’

‘You know who he is, Maggie.’

‘I do. Did his violence not cause you to question your allegiance to his kinsman? Is your conscience no longer your own?’

‘Maggie, Aylmer was right. The old man had seen us, and we could not risk his recalling what he’d seen, revealing our presence before we chose to appear. I can’t expect you to understand, Maggie, but it is the way in war.’

In her mind’s eye she saw again the two caskets, her father’s with a broken lock, Roger’s merely left unfastened, the lid closed sloppily on some documents. How easily she’d been misled. And how smoothly he’d continued to lie to her. Here was what she had feared, a chasm too wide to be bridged. ‘I doubt anyone would have believed Old Will over you. And he was innocent.’

‘No, Maggie. He was spying for the English. They’d paid him well.’

‘Old Will?’ So that was the source of the money for the shoes and the ale — and why the English took action upon his death when they had not after all the others. ‘That is why the English searched his lodgings,’ she said. ‘They wanted the siller for another spy.’

‘But Mary Brewster was there first, and they’ll never retrieve the siller from her clutches.’ Roger smiled wanly. ‘That is the only satisfaction in the story.’

Satisfaction. God help him in his blindness . ‘Can even Mary Brewster be safe from the English garrison?’

‘Her daughter Belle ensures that, Maggie. The men would not wish to lose her.’ Roger was quiet a moment, breathing shallowly.

Margaret leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, then smoothed his hair from his fevered brow. ‘I’ll leave you to rest,’ she said.

‘To go to James Comyn?’ Roger’s eyes shone unhealthily. ‘How is it he had not discovered the truth about Old Will’s spying?’

‘Perhaps you are more clever than he is.’ Margaret attempted a smile though she did not like the direction their conversation was taking.

‘And yet you love him.’

Jealous. She would have cried with joy had he exhibited jealousy a year ago. ‘I did not say that, Roger. I loved you. I still do.’ She said it with far more certainty than she felt. Worry softened her feelings for him, but he’d lied to her from the moment he reappeared in Edinburgh.