Candace Robb - The Fire In The Flint

‘You have doubts, Maggie. I see it in your eyes.’

His insistence frightened her a little. She prayed James did not read her confusion in the same way. ‘You’ve chosen the worst time to pay heed to my feelings.’ She felt tears coming and busied herself soaking a cloth in a bowl of water as she said, ‘We are so far apart.’ For it worked both ways — she had kept much from him.

‘Are we so divided? We both hate Edward Longshanks.’

‘Do we? I’ve seen no proof that Robert Bruce hates him.’

‘What can he do to convince you?’

‘I don’t know, Roger.’ She placed the cool cloth on his forehead, then kissed him on the cheek. ‘You are in good hands here.’

Roger caught the neck of her gown and prevented her from rising. ‘You’d leave before I’m recovered?’

He was too weak to hold her, but she did not move away.

‘There is no trust between us. I must fight for every morsel of truth I wring from you.’

‘So you leave me now, when I am helpless to stop you?’

Someone knocked.

Margaret took Roger’s hand from her gown, resting it gently on his chest. ‘I am leaving. If the Bruce rewards you richly for your service, you might spend some of the siller to free yourself from me, to buy an annulment.’

‘Never. Maggie!’

She walked to the door on trembling legs.

Roger struggled to sit up.

‘Be still!’ Margaret cried, but resisted the urge to return to his side.

‘If you can forgive your mother for her betrayal, you must forgive me.’

‘I do, Roger, I do. But it’s not enough.’ She opened the door to Dame Eleanor. ‘I’ll leave you with my husband. He fusses too much when I’m here.’ She stepped out and shut the door behind her.

The morning was cruelly beautiful with drops of dew glistening like gems of many colours on the gallery posts and the air sweet with late summer flowers. Margaret sank down on her haunches, wrapped her arms around her legs, and pressed her forehead into her knees. She shivered with the terrors of the previous night that she had pushed aside in order to nurse Roger. James might have been killed by the arrow loosed so casually, the arrow that had been shot from the riverfront of Perth, her home. And Roger’s wounds — the de Arrochs were vicious in their guardianship of the nuns; he, too, might have died, and might still. The world had become a terrible place without sanctuary.

The thought of leaving Roger, of opening wide the rift and pulling free to drift alone in this bleeding land terrified her. She was nothing without him, an unmarried woman dependent on her family once more, and yet she could hardly depend on her parents, both of them adrift in nightmares of their own making. Celia, her staunchest friend, was a servant with nothing. She did have Ada, and James was her ally, but only in regard to her work for his kinsman. And she must tread carefully with him; he must not misconstrue her motivation. A long while Margaret crouched there shivering, letting go her pent up-tears, sobbing for all that she’d lost.

But as the waves of emotion subsided she discovered a flicker of confidence. Over the past months she had proven herself significant in her own right. She had remade her life in Edinburgh, worked for the return of her rightful king, and discovered the truth of Old Will’s murder as well as the intrusions in Perth and here at the priory. These were no small accomplishments. She was not without resources. She pushed herself up, wiped her eyes, and took great gulps of the cool morning air. When she felt steadier, she descended to the hall.

James stood near the hearth circle, his left arm bound to keep the shoulder immobile. He looked up at Margaret’s approach. She was suddenly aware of her borrowed gown’s short sleeves and skirt and she irritated herself by fussing with it.

‘You’ve been weeping,’ James said, stepping closer. ‘Is Sinclair …’ He hesitated. ‘How goes your husband?’

‘He has wearied himself with talk, but it is a good sign. Dame Eleanor has some skill, I think.’

James glanced down at his shoulder. ‘She does, to have made me as comfortable as she has.’

‘He lost much blood from the chest wound, but it is the slash behind his knee that he will remember. You are not in pain?’

She had never seen James so unkempt and hollow-eyed.

‘None of this need have happened,’ he said. ‘There must have been a way to prevent this.’

Margaret shook her head. ‘What good are such thoughts? We cannot return to the past and undo it.’ She sank down in a chair and accepted a cup of ale from a servant. ‘But I know, I know.’

James sat down beside her. ‘How far back would you go if you could?’

‘Would I undo my marriage? Is that what you ask?’

‘Would you?’

‘It would have spared me much suffering. But there have been moments-’ She stopped. This was not something she meant to share with James. ‘I wish I had seen Jonet’s dissatisfaction. I wish Ma had gone to Bruges where she might have done no harm. But things are as they are and I must live with them.’

She stopped, noticing that Aylmer had awakened and was listening from his pallet.

‘You,’ she said, rising and moving towards his pallet, her anger growing with every step. ‘You’re naught but a coward, murdering an old man when he was too drunk to defend himself, then leaving him on the floor of his chamber to die.’

With a curse, Aylmer began to rise. ‘I listen to no woman’s babble,’ he growled.

Margaret shoved him back down with her foot.

‘Margaret!’ James pulled her back just as Aylmer grabbed for her foot with his uninjured hand. ‘This serves no one.’

‘My mother can neither eat nor sleep for sorrow about the deaths she caused and you — I saw how dead your eyes were after you killed the soldiers at the bridge below Stirling. You have no soul.’ Woman’s babble . She would not be so dismissed. She shook James off and withdrew, but not before hearing Aylmer grunt from a blow. Cursed man, cursed master.

Malcolm woke to sunrise and Marion crouching in front of him with a cup of ale. By St Rule, he was an old man to fall asleep at such an important juncture in his marriage. He drank down the ale and rose.

‘You cannot see Dame Christiana,’ said the handmaid.

‘Stop me,’ he said, pushing her aside and entering the chamber.

Marion fluttered behind, making anxious noises. Malcolm was accustomed to her and paid her no heed. But the room confused him. Pieces of his married life littered the place — chairs, tables, tapestries, chests, lamps — crowding it so that he wondered how the two women fitted within. This room belonged in a market place, not a priory.

‘Does she move all this out on to the gallery to entertain?’ he asked.

‘My mistress leads a quiet life here,’ said Marion.

Malcolm walked up to Christiana’s favourite carved screen and beyond it discovered her still abed, buried beneath cushions and bedding in disarray as was her custom. He was increasingly disappointed. He had imagined an ascetic life, with Christiana rising before dawn to kneel on the bare earth in prayer.

Marion dutifully set a cushioned chair beside her mistress’s bed. ‘I’ll bring more ale, sir,’ she said. ‘But you mustn’t wake her. It’s the first time she’s slept since …’ She crossed herself and withdrew.

Malcolm leaned closer and called out his wife’s name. The bedclothes shifted a little. He tried again.

Christiana’s head emerged from the blankets, her hair wild, her eyes wilder, with huge black pupils.

Malcolm’s heart sank. He knew this look, and he knew it was true she had not slept, and that she still could not.

‘Women in cages,’ she keened in the otherworldly voice of her most terrible visions, ‘hanging over castle yards, open to the leering crowds.’ The covers slipped further and she sat up, scooting back against the cushions, an arm thrown up to protect her. ‘The bridge beneath the castle is slippery with blood, the marsh grass is red with it.’