Candace Robb - The Fire In The Flint

‘You mean to stay?’

‘I mean to be a good husband to you. Teach me how.’

She was searching her memory for other nights with him, trying to recall whether he had ever said such words, and it came to her, their wedding night, after he had spent himself so quickly that he rolled away from her just as she was warming to his lovemaking. He had said, ‘I shall be a good husband to you, Maggie.’

‘You are tired,’ she said now. ‘Sleep.’

‘I cannot until you tell me how to be a good husband to you.’

Her mind was in turmoil and she did not trust what she might say. ‘Not now.’ She lay down with her back to him and tried to quiet her storm-tossed thoughts with Hail Marys.

She’d managed only a few before Roger put his arm around her and leaned close to kiss her neck.

Margaret tucked the covers up higher.

‘Maggie, we must talk.’

‘On the morrow.’

He tugged at her, trying to turn her around to face him.

‘Let me be,’ she cried, resisting him even as she searched the chatter in her mind for an excuse that would buy her some peace. She must think how to cope with his return without either dissolving in tears or shouting at him. Rolling on to her back she said, ‘I’ve not slept well since Fergus sent troubling news.’

‘So you are not angry with me, just weary?’ Roger stroked her forehead.

Oh, angry I am, Roger, but we must not yet speak of that . ‘He wrote of intruders searching our house and Da’s, and Ma’s room at Elcho as well.’

‘What?’ Roger lifted the cruisie that still burned beside the bed and brought it close to Margaret’s face. ‘In Perth?’

She nodded, turning a little from the lamp, the light startling her.

‘What did they take? Was anyone injured?’

‘No one was injured. Not there. Fergus cannot tell what is missing, but it appeared to him, as in the undercroft here, that they were after documents.’

‘Here, too?’

‘You didn’t know? I thought that was why you’ve come, to see what they took. They searched the caskets you and Da left in Uncle’s keeping. And Old Will was murdered in the wynd that night.’

Roger crossed himself. ‘How did he come to cross their paths?’

She explained how drunk the old man had been when he left the tavern, and how he’d disappeared. ‘I think he found the door ajar and slipped in to sleep off the drink.’

‘And you believe the intruders killed him?’

‘Yes. So, you see, I’ve had much on my mind and I yearn for sleep.’

‘I am not surprised to hear of such searches,’ Roger said, apparently not yet willing to let her sleep. ‘The English respect no Scotsman’s property. Nor do English abbots.’

Margaret had begun to turn away, but she sat up instead, putting a finger to Roger’s lips. ‘Do not condemn my brother until you know the truth.’

‘He raided all the kirks for the royal treasures, and now he’s confessor to the English garrison on Soutra Hill. What else can I think but that Andrew is cut from the same cloth as his abbot?’

‘You know nothing. He despises himself for obeying Abbot Adam. And as for his post to Soutra, it is a death sentence, his penance for defying Adam and going to Sir Walter Huntercombe at the castle asking for news of you. He did it for me.’

‘Is this true?’

‘Do you have cause to call me a liar? That is how I learned of Edwina’s death. Sir Walter believed the corpse found with hers was yours. But I’d seen you-’ A sob rose in Margaret’s throat, silencing her.

Roger set down the cruisie and gathered her in his arms. ‘Oh, Maggie.’

Too agitated to rest in his arms, Margaret pushed away. ‘You might explain yourself, why you lied about going to Dundee seeking a new port, why you abandoned me to help an Englishwoman.’

‘Let’s not talk of that now.’

Margaret let out a mirthless laugh. ‘How brief-lived was your resolve to learn to be a good husband to me.’

‘I meant from this day forward, Maggie. I know full well I failed you in the past.’

‘I’m to have no explanation? Will you command me to forget? Oh, but of course, you’ve always thought me naught but a child. What was I thinking to ask why you lied to me, why you lay with another woman, a false wife who-’

The slap shocked Margaret into silence. In that moment she hated Roger.

‘Don’t speak so of the dead,’ he said sharply. ‘Edwina was a brave, noble woman who died carrying messages to the Bruce.’

‘She was not returning to her husband? To England?’

‘No.’ Roger swung his legs off the bed and bowed his head. ‘God help me, I wake at night wondering how I might have prevented her death and that of her escort.’

Margaret crossed herself. ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered, hearing the pain in his voice, reaching for one of his hands and holding it to her heart. ‘But if you had trusted me with the truth of your activities …’

He jerked his hand from her grasp and rose, facing her with a murderous expression. ‘I have explained my silence.’

‘What happened on the way to Dundee?’ she asked, knowing they would never heal this rift without more of an explanation.

Roger dropped his gaze. ‘I’d prefer to talk of other things.’

‘I need to know. Tell me and be done with it.’

He sat down on the bed with a sigh. ‘This is a sorry homecoming.’

‘What happened?’ she asked more gently, touching his shoulder. ‘It would help me to understand your long absence.’

Roger groaned. ‘It is painful to talk of it.’

‘I beg you.’

He gave a resigned nod and looked down at his hands, but said nothing for a moment. ‘It was what I saw at the house of my old friend George Brankston,’ he began in a quiet voice. ‘It was my custom to stay the night there on my journeys to Dundee. I was treated as kin, not a guest, and though they were seldom forewarned of my coming I was always made to feel welcome. But this time …’ He covered his eyes for a moment.

When he looked up, Margaret saw tears. It was unsettling to see his emotion over a family he’d never spoken of to her.

‘The northern army of Edward Longshanks had ridden through George’s property in the summer on its march from Dundee,’ Roger continued. ‘They’d stolen the horses, the falcons, all the livestock.’ He took a breath. ‘They raped his daughter Emma, and so injured Isabel his wife that she lost the child she carried and the use of one leg.’

‘My God,’ Margaret said. ‘Why did you not tell me of this before?’

‘Where was John Balliol in all this?’ Roger demanded loudly. ‘He should have made a last great attack, caught the army on the road. He made no effort to help.’

‘I believe our king was in England by then, along with many of the Comyns, under close guard,’ Margaret said quietly. ‘And Robert Bruce was in Carlisle helping his father protect that English city from our people.’

‘Our king.’ It sounded like a curse from Roger’s lips.

‘You can’t blame him for Longshanks’s brutality.’

Roger swung his head from side to side slowly, as if trying to stretch out a pain. ‘You asked what happened to change my heart on the road to Dundee. It had nothing to do with Robert Bruce at first. To find the family I had loved as my own so broken, so … The light was gone from their eyes, Maggie. I thought of the soldier who had grabbed you for a kiss and I knew how much worse it might have been.’

‘If you were worried for me, why did you not come home?’

‘Edwina of Carlisle was the sister of George’s wife, Maggie. Isobel feared that what had happened to her and Emma might happen to her sister. I wanted to do something. George’s family needed him there, so it was up to me. It was a beginning.’