Barbara Erskine - Kingdom of Shadows

In numb, terrified silence, Isobel stared into the room. She saw and smelt the blood; only this blood wasn’t black and clotted like that which had stiffened on her father’s embroidered tunic. It was red and alive. It soaked the sheets and covered the women’s arms, and it seemed to pour from her mother’s body endlessly as again and again Joanna screamed.

And then the baby came. Her brother. Duncan. Her father’s heir. The new Earl of Fife. A tiny, blood-stained, ugly doll, the cord still hanging from his belly as someone held him up. He was mewling like a puppy. And they were pleased. Even her mother, exhausted as she was, was smiling now through her tears, holding out her arms for the boy.

Isobel turned away. Tiptoeing towards the room where she had slept some of the night, she crawled under the covers of one of the beds and began to cry.

It was Mairi who had told her that she need never have a baby of her own; Mairi who had promised there were ways for women to stop it happening and that if need be she would show her how; Mairi – who now said it was God’s will – who had dragged the child Isobel back almost from the edge of madness that September day.

Isobel looked at her now reproachfully and wondered if she remembered those days too. She caught Mairi’s eye and held it, and knew that she did. It was Mairi who, shamefaced, turned away.

‘May I ask what has happened to our dinner?’

Paul’s voice cut through the silence like a knife.

Clare stared at him blankly, then horrified, she rose to her feet. The candles in the candelabra had burned down more than an inch; the room was full of the smell of cooking.

‘Paul! I’m sorry. I … I must have fallen asleep.’

‘Indeed, you must.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘I warned you you would be too tired if you did everything yourself.’

‘It’s not that –’

‘No?’

He knew what she had been doing. Her eyes had been shut, but her whole posture, though relaxed had been attentive, alert, as though she were listening to something far away. He wondered momentarily why Sarah Collins found it so alarming. Clare was daydreaming, that was all, but was it normal to sit daydreaming for nearly an hour when you had six important guests upstairs? He thought not.

‘Is the food spoiled?’ he asked coldly.

Clare shook her head. ‘The casserole needed another half hour anyway.’

‘I see. But you didn’t think to return to your guests. They bore you, I suppose.’

Clare could feel herself colouring. ‘You know that’s not true, Paul. I just sat down for a moment to … think –’

‘To think!’ Paul repeated the words, his tone deliberately insulting. ‘And may I ask what you were thinking about so hard that you gave every appearance of being asleep?’

‘You were watching me?’

He could see she was uncomfortable.

‘I watched you.’ His eyes narrowed slightly.

Clare turned away from him abruptly. ‘If you want to know I was thinking about babies. Childbirth.’ She gave an involuntary shiver. She hadn’t been thinking about their own predicament, the dream was too immediate, too real, but Paul saw the shiver and misinterpreted it. ‘Clare, I have told you to stop dwelling on that.’ The sudden twinge of guilt made him angry.

‘One can’t just stop, Paul. Not after all you and I have been through in the last few months.’ Clare had realised suddenly that they were at cross purposes.

‘You have to, otherwise you will make yourself ill.’

Ill. Was that it? Was that what was happening to her? She had not sat down to meditate. She had not summoned Isobel. She had constructed no ashram to frame a meditation. The dream had come unbidden, a nightmare of blood and fear and pain to put an end forever to her own special little fantasy of a beautiful sterile birth with a tiny, powdered, pink and white baby as the end product. She took a deep breath, trying desperately to master her sudden cold fear. ‘Shouldn’t one of us go back upstairs?’

‘Both of us, Clare.’ Paul took her arm. ‘Are you sure the food is all right?’

She nodded, dragging her mind back fully to the present, and pulling away from him she went towards the kitchen. ‘I’ll put the starters on the table, if you’d like to bring the others down.’

‘Are you sure you feel well enough?’ Paul asked grudgingly.

‘Of course. No one will know anything. I promise.’ She forced herself to smile. ‘Go on, Paul. Fetch them now.’

‘A crisis, dear?’ Lady Beattie smiled at her graciously as she led the other guests into the room a few moments later. ‘You should have called me. I’m an old hand at coping with disasters.’ She was peering round the room as though expecting to find evidence of calamity pushed under the table.

‘It must be a frightful bore when your staff let you down.’ Diane’s drawl cut the air like a knife. ‘Paul was saying that your cook is stuck down in the country.’

‘She’s not stuck.’ Clare took her place at the table with a smile. ‘I told her not to come. It was hardly necessary for her to make the effort for a small dinner party like this.’ She was aware of the scandalised expression on Paul’s face and felt a sudden surge of triumph. ‘And there wasn’t any crisis. I was just putting the finishing touches to one or two things.’

She had seen Henry’s gaze go to the candles, already burning, translucent with heat, then back to her and she knew that he had guessed. She refused to catch his eye.

Kathleen leaned on the bar, watching Neil with narrowed eyes. She was drinking tomato juice. The Cramond Inn was packed. He was standing near her, a glass of whisky in his hand, lost in thought; then he glanced at his watch.

‘She’s not coming.’ She sat down on a bar stool near him.

‘She will.’

Kathleen raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s too big a risk for her. Anyway, why should she? You know enough.’

‘I don’t know enough!’ Neil slammed his hand down on the bar. ‘All I know is that Clare Royland turned down the first offer. I have to know what happened when she received the next one.’

‘Does her reaction affect the campaign then?’

‘Of course it affects the campaign. Are we on the side of the owners, fighting the oil moguls and the government, or are we against private individuals exploiting the environment to enrich their own purses?’ He was speaking quietly but his voice was passionately intense. ‘The whole angle of this campaign is going to depend on what Sandra has to say.’

‘They might not have heard anything yet.’

‘They’ve heard. She told me that much on the phone.’

Kathleen gave a slow smile. ‘You want her to accept that offer, don’t you? You want to fight this beautiful Mrs Royland.’ She narrowed her eyes again, cat like. ‘Don’t let her get to you too much, Neil.’ Raising her hand to his cheek for a moment, she flexed her fingers, stroking his face for a fraction of a second with her nails. ‘You mustn’t lose the cool impersonality for which you’re so famous.’

Neil stepped back slightly. ‘I won’t.’ He was visibly irritated. Turning his back on her he surveyed the crowds in the room. Sandra had arrived while they were talking and was standing nervously just inside the door.

‘There she is. You stay here.’ His voice was curt. Putting down his glass he threaded his way towards the girl who was staring short-sightedly around her.

‘I’m sorry. I took a wrong turning.’ She greeted him anxiously. ‘I’m not used to driving on my own. Can we go outside. I don’t like pubs.’

Neil opened the door for her and ushered her outside without a word. The car park was cold and very silent after the noise of the pub. It was slightly foggy. ‘Wouldn’t you rather I bought you a drink?’ He was wondering why she had chosen to meet there if she didn’t like pubs.