Child of the Phoenix (113 page)

She did not have to be told who he meant. It was strange that neither of them had given a thought to Malcolm, her husband. She nodded and felt him grow tense. ‘I was lonely,’ she whispered, ‘I couldn’t fight him.’

‘And you didn’t want to.’ He was looking deep into her eyes.

‘No, I didn’t want to, I couldn’t. I was torn, but it was as if I were under his spell.’

‘And if I’m there, will you still welcome him to your bed?’

She saw the muscles around his jaw tighten imperceptibly as he waited for her answer. Slowly she shook her head. ‘You are what I want.’

Neither of them noticed the sudden chill in the room.

IX

Alexander had not returned since Donald had come back into her life. Once, twice, perhaps three times she had imagined she sensed him near her and she had willed him out of her mind, feeling him dwindle and fade, confident that her love for Donald could hold him at bay.

Her physical obsession with Donald of Mar kept her totally enthralled. Somehow they managed to meet often; the custodians of the outlying castles of Fife grew used to seeing their countess and her hitherto infrequent visits became a regular occurrence. She checked the accounts, toured the demesne and after a night or two moved on, riding one or other of her beautiful grey palfreys and followed always by her stately wolfhounds and a minimum of carefully chosen attendants.

If she was often joined by a tall, handsome squire, who attended her with austere silent attention, it was scarcely noticed. Only her own servants knew that at night the squire took their countess to bed and none of them, hand-picked by Hylde and sworn to secrecy on pain of unspeakable and lingering deaths, ever said a word.

She no longer confided in Rhonwen. Rhonwen’s eagle eye had at once detected a difference in her mistress on her return to Falkland after that first meeting with Donald at Adam’s cave. The old woman cornered her alone. ‘What has happened,
cariad
?’ Rhonwen fixed her with a coldly analytical stare. ‘Where have you been?’

Eleyne returned her gaze unflinchingly. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, Rhonwen,’ she said, her resentment building. ‘I’ve put you in charge of my nurseries to leave me free to administer the Fife lands. What I do is not your province.’

‘But if you are unfaithful to the king, that is my province. I have promised to serve him.’

‘We have all given our allegiance to the king.’ Eleyne wilfully misunderstood her. But her stomach tightened with warning: she had seen that fanatical light in Rhonwen’s eye too often before. It spelt danger; danger to Donald and danger to herself. ‘Please don’t meddle in affairs which do not concern you. You have built something up in your mind which does not exist, something which is not possible.’ She raised her hand as Rhonwen opened her mouth to contradict her. ‘No, I don’t want to discuss it any more. Your province is the nursery and I do not want to find you creeping around my rooms again, do you understand?’

The two women’s eyes locked, their friendship and love lost in mutual suspicion and resentment. Eleyne had not spoken to Rhonwen for several days, and then it was to give her curt orders about the running of the nurseries. When she next left the castle, she made sure that Rhonwen did not know where she was going, and she gave Hylde stricter than ever instructions about the secrecy their visits required.

How Donald managed to evade his father and his ever-increasing duties, Eleyne never asked. Sufficient that he was there for her. The infrequency of their meetings, the danger, the inconveniences and sometimes the discomfort added to the excitement. Their lovemaking was passionate beyond anything she had ever dreamed. There was no room for Alexander.

There was no question of marrying Donald, they both knew that. She had toyed with the idea of asking the king to have her marriage to Malcolm annulled; it had after all been bigamous and there should be some way of using that to untie the knots which held her to an unloved husband. Once she had hinted as much to Donald, but he had frowned and looked embarrassed and she realised sadly that she was pushing him too hard. He could see her as a lover, but not as a wife; never as a wife. She had not mentioned the matter again, and nor had he.

X
June 1264

Rhonwen threw the pile of clothes back into the coffer, dropped the lid and turned to the next one. She had been hunting through Eleyne’s belongings for several days and still she hadn’t found it. The phoenix was missing. She had spotted immediately Eleyne had ceased to wear it, but it wasn’t in the jewel casket, nor in the coffer near Eleyne’s bed, or under her pillows.

‘I’ll find it, sire, I’ll find it for you!’ Rhonwen addressed the air somewhere near the bed curtains. ‘She still loves you. She is still yours.’ The rain rattled against the window, and a rumble of thunder echoed in the distance.

Eleyne was busy, happy, confident, but Rhonwen’s instincts told her that something had changed. Her first thought was that Donald of Mar had returned, but there was no sign of him and Eleyne made no attempts that she could see to arrange any secret meetings. It never crossed her mind that Eleyne would confide in Hylde or Meg and not in her.

She turned back to rummaging through the coffers. If it wasn’t here in the bedchamber, she would have to look further afield.

She found the phoenix at last, pulling the small package from the coffer in the solar with a triumphant smile. Why had Eleyne gone to so much trouble to hide it? Unwrapping it, she held it on the palm of her hand; the enamels glowed gently against the dark blue of the silk. It was almost as though she could feel the jewel humming with a life of its own.

She took it back into the bedchamber, and making sure she was alone she closed the door.

‘I’ve found it!’ Her whisper was husky with excitement. ‘I’ve found it for you. Now you can reach her, you can come to her again.’ She tucked it under the pile of pillows and bolsters and smoothed the coverlet down. She sent a quick darting look around the room, but there was no movement, no sign that anybody heard.

XI

Eleyne tossed uneasily on her bed. The storms had returned and the night was humid. She heard the heavy rain drumming on the roof of the chapel below her window.

She and Donald had planned to meet soon. She was to ride to the Abbey of Balmerino and nearby in one of the summer granges they would be able to spend a day together before returning to their public life. She sighed with longing at the thought of him.

The touch on her shoulder was sudden and very firm. Her eyes flew open and she stared into the darkness as a flash of lightning flickered at the window. She sat up slowly and felt her heart thudding with fear.

‘Go away,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’ Another flicker of lightning showed behind the glass, sending eldritch shadows lancing across the room. She pulled the sheet tightly around her. There was no fire: the night was too muggy. In the intervals between the flickers of summer lightning the room was dark as a tomb.

He came in the darkness, his lips commanding, the touch of his hands sure. She could not fight him, he knew her too well. Her body responded, obedient, slavelike, accepting him, opening to him, drugged with the heat of the night and the languor of her dreams. As she drifted into sleep, the perspiration cooling between her breasts, her hair damp on the pillow, there was a smile on her lips and Donald was forgotten.

XII

It was easy to remove the pendant before the maids made the bed in the morning. Whisking it out of sight, Rhonwen tucked it back in its hiding place in the solar. One look at Eleyne’s face told her that her ruse had worked. It would be simple to hide it again the following night.

XIII

The huge tithe barn was swept and empty, waiting for the harvest. It was a strange place to meet. Eleyne gazed up at the slanting sunbeams as they pierced its high walls; there was no sign of Donald. She had slipped out of the abbey guesthouse and stood absorbed in the view across the Tay to the blue mountains beyond, then as dusk fell she had made her way into the fragrant darkness rich with the scent of decades of harvested riches.

The slanting sunbeams had long gone when Donald came at last, slipping through the door and leading in his horse before pushing it closed with his shoulder. She watched, her mouth dry with desire as he tied the animal and threw down some hay for it, then she slipped out of the shadows.

His mouth on hers was firm, his arms around her so strong she gasped for breath as he swept her off her feet and carried her into the darkest corner of the building before throwing down his cloak and pulling her to the ground.

They had no warning. The ice-cold wind tore through the barn, whirled the hay into the air and crashed the doors back against the wall. The horse whinnied its terror, backing so hard that its halter snapped. It turned and galloped out into the night.

Donald drew Eleyne to him, trying to pull his wildly flapping cloak around them for shelter, ducking his head against the whirlwind trapped inside the barn, which threatened to tear the great roof beams apart.

‘Sweet Christ, Nel, what’s happening!’ There was a crash as a hayfork, long forgotten in a corner, flew up into the air and slammed into the ground only inches from him. Donald threw his body on top of her, trying to protect her from the flying debris which filled the air, passion forgotten as the sky above Fife split and sizzled with lightning which forked, split again and buried itself in the soil.

Her face pressed into the earth floor of the barn, Eleyne was trembling like a leaf. ‘No, please, leave us alone.’ She didn’t need the commanding touch of the invisible hand on her head to know that Alexander was there. ‘Please, leave us alone.’ She did not guess then or later that Rhonwen had sewn a small packet into the heavy train of her mantle which she would remove when Eleyne returned to Falkland.

Donald sat up. She could barely make out his face in the darkness, and she thought he was going to push her away. But his arms enfolded her as he climbed to his feet, helping her up. He glared around and narrowed his eyes against the flying dust.

‘Don’t think I won’t fight you for her!’ he yelled into the blackness. ‘It’s me she wants,
me
! Get back to the hell you came from and leave us in peace!’

Eleyne closed her eyes in terror, clinging to Donald, waiting for some new sign, but the wind had died as swiftly as it had come. The only sound now was the thunder of rain pouring on to the wet ground. The air was full of the sweet scent of the earth.

XIV

Adam’s cave was deserted. There were all the signs of his presence – the neatly stowed bed roll, the books, the astrolabe, the bottles and boxes of herbs – but there was no sign of him or his boy. She glanced at the carvings on the walls, with their strange ancient power, then went back to the cave mouth and looked up and down the beach. It had not crossed her mind that he would not be there.

The weather had broken with the storm and a sweet south wind ruffled the waters of the Forth, carrying the heavy scent of the Pentland Hills.

‘Good day, my lady.’ Adam’s voice at her elbow made her jump. He had appeared as silently as a shadow on the path behind her. He saw her pale face, the dark rings under her eyes, the tenseness of her hands as she clutched her cloak, and he frowned. ‘Lord Donald is not with you,’ he observed quietly.

‘No.’ She bit her lip, then she held out her hands to him. ‘Please, you have to help me!’

Donald had gone. They had planned another meeting, but the shadow of Alexander had been between them as they parted.

‘Of course. I am here to help, my lady. Please come in.’ He gestured her towards one of the three-legged stools which stood on either side of the rough plank table. There was no sign of the boy who had been with him before.

She sat down, her green eyes fixed on his fathomless dark ones. ‘It’s the king,’ she said.

Adam met her eye steadily. He did not need her to explain which king. ‘When a man has loved a woman through all eternity, it’s hard for him to let go,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘You must help him.’

‘How? How can I help him?’ she cried. ‘I’m torn between them, torn between the living and the dead. I love them both, but –’ She broke off abruptly.

‘But you prefer the living to the dead.’ Adam looked at his long brown fingers linked loosely before him on the table. ‘And you know your future lies in Mar.’

She nodded.

He walked across to the cave mouth, his shadow long on the sandy floor behind him.

‘Your destiny is linked to the royal blood line of Scotland,’ he said at last, narrowing his eyes and gazing out across the silver glitter of the water. ‘I saw it the first time I met you and Michael saw it before me. Across the centuries you tie the ancient blood of Alba and Albion to the future destiny of this land. Your descendants will one day rule half the world.’

He turned to face her. Silhouetted against the light she could not see his expression. His hair stood out in a wild tangle around his head, highlighted by the sun behind him. ‘I have studied the stars and read your fortune a thousand times, Lady Fife, but I can tell you no details beyond that. Which of your children will carry your blood into the future I cannot see. I cannot see if the father is king or earl or commoner. I’m sorry.’