Child of the Phoenix (118 page)

‘Can’t you see?’ Eleyne sat forward.

‘I have no powers like that. I see who is to fall in love with whom, in the hills; I look into a woman’s wame and see how many bairns she is to carry. I don’t see people’s destiny; I don’t see their deaths.’ Morna touched Eleyne’s hand. ‘Forget your king; forget the past. Live now, for the present, for your child, and be happy.’ She smiled fondly. ‘Now, go back to your lord. He is waiting for you full of anxiety because you have ridden out alone and he dares not reprimand you.’ She laughed.

Donald and Eleyne rode back to Kildrummy late on a hot August evening when they had been alone together in the hills. Donald had taken her on his horse before him and held her in his arms, Eleyne’s palfrey following loose behind them. They rode back along the slow Don, made shallow by the hot summer, past the lonely monastery of Cabrach, its stone buildings dozing in the late summer’s warmth, and turned in at last under the gatehouse and into the courtyard of the castle. It was crowded with horses and wagons and milling crowds of people.

Donald reined in his horse and looked around, his heart sinking. ‘My mother!’

‘Oh no.’ Eleyne turned in his arms, appalled.

‘It is. See, her standard, and the carts bear her coat-of-arms.’ He slipped from the horse and lifted Eleyne down.

‘You told her about the baby!’ she said accusingly.

‘I didn’t, my love, but you can’t expect people to keep it a secret forever.’ He looked fondly at her thickening waistline. ‘Come, let’s find out what she wants.’

The Countess of Mar was in the great hall. She wore a cloak and gloves in spite of the heat of the evening, and stared in horror at the sight of her daughter-in-law’s loosely knotted hair and tanned face and arms.

‘So, it’s true.’ Her eyes travelled down to Eleyne’s belly. ‘You do carry my son’s child. I can see it’s just as well that I came.’ She turned to Donald. ‘I hear you have been using the earl’s chamber. Please give orders for it to be cleared for me. You and your wife can sleep elsewhere. I suggest, madam,’ she addressed Eleyne, ‘that you dress yourself decently and cover your hair. I cannot imagine what my household think of you. I hear, Donald,’ she swept on, ‘that you have been neglecting the running of the estates, just as you have been neglecting the affairs of the kingdom. Now I am here, you can turn your attention back to both. I shall look after your wife.’

Eleyne could not believe Donald would allow his mother to speak to him like that, but he said nothing. Sheepishly he asked, ‘You won’t mind moving to another chamber, my love?’

‘Of course not,’ she said as coolly as she could. ‘I shall give orders at once. Please, excuse me, Lady Mar. As you say, I need to change my gown.’

She bowed to Elizabeth and walked from the great hall. Donald did not follow her.

‘No one forbids me to ride, Lady Mar,’ Eleyne said coldly to her mother-in-law who had walked into the bedchamber the following morning and dismissed Eleyne’s servants from the room.

‘Then you should forbid yourself, madam.’ Elizabeth sat on the chair near the hearth. ‘If you value your child’s life. Surely I need not point out to you that at your age it is scarcely suitable to be galloping around the country in your condition. You should rest.’

‘I do not need to rest.’ Eleyne reined in her temper with difficulty. ‘I am accustomed to riding and I assure you it will not harm me. I rode in all my pregnancies until the week of my delivery.’

‘And you lost two children, as I recall.’ Lady Mar looked her in the eye.

Eleyne blanched. ‘Neither died as a result of my riding I assure you.’ She changed the subject. ‘Do you intend to stay at Kildrummy long?’

‘It is my home. I intend to live here, and to run the estates.’ Elizabeth’s eyes gleamed with triumph. ‘You may have been accustomed to running the Fife lands, madam, and you may have learned to expect your own way, but here from now on things will be very different, I think you will find. You are not the mistress of these lands or this castle; I am. Here, you are nothing but the wife of the heir.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I
FALKLAND CASTLE
Summer 1266

C
olban sat at his father’s desk looking blankly down at the empty area of oak in front of him. ‘All you have to do is give the order, boy,’ Sir Alan Durward had said. ‘Do it now.’ He had walked from the room, leaving Colban staring unhappily at the servant standing just inside the door. Colban cleared his throat and took a deep breath. ‘Please. Fetch the Lady Rhonwen here,’ he said. His voice slid and squeaked uncomfortably from tenor to falsetto and the servant, hiding a smile, bowed and turned away.

Still upright, still slim, her hair white beneath her coif, Rhonwen entered slowly. She was, she calculated, in her sixty-sixth summer, like the century.

Seeing Colban standing so formally behind the desk, she smiled to herself. He had done well in his efforts to step into his father’s shoes. He missed Lord Fife and she knew he had been devastated by what he saw as his mother’s defection, but he had not showed it. He had turned his attention to Anna and to his son and concentrated on learning how to run the Fife estates. If he resented the overbearing interference of his father-in-law, he gave no sign.

‘You sent for me, my lord?’

He nodded and she saw him swallow nervously. ‘Lady Rhonwen, I’m sorry, but Sir Alan and Lady Durward feel – that is, I feel – that it’s time someone a little younger ran the nurseries here.’ She could see the sweat breaking out on his upper lip. ‘I shall of course give you a pension. And I shall always love you –’ that bit was not part of the speech he had prepared and he blushed unhappily – ‘but I think it’s better if you go.’

Rhonwen was not surprised. One by one Eleyne’s personal servants and companions had been demoted and sent to remote castles in the earldom. It had only been a matter of time.

As it happened the decision suited her plans very well. ‘I’m glad you told me yourself,
cariad bach
. I shall be sad not to see to the growing up of little Duncan and I shall miss you and your brother, but, as you say, I am growing old.’ She shook her head ruefully.

‘What will you do, Rhonwen?’ Suddenly he was a boy again. He ran round the desk and took her hand.

‘Why, I shall go to your mother, of course. She’ll look after me.’

‘My mother.’ Colban turned away, shoulders stiffening, his eyes unhappy. ‘She has forgotten us; she never writes to us.’

‘She hasn’t forgotten you.’ Rhonwen’s voice was gentle. ‘Have you ever wondered if perhaps her letters don’t reach you?’ Surely the boy could see that Durward would never willingly let Eleyne contact her sons. ‘Remember how she loves Joanna and Hawisa, even though they determined to shut her out of their lives. Don’t ever do that to her, Colban.’ She reached out and touched his shoulder, feeling the unhappiness in the boy’s rigidity. ‘You’ll be your own master soon,
cariad
, then you can visit her as often as you like and you’ll see she still loves you.’

‘But why did she go with Donald of Mar so quickly?’ He looked bewildered. ‘Why didn’t she wait and say goodbye properly?’

Rhonwen knew the answer to that. She had fled because otherwise she would not have had the strength to fight Alexander. ‘She went quickly because too many people wanted to stop her marrying. If she had waited they would have succeeded, and your mother thought that would make her unhappy.’

‘And is she happy now?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her fixed smile betrayed her true feelings. ‘I hope so.’

II
KILDRUMMY CASTLE
August 1266

Elizabeth of Mar summoned her son to her side whilst Eleyne was out visiting Morna. ‘You are happy with your wife, Donald?’ she asked doubtfully.

Donald stiffened. ‘You know I am. Eleyne is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.’ He straightened his shoulders, unconsciously preparing for the attack he knew to be coming. His mother always made him feel like an unruly child and he hated her for it.

Elizabeth could read her son like a book. She concealed a smile as she seated herself on the chair nearest the fire. ‘Perhaps your father and I were wrong to try to put you off marrying her. For all her age, she seems a healthy woman and she has brought a good terce to the marriage as her dower from Fife. Her ladies tell me she carries the child with ease.’ She paused. ‘Because of that you do not seem to have realised just how delicate a woman in her condition is.’ She watched him mockingly. ‘I am sure she is anxious to please you in every way she knows, but for her sake you must leave her alone. I am surprised that you have not realised that yourself. You cannot continue to share her bed.’

‘That is none of your business – ’

‘I think it is. Obviously she hasn’t the strength or the wit to tell you this herself, so I have to do it for her. It is customary for a man to leave his wife alone in the later stages of pregnancy. Amuse yourself elsewhere. Bed that pretty red-haired wench who eyes you constantly in the hall. Your wife will understand. All she will ask is that you do it discreetly. She will be nothing but relieved that you have freed her from what must be a dreadful ordeal for her.’ She paused. ‘What you have been doing, Donald, is a mortal sin.’ She hissed the word at him without warning and was gratified to see him flinch as though she had struck him.

Donald’s face was white, then slowly it blushed to a deep crimson. ‘I never thought.’

‘Men never do.’ She watched him with grim satisfaction. Once she had weaned him from his wife’s bed, his infatuation would be doomed. It was too late to annul the marriage and the child might yet be a boy, but at least she would have the satisfaction of being proved right. Her son would realise what a terrible mistake he had made.

III

Morna’s baby arrived at dawn on Lammas Day. She delivered the girl-child herself neatly and efficiently and alone, then wrapped her in the lacy shawl Eleyne had brought the week before. She called her Mairi and when Eleyne came – no longer alone: for the sake of peace and quiet at home she brought one of her ladies with her now – the baby was sleeping peacefully in a woven reed cradle. Eleyne bent over the child and smiled. Then her smile faltered. Just for a moment in the shadows of the cottage she thought she had seen flames licking around the cradle. She put out her hand as if to snatch the baby up, but the flames had gone. Morna had not seen what had happened. ‘Blessed Virgin; Sweet Bride, protect you,’ she murmured soundlessly. Perhaps it was her own birth she had seen, no more – an image which had floated up from the past. Though the August day was airless and muggy, she had begun to shiver.