Child of the Phoenix (127 page)

She adored the children unreservedly. Gratney at three was a chubby, mischievous child, into everything, already a determined rider, hanging on to the mane of the tiny fat pony she had found for him at the horse fair in Aberdeen. His twin brothers seemed equally extrovert and equally determined to succeed, tumbling over one another like the puppies they played with, and the three children were noisy favourites throughout the castle.

Secretly Donald watched the twins as they played, searching for signs of differences between them, searching in spite of himself for the clues or mannerisms which would identify one of the children as the son of another man, a man who had been dead for twenty years, but it was impossible. As they chuckled and wrestled and climbed over him on his visits to the nursery, he found himself responding with equal delight and love to all the smothering eager little bodies which hung around his neck. As did his wife. Never once did he catch Eleyne making any difference in her treatment of the children. Kisses for Duncan matched kisses for Alexander and so did slaps. There was no sign that she considered any of her sons to be of different blood.

When she found she was pregnant again in her fifty-second year, Eleyne cried. She was bouncing with health. She felt no sickness or aches or pains. Her hair was glossier and thicker than ever and Donald had been, if anything, more attentive than at any time in the last four years. This time she told him at once. He stared at her. Then he laughed. Then he kissed her. ‘My lovely fruitful wife!’

‘You will stay with me, Donald?’ She could not keep the fear out of her voice.

‘I promise.’ He kissed her again.

III
KILDRUMMY
March 1270

She had no premonition of disaster, no seeing in the flames. When Donald came to her in the stillroom, he found her with an apron over her gown poring over an old book of recipes.

‘Nel –’ Curtly he dismissed the servants and, with one look at his face, they all obeyed immediately.

‘What is it?’ Guiltily she slid a box of dried orris over the parchment page. The recipe was one for ensuring the fidelity of one’s husband.

Donald hesitated. How could he tell her? His mouth was dry. He didn’t know what to say. He should have brought the letter to her, shown her that.

She was suddenly full of misgivings. ‘What is it? What has happened?’

‘It’s Colban.’

‘Colban? What’s wrong with Colban?’

‘He’s dead, Eleyne.’

‘Dead?’ Her face drained of colour. ‘That’s not possible.’

‘His horse fell. I’m sorry.’ He was doing it all wrong, but he didn’t know how else to break the news.

She stood, stunned, the pestle she had been using still in her hand.

‘No.’ Her whisper was pitiful. ‘I would have known. It can’t be true. It can’t.’

‘I’m so sorry, my darling.’ He put out his arms and blindly she went to him.

‘I must go to him.’

He frowned. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’

‘Of course it’s wise!’ she flashed. ‘I have to go to him! I have to be there. Don’t you see?’ Her voice was broken. ‘I have to see him.’

IV
FALKLAND CASTLE

‘I’m sorry, my lady.’ John Keith looked unhappy and embarrassed. ‘Lady Fife will not receive you.’

‘What do you mean?’ Exhausted after the precipitous ride from Mar, Eleyne had ridden to the door of the great hall at Falkland with all the confidence of long ownership. It had not crossed her mind that she would be denied entry.

‘I think there is some mistake, Sir John,’ Donald said sharply. ‘My wife has come to be with Lady Fife and her son at this terrible time.’

‘I know.’ Keith shrugged miserably. ‘She has told me not to let you in.’

‘Where is my son’s body?’ Eleyne’s voice was very tight.

‘In the chapel, my lady.’

‘I take it Lady Fife does not object to my going there.’ She did not wait for an answer. Riding to the chapel door – the scene of her first marriage to Malcolm, the place where both her eldest sons had been baptised – she slid from her horse and went into the cool darkness.

His body lay on a bier before the altar, his sword clasped between his hands. Candles burned at his head and his feet. Eleyne walked slowly to his side and stood staring down at him, ignoring the monks who prayed near him. Colban looked younger than when she had last seen him the year before. His face was serene, boyish, happy. He was seventeen years old.

Closing her eyes, she felt a wave of dizziness sweep over her. She did not cry – she hadn’t cried since the news had come. Leaning over, she kissed him gently on the forehead and then went to kneel on the faldstool at his feet.

Behind her Sir Alan Durward had come into the chapel. He stood beside Donald for a moment without speaking, gazing at Eleyne.

‘I’m sorry that Anna was so cruel,’ he said quietly at last to Donald. The two men eyed each other with hostility, the long court case between Sir Alan and Donald’s father over the earldom of Mar as always in both their minds when they met. Simultaneously they made the decision to ignore it for Eleyne’s sake. ‘Anna is beside herself with grief. Of course you are both welcome here. It’s unthinkable that you should not be at the funeral.’

His sympathy was not endorsed by his wife or daughter. Neither Margaret nor Anna would speak to Eleyne and, to her fathomless grief, they refused to let her see her grandson, Duncan.

‘I’m sorry, mama,’ Macduff was red-eyed and pale, ‘Anna doesn’t want you to go near him.’ He didn’t know how to say that his sister-in-law thought his mother possessed the evil eye.

‘Why?’ Eleyne was bewildered and hurt.

He shrugged. ‘Give her time. She’ll get over it.’ He grinned wanly. ‘I had a little chat with Duncan, uncle to nephew, you know, and he sends you his love.’

‘Does he realise what has happened?’ Eleyne asked Macduff. He was like his brother in many ways, though she had to admit a sturdier and more reliable version. Her heart went out to him as she watched him fighting his tears.

‘He knows his father is dead. He knows he is the new earl, or will be one day.’ Macduff grinned ruefully. ‘It’s a shame a brother no longer seems to have a claim to inherit. This fashion for primogeniture is a disaster for the Earls of Fife. I’d have made a good earl.’

Eleyne gave a wistful smile. ‘Yes, you would.’ She put her arm around the boy and hugged him.

‘You told me once I’d be a great soldier, that you had seen it in the stars. Did you see this for Colban? Did you know he was going to die?’ he asked, biting his lip.

Eleyne shook her head. ‘It wasn’t me. It was Adam, the wizard, who saw your futures. He never told me what he saw for Colban, so perhaps I should have guessed.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Why did it happen?’

He shook his head. ‘Why does anything happen? Bad luck. A bird went up under his horse’s feet. He wasn’t paying attention. He was never as good a rider as me –’ He stopped guiltily at the sound of his own boasting – it had come so automatically – and she smiled reassuringly.

‘It’s true, you always were the better horseman, even when you were both small.’

He grimaced. ‘The earldom has been in a minority for four years already. Do you realise they will have to wait now until Duncan is twenty-one before there is someone in Fife who can administer the earldom personally? In the meantime, no doubt, the king will take the revenues again.’ The king was already taking the revenues on the few lands left directly to Macduff by his father.

Eleyne nodded thoughtfully. ‘When you are twenty-one, I will speak to the king for you. I’m sure he will make you one of the earldom’s guardians and give you some of its revenue so that you can set up your own household.’ She smiled fondly. ‘Fife will need you, my darling,’ she said gently. ‘For the sake of your father’s people you must be patient.’

V
May 1270

When Donald left Kildrummy again, twelve weeks after they had returned home, to join his father in the king’s council, Eleyne smiled and kissed him and wished him well. If it were the will of the gods, he would come home. He did, three days after Marjorie’s birth in August, with gifts for her and all the children and an invitation from the king.

‘He commands your presence at court, my darling,’ he said as they sat at table in the great hall with Muriel. His father’s wife had become Eleyne’s friend. Childless after a first, sad miscarriage, the Countess of Mar, though younger than Eleyne, had assumed with ease the role of the grandmother and confidante to the children. ‘He says you have been away too long. As soon as you are fully recovered from the birth we will ride south.’

Donald adored his two daughters. They both had their mother’s hair and eyes; they both laughed a lot and played with the toys he brought for them. As he surveyed his overflowing nursery, he sometimes found it hard to believe all these children could be his. Five children in four years. Three sons, two daughters and a wife who, to his infatuated eyes, seemed younger than ever.

VI

Now she did resort to magic and to the tricks that Morna taught her; to go alone into the hills and whisper to the gods; to stand naked under the moon and let its cold benign light stroke her skin and iron away the signs of age. There would be no more children. The knowledge had come to her as suddenly and as surely as she knew now that Donald would return each time he went away; knowing it, she was more certain, more alluring, when they were together. But it was less often. She accepted that now too.

As if to make up for the lessening at last of passion, the Sight returned. On the hills she had visions. She felt the tides of magic which ebbed and flowed with the moon and she grew less afraid. She foresaw that the young man Agnes loved would tumble from the back of a wagon and break his leg. She knew when Sir Duncan Comyn would fall ill with fever and she knew he would recover. Three times she had the vision of the horseman in the storm. But still she could not see his face. And unknowingly, as she opened her heart to worlds beyond the whirling darkness, she allowed Alexander back into her life. With her collusion, even though it was unwitting, he had no need of the phoenix. He was growing stronger.

The night of the first full moon in September he returned. Eleyne was watching Isabella as she took her first unsteady steps from one nursemaid to another in the warm afternoon sunshine. All the children were there. The three boys playing boisterously with a ball, little Marjorie asleep in a plaited straw basket and Isabella. For some reason it was to this one child above all the others – not to Sandy – that her heart reached out, and with it a fear she couldn’t name. It was then that she felt it: the faintest breath against her cheek, a touch on her arm so light it could have been her imagination. For a moment she didn’t understand.

Eleyne
…

She heard her name so clearly she looked around, puzzled. There was no one there, save the children and their nurses. No one who would dare to call her Eleyne.

Eleyne
…

It was fainter this time, just an echo in her mind, but suddenly she understood. She stepped backwards, her heart beating fast, staring around her. She had given the phoenix to the gods at the sacred spring, thrown far out into the pool where Elizabeth of Mar had died. How could he be here? How could he? What had she done to allow him near her?

‘My lady, look!’

‘Mama! Look at Isabella!’

‘Mama! She’s walking by herself!’ The chorus of cries claimed her, pulled her back to the present and he was gone.

That night she clung to Donald as though she would never let him go, worshipping his body, touching him with greedy fingers, kissing him, pulling him inside her with a hunger that delighted him. When they lay apart at last, spent and exhausted, she peered into the shadowy corners of the room with something like fear. ‘Don’t come again, please,’ she murmured into the emptiness. ‘Don’t take me from him.’ With her heart closed and without the phoenix, surely he could not come near her?

VII

‘You have to help me,’ she said to Morna. ‘There’s no one else I can talk to. It’s as though he’s trying to win me back, as though he’s pulling me. Tearing me in half. I got rid of the phoenix, but still he comes.’