Child of the Phoenix (132 page)

Morna looked down at the woman lying on the straw pallet on the floor at Mossat. She was pale and shivering, the sweat pouring from her body. She shook her head. ‘The fever hasn’t broken. She’s worse.’

The woman’s husband had brought her down from the high shielings in the autumn, carrying her on his back. Her fever had returned a dozen times since then and he had had to let the other men go to the lambing without him.

‘Last summer I went to the well. I thought the water would cure her,’ he admitted unhappily. He was twisting his cap in his hands in agitation as he looked down at his wife.

Morna frowned. ‘That wouldn’t help for this. What we need to do is break the fever once and for all,’ she said practically. She turned to her bag of remedies. The woman needed medicine now as well as spells.

She knelt, propping the woman’s head on her arm as she fed her the hot green tea. The man felt in his pouch and produced a scrap of sacking. ‘I took something from the spring,’ he said shamefaced. ‘I shouldna have done it. I knew it would bring ill luck.’

Morna was shocked. ‘You stole from the guardians of the spring?’

He nodded. ‘Will you take it back for me? Please. Will you make it all right? She won’t get better until it’s done.’

Morna helped the sick woman drink the last of the decoction, then she laid her gently on the ground and covered her with sheepskin rugs. ‘I’ll take it back, but I can’t promise the spirits will withdraw their anger,’ she said sternly. ‘You’ve done a terrible thing, Eddie, stealing from the gods.’ She held out her hand and taking the sacking she slipped it into her herb bag without looking at it. ‘Keep Jinnie warm. Give her some more of this tea at dusk and again at dawn. I’ll come and see her in the morning.’ She crouched down and laid her hand for a moment on the burning forehead, then she slipped from the house out into the village street.

It wasn’t until Mairi was asleep that night and Morna was sitting exhausted as her fire died, trying to summon the strength to go to her own bed, that she remembered the package and reaching for her bag of dried herbs took it out. She unwrapped the fraying piece of sacking in the firelight and sat looking down at what it contained.

He had packed the phoenix in dried moss. Tiny curls of it clung to the creature’s beak and claws. In the flickering light its eyes were red and malicious, glaring up at her. She, like the old man, could feel its energy.

For a long time she looked at it, then with gentle reverence she wrapped it up again. The fire was dead and the embers cold before she went to sleep.

X
April 1282

Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, was always a welcome visitor at Kildrummy. With him was his son, another Robert, a grown man and father himself now, who had taken the title of Earl of Carrick from his wife, Marjorie.

‘So, how was Wales?’ Robert of Annandale raised a goblet of wine and toasted Eleyne and Donald cheerfully.

‘Beautiful, as always,’ Eleyne replied. ‘But you haven’t come all this way to ask us about Wales, Robert.’ The two men had not so far divulged the reason for their visit. ‘I trust you haven’t come to complain about your squire.’ Gratney had gone back to the Bruces at Lochmaben two months before.

‘On the contrary, he’s a charming young man. He does you both great credit, doesn’t he, father?’ Robert of Carrick said. ‘You should be very proud of your children.’

‘We are.’ Donald stretched out and took his wife’s hand. ‘As you should be of yours.’

Carrick laughed. He already had a clutch of sons and daughters, and his wife, Marjorie, was pregnant again. ‘I am. My eldest son is so like his grandfather! They get on too well by far.’ He looked fondly at his father. ‘Though Robert is only seven, he is a bright, ambitious boy. And Christian is like mama in looks. She’ll make someone a good wife one day.’ He glanced at Eleyne sideways.

Eleyne smiled. ‘Subtlety was never your strong point, Robbie.’

Carrick threw back his head and laughed. ‘No, I’ll leave that to my father and my son. Subtlety and the Lochaber Axe, that’s about their mark. An unbeatable combination! But seriously, keep us in mind when you think of a match for Gratney. That’s one of the things we came to say. I think we could negotiate something which would please us all.’

Eleyne could not keep the happiness out of her eyes. ‘That would be wonderful,’ she said softly, ‘absolutely wonderful.’

‘And now that we’ve settled that,’ Robert of Annandale remarked, ‘on to the subject of the king’s remarriage. Does anyone yet know whom he has in mind?’

‘I do.’ Eleyne answered, though Robert had been looking at her husband. ‘It is to be Yolande de Dreux, the daughter of the Count of Flanders.’ She laughed at the thunderstruck faces of the three men.

‘Who told you?’ Robert asked.

‘The king, who else? He has made his mind up who to marry, but it’s when that he cannot decide. It’s not easy for him so soon after one son’s death to acknowledge that his eldest son is far from strong and may not live. But he will do what he must.’

Without realising it, her eyes had moved to the fire. The flames were intensifying, curdling over the peats, licking and sparking along the pine logs filling the chamber with their bitter scent.

There were pictures there, part of the flames: she saw the horseman, the storm clouds massing round him, but in a flash he had gone and there was nothing but the orange glow, like the living centre of the sun, searing her eyeballs.

The hands on her shoulders jerked her back to reality. ‘Eleyne,’ asked Donald, ‘are you all right?’

‘Of course.’

‘What did you see?’ Robert of Carrick whispered, awestruck.

She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

XI

Morna took Eleyne’s hand and led her to the window embrasure, drawing the curtain across the alcove to give them privacy. Behind them in the solar a wall painter was meticulously working on the last corner of the room, sketching in the outlines of two figures with sinopia before he began to colour the dry plaster. Near him, his apprentice stencilled a pattern of rosettes on the green wall. The room already glowed with colour.

‘I must know what you want me to do. If you wish, I will return it to the sacred spring.’ Eddie’s wife was improving. Obviously the gods had forgiven the man’s intrusion. ‘Or I can keep it at my house.’ Morna paused. ‘Or I can bring it here.’

Eleyne sat down. Her heart was beating very fast. ‘I knew it had been found,’ she said. She took a deep shaky breath.

‘Has he come back?’ Morna studied her face sympathetically.

Eleyne nodded. ‘Nothing frightening, not yet, but he’s here.’ She kneaded her hands together nervously in her lap. ‘He’s growing impatient.’ She stood up, every movement betraying her fear. ‘What shall I do, Morna?’

Morna was doubtful. ‘His power is growing. However much you beg him not to come he can reach you now the pendant is out of the water, even though it’s not here in the castle.’

‘I draw a circle round our bed,’ Eleyne said sadly, ‘and he has never crossed the line. And I draw a circle here in my solar and another around the castle walls.’

Morna raised an eyebrow. ‘You believe that will keep him away?’

‘A powerful wizard told me how to do it. But one day,’ Eleyne clutched at Morna’s hands, ‘one day he’ll come when I’m outside the circle. And then he’ll take me from Donald.’

‘Has anyone else seen him?’ Morna murmured.

‘Yes,’ Eleyne said, ‘Sandy.’

XII

Eleyne held the phoenix in her cupped hands. She felt its power; felt the colours vibrating beneath her fingers. She opened them and gazed down at the jewel. Flecks of moss still clung beneath the creature’s claws.

Gently, she packed it into an intricately carved ivory box and wedged it with lambswool. She fitted the lid with care and made her way towards the chapel. She climbed the stairs which led up over the undercroft to the first floor and went into the shadowy body of the building.

Father Gillespie was kneeling before the altar. Crossing himself, he rose to his feet and turned as he heard her footsteps. He had lit the candles on the altar and before the statue of the Virgin.

‘Are you ready, father?’ Eleyne was tense with nerves.

‘I am.’ His face was deeply lined, his eyes narrowed and watery from years of peering at the crabbed writing in his missals and books of hours. Surreptitiously he looked at her face – his countess looked pale and strained. He knew a little of her torment from her confessions; he also suspected that she paid more than lip service to another, older god, but he did not pursue the matter. There were many gods in the mountains, and he was a tolerant man. He knew she liked him and respected him and he liked and respected her. She would have his compassion and she would have his prayers. The Blessed Christ and the Blessed Virgin would succour her in her hour of need. And was not the old king the great-great-grandson of the blessed St Margaret herself? ‘You have the object, my lady?’ He was staring at the box in her hand.

She nodded. ‘You will bless it, father, so that no one can … so no one can use it any more.’

‘I shall weave a prayer around it, my lady, and beg Our Sweet Lord and his mother and all the saints to guard it. I can do no more.’

She gave him a tight smile. ‘Thank you, father.’

There was a strange coldness in the chapel. She shivered. She could see where he meant to put it: he had raised some of the new, painted tiles on the step before the altar, and beneath them a board had been removed. A cavity yawned black between the floor joists.

The candle flames were flickering wildly. She saw him look at them anxiously and again she felt the cold.

‘Put the box on the altar, my lady.’ His voice was strained.

Her mouth dry, Eleyne stepped forward. He was here, in the chapel. She could feel him, feel the protest and the anger in the air around her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Father Gillespie cross himself twice in quick succession.

Eleyne
…

‘
Ave Maria, gratia plena, intercede pro nobis
…’ The words John of Chester had repeated so often at her side filled her head. ‘Pray for me now and in the hour of my need…’

Eleyne
…

She laid the box before the crucifix and crossed herself, then she knelt at her usual prayer desk and closed her eyes.

Eleyne
…

Father Gillespie had begun his prayers. As he became more confident, his voice strengthened.

Eleyne
…

The call was growing weaker.

‘
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine
…’ The priest’s voice filled the high vault of the chapel. ‘
Requiescat in pace … in pace … in pace …
’

The call died away, and Eleyne felt tears burning on her cold cheeks.

Father Gillespie picked up the box and knelt on the step. He lowered the box into the darkness, then he fitted back the floorboard and replaced the tiles. He climbed to his feet and, strenuously rubbing the dirt from his hands on his chasuble, he smiled. ‘It is done, my lady.’

‘Thank you.’ She rose from her knees. ‘And you will tell no one, ever.’

‘My lips are sealed. I will have one of the masons come in and cement down the tiles. He will not know why they came loose.’

The candles burned steadily now in the silence. She and the priest were completely alone in the chapel.

All she had to do now was to leave another offering of gold at the holy spring where Elizabeth had died. Then she would be left in peace.

XIII
May 1282

We are surrounded on all sides. By sea, Edward attacks Anglesey. He is
trying to establish a blockade around Eryri. But he won’t succeed. Llywelyn
knows his people and his mountains too well, and he has even ordered the
digging of a secret tunnel from the palace to the valley so we can flee in
safety if Edward traps us here. Would that I could help him more, but my
time is near, and he has to leave valuable men here at Aber to guard me
and our son when he is born. Pray for us, dear Eleyne, and if you have
the King of Scots’ ear, beg him to send us help. If Wales falls to this tyrant
ambition, who knows but that Scotland might be next …

Eleyne put down Eleanor’s letter, smuggled out of Aber, and her eyes filled with tears. Her nephew Dafydd, Llywelyn’s younger brother, disenchanted at last with his treacherous adherence to King Edward, had launched the revolt against the English tyranny in Wales only weeks after Eleyne and Donald had left Aber. Within days the revolt had spread and all Wales was again in arms with Llywelyn at her head.

Gwynedd was far from Mar, but she did not need Llywelyn’s brief heartbroken note a week later to know that Eleanor was already dead, and that the longed-for heir to the Prince of Wales was a daughter. She had seen the woman’s agony in the candle flame and heard Wales’s sorrow in the wind on the moors.