Child of the Phoenix (80 page)

‘Sweet Bride, preserve me,’ she whispered desperately as she heard the unmistakable sound of Robert’s drunken laughter close to her head. ‘Sweet lady, help me.’

She could not hear what they were saying. The boat had steadied now and she could feel it travelling through the water, the cold black water which she could sense close beneath her body, on the other side of the thin planking. Panic gripped her and she began to shake all over. Any moment they would stop rowing.

‘Sweet lady, save me, please.’ She was tearing at the inside of the sack now, not caring if they saw her; moments later another vicious kick told her that they had. It was a while before she realised the boat had lost its swinging momentum through the water. There was another low laugh and she felt hands groping for the corners of the sack.

She screamed again and again as they struggled to move her towards the edge of the boat, rocking it wildly on the black water, then she felt the sharp gunwale beneath her ribs; she hung across it for a long moment before her captors, with a shout of triumph, lifted her feet in the air and tipped her head first over the side.

The sack floated around her, filled as it was with air, then it began to sink and Rhonwen felt the ice-cold blackness closing over her head.

VIII

As Eleyne’s screams echoed down the staircase, Andrew dropped the flagon of small beer he had been carrying to the table and raced towards the sound, panting heavily as he climbed the spiral stair in the thickness of the wall.

When he reached the room, he was so appalled he could not move. She had sprawled forward into the ashes and flames were running around her head.

‘Blessed Jesu!’ He hurled himself across the room and tearing a rug from the bed threw it over her, pummelling out the flames.

‘Janet!’ He pulled Eleyne back on to the floor and shouted as loudly as he could. ‘Janet! For Blessed Christ’s sake, woman, get yourself up here quickly!’

He could hear his wife panting as she hurried up the stairs, hampered by her heavy bulk.

‘What is it? Is it the bairn?’ She arrived, gasping for breath, her face glazed with perspiration.

‘My lady’s had a fall. Help me, woman, she’s too heavy for me.’ He was pulling ineffectually at Eleyne’s arms. ‘Let’s get her on the bed.’

‘Is she dead?’ Janet hadn’t moved from the doorway.

‘Of course she isn’t dead! Stop havering and help me, or she soon will be!’

Between them they pulled Eleyne on to the bed and Andrew cautiously peeled back the blanket he had thrown over her.

‘Oh sweet Virgin, look at those burns!’ His wife stared down in anguish. ‘Oh poor lady!’

‘Get something to put on them – quickly.’

‘Buttermilk, I’ll get some buttermilk.’ The woman scurried back towards the stairs as, gently, her husband began to pull away the burned remnants of Eleyne’s veil and hair. They still had not seen her hands.

IX

As Rhonwen fought the enveloping wet sackcloth, her fingers became entangled in the loosened seam at the side of the sack. Her lungs were bursting; red stars shot through her head and exploded in her brain. Her struggles were growing weaker. Any second she was going to have to take a breath, to inhale the soft black water which would fill her lungs and seep into her arteries and draw her to itself forever. With one last desperate effort she tore at the seam and felt it part. She pushed her arm through the gaping hole in the clinging wet hessian and then her head. The water was thick with reeds. Her fingers grasped them but they slid away, slippery and tough as wet leather. Then, as her bursting lungs drew in that final lethal breath of water, her fingers broke the surface and clawing towards the stars locked on to a half-submerged tree stump.

X

‘Her lovely hair; oh Andrew, her lovely hair.’ Janet was soothing the buttermilk over Eleyne’s face and head with a pad of soft lambswool.

‘Aye.’ His face was grim; the woman would be terribly scarred. ‘Is the bairn all right?’

Janet shrugged. Wiping her fingers on her apron she put her hand on Eleyne’s stomach. ‘I can feel it moving, but who knows … I wish Lady Rhonwen were here.’ Her eyes were round with fear. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Her soft plump face, reddened and weathered by the winter winds, was crumpled with misery and she started crying.

‘You’re doing fine, woman, just fine.’ He sounded more confident than he felt. Slowly, wearily, he picked up the remnants of Eleyne’s burned head-dress and the charred scraps of her hair. After wondering what to do with them, he dropped them with a shrug on to the fire, which hissed and shrivelled them into ash.

Janet worked slowly over the woman lying unconscious on the bed – her face, parts of her scalp, her hands and forearms and shoulder. Painstakingly, she smeared on the cooling buttermilk, tearing away the burned fabric of Eleyne’s clothes, binding her hands with strips of cloth she had torn from her own shift. ‘It’s not all her hair, the Lord be praised,’ she murmured to her husband as she worked. ‘It’s just the one side here, but her face – oh, the poor, poor lass.’ She blinked away her tears.

‘Just pray she doesn’t wake up yet awhile.’ He turned away to hide his own emotion. ‘It’s maybe she won’t want to go on living after this.’

XI

Her hands were like claws, clamped on to the wet trunk, her body humped over the body of the tree, her face hanging inches from the water. Her last convulsive heave before she lost consciousness had half dragged her into a position where her head hung down, her mouth open. The loch water drained out of her, leaving her suspended like a bag of old rags. It was raining hard. She could feel the cold sweeping down her neck. Perhaps it was that new, colder cold which had awakened her.

It was just growing light. With a tremendous effort, Rhonwen raised her head and looked around. As far as she could see, water surrounded her. She could see the luminous glow of it in the receding darkness, smell its cold dankness, see the bright trails in the distance where the sunrise was beginning to send pale gold across the Lomond Hills. Cautiously she heaved herself up higher on the log and felt it roll slightly under her weight. She lay still, her eyes closed, her heart banging with fear. She could not feel her feet; the rope still bound them and the hideous wet sacking clung around her waist, turning her into a travesty of a mermaid.

Too tired to move, she lay there a long time, watching it grow light, too cold now to feel cold, letting herself drift into unconsciousness as the first crimson sun path across the water rippled towards her trailing feet.

XII

Eleyne lay staring at the ceiling as the girl rebound the bandages around her hands. She was a small thin young woman, scarcely more than a child, her clothes ragged, her unkempt hair loose around her thin intense face.

‘Who are you?’ Eleyne could barely whisper; her blistered lips were very sore.

‘Annie, my lady, I am the cook here.’ She seemed well aware of the ironic grandeur of the title she claimed and amused at her self-mockery.

‘And where, Annie, did you learn to care for people with such kindness?’

Annie shrugged. ‘I used to go with the boat sometimes to St Serf ’s Island and watch the infirmarian at the priory there. He taught me which herbs to use. When the prior found out, I was forbidden to go there again. But I remembered what he showed me.’

‘That’s lucky for me.’ Eleyne paused. ‘Is my face very bad?’ There were no mirrors in the castle and she was too ill to bend over a bowl of water looking for her reflection.

‘Aye, it is now, but it will get better.’ Finishing at last, Annie straightened and tucked the sheet back around her patient. ‘I’ve bathed all the burns with lavender and put on flaxseed poultices; most of them will heal cleanly without a mark. Luckily your scalp wasn’t burned. The ash on your face saved you.’ She frowned. ‘But you have to eat to get better, my lady, and for the baby. Shall I bring you something now, before you sleep?’

Eleyne shook her head. She lifted her hand towards the girl as if to detain her, and then let it fall, flinching at the pain.

‘Rhonwen –’ she whispered.

Annie looked at the floor and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, my lady – ’

‘Robert took her?’

Annie nodded. Everyone in the castle had watched the struggling, heaving sack being carried down to the boat, knowing they could do nothing to help against de Quincy’s thugs.

‘She’s dead then.’ Eleyne’s voice was despairing.

‘We don’t know for sure.’

‘We do. He wanted her dead for so long.’ Eleyne turned her face away as the tears began to ooze from beneath her swollen eyelids.

XIII

When Rhonwen next awoke it was full daylight. She lifted her head and looked around. In front of her the water was green with reeds and water plants and about fifty yards away she could see the shoreline rising towards some trees. Cautiously she pulled herself higher on the log. It twisted beneath her but she could see now that it was firmly held by a tangle of branches. If she could just free her feet …

It took a long time. The rope was sodden and matted into the sacking and her feet had swollen at the ankles but in the end she managed to unknot it and kicked away the sack. She lay for a long time after that trying to regain her strength and pluck up the courage to relinquish her hold on the tree stump which had saved her life. Finally, she forced herself to let go by sheer will-power. She flopped into the icy water and floundered her way across the reed bed with its clinging mud bottom towards the shore. It seemed to take forever and she could feel her last reserves of strength draining away as she fought her way forward, but at last the ground was firmer under her feet and the water began to shallow and finally she was crawling up the beach into the shelter of some low bushes, where she collapsed into unconsciousness once more.

The rain woke her. The sun had vanished and the sky was heavy. A cold wind was blowing from the north. She could see Loch Leven Castle, low on its island in the distance. Eleyne was there, and for the time being she was safe, but for how long? Wearily Rhonwen pulled herself into a sitting position and began to rub her feet. She had to reach the king.

When the Earl of Fife’s steward found her she was wandering in wider and wider circles, staggering slightly as though she were drunk. At first he was going to ride past her, but something made him slow his horse and turn it off the road. It was several seconds before he recognised, in the mud-stained woman with her trailing hair and bare bleeding feet, the nurse of the Countess of Chester. He reined in and slid from the saddle.

He lifted her behind him on the sturdy palfrey and turned towards Falkland Castle. Three times she swayed and nearly fell; after that he tied her to his waist with his leather girdle and made better speed, feeling her head flopping weakly against his shoulder blades. At Falkland she was put to bed and fed a bread-and-milk pap and at last she was allowed to sleep. She could not remember now who she was or what had happened.

The fever burned for four days then at last she awoke clear-headed. Minutes later the earl himself had been summoned to her bedside.

He listened to her story, incredulity and anger vying for predominance in his face, and when at last she had finished he frowned. ‘You are welcome to stay at Falkland as long as you wish, Lady Rhonwen. In fact you can make it your home if you can no longer serve Lady Chester for fear of her husband, but I don’t know what I can do for her. If her husband wishes to keep her at Loch Leven – ’

‘It’s your castle – ’

‘But not in use at the moment. He asked me some time ago if he could use it as a hunting lodge.’

‘Did he tell you what he would be hunting?’ Rhonwen’s eyes blazed with something of their old spirit. ‘How can you let such a man live, never mind abuse his wife as he does?’ She was trembling with rage. ‘I thought you felt something for her yourself, my lord. The horse you gave her was a lover’s gift, surely!’

His face flooded with angry colour. ‘She wants none of me, Lady Rhonwen. She is besotted with the king.’

‘Then you must love her from afar.’ Rhonwen forced herself to smile, aware that she had to use her wits to overcome his hurt pride. ‘And you must show her your devotion in your actions. To tell the king of her plight would gain you great favour with him and my lady would see how much you love her.’

She watched his face carefully. Malcolm was a bluff soldier, a good-looking man of few words; tough, fair, no courtier, but she could see that this idea of himself as a chivalric lover pleased him. She prayed under her breath. If he would not help her, she had to find the king without delay and she doubted if she had the strength to stand, let alone ride across Scotland. She waited several seconds more, then: ‘If you love her, my lord, you cannot stand by and watch her suffer like this. That place is a vile prison.’

He nodded soberly. ‘Very well. I shall ride to the king today and tell him where she is.’

XIV

It was several days before Eleyne was able to rise. She was still in great pain, but each day she was stronger and calmer. The supply boat had still not appeared, and supplies in the castle were very low indeed, but they could manage with what they had. There was no wine, but the well water was fresh and the cow in milk; they had hens and there were plenty of squabs in the dovecote. Annie had concocted healing broths from plants she had found in the small wood outside the castle walls and with calm amusement she had seen her reputation as a healer spread. She was now allowed to treat Andrew for his gout and his wife for her headaches and her troublesome teeth.