Child of the Phoenix (86 page)

De Bret raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m surprised to hear you of all people call going into a convent incarceration. A strong word, surely.’

The abbot frowned. ‘What else is it, my friend, if the postulant is unwilling and must stay there for the rest of her life?’

XII

ROXBURGH CASTLE
August 1246

The house was on the main street in Roxburgh, not far from the bakehouse where she and Alexander had spent such happy hours. The rich tradesman who owned it was not interested in the identity of the two merchants’ wives who had agreed to rent the ground-floor rooms. They had heavy purses and were well dressed beneath their sober cloaks: that was all that mattered. They had two servants, a nurse for the baby and a great dog. He did not ask their business in Roxburgh.

He was not there when the elder woman took water from the silver Tweed and setting her bowl on the bank beneath the stars drew down the moonlight into the water with her muttered incantations, stirring glittering circles into the black depths of the pot before taking it indoors and making the younger woman drink. The spell was to hide her identity; to make her invisible to all but the king and in his eyes to make her irresistible.

XIII

The great hall of the castle was as always crowded and Alexander was in jovial mood after the midday meal. He had called for his horse and his hawk and was looking forward to an afternoon’s sport after a morning closeted with his nobles. Marie had left the table early to go and fuss over the boy. Even that small respite improved his mood.

He rose from the table with a contented sigh and began to make his way slowly down the hall towards the door. He could already hear the scraping of the horses’ hooves on the cobbles as they waited in the courtyard and the high piping call of the bird waiting on the fist of his falconer.

He wasn’t sure why the woman caught his eye; her stillness in the midst of so much confusion? The angle of her head as she waited unobtrusively in the shadows near the door? Shadows made blacker by the wedge of brilliant sunshine which streamed into the high-roofed great hall attended by a myriad of dancing dust motes. He squinted across the sun and stopped dead. Immediately the crowd around him stopped too, but their chatter did not cease; the stamping of the hooves did not cease. And yet it was the woman’s silence he heard: her silence and her power.

Sweet Christ! She had come back to him at last. At last she had tired of her husband and come back!

He looked about him swiftly. Whom could he trust? No one else had recognised her; no one else had even noticed her in the general mêlée which accompanied him everywhere.

He moved on without giving any sign that he had seen her, out on to the steps and down to his horse. Only then did he beckon one of the grooms and whisper into his ear. The groom found her, still standing in the shadows, though she was now alone. He peered at her inquisitively and shrugged; if the king wanted to play riddles with a heavily veiled townswoman who hadn’t even the wit to put on her best gown when she came to court it was none of his business. What was his business was the reward he had been promised if he got the message right.

Her smile was like the sunrise after a night of rain. He glimpsed it only for a moment beneath her veil as he whispered the message and then he felt a coin pressed into his palm – a coin hot from her own hand. With a flurry of skirts she was gone and by dusk when the king returned the groom would be richer by far than he had ever dreamed.

XIV

The mist was lying across the grass, drifting amongst the trees, hiding the river. She rode slowly, the reins loose, her eyes on the hill in front of her. It stood silhouetted against the sky, conical in shape, not very high, the tumbled ruins of the old fort clear in the moonlight. She knew at once why he had chosen it. It belonged now to the old people; to the fairies. The locals would go nowhere near it. She shivered, feeling the skin on the back of her neck stir and tighten and as if sensing her thoughts, Tam Lin laid back his ears and side-stepped at the shadows.

His horse was already there, tethered beneath the trees. She tied Tam Lin beside it and stood for a moment looking towards the hill top, Donnet at her heels. The moon had drifted higher, farther away from the earth, its light no longer soft and diffused. Now it shed a cold uncaring beam on the soft, sheep-cropped grass. Gathering her skirts, she commanded Donnet to stay and began to climb.

By the time she reached the top, her heart was pounding and the back of her throat was dry and tight. She stopped and looked around, trying to catch her breath. It must have been a castle of the ancient Picts. The huge, rough-cut blocks of stone lay tossed into the grass at crazy angles, throwing black wedges of shadow on the moon-silvered ground. Far below she could see Tweeddale laid out before her, the low-lying river valley brimming with mist. She closed her eyes and made the sign of protection. They were still here, the old ones, watching.

Alexander was sitting on a block of masonry, wrapped in his thick cloak, his arms around his knees. A naked sword lay beside him, its blade glinting in the moonlight.

She went to him without a word and stood in front of him, looking at his face as she raised her veil. If he no longer wanted her, she would know.

He smiled. Opening his cloak he drew her into its folds and held her close. For a long time neither of them spoke.

‘So. Finally you grew tired of your husband?’ he said at last.

Her eyes widened. ‘I don’t live with my husband; I haven’t seen him since Joanna was born.’

‘Joanna.’ His voice was thoughtful, then he went on. ‘So, why did you wait until now to come?’

‘I didn’t know if you wanted me.’

‘Wanted you!’ he echoed. ‘I wanted you so much I nearly went mad when they told me you had gone back to de Quincy.’

‘Who told you?’

‘King Henry.’

‘And you believed him?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘There must be honour among kings, Eleyne. You had ignored my gifts, my letters. I thought you wanted no more of me. After I heard about the bairn. I suppose I thought that after the two that died …’ His voice trailed away.

She smiled sadly. ‘I wanted
you
, my lord. Not letters, or gifts. I wanted you.’

Slowly he raised his hand and touched her face. ‘Why did you come this time?’ he asked softly.

‘You wrote and said you couldn’t live without me any more. I suspect that Rhonwen told you what to say, but it was what I needed to hear.’

He shook his head. ‘I knew what to say, woman. The Lady Rhonwen merely told me to say it again. Sweet Christ! How could we have wasted so much time? Every day that has passed, I’ve missed you in my arms!’ He pulled her closer. ‘You are defying your king by coming here, Eleyne.’

She nestled closer to him. ‘I would defy the world, if you wanted me to,’ she said. ‘And I still have a son to carry for Scotland. A son who will live and one day be the ancestor of a line of kings.’ She put her finger against his lips. ‘Don’t frown. I know you and I can never marry. I am content to be your mistress. We’ll leave destiny to see to the legitimacy of our children.’

As they kissed she pulled open the bodice of her gown. His fingers were calloused and cold from the moonlit rock, and she heard herself gasp as his arms slid around her naked body.

‘I’m never going to let you go away again, Eleyne,’ he murmured. ‘I want you to be mine forever.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I
GODSTOW, OXFORDSHIRE
Ash Wednesday, 13 February 1247

I
sabella was staring out of the window of her cell towards the dark sky. It was ice-cold in the small room and in spite of the fur-lined cloak over her black habit, her hands and feet were blue. Soon she would go to the warming room and sit with the other sisters, huddled around the fire. They were only supposed to sit near it for short periods between work and prayer, but somehow the majority of them managed to congregate there as often as possible. She sniffed. She had not gone down the night stairs for matins, or lauds or prime. Only when her maid had brought her a hot drink and helped her change her linen would she appear grudgingly at terce. This was a rich convent; many of the ladies were aristocratic relicts like herself, dumped by the king out of sight, out of mind. Some of them would leave the convent; she meant to be one of them.

The moon was high, its face a strange blood-red, shedding a weird half-light over the snow-covered roofs of the convent buildings. She did not remember ever having seen it like that before and for some reason it frightened her. It had upset the animals too. She could hear the horses stirring in the stables behind the dorter and somewhere beyond the convent walls a dog was howling.

With a shiver, she picked up her candle and carried it to the coffer which served as bookrest, cupboard and table. On it lay a small book of hours and the precious piece of parchment she had bribed from Sister Maude in the scriptorium together with quills and ink. This would be her fifth letter – carried out of the convent by one of the lay sisters to be consigned to the doubtful mercies of anyone passing who looked trustworthy enough to take it at least part of its way towards its destination.

This one was to go to Eleyne. She knelt before the coffer and nibbled thoughtfully at the feathered end of the quill.
Dear Sweet
Sister
. That was a good start.
For the sake of our long love for one
another I must ask you one last favour
.

Get me out of here, that was the gist of it. She was desperate, a prisoner in all but name, destined never to see another man unless she counted the old priest who took their services and the bishop who came to scold mother abbess about the slackness of the house and its signs of wealth and comfort. Comfort! Isabella snorted to herself. This place was the nearest thing to hell she could imagine. Eleyne had to get her out; she had the entrée to King Henry’s court. Surely she could help.

She bent again to the small circle of candlelight, scribbling laboriously, unused to handling a pen, watching in despair as the nib split and spat a fine shower of ink across the page.

The low rumble in the distance sounded at first like thunder. She looked up, puzzled, then she frowned. The floor she knelt on had seemed to move under her. She dropped the pen and clutched at the coffer. The pewter candlestick rocked violently and fell over. It rolled to the edge of the coffer and fell to the ground. The candle had gone out and she saw that a faint daylight showed at the window.