Child of the Phoenix (98 page)

Her head began to spin, but it was not an unpleasant sensation. She sat back and arranged her skirts. As soon as the flames burned more brightly, the pictures would come.

She saw the horseman first. He reined in slightly, his animal prancing, its flanks steaming in the rain. She could see the wind, the thrashing banner, his hands wet on the reins.

Show me your face, please show me your face
.

She bent yet closer. Who was he, this broad-shouldered man, and what was he to her? Why did she keep seeing him? But he had turned away, urging his horse forward, and he was riding on, out of her sight into the mists conjured from the flames.

Eleyne cursed softly.

Show me more, show me my future, mine!

Her head was heavy now and she felt a little sick, but there were other pictures there, shifting, changing. A man – Alexander! Her Alexander. With a whimper she reached out and she saw him smile. He stretched out his hand to her and their fingers almost touched. Then he was gone.

Her eyes were full of tears. The knowledge had been there all the time, had she been able to face the truth. Without the pendant she could not reach him and the phoenix, the precious link which held him to her, had gone, lost in the fire at Suckley.

But there were other pictures now. Children. She could see children. Several of them, playing on the beach beyond the flames. She rubbed her eyes. There were two little girls, playing by the water, intent on gathering stones and tossing them into the ripples. Joanna? Hawisa?

She half rose, a huge lump in her throat, holding out her arms. But they had gone. There was no one there, nothing but the empty sand. Tears ran down her cheeks again and she turned to look for the others. They were running away: five boys and two other girls, running, skipping towards the trees.

Come back!

She tried once more to rise to her feet but her legs were cramped and she stumbled. She could hear them laughing, the sound echoing amongst the trees. In a moment they would be out of sight. She sank back on the ground before the fire and stared at it again. But the flames were empty and dying.

‘Have you seen any children on the island?’ she asked that night.

‘Children, my lady?’ Her maid, Emmot, looked puzzled.

‘Did they come from the mainland?’

‘No boats came today, my lady, none at all.’

Eleyne did not mention them again. She had not seen their faces; she had not really heard their voices. Only as shouts, mingled with the breeze, teasing the leaves on the trees.

Two weeks later she knew that she was pregnant with Malcolm’s child.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I
LOCH LEVEN CASTLE
1253

I
t became easier each time. After a while she didn’t need the fire. As the muggy August days gave way to clear warm September she found she could see pictures in the water too. She watched the children playing in the depths of her earthenware bowl; she saw Tam Lin lying slaughtered on the ground and, through her tears, knew he had been killed quickly and mercifully because his leg was broken when he panicked in the fire. She saw the dogs gambolling in the sun and knew as she whispered their names that somehow they heard her. Sometimes she saw Joanna and Hawisa playing with them, but she could never know, never be sure, that they were alive.

Then Malcolm came. He rode from Dunfermline with gifts and wine. That night as he entered her chamber and dismissed her ladies he was eager for her, unfastening the neck of her shift and pushing it back from her shoulders with shaking hands. He saw the fullness of her breasts; slowly he raised his hands to them, cupping their heaviness in his palms.

‘You’re even more beautiful than I remembered,’ he breathed.

She woke to find him gazing at her naked body, his hand on the curve of her belly as he sat beside her on the bed. ‘You’re carrying my son.’ He sounded awed. When she nodded, he bent and kissed her stomach. ‘So soon! I shall take you back to Falkland. I want you at my side.’

He treated her as though she were made of precious glass. She wasn’t to lift a finger. He surrounded her with servants, plied her with new gowns and stayed with her every second that he could. When she asked for a Welsh harper he sent for one; when she asked for a garden to the south of the castle wall he had one dug and planted. When she asked him not to touch her any more, he backed off sheepishly and left her alone to her dreams.

II
September

Rhonwen put her hand again to the dagger she carried hidden in her gown and gave a grim smile. Ancret and Lyulf had come with her and it was almost as if they understood. She put her hand on Lyulf ’s head as Eleyne used to do and the dog looked up and growled a little in his throat.

She was sorry it was the Earl of Fife who had murdered Eleyne. When she had first heard the rumour that he was behind the raid which had destroyed their lives, it had been with shocked disbelief. He was the kind of man she could almost admire. She had waited silently, listening to the gossip which flew through the halls of Lady Lincoln’s castles, and at last she was convinced. Eleyne was dead. The king had ordered masses for her soul and begun to dismantle her estates, but no one was going to pursue Malcolm. No one was going to punish him. Rhonwen made her preparations.

The children were safe. With their mother dead and their father still in the Holy Land, they had been made the king’s wards and were for the time being to be reared by their cousin, the gentle Countess of Lincoln, whom Rhonwen liked and trusted. Besides, they would be safe with Annie.

Unobtrusively one night she had slipped away and set off on her grim journey north.

Before her, Falkland Castle lay in the shadow of the Lomond, the earl’s standard, depicting a mounted knight with a drawn sword, hanging limply from the Great Tower. The gates stood open. She watched a loaded wain creak slowly under the gatehouse, the shadows of the spikes of the raised portcullis falling obliquely across its load as it disappeared inside. It all looked so normal; so peaceful. Yet within the day the earl would be dead and so probably would she. Touching the dagger again, she smiled and walked forward, leading her horse.

The man-at-arms on the gate must have recognised her from her previous visits to Falkland for he did not question her. He merely smiled and waved her in. ‘Where is the earl?’ Her voice was husky with exhaustion.

‘He’s away, but the countess is here, my lady. You’ll find her in her rooms in the Great Tower.’

Rhonwen wanted no truck with Lord Fife’s countess, whoever she might be. She had nerved herself to kill – today.

The man was waving her on and another huge cart was looming in the gateway behind her and suddenly Lyulf was growling in his throat. As she stepped back out of the way of the heavy iron-bound wheels, the hound leaped away from her across the courtyard. Ancret too tore herself from Rhonwen’s restraining hand and followed him.

Rhonwen ran after them, her anger and astonishment at the dogs’ desertion mixed with a small incredulous flicker of hope. She had never seen them run like that before; not for a long time seen them look so eager or so excited.

No one challenged her as she ran up the stairs into the lower chamber of the tower. The dogs had vanished, but she ran on across the room to the stair up to the higher floors. At the doorway to the earl’s chamber she stopped, gasping for breath.

Eleyne was there, her arms around Lyulf ’s great neck, kissing the dog’s head whilst Ancret tried to push between them, licking her hands. It was a long time before she looked up, tears pouring down her face, and saw Rhonwen in the doorway. She straightened and held out her arms. ‘Rhonwen! Joanna? Hawisa? Where are they?’

The shock was so great that Rhonwen could not move, but the terror in Eleyne’s face as she misinterpreted Rhonwen’s silence catapulted her back to reality. ‘They’re safe,
cariad
, and well.’ For a long time the two women hugged each other in silence, with Eleyne’s ladies looking on in astonishment, then Emmot stepped forward. ‘I don’t know that my lord would want you to have visitors without his knowledge, my lady,’ she ventured timidly.

Eleyne smiled. ‘He would not object to Rhonwen.’ She turned to the eager dogs, kissing their heads in turn. ‘Oh, Rhonwen. I can’t believe you are here! I thought you were dead!’ She was crying through her laughter.

‘As I thought you.’ Rhonwen’s voice was strangely flat. ‘What happened to you? The whole world thinks you are dead. King Henry has had masses said for your soul and your lands have been redistributed. The girls have become the king’s wards.’ Her practised eyes ran over Eleyne’s figure. ‘Had you forgotten us?’

Eleyne gave a sob. ‘Forgotten! How can you say that? I was brought here against my will, forced into marriage. Guarded day and night!’

‘You’re married already. How can they force you to marry again?’ Rhonwen asked.

‘Robert is dead!’ Flinging away Rhonwen’s questioning hand Eleyne paced across the floor.

‘Dead, is it?’ Rhonwen’s voice followed her. ‘Then no one in England knows it. They say he is on his way back from Acre.’

There was a long pause.

‘Are you sure?’ Eleyne’s voice was no more than a whisper. Unconsciously her hand had gone to her belly where Malcolm’s child lay, not yet quickened, beneath her ribs.

‘When I took the children from the Lady Dervorguilla at Fotheringhay to Lady Lincoln, who has been made their guardian, she said they had sent letters to him to come back as soon as he could.’

‘Sweet Jesus!’ Eleyne stared at her appalled.

‘My lady.’ Ann Douglas, one of her new companions, had been listening in increasing distress and now she was wringing her hands. ‘It’s not true. What this woman tells you is a lie. You are married before God and the law!’

‘Am I?’ Eleyne was numb. Her joy at realising the children were safe had drained away as the full horror of the truth began to dawn on her. Malcolm’s plan had worked. The whole world thought her dead. Her children had been given to another woman and the king had reclaimed her lands. A wave of fury hit her. She shook off Ann Douglas’s restraining hand.

‘At least now I know the truth! That’s why no one looked for me; no one came to help me. I didn’t believe him! I didn’t believe people would think I was dead.’ She paused. ‘But you must be wrong about Robert. Malcolm would not have married me if he were still alive. He couldn’t have. That would be the most terrible sin.’

He had told her the truth when he said the children were alive; he had told her the truth when he had said that Henry thought her dead. This too must be the truth; it had to be. If it wasn’t, what did it make her and the child she carried?

‘You find that you like Lord Fife after all, do you,
cariad
?’ Rhonwen asked at last. She was staring into Eleyne’s eyes. Did her ghostly lover still visit her, or was he too forgotten? She reached surreptitiously into her bundle and touched the phoenix which lay there. But she did not give it to Eleyne.

‘Like him!’ Eleyne turned on her furiously. ‘He brought me here as a captive.’

‘You don’t look like a captive now though.’ There had been no guards save at the castle gatehouse.

‘No, because every person in this castle is my guard! She is my guard!’ She flung her arm in Ann’s direction. ‘And she.’ This time it was Emmot. ‘Every time I escaped – and I did – I was brought back. All my letters were intercepted!’ She paced the floor, solemnly followed by the two dogs who pressed close on either side of her. ‘And now I carry his child! What am I to do? Where am I to go?’ The words were a ringing challenge.