Kingdom of Shadows (56 page)

Emma sniffed. ‘It sounds like a placebo. Always next time. Never this.’

‘Oh, Em!’ Exasperated, Peter turned away. ‘I can’t win with you, can I? If I ask you to come you don’t want to. If I tell you you can’t, you sulk!’

‘I am not sulking.’

‘It sounds like it to me. Look, I have to do this job! I enjoy it, and I’m good at it and I’m not going to change it, so you’d better get used to it. God knows, you’ve had long enough to get to know what I do by now! Come or don’t come! Make up your mind. But don’t leave it till a few hours before the plane takes off!’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Look, do you and Julia want to come to Gatwick with me? We could have dinner on the way –’

Mutely Emma shook her head. ‘You know I hate seeing you off.’

Peter sighed. Snapping his case shut he slotted the key into the lock and turned it. ‘OK. Well, I’ve done all I can. You’ll just have to cope for a couple of weeks, that’s all. Anyway, I thought you and Chloe were going to have a wonderful time interfering in Clare’s life. That will keep you busy.’

He was speaking with a false, almost patronising heartiness and Emma frowned wearily. ‘Peter –’

‘Have you found her yet? Or has your brother done her in?’ Peter smiled. ‘You must admit that the way you were talking to Henry it sounded as though you thought Paul capable of it. Not that I’d necessarily blame him.’ He leaned forward and kissed Emma on the head. ‘It’s no good at this stage telling you not to get any more involved, I suppose?’

Emma shook her head mutely.

‘Well then, be careful. And be good.’ He glanced at her suddenly. ‘No assignations with rich American oil magnates while I’m away, OK?’ He smiled at her again, hesitantly. ‘Come on. I’d better get my briefcase together, then I’ll have to go.’

Emma watched him carry the suitcase out of the bedroom. She could hear it bumping heavily beside him down the narrow staircase. Idly her eyes strayed to the pad by the telephone. Her cleaning lady had taken the message that morning. ‘Please ring Rex Cummin as soon as you can.’

She went over to the pad and tore off the page. Angrily she crumpled it up and hurled it across the room, then throwing herself down on the bed she began to cry.

Between Perth and Dunkeld Clare turned off the main road. She drove up a long narrow lane, and then brought the car to a halt at the end of a ride on the edge of a hillside forest. Pulling on her Burberry she climbed out of the car. Casta rushed ahead of her up the track, her plumed tail waving as Clare slowly began to climb, her boots sinking into the soft pine needles.

Now that she was so near home her nerve had begun to fail. Her mother had as good as told her not to come. Her stepfather loathed her. Aunt Margaret wasn’t there any more. The house belonged to James, and it was the first place Paul would think of looking if he wanted to follow her. So why was she going there?

Raising the collar of her raincoat against the increasingly sharp wind she pushed her hands firmly into her pockets, feeling the crunch of fircones beneath her feet as she stepped off the muddy track and on to an outcrop of rock. The air was sharp with resin. Ahead of her she could see the hillside, here and there still splashed purple with late heather. The sun was dazzling after the dark shadowy track of the fire break between the trees.

Where did she belong? She had no one and nowhere to go to. Even at Duncairn Jack Grant had made it clear that he did not want her at the hotel, thanks to that interfering man from Earthwatch.

Stepping out of the shadow of the trees she stared round her at the panorama of rolling Perthshire hills, patchwork coloured in the sunlight, cloaked on their lower flanks by the dark green scented spruce. Following Casta, she picked her way through the heather to an outcrop of sun-warmed rock and sat down, staring round, feeling the wind tugging at her hair. With a yelp of excitement Casta disappeared over the shoulder of the hill on the trail of some rabbits. Far below she could just see the green metallic glint where the car was half hidden by the trees. She was completely alone.

Wishing passionately that she could stay here for ever, relaxed, safe, hidden from the world, she stooped and, picking up a stone from the mossy grass at her feet, she tossed it idly into the heather. In the distance she could hear the warbling call of a curlew and near by the sharp metallic not of a stonechat. This was the country where Isobel had been happy: the country of her birth. Clare frowned, pushing the thought of Isobel away. She shivered as the wind tugged at her raincoat.

Don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want to know
what my husband did?

The words spun out of the air, almost lost in the sound of the wind in the heather and the trees behind her.

Clare swallowed, glancing round. ‘No! I don’t want to know. Leave me alone. Please!’ She put her hands to her head, tugging at her hair, shaking her head. ‘Leave me alone. Leave me alone!’

She scrambled to her feet, groping in her pocket for the oil. With shaking hands she unscrewed the top and slopped some of the oil on to her hand. A little spilled on to her Burberry and she saw the dark stain spreading on the pale fabric.

‘Go away! Keep away from me! I don’t want to know. Please …’

She backed away from the rocks, smearing the oil across her forehead, holding the bottle in front of her like a talisman.

Don’t you want to know what happened? Don’t you want to
know …?

The voice was stronger now, inside her head. Insistent. Desperate. Pleading …

Isobel had turned away from her husband, her mind numb with fear, her nerves already stretched to breaking point by the sight of the man on the hurdle and the baying crowd around him.

‘Well, madam, have you lost your tongue?’ Lord Buchan was immediately behind her. ‘Do you not have a reply to these charges?’

Isobel turned slowly to face him. ‘Would you believe me if I denied it?’ she said. She felt completely calm. She gazed up into his face and the sudden absence of fear disconcerted him.

‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I wouldn’t believe you. You have sinned with this man a thousand times in your heart which makes you guilty in the eyes of God. Now you have sinned with your body and you are guilty in the eyes of the world.’

She expected him to hit her. She almost wanted him to hit her. Then at least his vengeance would have begun. This sudden icy calm was more frightening than anything she had ever seen.

Thoughtfully he turned from her. ‘Lord Carrick is a friend of the king at present. He is a powerful influence here at court. I do not wish to jeopardise Scotland’s position in the coming parliament by fighting him openly. Not yet. You are not worth it.’ The disdain in his voice was cutting. ‘But one day I shall kill him.’ The words were spoken with a venom so quiet that she wondered if she had heard them aright.

He turned back to her and his face was once more taut with anger. ‘But you are a different matter. It seems that you do not learn by your mistakes. My mother said she feared you were untamable. It appears she was right.’ He sat down heavily once more with a deep sigh. ‘Was your maid’s death not warning enough for you? Are you not afraid to die at the stake as she did?’

In spite of herself Isobel gasped. ‘You cannot mean to have me burned?’ she cried. ‘I’ve done nothing to deserve that!’

Buchan smiled. ‘Not even ensnared a nobleman of Scotland by your spells? Not even made mockery of your marriage vows and defied God and the Holy Church? Not even, once again, resorted to magic to prevent the conception of a child?’ His voice dropped to a hiss.

Isobel went white. He couldn’t know that! No one could know that. ‘That’s not true,’ she stammered. ‘None of that is true.’

‘No?’ He gave a cold smile. ‘So, you deny throwing a web of enchantment around the Bruce? I’ll warrant he wants none of you. And why’ – he sat forward suddenly – ‘have you not conceived a child unless you have avoided it by sorcery?’

‘That is God’s will –’ she whispered.

‘I think it is more the will of the devil.’ He stood up. ‘It is my intention, madam, to see that you never get the chance to see the Bruce again. Or Scotland, since so much temptation lurks there.’ He paused, his eyes on her face and he gave a tight smile at the sudden pain he saw there. ‘I have no time for you at present. The affairs of Scotland are pressing and I have to stay here at Westminster. While I am here I will decide what to do with you, but it seems to me that if I need an heir I must be free to remarry.’ He was still watching her thoughtfully. ‘In the meanwhile I will see to it that you do not – ever – have the chance to betray your vows to me again.’ He turned and left the room, turning the key in the lock behind him.

Isobel sank on to a stool. Her knees were trembling and she felt very sick. Slowly the afternoon passed and it began to grow dark. There were no fresh candles in the room and gradually it became cold. Huddling on the window seat Isobel could see little through the leaded coloured glass. She was hungry and very afraid.

It was pitch dark when the door was unlocked. Her husband stood outside, a flare in his hand. ‘Come,’ he ordered curtly. Isobel rose stiffly to her feet.

He took her to their bedchamber. Bolting the door he thrust the flare into a bracket on the wall, then he turned to her. ‘An escort awaits to take you back to Whitwick where you will remain a prisoner until I decide what best to do with you, but before you leave there is something I must do.’

It was a long time since he had beaten her. He struck her repeatedly with the flat of his hand until, barely conscious, she collapsed on to the bed. Somehow her pride sustained her and she managed to bite back her screams, but she was scarcely aware of what was happening as at last he began to pull off her clothes, ripping her gown and kirtle from her back and tearing her shift in two, waiting with some shrinking part of herself for the rape which she knew would follow.

Somewhere in the distance she heard him laugh as she huddled away from him, her eyes closed, her arms wrapped around her aching body, too dazed and bruised to react even when she heard the rattle of metal. He pulled her back towards him and she felt the cold iron around her waist, then the cruel tongue of metal between her thighs and heard the snap of the lock. ‘That, madam, will ensure you are never unfaithful to me again,’ he whispered; then he caught her arm and pulled her to her feet. ‘Now get dressed.’

She rode in a litter, thrown uncomfortably from side to side as the horses sped north through the darkness, their way lighted by the streaming flares of the armed escort. It grew light and they stopped for food and water at St Albans. Isobel refused to eat. In agony from the bruises and welts on her body and desperately conscious of the vicious cruel manacle clamped to her body beneath her torn shift she lay dazed in the litter for the whole of the long journey north.

At Whitwick she was carried to the bedchamber by her husband’s steward and there, alone in the great curtained bed, still fully clothed, she allowed herself to cry.

She expected to die. Each meal as it was brought to her was suspect. He would have ordered her to die by poison, there, far away from London, then he would be free to marry again. At first she refused to eat, but her hunger forced her to try the food, and to her own surprise it was good. She was not kept locked up. There was no more punishment. Far away in London Lord Buchan was distracted by affairs of state. For the time being he had put his wife out of his mind.

Life at Whitwick was ordered and calm. They heard little news. The men and women of the household were wrapped up in their own affairs and they had no interest in Lord Buchan’s except where they touched him personally. Isobel’s wounds healed, her natural resilience returned and she found herself slowly falling into the pattern of life at the manor as the long autumn days shortened and grew cold.

It had been made very clear to her that although she was not locked up she was nevertheless a prisoner. She was not to ride – that anyway she realised in rueful embarrassment would have been too uncomfortable to contemplate. She was not allowed to walk beyond the immediate gardens of the manor with their ordered beds of herbs and the rose bower the steward’s wife had made over the years for her own pleasure, and even there she was never alone. There was nothing for it but to wait and occupy her time as best she could, and to dream. At first her daydreams were all of escape; she would picture herself riding through the heather, or standing on the cliffs of Buchan listening to the sea. She had not thought it possible to miss the sea so much: the smell, the sound, the vitality of the wind and spray, the power of the waves. The forests and fields of Leicestershire were gentle and the air was soft, even the people so very different from the rugged loyal men and women of her northern home.

She filled her time with sewing and taught herself to weave; she sat spinning in the evenings with the steward’s wife and the three ladies who served them and by the light of the candles she read. There were three books at the manor: a book of hours, a book of psalms and an exquisitely illuminated copy of
Le Roman de la Rose
which Isobel herself had brought and left there on one of her previous visits.

The first soft snowflakes were falling from the sky when she had her only visitor. Alice, now married to Sir Henry Beaumont, rode into the manor courtyard with an entourage of men and horses at the beginning of December.

‘Aunt Isobel?’ She kissed Isobel cautiously, as though doubtful of her reception. ‘How are you?’ Her nose was pink with cold, her figure very obviously pregnant. ‘Uncle John said I could come and visit you.’

Isobel raised an eyebrow. ‘I had thought he’d forgotten I existed,’ she said with a rueful smile. ‘In fact I hoped he’d forgotten I existed.’ She gave Alice a hug. ‘Come in, my dear. I am so very glad to see you.’

They sat together by the roaring fire in the solar whilst her ladies mulled them some wine.

‘So. You are expecting a baby!’ Isobel took her niece’s cold hands. ‘When will it be born?’

‘In the spring,’ Alice hugged her again. ‘It’s going to be a boy, I know it.’ She eyed Isobel critically. ‘You have grown so thin. Have you been ill?’