The Fire in the Flint (7 page)

‘What?’ Roger lifted the cruisie that still burned
beside the bed and brought it close to Margaret’s face. ‘In Perth?’

She nodded, turning a little from the lamp, the light startling her.

‘What did they take? Was anyone injured?’

‘No one was injured. Not there. Fergus cannot tell what is missing, but it appeared to him, as in the undercroft here, that they were after documents.’

‘Here, too?’

‘You didn’t know? I thought that was why you’ve come, to see what they took. They searched the caskets you and Da left in Uncle’s keeping. And Old Will was murdered in the wynd that night.’

Roger crossed himself. ‘How did he come to cross their paths?’

She explained how drunk the old man had been when he left the tavern, and how he’d disappeared. ‘I think he found the door ajar and slipped in to sleep off the drink.’

‘And you believe the intruders killed him?’

‘Yes. So, you see, I’ve had much on my mind and I yearn for sleep.’

‘I am not surprised to hear of such searches,’ Roger said, apparently not yet willing to let her sleep. ‘The English respect no Scotsman’s property. Nor do English abbots.’

Margaret had begun to turn away, but she sat up instead, putting a finger to Roger’s lips. ‘Do
not condemn my brother until you know the truth.’

‘He raided all the kirks for the royal treasures, and now he’s confessor to the English garrison on Soutra Hill. What else can I think but that Andrew is cut from the same cloth as his abbot?’

‘You know nothing. He despises himself for obeying Abbot Adam. And as for his post to Soutra, it is a death sentence, his penance for defying Adam and going to Sir Walter Huntercombe at the castle asking for news of you. He did it for me.’

‘Is this true?’

‘Do you have cause to call me a liar? That is how I learned of Edwina’s death. Sir Walter believed the corpse found with hers was yours. But I’d seen you—’ A sob rose in Margaret’s throat, silencing her.

Roger set down the cruisie and gathered her in his arms. ‘Oh, Maggie.’

Too agitated to rest in his arms, Margaret pushed away. ‘You might explain yourself, why you lied about going to Dundee seeking a new port, why you abandoned me to help an Englishwoman.’

‘Let’s not talk of that now.’

Margaret let out a mirthless laugh. ‘How brief-lived was your resolve to learn to be a good husband to me.’

‘I meant from this day forward, Maggie. I know full well I failed you in the past.’

‘I’m to have no explanation? Will you command me to forget? Oh, but of course, you’ve always thought me naught but a child. What was I thinking to ask why you lied to me, why you lay with another woman, a false wife who—’

The slap shocked Margaret into silence. In that moment she hated Roger.

‘Don’t speak so of the dead,’ he said sharply. ‘Edwina was a brave, noble woman who died carrying messages to the Bruce.’

‘She was not returning to her husband? To England?’

‘No.’ Roger swung his legs off the bed and bowed his head. ‘God help me, I wake at night wondering how I might have prevented her death and that of her escort.’

Margaret crossed herself. ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered, hearing the pain in his voice, reaching for one of his hands and holding it to her heart. ‘But if you had trusted me with the truth of your activities …’

He jerked his hand from her grasp and rose, facing her with a murderous expression. ‘I have explained my silence.’

‘What happened on the way to Dundee?’ she asked, knowing they would never heal this rift without more of an explanation.

Roger dropped his gaze. ‘I’d prefer to talk of other things.’

‘I need to know. Tell me and be done with it.’

He sat down on the bed with a sigh. ‘This is a sorry homecoming.’

‘What happened?’ she asked more gently, touching his shoulder. ‘It would help me to understand your long absence.’

Roger groaned. ‘It is painful to talk of it.’

‘I beg you.’

He gave a resigned nod and looked down at his hands, but said nothing for a moment. ‘It was what I saw at the house of my old friend George Brankston,’ he began in a quiet voice. ‘It was my custom to stay the night there on my journeys to Dundee. I was treated as kin, not a guest, and though they were seldom forewarned of my coming I was always made to feel welcome. But this time …’ He covered his eyes for a moment.

When he looked up, Margaret saw tears. It was unsettling to see his emotion over a family he’d never spoken of to her.

‘The northern army of Edward Longshanks had ridden through George’s property in the summer on its march from Dundee,’ Roger continued. ‘They’d stolen the horses, the falcons, all the livestock.’ He took a breath. ‘They raped his daughter Emma, and so injured Isabel his wife that she lost the child she carried and the use of one leg.’

‘My God,’ Margaret said. ‘Why did you not tell me of this before?’

‘Where was John Balliol in all this?’ Roger demanded loudly. ‘He should have made a last
great attack, caught the army on the road. He made no effort to help.’

‘I believe our king was in England by then, along with many of the Comyns, under close guard,’ Margaret said quietly. ‘And Robert Bruce was in Carlisle helping his father protect that English city from our people.’

‘Our king.’ It sounded like a curse from Roger’s lips.

‘You can’t blame him for Longshanks’s brutality.’

Roger swung his head from side to side slowly, as if trying to stretch out a pain. ‘You asked what happened to change my heart on the road to Dundee. It had nothing to do with Robert Bruce at first. To find the family I had loved as my own so broken, so … The light was gone from their eyes, Maggie. I thought of the soldier who had grabbed you for a kiss and I knew how much worse it might have been.’

‘If you were worried for me, why did you not come home?’

‘Edwina of Carlisle was the sister of George’s wife, Maggie. Isobel feared that what had happened to her and Emma might happen to her sister. I wanted to do something. George’s family needed him there, so it was up to me. It was a beginning.’

Margaret took a deep breath. It did change things.

‘I did not go south with the intention of binding myself to Bruce. I wanted only to bring some relief to Isobel, who had always been so gracious to me.’

‘You’d promised to return by Yuletide.’

‘I am sorry, Maggie. I thought I would yet be home by then.’

‘In all that time, I received only one letter from you.’

‘I still hoped, Maggie. It would have been dangerous, perhaps impossible, to communicate with you. Dangerous for both of us. I’d left you safe in Perth, with Jack to look after you and my trade.’

‘You emptied the coffer and entrusted me to a man who was planning to take his leave to be with his lover.’

‘I left you sufficient funds to survive for a good while.’ There was a whisper of indignation in Roger’s tone. ‘I did whenever I left, ever praying but never certain I would return.’

‘There was money sufficient for but a month, and little trade to compensate.’ Margaret managed to keep her voice steady. ‘And what about before you left?’ she persisted. ‘I thought you were seeking another port for shipping.’

‘At first I was!’ he shouted, rounding on her. ‘My confiding in you would not have prevented anything that happened.’

‘I envy you such certainty.’

His gaunt, angular face was rigid with anger. She
had not set out to make him so angry.

‘You refuse to believe my good intentions in all that I have done.’ His voice was as cold as his eyes. ‘You are behaving like a pampered child annoyed to discover that life is difficult.’

Margaret opened her mouth to retort, but she stopped herself, thinking that there might be a little truth in what he said. But others had been as condemning of Roger’s behaviour as she was, especially Murdoch. ‘I do not claim to be better than I am, Roger. Nor am I so simple as to believe that now you’re here all is well. I don’t think you have any idea how I worried for you, thinking you might be injured, dying somewhere—’

‘You should not have left the safety of my mother’s house.’ He’d risen and taken the cruisie to a small table by the window, settling down and pouring himself some wine.

‘You refuse to see. Jack had been murdered, Roger, and it had happened while he was searching for news of you. I feared someone wanted to keep him from discovering where you were. I feared you had been killed, or captured. No one else was going to search for you, everyone was caught up in the troubles. It had to be me or no one. Can’t you see that? I could not bear to sit day after day watching the door, wondering whether the clatter on the street was someone bringing you home shrouded, as was Jack.’

Roger began to speak, then stopped himself. He
poured himself more wine, then shifted on the stool to gaze out of the dark window.

Margaret turned away from the light and, pulling the covers over her head, resumed her Hail Marys. She wished he’d stayed away.

Celia slept fitfully in a strange room, waking now and then in confusion. She could not seem to shake off the edginess of the evening.

After she had prepared a chamber for the strangers, she had thought of readying one beside Margaret’s for herself, but was uncertain whether the reunited couple would wish for more privacy. Or whether Roger would spend the night – after all that she had suffered, Margaret might not wish him to share her bed. The sun was low in the sky and the evening cool. Celia’s stomach rumbled and her mouth was dry. But if she went into the tavern someone might ask after Margaret, and Celia had not yet settled on what to say. She has a guest? She is on an errand? Visiting … who? At the kirk, perhaps. She slipped inside the little maid’s hut between the two kitchens, Murdoch’s and the tavern’s, and settled on a bench by the window where she could watch for Margaret on the steps.

Dusk came and there was still no sign of Margaret. At last, starving, parched and cold, Celia went into the tavern. It was almost empty.

‘Folk fear the English are watching us to see if more corpses crawl out of the wynd,’ Sim said.

As if his unpleasant conversation were not penance enough, Celia glanced up to find James Comyn walking towards her with his tankard in hand. He slipped on to the bench opposite her.

‘Though the day was warm there is a chill in the air this even,’ he said. ‘Where will you bide while your mistress is entertaining her husband?’

Celia should not have been surprised that he already knew of Roger’s presence, but there was something about James Comyn that made her stubborn. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. My mistress is asleep, and I was still hungry.’ She forced herself to wait for her food and drink, and then gave it her full attention. When she must look elsewhere she gazed around the room. She noticed the servant Aylmer. He sat away from the others. She noted that he was simply but tastefully dressed – she had made it her business to notice such things.

‘Has his master arrived?’ she asked James.

He followed her gaze. ‘Him? He arrived with the man I’d mistaken for Roger Sinclair. I did not think your mistress would entertain any other man in her chamber.’

Celia did not like Comyn’s smirk. She thought him like many well-born folk, seeing servants as simpletons, people to be teased and ridiculed when he wasn’t ordering them about. She made no attempt to retort. He would only smirk more. She
was also dumbstruck by the news that Aylmer was Roger Sinclair’s servant.

Fortunately Comyn soon wearied of her silence and returned to his former spot by the fire. In a little while, full and now almost too warm, Celia withdrew, thinking to retire early. But as she drew near the maid’s cottage she heard voices from within. Thoughts of Old Will’s murder made her heart pound. But stubborn curiosity made her creep closer, until she could make out the quiet murmur of a man’s voice and a woman’s sigh and giggle. She could guess who the lovers were, Roy, the tavern cook, and Belle, a former chambermaid who had been forbidden on the premises. Celia went to the tavern kitchen where she found Geordie, the cook’s helper, sullenly cleaning.

‘So it’s Roy and Belle next door?’ she asked him.

‘Aye. It will be bad for them both if Master Murdoch finds out.’

Belle had left Roy for another, then returned heavily pregnant with the cook’s child, or so she said. Murdoch had not banned her because of her morals, but rather because he could ill afford Roy’s destructive tantrums whenever Belle crossed him. Foodstuffs were too difficult to replenish.

‘Well I’ll not be the one to betray them,’ Celia said. ‘Could you give me a warm stone?’

Geordie drew one out of the fire.

She carried it across to the stairs, her eyes searching the dark corners, then hurried up. All
was quiet in her mistress’s chamber, and no light shone beneath the door. She chose the smaller room on the right and put the hot stone beneath the covers, then returned to the kitchen for another for Aylmer’s room. He, too, would be sleeping alone tonight.

Throughout the night she woke, thinking she heard her mistress call, but she was loath to knock on the door. She hoped Margaret was resting more easily than she was.