A Cruel Courtship (26 page)

‘How did he die?’ she whispered.

‘He’d fallen from an outcrop behind this kirk. His head hit another great stone.’

‘In the kirk yard,’ she said. ‘So close.’ She should have searched out there.

‘One of my men found him. The brush and the rocks shielded him from sight.’

Her vision had been accurate – and utterly useless.

‘God grant him peace,’ she prayed. ‘Did you see him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think he suffered?’

‘His neck was broken, Maggie. I don’t think he would have lingered.’

He held her tight and she turned her head to one side to take a few deep breaths, hoping to ease the lump in her throat. Roger would have counted his death by a fall ignoble. He had once predicted that he would die defending the goods on one of his ships. He would have preferred that.

‘I think he’d been robbed, for there was nothing of value on him,’ said James, ‘not even his personal knife.’

Margaret straightened a little, needing more air. ‘Do you think he was pushed?’

‘That I cannot guess, Maggie. He might have given chase if he’d discovered he’d been robbed.’ James tucked a stray lock into her wimple. ‘I saw no knife wounds, nor did I see any marks on his neck, so he wasn’t strangled before falling.’

Margaret stepped back and turned away, into the lamplight beside them. ‘You so closely examined him?’ She did not like the idea, his being examined by – what was James to her? Not yet a lover, so he was not a rival, though regarding Balliol and the Bruce he and Roger had been in separate camps.

‘I wanted to give you as full an account as I might, for I knew we could not wait to bury him. I thought it a miracle he’d fallen where he was not noticed by the English – he’d been dead at least several days.’

She might have found him herself. Yet what would that have changed but that the English
might then be certain of their connection. ‘Did you find his companion Aylmer, the Bruce’s watchdog?’ Margaret distrusted the man, a distrust validated by a letter she’d found in his belongings when he’d stayed in their home in Perth. He and Roger had been on a mission to coax her father into supporting Robert Bruce, and Aylmer had carried orders from the Bruce to kill Roger or her father if either proved false in any way.

‘No. We found only Roger.’

She cursed Aylmer for not helping Roger – he might even have pushed him. The lump in her throat seemed to have travelled to her stomach and now burned like a coal, yet her hands were aching with cold. ‘Where did you bury him?’

‘My men took him to Cambuskenneth Abbey.’ James moved behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

‘With all those camping down below? How could your men carry a body across the river without being caught?’

‘We respect each others’ dead.’

‘They did not respect the dead in Berwick.’

‘It is always possible that my men did not make it, but it would not be for want of trying. I have done all I could to honour him, Maggie.’

She moved back into James’s arms and let the tears come, a brief outpouring that eased the fire in her stomach. But in its place an iciness spread from her hands up her arms and encased her heart. She’d
been cursed with the Sight and no man might undo that.

Celia had been surprised to find a straw pallet already tucked into a corner behind the chapel’s altar, and some dishes sitting on a small table.

‘What is to prevent the English from taking Master James when the kirk is open during the day?’ she asked.

‘Fear of eternal damnation,’ said Father Piers.

Celia did not have his faith that such fear would protect James.

‘But I’ll not risk it,’ said Piers. ‘I’ll lock the gate to this chapel. The chaplain has long been gone and it is now merely the burial place of the ancestors of a family gone from Stirling for many a year.’

It was no place she would care to sleep, but Celia knelt to arrange the bedding. Father Piers crouched down to assist her, his second act this evening that proved wrong her early impression of him as self-centred – the first had been when he upheld James Comyn’s request for sanctuary.

She was glad to have a chore because the depth of feeling evident between her mistress and James Comyn in those first moments in the nave had shaken Celia. She felt as if she’d missed a crucial development in the motivation behind their coming to Stirling. Her confidence had already been shaken by Johanna’s murder and James’s capture. She felt as if the English soldier knew
everything that they’d done since they arrived; she would not be at all surprised to hear that he was the one who had captured James.

‘What did the captain look like? The one who came for Master Comyn?’

The priest’s description fitted her English soldier. When she told Father Piers, he looked frightened. ‘It had not occurred to me that he was the one of which you and Johanna had spoken.’ He knelt at the small altar to pray.

‘You said you had sad news for me,’ James reminded Margaret.

She’d withdrawn from his embrace and held her hands over the lamp, trying to thaw them, but as soon as she took them from the heat they were cold as the stones beneath her feet. And now she must tell James of her other vision become reality.

‘When did your men find Roger’s body?’ she asked instead. An uncomfortable sensation had begun, as if she wanted to run from James, as if he were dangerous to her.

‘Yesterday.’

James stepped closer; Margaret moved to the far side of the lamp, as if meaning to share it with him.

‘Do you think your finding him had anything to do with your being found by the English today?’

‘It might, though I think it more likely it had to do with the Welsh archer. Do you remember him? The one who brought news of Andrew?’

‘The one you didn’t trust.’

James nodded. ‘He showed up at our camp with a tale of escape from his guard because he had gone through hell to be part of the battle that is about to take place for the River Forth. My men believed him – before I arrived he’d insinuated himself into their ranks. This morning he disappeared.’ He pressed his palms to his face for a moment and looked so dejected that Margaret felt cruel for avoiding his touch.

‘You were right to distrust him,’ she said. ‘I doubted him a little, too.’

‘I wish we’d been wrong.’

‘How did you
know
to distrust him?’ As he began to reiterate his reasoning Margaret interrupted him. ‘I remember your reasoning, but how did it
feel?
Did you sense it the moment you met him?’

‘Are you asking me now whether
I
have the Sight?’

‘No, no, I’m wondering how to know whom I can trust in such times.’

James gave a little laugh. ‘Would that we
could
know. Why do you think both Roger and I wanted to talk to your mother? We wanted to learn more about her prediction that you’d watch the true King of Scotland ride into Edinburgh. We wanted to learn what she knows with her gift of kenning.’

Both had been disappointed, for Christiana swore she’d seen only Margaret’s features in the vision. She’d refused to see Roger at first, which
was why her befriending him when he returned to the nunnery wounded had surprised Margaret. But it might have meant little – he might have spent time with her hoping to learn more about the prediction. It had been Margaret’s lifelong experience that few people wanted anything to do with her mother except to learn something through her Second Sight, and they often blamed her if they were unhappy with what she had to tell them. Never did they ask about her as they would a woman without that gift. Margaret did not want that to be her own fate.

James reached out for Margaret’s right hand. ‘Maggie, what is this bad news?’

She almost recoiled from his touch. Perhaps because he had touched Roger after death. It was a moment before she could draw herself from that thought.

‘Johanna was murdered this evening.’

‘Our spy?’

Margaret nodded.

‘God’s blood, how?’

‘She was hit in the back of the head with a thick branch, at least once, and once in the jaw. She was lying on the floor of her home when I arrived.’

James caught Margaret’s arm. ‘You went to her home? Why? You were to communicate through Father Piers and Archie.’

‘Father Piers introduced us. And I’ve yet to meet Archie,’ said Margaret. ‘He’s a slippery young man.
He’s told Father Piers he cannot help us any more.’ She did not want to tell James about her fear for Johanna; he’d want to know who was next. ‘I was in the backlands and heard a scream. It was foolish, I know, but I ran to see who it was. Her neighbours told me. There was an English soldier in the house.’ She was talking too fast, hoping he would not stop her for details. ‘And then his captain came and asked me to look on her, tell him if it was Johanna. He told me that he’d lost a prisoner, that the man had claimed sanctuary here.’

‘Do you know his name?’

‘No.’

‘Pale hair and dark brows?’

‘Taller than you, lean and well-spoken?’ Margaret finished for James as he nodded. ‘Your captor?’

‘Aye, Maggie, and his name is Peter Fitzsimon – Ada’s son by Simon Montagu.’

She began to shake her head in disbelief, but in her mind’s eye she now saw how much he favoured his mother. Even so, she asked, ‘Are you certain?’

‘I am.’

‘God help us.’ She wondered whether the night was yet finished with them, twisting all their fates about. ‘If the archer has met with Peter, he might have mentioned me.’

‘I don’t believe he’s met with Simon yet. We can only pray that the archer does not see you.’

‘I still might be Ada’s niece.’ But that did not
matter, she realised that. ‘They’ll act on suspicions, whether or not they are certain. Ada and all in her home are threatened by the archer’s knowledge.’

‘I should have killed him,’ said James. ‘I felt in my gut that I should.’

‘What if I claimed sanctuary with you?’

‘You would condemn Ada.’

‘What can we do?’

‘For now, withdraw into Ada’s home. Call no attention to yourself.’

9

Perhaps it was the quiet in the kirk, or perhaps it was the ordinary motions of preparing a bed, but Celia could sense for the first time in a long while the presence of God. She felt confident that if she prayed with all her heart He would hear, which she’d doubted since leaving her comfortable life in Katherine Sinclair’s home in Dunfermline with Margaret. She’d been unable to reconcile the cruelty and suffering she witnessed in Edinburgh, Perth, and Stirling with the welcoming Lord she’d always imagined. But at this moment she felt invited to pray. Kneeling, she bowed her head and told God all that was in her heart: her fears, her angers, her wishes for those she loved, her wishes for herself. A surprise awaited her. She had not been aware that her wish for herself had changed since the last time she’d opened her heart to Him.
No longer did she yearn to be a lady’s maid and travel to castles and manor houses; now her heart’s desire was to find a kind man and to bear his children, to create a home filled with love – a tidy home over which she ruled with joy and peace of mind. She felt God smile on her and almost wept for the hope it gave her.