A Cruel Courtship (36 page)

Her first reaction – God forgive her – was relief, but that was short-lived. ‘My son? How?’

Margaret took a breath, and Ada knew that this was the part that her friend most dreaded telling her.

‘He was stabbed. First, I think, by Archie. Then he–’ Margaret pressed her forehead to Ada’s for a moment, then looked up again. ‘Sandy and I have tried to put it all together. We think that Archie managed to stab Peter in his left side and he sought shelter in the garden shed. He pulled some old bags around him for warmth.’ Her voice was gruff and it was plain she was holding back tears.

‘Dear God,’ Ada moaned. ‘He would be grievously wounded to do that.’

Margaret nodded. ‘I know. As much as I feared him, I think of his pain–’ She shook her head. ‘Someone else came upon him and stabbed him in the heart – through one of the bags – that’s how we know it was
later.’ Margaret began to sob. ‘I don’t know where to begin, Ada. I don’t know where to begin.’

‘Begin what? No, shush now. He was heading down a road that could lead only to his death, Maggie. Archie should be grateful his wasn’t the fatal wound.’
I’m rambling on
, thought Ada,
trying to fill in the silence. The one child I knew is dead. He suffered. So near here. So recently
. She stepped away from Margaret and began to heave. She felt Margaret behind her, steadying her, holding her forehead. When her stomach was empty, her knees threatened to buckle beneath her.

‘Come,’ Margaret said, supporting Ada as she straightened. ‘Brandywine and bed, that is what you need. Plans can wait until morning.’

In the early morning, as Ada dully stared out the solar window trying not to think about how little love she’d felt for her now dead son, she noticed Simon departing the castle on horseback, leading a group of foot soldiers.
God be praised
, she murmured when he continued on Castle Wynd to St John Street. He would feel far less ambivalent about their son’s murder than she did.
Now
she mourned Peter,
now
that he was dead she considered his courage and wished she had offered him affection. Surely she might have found a way to his heart. If she’d only tried.

She wanted to strangle the young man who slept so peacefully down in the hall. Had he not injured Peter, her son would not have sought shelter in
such an exposed place. Aylmer she’d hated from the moment she met him in Perth. Shortly after he’d arrived with Roger Sinclair, Margaret had found documents on him that revealed he was not quite who he claimed to be. He was Robert Bruce’s kinsman, and was making certain that Roger fulfilled his mission and proved his loyalty to the Bruce; if Roger had failed, Aylmer was to kill him. It was not just Ada’s loyalty to Margaret and therefore her husband that had tainted her impression of Aylmer – he had seemed an arrogant man of no courtesy.

Margaret had explained Peter’s part in Roger’s death, so Ada understood why Aylmer might have gone after Peter. Yet hadn’t Christ told mankind to turn the other cheek? And how could the man who had carried an order to deal with Roger as needed consider it his right to avenge the man’s death?

Margaret knocked on the flimsy dividing wall of the solar. She’d slept with Celia and Maus to give Ada some privacy in her grief. ‘Did you sleep at all?’ Margaret asked.

Ada shook her head. ‘Come, sit with me a while.’ She patted the bench beside her. Margaret looked refreshed; so much better than she had the previous night. ‘You slept.’

Winding her red-gold, wavy fall of hair round one hand, Margaret fastened it with two polished wood sticks as she took the seat. She was a beautiful woman, Ada thought.

‘John has gone to Father Piers,’ she told Margaret. ‘I hope he will agree to bury Peter in the kirk yard.’

‘Will you tell Simon?’

‘He’s just headed down the hill, leading foot soldiers.’

Margaret closed her eyes and bowed her head. ‘We have a respite. Thank God. But Ada, you cannot attend your son’s funeral.’

Ada nodded. ‘But he’ll have a proper burial. And later …’ Whether she would tell Simon was something she was not yet ready to consider. One thing at a time. They must make safe the house by ridding it of her son’s corpse. ‘I wonder what Simon’s departure means,’ she said, ‘whether he’s to negotiate a truce or lead those men into battle.’ She pressed her hands to her face. ‘This town reeks of blood.’

They sat silently for a time.

‘I’d thought to join you at Isabel’s last evening. How did you find her?’ Margaret asked.

‘Glad to be alive,’ said Ada. ‘She hopes to join her daughter in the north if the truce comes to pass. She sent her there when–’ she remembered that Margaret would be most interested in a piece of information that had surprised her. ‘Maggie, her daughter was betrothed to Huchon Allan. When he was to be hanged, Gordon and Isabel sent her to kin in the north. Poor Isabel – she has suffered so much of late.’

Margaret suddenly brought her face so close that Ada could see shots of gold in the irises.

‘Her daughter and Huchon Allan?’ Margaret said, her voice high with excitement. She sat back so suddenly the bench rocked. ‘If it was his ring, then Peter – I must go out.’ She was off the bench before Ada could ask where she was going. ‘Celia, dress me. Hurry!’ Margaret called.

Margaret struggled not to jump to conclusions, though she kept thinking of her bargain with the Sight, that if it proved helpful she would go to her great-aunt in Kilmartin to learn more – she wondered whether the Sight was making sure she would. She wanted to ask Isabel about the whereabouts of Huchon’s ring when Gordon was killed, but first she needed to make sure that it
was
his ring that Peter had given Ellen, which meant she must show it to Lilias and Ranald Allan. It was not an encounter she looked forward to.

As Celia dressed Margaret, she listened quietly. When she was finished, she touched the ring in Margaret’s hand. ‘So this was Peter Fitzsimon’s ring? He gave it to Ellen?’

Margaret belatedly realised that she hadn’t explained any of this to Celia – she hadn’t expected her to be involved.

‘You know enough now. Don’t worry whether you understand it. All you need to do is be sure to not contradict me.’

Celia’s dark brows were knit in concern. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To the Allans’s house.’

‘Next door? You hardly need a companion to walk across the wynd.’

One could count on Celia to get right to the telling detail, thought Margaret. ‘I don’t want to go alone.’

‘Oh.’ Celia pressed her lips together and was quiet a moment.

‘Maggie, come quickly,’ Ada called from below, ‘James is here!’

Margaret’s and Celia’s eyes met.

‘He’s escaped?’ Celia whispered.

‘God help him,’ Margaret said. ‘We’ll go to the Allans soon.’

Celia crossed herself. ‘May God watch over him. Perhaps he will be able to join the others.’

As Margaret hurried down to the hall she felt a knot forming inside. She’d not thought about James fighting in the battle with the others.

He stood by the back doorway, dressed for travel, listening to Ada’s recounting of the conversations in the market square the previous night.

‘I’ve not had the courage to look down at the camps,’ she said, ‘but I can imagine. How can we possibly prevail against them?’

‘We cannot fail, else things will be far worse than they are now. We must carry the day.’ He glanced up, and seeing that Margaret had come, bowed to
Ada. ‘The guards are gone,’ he said, taking a step towards Margaret.

‘Sir Simon Montagu left early this morning, leading some foot soldiers,’ said Margaret, guiding him to the far end of the hall, away from Archie.

James looked tired. ‘What of Peter? Is he still lurking about?’

Margaret’s stomach clenched, instantly back in the shed with Peter’s blood on her. She drew James down on to a bench beside her, taking his hands. ‘No, Jamie. Peter is dead.’ She told him how they’d found him, and explained how the fatal stabbing had occurred after he’d taken refuge in the shed, and that Ellen had said Aylmer had gone looking for Peter.

‘Aylmer. God’s blood. How did he find him there?’ James glanced towards the fire circle.

‘I don’t know. Archie admitted that the knife was his. Peter had grabbed it by the blade and Archie had not the strength to retrieve it.’ She remembered Peter’s cut-up hand and shivered at the thought of the pain he must have experienced.

James pulled her close. ‘I am so sorry you’ve seen the bodies of people you knew so viciously injured, Maggie.’

She clung to him, trying not to see the blood, the battered flesh, the gaping wounds, but her mind was full of Johanna’s and Peter’s suffering – and Roger’s, though she had witnessed it through the Sight, not her fleshly eyes. She could not help but
think that souls so violently wrenched from the body were never entirely freed.

‘Maggie, Maggie,’ James whispered, ‘you are so young to be seeing all of this. I wish I could protect you.’

She turned her face towards his, and their kiss was long and sweet. This was a cruel courtship indeed.

When they moved apart, Margaret asked, ‘What will you do now that you are free?’ She did not for a moment expect him to stay here with her, knowing that his first loyalty was to John Balliol, his kinsman, and she respected him for that.

‘Free? I hardly feel that. I must return to my men below. This battle will decide whether we go on to fight another day, Maggie. I cannot bide here while they fight for my kinsman.’

‘I did not expect you to.’

‘I wonder whether Aylmer has run off to Robert Bruce? We could use all the men we can find.’

Margaret shrugged. ‘Will you try to reach Wallace and Murray on Abbey Craig?’

‘Yes, God help me.’

‘May God watch over you, Jamie,’ she whispered.

He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips and held her tight for a moment. ‘I’ll come back to the house if I can’t get through. And in time I
will
return for you, Maggie, no matter what happens.’ She knew by the fullness of his voice that he meant it, and that he regretted that he could not simply stay with her. ‘It is possible that the English will use the
townspeople of Stirling as hostages, Maggie. If you begin to see patrols on the streets, seek sanctuary in the kirk. Promise me you will.’

‘I promise. May God watch over you, Jamie. I’ll be here, praying for you.’

‘May God keep and protect you.’ He kissed her forehead again, and then her hands. ‘I wish I’d never brought you here.’

‘I regret nothing, Jamie, except that we’ve had so little time together.’ She knew so little about him, and he her.

‘I’ll leave you now.’

They rose. Margaret kissed his cheek and then crossed to the solar steps, feeling his eyes on her.

‘Maggie!’ he cried as she climbed.

Already feeling the heat of her emotion in her cheeks, she knelt down by the bed and prayed for strength. This was not a day on which she could give over to weeping for James.

A hint of autumn was in the air in the mornings, chilling toes and stiffening joints, and making everyone in the camps eager for something to happen so that they might turn towardss home. This enforced rest was no rest at all, but rather fuel for anxiety, fear, anger, resentment – Andrew feared that the pressure would make someone snap.

‘What sins have they still to confess?’ Matthew asked Andrew after yet another impromptu confession had taken him away from his prayers.

‘They begin over again, fearful lest they have forgotten a detail, as if God doesn’t already know all, as if He forgives only what has been thoroughly described.’ Andrew leaned back against a sun-warmed stone. ‘My neck hurts from bowing my head to listen so that they cannot see how I fight to keep my eyes open.’ He stretched out his legs and pressed his palms to his thighs, stretching into his lower back. ‘They need activities to occupy them. This waiting gives them time to worry. For some of them it is the first chance they’ve had to review their lives since leaving home. Some have killed their fellow men for the first time. Some ache for home. They tell me they don’t feel like themselves. They are frightened that God has misplaced them.’ Andrew understood, but all he could do was listen and assign penances. ‘I have no wisdom to offer them.’

‘They are fortunate to have a chaplain to care as you do, Father,’ said Matthew. He nodded towards a page picking his way through the camp. ‘I think Sir Francis wants to consult with you again.’

Ever since Andrew had returned to the camp Sir Francis had kept him near. At first Andrew thought he suspected that he’d almost lost his chaplain, but gradually it became clear that he wanted a companion, someone with whom he could mull over what was happening – or not happening. Andrew had little to add, but it seemed his listening was sufficient for Sir Francis.

‘I hope and fear that it is news of Stewart and
Lennox; today is the day they were to return.’

‘What will Sir Francis do with us if there is to be peace?’ Matthew asked. ‘The men would no longer be desperate for a chaplain.’

Andrew also wondered what they might intend for him. Send him back to Holyrood? To Soutra? He belonged nowhere at the moment. Abbot Adam wanted him safely trapped in Soutra, but if the English were victorious the spital would no longer be so dangerous for him. He glanced at Matthew and saw by his earnest gaze that he awaited a response.