Turn of the Tide (43 page)

‘One of Robbie’s fugitives, I presume.’ Archie leaned back.

‘Aye, he hasn’t improved much since last you were here. It’s well we don’t count on him to feed us.’ Kate switched her attention to the sky arched above them,
peppered with stars.

‘D’you think . . .’ Sybilla stared up at the Pleiades. ‘. . . there are folk up there, seeing us as a pinprick that sparkles in their sky?’ She rubbed her cheek
against the velvet of Archie’s doublet, ‘Wouldn’t it be fine to go and see?’

‘I have enough trouble traipsing about Scotland after William, without wishing for the stars.’

An uncomfortable silence, in which Sybilla was aware of cold seeping through her skirts and settling on her stomach. She heard only half of Archie’s next sentence.

‘. . . I have wondered about the Americas.’

Munro shot upright. ‘The Americas? Yesterday it was the Solway.’

‘Aye and so it is. So it will be. Only . . .’

‘Only you would wish to have more distance between us and William than Scotland can provide.’ It was said. That which Sybilla had vowed never to say; lest speaking the fear breathed
life into it. Turning away from Archie’s outstretched hand, she fled for the path, Kate close behind.

The mood of the evening broken, Kate re-appeared only briefly, Sybilla not at all. Munro was leaning his head against the lintel of the fireplace as he poked at the ashes.
Behind him, Archie ranged the length of the room, his progress punctuated by the intermittent squeaking of the floorboards. Uncovering a remnant of log, its jagged tip still glowing, Munro
criss-crossed slivers of kindling over it and blew, his breath steady and slow.

‘Don’t revive the fire on my behalf.’

‘Archie . . .’ Munro stood up, turned.

‘Leave it.’ Archie had stopped pacing and was staring out into the darkness.

Munro waited, as if an inner sense warned him that answers might come the quicker if unforced.

‘I did think on the Americas, but we haven’t the silver, forbye the stories that suggest it isn’t just plain sailing there either.’

Munro was picking at spikes of gorse stuck to his sleeve, ‘This thing with William. Has he been more difficult these months past? Kate fell foul of him in Edinburgh at the Queen’s
entry and I have crossed swords with Maxwell since.’

‘Oh, we heard. Of both. In detail and at length, both Maxwell and William took great pains to make sure of that.’

‘There was no mention of the Frost Fair?’

‘No. Why?’

‘We had the misfortune to meet up with him there also . . . it was a close run thing.’

‘I take it he had the worst of it? Or we would no doubt have heard the whole. Though how much credence Glencairn gives to anything William says these days . . . he is more often drunk than
sober and all not always as he paints it. Not that that stops the rant.’

‘I hope you do not bear the brunt of it.’

‘No. My quarrel with William is more personal. What I feared at the first . . . it has come. Sybilla can hardly move without William’s eyes on her and her refusal to respond to the
direct approaches he has made serves only to quicken his desire. She says she can handle him, but the sooner I can take her away . . .’

‘Does Glencairn know?’

‘Lady Glencairn does. At least we think so, and that the reason she favours our attachment. . . . Once we are betrothed he won’t risk rousing his father.’

‘Not if he’s any wit.’

‘The sooner we get sorted with Glencairn. . . . Perhaps it would be best to leave first thing . . .’

Avoiding thought of the children, the promised spawn, Munro said, ‘An early night then.’

‘Aye . . . You’ll not mind looking at the tower for us? It’s far enough away from Kilmaurs that William should not trouble us. At least I trust so.’

‘I’m happy to help. Though it will have to wait till after lambing, but I don’t suppose you’ll have it settled so soon?’

‘I dare say not.’ Archie was picking at the window frame, scattering flakes of paint onto the sill.

‘It won’t speed matters if I have to make repairs to my own house.’ Munro risked a smile, ‘I don’t wish to be maudlin, but this marriage . . . it gives us
pleasure.’

‘It isn’t the best way.’ Sybilla was adamant. She leant back against the warm sandstone of the disused tower where Archie had suggested they stop for a bite
of the lunch that Agnes had provided, and clasped her hands about her knees. ‘You have sound arguments for Glencairn and they no doubt will pass, but I don’t want the work spoiled for
want of a wee bit softening first. I will but drop a hint or two to Lady Glencairn, a wife . . .’ she smiled up at him, a hint of promise in her eyes, ‘. . . can oft forward
things.’

‘Speak to her then, but don’t be long about it.’ He touched her hair, turned copper by the sun, as if in apology for questioning her judgement, then reached for her hand and
raised her to her feet. An unspoken need to dispel the shadow that had fallen on them the previous night lay between them, and though there was nothing to be gained by a look at this tower, it was
so similar in plan to the one at Dunisle that it would be easy to imagine themselves there. They wandered hand in hand through the part ruinous tower, busy with their thoughts, each in their own
way seeking to re-capture the anticipation of a life together.

Sybilla looked to the barrel-vaulted kitchen, thinking on the draw of the fire, the potential for storage, the need for a cool room; and in the solar, at present open to the sky, dreamed of a
beamed ceiling, the wood richly decorated, and a low chamber above, with a truckle bed or two for the bairns. Archie, whose thoughts she imagined ran more on the getting than the having of bairns,
was pacing out the bedchamber, clearly comparing it with that of Dunisle and counting the probable cost of newly-glazed casements.

Noting his smile, she questioned, ‘What is it? Surely a pleasant thought.’

‘Pleasant enough.’ He pulled her towards the bulge in the wall, indicating the rise of a chimney. ‘If this was Dunisle and we placed the bed here, it would give us a heat to
start off, not that we’d stay cold for long.’ His fingers bit into her shoulder.

‘Archie! I’m not going anywhere.’ She reached up and peeled his hand away, but held it lightly. ‘Archie?’ This time it was a question, concern shining in her
grey-blue eyes.

He shook his head and forced a smile. ‘We should go. I don’t wish for it to be past dark before we get back.’

They arrived at Kilmaurs to a house in turmoil, the youngest bairn taken with a fever. Lady Glencairn had refused to let her be bled, standing her ground against the physician
with a ferocity that none of the servants had encountered before. Sybilla and Lady Glencairn took it in spells to sit with the child, swabbing her with cloths wrung out in endless supplies of water
ferried from the well in the yard. The sheets and the child’s shift they changed daily, morning and evening dribbling tincture of aconite onto her tongue.

For five days they battled, until at three in the morning of the sixth day, the fever broke. Sybilla flew to Lady Glencairn’s bedchamber and without thought of knocking, slipped in to
whisper her awake. ‘Praise God . . . she sleeps.’

They sat together on either side of the bed, content to watch the even breathing, and to see the colour in her face fade from fever crimson to pale rose.

‘I thought us like to lose her.’ Lady Glencairn tucked away a stray tendril of hair that lay damp across the child’s mouth and reached to touch Sybilla’s arm. ‘And
maybe would have done without you. When you have bairns of your own, I trust that you will have as ready a helper if ill should come.’

Sybilla picked at a loop of loosened thread in the coverlet, considering whether this was the moment to speak of her own plans, when, as if she read her thoughts, Lady Glencairn touched her arm
again.

‘I would miss you sore, but you must know, especially now, I will not stand in your way.’

‘Archie . . . we have talked . . .’

‘Well then,’ Lady Glencairn’s smile was warm. ‘You have only Glencairn to pass and that should be little problem now.’

Sunlight was creeping around the edge of the shutters as the child stirred and stretched and puckered her face in a cross between a question and a smile; as if bemused to find that she woke, not
in her own cot in the attic, but in the guest chamber, her mother and Sybilla at her side.

Lady Glencairn gathered her up in a fierce hug. ‘You’ve been ill, but will be bravely soon.’ She released the child back against the pillows, ‘But don’t try to rise
yet. You have lost a ween of days and are in need of rest and food both.’

The crisis past, Glencairn showed himself uncharacteristically soft, saying, first to his wife, ‘Look to yourself, madam. You have saved the bairn – see that it isn’t at your
own expense’, then to Sybilla, ‘Nor will your part in this be forgotten.’

William trailed Sybilla to where she rested, at Lady Glencairn’s behest, in the small, walled garden on the east side of the castle. He slid onto the bench by her side.
‘I hear we owe you thanks.’

She edged away from him. ‘I did only what anyone would have done and the bairn so poorly.’

He stretched out his legs, so that one elegant boot held down the hem of her dress. ‘That’s not what mother says – she cannot speak highly enough of you. In her eyes you are an
angel.’ He slid closer and, trapped by her skirt, she felt the heat of his breath on her face.

She tried to laugh him off. ‘I’m not an angel.’

‘No?’ William raised his arm, placed his hand behind his head. ‘That is good news.’

Her head was bent, her hair rippling from her coif, an escaped curl lying, like a question mark, across her cheek. William liked copper, even if his luck with red-headed lassies hadn’t
always held. He thought of the wee slip in Stirling, and his hand slid inside the front of his ruff, tracing the fine scar on his neck, his eyes darkening. The little trollop wouldn’t have
got the better of him if Munro had stayed sober and alert, but instead, humiliation. There had been no denying that the girl had clear, young skin and fire in her hair and a promise of a figure,
though that too had proved a cheat . . .

His thoughts slid back to Sybilla. To her smooth skin, unbroken but for the dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose. As to figure, it was aye difficult to estimate what lurked beneath a
corset. But the discovery of it . . . he allowed his gaze to travel over her shoulders, down her neck, her bodice, counting the neat line of buttons, imagining opening them one by one. Oh yes . . .
the discovery was half the pleasure. He’d dreamed of that particular voyage since first she came. Archie away on some business for his father and the rest of the household looking to his
mother and to the bairn, the opportunity that had thus far eluded him was finally within his grasp. Casually he trailed his hand along the wall, tracing the pointing between the stone, the tips of
his fingers reaching her neck. He felt her stiffen. He enjoyed spirit in a girl, it added spice to the proceedings.

He grasped her chin, forcing her head up.

She tried to twist away, to rise. ‘Lady Glencairn . . .’