A Cruel Courtship (29 page)

Lovers – she’d never made love with anyone but Roger. Often of late she’d wondered about James, what he would be like. She sensed there was some part of him that he shared with no one, or at least not her.

A sound down below startled her for it came from the street side rather than the rear of the house where the servants slept. She recognised the creak of the street door, its muffled groan as it swung back into its jamb, and then the thud of the bolt in its socket. Light footsteps crossed to the steps leading up to the solar, and now the steps creaked. She prayed it was Ada returned at last, but in case it was not she drew out the knife she kept beneath her pillow and sat up, ready to defend herself.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ she breathed as Ada’s head appeared.

Ada started when she grew aware of Margaret sitting up.

‘Oh, Maggie, it has been a most horrible night,’ she said as she sank down on to the bed.

‘For all of us, Ada,’ Margaret said.

As Ada unfastened her shoes, Margaret lit a cruisie from the embers of the small brazier in the room.

‘So you know about James and Johanna,’ Margaret said.

The light did not compliment Ada. For once she looked her age, haggard and puffy-eyed.

‘You are in danger, my friend,’ Ada said.

‘I know.’

‘I feel unclean,’ Ada said, her voice trembling. She tugged at her veil and wimple with such impatience that she tore the silk. ‘Damned silk.’ Leaning over to toss the head dress on a chest, she suddenly slumped, and face in hands began to weep.

Margaret knelt to her and drew her head to her shoulder, smoothing out Ada’s long white hair. Her own heart was pounding, wondering whether Ada knew of an immediate danger and what her friend had suffered.

After she had been quiet for a while, Ada raised her head ‘It is all my fault. I should not have insisted you play my niece, for it has brought you to his attention. He would not have given you a second thought otherwise.’

Margaret sat back on her heels. ‘Do you mean Peter?’

‘Peter?’ Ada shivered and held out her hands to the warm brazier. ‘No, Simon. But I forgot – you met Peter tonight.’

‘He told you?’

Ada seemed to take on the weight of the world in her nod. ‘He said he asked you to look at the murdered woman and tell him if it was Johanna. Was he unkind?’

‘It was not a gentle moment, though he played
the role of a considerate man.’

‘I can imagine,’ Ada said in a bitter tone.

‘He is a busy man, your son Peter. He has spent much time at Evota’s house, he seized James, he showed up at Johanna’s soon after she was found murdered; why, Celia says he was here in the hall the day we arrived. Wherever we turn, Peter Fitzsimon is there. I am almost certain that it was he who silenced Archie.’
And perhaps Johanna
, Margaret thought, but did not say it.

Ada crossed herself. ‘He and Simon are so much alike. I had not seen it until tonight.’ She rose and began to fuss with her sleeves.

While Margaret untied them for her, Ada said, ‘So you have solved your mystery.’

How pointless it seemed to Margaret now. ‘With James in Holy Rude, Archie’s situation is no longer of any consequence to me – unless it was he who murdered Johanna.’

Ada shrugged. ‘At least James is safe for now.’

‘Are you so certain the English will honour the sanctuary?’

‘I often wonder at the niceties of war,’ Ada said. ‘But in this case yes, they have no cause to risk excommunication because Simon is satisfied that James can do no harm while hiding in the kirk. I should think that the keeper of the castle feels the same.’

‘I am glad of it,’ said Margaret, though she felt little relief. ‘Ada, before we talk of anything else you must know – Roger is dead.’

Ada caught her breath and bowed her head for a moment, then met Margaret’s eyes. ‘How do you know this?’ she asked, but she was not surprised.

‘You already knew.’

‘I guessed. Simon spoke of a dead spy in the kirk yard. He knows that James’s men took him away for burial, which he thought strange since the dead man was believed to be a spy for Robert Bruce. A Comyn caring for a Bruce’s soul is unexpected. It’s plain to me that they had left him there as bait.’

Margaret could not speak for her anger.

Ada let her be for a while, then said, ‘Would you tell me about it, Maggie?’

Margaret swallowed bile and nodded, though she waited a while before trying her voice. ‘James’s men found Roger in the backlands of the kirk. He’d fallen from a height and broken his neck. He’d been dead for several days when they found him hidden in the underbrush.’ She’d begun to shake and hugged herself tightly. ‘I hate the thought of him lying there, exposed– How could the English be so unchristian as to leave him there unburied?’

‘As in Berwick,’ Ada whispered.

Margaret moved closer to the brazier, hoping the heat would dispel the trembling. ‘I am a widow before I ever felt truly a wife.’

‘Maggie, oh my dear child, I am so sorry. Here I sat weeping like a baby in a fit and you had such a heavy heart.’

‘I’d already spent my tears.’

Ada reached for one of Margaret’s hands and held it, palm up, tracing the lines. ‘There are some who believe our lives are written in these lines. I’ve never wanted to hear what they would say about mine. But how could anyone have guessed what has happened? If they had, we would have fled. Our country would be empty.’

Ada had never sounded so despondent.

‘What will happen to us?’ Margaret asked, expecting no reply.

Ada shook her head. ‘There is more you must know. David, the Welshman who came to you with news of Andrew, is here in Stirling. If he sees you and tells Simon who you are there will no longer be any doubt. I don’t know what Simon will do.’

‘We are found out, and all we can hope is that the battle comes soon.’

Ada lay back on the bed. Margaret lay down beside her.

‘I hate him now,’ said Ada.

She did not need to explain whom she meant.

‘I just pray you have a chance to marry again and have children,’ said Ada. ‘The child Christiana saw in your arms.’

‘Do you still believe her vision will come to pass?’

‘I cling to it for hope, Maggie. Don’t you?’

‘But who is the husband? Not Roger – it’s too late for that.’

‘I wonder whether Christiana knew it was not Roger and spared you the knowledge of his death.’

Margaret considered the possibility, fighting a sudden drowsiness. ‘I doubt it.’ The Sight was deceptive, cunning in its opacity. She could believe that her mother truly had no idea who the man was. ‘I intend to find out who murdered Johanna,’ she said, preferring to think of a practical matter. ‘And Gordon Cowie. He has been on my mind, too. Perhaps I am tricking myself into believing there is a future, that I have time to accomplish something, to solve a murder. He was Huchon Allan’s neighbour. Might their deaths be connected?’

Ada made worried sounds. ‘You must not leave the house for a day or two, Maggie. I beg you.’

‘James gave me the same advice. Will you go to Johanna’s funeral?’

‘I will. For you. And for myself.’

Margaret wondered at Ada’s last words, but she was too close to sleep to make the effort to speak.

10

Will and Pete, true to their words, escorted Father Andrew and Matthew back among the small camps, but their progress was slowed by penitents begging for confession. At first Andrew thought that word of the possible truce had not spread through the ranks, but it became clear that few believed peace would come without a battle, and the lower the rank the greater they believed their risk of death. It saddened him to witness the fear and resignation of these men, and he could not refuse them absolution despite being sleep-deprived and very hungry.

By the time the four entered their own camp the air was heavy with early morning dew and a light rain that beaded in Andrew’s curly hair and then coursed down his face in rivulets. He had not slept, but his belly was empty and his mind too full, so he
went straight to the cook fire. After oatcakes and a mongrel potage that tasted like heavenly manna as it warmed his empty, anxious stomach, he moved away from the bustle and bowed to his prayers while Matthew dozed beside him. Andrew wondered whether Pete and Will, who had left them at the cook fire, would now disappear.

Ada had Sandy the groom accompany her and Celia to Johanna’s service. She thought she would feel better with a muscular young man along to protect them, though she wondered whether he would feel any obligation to defend a woman for whom he had worked so briefly. She admitted to herself that he was essentially a charm against attack.

A fine rain had arrived with the dawn, and though now it was but a drizzle it had refreshed the air and brought out the scents of earth and stone, which reminded Ada that life went on, nature taking no notice of the affairs of men. She wondered how her garden in Perth fared; the plums and apples had been close to ripening when she’d departed. She hoped the couple she’d left in charge would not let the rats have too much of the fruit.

Few parishioners attended the service – none of Ada’s neighbours. She noticed a young man sitting in the shadow of a pillar as if trying to hide the intensity of his grief and wondered whether he’d been one of Johanna’s lovers.

Once out in the kirk yard Ada felt she’d done her
duty and was about to suggest to Celia that they should depart. But she noticed that the bereft young man shifted his gaze to someone behind her and his bearing shifted as if he were trying to make himself so small as to be invisible, letting his shoulders sag and curl inward, his head droop. The hackles rose on Ada’s neck at the sound of her son’s voice.

‘I had expected to see your niece Maggie here, Ma,’ Peter said. ‘She claimed to be the woman’s friend. I should have thought she would attend her burial. Was she too upset after her ordeal last night?’

‘Seeing her friend’s body so violated? You ken full well she was.’

‘Were you also a friend to the woman?’

‘She had a name, Peter. Johanna.’ Ada wondered whether he had always been so irritating. ‘And no, I did not know Johanna; I am here in Maggie’s stead. But I also felt a kinship to her, and I want her murderer found and punished.’

‘A kinship. I see.’ He did not try to mask his amusement.

At the opposite side of the grave the young man had now withdrawn behind some of the mourners yet he kept shifting so that he might keep his eyes on Peter, as if reassuring himself that he was keeping his distance. His damp hair was wavy and long, greasy where it fell over his eyes; he repeatedly pushed it aside. He had dark, heavy-lidded eyes
and the cheekbones and chin of a handsome man. Though small he was well-formed. He was not in livery, so she doubted he was a soldier. Yet he knew Peter.

‘Who is that young man across the way?’ she asked Peter.

‘The pretty lad, you mean?’

Ada nodded.

‘Archie, the son of Evota the alewife. Are you in the market for younger flesh?’

Ada jabbed her elbow backwards into her son’s taut gut and found satisfaction in his gasp. ‘Respect your mother, dear,’ she hissed. The mild humour was for her benefit, not his. It was a base sin to hate one’s own child. She prayed God to show her some better part of him, something more than Simon’s feeble explanation that he had perfected his fighting skills because of his innate fear, a product of his parentage. But God had so far left her ignorant of her son’s virtues.