by Candace Robb
‘Ada,’ Simon caught her hand, laughed. ‘We’ll solve nothing with such idle hands.’
She felt mischievous and gave the throaty chuckle he loved. ‘You are right. The sooner I make my moan, the sooner I might devour you again.’
‘Wanton woman.’ He pressed her hand, released it, and pushed himself upright, leaning back against the pillows.
Ada sat up as well, pulling the blanket up to her neck for warmth. ‘Will you do anything to bring this Johanna’s murderer to justice?’
Simon pulled up the covers a little, too, she thought to hide the scars she’d just noticed on one shoulder. ‘It was a terrible act, to be sure, but Peter may be right, a soldier has weapons.’ He shook his head.
‘Would he carry them to see his mistress?’
‘In this town? I should hope he would.’
‘So nothing is to be done? Have you not taken over the governing of this town? Is it not your responsibility to see that the people are safe?’
He shifted and she saw that she had broken the spell. ‘Why trouble yourself about it?’ he asked.
‘It sounds as if Johanna and I had much in common, being the mistresses of soldiers. I would hope that my murder would be avenged.’
His eyes softened a little. ‘Do not speak such things, Ada. She was quite another matter.’
‘Her murderer must be brought to justice. Will you question her lover?’
‘I might suggest it. Particularly if Peter is right that he’s a traitor.’
She risked pushing a little further. ‘Might I talk to him? He might talk more readily to a woman.’
Simon made an impatient sound deep in his throat. ‘Things are tense in the garrison. The man may already be in the valley. In faith, we have no time for such things.’
‘I do, Simon. A war is no excuse for slack justice. Do you want a dishonourable soldier fighting under you?’
‘You choose a poor argument. Edward has granted us an army of felons and miscreants. The English soldiers blame the Welsh for their own misdeeds, the Welsh desert ingloriously. It is a shambles. Only our number overwhelms Murray and Wallace.’
‘And some honourable and excellent commanders,’ she whispered.
He grunted, then surprised her with a bemused smile. ‘You have a knight’s courage. I’ll consider your request that we look into it.’
‘Thank you, Simon.’
‘I promise only to consider it.’
It was enough for now. Ada was tired, and she sensed Simon’s weariness. But she must keep up the lovemaking a little longer so that he did not suspect how important Johanna was to her.
Shivering in the breeze despite her plaid, Margaret was sorry the strong ale no longer dulled her senses. The guard’s torch snapped and sputtered loudly in the quiet night.
‘Let us pass,’ demanded Father Piers in a strong voice.
‘Who are these women?’
‘Maidservants come to fix a place for the man to sleep,’ said Piers, holding up the blankets he carried.
Margaret appreciated the priest’s sensible approach.
Apparently the guard believed Piers, although he made a few snide comments about fussing over a man as good as dead.
Ignoring him, Piers fitted the key into the kirk door and stood aside to let Margaret and Celia hurry within.
The cavernous nave engulfed Margaret, the darkness huge beyond the meagre light from a small lamp beside the door. When Father Piers closed the door and locked it, the sound echoed and expanded through the vastness. Margaret felt dizzy, as if her spirit were spreading wide and high to fill the inhuman space. She moved into the light for reassurance.
‘Maggie, is it you?’ James’s voice came from behind her.
She turned around slowly, not trusting her balance. James caught her up in his arms, kissing her with a passion that she did not return at once, unable to push away the memory of Johanna’s battered head so quickly. But the warmth of his embrace and the tenderness of his kisses drew her back to the present, to the world of the living, and in a few moments she responded with passion equal to his.
Father Piers’s voice reminded them that their companions could see all despite the darkness of the nave, and they stepped back from one another, reluctantly withdrawing their hands.
‘I had not realised how it was between you,’ said the priest.
‘I do not think we did either,’ said James, sounding a little breathless.
Margaret marvelled at how easily James could play to the situation, pretending that he had not professed his love for her just a few days earlier. She had not known how she would feel when she saw him again, but his presence had made the nave a far less frightening expanse despite his need to seek sanctuary there. Tenderly grateful, she wanted to see to the scratches on his face and the wound that was staining his tunic at the shoulder, as if by tending his wounds she might save both of them from danger.
‘We have much to talk about,’ said Father Piers. ‘Let us withdraw to the chapel we are preparing for you, James.’
The priest motioned to Celia and Margaret to follow him, but James caught Margaret’s arm.
‘What I must tell you will be easier without the others,’ he said, and in his voice she heard weariness and pain.
Although the shadows obscured his expression, Margaret could feel his eyes fixed on hers. She glanced back at their companions.
Piers bowed his head slightly. ‘As you will,’ he said, and picked up the bedding that Margaret had set aside. ‘Come, Celia. We will await them in the chapel.’
As they withdrew, the echo of their footsteps reminded Margaret of the vast stone structure around her and once again she felt like a mote in the draughts of the dark nave, at the mercy of an inhuman force. She stepped closer to James.
‘I feel too small in this great nave.’ She forced a little laugh that eerily echoed.
‘It was not built for our ease,’ said James, ‘but to put us in awe of the Almighty. I’m sorry to keep you here. We will join the others as soon as I’ve told you–’
‘I have troubling news for you as well,’ she whispered.
‘Troubling? I said nothing of that.’ James took her hands. ‘Do you feel what I am feeling? Are we already so bound?’
Margaret realised that in his hesitation she’d known what he was about to tell her. Both of her frightening visions had now been realised, with her powerless to have prevented them. The Sight was a thing of madness, a curse.
‘Something has happened to Roger,’ she said.
He pulled her closer, stooping to look into her eyes. ‘How do you know?’
Surely it was a sign of madness to have forgotten to wait for him to tell her. Think, she screamed in her head as he stood waiting for her explanation. If she revealed her madness he would want to know more, he would expect her to see into the future, and she could not do it. She had no control over this affliction. Think. She’d already been worried about Roger before the vision. Because of Christiana. ‘My mother was worried about him, and it seemed one with her concern about my coming to Stirling. What is it, Jamie, what are you thinking?’
He relaxed his grip on her hands a little. ‘I feared that Dame Christiana has passed you the Sight. I don’t know how I would feel about that regarding our mission.’
Margaret did not dare respond for that’s why she’d said nothing of it.
‘He is dead, Maggie. Roger is dead.’
The power of the words startled Margaret. She had relived Roger’s fall in the visions and dreams many times, and yet she had not been ready for the finality of James’s words. Dead. No more. There would never be a reconciliation. She would never know the truth of Roger’s feelings for her. Feeling light-headed, she leaned against James not because she thought his embrace would ease her pain but because she feared falling in this place, disappearing through the stones to the ancient power that lay beneath.
James put his arms around her and held her close.
‘How did he die?’ she whi
spered.
‘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?’
Marga
ret 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.’