His whisper, not in her ear, but close, was barely loud enough to hear.
‘A perfect flight, my fearless falcon. You soar above the rest.’
She snuggled against his shoulder. The freedom she had sought, chased across the hills, lay instead in the dark of a shared bed.
So their days became light and the evenings shade.
With every joining, she was satiated, only to crave his touch again, hours, minutes after.
She resented the long, endless summer days that kept them from bed. But they used the time to work with the two fledglings, Wee Twa and Wee Thre. First in the weathering yard, then in the wild, she and Gavin taught them to chase the lure. Each successful catch was rewarded with food, as it would be when they hunted live prey.
But they could not spend all day with the birds. As she worked in the kitchen, or picked herbs from the garden, her hands moved of their own accord while she remembered the night before. Her father and Murine exchanged sly smiles when they saw her.
She ignored them.
And sometimes, a low whistle, vibrating, would tickle her ear and she would catch him watching her, his smile a promise of the night to come in their secret world, unacknowledged in daylight.
After joining, they talked, as intimately as they loved. Of daily tasks, and whether they should imp the feathers of a short-winged hawk so that she could fly again. And of their days as children in exile. For Clare, lonely, motherless days in France, as she struggled to shed her Scots accent and memorise every new rule of conduct. For Gavin, days as a young page, serving King David on foreign soil, said to be his own.
Yet as much as she craved his touch, the silken scarf hung close at hand, for she needed the protection of the blindfold and darkness, before she could truly surrender.
‘Not so much cannelle, Euphemia. The recipe calls for half that.’
Clare was trying to teach the girl how to help with the brogat. The task was trying her patience. ‘You must weigh and measure carefully, not just fling handfuls into the brew.’
‘But I like cannelle!’
‘I like it, too, but that doesn’t mean I can have as much as I want.’ The brown, spicy quills were dear. She looked into the sack, trying to assess how much was left. ‘I am trying to teach you how to do it properly.’
Euphemia shrugged and still kept smiling. ‘And I thank you for that, mistress.’ She stuck her nose over the malt mixture, inhaled, then released a happy sigh. ‘It smells good, though.’
Clare wrinkled her nose over the brew and sniffed, savouring the whiff of cinnamon, trying to assess how much the girl had used. Maybe, if she liked the taste, she’d adjust the recipe. She had discovered, grudgingly, that Euphemia was able to cook without the benefit of instructions.
They worked in silence for a few minutes. ‘I saw you with Walter last night and Thom the night before,’ Clare began. Thom was one of the louts who had attacked Gavin at Beltane. Walter was apprenticed to the farrier. A good, steady lad. ‘Have either of them mentioned marriage?’
She’ll marry the first man who asks her, her father had said. If he didn’t get her with child first.
She shook her head. ‘Fitzjohn keeps Walter busy with the horses and Thom keeps busy complaining about Fitzjohn.’
‘Complaining?’ She asked the question with more calm than she felt. Men-at-arms grumbled, always. But this one seemed to have a special grudge. ‘What does Thom say?’
‘That Fitzjohn is more Inglis than Scots.’
Safe in bed with Gavin, she had allowed herself to forget that he was still Inglis to many of the men. ‘Do others say the same?’
She shrugged. ‘A few. I always tell them how kind he’s been to me.’
Clare smiled, suddenly wishing to hug the girl. It was not an argument that would sway a fighting man, but it was a sweet sentiment, all the same. ‘Do you think it is more than talk?’
Euphemia tilted her head and thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know.’
Gavin had worried about Douglas. Maybe he had been right. Maybe Douglas had left spies in their walls.
She put down her spoon and wiped her hands on her napron. ‘Euphemia, I need you to find out. Can you do that for me?’
She nodded.
‘And if you hear anything, anything that threatens him, come tell me.’
‘And Fitzjohn?’
‘No. Come to me first.’ The girl was too young to distinguish a complaint from a conspiracy. No reason to disturb her husband unless the threat was real.
‘You like being married to him, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do.’ What a miracle, to say it.
‘I told you he was braw.’
Clare’s laughter bubbled. ‘And now I suppose you’ll say that you were the one who invited him home with us.’
The girl grinned. ‘Well, I did, didn’t I?’
‘And you deserve proper thanks for it. So thank you.’ The words tasted as sweet as the brogat.
It was time to fly Wee Twa free.
She knew that. But if the fledgling was ready, Clare wasn’t.
‘Today,’ Gavin said. ‘We should fly her.’
She looked up at the sky as if assessing the weather. But the August rain had stopped. The sky was clear blue, the clouds puffy and benevolent. ‘It’s a little windy. Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘You have said tomorrow these last seven days.’
‘But Wee Thre is sick. We should wait until she is well and they can fly together.’
He cupped her cheeks in his hands and turned her face to his. ‘Now. Or she’ll never fly.’
She nodded, knowing he was right. Her fingers shook as they gathered the creance and the lure and rode into the hills. She tried to take comfort from the familiar routine.
She had trained Wee One well. Unfailingly, the bird would return to the fist at her whistle. But this younger bird was an untried thing. They had trained her, of course, letting her free and calling her from post to fist in the weathering yard, then outside the walls. But Clare had never yet risked a free flight. Daring to raise the chicks, she had flouted hundreds of years of falconers’ experience.
Now, she would discover whether she had been right, or a fool.
They rode high enough that the trees gave way to brush. She looked out over the hills, hoping there would be less chance of losing her here than in the forested slopes.
‘It’s too soon, Gavin. She needs more training.’
He helped her off the horse. ‘Clare, now is the time. She’s trained and she wants us to know what she can do. It is her nature to fly.’ He touched his wife’s cheek and she blushed.
Just as it had been her nature to join with him.
She looked at the bird, hooded on her leather gauntlet. Had she done everything right? Would it keep her safe? Yet Wee Twa was a hunter and must fly as she was meant to.
She transferred the bird to Gavin’s wrist and took the lure in her hand. The weight of it swung comfortably on the end of the rope. She tested it, swinging it in the familiar pattern, up and down, side to side like a great cross, then left, then right, then overhead.
She nodded at Gavin, ready.
He removed the creance and the hood. The bird looked around. They had worked with her here before, still tethered, so the place was familiar.
Gavin, a length away, let the bird go, lifting his fist, and Wee Twa flew up, up and higher.
Clare could hear the wings, flapping as hard as the pulse in her throat, the endless wind, the jingle of the bells.
She started to swing the lure.
At first, the bird didn’t turn. She flew straight, as if ready to soar into the sky she was bred for and never return to earth.
Then, the lure caught her eye.
Once she saw it, the sky held no appeal.
It was an easy matter, at first, to keep the lure just ahead of her. Close enough so that she could see it, almost reach it. Close enough that she would not get discouraged, but far enough to keep her flying.
&
nbsp; Clare did a complete round, twirling the lure, her skirts flaring in the wind, feeling as if she and the bird danced. Wee Twa, still new to the hunt, was easy to stay ahead of.
On the third pass, she slowed, ever so slightly, and the bird pounced, ‘killing,’ the lure. Clare rushed to her, calling the bird to her wrist.
She came, as she was trained, to eat her reward.
Gavin joined her, putting his arm around her shoulder. The wind had blown her hair free and she felt her whole body smiling. ‘Again?’
The bird did as she had been taught, faster each time, until even Gavin could barely keep the lure ahead of her. Clare, buoyed by the day’s victory, finished the practice with laughter.
‘As soon as he’s well, we’ll fly Wee Thre, then we can take them both after game,’ she babbled happily, as they put away the gear and hooded the bird to head home. ‘You see? It is possible to raise a bird from the nest. She’ll come to the fist as well as her mother does, every time.’
Instead of sharing her joy, he frowned. ‘There is no surety with the birds. Ever.’
Or with us, he seemed to say.
That night, he finally spoke of his birth.
‘My mother lived on the land near Halidon Hill,’ he began, softly, ‘where my father helped lead the English troops to their victory.’
She wanted to know, yet she resented having the past thrust into their bed. The battle’s very name was poison in a Scottis man’s mouth. More than a battle lost, it was the death of a generation of leaders. Twenty years later, some said Scotland had not yet recovered from the loss.
‘So was she one of the spoils of war?’ She winced at a sudden vision of a prince, maddened with battle lust, a son, born of a rough taking.
‘No!’ His arms tensed about her. Then, in softer words, he continued. ‘At least, that is not how she told me the story. They met before the battle.’
He rolled away from her and lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling.
‘How,’ she whispered, ‘did her story go?’
‘It seems,’ he began, as if reciting a favourite tale, ‘that the King’s younger brother, John of Eltham, had spent so much time in Scotland that he developed a fondness for the land. There was talk of making him its King, if he could subdue the place.’
She heard the chuckle in his voice and answered it. ‘A Scot is harder to tame than a falcon.’
‘So he discovered.’
She placed her hand, small, pale, over his, encouragement.
He kept his gaze on the heavens, but finally spoke again.
‘One day, he was leading his soldiers in the land above Berwick, in the East March. This was a few months before the great battle. They stopped at a nunnery, hungry, thirsty and wanting shelter. The nuns, of course, could not attend the soldiers, but some of the daughters of the local families had been sent there for safekeeping. One of them was my mother, Margaret MacGuffin.’
She had heard of the family, distant relations of a Highland clan.
‘As she told me, they were taken with each other on sight. He was only seventeen then and she was the same. One night. And in the morning, he was gone.’
Clare held her breath, seeing the young lovers of memory. John of Eltham. No doubt a golden eagle, like his son. Margaret MacGuffin. Eager, rebellious, perhaps, and too young to know better.
Or perhaps too swept away to care. She could understand that feeling now.
Even forgive it.
She curled her fingers tight between his as Gavin continued.
‘She told me he promised to marry her.’
Impossible. A romantic fabrication by a woman attempting to salvage her pride.
‘But he was the brother of the Inglis King,’ she said.
His eyes met hers and she saw his wistful desire to believe. ‘But plausible if he were to rule Scotland, to have chosen a Scottish bride.’
She could not destroy his illusion. She, too, clung to a childhood memory of a mother’s perfection. ‘What happened to her then?’
‘The nuns protected her. And me. But when she took me home, her family was furious, ready to disown her and her English bastard. This was after the battle, and my father had become one of the most hated enemies of Scotland.’ Bitterness touched his face. ‘And with good reason.’
‘So she never saw him again.’
He frowned, seeing the doubt in her eyes. ‘The tale’s not so simple. She did see him. He was on his way to Perth, where he died. I was only a child, but I saw him embrace and kiss my mother.’ He paused. ‘And after he left, she cried. For a long, long time.’
‘Because he abandoned her?’
‘No. Because she knew by then that he was a monster willing to torch a church full of supplicants who had sought sanctuary. And I carried his blood.’
His words, bleak and sharp as January’s wind.
‘A few weeks later, he was dead.’
Dead. Killed by his brother’s hand. All of Scotland knew the story of Edward’s fury. Even the King of the Inglis could not tolerate such sacrilege, at least, he couldn’t then.
Cruel, though, to remind Gavin of that.
He squeezed her hand. ‘Dead, leaving me to fight his poisoned blood.’ He sat up and looked at her. ‘And I have fought it.’ His hands, gripping hers hard enough to hurt. ‘Every day of my life. And I swear to you, of all the deeds I did in war, I did not kill those people.’
‘I believe you,’ she whispered. And for the first time, she truly did.
‘But I wanted to. Don’t you understand? For one dreadful moment I wanted to.’
She took him in her arms, rocked him against her, thinking tears might come, but she felt only a long, painful shudder, and she was not sure whether it was his or hers.
She had put herself at his mercy and now, she wondered whether she really knew this man at all.
Was she blindfolded in more than one way?
Chapter Nineteen
No surety with the birds, he had said. Early in October, she found out he was right.
Wee One and Wee Twa were ready to hunt, eager for the start of the season. But when Wee Thre had been sick, Clare had cared for her like a child and the bird lost all fear of humans and all interest in hunting. Finally, they moved her out of the mews and into the hall, where everyone petted her and she screamed for leftovers from the midday meal.
Today, they left Wee One in the mews and took Wee Twa for her first real flight. The crisp, sunny air and the scent of heather mixed into a perfect day as the new hunter caught her first prey: a small pigeon. She missed the second bird, but the third time, she plucked her second pigeon in the air.
One more flight, Clare thought, as the sun drifted down towards the mountains. One more and we’ll turn home.
Perhaps she had become careless, too confident that all would be well. Perhaps she was tired. Or the bird was. Or perhaps after her catch she was no longer hungry and the sky was more tempting than a meal.
Whatever the reason, this time, when they flushed out a black grouse, and looked skywards, Wee Twa did not turn.
Instead, she kept flying, fast and straight, into the gloaming settling over the mountains. Straight towards the border as if she knew where she was going.
‘No!’ The wind whipped Clare’s scream out of her mouth and flung it behind her.
Wee Twa was barely visible now.
Clare whistled, shrieking over and over until her lips shook too much and she could not hold them firm.
The bird, if she heard, paid no heed.
Behind her, Gavin enfolded her, pulling her to him. No words. He did not need to say words.
But she needed to hear them. ‘I flew her too long. I fed her too much.’ She tried to remember all the steps of the training. Which one had she done wrong?
He rocked her against his chest. ‘It is in their nature to fly.’
‘Not this one.’ She squeezed her eyes against the tears. ‘She knows nothing but the mews. She cannot want what she does not know.’
‘You did.’
Her hands flew to cover her mouth. Things she wanted. Things she had flown to him seeking, even though she did not know what they were until she found them.
All her training had not extinguished the fire of those wants.
‘We’ll look for her,’ he said.
She pulled out of his arms. ‘It will do no good.’ Though she wanted to believe. ‘A lost falcon is as good as dead.’
‘I said we would look. I did not promise we would find her.’
But he was willing to try. For her. A comforting gesture, but it would not change the truth.
She had flouted convention deliberately, thinking that she knew better than generations of falconers just because she wanted so much.
No surety with the birds.
This was the price. Or was it only the first of many payments?
They rode out again the next day, passing the shepherds herding some of the flocks down from the hills. In the valley, mist hung in the air, like frost suspended. Towards the top, the wind started again, blowing the sky clear.
They dismounted, leaving the horses while they climbed higher. Where the ground became a soggy bog, the shepherds had moved a few stones into a rough path. Wind, relentless, whipped her cloak, whistled in her ears and scrubbed the tears from her cheeks.
How could a poor wee bird fly against such a gale?
She gazed towards the crest as the wind, suddenly, held its breath. In a moment, fog settled in, blinding her as effectively as a hood.
‘It’s here. Somewhere.’ Gavin, barely visible, looked at the ground as if seeking something he’d dropped.
‘What?’
‘The line.’
The chill that gripped her did not come from the mist.
Had the bird noticed when she crossed it? Did the sky look bluer on Edward’s side, offering something Clare could not?
Where is the border in my body? Gavin had asked her, that first night. Now, he stood, perhaps straddling that line carved by men.
With their joining, she had thought his split, and hers, would heal. That all divisions and wounds would disappear and they would be woven together, whole, a seamless cloth and he would be a Scottis man indeed.
His Border Bride Page 17