Turn of the Tide

by Skea, Margaret

  Chapter Four

  May came in soft and mild. And to Braidstane, all four brothers come together. Meeting at the entrance of the hall, Grizel flung herself at Hugh and he crushed her against him. She searched his face. Anger she saw, and a weariness that was little to do with his journey from Holland. She could see he felt this death more keenly than their mother’s. And not without cause. For his last parting from father was not well done. Dear God, she thought, meaning it as a prayer, let him bide awhile and find some other focus. Her voice was muffled, ‘I am sore in need of you all.’ She hadn’t meant to cry, but the pressure of Hugh’s arms enfolding her, the imprint of his jerkin buttons stamped across her breast, the sharp stab of his nails biting into her arms, all combined to force her pain, dammed these weeks past, to well up, threatening to engulf her.

  He held her and rocked her and eventually, when the flow subsided, spoke over the top of her head, as if a prepared speech, learnt by rote. ‘I am come home,’ he said, ‘and when the estate is sorted, I will have to look to other pusuits, for my commission is sold.’

  ‘There are debts . . .’ she began doubtfully, ‘. . . and not a few calls on us that weren’t looked for.’

  He waved her words away. ‘Tomorrow is soon enough for that, the now . . .’

  She felt his deliberate lightening.

  ‘Know you your duty, sister? We are fair starved and like to ransack the kitchens.’

  Watching as they attacked the capons and the fruit pies and the ale brought from the stillroom, she thought with a spark of envy how men could aye be distracted by their belly. Though, given the formalities that must be faced, she doubted that the mood would last long.

  She had misjudged Hugh. He pored over the estate finances, questioning her closely for the explanatory details that gave life to the bald figures, seeming to find a satisfaction in seeing the books in order and in discussing which accounts were immediate and which could wait the transference of other funds. It was an unlikely answer to her prayer, but an answer none the less.

  Whether, or for how long it would have lasted, they were not to know, for fast on her brothers’ heels came a new summons from court. It little pleased the King to have his nobles fighting like stags at the rut, and he commanded Hugh, as the new laird of Braidstane, along with Robert Montgomerie, Eglintoun’s heir, to meet with Glencairn to swear that all enmity between them was at an end.

  Grizel, as soon as she saw the messenger and understood from whence he came, feared for Hugh. Her fear well founded. He raged: against the King, against Glencairn, against the whole Cunninghame connection.

  ‘Friendship. Hah! Whatever others feel, I’m not for dancing to James’ pleasure in this. Not even . . .’ as she turned to him, her face taut, ‘. . . for your comfort. It is too much to ask. Do you wish that I swear and smile and be a laughing stock of all?’

  Though she spoke quietly, there was steel in her voice. ‘We have lost our father, is that not enough? And had you been here, I would no doubt have lost you too. If this is truly a chance to halt the killing I would wish for that.’

  A letter had come from John Shaw, Hugh’s close friend, counselling caution, but despite Grizel’s hopes it seemed but fuel to the fire. ‘Blood will out,’ Hugh said. ‘The Cunninghame taint aye stretches far.’

  Knowing the injustice of the remark and suspecting also that it bore the stamp of a private pain, she left him to his rant, warning the others, ‘Leave be for now; sense will prevail, if left to stew a little.’

  That her sentiment owed less to past experience and more to a dogged hope she would not have cared to admit. Yet so, to her great relief, it proved. Two days later as John left to return to his studies at Padua and George to his duties in London, Hugh and Patrick, with a small following, set out to travel in their father’s footsteps to court, and to the meeting with Glencairn.

  At the last, knowing that it made him sick to think of it, she grasped his bridle. ‘Compliance with James’ command is as necessary to our well-being as breathing, you know that. Promise me, whatever the provocation, you won’t rise.’

  He covered her hand with his and repeated, ‘I won’t rise.’ Then, as if he feared to promise too much, ‘But will make enough of a play of it to pass.’

  And with that she had to be content.

  Chapter Five

  Munro was in the lambing field, halfway through the skinning of a dead lamb when the messenger arrived from Kilmaurs, sweated and muddied from the ride. A ewe butted against the makeshift gate of the sheepfold, bleating. Munro raised his head at the rider’s approach, but continued with his task. The setting on of an orphan lamb was a delicate job at the best of times and one that must needs be done quickly, else the loss was double. He finished the skinning, then tied the lambskin, still warm, over the back of another, smaller lamb, who wobbled under the extra weight. She made a few experimental wiggles of her rump in an attempt to cast the unfamiliar burden, then stood quivering, head down. He picked her up and placed her in the fold, allowing the ewe to nuzzle at the skin he had applied, guiding the lamb to the teats that hung, pendulous and oozing. He held the lamb against the ewe, and worked the teat, squirting milk into the lamb’s mouth until it latched on and sucked greedily, tail flicking. Satisfied, he wiped his hands on a rag and turned to the man who waited by his horse. ‘Well?’

  The man looked at the ewes dotted about, a few with lambs, but most still heavy with pregnancy. ‘Glencairn is summoned again to court, and wishes for you to attend him.’

  Munro likewise surveyed the flock. ‘Today?’

  ‘Yesterday.’ The messenger stretched his lips into a mockery of a smile.

  ‘More trouble?’

  ‘If you call the public mending of a quarrel trouble . . . though neither Glencairn nor William seem overly keen.’

  Munro shot a glance at the man’s face, but didn’t reply. Instead, he tossed the rag to the lad who was busying himself with a second ewe recently birthed. ‘Stay with them.’

  He turned to lead the way up the track to the house. It was a simple rectangular tower, three storeys and a garret, surrounded by a small barmkin. Below the wall that bounded it a few cattle grazed. Munro was proud of his livestock: the small flock of sheep, begun with two ewes, which now provided wool enough for all their needs, the cattle and pigs which kept them in milk and meat most of the winter. And due, in large part, to the Cunninghame connection.

  Kate looked up as they entered the solar. ‘Are we to have no peace?’

  Munro examined his hands. ‘I am bid return to court.’ Then before she could reply, ‘It is to be an end to the enmity.’

  ‘And they are to beat their swords into ploughshares?’

  He sought to diffuse the scorn in her voice. ‘It may be that they’ll keep to it.’

  ‘It may be.’ She was picking at a rag-nail, pulling at the skin, and he saw a bead of blood begin to well. ‘But forgive me if I’m not over confident.’ She turned to the messenger. ‘Have you time for a bite?’

  Thank you, aye.

  ‘I’ll see to it then.’

  The messenger, his gaze on her retreating back, forestalled Munro. ‘Don’t say anything. I had the same myself. I hope to God it is an end of it, else there might be little point in going home.’

  Munro found Kate in the kitchen, standing in the window alcove, her forehead resting against the glass. He came close, but didn’t attempt to touch her; strove to inject a note of reason into his voice. ‘It’s best I go. Glencairn thinks me safer in sight than skulking at home. For his own sake no doubt. But it will serve us to watch his steps also.’ It was out before he thought: the nearest he had come to an open admission of guilt. And instantly regretted.

  Her eyes were fixed on some point far out on the horizon, a suggestion of dampness tingeing her cheeks. Without turning she said, ‘Go then, if you must. We will do very well without you and be safer withal.’

  They were fed and away in under an hour. As he mounted the bay, Kate appeared in th
e doorway, the twins clutching at her skirts. He swung himself down again, and scooped them up, one on each arm, hugging them tight so that they squealed. Above their tow-heads, his eyes met Kate’s.

  She accepted his kiss, but did not return it. ‘Take care . . . if not for yourself, at least for your children. I have no wish that they be orphaned yet awhile.’

  ‘I neither . . .’ He delayed the moment, hoping for something more, while the twins, Anna and Robbie began to wriggle. Setting them down, he reached for Kate, but she retreated beyond arm’s length.

  As they picked their way down the rough track that led through the grassy slopes to the valley floor, and forgetting for a moment that it wasn’t Sweet Briar he rode, that she no doubt fretted in Clonbeith’s stable waiting to be reclaimed, Munro leant forward to mutter into the mare’s neck. ‘It’s an ill-leaving, lass.’ That his wife despised the business at Annock was clear. How long she would nurse her disdain of him, less so. But the sight of her, turning away as he left, remained as a pain in his chest that no physic could shift.

  On his arrival in Stirling, Munro lost no time in presenting himself at Glencairn’s lodgings. His original intention had been to seek his brother first, but he was out and not expected back before supper. Glencairn, it seemed was also elsewhere, so William it had to be. There was perhaps some capital to be gained from a timely arrival, though he doubted that it would make much difference. Still.

  William was standing at a narrow window giving onto Stirling’s High Street watching a pedlar, as first, he displayed to the small crowd who gathered around him the very latest cure for warts, then turned to calling them for the foolishness of refusing to buy. All the while a child, probably no more than six or seven, moved around the outer fringes neatly slitting a purse or two as he went. Munro, peering past William, judged that they worked together. Guessed also from William’s broad smile that it amused him to see the gullibility of lesser folk, confident that he himself would not be prey to such a ruse.

  William glanced sideways. ‘You made good time.’

  Below them, the pedlar redoubled his efforts, his hands flashing, voice strident.

  ‘Little point in arriving too late for the show.’ It was an unhappy choice of words.

  Dark colour suffused William’s neck. ‘Is it that you relish this business?’

  ‘I can pretend to relish, if required.’

  ‘And a pretty pretence it will be.’

  Munro focused on the scene on the street below, his lack of reply itself a challenge.

  ‘Have no fear, Munro, I shall not pick a quarrel, not here, and not now. I have need of father’s favour at present, and he of James’.’

  ‘No doubt’

  ‘We can make a play of swearing anything to Robert Montgomerie, if so be it will satisfy the King, but as for Braidstane . . .’ William struck his hand against the windowsill. ‘We shouldn’t have to waste our breath on such as he.’

  There was a downdraught in the chimney and a dusting of ash sifted into the room, peppering their shoulders, so that William beat at it scowling.

  ‘In truth, William,’ Munro’s tone was deliberately light. ‘You hate him.’

  ‘In truth, I do not. One doesn’t hate a cur for his bad breeding, but one may kick him for it.’ William turned back to the window. The pedlar was packing up, the folk melting away, one or two clutching a ‘cure’ that would no doubt turn out to be worthless, while the child skulked in a doorway, out of sight. ‘Wait on us at six.’

  An angry flush spread across Munro’s cheeks.

  ‘And close the door when you leave. The draughts are something cruel.’

  Outside, Munro kicked his way through the muck and stour of the streets that straggled below the castle complex, imagining William on the end of his boot.

  The urchin sitting on the doorstep looked up as Munro’s shadow fell across him. ‘You have a visitor. I showed him to your room.’ He fixed Munro with black, button eyes, holding out a grubby palm, his other hand straying to his jerkin.

  Munro, guessing correctly, made his voice stern. ‘You needn’t be asking twice.’ He took the stairs two at a time, and pushed the door. Archie, who had been stretched out on the narrow cot dozing, shot to his feet and then seeing Munro relaxed again onto the bed, pulling his legs up and leaning back against the wall. Munro grinned, ‘Well, well, too many late nights, I fear.’

  ‘Early mornings, more like. I have seen more dawns in the last month. . .’

  ‘There is some gain then in your new employ. That’ll commend Glencairn to our mother.’ Munro kicked off his boots, and flung himself down on another bed, as yet untenanted. ‘What of the court? Is it as you fancied?’

  ‘Well there are plenty lassies . . .’

  ‘And at what cost?’

  ‘A ribbon or two, and the learning of a ween of poetry . . . ’

  ‘That I don’t believe.’ Munro broke off, remembering his mother, ‘Serious though, have you not an understanding at home?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ It was Archie’s turn to grin. ‘A means to an end,’ and, holding up his hands, ‘Don’t worry, Sybilla Boyd isn’t broken-hearted.’

  Laughter bubbled in Munro’s throat. ‘Sybilla was it? She’ll not be broken-hearted, not over you, but what’s in it for her?’

  ‘I’m not the only one who wishes to rise. I’m to send her word of the court and speak for her in the right quarters.’

  Munro’s laughter died. ‘I’m not sure if we are in the right quarters. The Cunninghames are a gey quarrelsome lot. James has this notion for a nobility at peace, and I’m thinking that it shouldn’t be discounted. It would be better for all of us if we didn’t have to walk down the street with a ready eye to our backs. And, as for rising, better not to carry such a weight of family. Aye and safer too.’ He saw that Archie’s grin had slipped. ‘Don’t fret, however much I may wish it, I can’t distance myself from the Cunninghames yet awhile. It isn’t easy to change sides, and to abdicate altogether from old obligations is a chancy business, especially at present. Any whiff of disloyalty and the responsibility for Annock would likely be laid to my charge. Besides . . .’ he summoned a grin, ‘I wouldn’t like to have to answer to mother, if I spiked your chances.’

  Chapter Six

  For Hugh Montgomerie, the journey to Stirling was an uncomfortable reminder of that undertaken by his father not five weeks since. Though they didn’t make by Langshaw, yet much of the route was the same and he tormented himself: this rain-washed scree, that outcrop newly scarred, this line of trees, freshly greening; thus and thus it must have looked to father also. The others followed his pace, stopping at his choosing, rising again at his beck. He didn’t lag, knowing that he would likely be less rather than more ready to comply with the King’s wishes the longer he delayed. When they breasted a hill and came upon Greenock spread out beneath them, he halted, his hands gripping the reins as if he struggled to hold a runaway horse. Looking west, he indicated the castle perched high above the town.

  ‘We wait the night here.’

  As they rode through the gateway, he straightened, mindful of eyes that might be watching their arrival. Of John Shaw’s welcome he was assured, their friendship of such a standing that long absences did not detract, but as for his sister Elizabeth, though if John was to be believed then she also thought fondly of him.

  At the rear of their small party one of the men queried, ‘He has forgot the Cunninghame connection then? Or is it that he can forgive a woman anything?’ He was swiftly silenced by Patrick’s glare.

  As they swung down from their horses, the door opened and John Shaw himself appeared, with two of his sisters. They lined up, a formal greeting belied by the laughter which accompanied it. Six-year-old Gillis was the first to break rank, running to Hugh’s horse and stretching a finger to scoop a gob of the white lather that streaked its flanks, popping it into her mouth.

  ‘Oh Gillis!’ Christian, by Hugh’s reckoning now seventeen and comely, gathered up the child, shaking
her gently, pulling her finger from her mouth.

  ‘Salty,’ Gillis said, wrinkling her nose.

  John tousled Gillis’ hair. ‘It won’t kill her.’

  Christian’s frown slid into a smile and Hugh was reminded of that other arrival, more than six years ago, when he had stopped by on his way home from college in Glasgow. Then it had been she who had swung on John’s arm and plagued him for the presents that were promised. Noting the pallor of her cheeks and belatedly remembering the reference in John’s letter to an illness that had taken them all in turn, he said, ‘I heard you were not well, I trust you are much recovered.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I’m bravely now. But Elizabeth . . .’

  John cut in quickly, ‘Elizabeth was the last to succumb. She nursed us all and seemed hearty enough till a few days ago, when a fever took her. Slight,’ he said, as he saw Hugh’s face. ‘She is abed, but a precaution only. In fact she didn’t wish it, but Christian insisted, and, as you will remember, it is not politic to disoblige any of my sisters.’

  ‘She will come down?’ Hugh tried and failed to sound casual, afraid that this visit might be, if not altogether a wasted effort, somewhat of a disappointment.

  ‘I’m sure she will once she knows you are here. But come, I mustn’t fail in our hospitality, or I’ll be soundly bated for it.’

  There was no need to change from their travelling clothes, for the weather had been favourable: a pale spring sunshine, with enough air about to make the journey comfortable; the ground under-foot firm and dry so that they had no tell-tale mud-spattering to show the distance they had travelled. Nevertheless, Hugh spent some little time in the chamber that had been allotted to him, damping down his hair and brushing his doublet and hose with his hands to remove any trace of dust that might cling to them.