The Fire In The Flint (Margaret Kerr Mysteries 2)

by Candace Robb

‘He and your brother went to the warehouse.’

  Margaret sighed and sat for a moment, head in hands. Just as Celia was handing her the cup, Margaret sprang up and stepped out into the yard.

  Celia stood with cup in hand, watching Margaret’s restless gait, wondering whether she should follow. What must she be feeling, to return to this house with such hope only to have everything turn so ugly? As Celia pondered this she noticed a man emerging from the shadows by the stable.

  She stepped outside. ‘Mistress, do you know that man?’ she hissed, pointing to him. As he approached he seemed familiar to her.

  Margaret gave a little cry. The man hurried forward, shaking his head, a finger to his lips.

  Of course, Celia thought, he reminded her of his brother Murdoch Kerr.

  Margaret took him by the elbow. ‘Come away in, Da.’

  Celia frowned at the affection in her mistress’s voice. She’d heard nothing of Malcolm Kerr to think he’d earned that.

  13

  THIS PURGATORY

  Malcolm retreated from Margaret’s grasp. ‘It would be unwise for me to go within, Maggie.’

  He looked well. As ever, his long nose, dark eyes, and bushy brows gave him the air of a predator. She noticed that as they’d aged, her father and his brother Murdoch had grown more alike in appearance, their red hair thinning and growing pale, their fair complexions spotted, their girths settling in their middles. But her father had neither her uncle’s rolling gait nor his scars. He had lived more comfortably and moderately. At the moment he was glancing nervously towards the street.

  ‘There are only the two servants and me,’ she said. ‘You’ll be safer within.’ News of the death in his warehouse would soon spread through the town, and whatever his reason for hiding had been, he might risk his life if he were seen now.

  ‘Two servants – that’s bad enough.’

  ‘Anyone passing along Watergate can see you here,’ she said. ‘Come within, into the kitchen.’

  ‘No. In there we cannot hear whether someone enters the house.’

  ‘Do you ken what happened to John Smyth?’ She tried to keep her tone even. Now that she was face to face with him she could not believe her father a murderer.

  But Malcolm searched her eyes and saddened. ‘Even you, lass. How are those without our tie to believe in my innocence if you don’t?’

  ‘I did not accuse you. Come into the hall, do.’ She moved towards it, heard him following.

  He stopped just inside the door that opened out towards the kitchen, where it was shielded from the hall by a tall wooden screen. ‘This is far enough.’

  Margaret pulled out a bench and they sat straddling it, facing each other. He smelled of spices.

  ‘Why are you here, Da?’

  Again he looked taken aback. ‘How can you ask that, Maggie? I worried when I arrived and heard of Roger’s abandonment.’

  ‘I mean back in the country.’

  He shook his head in sympathy. ‘You are hardened by all your troubles, I understand.’ He paused, as if expecting her to protest, but shrugged when she did not shift her level look. ‘I am here because King Edward is in the Low Countries. It seemed an opportunity to retrieve more of my goods. I’d not heard that so many troops were biding here, and that Wallace and Murray had stirred up the people so. I’d not have come had I kenned the mood of the land.’

  Margaret relaxed a little, believing he told the truth – as far as he cared to. ‘I did not see your ship on the river.’

  ‘No, and I’ll not tell you where it is.’

  ‘I was not about to ask.’

  Her father grunted and drummed his fingers on the bench for a few moments, staring out at the yard. ‘Edward of England has arrived too late in Flanders. They’ve no need of him. His ambition outruns his wit. I did not wish to be there when he needed a dog to kick, eh, lass?’

  Margaret did not feel obliged to offer sympathy. ‘Where are you biding, Da?’

  ‘Best you ken nothing of my activities.’

  ‘You sound like Uncle Murdoch and Roger. But Fergus and I have a right to know, having the care of your warehouse. He will surely be questioned.’

  ‘And neither of you will have aught to say.’

  ‘The English won’t believe that.’

  ‘They are not here at present,’ her father reminded her.

  She would not be so easily dismissed. ‘Why was John Smyth in your warehouse?’

  Pressing a hand to the back of his seamed neck, her father tilted his head back and sighed. ‘That man has been my bane since … What was I thinking when I gave him work? Och, Maggie, the mistakes we make in the name of charity.’ He pressed his temples as if just thinking of John Smyth made his head ache. ‘What did Roger see in the warehouse? Can he tell what befell the thieving sneak?’

  Margaret could not assess whether or not her father was faking innocence. ‘I’ve not been to the warehouse. Fergus is there now. You might learn more from him.’

  Her father sighed with impatience. ‘I cannot risk being seen there, Maggie.’ He grew quiet.

  ‘Was it a difficult crossing?’ she asked, finding herself reluctant to part with him, though her feelings for him were a confusing mix of suspicion and love.

  ‘We had good weather, God be thanked, but we were twice boarded by the English.’

  ‘You did not lose your ship?’

  ‘No, no. They were satisfied that we were a merchant ship, nothing more.’

  She guessed by his guarded expression that there was more to the tale than he wished to tell her.

  ‘You mentioned my brother,’ he said suddenly. ‘So it is true that you’ve been to Edinburgh seeking news of your husband, that you thought Roger had deserted you?’

  ‘You are well informed. He was away for a long while, and things being as they are, and having no word of him …’ She trailed off, tired of making excuses for Roger. ‘Yes, Da. I thought he had.’

  ‘Pray God he intends to do his duty by you. I’d begun to regret your marrying him.’

  The words stung her. What was his regret in comparison to hers?

  ‘I never thought he would prove so intractable,’ Malcolm continued. ‘I am much grieved by his behaviour. And Jack’s murder –’ he palmed his eyes, then dropped his hands, a wounded look on his face – ‘I cannot think why God so punishes us.’

  His professed grief did not move Margaret. ‘You chose him, Da.’

  She was about to say more, but Jonet and Celia’s conversation in the hall about the placement of the tapestries was interrupted by Celia’s loud comment, ‘Here come the men. They can assist us.’

  Her father swung his leg over the bench, and with a nod to Margaret, slipped away, crossing the yard behind the kitchen. Pushing the bench back against the wall, Margaret smoothed her skirts, took a deep breath, and stepped out from behind the screen just as Roger entered.

  ‘I wish to go to Da’s warehouse,’ she said.

  Roger glanced at the maids and, taking Margaret’s arm, led her back to where she had just sat with her father.

  ‘I want to see the body,’ she continued.

  ‘You’re not to pry into matters that are not your concern, Maggie, not here in Perth. You have your name to uphold.’

  ‘Your name, you mean.’ She had a wild thought that she did not voice, frightened by both the appeal of it and the finality. Roger might annul their marriage – they had no children, it was done all the time – and then be free of the Kerrs, whom he found so inconvenient. And she would be free. But an annulment was costly, and unless he had hidden money from her, which would be no surprise, he could not afford one.

  Furious at Roger’s treatment and embarrassed by how ill he’d felt in the presence of the corpse, Fergus did not return to the hall but found occupation in the stable. While cleaning a saddle, he began to plan his departure for Aberdeen. Now that Roger and Maggie were back he would be free to go. It was a good season for travel, and he would have time to learn some of the workings
of the shipyard before it was idled by winter storms.

  ‘You’re looking gladsome, Son.’

  He turned towards his father’s voice with surprise. ‘I hope I’ve no cause to be otherwise. When did you return?’

  Malcolm settled down on a grooming stool with a sigh. ‘You have done a man’s work here since I left.’

  ‘That should be no cause for wonder, considering I am a man.’

  Malcolm dropped his head and nodded. ‘So you are. So you are.’

  Fergus crossed his arms and studied his father, deciding that he looked well but uncomfortable, perhaps worried.

  Malcolm squinted at Fergus as if trying to read his mind. ‘Maggie tells me you’ve seen the body in my warehouse.’

  Fergus nodded. ‘That is why you’ve come, I’ll warrant.’

  ‘So? What did you see?’

  Fergus told him.

  Malcolm listened impatiently. ‘Anything else? Was there anything in his hands? Anything near him that looked out of place?’

  ‘Not that I noticed. Why?’

  Malcolm scratched his forehead. ‘No matter.’

  It was hardly no matter, the way he had asked it.

  ‘I see your goodbrother is here,’ Malcolm said. ‘What’s Sinclair doing in Perth?’

  ‘Coming home with his wife – what else would he be doing here?’ Fergus noted the use of Roger’s surname, which was not how his father had been wont to refer to him.

  ‘Who’s the man with him?’

  ‘His servant. Aylmer.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Malcolm worked his neck as if it were stiff. ‘So fine a servant, Sinclair must have managed to increase his wealth while away. What has he been doing?’

  Fergus had thought his father curious about Roger’s loyalties. He was disappointed that he cared only about how Roger had afforded Aylmer. ‘Why ask me? I care nothing for costly servants, and Roger has offered no explanation. We have never been confidants.’

  Roger and Margaret stood silently brooding on each other’s shoes.

  ‘You are my wife,’ Roger said, breaking the silence in a full voice that snapped Margaret back from her fantasy of freedom. ‘What you do reflects on me.’ He looked like the angry prophet from the Old Testament she had once seen on a wall mural.

  ‘If you’re so concerned about your name,’ she said, ‘perhaps we should carry on this discussion in our bedchamber rather than before an audience. When you raise your voice you can be heard beyond the screen.’

  Without waiting for his response, she went to tell Celia and Jonet that she needed nothing, and then climbed the steps to the solar. Roger followed, pausing to say something under his breath to Aylmer, and then continuing up the steps behind her. The grim set of his face caused Margaret a confusing pang of regret that she had alienated him. And yet she had just thought how good it might be to be free of him. She was unravelling.

  Roger propped one foot up on a stool and rested an elbow on the bent leg. ‘Much of your behaviour has displeased me of late: leaving the safety of my mother’s house for Edinburgh, serving in your uncle’s tavern, taking it upon yourself to find my cousin’s murderer.’ He looked disgusted.

  It was as if he’d heard nothing she’d said to him. ‘Can’t you understand how I feared for you? Are you made of stone?’ She turned away, afraid to say more.

  ‘You were safe at home,’ he said. ‘Or in Dunfermline with my mother.’

  ‘Oh Roger, Roger, we’ve already argued about this.’

  ‘You cannot go to the warehouse. You must behave as befits a wife.’

  She rounded on him. ‘I believe you forfeited any expectation of that when you abandoned me.’

  ‘What? I cannot believe my ears. Is this Maggie speaking, or some devil taken up her body? I forfeited nothing for I did not desert you. I’m here now, wife, and I expect you to obey. And what’s more, the laws of both God and man are on my side.’

  ‘How fortunate for you.’ She almost spat out the words. ‘But by God’s law you were to love and protect me.’

  ‘I do—’

  ‘What was I to think when you ran from me in Edinburgh, Roger? What would you have thought had I run from you? Was it to protect me that you fought for Robert Bruce? And now, now you order me about with steel in your eyes and ice in your heart. I sometimes think Jack loved me more than you do.’

  Roger’s anger seemed to cool and he looked round as if searching for something.

  Margaret held her breath, fearing she had gone too far, that she had unwittingly followed on from her thought of annulment.

  ‘I should not have said such things, Maggie.’

  Roger’s sudden apology confused Margaret.

  ‘Nor I,’ she whispered.

  Roger sat down heavily and stared at the floor for a long while.

  Margaret did not know whether to join him on the bench or leave him to his thoughts. Her heart still pounded. Her fear at the thought of losing Roger was a revelation to her.

  Suddenly Roger rose and, stretching, grasped the beam above, then dropped his arms to his sides as if they were dead weights. ‘What suffering Longshanks has wrought.’ He took Margaret’s hands in his. ‘All I meant was that we must avoid calling attention to ourselves. And as it is not your custom to go to Malcolm’s warehouse, people might make note of your doing so. Do you see?’

  Margaret sighed. ‘I do, Roger. I do see.’

  ‘It is such a small request,’ said Malcolm. ‘Engage Sinclair in talk of the English presence in Perth. See how he responds. Ask what he thinks of all this.’

  At least his father’s mind was now on the fighting, but Fergus felt the heat rising in him. He was once again being treated as the family toady. ‘Come within and ask him yourself. Be a man, not a sneaking coward.’

  ‘You little—’ Malcolm slapped him on the cheek.

  Fergus grabbed his father by the collar and was about to punch him, but reason stayed his hand. He was not only an elderly man but, more significantly, Fergus’s father, and to strike him might create a permanent rift. Fergus’s pride was not worth the risk.

  Malcolm stepped back to adjust his tunic, forcing a chuckle. ‘Well, you’ve learned a great deal about fighting since I left.’

  ‘I saw a need for it.’ Fergus was breathing hard and trembling with the audacity of what he’d almost done. It was no triumph. Twice since Maggie’s return he’d behaved in a way he’d afterwards regretted. ‘I don’t understand why you don’t talk to Roger yourself. You liked him well enough when you wed him to Maggie.’

  His father did not answer at once, examining an imperfection in the saddle Fergus had been oiling, tinkering with a buckle that had a crooked tongue. ‘It was a good match for her, or so I thought.’

  ‘You might have done better to let her choose,’ said Fergus.

  Malcolm laughed. ‘You might have learned to fight, but you’ve still much to learn of life, son. I’ll come again. Surely you can glean something of Sinclair’s mind without betraying your high moral code – or me. I don’t want him to know I’m here. It’s as simple as that.’ He peered out of the stable, then slipped away.

  Fergus had no intention of biding in Perth long enough to learn anything for his father.

  James walked through the camp, observing archery practice, sword drills, wrestling. Wallace’s men ranged in age from a little younger than Hal to greybeards. Some proudly carried battle scars, others were skilled in one or another of the martial arts but as yet untried, and many were learning the arts for the first time. What was characteristic of the great majority of them was their common status. As James wandered among them he wondered where his fine kin were hiding while these simpler men fought for them.

  A young man caught up to him by a stream. ‘The Wallace has sent me to fetch you, sir.’

  James followed him to the crest of a hill on which several others were gathered. Wallace was talking to a sweaty, dusty messenger, but sent him off for food and drink when James joined them.

  Wallace s
haded his eyes from the sun. ‘I must talk to the Kerr woman,’ he said, as if he were concluding an argument and would not entertain further debate.

  ‘I have explained the difficulty—’ James began.

  Wallace waved him quiet. ‘You ken not the danger she is in, James. Her father, her husband – they are both sought by the English – her father because of his return from Bruges, her husband because he is known to be escorting people and money back and forth across the border for Robert Bruce. And with a company of English soldiers approaching Perth …’

  So attempting to get Edwina across the border had not been an unusual mission for Roger. And this was news about Margaret’s father. ‘Malcolm Kerr has returned?’

  Wallace nodded. ‘He is in Perth.’

  ‘Why would he return now?’

  ‘I share with the English a keen wish to know that very thing.’

  ‘Are Sinclair and Kerr the reasons the English are headed for Perth?’

  ‘We don’t know. But there is rumour of a death in Malcolm Kerr’s warehouse. The English will surely hear of it from the traitors in the town. I want to meet Dame Margaret before fear silences her.’

  James wondered whether it was too late already. He was glad he had told Margaret nothing of import regarding their dealings in the north. She was still too untried to trust completely. But he must see to her safety.

  Christiana knelt beside Dame Bethag in the small nunnery kirk, seeking serenity. The ever smiling, ever calm nun had suggested that Prioress Agnes would be a more appropriate tutor, but Christiana found nothing she wished to emulate in the beauty with the chilly voice and pinched expression who sighed impatiently throughout Mass. She wished to learn to quiet the chaos in her mind, and Bethag seemed the ideal model to emulate.

  Sunlight fell on the statue of the Blessed Virgin, and Mary’s face glowed. Christiana caught her breath and crossed herself, staring unblinkingly at the illuminated face, expecting a vision.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ Dame Bethag said quietly. The nun knelt with rosewood beads encircling hands pressed together in prayer.

  ‘Look at the Mother of God,’ Christiana whispered.