A Cruel Courtship (40 page)

The women set two benches in the shade beneath the eaves, away from the door and the one tiny window that looked out on to the kitchen and beyond to the backlands.

In daylight Andrew noticed with some surprise that Ada had at last begun to age beyond the whitening of her hair. Fine lines encircled her mouth and eyes, and her flesh had sagged a little. He wondered if his mother, too, was showing her age.

It was Ada who began. ‘I bore five children, four to Simon Montagu. Peter is the only one of my adult children I’ve met, and I will always regret that I did. He might yet be alive had I not come to Stirling.’

‘That is not true,’ Maggie interjected, and Andrew could see by the way she sat forward that she was impatient for Ada to come to the point.

But Andrew thought she had. ‘Your son is dead?’ he asked.

Ada dropped her gaze to her lap, where she was
clasping her hands together so tightly that her fingernails were white. ‘Murdered. Just without this house. The boy inside fought with him, Peter withdrew to the garden shed, and while he lay there he was stabbed in the heart.’

Andrew was caught off guard by her bluntness. ‘God grant him peace,’ he whispered, and then looked up at the sky, trying to think of something comforting to say to her, but he could only wonder at their kindness to the man’s murderer. ‘Archie followed and killed him?’

‘No,’ said Maggie. ‘I don’t think Archie killed him.’

‘Have you asked?’

‘Archie’s leg was broken, Andrew. He could not have been near the shed after that.’

‘Would you say Peter’s requiem, Andrew? It would mean so much to me if you would.’ Ada was looking at him, her face composed. ‘Please don’t feel that you need to comfort me, for I did not like him. He caused much grief here in Stirling and no doubt elsewhere as well.’

‘But Sir Simon spoke as if Peter were alive,’ said Andrew.

‘He does not know. I feared what he would do, whom he would blame.’

‘Where is your son now?’

‘At the kirk.’

‘Why did Archie attack your son?’

‘Peter controlled Archie’s family with fear,’ said
Maggie. ‘And Archie suspected him of murdering the woman he loved.’

Andrew looked from one to the other. ‘You’ve witnessed more horror here than I have while travelling with an army.’

Neither woman responded.

‘Well if Archie didn’t strike the mortal blow, who did?’ Andrew asked.

‘Archie’s sister told me that Roger’s partner was looking for Peter that night,’ said Maggie.

‘Roger’s partner?’

As Maggie explained who Aylmer was, Andrew thought that he did not know half of what his sister had suffered since she’d seen him off to Soutra.

He turned to Ada. ‘Certainly I will say Peter’s requiem.’

‘God bless you, Andrew,’ said Ada.

Maggie leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

They talked a little more about family matters, Maggie telling Andrew how Fergus had carried a message to Murray. ‘James says he is fighting with Wallace this day, and Hal as well.’

‘Uncle Murdoch’s groom?’ Andrew asked.

Maggie nodded. ‘He’s gifted with animals.’

‘Uncle must have been furious when he left.’

‘Only because he’ll worry,’ said Maggie. ‘He thinks of Hal as his son.’

‘What will you do now, Maggie? If we don’t win the day, if the English release the guard on the town, will you stay here?’

‘We’ll talk of that by and by,’ she said.

James Comyn had plans for her, Andrew imagined.

‘What will
you
do, Andrew?’ Ada asked. ‘Will you return to Sir Francis?’

‘He’ll have no need of me. I don’t know what I’ll do. I thought I’d seek Bishop Wishart’s advice.’ The bishop of Glasgow made no effort to hide his animosity towards Edward Longshanks. ‘I believe he’ll sympathise with my estrangement from my abbot.’

‘I still fear Abbot Adam,’ said Maggie. ‘Is the bishop–’

She was interrupted by a shriek. It came from the house. The servants went running towards it from the kitchen. Maggie was the first to follow. Andrew and Ada were right behind her.

The scene in the hall was very confused by the time they reached it. John knelt beside the shrieking Evota, who appeared to be bleeding from her shoulder. Archie was on the floor near her, moaning and kneading his injured leg with one hand, while in the other, which was held in the air by Sandy, he clutched a knife.

‘He’s gone mad,’ Evota sobbed. ‘My poor boy, the head wound has addled his wits. He tried to kill me!’

‘Murderer!’ Archie shouted. ‘Show her no pity, the murdering whore. She killed Johanna. Ask her. Ask her, Father! She’ll not lie to a priest.’

‘God help us,’ Maggie whispered. ‘Can it be true?’

Celia had knelt down by Evota to examine the wound. ‘It is not deep. You are in no danger,’ she told the woman.

Andrew crouched down beside her. ‘What is your son talking about?’

The woman looked up at Celia. ‘But the blood!’

‘It is the sort of wound that bleeds freely, Evota, but it is far from mortal,’ Celia assured her.

‘Celia, come away,’ Maggie said. ‘Let Andrew talk to her.’

The maid left with a sigh of frustration. ‘I’ll fetch a rag to staunch the flow.’

‘I tell you he’s confused,’ Evota said.

‘Why would your son call you a murderer?’ Andrew asked. ‘Who was Johanna?’

Sandy had taken the knife from Archie and let him go. Maggie now knelt by him.

‘My leg,’ he moaned, ‘I think it’s broken again.’

She and Sandy helped him back to the pallet.

‘Why do you think your mother killed Johanna?’ Maggie asked him.

‘She told me. Just now. She was trying to make me understand what she’d done, how it was for our family, but you saw what she’d done, you
saw
Johanna. They said her head was beaten in.
She
did that, the bitch who calls herself my mother.’

‘We’ve got to live, you stupid boy,’ Evota cried. ‘You were paid good money by Father Piers. We
depended on that. Your sister had to go whoring because Johanna rejected you and then you’d have naught to do with her. You good-for-nothing lovesick ass!’

Andrew looked up at Maggie. ‘Do you understand what they’re talking about?’

‘Yes.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Poor Johanna.’

Andrew took the wounded woman by the chin and held her so that she must look at him. ‘Did you beat a woman to death?’

Evota whimpered. ‘All I asked her was to favour Archie, sleep with him – she’d slept with all the soldiers at the castle, why not my son? Then he would go back to work as a messenger.’

‘Selfish cow,’ Archie shouted. ‘Johanna wasn’t like that.’

‘She wouldn’t agree?’ Andrew asked quietly.

‘She hit me. Hard. On the mouth. And she said she’d tell Father Piers and wouldn’t use Archie any more. They’d find another messenger. My son wasn’t good enough for her, the whore. He wasn’t English, that’s what she meant.’

Andrew let her go and drew away from her, sickened by the hatred in her eyes, her voice. The young man was sobbing. When Maggie looked up, her face was wet with tears, too.

‘What should we do with them?’ Ada wondered aloud. ‘I don’t want them here. Who is the law in the town now?’

Andrew shook his head. ‘There is none.’

Celia had brought a bowl of water and some rags, and now knelt to Evota, who stared at the ceiling wide-eyed, breathing in a laboured wheeze.

‘Go for Dame Bridget,’ said Maggie to Sandy. ‘I don’t know what to do for Archie’s leg.’ She rose and joined Andrew and Ada.

‘Had you any sense of her guilt, Maggie?’ Ada asked.

‘When she was startled to see a priest here in the hall, I wondered, but anyone might have,’ said Maggie.

‘Was this Johanna the woman over whom Peter and Archie fought?’ Andrew asked.

Ada nodded. She looked spent.

‘Was she a friend of yours, Maggie?’ Andrew was still trying to grasp all the implications of what had just transpired.

‘She was the source for the messages Archie carried to James’s men, which is why we met.’ She explained about Johanna’s English lover. ‘When she met me, I knew she was in danger, but I didn’t know whence came the threat, and I didn’t know what to do.’

‘Of course she was in danger,’ Andrew said. ‘But if anyone was responsible for that it’s James Comyn, using her as he did.’

‘He’s forced no one to fight for his kinsman, Andrew. Johanna wanted to do something for the cause.’

‘So why do you feel guilty?’

‘I told you, I kenned she was in danger, but I didn’t know what to do with the knowledge.’ Her voice had risen and she pressed a hand to either side of her wimple as if trying to close her ears to some noise. ‘I don’t understand how to use the Sight.’

‘My God, Maggie.’ Andrew reached her in two steps and laid his hands gently on hers. ‘The Sight? Tell me you’re not accursed with it.’ But he knew by the suffering he sensed in her and the fear in her eyes that she was.

‘I pray it’s God’s gift,’ she said. ‘I pray He’ll show me how I might use it for good.’

Ada had gone over to the wounded woman. ‘Take her home, John. Let her daughter tend to her. We’ll get no justice for Johanna by hanging this woman. Dame Bridget will advise us where Archie might go. I’m sick of them.’

Maggie broke away from Andrew. ‘The war has done this to them, Ada. They would have done none of this if Longshanks hadn’t torn apart their lives.’

‘You don’t know that, Maggie.’

Maggie turned back to Andrew. ‘You must feel you’ve walked into a house of madness.’

‘How could this town be otherwise, trapped between the castle and the camps?’ He put his arm around her. ‘How long have you known about the Sight, Maggie?’

‘Not long. Only you, Ada and Celia know. And
Ma, I think. I’m going to Great-Aunt Euphemia, if I can. I want to learn about it, not let it destroy me like it has Ma. Let’s not talk of it any more today.’

’Thank God. Andrew did not think he could bear more.

14

Far off shouts and shrieks rendered the late September day the tinge of horror, as Margaret sat in the backland with Ada and Andrew. The delicate brandywine did little to ease the tension and chill that lingered after John led Evota away and Archie was moved out of the house to the kitchen. Celia was supervising the removal of the bloodstains in the hall, but no one could ever erase Margaret’s memory of Johanna’s suffering. She doubted Archie would ever forgive his mother; at least he had been spared the sight of what she’d done to his beloved.

Andrew’s encounter with the guards below had frightened Margaret. She prayed that James had managed to outwit them. She prayed for him, Fergus and Hal, and William Wallace, whom she’d found a kind, noble man. She wondered what the future held, what defeat might mean to all of them.

What had begun as a happy reunion was now not ruined, but subdued. The town was very quiet, though now and then she and her companions lifted their heads as folk who’d been watching the battle from the heights wandered home loudly sharing the hopeful, yet horrible news that the English were being slaughtered and being left to die in the carse, and their survivors retreating.