Child of the Phoenix (117 page)

They were gone within two days and Eleyne breathed a sigh of relief. Slowly they toured the castle and Donald introduced her to the vast household. Some of them were suspicious, some amused, but most were friendly. She chose two girls, Agnes and Bethoc, to join Meg as her personal maidens and she and Donald moved into the earl’s chamber, a large room with arched windows on the first floor of what was already being called the Snow Tower.

Slowly the spring grew warmer. There was no word from the south. The earl and countess were with the Scottish court; in Fife, in spite of Eleyne’s anxious letters, Rhonwen remained obstinately silent. Still obsessed with Donald and their life together Eleyne kept her worries about the boys at bay just as she refused to face the other problem which haunted her.

She was not yet pregnant. Never in all the years of their illicit lovemaking had she become pregnant and she had borne no children for nine years. Elizabeth’s cruel comments had cut her to the quick and she brooded on them constantly. Was it true? Was she too old to give Donald the heir he must have?

Secretly she cast her horoscope. It spoke of many children and in disgust she swept her charts aside. The stars mocked her. She looked, cautiously at first, then more anxiously, into the flames. There were no pictures there.

Also in secret she stood beside the bed, staring down at her naked figure. She had no way of knowing how she looked. Donald still took enormous delight in her body, but did he also notice the slight slackening of her skin, the little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the streaks of silver in her hair which had broadened over the years?

She took Meg into her confidence and between them in the stillroom they made up a soft balm scented with rose petals which she rubbed on her skin to keep it soft. Donald noticed the smell at once. He buried his face between her breasts and threatened never to leave her bed again.

VI
FALKLAND CASTL
EJuly 1266

The king had given them time enough. Rhonwen felt him growing restless. Twice she thought she saw him, shadowy on the turnpike stair above her – reproachful, angry that she had done nothing to bring Eleyne back to him. Afraid, she began to form a plan.

She stood for a long time at the door of the chapel. It was dark. The castle was asleep, but one candle burned before the statue of Our Lady, replaced and trimmed before the priest had gone to his bed. Rhonwen could feel the prickle of fear on the back of her neck, and peered at the altar. It was somewhere at the back that Eleyne had hidden the pendant. She had to break the taboo; she had to enter this chapel of the priests, but what would happen to her if she laid a hand on the fabric of this holy place? Her fingers went automatically to the amulet at her throat.

With a muttered prayer to the goddess of her Welsh mountains, she took two tiptoed steps inside the door and held her breath. The small chapel smelt of cold incense; it was impregnated in the stones of the walls and in the air around her. Her heart beating very fast she crept towards the altar and, her back to the wall, her eyes fixed on the crucifix between the candles, she made her way towards the eastern wall.

Reaching the reredos at last, she felt behind it. Sweat dripped into her eyes. She was breathing audibly through her mouth. Blessed Bride, she couldn’t feel it. There was nothing there. She pushed harder, trying to wedge her whole arm behind the carved oak panel.

The candle flame flickered. A few drops of pale wax spattered on the shelf before the statue and a trail of smoke spiralled into the air. The shadow in the corner of the chapel behind the faldstool was no more than smoke itself. Rhonwen’s hands were shaking violently.

Driven by panic to one last effort, she pushed again, groping in the emptiness with desperate fingers, and suddenly she touched something soft. The sensation was so unexpected that she let out a whimper of fright. Then she remembered. Eleyne had always wrapped the pendant. Cautiously she hooked her fingers into the object again in the darkness and slowly, carefully, she managed to draw the wisp of silk towards her.

VII
KILDRUMMY

Sometimes they rode together, exploring the neighbourhood, and sometimes, when Donald was occupied with the affairs of the earldom, Eleyne rode alone, realising how much she had missed her solitary rides with only the dogs for company. Gradually she extended her range, beyond the crofts and the tofts around the township and up the broad river valley, following the meandering course of the River Don and into the mountains beyond, feeling immediately at home, although these mountains were unlike those of Eryri. These were rounded shoulders, humped massively from the great backbone of the Grampians beneath a vast north-eastern sky.

It was here, in a lonely glen where she had ridden with only the dogs for escort, that she met Morna. The woman was gathering flowers by the river as Eleyne stopped to let her horse drink. She straightened to look at Eleyne, her face solemn, her eyes direct, showing no shyness as the Master of Mar’s wife slid from her saddle. The two women looked at each other with the strange empathy that brings immediate liking, though neither had spoken a word.

Eleyne smiled. ‘Good day, mistress.’ The woman, whom Eleyne judged to be only a little younger than herself, was heavily pregnant.

She nodded gravely in return. ‘You’ll be wanting a drink too, perhaps.’ Her voice was low and musical. She glanced at the horse and Raoulet and Sabina, and Sabina’s son, Piers, as the animals drank greedily from the cool brown water. There was no need to ask who her visitor was. Word of Lord Donald’s wife, with her silks and velvets, riding her horse unescorted like a man, followed by the three great hounds, had spread for miles around.

‘I can drink with them.’ Eleyne dropped the horse’s rein and pushed up the sleeves of her gown.

The other woman smiled. ‘I have something you might prefer: there’s blaeberry wine in my house if you would care to follow me, my lady.’ She set off without looking back, the withy basket full of flowers on her arm.

Her house, set back from the shingle bank of the river, on the side of a small hill, was a small stone-built bothy, roofed with turves. She led the way inside and gestured Eleyne to sit on the rug-covered heap of heather which served as a bed. The place was spotless, swept with a heather besom which stood against the wall, furnished sparingly with a rough oak coffer, a girnel kist, a table and two stools and by the fire a polished bannock stone. The cup in which she offered the wine was a finely chased silver. Eleyne took it without comment. Such was the woman’s dignity it did not occur to her that it was out of place in such a poor hut, and that it might be stolen. She sipped the wine and smiled. ‘This is good.’

‘Aye.’ The woman nodded. ‘It’s the best you’ll taste in Mar.’ Her hand to her back, she sat down gracefully on the floor, her ragged checked skirts swirling in the dust of the dry earth floor.

‘Is your husband a shepherd?’ Eleyne looked around the hut.

‘I’ve no husband, lady. I prefer my own company. The bairn – ’ The woman put her hand on her stomach with a possessive gesture of affection. ‘Well, maybe she’s a child of the fairies.’ She gave a humorous scowl, and shook her head in mock despair. ‘I’m Morna, my lady. I’m the spaewife, or so the cottars call me.’

‘I see.’ Eleyne smiled. ‘Yes. I’ve heard about you. The people of the castle think very highly of your powers.’

She was much loved, this Morna of the glens. Eleyne had heard her name repeated often with tales of healing and magic and love spells. She leaned forward and set her cup down on the ground before her. ‘Perhaps you could help me.’

‘You want to know your fortune?’ The woman sounded incredulous. ‘Usually the lasses come out to me to know the name of the lad they’ll marry. You already have your husband.’

‘But will I give him a son?’ Eleyne wasn’t aware how desperate she sounded until the words were out.

The woman leaned forward and took Eleyne’s hands in hers. She turned them palm up and looked at them. The only sound in the bothy was the high trickling song of the skylark, lost in the brilliance of the sky above the glen, and the small murmur of the river outside. Eleyne found she was holding her breath. Her hands grew hot in the woman’s cool grasp. When at last Morna looked up, she was smiling. ‘You will give your husband three sons.’

‘Three!’ Eleyne echoed in astonishment. She laughed, half in disbelief, half in delight. ‘I had suspected I was past the age of childbearing. I still have my courses, but it’s nine years since I conceived. If you are right, I shall be the happiest woman in the world.’

‘I hope so, lady.’

‘When? Can you see when it will happen?’

The other woman nodded. ‘You already carry your first son.’

Eleyne stood up. She walked outside the small house and stood staring down towards the river numb with shock.

Morna followed her. ‘Why do you ask me all this? You have the Sight yourself.’

Eleyne shook her head. ‘I see other things: visions of the past and of the future, but never for myself. I’ve tried to learn, but I can never understand; never see clearly.’

‘Perhaps you try too hard.’ Morna folded her arms across her stomach. ‘You have lived too long in the castles and courts of the south. If you want to see, the mountains of Mar will teach you. All you have to do is listen and watch with stillness in your heart.’

VIII

It was another six weeks before Eleyne was sure in her own mind. Only then did she tell Donald. Solemnly he undressed her and kneeling before her he kissed her stomach. Then he gave her a twisted rope of sea pearls.

‘Don’t tell your parents, Donald.’ Suddenly she was afraid.

‘Why?’ He pulled her on to his knees, ‘They’ll be delighted.’

‘Suppose something goes wrong?’

‘It won’t.’ He touched her belly again, gently stroking it, ‘Nothing could go wrong now.’

It was an idyllic time. The long summer drowsed over the hills. She and Donald made love as often as before, though he was more careful with her now, watching in wonder as her breasts and belly grew. Sometimes they rode together into the hills and he would undress her there, on his cloak, spread on the heather amongst the wild marjoram by the burns, surrounded by clouds of butterflies.

She would still ride out alone though not so far now. More often than not she went to visit Morna, taking gifts for the woman and her coming baby, and they would talk for a long time, companionably, sitting by the babbling river or, if the soft highland rain poured down, by Morna’s fire. Morna’s knowledge of the magic of the hills was vast; Eleyne found herself listening enthralled to her hostess’s tales, and then almost without realising it she was talking too, about Einion and his prophecies, and about Alexander.

She still feared sometimes that he would return, suddenly while she and Donald were together. But it had not happened; he had not come to Kildrummy.

‘Perhaps he could not follow me here,’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps he has forgotten me at last.’

Morna was watching her closely. ‘If his love was as great and as deep as you say, he will never forget you,’ she said slowly. ‘He will love you through all eternity and through all ages.’

Eleyne was silent.

‘Did you love him as much?’ Morna asked.

Eleyne nodded. ‘He was everything to me, but he turned his back on me. If he had really wanted, he could have had me as his wife, but he chose not to. He chose not to make our sons legitimate. He put Scotland’s honour before mine.’ She considered for a minute. ‘Malcolm of Fife killed so that he could have me as his wife. Does that not make his love the greater?’

‘Do you measure love in bloodshed and honour?’ Morna’s voice was sharp. ‘Has Malcolm returned from the grave to make you his own again? Would Lord Donald?’ She was stern. ‘Has not the king crossed the greatest boundary there is, for you?’

‘You sound as though you would make me choose between Donald and a dead man,’ Eleyne replied, ‘and there is no choice, not for me.’

‘Perhaps it is not up to you – one day the gods will decide: ghost or mortal; king or man.’

Eleyne went white. ‘There is no choice,’ she repeated. ‘Donald is my husband. You are frightening me.’

Morna was apologetic. ‘I didn’t mean to do that. Of course Donald is your husband and you belong to him. Perhaps the prophecy your Einion spoke of will yet be fulfilled. You have four children and another on the way. One of them may be a king or the father of kings.’