Kingdom of Shadows

by Barbara Erskine

  Drying herself slowly, Clare wandered back into the bedroom. The room was hot and stuffy after the country in spite of all the open windows, but at least she was alone. She had to admit that the presence of Sarah Collins, constantly tip-toeing around the old Suffolk farmhouse, got on her nerves. She longed to be alone – really alone. To be able to do what she wanted, to strip off her clothes and run down to the pool or anywhere else in the house naked if she chose. Just to be relaxed.

  She dropped the towel now and stood in front of the long mirror scrutinising her figure critically. At twenty-eight, ten years younger than her husband, she was as slim and taut as she had been when she was eighteen.

  She lit the candle solemnly and raised her arms as Zak had told her, to signal the start of her meditation. Then slowly she sank down into the half-lotus position.

  She had written back to the solicitor the afternoon before, a considered, firm letter in the end, politely informing him that Duncairn was not, and never would be, for sale, and she had driven into Dedham with it and caught the evening post. As far as she was concerned the matter was closed. Duncairn was safe. Her haven, her refuge. As Zak had promised, the problem, once faced, had gone away.

  For a moment, on the brink of closing her eyes, she hesitated. Her last visualisation of Duncairn hadn’t been as she intended. It had brought back unbidden memories of Midsummer’s Day. She shivered. That experience she did not want to relive. This time she would be more careful. She would picture the moors beyond the castle and perhaps, if she concentrated, she could summon Isobel back, the Isobel of Aunt Margaret’s stories … The Isobel who had been the heroine of all her daydreams as a child; her imaginary playmate in her loneliness. Carefully she began to construct a picture in her mind of the moor near the castle as she had seen it so often when she was a child. She saw the blaze of heather beneath the torrid sky and the hills, misty in the distance. Overhead, slowly rising on the invisible spirals of the wind a buzzard was mewing, the lonely call echoing across the moorland. She could feel the sun on her back, smell the soft honey of the wild thyme and moss, even hear the gentle ripple of the brown water in the burn at her feet. Now, with the scene set, perhaps the story could start again …

  Shaking her long hair back from her face the child threw herself down full length on the grass and began to scoop the cool water into her mouth. The young man standing behind her eyed her bare legs and naked brown feet doubtfully. ‘You’ll be in trouble when your nurse finds out where you are,’ he said, his face unwillingly relaxing into a smile.

  ‘Nurse!’ She sat up. Some of her hair had slipped into the water and it dripped on to the shoulders of her thin woollen gown. ‘I don’t have a nurse. I’m a grown woman, Robert of Carrick, and don’t you forget it.’

  ‘You are?’ The young man laughed out loud. ‘I beg your pardon, my lady Isobel. But all the ladies I know have bevies of maids and attendants following them everywhere, and men-at-arms to watch over them when they stir from their castles!’

  ‘I do too.’ She clasped her knees with a shiver. ‘I ran away from them when I knew you were riding up here. I wanted to come too. I get so bored doing what Lady Buchan tells me all day long, Robert.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you should obey her.’ Robert looked troubled. ‘If you are to marry the earl it is important that his mother teaches you all she knows. Lord Buchan is a great and powerful man, Isobel. He will expect much from his wife.’

  ‘Pooh.’ Isobel flung herself backwards on the grass, shading her eyes to stare up at the sky. ‘He’ll never marry me! He barely knows I exist. Do you know, when he comes to Duncairn or Slains to see his mother he sometimes takes me on his knee and tells me stories. He gives me presents and sweetmeats, just like the children of his brothers. I’m sure he thinks I must be one of them.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Robert stood looking down at her. ‘You and he have been betrothed since you were a small child. He’s only been waiting for you to grow up. That is why your mother gave you to Lady Buchan to bring up, when your brother was sent to England after your father died.’

  There was a long silence as his words sank in. She sat up again, pushing the hair back off her face. It was a small oval face with huge grey eyes, set below straight dark determined eyebrows, a face which promised great beauty. Defensively she hugged her arms around herself, unconsciously hiding the budding breasts which barely showed yet beneath the loose folds of the dusty gown. ‘Then perhaps I’m not grown up,’ she said at last in a whisper. ‘Perhaps I never will.’

  The betrothal had taken place before her brother was born. She remembered vividly the day at Falkland Castle when her father had told his wife what he had arranged. Neither the earl nor the beautiful Joanna de Clare had realised that their small daughter was listening and taking in every word of their conversation. It had been after Duncan of Fife, young and inexperienced as he was, had been chosen as one of the two earls on the small council appointed to rule Scotland after the death of King Alexander. He had received the news of his appointment confidently, attributing it to his own undoubted qualities, becoming since that day more conceited than ever, flaunting his position, using it everywhere to his own advantage. Later Isobel had learned the truth: that the earldom of Fife had to be represented because of its preeminence amongst the seven ancient earldoms of Scotland; before she had believed it was because her father was a great and good man.

  The earl had glanced down at his daughter as she played near him. ‘I have been speaking to my lord of Buchan. He is willing to agree to her betrothal to his heir.’ Duncan had preened himself, waiting for his wife’s reaction. Isobel too had waited; and she had seen the horror and disbelief on Joanna’s face. ‘You wish to betroth that child to John Comyn?’ Her eyes had grown enormous. ‘But, my lord, she is only a baby, and he a grown man. He would never want a child for a wife!’

  ‘He will wait.’ Duncan had given a snort of laughter, throwing back his head so that Isobel could see even from where she sat on the ground the gaping hole in his gum where the surgeon had pulled a great aching molar. ‘By the saints, he’s waited long enough to take a wife as it is!’ He had grown serious suddenly, sitting forward on the edge of the wooden bench, resting his chin on his hand so that he could gaze into his wife’s face. ‘Don’t you see what a marvellous union this will be? The Comyns are the richest and most powerful family in the land. The old earl is with me one of the six guardians, but when he dies, which must be soon, Joanna, it would be expedient if our two families were linked by more than just friendship. Our lands in the north march together – what could be better than to bring them closer. After all,’ he had added bitterly, ‘it looks as though that puny girl will be my only heir.’ He had paused, and Isobel, hugging herself with sudden devastating misery, saw the sparkle of tears in her mother’s eyes as he rushed on in a bluff attempt to cover his cruel remark. ‘Think, Joanna, think of the power this will bring us. If it hadn’t been for this little queen of ours far away across the water, it might well have been a Comyn chosen as king. Think of that.’

  And now that little queen had died without ever coming to Scotland, and as Duncan had predicted, a member of the huge Comyn family had been chosen as king – John Balliol, Lord Buchan’s cousin.

  Only six weeks after that terrifying news of her impending betrothal had come tidings of the death of the old Earl of Buchan. Joanna had been afraid that now he was free of his father’s influence John Comyn would repudiate the agreement. She had heard, and so had Isobel, all eyes and ears as usual, how he had sworn and flown into a rage when told that his father’s choice for his bride was only four years old; but then he too had seen the strength which would lie in such an alliance and only two weeks after his father’s death he had come to Fife for the betrothal ceremony and Isobel had seen him for the first time. He had brought a fine filigree brooch of silver for Joanna and a heavy ring, engraved with the Buchan seal, for Isobel; her small finger had not even the strength to hold it. Once the ceremony was over he had ga
lloped out of the castle courtyard, followed by his retinue. Two days after that a messenger had arrived from him bearing a doll. The riders had, it seemed, passed a travelling packman, and the earl had found a gift more suited for his little bride. They had heard nothing of him after that until Isobel’s father died.

  * * *

  Robert rode ahead of her to within sight of the castle, then he drew rein. ‘You go on, back to your attendants,’ he said. ‘I think it better that we’re not seen together. I’ll ride on south to Mar, as I intended in the first place.’ His smile softened the rebuke.

  ‘If you see my great grandmother at Kildrummy will you give her a kiss from me.’ Isobel smiled suddenly. Malcolm, Earl of Fife, had died some twenty years before, long before Isobel was born, and his widow Helen had remarried, taking as her husband the powerful Earl of Mar, but she had kept her interest in her Fife family, particularly Isobel, in whom she recognised much of herself when she was young; and Isobel, in a world devoid now of close family, loved her dearly.

  ‘Why don’t you get into trouble if you ride without attendants?’ Isobel asked Robert suddenly. ‘It’s just as dangerous for you to ride the hills alone.’

  ‘My attendants are waiting for me, as you well know.’ He slapped the neck of his horse affectionately. ‘Besides, I am a man.’ He frowned. ‘Will you get into bad trouble when you go back?’

  ‘I’m bound to.’ She looked up at him unrepentantly. ‘But Mairi, who has charge over me, never does very much, even though she says she will. She says I’m uncontrollable.’

  ‘I can believe it!’ He laughed. ‘I’m glad I’m not to have the marrying of you, cousin. I doubt if I could cope.’

  She giggled. ‘No, you couldn’t. I shall be a shrew and a scold and no man will want anything to do with me! I shall ride the hills dressed in men’s clothes and be my own mistress. Then my Lord Buchan will wash his hands of me and marry an old docile lady who can give him ten fat babies!’

  This time they whipped her. They took her into the great hall at Duncairn where Elizabeth, Dowager Countess of Buchan, was sitting on the low dais.

  Isobel stood before her defiantly, her fists clenched in the folds of her skirt, as Lady Buchan distastefully looked her up and down, taking in the ragged gown hitched up in her girdle revealing her muddy, scratched legs and feet.

  ‘So, where did you find her this time?’ she asked. ‘In the byre with the animals?’

  Mairi, a stout woman of indeterminate years and unswerving loyalty to her young charge, shook her head miserably. ‘She went out riding alone, my lady. She told her escort to go back without her.’

  ‘And they obeyed her?’ Lady Buchan’s eyebrows shot upwards towards her fashionably plaited and netted coils of hair.

  ‘Oh yes, my lady. The men always do as Lady Isobel says.’ Mairi bit her lip. ‘She’s awful determined, for a lass.’

  ‘Is she, indeed?’ Lady Buchan’s face was growing more and more grim. ‘And did you set off to ride looking like that, my lady?’

  Isobel coloured a little at the sarcastic tone ‘I took my kirtle and my stockings and shoes off and bundled them up in the heather so that they’d not be spoiled,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘I see. And what were you intending to do, that they might get spoiled?’ The older woman rose to her feet suddenly. Her face had sharpened with suspicion. ‘Was there someone with you, out there?’

  ‘No, my lady,’ Isobel blurted, suddenly guilty. ‘There wasn’t anyone there.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Taking a step towards her, Lady Buchan seized her by the wrist. ‘No young man? No love to amuse you? Where is my son?’ She turned abruptly to the attendants who encircled them.

  ‘He’s just returned to the castle, my lady,’ a voice replied. ‘He said he’d be in to greet you directly.’

  John, Earl of Buchan, was as good as his word, striding in to the castle hall only a few minutes later, his spurs ringing on the stone flags.

  ‘So, what is this? A trial with so small a prisoner?’ He dropped a kiss in the air some inches above his mother’s head and then straightened to look at Isobel, standing before Elizabeth, her arm still firmly clasped by the wrist.

  He was a tall, hirsute man in his late thirties, good-looking, with hard brown eyes. Isobel took a step back as his gaze fell on her.

  ‘This child has been roaming again. She behaves like a strumpet.’ Although near sixty, Lady Buchan was still a slim, graceful woman, without a streak of grey in her dark lustrous hair. She was almost as tall as her son as they stood facing each other across Isobel’s head.

  ‘A strumpet, is it?’ John looked down at Isobel with sudden interest, his eyes travelling down her slight form.

  ‘Aye, a strumpet. And her maidenhood will be long gone before you get around to making her your wife!’ Elizabeth of Buchan tightened her lips primly. ‘She is uncontrollable.’

  ‘Surely not.’ John stepped forward, and taking Isobel’s arm, pulled her away from his mother. ‘How old are you, sweetheart? I thought you were still a child, but I gather you are not content with a child’s games any longer.’

  Too proud to shrink away from him, Isobel straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chin. ‘I am fourteen, my lord.’

  ‘So you are indeed. Old enough to be bedded it seems, so old enough to be wedded. Who did she lie with?’ He shot the question over her head at the unfortunate Mairi. ‘Whoever it was, he’ll pay for it with his life.’

  ‘There was no one, my lord.’ It was Isobel who answered, her eyes blazing. ‘Your lady mother seems to think I would lie with stable boys and serfs – I, the daughter of the Earl of Fife, a descendent of the ancient house of Duff!’

  ‘Hoity toity!’ The dowager countess gave a humourless laugh. ‘If you behave like a strumpet, madam of Duff, you may expect to be treated as one. She has disobeyed me too often, John. She should be whipped.’

  Isobel bit her lip. She stood her ground, though, her wrist still firmly held in John’s rough fingers.

  He seemed to be considering, and for a moment she dared hope he would reprieve her, but it was no good. He released her wrist.

  ‘Very good, Mother. Perhaps a lesson in obedience now will make her a douce wife later. But don’t hurt her too much. I’d hate to see such a pretty child marked.’

  Almost blind with rage and humiliation, Isobel barely noticed as she was led, stumbling, to the chamber she shared with Mairi and two of Countess Elizabeth’s grandchildren, and there made to take off her gown. Standing shivering in her shift, she watched dumbly as one of the countess’s ladies appeared, carrying a hazel switch.

  She was too proud to cry. When it was over she pulled her gown back on with Mairi’s help, and then walked in silence to the deep window embrasure. Only there, behind the heavy curtain, did she allow herself to waver for a moment, kneeling on the cushioned window seat, staring out across the glittering sea.

  The telephone made Clare jump nearly out of her skin. It was several minutes before she could gather her wits enough to stagger to her feet to answer it.

  It was Emma.

  ‘I thought I’d missed you again. Are we still going out tomorrow evening?’ Emma’s voice was down to earth, cheerful.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Clare was dazed.

  ‘You remember. We agreed we’d have a meal together – just us, without husbands – to try that new place we were talking about. Are you all right, Clare?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Clare pushed her hair back from her face distractedly. ‘I must have been asleep. What time is it?’

  ‘Just after five –’

  ‘Five?’ Clare’s eyes opened wide. ‘My God, I’m due at the bank in less than an hour. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Em, OK?’

  She sat still for a minute after she put down the phone, trying to gather her wits. The meditation, if that is what it had been, had been a terrifying reality. It was as if, in sitting down and opening the secret, closed recesses of her consciousness to the past, she had allowed someone else�
��s memories to come flooding back. It was as if she were Isobel and Isobel were she; as if she had entered completely into the mind of this child who had, according to Aunt Margaret, been her ancestor, and as if Isobel had entered into hers. Shaken, she stood up and gazed into the mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of those other eyes which had, in the silence of her meditation, looked out through her own. But it was no use. They had gone. All she saw were the eyes of Clare Royland, a twentieth-century woman who was late for an evening with her husband.

  Shrugging off her mood as best she could she began at last to get ready. She slipped into the green silk dress with its swirling calf-length skirt, and reached for Aunt Margaret’s gold pendant to clasp round her neck, staring at herself in the mirror for a moment one last time before reaching slowly for her hairbrush. Already it was nearly half past five.

  The taxi dropped her opposite the broad flight of steps which led up to the door of the merchant bankers, Beattie Cameron, at 6.15 p.m. exactly. Slowly, trying to compose herself into the role of partner’s wife, she walked up the steps and smiled at the commissionaire who unlocked the door for her.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Baines. Is Mr Royland in his office?’

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Royland. It’s a treat to see you again, if I may say so. I’ll just check at the desk.’ He led the way to the reception desk and picked up the internal phone.

  Clare stared round at the huge entrance hall. This was still the old building, for all its modern plate-glass doors, the broad flight of stairs and the oak panelling betraying the office’s solid Victorian origins. Above the grotesque marble fireplace at one end of the hall was a large portrait of James Cameron, cofounder of the bank, and opposite him, hanging over another equally imposing fireplace, Donald Beattie, grandfather of the present senior partner. Paul’s office was at the top of the first flight of stairs.