Kingdom of Shadows

by Barbara Erskine

  But it was no good. Slowly she pushed her body into a series of yoga movements: the cobra, the swan, the shoulder stand, the stork. But her mind was still racing, her muscles contorted. She could find none of the usual comfort in the asanas. Lying down flat on the floor she tried to relax, bit by bit, starting with her feet as she had been taught, but that was no use either. Exasperated, she gave up. What was the point of trying relaxation methods now? She never would conceive. There would be no baby. She was barren.

  She paced up and down the floor a couple of times gnawing her thumbnail, then she reached for the phone again and dialled the Cambridge number.

  ‘Zak, I’m sorry to ring you, but you did say –’

  ‘Sure I did, Clare. What is it? You sound upset.’

  At his desk at the open window overlooking the river, Zak de Sallis leaned back in his chair and threw down his pen. He was a tall, rangy man in his early thirties, his long brown hair caught back at the nape of his neck with an elastic band. His denim shirt and jeans, though frayed, were immaculately washed and ironed. Behind him the young man who had been lounging at the table stood up. He came silently across the room and stood behind Zak, his hand resting gently on Zak’s shoulder.

  ‘The doctor’s results have come through.’ Clare’s voice was loud in the room. ‘It is me, Zak. It is my fault. I’m the one who can’t have children. I’m barren. And there’s nothing any one can do. No amount of yoga is going to help me.’

  ‘Hey, steady, Clare. Calm down.’ Zak felt the hand lifted and knew that Kenny was frowning. He hunched his shoulders in momentary irritation. ‘Listen. Did the doctor say there was nothing to be done? That doesn’t sound likely to me. There are always things they can do.’

  ‘No. He told Paul I would never have children – there is no point in me going on with all this, Zak –’ It was a plea for help.

  ‘Oh, but there is, Clare.’ His lean figure relaxed and he tilted the chair back, balancing himself with one finger under the rim of the desk. ‘All the more reason. You are a very together person, Clare. You can do it.’ The soft Californian accent was rhythmical and calm. ‘You have enormous inner resources, Clare. I don’t have to tell you that.’

  ‘I don’t know that I have, Zak. I don’t know if I can cope with all this. Please. I must see you –’

  ‘You don’t need me, Clare.’ Zak glanced at Kenny, who was staring out of the window, his hands in his pockets. ‘You have the techniques now, and I know you can use them.’

  ‘But I’m not doing it right. I’ve tried and tried this afternoon, and I can’t do any yoga. I can’t meditate. I can’t even relax on the floor. I’m so wound up I feel I might snap at any moment –’

  ‘So. I want you to lie down on the floor. Do it now. Take the phone down there with you. Now, close your eyes.’ Zak was staring at the water. A punt with three young men in straw boaters was drifting down the centre of the river. ‘Now, I want you to picture somewhere special. Somewhere you love very much. Somewhere you feel secure.’ His voice was low and caressing.

  ‘It’s not going to work!’ There was real distress in her voice. ‘Oh, Zak! That was the one exercise I could do – the one I really enjoyed. I can’t even do that one!’ He could hear her panic; her sense of bereavement.

  ‘Well, the exercise you need is the one that works for you. So, we have to find out why it’s not working now, and start you off again. One of them will work, Clare.’ Suddenly he relented. ‘Look, where are you? I have to go to London tomorrow for a few days – if you can meet me there, maybe?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Clare hesitated. ‘I’m supposed to go home tomorrow. No, I’ll be here, Zak. I can’t face driving home with Paul tonight anyway, not after what has happened between us. Come here, to the house. I’ll be alone.’

  ‘OK, Clare. I’ll see you about three. And meanwhile keep relaxed, and keep practising the technique you find you’re comfortable with. It’ll work. Don’t try and force it. Just take it nice and slow and steady.’

  Putting the receiver down he took a deep breath. ‘Don’t say it, Kenny,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Just don’t say it!’

  Thoughtfully Clare looked down at the phone. She took the receiver off again and laid it gently on the table, listening for a moment to its quiet purr, then she ran downstairs to the front door. She locked it from the inside and set the chain, then slowly she walked upstairs once more. Zak’s calm voice had reassured her, had stilled the urgent jangling of her nerves. She would try again, as he suggested, and if it didn’t work at once, she would go on trying. There was no hurry. She had all evening. But somehow she had to find a way of getting back into Isobel’s world. There she could forget her own.

  She lit the candle and stood looking down at it for a while, breathing slowly and rhythmically, then slowly she raised her arms. She closed her eyes and sank down to the floor. ‘Be there,’ she murmured out loud as she began to build again her laborious picture of the empty moors. ‘Please, be there forme …’

  Isobel was on horseback, a bundle of clothes tied behind her on the wooden saddle, a cloak around her shoulders. A heavy fur-lined hood bounced behind her on her back and her hair was loose, streaming in the wind as she bumped up and down to her horse’s trot. She was alone.

  She glanced behind her apprehensively, but the castle, silhouetted blackly against the blaze of the sunrise, was quiet. She had not been missed yet. Her heart gave a little lurch of excitement as she kicked the animal into a canter.

  It was a year since Robert had left Duncairn and still she was unmarried. Martinmas had come and gone and Lord Buchan was too busy to arrange his marriage. He was constantly absent from the castle. One of the most influential men in the land, he was helping to direct the nation’s affairs, helping to balance the delicate political manoeuvres needed to keep Scotland an independent nation, free from English domination.

  Having been asked to choose Scotland’s king from amongst the several claimants to the throne, after the direct royal line had failed with the death of Scotland’s little Queen Margaret far away in Norway, seven years before, Edward of England was not inclined to retire now from Scottish politics. His aim was to be overlord of Scotland if not king himself. The nation was in deadly danger. In March Berwick was captured and sacked and then the Scots had been defeated at Dunbar. Lord Buchan had not returned to his northern lands. Isobel, with everyone in the Countess of Buchan’s household, heard the news from the south and waited anxiously to see what would happen next, but her anxiety had a very personal twist to it. She did not want the Earl of Buchan to come back at all, unless, perhaps, he had had second thoughts and still thought his betrothed too young for marriage.

  Nothing was said and Isobel prayed that the affair was forgotten. Then to her horror she found that it had merely been postponed while lawyers wrangled. Once again, she now knew, the date for the wedding had been set. So now she was having to carry out her plan.

  Robert’s departure the year before had left Isobel very thoughtful. If he would not help her, no one would. She was alone. Alone in every sense but the true one, for not for a moment was she allowed out of sight of one of Lady Buchan’s attendants; on every side there were eyes watching her.

  They could watch, but they couldn’t read her thoughts. Her vague childish optimism that the earl would forget about her was gone, so every waking second of her day was filled with plans of escape. She was cautious now, and outwardly docile, but inwardly she was defiant. She would not marry the Earl of Buchan.

  She still hugged the thought of Robert to her secretly. His words had shaken her but, unknowingly, he had offered her a challenge. It was one she could not resist, and the reward for success was freedom. He was married now to another and he could never marry her, but he loved her. He had kissed her, and that kiss, she knew instinctively, had sealed a bond between them which had to be redeemed.

  And to redeem it she had to leave Duncairn.

  She did not doubt she would succeed; there was no possi
bility of failure. Carefully she laid her plans. Calmly practical she had rejected the romantic notion of climbing the castle walls. She had to go out through the gates, but invisibly, covering her tracks, so that no one would miss her and no one see her go. That meant at night.

  The horses had been easy. She bribed Hugh, the handsome son of the farrier, to take one of Lady Buchan’s palfreys from the stables under the west wall and leave it overnight in the stall next to the forge. Reluctantly she decided against her own showy spirited grey pony, and selected instead a sturdy bay, a horse which would excite no attention on the road. Hugh knew what he had to do.

  The bundle of clothes was easy too. She gathered them together over two days, stuffing each garment down behind a coffer in a corner of the dark sleeping chamber. It was the actual leaving of the curtained bed she shared with Mairi and Alice, one of Lady Buchan’s grand-daughters, which would be very hard.

  She tried getting up before dawn to see what would happen. Grumpily Mairi turned her head on the pillows. ‘Where are you going, my lady?’ The woman’s eyes were still puffy with sleep.

  ‘Where do you think!’ Isobel slid out of the high bed.

  In the privy she waited, counting slowly to see if Mairi would get up to see where she was or go back to sleep.

  Mairi got up.

  The second idea was more daring. She announced she had decided to go to keep a dawn vigil in the chapel to pray for the soul of her dead father. Grumbling furiously Mairi accompanied her there too and Isobel was forced to kneel on the cold stone for an hour, her eyes fixed on the statue of the Virgin before she would admit that she could stand it no longer and creep back to the warmth of the bed.

  In the end the solution had presented itself. Mairi was so tired after her disturbed nights that she nodded off once or twice in the course of the day. Isobel noticed, and waited, and managed to whisper to Hugh.

  That night she was deliberately restless, kicking her companions, tossing and turning, determined to keep them awake as long as possible so their exhaustion would make them sleep through her exit from the bed, though, she had to acknowledge, she could not have kept still if she had tried. Keyed up beyond endurance as she was with the thought that Hugh would be waiting at dawn, she was terrified that she would fall asleep herself and miss her assignation with him.

  As the first lark soared upwards into the black sky Isobel lay completely still at last and held her breath. Beside her Mairi groaned and, punching the soft pillows, turned on her side. Within a few minutes her breathing had steadied and she was deeply asleep.

  On the other side of her Alice muttered incoherently and let out a gentle snore. Isobel breathed a little prayer and wriggling towards the foot of the bed pushed her way out between the heavy curtains.

  The spiral stair outside the door was pitch dark, the light in the sconce long since burned out. Holding her breath she listened; then she pulled her kirtle on over her head and wrapped herself up in her cloak. Barefoot she began to feel her way down the steep stairs, her hand pressed against the cold curving wall. In the silence of the pre-dawn she could hear everywhere the sigh and shift of the sea below the castle walls. It was almost high tide.

  The great hall was full of sleeping figures, men lying on the rushes, wrapped in cloaks or plaids; the air was fetid. Wrinkling her nose she crept along the wall towards the door and using every ounce of strength to lift the latch and pull it open she slipped through. Beside it the door ward, an empty ale tankard beside him on the floor, sprawled against the wall. He never heard the latch lift, nor saw the slim dark figure slip out of sight amongst the shadows.

  The cold morning air was sweet and intoxicating. Waiting only to pull on her shoes and take a firmer grip on her bundle, Isobel ran down into the outer bailey, praying Hugh had remembered.

  He was waiting at the postern with the horse, the keys in his hand. When she had gone he would relock it, slip the keys back into the gatehouse, and crawl back to his pallet at his father’s side.

  Isobel was exultant. She had not dreamed it would be so easy. Staring up into the brilliant blue of the sky she felt her heart soar up with the lark. She would show Lady Buchan and her son! And Robert! Other women might meekly marry and submit to their fate, but not she! She felt the wind lift her hair and, dropping the reins, she flung out her arms towards the sky. She was free!

  She rode all day without seeing anyone, carefully avoiding the wider tracks, keeping to the deer paths through the heather, always alert for the movement of horses or the alarm calls of the buzzards which would tell her she was not alone. Two days’ ride, she had heard, that was all; two days with her back to the rising sun and her nose to the land where it sets, then she would reach the territory of the Gordons, the sworn enemies of Lord Buchan.

  As night came near she grew less certain. She was desperately hungry, and she was cold. A heavy dew was falling as she stopped at last in a small glen with a burn running through it. It seemed a safe enough place, with shelter and grazing, but as the shadows lengthened and the soft darkness deepened around her, she felt for the first time a shiver of fear. Tethering the horse, she lifted down the heavy saddle with difficulty and, wrapping herself in her cloak, she settled herself to sleep.

  It was impossible. Her mind was racing in circles: pictures of her life in the Buchan castles, at Duncairn and Slains, Kinedar, Ellon and Rattray and the others flashed before her eyes, and with them visions of the countess, the earl, their household – and Robert. Again and again the face of the handsome young earl appeared before her. She scowled, shifting her weight as she leaned against the saddle, feeling the damp from the ground working its way into her clothes. Somewhere nearby an owl hooted and she shivered at the sound.

  If only Mairi could have come with her. She prayed silently that Mairi wouldn’t get into trouble for letting her escape. She loved Mairi, who had looked after her since she was a baby, going with her when, at the age of four after her father was brutally murdered, the Countess of Fife had sent her to the Buchans. Joanne de Clare, distraught and preoccupied after the death of her husband and the traumatic early birth of her son, had not had the strength to stand out against the earl’s demands that she send Isobel to be brought up by his mother. The owl hooted again and seconds later Isobel heard the agonised scream of a small animal dying in the heather.

  She was frozen and aching in every limb by dawn; sleep had come in the end, but only in short fits and starts, interrupted by every night sound. She had been reassured by the steady single-minded grazing of the horse and its relaxed dozing – it sensed nothing to fear – but her senses were over-stretched and exhaustion had made her too tired to sleep deeply. By dawn she was again in the saddle, her back resolutely to the crimson blaze of the sunrise in the sky behind her.

  Lady Gordon was completely confused by the arrival of her young visitor. The dishevelled clothes, the dusty, exhausted horse, the absence of escort or anything to prove her identity beyond the haughty demeanour and Isobel’s insistence that she be received at once by the lady herself were all most perplexing.

  ‘But who are you?’ Lady Gordon stared at her visitor in astonishment.

  ‘I am Isobel of Fife; the earl is my brother,’ Isobel smiled demurely, only half aware that she looked more like a peasant than a lady, with her peat-stained face and hands. ‘I have been held prisoner at Duncairn Castle. Lord Buchan wants to force me into marriage. I knew you would help me.’

  She was thoroughly enjoying herself now, her hunger and exhaustion temporarily forgotten, as she became conscious of the circle of men and women behind her, listening open mouthed to her dramatic appeal.

  She held her breath, her eyes pleading, as Lady Gordon stood up. The reference to the Earl of Buchan had evidently struck a chord with her. Her pale cheeks had coloured violently. ‘Nothing would surprise me about that man! You poor child. What a terrible thing! Of course we will help you!’

  Isobel sighed with relief. She was safe.

  Within an hour she had be
en fed and wrapped in warm blankets and put into a bed. Only minutes later, hugging herself with excitement, she was fast asleep.

  It was two days before she discovered her mistake.

  Running upstairs to join her hostess who was spinning in the comparative comfort of the solar as the soft rain fell outside, Isobel, pausing outside the door to grope for the handle, heard a male voice. It was full of excitement. Almost without realising it, she stopped to listen.

  ‘My God, mother! Do you realise what a strong hand it gives us? That child was no prisoner! She is Buchan’s betrothed. She has been lined up to be his bride practically since she was born. And we have her! It gives us the key, don’t you see? If we hold her he’ll have to agree to our demands over our boundaries and give us back our lands. All we have to do is say he must agree or he won’t see her again! She’ll have an accident of some sort, and disappear!’

  On the landing, Isobel closed her eyes.

  In the solar, Lady Gordon stood up, agitated. ‘How could you be so stupid, my son! He would never allow himself to be blackmailed! He’ll come and take her by force, killing every man, woman and child here and burning our roof over our heads while he’s at it.’ Isobel could hear the sound of her skirts catching on the dusty heather strewn on the floor as she paced back and forth. ‘Dear God, I wish Patrick were here. He would know what to do! We cannot defy Lord Buchan, we cannot!’

  ‘You were prepared to hide the girl.’

  ‘That was because I believed her. I thought she was being held against her will.’

  There was a laugh. ‘She probably was. She probably has a lad somewhere she would rather marry. She’ll learn.’ He sounded cynical. ‘When she’s a countess.’

  Isobel waited to hear no more. Cold with horror, she turned and fled down the long staircase.