‘Bairns are aye hard work and can aye have a temper, red-haired or not.’ Mary smiled. ‘You’ll manage fine for you have a way with you that I’d have welcomed when my bairns were wee.’
It was an unexpected compliment that seemed to embarrass Kate and when Agnes emerged into the sunshine to ask about supper, she made an excuse to accompany her to the kitchen. Ellie began to make small noises, turning her head back and forwards as if she sought the breast. Mary lifted Ellie, walking her up and down, the small head cuddled into her neck, her crooked finger held against Ellie’s lips. She fastened on greedily, but after a moment of concentrated effort began to wail. Though Mary had carried her for but a few moments and the bairn a wee bit thing, Munro saw that she felt the weight as if the babe were half-grown, so he said,
‘We should go in. Fine and all as it has been, when the sun fails there is a bite to the air.’
In the solar he saw to the fire and so was only half-listening as Kate said,
‘What is it about a baby’s smell?’ Is it only me or do women aye find it soothes?’
‘I did. Do yet. Indeed to nurse a bairn still gives me a broody feeling, for all that I’m an auld hen and far past laying.’
‘Who’s past laying?’ Munro swivelled, ‘I trust our hens won’t fail us now. We have the winter to wait and we can add to our flock.’ He rose and touched his finger against Ellie’s palm so that she closed her fist around it. ‘And with another mouth to feed, I don’t know if we can stand the expense.’
Mary laughed. ‘You needn’t worry. It was I we spoke of.’
‘It’s well you said it then, for I wouldn’t dare. True or not.’
She laughed again. ‘Is Archie still out with the bairns? He has lasted longer than I supposed.’
‘They have gone coney-chasing. Though there are more effective ways of catching a rabbit or two than letting those three loose in the warren, and Robbie so puffed-up I don’t know how we will squash him once Archie is gone. Anna no less so. Maggie aye tags along, but will, I think, quickly settle to her old pastimes.’
Kate slid one finger against Ellie’s mouth to break her sucking. ‘Archie has seemed easier these last days and will, I hope, carry that feeling away with him.’
‘The influence of the children may stretch past the barmkin wall, but I doubt it’ll last in William’s company.’
Mary frowned at Munro. ‘Archie used to be gey easy going. And may be so again.’
‘Maybe.’
As if on cue, Archie appeared, the three children in tow. Robbie was immediately behind him, struggling to keep his step in time, forbye his shorter stride. Telltale traces of blood seeped through the corner of the canvas bag he carried.
‘You were sucessful then?’
‘How did you know?’ Robbie sounded disappointed.
Kate nodded at the sack. ‘How many have you?’
‘Only the one. We should’ve had more but,’ he cast a disgusted look towards Maggie, ‘she squealed and gave warning of our coming and set them all running. Archie said I did very well to get this one.’
‘Indeed I did. He has the makings of a fine stalker.’
‘That’ll be one less job for me then.’ Munro ruffled Robbie’s hair. ‘It’s a fine thing to have a son with his wits about him.’
Robbie tugged at the strings on the bag and thrust it under Kate’s nose.
She peered in. ‘A goodly size and a welcome addition to our supper. Maybe Archie could help with the skinning.’
‘Come on then.’ Archie hefted the sack, ‘If it’s rabbit stew we’re after, we need to get on.’
‘Me too.’ Anna was right on Robbie’s tail.
In the kitchen, Agnes looked up. ‘What have you then?’
Robbie held out the open sack.
‘Well now. It’s a fine buck and will make a tasty stew.’ She pulled on Anna’s plait. ‘If we leave the men to the easy job, d’you think you could take a hand in the vegetables with me?’ She ignored Anna’s scowl. ‘Rabbit is all fine, but without well-prepared vegetables, it isn’t much of a stew. And it takes a woman to make a good job of them.’
Mary returned to their earlier conversation. ‘I wish that Archie could bide a while.’ She kneaded her palm with her thumb. ‘Whether it is the bairns doing or not, he’s neither so tense nor so hard as when he came.’
Kate said, ‘They can’t all favour William at Kilmaurs?’
It was a new thought to Munro, but one that raised difficult memories. He thought on the Cunninghame party present at the meal after the hunt at Fintrie, and further back, the evening at Kilmaurs before the business at Annock, though most of those who had gathered then were dead. As he was fortunate not to be. Of those that remained, though they might not all favour William, would any openly withstand him? It was a question that came uncomfortably close to home. Kate was waiting for an answer.
I don’t know. I had a suspicion that John Cunninghame doesn’t sit easy with William and would wish himself elsewhere.’
‘Wishing is one thing . . .’ Mary tailed off.
Kate, as if determined to be cheerful, said, ‘Don’t forget Sybilla Boyd. Looking to her may keep Archie on the right track.’
Munro crossed to the window. The sun, bleached of colour, was slipping behind the hill. The half-shadows emphasized the unevenness of the ground, the hillside a crumpled plaid of brown and purple; bracken and late-flowering heather criss-crossed with narrow tracks where sheep wandered. He spoke his thoughts aloud.
‘Is there a right track in the Cunninghame household?’
Kate came to stand behind him, her breathing not quite even. ‘Let be. We’re peaceable the now. Why trouble over what may never happen.’
‘Sufficient unto the day?’ The mockery was unintentional, but so it came out and so she clearly took it.
She spoke to Mary. ‘It’s time Maggie was away, else she’ll be gey grumpy in the morning and we don’t want to present Archie with a sour face as he leaves.’
With the distant click of the latch on the bedchamber door Mary turned on Munro.
‘Have you no wit at all? Did I not say yesterday that now wasn’t the time to pick a quarrel with Kate?’
‘I didn’t intend . . .’
‘Men never do. You have a fine wife and bairns to be proud of and a fitty house with a well-stocked storeroom. Is that not enough for you?’
‘I know, I know . . .’ He stared into the gathering dusk. Sheep on the slope below the tower moved like pinpricks of light, while across the courtyard answering candles flickered as the horses were bedded down in the stable. From above, he heard Maggie’s protests as Kate undressed her, and from below, the twins laughter mingled with Agnes’ gruffness – it was enough. Of course it was . . .
‘Go after her. It isn’t that she doesn’t know what frets you, but every wife wants to feel important to her husband and especially so the now.’
‘She knows she is.’
Mary sighed. ‘Try telling her again. A soft word or two never goes amiss.’
Supper was a quiet affair. The twins, allowed to stay up for Archie’s last night, were unusually subdued; Kate and Munro still somewhat at odds, despite that he had taken his mother’s advice and gone to her. She had taken his apology, but tension remained, indication that she saw the Montgomeries as a new cloud on the horizon, the size of a man’s hand maybe, but a cause for concern for all that. To begin with Archie made a good show of heartiness, but became more morose as the meal progressed, snapping at Anna as she rehearsed for the third time yesterday’s tale of his fall into the loch trying to save Robbie’s rod, pulled out of his hand by an unexpected bite. Mary put an end to the ordeal, pleading tiredness and declaring her intention to retire. Kate, equally glad of an excuse, also rose, taking the children with her, leaving Munro and Archie to finish or not as they pleased.
Munro broke the silence. ‘I’ll ride a way with you tomorrow. It will give Sweet Briar some much-needed exercise: with the birth we haven’t been any d
istance for above three weeks.’ It was clear that the suggestion wasn’t altogether welcome and he searched for some way of extending the conversation. ‘Do you go by Sybilla’s?’
‘No. She’s to meet me here. It seemed more sensible than that I add to the journey.’ Archie was toying with the chunks of rabbit on his platter, his normally hearty appetite seeming to have deserted him, a sign perhaps that despite his selfish-sounding words, he was thinking more of Sybilla and of what he took her to, than of himself. And likely not comfortable in his thoughts. Alone with him, in the quiet that the bairns’ absence brought, Munro thought to take the opportunity to broach the subject of their mother’s health, but watching Archie’s face judged it wasn’t the right moment for discussing anything of consequence. He sought neutral territory. ‘The bairns will miss you. It’s been a fine few days for them. I don’t know how they will take to having to entertain themselves again. If you could have bided longer . . .’
‘They would have tired of me.’
‘Or you of them perhaps.’ It was a joke, but Archie echoed,
‘Or I of them.’
Munro rose. ‘Or I of you.’ An instinctive response, instantly regretted.
Archie shoved his food away. ‘Don’t let me hold you back.’
‘I have my peace to make with Kate and better now than later. She isn’t quite herself yet and women are gey odd creatures as you’ll find out soon enough when you have a wife and bairns of your own.’
‘I told you – I’m not for marrying soon.’
Munro still sought a light note. ‘Ill-favoured as you are, some body will have you. And taken in the round, there’s more to be gained than lost.’
‘So you say, though I’ve yet to see the proof of it.’
It was a defensive retort, born of Archie’s unwillingness to admit to his growing appreciation that the atmosphere at Broomelaw was an altogether happier thing than it ever could be at Kilmaurs. A lie spoken without thought to what it implied of Kate; Munro’s reaction instant.
‘Brother you may be and guest, but if you cannot at least try to be civil, then it’s best you go, and don’t hasten your return. Kilmaurs is welcome to you.’
They were both on their feet, a pair of dogs spoiling for a fight.
‘Fine by me. Three days is more than enough time to bury myself in a wee-bit tower, a clutch of bairns the only distraction.’ Archie turned back to the table, lifted his tankard. ‘And you needn’t trouble. I can see myself off in the morning, that is . . .’ his lip curled, ‘. . . if you aren’t turning me out tonight.’
The gesture was William’s. Munro, thinking of his mother in the chamber above, held his fists pressed against his side, forced himself to respond in word only. ‘All that any man could want is here, Archie, if you only had the sense to see it. You have been too long in William’s company. Take care that he does not blind you altogether. And extinguish the candles when you’re done and rake the ashes. We have no wish to be burnt in our beds.’
The stairs did nothing to calm him as he climbed to his chamber, so that Kate, who lay back against the pillows, her hair loose about her shoulders, caught his scowl full face as he entered.
Munro saw the instinctive narrowing of her lips. ‘It isn’t you that deeves me. Archie is determined to give offence and I . . .’
‘And you to take it. If it is distance from William you wish, I share it, but bickering at home will not save us from fighting abroad, only make us less able to withstand it.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He leant towards her. ‘Kate?’
‘Promise me you will at least try to talk to him in the morning. To let him go in this frame, it would not be well done.’
He turned her face towards him, sensed a softening. ‘I promise. I had no wish to. . .’
‘There’s more than one way to apologize and some . . .’ she grasped the tangle of hair at the nape of his neck, pulled his head down, ‘. . . some are more fitty than others.’
Sybilla arrived early the following morning, to be met in the barmkin by all bar Archie. Munro helped her dismount, sought for an excuse to explain Archie’s tardiness. And found none, only a return of the slow-burning anger that had taken him the previous night, so that he had to make a conscious effort to hide it.
The reins looped over her wrist she looked directly at him. ‘What ails him?’
‘I don’t rightly know.’
‘He isn’t over keen to be back at Kilmaurs? Or too keen perhaps? I could see for myself that Kilmaurs has changed him and not for the better.’
Munro tried to sound reassuring. ‘The problem lies with William. But you are to see to Lady Glencairn. She is, I think, more kindly.’
‘You know her?’
‘Only slightly. But what I don’t know, I have by reputation, and that good.’
Above them a kestrel hung suspended against the growing light, the movement of his wings invisible. They watched him arc like an arrow and disappear.
‘Archie didn’t say . . .’ Sybilla stopped, started again. ‘Do you know what went awry with the maid I am to replace?’
‘Lasses marry, have bairns . . .’ It was true in its way. ‘And not always at their Lady’s convenience: she went, I think, to Largs.’
‘Oh. No matter. It’s no concern of mine, though I daresay I’ll find out soon enough.’
Robbie and Anna were playing ‘follow my leader’ Maggie trudging valiantly in their wake. Mary shivered at the doorway. When Archie did appear he had all the markings of a bad night: his face flushed, the skin puffy around his eyes. The twins rushed to hang onto his elbows, Maggie bouncing up and down behind them. Mary stepped forward, but was arrested by his stiff bow.
‘Mother . . . Kate.’ He cast off Robbie and Anna and swung himself into the saddle, jerked the reins. ‘Sybilla?’
Robbie dropped back but Anna clung on to his stirrup, her face crumpling as he detached her again. When he turned towards the gateway he wore again the closed, wary look of his arrival. Munro kept his voice low. ‘You could at least look civil, for our mother’s sake.’
Archie’s only response to spur his horse. Munro handed Sybilla into her saddle, swung into his own. Making the promise to Kate had been easy; keeping it would not.
Sybilla turned, ‘It’s as well you’re here, else it could be a gey lonely ride.’
‘I don’t go far with you, indeed, for all the good it does me, I mightn’t be here at all.’ Belatedly, Munro realised the rudeness. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
‘We are old friends and I’m not easy offended: what did you mean?’
‘Last night . . . we parted ill. Kate hoped that this morning would mend matters. Besides, I had intended to seek his opinion of our mother. When you see someone almost daily it isn’t easy to know . . .’
‘Whether she fails or if it is only imagination?’
‘Aye.’
‘I haven’t seen her for a while but she seems wearied. It isn’t my place to advise but if she doesn’t wish to draw attention to how she feels, I wouldn’t pry. My mother wished to pretend it wasn’t happening and we gave her this wish for as long as we could. And for that, I think she was grateful. . . . What does it serve to fret over what can’t be changed?’
She sounded so like Mary that he laughed. ‘Mother said the very same to me yesterday, though with other than health in mind. So thank you. Place or not, it is welcome advice.’
She reached across, touched his arm. ‘As for Archie . . . I will do what I can. He is changed, but,’ faint colour tinged her cheeks, ‘I do not think him all lost.’
‘Thank you again.’ He clicked his tongue at Sweet Briar and she sprang away, Sybilla’s horse following. ‘We mustn’t let him get too far ahead, else it will indeed be a gey lonely ride for you and not so safe either.’
Chapter Four
Hugh Montgomerie stood on the quayside at Flekkefjord watching the Svanen slip its berth, his thoughts on Elizabeth and on the tall Norwegian he had accosted at the dock. He had seemed rel
iable and willing enough to take a message and the silver to pay for its carrying, and so Hugh spared a quick prayer for the Svanen’s safe passage.
It was a notion that had come to him as they nudged towards the shore. Docked, Hugh had seen from the bustle on the ship alongside, that she prepared to take the tide. Fortunate for him that despite James’ desire for haste, the delay in their horses’ arrival meant that their party waited on the quay, stamping their feet to stave off the nipping cold, their breath eddying against the sharp brightness of the sky. Fortunate too that the master of the Svanen had come to pass common courtesies with their captain, and to hear what weather awaited him. It was a lucky strike that the Svanen made for Leith. Unfortunate that there wouldn’t be a way of knowing if his message arrived, for the royal party would likely be in Oslo when the Svanen returned, but at least he would have tried.
‘It’s a sop to your conscience surely,’ Alexander came up behind Hugh. ‘You were keen enough for the venture before, so little use in guilt now. The horses are here and all mounted save us. James is tolerant enough and will respect your concern for your wife and bairn, but only so long as it doesn’t hold up his own plans. Remember that you are here and others are not, and make what capital of it you can.’
Hugh turned. ‘I shan’t forget who I have to thank.’
‘There are those I would choose to winter with and those I wouldn’t, and family is aye better than strangers.’
Hugh saw that James was leaving. ‘You have the right of it. The King is gey impatient.’
‘And to so little effect. It’s a long road to Oslo and won’t be easy on either men or horses, forbye what the weather may throw at us.’ Alexander, seeing Hugh’s expression as he took the reins of the sturdy pony that was all that was left for him, laughed outright. ‘It has four legs and I dare say will carry you. Though catching up with the James may be a different matter.’
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