by Candace Robb
Her uncle’s business partner and kinsman of the king, James Comyn, had come to depend on her reports. Not that she was his only source of information – a member of his own Comyn family, who were related to Balliol and Murray, had come to James in late July with the news that Murray had recaptured Urquhart and Inverness castles. Most recently Murray was said to have ousted the English from Aberdeen, then continued on down the eastern coast, intending to join Wallace at Dundee. Margaret knew that although James told her much, he kept more to himself. Every so often she sensed she was telling him things he already knew. The speed with which news travelled through the war-torn countryside amazed her. Sometimes she suspected that those who had chosen to remain in Edinburgh were all there as spies.
She worried about her family, scattered and torn in their loyalties. Her brother Andrew, a priest and canon of Holyrood Abbey, had followed his abbot in supporting Longshanks until his shame provoked him to disobey. For this he had been condemned to the post of confessor to the English army encamped at Soutra Hospital, which was a death sentence – he would know too much to ever be freed. Margaret feared Andrew would take terrible risks, having little to lose. She also worried about her younger brother, Fergus, whom she’d left in charge of both her husband’s and their father’s businesses in Perth. There was little to the responsibility with the English all but halting trade, but Fergus was an untried seventeen-year-old and had never been so alone. He might very well seek adventure as a soldier. Their mother could not be depended on to advise Fergus for she had retired to Elcho Nunnery several years earlier and even though so near Perth she sought no contact with her family. Margaret’s father, too, might now get caught up in the struggle; though he had fled to Bruges to avoid trouble with the English, it was said that King Edward planned to sail soon to the Low Countries. He was assisting the Flemish in containing an uprising to thus secure their support of the English against the French, who had made an alliance with the rebellious Scots. Rebellious against whom, she wondered – they merely wished to return their king to his throne, to repel Longshanks’s attempt to annex their country to his.
And though she had tried to harden her heart against her absent husband, whenever his lord Robert Bruce was mentioned she pricked her ears in hope of hearing something of Roger. But none spoke of him. Indeed, Margaret did not even know how he had come to join the company of the Bruce, who many suspected would fight against Longshanks only as long as he thought his own ambitions for the throne of Scotland might be realised. She had never thought Roger a man to betray his own king. Sick at heart at her husband’s defection, Margaret tried to forget him by focusing her energy on the tavern and her work for James Comyn.
On this warm summer evening James himself was seated at one of the tables, listening to Angus MacLaren’s tales. The storyteller’s wild red hair clung damply to his temples and cheeks and his beard was frothy with ale, but his voice was strong, drunk or sober, and he had more tales than any man Margaret had ever encountered, many of them bawdy, but all providing a good laugh, something they all sought these dark days as a respite from the talk of war. Now Angus was sitting back, pressing a tankard against his hot neck for the coolness of the smooth wood.
The talk returned to what was on all their minds.
‘They say men are gathering round Wallace in the countryside, at Kinclaven Castle near Dunkeld,’ said Sim the server.
‘He’s doing us no good up there,’ Mary Brewster muttered, her head sinking down towards her almost empty cup.
Margaret drew closer. Dunkeld was not so far from Perth and her brother Fergus. She slipped on to the edge of Mary’s bench.
‘Have you any news of Perth?’ Margaret asked.
‘Some say the folk there are welcoming English ships,’ said Angus.
‘Who else can get through the watches on the coast?’ James said with a slow shake of his head. ‘But as to their welcoming the English, how can we know what’s in their hearts from so far away?’
Margaret glanced at him, wondering if he’d said that to comfort her. He sat with cup in hands, moving it lazily and watching the pattern in the ale. His hands were those of a nobleman, clean, smooth, unscarred. His high forehead and long straight nose were fit for a coin. He raised his eyes and caught her watching him. She realised she had lost the thread of the conversation.
It did not matter, because Old Will had pushed himself up on to his feet and careened drunkenly their way, knocking over a bench and unseating several men whose bowls of ale crashed to the floor. As the men rose, their flushed faces turned ugly and curses flew. Margaret called for Sim to refill their bowls and asked for a volunteer to take the old man home.
‘The old boller won’t thank you for an escort home,’ said Angus. ‘He’d rather crawl beneath a table and take his rest than walk out into the night with one of us steadying him. Leave him be, that’s what I advise.’
It was true that the refilled bowls had prevented a fight and most folk present had resumed their conversations, but Margaret could not bear the thought of anyone lying down in the rotting straw. The English had confiscated all the new straw she had collected to refresh the floor and what was left had not been changed in months.
‘Murdoch doesn’t bother to shift him,’ James said. ‘Why should you?’
‘Because if he stays I cannot lock the doors.’
‘He won’t wake before you in the morning,’ James argued.
‘He’s sure to wake in the night with his bladder full,’ Margaret said. ‘This place already smells like a midden.’
‘Then what’s the worry?’ Mary Brewster asked, chuckling at her own wit.
‘It’s no matter now,’ Angus said. ‘Will’s gone.’
James shook his head at Margaret’s sigh. ‘I’ll go after him.’
Angus laughed as his friend walked out into the night. ‘Now you’ll have two men cursing you, lass. Och but you’re a match for your uncle. Blood shows.’
Mary, grunting as she slid along the bench, rose a little unsteadily. ‘I’ll see to Will.’
Margaret looked at Angus, who grinned but said nothing until Mary had departed.
‘She fancies him, so they say.’ He nodded as James stepped back inside. ‘I see the Comyn has left the old boller to Mary’s care.’
James shook his head. ‘I did not find him.’
In the morning Margaret and her maid Celia climbed High Street for Mass at St Giles. The fog that lay over the town was chilly on Margaret’s face, but she knew it to be a sign of a warm, sunny afternoon and looked forward to taking her mending out into the sunlight. She wrapped herself with the promise of warmth as she entered the drafty nave.
A priest stepped into her path. ‘Father Francis,’ she said with a little bow. He should have been in the sacristy preparing for the service. ‘Is there no Mass today?’
‘I would speak to you first.’ He drew her aside into a corner well away from the arriving parishioners. ‘You should hear this before the gossips spread the word. Mary Brewster sent for me early this morning after finding Old Will lying in his rooms in a faint, beaten about the head. He reeked of ale and vomit. I thought you might know something of his last evening.’
Margaret hugged her stomach, recalling the state the old man had been in when he left the tavern. ‘I sent James Comyn after Will when he left the tavern, but he’d disappeared,’ she whispered. ‘What was Mary doing in Old Will’s chamber?’ She had not believed Angus MacLaren’s claim that Mary fancied the old man.
‘She says it had been her habit to take him bread and ale after such an evening.’ The nave was filling. ‘I must be quick,’ said the priest. ‘He said something to Mary about an open door and crawling inside for warmth, that he’d lusted after other men’s women and other men’s wealth, particularly Murdoch Kerr’s wealth, and swore that he’d meant no harm.’
‘Had he stolen something?’ Margaret asked.
‘I don’t know. He said much the same thing to me. Part of it seemed a vague confessi
on of his chief sins. But the open door … And he said, “I emptied my belly without and crawled in for the warmth. I saw naught.” Murdoch might wish to check his undercroft.’
Margaret nodded. ‘I’ll tell him. And when Old Will recovers—’
Father Francis shook his head. ‘He passed as I was blessing him. At least he died shriven, may he rest in peace.’ The priest crossed himself, as did Margaret. ‘Now I must leave you.’
Expectations of a sunlit afternoon’s work no longer cheered Margaret and in a solemn mood she turned to Celia, who had stood by near enough to overhear.
Tiny Celia shook her head and drew her dark brows even more closely together than usual in a worried frown. ‘He named only your uncle?’
‘Yes. I pray Mary does not spread that about.’
‘But it can’t be Master Murdoch who killed him. I won’t believe it.’
‘I don’t think it was my uncle. In faith, I can’t think who would commit such an act against Old Will.’
They moved forward to join the others.
‘Poor old man,’ Margaret said under her breath. ‘He harmed only himself with his drink, no others.’
‘Sim said Will had angered some at the tavern last night.’ Celia did not look up from her paternoster beads as she spoke.
‘He upset a bench. They were happy with fresh drinks.’
‘Was your uncle there last night?’
‘No. God help us, Uncle was always kind to Old Will. He never sent him home until he had slept off some of the ale.’
‘I only wondered whether your uncle was there.’
‘I’m sure he was with Janet Webster.’
‘Master Murdoch’s so attentive to Dame Janet of late, do you think they might wed?’ Janet Webster had been widowed in the spring.
‘Her children would have much to say about that, and none of it good,’ Margaret whispered, then bowed her head and said no more, though she could not still her thoughts.
After Mass she went straight to Murdoch’s undercroft. There was little light in the alleyway, so she could not make out whether it was her imagination or whether it smelled fouler than usual, as if someone had retched near the door. She found the lock hanging from the latch as it should and almost turned away in frustration, but something made her give it a tug. It opened. She lifted it off and carefully opened the door. She knew at once that this was not as Murdoch had left it, for he was a tidy man and would not leave a barrel lying on its side in the aisle with staves littering the floor, or a casket half closed, the lid crushing a rolled document.
The casket reminded her of her brother Fergus’s letter, received a few days earlier.
All summer the English had worked on walling Perth, which irritated merchants because the wall cut off access to their warehouses along the canals. Fergus was not so inconvenienced because the Kerr and Sinclair warehouses were right on the Tay, and in fact he had been the guest of honour at many merchants’ tables earlier in the summer in case they needed to make use of his accessible spaces. But the garrison was now away and the merchants grew complacent, neglecting Fergus. With so many his age having disappeared into the countryside to fight or hide, he had little occupation beyond seeing to what little business he had and checking that Jonet, the serving woman who looked after Margaret’s and his father’s houses, was keeping both in order. He resented his sister Maggie and his brother Andrew for being in the thick of things. Growing lazy, in the heat of the day he took to napping in the shade of the fruit trees behind the family house.
One afternoon he’d awakened, puzzled that his dog was not lying beside him. Thinking he heard Mungo’s wheezing whine, he searched the outbuildings. At last he found the poor creature shut into a feed box in the stable. Once free, the dog ran straight for a puddle and lapped up the muddy water. Fergus puzzled over the dog’s entrapment because he was certain that Mungo had settled down next to him to nap. He could not have wandered off afterwards and trapped himself in the box, for the lid was too heavy. Someone must have put Mungo in the box. But why? To keep him from waking Fergus? He broke out in a cold sweat thinking how close to him someone had come in order to coax away the dog. It must have been someone from the town for, although Mungo was friendly, he barked at strangers. Had the dog made an enemy of one of his friends, or had he been the victim of a jest that might have gone very wrong if Fergus had not found him quickly?
Fergus checked the kitchen first, thinking of the reported thefts throughout the spring and summer, as the troops on both sides wanted feeding. But he found the kitchen undisturbed. With Mungo padding along beside him, Fergus crossed the yard to the house, entering by the back door. Once inside the dog ran ahead, nose low, following a scent. He was still crossing and recrossing the middle of the hall when Fergus noticed documents littering the floor in front of a cabinet, some of the rolled parchments crumpled so that they lay open, some undisturbed. A cracked leather-backed wax tablet lay against the wall. The dog was content with sniffing the floor round the littered area, so Fergus guessed whoever had searched his father’s papers was gone.
While he put the documents back in the cabinet and searched for the lock, he grew concerned about the servant – Jonet should have been seeing to supper by now. It was not market day, such as market day was now that the armies were seizing all that was worth eating.
Securing both doors, Fergus and the dog headed for Margaret’s house. A chill breeze stirred from the river. There would be rain tonight.
A stranger approached, a cleric, modestly attired. As he grew close he hailed Fergus by name, albeit with a hesitance, as if making a good guess.
‘You seek me?’ Fergus asked.
The man bobbed his head. ‘I am David, come from Elcho Nunnery, sir. Your mother, Dame Christiana, sent me. I thought I might find you at the house of your goodbrother Roger Sinclair, but I encountered only a maidservant – badly frightened, she was. I think you might wish to see to her.’
‘I was on my way there,’ said Fergus, not waiting for more conversation. ‘Come along if you wish.’
He found Jonet kneeling in the midst of chaos in Margaret’s hall. It was much as his father’s had been, documents tumbling off the shelves of a large dresser. A crock of lamp oil had also broken and stained several of the parchments. Jonet was picking up the shards of crockery and weeping.
‘They took neither food nor blankets – I had them airing in the backland,’ she said, when Fergus had coaxed her up and into a chair. ‘And the oil lamps on the wall, they were not taken.’
‘Did you see the intruder?’
She shook her head. ‘I came in from the kitchen and found it like this. The Lord was watching over me. I might have walked in on the thief.’ She crossed herself. ‘But I should have heard.’
‘I am glad you weren’t accosted,’ Fergus said. ‘The hall can be tidied.’
‘But the letters and deeds, sir. Some of them are ruined.’
‘I’ll see to them. I know you are upset, but we have a visitor. We would have some wine.’
When Jonet had left them, both men stood for a moment silently surveying the room.
‘I see that I come too late,’ said David. ‘Dame Christiana sent me to warn you that intruders broke into her room and searched it last night, and she feared they might come here next.’
‘Did her chamber look like this?’
‘Far worse. It is crowded with clothing and much else. It was all pulled out, turned over, spilled, trodden on. I saw no documents, however.’
‘She sent you – she was not harmed?’
‘Dame Christiana was frightened but not hurt.’
‘God be thanked.’
Fergus said nothing else until Jonet had served them and withdrawn, but he thought the cleric’s expression had changed a little, become guarded.
‘Did my mother recognise the men?’
‘It was her handmaid who saw them. She said there were three. The room was dark when one pulled her from her bed and pushed her to the door, whe
re another pushed her out. A third guarded her. Once they released her, she woke the convent.’
‘And my mother?’
David averted his eyes. ‘Dame Christiana had gone out to walk along the river, and thus she was saved the encounter.’
Fergus thought he left much out. ‘I would hear it all.’
The cleric put aside the cup he’d just lifted. ‘Dame Christiana—’ He hesitated, glancing at Fergus as if asking for his help.
‘She had foreseen this?’
The cleric looked relieved. ‘Yes. She knew of the intrusion before it happened, but knew not when it would occur. No, that is not quite right. She said she awakened to the terror of their being in the room and fled out of doors. I am afraid that Dame Christiana’s explanation has caused much discussion about her wits.’
Fergus could imagine. ‘My mother can be difficult to understand.’
David nodded over his cup.
Fergus recounted this event in a letter to Margaret, then debated with himself about sending it, for he could come to no resolution about what to do. He felt he’d been of no use when needed, allowing such a break-in to occur, and he admitted as much to his sister. He might just as well have gone to Aberdeen, where he had been about to become secretary to his uncle, a shipbuilder, when his father had decided he was needed at home. At least he might have been of use there.
Margaret had gone over the letter many times since Father Francis had read it to her, picking out the words she had learned to read over the summer. She feared she’d been wrong to remain in Edinburgh, that perhaps she had left Fergus with too much responsibility. He sounded frightened. And with the inn so little used as a hostelry of late, Murdoch could manage without her. Still, the countryside was dangerous, full of men with bloodlust and little to do, so she might not have found an escort to Perth.
