The Fire In The Flint (Margaret Kerr Mysteries 2)

by Candace Robb

  Glancing at Celia as she considered this suggestion, Margaret saw the maid’s obvious curiosity. And why not use some of the trappings her mother was hoarding?

  ‘Come, Celia, we shall accept Ma’s invitation with gratitude.’

  ‘Am I discarded so lightly?’ Roger protested.

  Margaret squeezed his arm, feeling his muscles tensed, and gave him an encouraging smile. ‘You know Ma,’ she said. ‘If we press this, she might banish us all. As you so wisely said, we must think of Andrew.’

  Coldly withdrawing his arm from her grasp, Roger bowed his acquiescence, though anger still darkened his countenance. Margaret was too agitated about the coming meeting to have the patience to soothe his feelings. Besides, Christiana had foiled whatever had been his plan, and Margaret regarded that as a favour.

  Margaret and Celia followed Marion out into the quiet yard and up the covered steps to the first floor. Her mother’s chamber was down the covered gallery facing away from the yard, looking east. Marion knocked, then opened the door and bowed Celia and Margaret in. A confusion of furnishings alive with coloured patterns crowded the room, distracting Margaret’s attention as if the trappings of her mother’s life shouted at her. As her mother rose, Margaret noted the costly wool of her simple gown, the impeccably white wimple.

  ‘My child,’ Christiana said, offering her hand. It was that of a lady, soft and white, as Celia had wanted hers to be. As Margaret bent to kiss it, her mother said, ‘I’d had news you were in Edinburgh, Maggie.’

  Straightening, Margaret nodded. ‘I’ve come home. With Roger.’

  ‘Oh yes. I could not see your husband today.’ Hand at her throat, Christiana gazed down at Margaret’s hem. ‘Your gown is travel-worn. Surely the journey from Perth is not so muddy?’

  ‘I’ve come from Edinburgh, Ma. We have stopped here before continuing on towards home.’

  Christiana searched Margaret’s face. ‘What is wrong that you come to me in such haste?’

  ‘I bring news of Andrew.’

  ‘Sweet heaven.’ Christiana raised her voice. ‘Marion, refreshments.’ Then she noticed Celia, who stood behind Margaret. ‘Where is your family?’ she asked Celia in Gaelic.

  ‘I do not understand, Dame Christiana,’ said Celia.

  ‘She does not speak the tongue, Ma. Celia is Dame Katherine’s maid. She accompanied me to Edinburgh, as was proper, and will now help me reorder my household.’

  ‘She looks like one of my clan, a MacFarlane with her dark hair, joined brow, and pale skin.’

  Marion had arranged a table and two chairs, one cushioned, near a small brazier. Wine and oat cakes and a bowl of berries were set out for them. Margaret’s mother settled in the cushioned chair and motioned Margaret to the other.

  ‘A maid should not be so tiny,’ said Christiana. ‘How can the MacFarlane carry your things?’

  ‘Mistress, I am not—’ Celia began.

  Margaret interrupted her. ‘Celia has proved her worth over and over, in a most difficult and dangerous time.’ She was angry to be caught up in one of her mother’s tortuous arguments. ‘Do you not wish to hear about Andrew?’

  ‘He told me what he’d done, Maggie.’ Christiana nodded to Celia. ‘Do you see that trunk in the far corner? Take a lamp and look at the gowns, sleeves, shifts, gloves, veils. See if there is anything that would be of use to your mistress. I have no need of such finery among the sisters.’

  Celia bobbed her head and withdrew. She would be content for a long while, handling Christiana’s fine clothes.

  ‘Your offer is generous, Ma. I thank you,’ said Margaret.

  ‘See whether you might be of help to my daughter’s maid,’ Christiana said to Marion, then trained her eyes on Margaret with a formidable stare. ‘I am aware that Roger has not provided you with much. He is a disappointment. But you need not suffer.’

  Margaret blushed and busied herself pouring wine for both of them. ‘You know what Andrew did for his abbot, but do you know how his abbot rewarded him?’ She handed a cup to her mother.

  Christiana took it, but set it down with a clatter and leaned back in her chair.

  Margaret saw that her mother’s eyes were unfocused.

  ‘He will go through fire.’ The vein in Christiana’s left temple pulsed.

  ‘Andrew has been sent as confessor to the English at Soutra Hill,’ said Margaret.

  With a sigh, her mother pressed her throbbing temple, closed her eyes, head tilted, as if listening.

  ‘As confessor, Andrew is privy to their secrets,’ Margaret continued. ‘The English will fear what he might tell his fellow Scots. They’ll not let him go, Ma. When they return to England …’ She stopped, reluctant to say the words.

  ‘They’ll either take him with them, or execute him here,’ Christiana finished in a fluting voice quite unlike her normal speaking voice.

  Margaret was uncomfortable with her mother in this state. Silence sometimes quieted the spell, so Margaret turned her attention to the room, let her gaze wander over the small caskets, footstools, silk-wrapped cushions. But a flutter of fabric and a clatter of beads drew her attention back to her mother. Christiana was fingering paternoster beads, flying through the decades. Margaret covered her mother’s hands to still them and then slipped the beads from them. Christiana lunged for the beads, but Margaret held them out of her reach.

  ‘You don’t understand, Maggie. I must say my penance.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘My visions are not to be shared.’ Her mother spoke sharply, almost angrily. ‘God gives the visions to me. No one else.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Margaret had been taught that the Sight was never used for oneself.

  ‘The prioress says I am wrong to share my visions. It is sinful.’ Christiana spoke in a rush of words, her colour high. ‘God tests me with them.’ She hesitated. ‘No, Dame Agnes did not say that, but it must be so or they would have ceased long ago. I revealed so many, too many. God have mercy on me, a sinner, and forgive my error.’ She crossed herself.

  Margaret was familiar with her mother’s agitated state. It often sent her to her bed for days. Margaret tried to draw her mother out of her thoughts.

  ‘Will you ask the sisters to pray for Andrew’s deliverance?’

  Eyes wide, Christiana gave a strangled laugh. ‘What are you thinking? Pray for Andrew? They curse him, Maggie.’

  They curse him. It had not occurred to Margaret that the sisters might know of how Andrew had assisted the English in stripping the kirks of Scottish royal documents.

  ‘He was observing his vow of obedience, Ma. But later he saw how wrong it had been to obey Abbot Adam, and it is because he disobeyed – to help me – that he is in mortal danger.’

  ‘As are we all with the English in our midst,’ said Christiana, calmer now. ‘But I shall ask them to pray for him if you wish it.’

  She should wish it. ‘He is a good man,’ said Margaret, ‘and a brave one. I do wish it.’

  Her mother pressed her temples, shook her head. ‘If you say so. But you know he should have been a merchant. Malcolm was so disappointed. First sons do not enter the Kirk.’ She was like any mother now, fussing about how her children came up short of her expectations.

  It was useless to argue with her, and besides, while she was calm Margaret wished to learn what detail she could about the visions regarding herself. Whether or not she would share them with Roger she would decide after she heard them, though she doubted she would.

  ‘At Yuletide you told me about two visions of my future. Do you remember?’ Margaret recounted them, knowing her mother’s absent-mindedness.

  Christiana had resumed her prayers, despite her lack of beads, using her fingers to count out a decade.

  ‘Who are the men in the visions?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘I should never have told you of the visions.’ Her mother stilled her hands for a moment and looked at Margaret, a deep, long look, that seemed to bore into her soul. ‘You’ve told
others, haven’t you? Fie, daughter. You should not have done so. It will bring you only grief.’

  Margaret trembled in her mother’s gaze. The telling had caused her grief, that was true. ‘Who is the king of the Scots in the vision?’

  Christiana pinched her lips and shook her head. ‘You’ll draw me out no more, Maggie, I’ll not sin for you.’

  The prioress had turned her mother against using the Sight for Margaret’s enlightenment. ‘Damn your prioress. She blathers on about things beyond her ken. You know that the Sight is to share with the people. It is not a gift for the selfish.’

  ‘You will burn in hell for cursing the good prioress, Maggie. I should not have let you grow so close to your Uncle Murdoch, I see it now, too late. He taught you the devil’s ways.’

  ‘He saved us many a day when you were abed and Da away, Ma.’

  Christiana waved away the comment and turned her attention to the maids. ‘Well, Celia,’ she called, ‘have you found anything to your taste?’

  Bright with their explorations, Celia and Marion joined them holding several gowns and surcoats.

  Examining them, Margaret shook her head. ‘I have little occasion to wear such fine things.’ She said it rather sharply, irritated by her mother’s changing the subject.

  ‘But where will you get the wool to make anything else?’ Celia asked, her face pinched beneath the dark brows. Apparently she was not enjoying herself as Margaret had thought she would.

  Weary of arguing, Margaret said, ‘We’ll accept whatever you feel appropriate, Celia.’ She could always put them away somewhere.

  ‘And now the tapestries,’ said Christiana. ‘Marion, show Celia those.’ She turned to Margaret. ‘I approve of your little MacFarlane. Your goodmother has made up for the neglect of her son by gifting you with such a clever lady’s maid. I hope you are duly grateful.’

  ‘I am. Ma, the visions. You’ve already told me of them, so it cannot be a sin to fill in the parts you left out before.’

  Her mother rose and wandered over to the maids, pulling out two of the tapestries that Celia had set aside. ‘These will keep out the drafts and cheer the hall. And that small one for the bedchamber. Now gather all this and put it together so that the horses might carry the pack. No doubt Maggie and her husband are eager to reach home.’

  ‘Send it upriver on a boat, Ma, to our warehouse.’ Margaret was trying to keep her head out of the mists of prophecy by focusing on the figure her mother cut, graceful in her straight carriage, though showing her age in a greater girth round her middle that was not quite hidden by the soft folds of the fabric. She was an ageing woman afraid of dying in sin.

  ‘So be it,’ sighed Christiana. ‘By boat. But you’ll shiver tonight without the tapestry over your chamber doorway,’ she warned Margaret.

  ‘We’ll stay here tonight, I think.’

  Christiana frowned as she gazed around her crowded room. ‘Here?’

  ‘In the guest house, but not this room.’

  ‘Oh yes, you should all be comfortable here, Dame Katrina has borrowed many of my furnishings to improve it.’

  ‘Why could you not see Roger today?’ Margaret asked.

  ‘I felt I should not. I felt it keenly.’

  ‘You were keen to see us wed.’

  ‘Malcolm assured me that Roger Sinclair was a good match for you.’

  Margaret did not doubt her father instigated the match. ‘You will say no more about the visions?’

  Christiana shook her head. ‘You must go now, Maggie. I have not the strength for long visits.’

  Christiana wished the children would leave her in peace, but she suspected that these visits were not of their doing, but that God sent them to her. Not so long ago He’d tested her when Fergus twice appealed to her for help, and now she must embrace her daughter’s problems. It was frustrating to have tasted contentment, peace, and now have the turmoil of her maternal unhappiness intrude.

  She was selfish, that is what God wanted her to face. All three of her children had good cause to seek the solace of their mother’s love. They had a right to expect her to be a fount of comfort and wisdom. But she had not the strength to be the mother they deserved. No one had ever understood her frailty.

  She yearned for the quiet of devotion, to repeat the prayers until a white light enfolded her in absolute serenity, withdrawing all pain, physical and spiritual. She knew that this was possible, for she had long watched Dame Bethag, whom all in the convent knew to be a most blessed mystic, at her devotions in Elcho chapel. Christiana had witnessed Bethag’s uplifted face illumined by God’s grace. At other times she had witnessed the nun weeping while from her throat rose a song expressing ineffable joy. Bethag moved about her day with such serenity that all loved to be near her. Even many of the other sisters experienced benedictions, though more modest than Bethag’s. But not once had Christiana’s prayer lifted her into the presence of the divine. Were the nuns of Elcho so much worthier than she?

  Maggie’s visit had ripped open the veil of peace Christiana had managed to draw around her. Her daughter was disappointed in her husband, and with cause. Roger had been wrong to worry her so, and to leave her so little money on which to live while away, but he had returned and Maggie must abide with him. Her journey to Edinburgh and her sojourn there with her uncle had been dangerous and unwarranted, and Murdoch’s influence could be seen in her new bold stubbornness. Yet Christiana knew she was also to blame. It was probably her vision of Maggie with soldiers that had filled her daughter’s head with ideas like running off to Edinburgh. That she had no control over her Sight was an agony none comprehended. She must say no more. Prioress Agnes had made that clear.

  And yet how satisfying it would be to share what knowledge she had with her daughter. How like herself at that age Maggie looked. It was a pity she had not been given the Sight – she had the courage for it.

  The weary travellers ate well, drinking temperately as had been their custom all along the way, and spent some time relaxing around the hall fire before bed. It was a luxuriously large fire and, though it was summer, all seemed drawn to its bright warmth.

  Margaret watched Roger talking quietly with the other men. Gone was the proud swagger and calculated elegance of the ambitious merchant. He had hardened and withdrawn to some inner core of which she had been unaware. He watched others closely as they spoke and gestured. He seemed complete in himself, needing no one, not even her.

  She turned her attention to Celia, beginning to plan the airing of the house in Perth.

  *

  Celia climbed wearily to the chamber she was to share with Margaret. After the warmth of the hall, the covered steps and gallery felt cold. It was a pity that the men would have all the benefit of the fire, while she and Margaret had to make do with a tiny brazier. But the chamber above was properly private. Celia feared her mistress’s mood tonight. Margaret surely could not be happy about her mother’s reception.

  Nothing Celia had heard about Dame Christiana MacFarlane had prepared her for the depletion of strength in both body and soul that resulted from being in her presence. Margaret’s mother reminded Celia of a holy man she had once seen preaching near her family’s kirk, thundering about the day of judgement with a fervour that was more curse than sermon, staring into the faces of those listening with such intensity that he caused them to shrink into themselves with the horror of their damnation. That such a beautiful woman, with such grace, could cause a similarly frightening despair simply by being in the same room appalled her. She had thought Margaret a complaining daughter, resentful of the things that her mother withheld, as so many daughters were. But now she thought Margaret was to be admired for her strength.

  Judging the chamber ready, Celia heated some spiced wine to soothe Margaret to sleep. Soon Margaret appeared and began nervously plucking at the laces at waist and shoulders. Celia put down the cup and hurried to assist her.

  ‘Marion came down after you left the hall,’ said Margaret. ‘Mother wish
es to see me tomorrow morning before we depart.’

  ‘To apologise for her pathetic welcome?’ Celia muttered, working at the knots that Margaret had tightened with her impatient tugging.

  ‘What you witnessed was her customary behaviour,’ said Margaret. ‘But perhaps she has relented, and means to explain the visions. I could see Roger hopes so.’

  That bitch holed up in luxury and safety in this nunnery while her children are abroad in the world without kin to protect them. Celia bit her tongue and put some valerian from her travel supplies in Margaret’s spiced wine. She seemed to need it.

  As James’s small party approached Kinclaven Castle, the long-shadowed evening wood was so quiet that he thought they had come too late, that Wallace and his company had already moved on. When he halted, Angus MacLaren rode up beside him.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said James.

  MacLaren grunted. ‘And left their fires burning, their horses feeding? You’re too much in the towns, Jamie, your ears and nose are numb.’

  Angus moved to the head of the party and led them slowly across a stream, over a small rise, and into a circle of wary-eyed guards with daggers and bows drawn. The encampment was not yet visible, but James now detected the smoke that MacLaren had smelled much further away.

  One of the men recognised James. ‘It is James Comyn, kinsman of our king,’ he told the others, ‘and friend of the Wallace.’

  When the weapons were lowered, James and the rest of the party dismounted and followed one of the men over another hill and round a bend, where the size of the encampment brought a cry of surprise from Hal.

  James fell back to reassure him. ‘You’ll find few of high birth here, my friend. It is the men who work the land and tend the herds who fight for our land under the Wallace.’

  ‘So many.’

  ‘Christ, we’d hoped for twice as many – several hundred. But come, we’re all the more critical to our king’s welfare when we count for so goodly a portion.’