A Cruel Courtship (22 page)

Ada nodded. ‘I am only thinking of your safety, Celia,’ she said.

‘I know, Dame Ada.’

‘Good,’ said Margaret. ‘We must work together. That is our strength.’

Sir Francis dropped back to ride by Andrew as they reached the eastern boundary of the troop encampments – King Edward’s troops. He seemed to enjoy conversing with Andrew, trying out his philosophy of life, of leadership, of faith. Andrew found him a man of honour with a strong sense of responsibility for his men – those who were not felons.

‘There is some news,’ said Francis. ‘James Stewart and the Earl of Lennox met with Surrey several days ago to request a week’s grace in which to persuade Wallace and Murray to put down their arms. He granted it.’

With a glance at Andrew, Francis paused, obviously awaiting a comment.

‘An unexpected development.’

‘What do you think is the likelihood of a peaceful settlement?’

‘I know none of these men, Sir Francis,’ Andrew said.

‘You must have an opinion.’

He’d grown comfortable with Sir Francis, but not so that he forgot the danger of his intention. ‘I pray for peace, but do not expect it.’

‘John Balliol has made no attempt to escape back to his people here. Nor is there any evidence of his communicating with his subordinates to rally the people against King Edward. Why are your people so stubbornly supportive of a man who does not seem to miss being their king?’

Andrew looked out over the sea of men. ‘It is possible that Balliol is not necessarily what they are fighting for, but simply rule by their own king, so that they retain their sovereignty rather than become a little-loved part of Edward’s kingdom.’ They – it was so simple as long as he used ‘they’ instead of ‘we’.

Sir Francis did not respond at once, and Andrew wondered whether he’d gone too far. But perhaps he was simply distracted by the army among which they rode.

Despite the fairly steady stream of soldiers passing through the spital at Soutra, Andrew had not been prepared for the size of the camps stretching along the water meadows, or pows, to the south of the River Forth and into the dry land south of Stirling. In sheer numbers his countrymen could not hope to compete against such a host. He wondered whether it was possible for them to make up in strength, courage, and the passion they felt for defending their own land and people what they lacked in numbers. He was not sanguine.

‘You might be right, Father Andrew,’ said Sir Francis at last. ‘It would explain much that I have
heard. What do you think of the rumours that the younger Robert Bruce, now Earl, has turned against his benefactor and long-time friend, King Edward?’

Andrew smiled – an easy, quite natural smile. ‘I think it laughable that anyone would give any credit to such a rumour.’

‘I think it quite possible,’ said Francis, ‘but doomed to failure. Balliol’s Comyn relatives would never support him. Who do you think they would put forward?’

‘Though of course I know of them I know little about them, Sir Francis.’ It was true, and he was glad of it. ‘Abbot Adam is able to expound at length upon such matters, but I have never moved in such circles.’

Sir Francis nodded, then excused himself to ride to the head of his men as they neared the base of Stirling rock. Andrew wondered whether he’d inadvertently given away any information.

In the evening, after Ada had been escorted once more to the castle, Margaret turned her attention to her growing sense of urgency about Johanna. She argued with herself about whether to go to her and warn her of the vision, not entirely certain whether it had been the Sight or her own intuition. She must keep her head about this, for surely she was still capable of perception and judgment. In Father Piers’s chamber she might have been drawn to the clothing of the dead by the Sight, but it was by her
own powers of observation that she had understood his distress and noticed the signs of his drinking and lack of sleep.

Dame Bethag believed Margaret’s vision and Christiana’s visions were from God; if she was right, they must have a purpose. But beyond a general warning for Johanna, Margaret could think of no other way to help her. She had no one who might stand guard at the woman’s home, and an attack might happen anywhere. Yet she felt she owed it to Johanna to give her the choice whether or not to heed the warning and seek sanctuary.

She sought out Celia, who was sitting with Maus in the doorway to the backlands, enjoying the evening breeze. Drawing Celia aside, Margaret told her she was going out for a little while, not far, and did not need an escort.

‘But it’s dark, Mistress, or nearly,’ Celia said, glancing up at the dusky sky. ‘The men will have been drinking.’

‘I doubt there is enough ale left in the town to make them dangerous,’ Margaret said. She was not as sanguine about that as she tried to sound, but she was not ready to discuss the Sight at length with Celia. ‘This I shall do alone.’

Dusk was darkening the backlands, though the sky was shot with eerily lit clouds. Margaret wondered whether the colours were caused by the armies’ cook fires down in the valley. The smoke of the cook fires in the town gave texture to the air.
From the surrounding houses came the murmur of voices, punctuated now and then by shouts, snatches of arguments, or a child’s cry, but Stirling seemed subdued this night. She imagined that Huchon Allan’s hanging and more recently Gordon Cowie’s murder had frightened many – particularly those who supported the English. She had been disappointed that Ada had learned nothing from Isabel – except that the widow was weak with grief and terrified that she would be next. ‘A wife is judged by her husband, as a husband his wife,’ she’d repeated over and over again to Ada.

But besides her concern for Johanna, what was oddly uppermost in Margaret’s mind this evening was the coming battle for the bridge across the River Forth. She’d not given much thought to the fighting before, focused as she was on reopening the line of communication between Johanna and James, but despite her irritation with Father Piers’s hesitation to proceed she, too, worried whether it was now too late for James to relay any message to Murray and Wallace. She did not know how he would make his way through the English camps and across the River Forth to the Scots on Abbey Craig. James had told her so little, and having never been in battle she could not imagine what might be happening down in the valley.

Awakening to the danger, she realised that she and the rest of the townsfolk were precariously balanced over a deadly precipice with little
information about what lay below them, or even whether the fighting would be contained in the valley. She had assumed that any battles would occur down below, but considering the charred houses farther down the hill, the bloodstains on walls near the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, the rubble left along the route of a siege, she realised that these were such chilling scars because they were evidence that the fighting often encroached on or even moved through the towns. Here on Stirling Rock they would be overrun if Wallace and Murray sent a raiding party to the castle. Margaret’s heart pounded in her ears. There was no way out. She and everyone in Stirling were trapped here, between the battling armies and the castle. Perhaps it was this tension that was behind Gordon Cowie’s death, an anger fanned by fear.

‘God help us,’ she whispered. And what was it for, but that they might have a slightly less English, slightly more Scots king to rule them. Suddenly it all seemed like a pathetically misguided child’s game.

She’d picked her way out to the midden as if headed to relieve herself, and then slipped into what had been a carpentry shop until the English had confiscated the wood and tools. Idle now, it was dark and deserted, lacking both door and shutters, merely a wattle and daub shell, truly only twigs and mud, which was made apparent by a chilly draught on her feet. It had been stiflingly hot in the house,
but out here a breeze cooled the day’s heat. She’d intended to wait in the shelter for a while to see whether anyone followed her. Now it seemed less important. Perhaps she and Celia would be safer slipping down the hill in men’s clothing than waiting here for what was to come.

This was panic, she told herself, not clear thinking. Longshanks had ordered the men of Berwick slaughtered the previous summer, their bodies left to decay in the streets, to be eaten by scavenger birds. He was a murderer, not fit to be king, and that was why they fought him. She had never heard what became of the women and children of Berwick. Had they been taken away, sent out of the town? Had they died of the disease brought by the putrefying corpses? Had they tried to bury their men? Although she’d prayed for the victims often, she whispered a prayer for those she’d forgotten until now, now that she feared she might have something in common with them. She wondered whether there was enough earth in Stirling for all the corpses that the army might leave behind.

But Wallace and Murray knew that Scots were still in the town; they would not slaughter their own people, else they would have little left to defend and rule. And Father Piers had mentioned an attempt at negotiations, about which he disapproved but which might save many lives. Waiting to give the negotiations a chance might give James time to carry a message across the river.

The usually quiet Allans were loudly arguing –Margaret assumed it was them and not their servants.

Lilias Allan shouted, ‘How could you stand there and say nothing? He had no right to wear the garnet.’

‘God’s wounds, will naught satisfy you?’ a man cried.

Margaret tried not to listen to their argument. She thought she might still do some good by warning Johanna. That is what she’d set out to do, and with God’s grace she would accomplish that this evening, and afterwards she would see Father Piers and insist that either he personally deliver the information to the contact or tell her where to go herself.

What had seemed a quiet night was alive with sound once she gave it her full attention, with the high-pitched buzz of insects seeming to own the air and the low murmur of voices providing an almost rhythmic drone in the background interrupted by occasional shouts that startled her. She had grown accustomed to the noise of an occupying army in Edinburgh; Perth had fortunately been quieter. Except for the sense of a collective waiting it might be an ordinary night in Stirling. By now Margaret felt assured that she had not been followed. Leaving her shelter, she made her way to St Mary’s Wynd through the backlands rather than going out into Broad Street. The murmur of voices grew
louder as she approached St Mary’s Wynd. It sounded as if folk were out on the street and talking rather loudly, in anxious tones, as she imagined they’d done with news of the goldsmith’s death. She prayed his murder had not been the beginning of anarchy while the soldiers were occupied elsewhere, particularly caught as they were between the army’s camps and the castle, with no easy escape. Fear created a terrible energy.

In the alley she paused to collect her thoughts, planning how she would approach the subject of having Second Sight, how little she understood it, and how it was possible it had not been a vision, but that she believed it was for Johanna to choose whether or not to heed it and seek sanctuary. Margaret was flustered by how foolish it all seemed when laid out so. God help her if she mentioned the owl’s warning – Johanna would laugh so loudly the entire town would soon ken that Margaret was mad. She must take action now before she lost her courage.

After tidying her wimple and shaking out her skirts – she’d no doubt that her hems had collected dust and debris in the backlands – she continued down the alley and emerged into a tableau of a half-dozen townsfolk, several carrying lanterns that darted light here and there, seemingly silenced in mid-sentences to stare at her in alarm. She regretted her stealthy approach. As she distinguished faces and expressions she saw that they all looked either angry or frightened.

‘Has something happened?’ Margaret asked. Into the resounding silence she added, ‘I’m the niece of Ada de la Haye,’ hoping that might reassure them.

‘The de la Haye house is on Broad Street,’ a man said. ‘Why’d you come through the backlands?’

‘What is wrong with that? I came to see Dame Johanna.’

One of the women began to weep, leaning on her companion who was faring better with fighting tears.

Crossing himself, another man asked, ‘Did you hear her scream all the way over in the market square?’ He’d poked his lantern so close to Margaret’s face that she took a few steps backward, frightened by the emotions swirling around her.

‘Scream?’ Margaret cried. ‘Holy Mother of God, what monster has been unleashed on this town?’

‘Did you come upon anyone in the backlands?’ asked another man from behind her.

It was like a nightmare, the crazy lights, the angry strangers questioning her, when all she wanted was to see Johanna.

‘I saw no one,’ said Margaret. ‘Has Johanna been hurt?’

‘She’s been murdered,’ sobbed the weeping woman, ‘beaten about the head, her beautiful face, God help us!’

‘One of the English guards is in there now,’ said the first man, nodding towards a small house.

That sweet, beautiful woman beaten to death. Margaret’s vision blurred; she felt sick to her stomach. It had happened. She’d been too late. What was the use of the vision she’d had if she could not save Johanna from the threat? She wanted to scream.

‘Who is doing this?’ one of the women cried. ‘First Gordon, now Johanna. Are they going to kill us all?’