Turn of the Tide (17 page)

Anna burst onto the stairwell, short plaits flying, Robbie behind her. ‘Dada,’ they chanted in unison, tugging at the saddlebag slung over his shoulder.

He hunkered on the floor and delved in his bag – bairns aye appear when they aren’t wanted. The carpenter from whom he had bought the toys had, at Munro’s request, wrapped them
individually in scraps of hessian, so that he had a parcel for each of them.

Robbie didn’t open his immediately, probing at the shape, his eyes narrowed, the tip of his tongue wiggling between his lips. He looked at the knot intently, then worried gently at it till
it loosened and the string fell away, the coarse cloth springing back. Rocking on his heels he said, ‘What is it Dada?

‘Watch!’ Munro set the top on the floor and flicked the knob between his forefinger and thumb.

Robbie clapped his hands as the colours spiralled outwards. When it stopped and fell over, he dived to pick it up. ‘Again Dada, again.’

Munro set it spinning twice more, then, taking the small hand in his, placed Robbie’s fingers against the knob. ‘You try.’

Three times he held Robbie’s finger and thumb and tried to help him to start the top, but each time it wobbled and fell over. Munro saw in the tightening of his lips determination
building. He tousled Robbie’s hair. ‘We can try again later.’

‘Now,’ Robbie said. ‘I shall try now.’

Munro caught Kate’s eye and risked a smile. Anna was tugging at her string, pulling at the knot, first with her fingers, then with her teeth, succeeding only in making it tighter. As she
threw the parcel away Kate slipped onto the floor beside her.

‘Careful, you don’t want to break it, else Robbie will have his top and you will have nothing. Let me help.’

‘Stupid string,’ Anna said.

Kate freed the knot and laid the bundle in the child’s lap. Anna kept her small fists tightly clenched, scowling, but when neither Kate nor Munro intervened, she slid one hand to the
hessian and pulled it aside, staring down at the tiny horse. For a moment Munro thought he had chosen badly, but when she looked up, her eyes sparkled. She rubbed her finger down the ripple of mane
and over the smooth swell of belly, contoured from the grain of the wood, then cantered the horse across her knees, up her chest, across her throat and all the way down again. Uncurling her legs,
she ran to the window that overlooked the courtyard and climbed onto the sill to gallop the horse backwards and forwards, ‘clip-clopping’ vigorously.

He rummaged again and produced the parcel for Kate.

‘It’s but a wee bit thing. Nice enough in its way, at least, I trust so.’

She fingered the parcel, ‘I trust so too. Else I may be forced to steal Anna’s horse and that . . .’ there was a hint of a thaw in her voice, ‘. . . would likely cause a
riot.’ She bent her head and in her turn worried at the string, which had somehow worked itself into a knot.

She too poked her tongue between her lips and bent her dark head close to the parcel, illustrating the origin of Robbie’s patience. There was a flash of colour at Munro’s feet and a
crow of satisfaction as the top spun briefly before tilting to a stop. Satisfied, Robbie set it carefully on the table and clambered up onto the sill beside Anna. She shifted sideways, leaning her
back against the angle of the wall and trotted the horse onto Robbie’s lap. Munro touched Kate’s wrist and pointed. Her face softened as she looked at the twins, cross-legged, like a
pair of happy brownies, the horse between them. Kate’s hand was small and fine and warm, and, without conscious thought, Munro traced a line from her wrist to the tip of her fingers.

Her breathing shallowed. She turned her hand over and he nudged her fingers apart to slip his own into the gaps. Her skin was dry, the scar at the base of her thumb, where she had torn it on
hawthorn as she helped him clear ground for the lambing pens, rough under his touch. He tightened his grip and was rewarded by the first full smile since Annock. ‘Can you not manage?’
he said, looking at the parcel on her lap.

‘Not one-handed, I can’t.’

‘Well then, I shall have to help.’

Again the smile. She pulled the parcel against her stomach and caught at the string with her free hand while he took the other end and pulled, but too hard, so that it skidded off her lap and
dangled, the knot remaining stubbornly tight.

‘It isn’t going to damage?’

‘It’ll take no harm. There. I’ll hold and you pull. A lighter touch may do it.’

Light or not, it took several more attempts before the string was released and the hessian put aside. With all the tugging and pulling the scent was strong, even before the cushion was revealed.
She held it against her face, breathing in deeply, then traced the pattern of lavender stems appliqued onto the smooth silk. Her mouth trembled between a sob and a smile and he tried to think of
something comic to say, but couldn’t find words.

‘Nice enough,’ she pressed her palm against his, the smile winning, ‘in its way . . .’

With his free hand he ran one finger into the hollow of her throat then downward towards the swell of her breasts. He felt the flutter of her pulse and bent his head and kissed her. She
didn’t pull away. It was a mood that lasted the evening through, past the children’s bedtime into their own, so that they lay together for the first time since Annock.

Afterwards she said, her head tucked into his neck, a strand of hair lying across his face, the scent of it wholesome, ‘I feared for us.’

His voice was hoarse. ‘I think that I feared more.’

She settled firmly against him. ‘It wasn’t the house, nor the land, nor even the safety of the bairns that plagued me. It was this. Us. The thought that whether here or not, you
might have gone somewhere I couldn’t follow.’

He knew that he should tell her of his detour to Greenock, his meeting with the Montgomeries, for if they were to start again, there should be no secrets between them, and was searching his mind
for appropriate words when she continued and the moment was gone.

‘Now maybe isn’t the time to talk of obligations, but there is nothing . . .’ he heard the steel in her voice, ‘. . . nothing we owe, to the Cunninghames or anyone else,
is worth that loss.’

He lay, inarticulate, able only to press his chin onto her head, to hold her more tightly for fear that he might rock the fragile peace. Finally, when he felt her draw back, he said,
‘Without your anchor these months past, I have been adrift and like to founder. I don’t know yet how things will turn, but . . .’ he pulled her close again and spoke into her
hair, ‘. . . if it’s a promise you want Kate, I won’t risk losing you again.’

October – November 1589

Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

King James Bible, Galations 6:7

Munro heard it first. On the quayside, as he stood in the small crowd waiting for the line of fishing boats nosing into the harbour. A rumour only, insubstantial, fragmented,
like the mist that drifted in curls on the Clyde and eddied among the masts of the few trading vessels moored against the sea wall.

He thought it hardly credible, yet it amused him to imagine James slipping away, the court abed, to rescue his Danish bride, as if it was ardour that drove him. As indeed it might be if he were
not the King; for the bride was not yet fifteen, and winsome, so it was said. Who wouldn’t have chosen as he had, and the choice a lass eight years older or one eight years younger than
himself? Still, for all his love of poetry, it was a match that owed more to politics and the need for an heir, than any sonnet he might write. And if the King was indeed on his way to Norway, it
was a foolishness that wouldn’t be appreciated by most of his council. The truth would be known soon enough, and, in the meantime, it was a fine piece of gossip to take home.

He had been sent to the harbour for salt herrings, more to get him out of the way than anything else. He watched the fishing fleet emerging and disappearing again into the mist, a wee pickle
larger each time he spied it, and the notion took him to wait for a fresh catch to salt at home.

‘It’ll give me something to do, lass,’ he murmured to Sweet Briar, ‘And save Agnes the trouble of imagining another unnecessary errand.’ It irked him that each time
there was a birthing, the womenfolk shut him out, so that he was forced to pace up and down in the hall or the courtyard and nothing to do but wait.

‘Anywhere you please,’ Agnes had said, ‘so long as it isn’t under our feet.’ She had been Kate’s nurse and was now both midwife and nurse to Kate’s
children; and so thought nothing of speaking her mind to Kate’s husband when the need arose.

An hour later, when the sounds from upstairs had temporarily stilled, she had appeared in the doorway of the hall. ‘Kate’s resting the now and like to be so for a while. If you
can’t find anything to do other than pace, you might away and get some salt herrings. That will at least not waste your time altogether.’

‘I don’t wish . . .’

She brushed aside his protest, as she would swipe a fly that buzzed about her kitchen. ‘We can’t be doing with you ranging up and down, the tramp of your boots on the flags like the
beat of a drum pounding at Kate’s head till she is fit to burst.’

And so he had saddled Sweet Briar and set out, in one way glad of the excuse for the ride, yet guilty also for the gladness. This was her third confinement, and the first two straightforward as
the dropping of lambs, though not so fast. Yet however hard he tried, he couldn’t help but fear that something would go awry. No amount of telling, from Agnes or the apothecary, would settle
him until it was over and the bairn safely delivered. The other children: the twins, now six, and Maggie, a placid, roly-poly two-year-old, who you couldn’t so much as glance at without
smiling, had been sent to his mother at the first twinge and no doubt romped to their hearts’ content with no-one to check them.

He had kept tight to Broomelaw these three years past and was glad of it, glad too that events abroad had turned greater folks’ thoughts aside from their own squabbles to other dangers.
News had filtered to Broomelaw in snippets: arriving with pedlars; confirmed in the market; thundered from the pulpit. And if hard at times to guage the accuracy of the reports, the kernel was no
doubt true and enough for their needs: Babington’s execution, sufficiently horrific that Munro spared Kate the detail. Queen Mary, beheaded at Fotheringhay: protesting her innocence and her
adherence to the old faith to the end. A seemly death, if you discounted the talk that it had taken more than one cut. Eclipsing all else, and producing a ripple of fear that bought temporary peace
between the warring Scottish Lords: the talk of a Spanish fleet, bound for England, yet threatening the peace of Protestants everywhere. When word came that the vast ships, nipped and harried by
the English, had been defeated, thanks to the fervent prayers of the faithful and to the weather, relief returned, along with reawakened interest in personal affairs. There was scarce a seaboard
parish without their own tale of the tattered Spanish fleet. And the Clyde shore no exception. The immediate danger past, the Munros, like many others, had spared a thought for the poor sailors who
found themselves washed up on a foreign shore, the sorry remnant of a vast endeavour.

On the quay a cluster of women, their sleeves rolled past their elbows, headed for the tables set out at the head of the steps where the catch would come in. One, young and fair, smiled shyly at
him in passing, a bairn strapped to her back, perhaps three months old, his skin dark as a gypsy. Munro smiled back, thought – shipwreak isn’t aye a disaster, or not for the young at
least.

On the ride home his thoughts returned to James and his Danish princess and the storms that had delayed her arrival. And politics aside, he wished them joy. Though it was hard no doubt for a
King to find the easy companionship of lesser folk, yet it was not unknown.

‘If he is half as happy as I am this day, or will be when the bairn is safely come, then fine for him.’

Sweet Briar tossed her head.

‘Aye, lass, fine for us all if the King is taken with his bride.’ He was paying little attention to the journey, and so was surprised when Sweet Briar stretched her neck, breaking
into a canter, and he found himself nearly home.

All was quiet as they entered through the gateway and although dusk was falling he saw no flicker of candles. For a moment he remembered that other home coming, three years earlier, when he had
feared that the love between them was gone, snuffed out by his part in the business at Annock. It hadn’t been easy to repair the damage, and though Maggie was likely the fruit of that first
night’s loving, the real work had stretched through the months of the long, hot summer that followed and into the winter beyond. The spectre of the Cunninghames and the demands that they
might yet make upon them an intermittent fear, never spoken of, but no less real for that.

With the birth of Maggie just short of nine months after his return, a shadow had lifted and, Glencairn making no further calls on them, they had begun to live as if their lives were truly their
own. From the start, Maggie had been a placid child, plump and well favoured, her engaging smiles bestowed generously on all who looked at her. Whether it was due to her presence or not, and Munro
was sure that at least in part it was, Broomelaw had begun to prosper and the relationship between himself and Kate to bloom afresh. And so to today and the new fruit of their love pushing its way
into the world.

Now and then he thought on Hugh and Elizabeth and wondered if their marriage was equally blessed, but was forced to keep the thoughts to himself, for he had never found the right opportunity to
confess the Greenock visit to Kate.

He crossed the courtyard to the stable, not knowing whether to be uneasy at the lack of lights. The door creaked as he entered, startling the lad curled on a heap of straw, half-asleep.

‘You’re surely tired to be asleep the now. Were you not sleeping last night?’ It was an innocent enough question, for Munro had no thought but to chafe the lad, and so was
startled by the flush that crept across his face. At another time he might have probed further, for though it was fine for a lad to set his eyes on a sonsy lass and she was willing, Munro had a
certain responsibility to see that those in his employ didn’t over-step the mark, or if they did that they were ready to make amends. ‘No harm done.’ He passed the reins over and
released the bag with the herrings. ‘She needs a good grooming. The smell of the harbour is on her, and I don’t think she’s overly keen on the stench of fish.’