Turn of the Tide (27 page)

‘Will she have a pony?’ Kate crushed her against her chest and kissed the top of her head and said, with a swift prayer that God would forgive the fiction, ‘The
best.’

Maggie, curious, said, ‘What like will it be?’

And Kate, choking afresh, found an answer. ‘Snow-white and fine, with a mane of silver and hooves of gold. Handsome and . . .’ Her voice cracked, ‘. . . sweet-natured and
kind.’

But afterwards, the children finally asleep and the servants dismissed, she went to the stable and savaged Midnight’s saddle cloth with the newly-sharpened scissors until it was barely fit
for stuffing. And when that wasn’t enough, tossed it, sodden with tears, onto the midden.

It was the remnants of the saddle cloth that caught Munro’s eye as he returned home, so that he slid from Sweet Briar’s back and left her standing, reins trailing
while he went to investigate – dear God . . . sensing something was amiss.

Kate met him at the foot of the stair and keeping him at arms length, told him, in a voice devoid of emotion, that Anna was dead. That they had found her, her neck broken, bruises blossoming
along her length, Midnight cropping at the grass nearby. That if the tinker hadn’t come; if Midnight hadn’t been saddled; if she hadn’t sent for the axe and scythe . . .

He cut through her babble in a voice that far surpassed the grimness of hers. ‘If I hadn’t been obsessed with William. If I hadn’t gone to Kilmaurs. . .’ The realization,
surfacing from deep in the recesses of his memory, was sharp as a stab wound. ‘If I hadn’t bided away. I promised . . . dear God, Kate, . . . I promised her a riding lesson.’ He
plunged back down the stairwell and out onto the hill to fling himself prostrate in the Anna-shaped hollow of crushed grass; and railed in anger, at himself and at William and at the God that he
was now almost sure couldn’t exist, or if he did was the God of the Old Testament only and not of the New.

As dusk fell he shut himself in the tack room, his head resting on the saddle that Anna had polished so vigorously, the smell of it stripping his nostrils as if it were acid she used and not
goose grease. He found the rag wad and buried it inside his doublet, so that it pressed against his rib, a constant irritation reminding him of what was lost.

In the days and weeks that followed he found he could not bear to look at the horse, whose fault it was not, nor himself, whose fault it was, nor Kate, whose every movement seemed an accusation,
nor the bairns, who sought attention that he couldn’t give. Nor could he go away, which was his inclination. Instead he marked out an area of ground in the valley below the tower, and
refusing all offers of help, began to clear it of stones. With the stones he made a wall, and it was as if he built it as a defence, not to protect the sheep whose new lambing pen it was to be, but
as a barrier around himself, that no-one could breach.

January 1590 – April 1591

This above all: to thine own self be true . . .

Hamlet
: Act 1 scene 3

Winter passed.

Little word came from Kilmaurs to give them either quiet or dismay, their unease over Archie and Sybilla displaced by more personal ills. Kate kept herself occupied with the children: nursing
Ellie, braiding Maggie’s hair and playing endless games of marbles and Nine Men’s Morris with Robbie. A clear attempt to bring a forced gaiety to the long evenings; so that Munro,
unable to speak of it, ached for her, for the children and most of all for the Anna-shaped chasm that yawned everywhere you looked. Robbie had lost his competitive edge and despite that it had
often been a trial, Munro missed his quick flare of temper when things went awry. Maggie, though still with a ready smile, seemed also to have lost her bounce. Even Ellie, for all that she was but
months old, grizzled at odd moments as if she too felt the lack.

He was taken by surprise that the usual concerns of winter: the timely servicing of the ewes and the cattle, the repairing of walls and byres, the worry that the straw wouldn’t last out,
that the food laid by would be insufficient to see them through to the spring, that the animals confined to the byres might ail, were just as they had been every winter for as long as he could
remember. Daily, the thought weighed on him: only we have changed. And all my blame. His mother failed each time they saw her and he dreaded another funeral, the pain of Anna’s still with the
power to fell him like a blow.

March came in wet and wild, an unusually fierce storm lifting the foot-square roofing slabs on one side of the tower and scattering them across the rough slopes below. Although some were
recoverable, most were not, and Munro was forced to plunder their small savings to pay for the new stone and the mason to replace them. There were few jobs he wouldn’t tackle himself, but the
roofing of the main tower one of them.

Paradoxically, the setback seemed to ignite a spark of the old Kate. She placed a hand on his arm as the mason left, two-thirds of their hard saved cash clinking in his saddlebag. ‘There
is always a blessing. No-one is hurt and the job is well done and should see us right for years to come.’

‘I know, only . . .’ he had been about to say that he had a mind to take Kate away for a bit: abroad even, to Holland or France. But little point in speaking of what they could no
longer do.

‘Only what? We have a wee pickle still aside if we need it, though with spring just around the corner, I can’t think for what.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

It was the first normal conversation in months and both of them aware of it, both equally afraid to continue lest they strayed into dangerous territory.

At the beginning of April with lambing newly on him, Munro received a summons from his mother. She received him in her bedchamber, the first time he’d been at her bedside since a child,
and though she pulled herself up against the pillows, it was clear that even that effort was much for her.

He touched her shoulder, the bones fine as a bird’s under his fingers. ‘I should have been here sooner.’

‘For why? To carry worry the longer?’ Her skin was parchment-thin and heavily lined, a map of veins like clogged tributaries through which her blood battled to pass. ‘When it
is time I will know.’

‘Come back with me.’

‘I wish to die at my own hearth.’ She gripped his hand, but there was little power in her fingers. ‘I am well looked after here. And death isn’t for the young. . .
.’ Her eyes signalled her distress, the silence between them a weight crushing his chest. ‘Let the bairns mind me as I was.’ She closed her eyes and he thought that she had
slipped into sleep and wondered if he should leave. But whatever else had caused her to call for him, it wasn’t that he could sit by her side a while and begin to grieve, though her not dead.
And so he waited, perched on the edge of the bed, her hand lying in his, almost weightless. The silence deepened and, for a moment, he thought her wish fulfilled, that she had known and so had
cried him. He had time to begin to be glad of the call before he heard the fresh in-gasp of breath.

She spoke as if the conversation between them had never been interrupted. ‘Wabbit I can stand, wandered I couldn’t. If you wish to make a prayer on my behalf, let it be that I go
before my wits desert me.’ Again a silence, her gaze sliding past Munro to settle on the hanging behind him. He pictured the embroidered initials – AM and MC, the colour of the silks
faded to a dull brown, and guessed, wrongly, that she minded his father.

‘What of Archie? Have you word?’

He was startled back to attention. ‘None since I was last here. He was aye a poor correspondent.’

‘And the Boyds? Have they had anything?’

‘No idea.’ He turned the conversation. ‘You should see Ellie now. Red-headed for sure, and already starting to curl for all it’s no length.’

‘And a temper to match?’

‘Oh, aye. She may be but a wee mite yet, but there’s nothing wrong with her lungs, and when she’s cross, she clenches her fists and hammers her heels that hard that if she
forgot what angered her in the first place, she’d still be howling from the pain of it.’

‘Maybe it’s a blessing I won’t be around to see the fallings-out between her and Maggie then.’

It was his turn to look past her, to the cross-stitch that Kate had given her last Yuletide but one: of the bairns in the barmkin. Anna, riding the wooden horse across her knees, Robbie
whittling at a stick and Maggie, kneeling on the cobbles, a kitten sleeping at her feet. He admired the spirit in his mother that made a joke of imminent death but found himself unable to reply in
kind.

She touched his face so that he was obliged to look at her. ‘I have had my share of this world and am ready for the next. Only . . .’

He waited.

‘. . . I would wish to see Archie settled. The last time . . .’ She began to worry again at the embroidered coverlet. ‘Last time he was here he seemed over hard for his own
good.’

‘Yet when I went to Kilmaurs, I found him changed, less William’s man.’ Her hand fluttered under his fingers. ‘You will say when I must cry him home? And in good
time?’

‘If I can.’

‘Should I send the now?’ He was searching her face, trying to draw out a sense of how she really felt.

‘A week or two maybe. Tell him I won’t make his wedding, but a wee sign of intent would be welcome.’

‘I’m not sure . . .’ he began.

‘He has long had more thought on Sybilla Boyd than you might have supposed. And I don’t think biding in the same house will have cooled him any.’

Munro thought of the expression on Archie’s face as Sybilla squeezed past William, his admission that he stayed at Kilmaurs to protect her. ‘Marriage wouldn’t do him any harm,
or so Kate would say.’

‘You were lucky in your choice.’

He heard the real affection in her voice and so tried one last time. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to bide with us, even for a little while?’

She shook her head, her voice vehement, ‘I’ve told you no.’

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and stood up.

‘Don’t go yet. I didn’t call you to talk of death just, though it is likely my most pressing concern . . . I was thinking May is aye a fine month.’

He knew that her abrupt change of direction was deliberate and that the seeming inconsequential remark would have a point to it.

‘Mother?’

Her eyes, though washed out, danced.

‘If you don’t tell me what your game is now I’ll have to go.’ It was a shrewd move.

‘There is a box under the bed.’

He hunkered down and lifted the edge of brocade that swept the floor.

Hoisting the small oak chest onto the bed, he thought – she has heard of the roof. ‘We don’t need . . .’

‘This isn’t about need.’ She was fingering the clasp. ‘They say the King and his new Queen are expected shortly and May a fine month for a celebration.’

He shook his head, gave a half laugh.

‘I had thought it might be a fitty thing for you to take Kate to see the Queen’s entry.’ She halted his withdrawal. ‘To leave the bairns awhile would do no harm. Indeed,
it may be what is needed.’

‘I don’t know if we could.’

‘I have done my share of grieving and home isn’t always the easiest place for it. The loss of a child . . .’ A single tear formed at the corner of her eye, slid down the side
of her nose. ‘It will always be with you, but the pain of it will dull. She paused, as if to draw strength to continue, ‘Blame is a poor bedfellow: A jaunt may help you both.’ She
traced the lover’s knot on the lid of the box. ‘I know your roof hasn’t bankrupted you, but it will have made a dent that isn’t so easy to fill. Open it.’

Two drawstring pouches lay in the base of the chest, the outline of coins stretching the soft kid leather.

‘One will be yours soon enough. Why not now? That I might share some of Kate’s pleasure in the spending of it.’ A wistful note crept into her voice. ‘I didn’t have
the chance when Queen Mary came, but that isn’t a reason to keep others back.’ She pulled herself further up in the bed, a spasm crossing her face. He placed one hand under her arm,
lifting and tilting her so that he could raise her pillow.

‘One more thing,’ she gestured to the large kist under the window. ‘There is a dress: burgundy and silver and scarce worn.’

‘Kate isn’t . . .’

‘I don’t mean for her to wear it. Forbye the fit, it’s hardly fashionable, but there is a breadth of material in it that should provide the makings of a fine gown. Something
new is aye welcome.’

She looked past him to where the last rays of sunlight slanted onto the rush floor, criss-crossed with shadows cast by the window bars, and weariness settled on her like a layer of dust that had
been raised in the passing and now fell again. He stood up and caught the flash of a bird swooping past the window. As he bent to kiss her she tapped his cheek with a cold finger. ‘I
won’t be long a prisoner and I have a notion that I shall enjoy to fly.’

He arrived home bringing with him both the proposal that they make for Edinburgh for the Queen’s entry, and the burgundy gown. At first, Kate was adamant. ‘I have
lost one bairn and can’t think of leaving the rest’.