Turn of the Tide (36 page)

Kate, lit by a spark of irritation, said, ‘Her mother is a Cunninghame, I believe?’

‘Some distant connection.’

It should have been a warning, but Kate, her normal good sense stifled by William’s repressed scorn, her mounting dislike fed by the two days spent in his company, directed attention back
to the Montgomeries. The Queen had reached out to the babe and was stroking the soft down on her head, while James turned to Hugh. It was impossible to hear what was said, but the intention was
clear. A soft flush of colour flooded Elizabeth’s cheeks and she made another, deeper curtesy, while Hugh, bowing also, seemed to be expressing gratitude.

‘Oh look!’ Kate encompassed William and Maxwell in her gaze. ‘I do believe the Montgomeries are invited into the palace. They must be high in favour.’

She was aware of Munro’s tension, of Maxwell focusing on straightening his cuff; of William his colour rising, as if under the skin he fizzed like a firework about to explode. The impulse
to goad him strengthened. She stood on tiptoe as if to inform her stream of commentary. ‘They’re moving into the close . . . the nobles following . . . and Glencairn . . . just to the
rear of Robert Montgomerie . . .’

John was by her side hissing at her, ‘This is madness . . .’

She threw him off, past caring, past all rational thought. The pent-up pain of the last months; the surge of frustration she felt at the Cunninghame connection; the blame for Anna’s death,
which, though not openly acknowledged, she laid at William’s door, coalesced into a recklessness that consumed her. She kept her eyes fixed on the entrance to the pend, her voice brittle.

‘Do you suppose we could pass into the courtyard? There may be more to see yet. I know
we
can’t go into the palace. Braidstane is fortunate in his Lord.’

John turned to William, put out a restraining hand, ‘James’ favour is a dangerous and volatile commodity. I for one . . .’

‘I for one . . .’ William’s mimicry was perfect, ‘. . . am not going to stay here to watch a scrag end of a bonnet laird trail after James’ favour like a mongrel
wriggling on his belly hoping for a bone.’ He turned the full force of his contempt on Kate. ‘You, of course, may do as you please.’

There was a moment when she thought that she had provoked an all-out brawl, as Munro launched himself at William. John leapt between them, shoving Munro towards Maxwell who grasped his arms,
pinioning them behind his back, his grip tightening the more Munro struggled for release. William had drawn his dirk.

John grabbed William’s wrist, twisted it, ‘A brawl now is madness that we none of us can afford. Fight where and when you please, but not here. Your father . . .’ a space had
opened, a ring of spectators forming around them and John increased the pressure on William’s wrist, ‘Put the dirk away, you may not approve our lodgings, but they are better than a
cell.’

Maxwell released Munro, motioned to William as they both thrust their way through the crush, ‘the show is over, no doubt we can find more congenial company elsewhere.’

Kate, her temper subsiding, reached out in apology to John. In his gaze she saw anger, shot through with understanding.

‘Drunk as William undoubtedly will be tonight, he may not remember how you baited him. You may hope so.’ He turned to Munro. ‘Go home.’ Then, with a brutality she thought
deliberate, said, ‘You had a loss. Well. In that you are not alone. Be thankful for what you have.’ His glance shifted to William’s retreating back. ‘And for what you have
not.’

Summer slipped past Broomelaw like a stream dividing around a boulder, casting scarcely a ripple. The quiet monotone of the days seemed to Kate like a plain worked border,
highlighting the rich tapestry of their time in Edinburgh. The new memories: vibrant, cherished, became a counterpoint to the old: enriching them, removing their sting.

Mary had been right. Anna, locked in the grave at the foot of the slope below the sheep pens, her face lost these months past, had come back to them. And though often she came in sharp shafts of
remembrance, the pain and sadness undiminished, she came also in laughter and in sudden, unexpected spurts of joy. Her name began to come naturally to their lips again, her presence, though
incomplete, easier to bear than the months of absence had been.

Remembered laughter in the Canongate garden slid Kate effortlessly to Anna, mischief dancing in her, looping a cord round Agnes’ boot buttons as she dozed, giggling helplessly at her
efforts to stand. The Montgomerie bairns guddling for trout parr at St Margaret’s loch blurred into the twins at their own loch: trapping speckled smoults in a muslin net filched from the
pantry; Robbie outraged when Anna, taking pity, trudged back to release them again. The gorse in full bloom in the Holyrood Park became the gorse on the hillside above the tower, Anna gathering
handfuls of petals to, as she called it, ‘scatter the sun’.

As for the memory of the moment when she had crossed swords with William, though she was not particularly proud of her part in it, she knew that faced with the same situation, she would likely
react the same way again. Folly it may have been, but whatever it had released, in her and in Munro, their marriage was the stronger for it. And for that she had no regrets.

They visited Mary Munro every week, each time finding her a little more failed. She lay propped in the tall bed facing the window, so that she could see the birds that wheeled and swooped in the
clear summer sky. Sometimes, as they sat, she would slip into sleep, her breathing laboured, and they would tiptoe away, glad to escape from the air thick with spice. Once or twice she made an
extra effort, asking after each of the children in turn. But when they suggested bringing them, she refused.

‘I am an old dry stick with a skin that is three sizes too large, but that isn’t how I wish to be remembered. You may look back to better days, but the bairns . . . the last picture
is the one they will keep.’

Munro had been for bringing them anyway, but Kate overuled him.

‘Dignity is all she has left and we mustn’t take it away.’

At the beginning of August Munro sent for Archie. They took it in turns to sit with her, moistening her lips with sips of a potion made from willow bark. She took four days to die, but
peacefully and without pain. Towards the end, her breathing was grumbling and irregular so that they thought she left them a hundred times, but at the very last she opened her eyes and looked past
them towards the clouds that hung in white puffs against a cobalt sky. She lifted her arms, her face radiant, and said, distinct and clear, ‘Ah, sweet Jesus’ as her head dropped into
the pillows, her breathing fading to a whisper.

Then silence.

Kate was the first to move, folding Mary’s hands across her chest, her eyes pricking. ‘It is a goodly passing and one that I would wish for.’

They buried her among the cluster of graves in the hollow below Broomelaw, alongside her husband and the bairns she’d lost in infancy; her grave a fresh mound to overlay the newness that
had been Anna’s, the mason who had worked on the roof tiles returning to place her name on the rough hewn stone.

By September they had found a new equiblibrium. With Anna gone, nothing could ever be quite as it was and the smallest and most unexpected things still produced the sharpest pain. Yet the bond
of family was stronger, perhaps because it was incomplete. And Kate, who had for a time indulged in Maggie traits rigorously disciplined in Anna, regained a true perspective.

A letter came from Braidstane, with an invitation for the whole family, and Kate was of a mind to go, but Munro was reluctant. It was as if coming back to Broomelaw, the grip of the Cunninghames
tightened, so that closer connection with the Montgomeries held more danger than he was prepared to chance. Not that he said they wouldn’t go, but each week there was a new reason why it
wasn’t convenient. Repairs to the stabling, the building of new cattle pens in preparation for the winter, the draining of an area of ground to allow for the enlargement of the warren: all
impossible to counter, so that she was forced to bide her time.

The weather held right through to the second cutting of hay, the whole family growing brown as gypsies. Robbie spent hours at the lochside, fishing still his passion, though, had supper been
dependent on his catch, they would have gone hungry. Ellie grew plump and contented, crawling about on the grassy slopes at Kate’s feet while she filled basketfuls of brambles to turn into
pies and preserves. Maggie had taken a fascination to anything that moved and was never happier than when she found some new creature to cherish, usually by imprisoning it in a jar, tightly
stoppered, and feeding it on grasses and odd scraps until it died.

Kate was picking her way downhill, careful that she didn’t drop either Ellie or the basket which swung from her other arm, when she saw a rider outlined against the horizon. He was jogging
along without any sense of haste and she judged that she would beat him to the tower and so didn’t trouble to hurry. Munro, straddling the roof of the byre tying in new thatch, waved before
continuing, content to leave her to greet their guest.

Maggie was crouched by the barmkin wall, poking intently into a crevice, with a bodkin from Kate’s work basket, trying to prise out the slaters that hid there. She had made a little pen of
twigs for her captives and had provided in it both food, in the form of a docken leaf, and the shelter of two small stones. One slater lay motionless in the centre; another scuttled under the
stones. Maggie gave a triumphant whoop and rocked back, a third slater held fast between her thumb and forefinger, its legs waving.

Kate knelt down beside her. ‘You haven’t killed that one then?’

Maggie’s face was serious. ‘I didn’t think to kill any.’

‘Here.’ Kate popped a bramble into Maggie’s mouth. ‘We have a visitor. Maybe you should free them the now.’ She forestalled Maggie’s protest. ‘You
wouldn’t want your beasties to be trod on. You can aye catch them tomorrow.’ She held out another bramble and Maggie allowed herself to be distracted. Kate was still kneeling on the
cobbles when the lad ducked under the archway. She rose, brushing her skirt.

‘I have a message, from Glencairn.’

She felt the accustomed chill, but summoned a smile, gesturing towards the byre. ‘My husband will be up shortly. You’ll stay to sup?’

‘A bite only. I must be back tonight.’ As if to reassure her, he said, ‘Wi’ Glencairn the answer is aye wanted yesterday, as ye’ll ken.’

‘Come in then.’

He was finishing his piece as Munro slid onto the bench beside him and reached for the ale. ‘How’s Archie?’

‘Fine, so far as I ken. I don’t see that much of him. He mostly shadows William and they havn’t been around much of late. Though . . .’ he grinned, ‘Archie seems a
mite more reluctant to be away than before. He and Sybilla Boyd . . .’

‘There is an understanding?’ Kate turned from looking out the window to where Robbie’s small head bobbed as he cast and re-cast his line.

‘Not an understanding exactly, but I ken he has an interest and the talk is that she shares it.’

‘Pity mother didn’t see it.’

Kate half-turned. ‘She’ll know.’

The lad scrabbled inside his jerkin and produced a letter. Munro, narrowing his eyes against the light, took it across to the window and leaned on the sill. Kate saw the pucker between his brows
disappear, his voice unexpectedly light.

‘D’you fancy accompanying me to Greenock?’

‘Greenock?’

‘To the Shaws. Jean Cunninghame, Elizabeth’s mother, is dead.’

Kate heard the pleasure in his tone, frowned.

‘Glencairn has seen fit to suggest that we represent him at the funeral.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘For his own convenience, no doubt. He’s at court and I imagine doesn’t wish to be dragged away to satisfy the courtesies.’

‘But why us?’

‘Our acquaintance with Elizabeth, which he thinks but scratched, yet enough to pass muster.’

She rubbed at her arms. ‘What about William?’

‘If you were Glencairn, would you send William into Braidstane’s company? It suits him to make use of us.’ He turned to the lad. ‘You may say that we will go.’

Afterwards, when the boy rounded the hill and disappeared from sight, Munro resumed, ‘It suits us also. I know it isn’t quite the same as a visit to Braidstane, but you will have a
chance to renew your acquaintance with Elizabeth.’

‘And at Glencairn’s behest.’

‘And at Glencairn’s behest. A visit will be the easier another time, our better acquaintance set at Glencairn’s door. Even William couldn’t fault it.’

Kate slid her arm around his waist. ‘I’d like fine to go. It will be good to see Elizabeth again. Was her mother old?’

‘I’ve no idea . . . though, as John Shaw is ages with Hugh, she can’t have been young. Things are well sorted here. We don’t need to rush back. The funeral past,’
he touched his lips to her hair, ‘there may be time to make the detour to Braidstane if you’ve a mind.’

They sat on long benches brought from the castle especially for the occasion. Munro, seated beside Kate, noted that Elizabeth curved into herself, shivering despite the blanket
wrapped tight around her knees. On one side of her, James Shaw, grown small and bowed, a tremor noticeable beneath his right eye. Beside him John, on the other side Hugh. Behind them, the remainder
of the congregation packed close, standing hunched against the draughts that slid through the narrow window slits and crawled across the damp stone flags, snaking around ankles and funnelling
indiscriminately through torn petticoat and fine chemise alike. The weather, fair for so long, had turned as those who came to pay their respects to Jean Shaw flowed in a steady stream up the
terraced slopes of the town. What had begun as a weak drizzle, gaining in intensity, so that none escaped a wetting on their way to the church.

In front of the Munros the rain marked time, plopping into a wooden pail through a hole in the roof. The rhythmic dripping was a counterpoint to the drone of the minister who mumbled his way
almost by rote through a homily on the life of Jean Shaw, as if his thoughts ran less on what he said than on the dinner that was to follow. No doubt it was hard to preach a good sermon with
dampness seeping upwards through robes that absorbed the moisture like a sponge. Munro could see a thin trickle of water funnelling along the wall bracket of the candle sconce behind him and
landing on the back of his neck – if this looby is the best that the new religion can muster small wonder that the church leaks parishioners in equal measure with the rain. At Renfrew it had
been altogether different: the preacher, in his raising of Mary heavenwards, giving a tantalising glimpse of a gate swinging wide and of Mary, welcomed by a clutch of laughing children, chief among
them Anna, her hair like flame.