‘That is not necessary, Robert.’ Eleyne’s voice was steady, though her stomach had turned over with fear. Sensing it, the baby kicked feebly beneath her ribs and she flinched.
‘Oh, but it is.’ He lunged towards Rhonwen and caught her wrist. ‘Peter!’ he shouted. ‘Peter! Some rubbish to dispose of on the way to the shore.’
‘No!’ Eleyne screamed. ‘No, you can’t.’ She clawed at his arm desperately, but he pushed her away.
‘Yes, sweet wife. Take her.’ He pushed Rhonwen towards his manservant, who had appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Put her in a sack and take her to the boat.’
‘No!’ Both women were screaming now. Rhonwen was kicking frantically as the tall young man dragged her from the room. Sobbing, Eleyne ran towards the stairs after him, but Robert caught her. He slapped her face. ‘Do you want to risk your precious royal bastard?’ he shouted. ‘Leave her!’
‘Why? Why are you doing this? For pity’s sake, Robert.’
‘For pity’s sake,’ he echoed, high-pitched. ‘Think about it, my dear, just think what you have done to me and think well. Perhaps this is your real punishment.’ He ran down the stairs and out of sight.
Eleyne followed him, but at the narrow door in the undercroft she was stopped by the old castellan. ‘Please, Andrew – ’
‘I’m sorry, my lady, there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing any of us can do.’ He braced his arm across the doorway. Behind him the small courtyard was already empty, and she could hear nothing but the plaintive murmuring cry of overwintering geese echoing from the bleak shores beyond the loch.
That night she called for a fire in her room. Andrew piled the kindling high, though there was little left on the island, and lit it with a sidelong look at the countess. She was rocking herself back and forth, her arms around her belly, her tears long dry, but her face so drawn in misery that even his unsentimental old heart was touched. He had liked the Lady Rhonwen – for all her tart tongue, she had been fair with him.
‘Shall I ask my wife to come and sit with you, my lady?’ he ventured when the fire was drawing to his satisfaction. His Janet was a kind soul whose views on Sir Robert had been so outspoken he’d had to slap her face for fear she would be overheard by de Quincy or one of his men. It was Sir Robert, after all, who was paying them to look after the countess and keep her on the island, and paying him more than he had ever dreamed of.
Eleyne shook her head dumbly.
‘I’ll leave you then, my lady.’ He didn’t like the look of her at all, but what could he do? He was now the senior member left in the household. Household! He snorted to himself as with a bow he shuffled towards the door. There was him and Janet, Annie, the cook, and three men to mind the walls.
Eleyne sat a long time without moving after he had gone, then slowly she stood up. The fire had settled to a friendly blaze, smoking from the damp in the wood. The night beyond the narrow window was starless, the waters of the loch black and forbidding, as she stood staring out. She felt empty and afraid and lonely as the slow tears began once more to slip from beneath her lids. Of her ghostly companion in imprisonment there was no sign.
For a long time she stayed there, feeling that just by looking at the water she still had some link left with the woman she had loved. At last, frozen and stiff, she turned from the window and went to the fire. She bent awkwardly to throw on another log and caught her breath. There was a picture in the flame. Falling to her knees in the dusty ashes at the edge of the small hearth, her heart thumping with fear, she stared into the heart of the fire.
He was there, the horseman, filling her head, filling the scene in the fire, riding away from her to who knew what fate. But who was he and what had he to do with her? Still she did not know.
The position she was kneeling in was uncomfortable. Her back ached and the baby kicked resentfully beneath her ribs. Please. She was talking to the fire as though it were alive and slowly she reached out towards the flames. This time, as they began to lick playfully towards her fingertips, there was no one to pull her back.
VII
De Quincy’s men had bound Rhonwen with a single rope around her body, pinioning her arms before pulling the big flour sack over her head and tying its neck around her ankles. Half fainting with fear, and choking from the flour dust still clinging to the hessian, Rhonwen felt herself lifted by the two men and hauled roughly over the ground. Twice she was knocked against something, then at last she was dropped, doubled up, on the bottom boards of the boat.
Frantically she struggled inside the sack as the men walked back up to the castle from the small landing stage, their voices growing fainter, then from the silence she guessed that she was for the time being alone. All she could hear was the gentle lapping of the water and the beating of her own heart. The rope around her body had been carelessly tied; almost at once she felt it loosen as she fought against the stifling folds of sacking, but the rope around her ankles was tight, knotting the neck of the sack. She flailed out with her arms and, humping over, tried to reach her feet, tearing her fingers on the rough material. She was concentrating so hard that she didn’t hear the men returning. The sudden dip and buck of the boat as one by one they jumped aboard, and a sharp agonising blow in the breast as someone kicked out at the sack, was the first she knew of their return.
‘Sweet Bride, preserve me,’ she whispered desperately as she heard the unmistakable sound of Robert’s drunken laughter close to her head. ‘Sweet lady, help me.’
She could not hear what they were saying. The boat had steadied now and she could feel it travelling through the water, the cold black water which she could sense close beneath her body, on the other side of the thin planking. Panic gripped her and she began to shake all over. Any moment they would stop rowing.
‘Sweet lady, save me, please.’ She was tearing at the inside of the sack now, not caring if they saw her; moments later another vicious kick told her that they had. It was a while before she realised the boat had lost its swinging momentum through the water. There was another low laugh and she felt hands groping for the corners of the sack.
She screamed again and again as they struggled to move her towards the edge of the boat, rocking it wildly on the black water, then she felt the sharp gunwale beneath her ribs; she hung across it for a long moment before her captors, with a shout of triumph, lifted her feet in the air and tipped her head first over the side.
The sack floated around her, filled as it was with air, then it began to sink and Rhonwen felt the ice-cold blackness closing over her head.
VIII
As Eleyne’s screams echoed down the staircase, Andrew dropped the flagon of small beer he had been carrying to the table and raced towards the sound, panting heavily as he climbed the spiral stair in the thickness of the wall.
When he reached the room, he was so appalled he could not move. She had sprawled forward into the ashes and flames were running around her head.
‘Blessed Jesu!’ He hurled himself across the room and tearing a rug from the bed threw it over her, pummelling out the flames.
‘Janet!’ He pulled Eleyne back on to the floor and shouted as loudly as he could. ‘Janet! For Blessed Christ’s sake, woman, get yourself up here quickly!’
He could hear his wife panting as she hurried up the stairs, hampered by her heavy bulk.
‘What is it? Is it the bairn?’ She arrived, gasping for breath, her face glazed with perspiration.
‘My lady’s had a fall. Help me, woman, she’s too heavy for me.’ He was pulling ineffectually at Eleyne’s arms. ‘Let’s get her on the bed.’
‘Is she dead?’ Janet hadn’t moved from the doorway.
‘Of course she isn’t dead! Stop havering and help me, or she soon will be!’
Between them they pulled Eleyne on to the bed and Andrew cautiously peeled back the blanket he had thrown over her.
