Child of the Phoenix

November

Her letters to Margaret of Lincoln went unanswered; Malcolm’s more circumspect requests to King Henry received the curt reply that, now that their mother was dead, the children had been given to their cousin’s charge and were safe and well in her care. There was no acknowledgement of Malcolm’s interest and no hint that Henry knew the identity of his new countess. There was no mention of the children’s father.

‘Be patient!’ Malcolm was bored by the whole business. ‘You’ll have another bairn soon to occupy you.’

The phrase was repeated often before he left once more for Stirling.

‘You have to go and fetch them.’ Eleyne’s patience, at best frail, had snapped. She caught Rhonwen’s hand. ‘You must go and bring them to Falkland. Malcolm will give you an escort. Steal them, kidnap them, anything. But please, please bring them. Go now, before winter sets in.’

The night before she left, Rhonwen put a small packet into Eleyne’s hands. Eleyne looked down at it. For a long time she did not move. She could feel him: Alexander. He was there beside her in the room; there between her hands; in the shadows. She closed her eyes and brought the package to her lips. ‘The phoenix?’ she said wonderingly.

Rhonwen nodded grimly. ‘I found it in the ruins of the fire.’

Eleyne unfolded the piece of soft leather and held the pendant in her palm. ‘He always said I had nothing to fear from Malcolm,’ she whispered. Her hand went to her shoulder almost as though another hand rested there – a strange, intimate gesture and Rhonwen, seeing it, suddenly smiled.

IV

Snow came at the beginning of January: drifts which blocked the roads and made riding impossible. The great fires were banked high and minstrels and harpists kept the household amused.

Eleyne slept late each morning, her body heavy and uncomfortable and constantly tired. The salt-meat diet of winter did not suit her, nor did the narrow indoor life. She wanted to ride; she wanted her children and, strangest of all in that crowded environment, with her husband beside her every night, his hand resting proprietorially on her belly, she was lonely; desperately and deeply lonely, for her lover had not returned. She had not dared to put the phoenix around her neck for fear that Malcolm would see it and recognise it. Instead she kept it hidden. But she kept it close – yet still he did not come.

One visitor came however, in the shadows and in the cold winter sunlight, a visitor who was never seen by others. The lady in black velvet was here too, only now her clothes were white and silver and she smiled, and Eleyne knew that at Falkland she was happy. ‘Who are you?’ She spoke the words out loud as the lady drifted across the snow-covered gardens, a wraith scarcely more visible than the snow itself.

Marie…

Perhaps she had imagined the name of the woman who shared her blood and whose destiny was bound with hers at Fotheringhay, at Falkland and in the bitter loneliness of Loch Leven, but her presence comforted Eleyne in the long desolate days.

Weeks passed and there was still no word from Rhonwen. At first Eleyne waited calmly, filling her days with her horses, cooped up in their stables, and organising the castle, for the first time assuming her full role as Malcolm’s wife. He responded by turning over to her the financial running of his estates. Fife was not a rich earldom, or a large one. One of the seven ancient earldoms of Scotland, it was tiny compared with the lands she had overseen as Countess of Chester, but it had power and influence in Scotland and some pretensions to be pre- eminent because of the tradition which gave the Earls of Fife the ancient right of sanctuary beneath the sacred cross of the Clan Macduff and the right to place the crown on the king’s head at his coronation.

She kept herself busy, but there was no privacy; nowhere she could go to stare into fire or water to see how Rhonwen fared; nowhere she could go to try to summon Alexander. Night after night she lay awake listening to Malcolm’s quiet, regular snores, trying to ease her body on the deep mattress as the wind howled across the central flat lands of Fife and beat against the ice-coated walls of the castle. This night in particular was colder than any before. Her back ached; her legs ached. Her heart ached. She pulled herself up on the pillows wondering if she should get up yet again to visit the garderobe. But the room was bitter. The fire, banked for the night, gave off little heat and she was reluctant to crawl from beneath the warm bedcovers. She slipped her hand beneath the pillow where she had tucked the phoenix, wrapped in a blue silk handkerchief. Easing herself once more on to her side, she closed her eyes, pressing the cold jewel against her lips.

The hand on her breast wakened her. The sheets were thrown back as though she had been dreaming, her breasts aroused. She frowned: Malcolm had up to now respected her wish not to be touched. Then she heard his snore from beside her. He was fast asleep. She lay still, confused, then she felt the touch on her breast again, as though lips caressed her in the velvety darkness. Were her eyes open or closed? She wasn’t sure. Was she awake or asleep? Again the light touch, the whisper of fingers over her breasts and down her belly, the warmth of a mouth on hers. With a secret shiver of recognition, she eased herself down on the pillows and opened her arms. She could feel his warmth, his strength, his longing and at last she felt the brush of his lips on hers as her thighs parted to receive him. Malcolm was still asleep when some time later Eleyne gave a gasp of pleasure in fulfilment of her waking dream.

He came every night after that; she never saw him and she never tried to speak, but he brought her reassurance and pleasure in her lonely bed. Then one night Malcolm awoke. For a while he lay still, aware of his wife awake in the darkness beside him. He could feel her tenseness; feel her excitement. He frowned. She had made it clear that she didn’t want him while her belly was so huge and uncomfortable, and yet he knew she was aroused. Cautiously he put out his hand and cupped it around a heavy breast.

Half-asleep, not knowing if it was a dream or reality, Eleyne turned to him. She wanted the hardness of a man inside her, his lips on her breasts, his skin on hers. Glancing at her face in the shadowy firelight he saw the hunger there and he smiled. She closed her eyes. It wasn’t Alexander. She had realised it too late. It was her husband and yet at that moment she wanted him.

He was less gentle that night than he had ever been and she responded in kind, tearing at his shoulders with her nails, sinking her teeth into the sinews of his neck, gripping his hips with her thighs as though she would suck him dry of his seed. She took no pleasure from him though and somewhere in the darkness of the room she could feel Alexander’s anger and despair. When at last he fell away from her, spent, she turned towards the wall and wrapping her arms around herself she felt the tears pouring down her face.

V

March 1254

When Rhonwen arrived back the children were not with her.

‘They didn’t want to come, cariad. They love their Cousin Margaret, and they thought you were dead. Yes, yes, I told them you weren’t.’ She raised her hand as Eleyne tried to interrupt. ‘But that made it worse. Joanna got very angry; angry that you had left them. I tried to explain, again and again, but they are only little, and it has been a long time since they saw you. I know it’s unfair, but Joanna blames you. She has been hurt too much. Hawisa is too little to know anything but that she loves her sister and she loves Margaret Lincoln and they both adore Annie, who looks after them and runs a nursery of ten children!’ She smiled. ‘They are happy and secure and well looked after there – ’

‘You are telling me to leave them there – ’

‘Cariad -’

‘You are! You are telling me to leave them. To abandon them! You never cared for them because they were Robert’s children.’