picked up his empty goblet. He reached for the wine. ‘I’ll be all right in a minute! Oh Christ, Nel, what must you think of me! you’ll think I’m a girl…’
‘Donald.’ Eleyne held out her arms. ‘Come back, you’re quite safe. He won’t come, I promise.’
‘I know he won’t come. He doesn’t exist.’ Donald threw back the wine and poured himself another cupful. ‘It’s just I can feel that ice-cold hand on my shoulder!’ He shuddered.
Eleyne stared at him. ‘He touched you before?’
‘Yes… no, I don’t know!’
She went to him and took the goblet out of his hand. ‘He can’t come near us, Donald. I’ve drawn a circle in the room, and he can’t cross it. We are safe.’
‘You’ve done what?’ His face was as white as her shift.
She looked at him anxiously. ‘I’ve drawn a circle.’
‘So you do believe he’s real?’ He stepped away from her.
‘I was afraid, I didn’t know what to believe.’
But he wasn’t listening. ‘You do! You believe in him. You think he’s real! You said you went on loving him after he was dead! Did you mean that? Is that what happened? Blessed Virgin! What did you let him do to you?’
‘Donald, please.’ Suddenly she was frightened. ‘Forget him – ’
‘How can I forget him? If he were a real man I could fight him. I could take you away and hide you from him. I could see him, for Christ’s sake! But this!’
Her hands had begun to shake. ‘There is no danger. There’s no one there. It’s you I love.’
For a moment he continued to stare at her, then he reached again for the wine. ‘Is it true you bore him a child?’
‘Yes.’ She did not dare tell him there had been two children, her two little boys.
Almost timidly she put her hand on his shoulder. He froze. ‘Does he lie with you, this ghost? Like some foul incubus?’
‘No!’
‘Oh yes, he does. I can see it in your eyes.’ His anger evaporated and there was nothing left but terrible hurt. ‘Oh, Nel, how can I compete with a king? I don’t know if he’s real, or if he’s just in your mind, or if he’s just in my mind, but I can’t compete with him. Every time I see you I shall imagine I see him at your shoulder. Every time I touch you I shall imagine he’s touching you too.’
He stooped and picking up his mantle he began to shrug it on.
‘What are you doing?’ Her voice rose in panic. ‘Donald, you can’t leave me.’
‘I’m sorry, my love, I can’t stay.’ He looked at her with terrible sadness in his eyes. ‘You belong to King Alexander. Malcolm may not mind sharing you with him, but I can’t. I’m sorry.’
She was too shocked and frightened to speak as he turned towards the door. When he was halfway across the room he stopped and hesitated. He groped in his scrip and pulled out a folded piece of parchment. Without turning round, he tossed it on to the table, then he walked out.
It was his poem.
IV
Rhonwen sat in the large chamber which had served as nursery, playroom and, while they were young enough, before their tutors came, as schoolroom to the two young Fifes. On the table before her were a dozen small piles of embroidery silks, all carefully graded by quality and colour. Her eyes weren’t as keen as they used to be. The long hours of needlework, the fine stitches, the poor light had all made her near-sighted. She peered at one of the tangled skeins and, sighing, put it down.
Behind her two young women were threading the loom. The pattern of the woollen warp was complicated and repetitive and involved much serious counting as they knotted the loom weights into place. The finished length of cloth would make a fine plaid: the broad warm multi-coloured strip of cloth the men and women of Fife wrapped around themselves against the vicious east wind which whipped across the forest from the bitter North Sea. If it turned out fine enough and warm enough, she would give it to Eleyne. She smiled fondly, then frowned.
She had known at once that the affair with Donald of Mar was over. Eleyne had hidden her devastation well. Outwardly her life continued as before, the life of a country woman above all else, less concerned with the goings- on at court, where her husband spent most of his time, and more passionately involved with her horses and the new stud farm she was building. Her aching heart was invisible to all, Rhonwen suspected, except herself. She had pondered what to do about it, once or twice going to the casket where the phoenix lay and gazing thoughtfully at it. Her cautious enquiries revealed that Donald had disappeared back to Mar. Her mistress’s pride would not tolerate a man brought back unwillingly. And did she want him back? Rhonwen watched and waited.
One morning as she sat with Eleyne, working on the tiny gold knots which were to decorate the neck of one of Macduff ’s tunics, Rhonwen found herself contemplating yet again the younger woman’s preoccupied face. Eleyne’s fingers were inky like a child’s; she had been copying lists of horses into the great ledger she had begun, listing every foal bred at Falkland since her arrival, but she had written nothing for some minutes. The ink was drying on her quill as she stared into space, the expression on her face transparent. With a frisson of shock, Rhonwen found herself reading it with ease. Eleyne of Fife had a new lover! The glow on her skin, the excitement in her eyes, combined with the dreamy expression, could only mean one thing – a man.
The embroidery dropped unnoticed on Rhonwen’s knee as all her senses sharpened. It wasn’t possible! Not without her knowledge! And it certainly wasn’t Donald of Mar. Her curiosity was aroused.
She watched for days, surreptitiously and with great caution. The obvious place for the meetings was the stables. In the old days she had often wondered if Eleyne hadn’t found comfort with that pleasant young man who had been her master of horse at Suckley. He had died for her, that young man; there were perhaps many who would do the same.
The marshal of the horse in the Falkland stables was Thomas of Cupar, a man in his mid-sixties, who had been shiningly and aggressively bald for more than forty years. He was a brilliant, dedicated horseman, and undoubtedly he and Eleyne respected and liked each other enormously – but lovers? No. Rhonwen was sure not. Stealthily, she tracked Eleyne around the castle and found her the same with all the men she spoke to. She had a way with men, as she had had since she was a child. From the most senior of the household to the most junior of the pages, she spoke with gracious dignity, combined with an almost invisible flirtation of the eyes which told them that, though their countess appreciated them as men and found them attractive, they must not overstep the mark.
Her eyes alight with wry amusement, Eleyne refused to be drawn by Rhonwen’s casual attempts to trick her into giving herself away. She still loved Rhonwen, the older woman was sure of that, but she confided in her less and less. There was a reservation there which hurt and saddened her and Rhonwen guessed why. She had been away too much; she had left Eleyne when Eleyne had needed her most, and when she had returned the habit of keeping her own counsels was established. That Eleyne had ever resented her prying and manipulation over their long years together never entered her head. Nor had she noticed that sometimes it was Eleyne who watched her, as though she too were trying to resolve a problem which would not go away.
Rhonwen sucked in her cheeks and doggedly pursued her quest. There was someone. She saw the signs again and again, but only when Eleyne was alone and thought herself unobserved; and she never saw her single out any particular man for so much as an extra smile.
So. It must be at night. He must somehow go to her at night right here in the castle under everyone’s noses. It was so convenient, her strange habit of wanting to sleep by herself when her husband was away; so easy when her servants were used to leaving her alone; no fear of interruption, no possibility of discovery; no guards save at the main entrance to the Great Tower.
The man in question had therefore to secrete himself in the Tower, in the evening, after supper in the great hall and before the door was closed and bolted for the night. Rhonwen, her eyes everywhere, watched and waited her chance.
Eleyne’s new young maid, Meg, was somewhat in awe of her mistress’s old nurse: the hawklike nose, the
