riding one or other of her beautiful grey palfreys and followed always by her stately wolfhounds and a minimum of carefully chosen attendants.
If she was often joined by a tall, handsome squire, who attended her with austere silent attention, it was scarcely noticed. Only her own servants knew that at night the squire took their countess to bed and none of them, hand-picked by Hylde and sworn to secrecy on pain of unspeakable and lingering deaths, ever said a word.
She no longer confided in Rhonwen. Rhonwen’s eagle eye had at once detected a difference in her mistress on her return to Falkland after that first meeting with Donald at Adam’s cave. The old woman cornered her alone. ‘What has happened,
Eleyne returned her gaze unflinchingly. ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business, Rhonwen,’ she said, her resentment building. ‘I’ve put you in charge of my nurseries to leave me free to administer the Fife lands. What I do is not your province.’
‘But if you are unfaithful to the king, that is my province. I have promised to serve him.’
‘We have all given our allegiance to the king.’ Eleyne wilfully misunderstood her. But her stomach tightened with warning: she had seen that fanatical light in Rhonwen’s eye too often before. It spelt danger; danger to Donald and danger to herself. ‘Please don’t meddle in affairs which do not concern you. You have built something up in your mind which does not exist, something which is not possible.’ She raised her hand as Rhonwen opened her mouth to contradict her. ‘No, I don’t want to discuss it any more. Your province is the nursery and I do not want to find you creeping around my rooms again, do you understand?’
The two women’s eyes locked, their friendship and love lost in mutual suspicion and resentment. Eleyne had not spoken to Rhonwen for several days, and then it was to give her curt orders about the running of the nurseries. When she next left the castle, she made sure that Rhonwen did not know where she was going, and she gave Hylde stricter than ever instructions about the secrecy their visits required.
How Donald managed to evade his father and his ever-increasing duties, Eleyne never asked. Sufficient that he was there for her. The infrequency of their meetings, the danger, the inconveniences and sometimes the discomfort added to the excitement. Their lovemaking was passionate beyond anything she had ever dreamed. There was no room for Alexander.
There was no question of marrying Donald, they both knew that. She had toyed with the idea of asking the king to have her marriage to Malcolm annulled; it had after all been bigamous and there should be some way of using that to untie the knots which held her to an unloved husband. Once she had hinted as much to Donald, but he had frowned and looked embarrassed and she realised sadly that she was pushing him too hard. He could see her as a lover, but not as a wife; never as a wife. She had not mentioned the matter again, and nor had he.
X
Rhonwen threw the pile of clothes back into the coffer, dropped the lid and turned to the next one. She had been hunting through Eleyne’s belongings for several days and still she hadn’t found it. The phoenix was missing. She had spotted immediately Eleyne had ceased to wear it, but it wasn’t in the jewel casket, nor in the coffer near Eleyne’s bed, or under her pillows.
‘I’ll find it, sire, I’ll find it for you!’ Rhonwen addressed the air somewhere near the bed curtains. ‘She still loves you. She is still yours.’ The rain rattled against the window, and a rumble of thunder echoed in the distance.
Eleyne was busy, happy, confident, but Rhonwen’s instincts told her that something had changed. Her first thought was that Donald of Mar had returned, but there was no sign of him and Eleyne made no attempts that she could see to arrange any secret meetings. It never crossed her mind that Eleyne would confide in Hylde or Meg and not in her.
She turned back to rummaging through the coffers. If it wasn’t here in the bedchamber, she would have to look further afield.
She found the phoenix at last, pulling the small package from the coffer in the solar with a triumphant smile. Why had Eleyne gone to so much trouble to hide it? Unwrapping it, she held it on the palm of her hand; the enamels glowed gently against the dark blue of the silk. It was almost as though she could feel the jewel humming with a life of its own.
She took it back into the bedchamber, and making sure she was alone she closed the door.
‘I’ve found it!’ Her whisper was husky with excitement. ‘I’ve found it for you. Now you can reach her, you can come to her again.’ She tucked it under the pile of pillows and bolsters and smoothed the coverlet down. She sent a quick darting look around the room, but there was no movement, no sign that anybody heard.
XI
Eleyne tossed uneasily on her bed. The storms had returned and the night was humid. She heard the heavy rain drumming on the roof of the chapel below her window.
She and Donald had planned to meet soon. She was to ride to the Abbey of Balmerino and nearby in one of the summer granges they would be able to spend a day together before returning to their public life. She sighed with longing at the thought of him.
The touch on her shoulder was sudden and very firm. Her eyes flew open and she stared into the darkness as a flash of lightning flickered at the window. She sat up slowly and felt her heart thudding with fear.
‘Go away,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’ Another flicker of lightning showed behind the glass, sending eldritch shadows lancing across the room. She pulled the sheet tightly around her. There was no fire: the night was too muggy. In the intervals between the flickers of summer lightning the room was dark as a tomb.
He came in the darkness, his lips commanding, the touch of his hands sure. She could not fight him, he knew her too well. Her body responded, obedient, slavelike, accepting him, opening to him, drugged with the heat of the night and the languor of her dreams. As she drifted into sleep, the perspiration cooling between her breasts, her hair damp on the pillow, there was a smile on her lips and Donald was forgotten.
XII
It was easy to remove the pendant before the maids made the bed in the morning. Whisking it out of sight, Rhonwen tucked it back in its hiding place in the solar. One look at Eleyne’s face told her that her ruse had worked. It would be simple to hide it again the following night.
XIII
The huge tithe barn was swept and empty, waiting for the harvest. It was a strange place to meet. Eleyne gazed up at the slanting sunbeams as they pierced its high walls; there was no sign of Donald. She had slipped out of the abbey guesthouse and stood absorbed in the view across the Tay to the blue mountains beyond, then as dusk fell she had made her way into the fragrant darkness rich with the scent of decades of harvested riches.
The slanting sunbeams had long gone when Donald came at last, slipping through the door and leading in his horse before pushing it closed with his shoulder. She watched, her mouth dry with desire as he tied the animal and threw down some hay for it, then she slipped out of the shadows.
His mouth on hers was firm, his arms around her so strong she gasped for breath as he swept her off her feet
