she remembered. Eleyne had always wrapped the pendant. Cautiously she hooked her fingers into the object again in the darkness and slowly, carefully, she managed to draw the wisp of silk towards her.
VII
Sometimes they rode together, exploring the neighbourhood, and sometimes, when Donald was occupied with the affairs of the earldom, Eleyne rode alone, realising how much she had missed her solitary rides with only the dogs for company. Gradually she extended her range, beyond the crofts and the tofts around the township and up the broad river valley, following the meandering course of the River Don and into the mountains beyond, feeling immediately at home, although these mountains were unlike those of Eryri. These were rounded shoulders, humped massively from the great backbone of the Grampians beneath a vast north-eastern sky.
It was here, in a lonely glen where she had ridden with only the dogs for escort, that she met Morna. The woman was gathering flowers by the river as Eleyne stopped to let her horse drink. She straightened to look at Eleyne, her face solemn, her eyes direct, showing no shyness as the Master of Mar’s wife slid from her saddle. The two women looked at each other with the strange empathy that brings immediate liking, though neither had spoken a word.
Eleyne smiled. ‘Good day, mistress.’ The woman, whom Eleyne judged to be only a little younger than herself, was heavily pregnant.
She nodded gravely in return. ‘You’ll be wanting a drink too, perhaps.’ Her voice was low and musical. She glanced at the horse and Raoulet and Sabina, and Sabina’s son, Piers, as the animals drank greedily from the cool brown water. There was no need to ask who her visitor was. Word of Lord Donald’s wife, with her silks and velvets, riding her horse unescorted like a man, followed by the three great hounds, had spread for miles around.
‘I can drink with them.’ Eleyne dropped the horse’s rein and pushed up the sleeves of her gown.
The other woman smiled. ‘I have something you might prefer: there’s blaeberry wine in my house if you would care to follow me, my lady.’ She set off without looking back, the withy basket full of flowers on her arm.
Her house, set back from the shingle bank of the river, on the side of a small hill, was a small stone-built bothy, roofed with turves. She led the way inside and gestured Eleyne to sit on the rug-covered heap of heather which served as a bed. The place was spotless, swept with a heather besom which stood against the wall, furnished sparingly with a rough oak coffer, a girnel kist, a table and two stools and by the fire a polished bannock stone. The cup in which she offered the wine was a finely chased silver. Eleyne took it without comment. Such was the woman’s dignity it did not occur to her that it was out of place in such a poor hut, and that it might be stolen. She sipped the wine and smiled. ‘This is good.’
‘Aye.’ The woman nodded. ‘It’s the best you’ll taste in Mar.’ Her hand to her back, she sat down gracefully on the floor, her ragged checked skirts swirling in the dust of the dry earth floor.
‘Is your husband a shepherd?’ Eleyne looked around the hut.
‘I’ve no husband, lady. I prefer my own company. The bairn – ’ The woman put her hand on her stomach with a possessive gesture of affection. ‘Well, maybe she’s a child of the fairies.’ She gave a humorous scowl, and shook her head in mock despair. ‘I’m Morna, my lady. I’m the spaewife, or so the cottars call me.’
‘I see.’ Eleyne smiled. ‘Yes. I’ve heard about you. The people of the castle think very highly of your powers.’
She was much loved, this Morna of the glens. Eleyne had heard her name repeated often with tales of healing and magic and love spells. She leaned forward and set her cup down on the ground before her. ‘Perhaps you could help me.’
‘You want to know your fortune?’ The woman sounded incredulous. ‘Usually the lasses come out to me to know the name of the lad they’ll marry. You already have your husband.’
‘But will I give him a son?’ Eleyne wasn’t aware how desperate she sounded until the words were out.
The woman leaned forward and took Eleyne’s hands in hers. She turned them palm up and looked at them. The only sound in the bothy was the high trickling song of the skylark, lost in the brilliance of the sky above the glen, and the small murmur of the river outside. Eleyne found she was holding her breath. Her hands grew hot in the woman’s cool grasp. When at last Morna looked up, she was smiling. ‘You will give your husband three sons.’
‘Three!’ Eleyne echoed in astonishment. She laughed, half in disbelief, half in delight. ‘I had suspected I was past the age of childbearing. I still have my courses, but it’s nine years since I conceived. If you are right, I shall be the happiest woman in the world.’
‘I hope so, lady.’
‘When? Can you see when it will happen?’
The other woman nodded. ‘You already carry your first son.’
Eleyne stood up. She walked outside the small house and stood staring down towards the river numb with shock.
Morna followed her. ‘Why do you ask me all this? You have the Sight yourself.’
Eleyne shook her head. ‘I see other things: visions of the past and of the future, but never for myself. I’ve tried to learn, but I can never understand; never see clearly.’
‘Perhaps you try too hard.’ Morna folded her arms across her stomach. ‘You have lived too long in the castles and courts of the south. If you want to see, the mountains of Mar will teach you. All you have to do is listen and watch with stillness in your heart.’
VIII
It was another six weeks before Eleyne was sure in her own mind. Only then did she tell Donald. Solemnly he undressed her and kneeling before her he kissed her stomach. Then he gave her a twisted rope of sea pearls.
‘Don’t tell your parents, Donald.’ Suddenly she was afraid.
‘Why?’ He pulled her on to his knees, ‘They’ll be delighted.’
‘Suppose something goes wrong?’
‘It won’t.’ He touched her belly again, gently stroking it, ‘Nothing could go wrong now.’
It was an idyllic time. The long summer drowsed over the hills. She and Donald made love as often as before, though he was more careful with her now, watching in wonder as her breasts and belly grew. Sometimes they rode together into the hills and he would undress her there, on his cloak, spread on the heather amongst the wild marjoram by the burns, surrounded by clouds of butterflies.
She would still ride out alone though not so far now. More often than not she went to visit Morna, taking gifts for the woman and her coming baby, and they would talk for a long time, companionably, sitting by the babbling river or, if the soft highland rain poured down, by Morna’s fire. Morna’s knowledge of the magic of the hills was vast; Eleyne found herself listening enthralled to her hostess’s tales, and then almost without realising it she was talking too, about Einion and his prophecies, and about Alexander.
She still feared sometimes that he would return, suddenly while she and Donald were together. But it had not happened; he had not come to Kildrummy.
‘Perhaps he could not follow me here,’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps he has forgotten me at last.’
Morna was watching her closely. ‘If his love was as great and as deep as you say, he will never forget you,’ she said slowly. ‘He will love you through all eternity and through all ages.’
Eleyne was silent.
‘Did you love him as much?’ Morna asked.
Eleyne nodded. ‘He was everything to me, but he turned his back on me. If he had really wanted, he could have had me as his wife, but he chose not to. He chose not to make our sons legitimate. He put Scotland’s honour before mine.’ She considered for a minute. ‘Malcolm of Fife killed so that he could have me as his wife. Does that not make his love the greater?’
