king.
‘He commands your presence at court, my darling,’ he said as they sat at table in the great hall with Muriel. His father’s wife had become Eleyne’s friend. Childless after a first, sad miscarriage, the Countess of Mar, though younger than Eleyne, had assumed with ease the role of the grandmother and confidante to the children. ‘He says you have been away too long. As soon as you are fully recovered from the birth we will ride south.’
Donald adored his two daughters. They both had their mother’s hair and eyes; they both laughed a lot and played with the toys he brought for them. As he surveyed his overflowing nursery, he sometimes found it hard to believe all these children could be his. Five children in four years. Three sons, two daughters and a wife who, to his infatuated eyes, seemed younger than ever.
VI
Now she did resort to magic and to the tricks that Morna taught her; to go alone into the hills and whisper to the gods; to stand naked under the moon and let its cold benign light stroke her skin and iron away the signs of age. There would be no more children. The knowledge had come to her as suddenly and as surely as she knew now that Donald would return each time he went away; knowing it, she was more certain, more alluring, when they were together. But it was less often. She accepted that now too.
As if to make up for the lessening at last of passion, the Sight returned. On the hills she had visions. She felt the tides of magic which ebbed and flowed with the moon and she grew less afraid. She foresaw that the young man Agnes loved would tumble from the back of a wagon and break his leg. She knew when Sir Duncan Comyn would fall ill with fever and she knew he would recover. Three times she had the vision of the horseman in the storm. But still she could not see his face. And unknowingly, as she opened her heart to worlds beyond the whirling darkness, she allowed Alexander back into her life. With her collusion, even though it was unwitting, he had no need of the phoenix. He was growing stronger.
The night of the first full moon in September he returned. Eleyne was watching Isabella as she took her first unsteady steps from one nursemaid to another in the warm afternoon sunshine. All the children were there. The three boys playing boisterously with a ball, little Marjorie asleep in a plaited straw basket and Isabella. For some reason it was to this one child above all the others – not to Sandy – that her heart reached out, and with it a fear she couldn’t name. It was then that she felt it: the faintest breath against her cheek, a touch on her arm so light it could have been her imagination. For a moment she didn’t understand.
She heard her name so clearly she looked around, puzzled. There was no one there, save the children and their nurses. No one who would dare to call her Eleyne.
It was fainter this time, just an echo in her mind, but suddenly she understood. She stepped backwards, her heart beating fast, staring around her. She had given the phoenix to the gods at the sacred spring, thrown far out into the pool where Elizabeth of Mar had died. How could he be here? How could he? What had she done to allow him near her?
‘My lady, look!’
‘Mama! Look at Isabella!’
‘Mama! She’s walking by herself!’ The chorus of cries claimed her, pulled her back to the present and he was gone.
That night she clung to Donald as though she would never let him go, worshipping his body, touching him with greedy fingers, kissing him, pulling him inside her with a hunger that delighted him. When they lay apart at last, spent and exhausted, she peered into the shadowy corners of the room with something like fear. ‘Don’t come again, please,’ she murmured into the emptiness. ‘Don’t take me from him.’ With her heart closed and without the phoenix, surely he could not come near her?
VII
‘You have to help me,’ she said to Morna. ‘There’s no one else I can talk to. It’s as though he’s trying to win me back, as though he’s pulling me. Tearing me in half. I got rid of the phoenix, but still he comes.’
She put her head in her hands. ‘I think I’m going mad. He’s there all the time even when Donald is with me. I can feel him, sense him – he won’t leave me alone. Why suddenly, after all these years? Why has he come back?’
Morna shrugged. ‘Something has happened to give him hope.’ She sighed. ‘You have learned to walk in the world of the moonlight. He senses you near him there and his love is so strong that it builds the bridge between you. Perhaps you should do as Lord Donald wishes and go to the king. You said before that you thought he would not follow you near his son.’
VIII
The king greeted Eleyne and Donald warmly and at once drew them inside. ‘Lord Donald, your father has reminded me that you, the most chivalrous and knightly of men, have never been given the accolade of knighthood. It is my intention to confer it upon you here at Michaelmas.’ He took Donald’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder, then he glanced at Eleyne with an embarrassed little shrug. ‘I’m glad we can put it right at last and that you can be presented with your spurs by your king.’
Eleyne’s heart was bursting with pride. In all their years together, they had never discussed the terrible day when the king had denied his knighthood. Eleyne had never mentioned it: her guilt was too profound. If he thought about it, he kept it to himself. He had never reproached her, never given any sign that he thought about it at all. But now the incredulous joy on his face reminded her of how much he had been prepared to give up for her. Silently she touched his arm; he smiled and that smile told her what she wanted to know. His love for her still came first. He would give up a thousand knighthoods for her if she commanded it. She gave him a little push and stood back as Donald knelt before his king and kissed his hand.
The day after the ceremony of knighthood Eleyne walked in the great park at Scone. Bethoc was with her, half-heartedly twirling a spindle as she followed her mistress. ‘You look happy, my lady,’ she smiled. ‘You must have been so proud of Sir Donald.’
Eleyne stopped. ‘I am.’
She had much to be happy about: Donald. Their children. Mac-duff. Little Duncan.
There was a special place in her heart for Joanna and Hawisa, apart, toughened to keep the pain at bay, and another there for Colban and her two dead babies by the king and for Rhonwen, but she did not let herself dwell on them. Her mourning for them was done in the dark and in her prayers. And there was Alexander. Her love for Alexander – a thing apart, a piece of her future after she too had died. She frowned. What had made her think such a thing? Alexander was nothing to her now, nothing. There was no place for him near her or near his son. But even as she thought it she knew that was not true. She had been wrong to think he would not come near his son. He was here. He was everywhere. This was still his kingdom and next to her he loved Alexander more than anyone on earth.
The sun was reflecting on the distant curve of the river, sending zigzags of silver across the rippled water. Bethoc’s voice came to her in waves, advancing, retreating, muffled as the silver broadened and merged into a
