‘There’s no one here, Eleyne. Look, the dogs are asleep. They wouldn’t let anyone near you, you know that. It’s your imagination, Nel. He wouldn’t come here.’
She gave a doubtful smile. ‘I’m sorry. It must have been a dream.’
The candle flame spluttered in an unseen draught and a spatter of wax spilled across the coffer where it was standing.
Eleyne stared into the shadows. It was no dream. He was there. She could feel him, feel the anguish, feel the longing. His raw pain made her flinch. It was like a scream deep inside her.
Donald felt it too. ‘Why now? Why has he come back now?’
‘It was my fault. It was because I let him back in.’ Her voice was all but inaudible.
‘How?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘I didn’t mean to. It was after Marjorie was born, as if he knew I could no longer bear you any children.’ Her voice broke into a sob. ‘I was afraid I would grow ugly in your eyes, and I prayed to be beautiful again. I opened myself to the forces of magic, and he came back. Don’t let him near me, please! Hold me!’ She threw herself back into his arms, pressing her face against his chest.
‘He can’t hurt you, Eleyne,’ he murmured, stroking her hair. ‘If he loved you so much, he won’t want to hurt you.’
‘No?’ She looked up at him. ‘No,’ she repeated thoughtfully, ‘he doesn’t want to hurt me. He knows he can’t share me, not any more. So he wants to take me away from you.’
The truth had come to her in a flash. ‘Today I told the king the manner of his death.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I foresaw it long ago, but I didn’t understand. I never recognised him before. Then today I saw his face. I saw his face because Alexander showed it to me.’ She pressed herself against Donald’s chest. ‘Now that he knows, now that I have warned him – there is no need for me to live. My purpose has been fulfilled and Alexander knows his son has been warned. Don’t you see, Donald? He wants me dead!’
‘Nonsense.’ Donald looked over the top of her head into the darkness. ‘He’d have to fight me for you.’ The hair on his forearms was standing on end. He could feel an eerie coldness around them as he strained his eyes into the shadows. ‘Tell him, tell him I’m not letting you go. Tell him to go away.’
‘I have, I’ve begged him.’ Her voice rose hysterically and Bethoc stirred and sat up.
‘My lady?’ she queried sleepily.
‘Go back to sleep,’ Donald commanded.
Gently pushing Eleyne from him he stood up and reached for the dagger which lay on the coffer beside him. Unsheathing it, he raised it before him, hilt uppermost, the thought of his all-night vigil in the royal chapel on the night before his knighthood still fresh in his mind. ‘In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of Our Blessed Lady, I command you to leave my wife alone. Go back to wherever you came from. Leave her in peace. Tell him.’ He pressed the dirk into Eleyne’s hand. ‘Tell him this is what you want.’
‘Please, Alexander, please go.’ Eleyne raised the dirk in front of her, holding it in both hands. ‘I loved you. I still love you, but I’m not ready to come to you, not yet. I want to stay with Donald and with my children as long as they need me. Please leave me. I’ll watch over your son, I’ll show him the danger, I’ll keep him safe from the storm.’
In her bed Bethoc realised she had stopped breathing. Clutching her blankets under her chin, she watched the bed curtains, her heart thundering with fright. She could see the shadow again, quite clearly, standing over Eleyne.
Eleyne looked up as though she too could see it. ‘Please,’ she whispered brokenly, ‘if you love me, go.’
He was fading now. Bethoc lost the shape amongst the shadows.
Eleyne felt him drawing away, his sadness tangible. ‘Bless you, my love,’ she whispered. ‘God keep you. One day I’ll come to you, I promise. One day, when they don’t need me any more.’
‘No!’ Donald cried, anguished. ‘Never!’
Eleyne laid down the dirk on the bed and put her arms around Donald’s neck. ‘Oh, my love, don’t grudge him that. If I die before you, then you will marry again. Of course you will. Then I shall be with him.’
‘Has he gone?’ Donald stared over her head.
‘Yes, he’s gone.’ She smiled faintly.
‘And he won’t come back?’
‘No.’ There were only empty shadows where the darker shadow had been. ‘No. Now he knows that one day I shall be his, I don’t think he’ll come back. Not until I die.’
BOOK FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I
It had rained for several weeks; torrential, cold, swelling the rivers and burns, lying in the great sodden mosses of the moors, cascading from the mountains in falls and leaps of white water. When the sun appeared at last it was balm upon the land.
The old man went regularly to the sacred well. He would hang a torn strip of cloth from a branch of thorn or leave a broken piece of bannock and once, in despair, he tossed a penny, a whole day’s pay, into the spring before he dipped a jug of the pure, ice-cold water to take back to the high shielings where his wife lay ill with fever in their makeshift bothy.
The rain had deepened the pool. The trickle which usually bubbled gently from the rock had become a torrent. He could see where the shingle had been washed out of the pool by the force of the floodwater. It lay on the bank amongst the thin scattering of bog orchids and purple-black cornel like the sea strand. Something caught his eye, gleaming amongst the stones. He bent and picked it up. Trailing with soft, feathery moss, the phoenix lay in his palm and it seemed to him that it vibrated like a captive dragonfly. For a long time he looked at it, debating whether he should throw it back into the pool. Someone had left it as an offering, and it would be the worst of luck to take it. On the other hand, he could see the jewel was worth a king’s ransom.
II
On the hills behind Kildrummy Castle the heather was beginning to turn to purple beneath the summer sun.
