Eleyne sat in her favourite room in the Snow Tower watching Marjorie and Isabella sew whilst she told them the stories of old Wales. Agnes brought in a pouch of letters which had just arrived from the south.
She had grown to dread the arrival of these letters. Too often, as the years passed, they contained bad news. The first had come four years before. A letter, out of the blue, from Alice Goodsire, Luned’s eldest daughter.
Luned had left a doting husband, five children and sixteen grandchildren to mourn her.
Her death shook Eleyne terribly. Her foster sister, her maid and her oldest friend, Luned had been her closest companion for so many years it did not seem possible that she could be dead, that she would never see her again…
Then five months ago the next blow had come, word of her sister Gwenllian’s death, followed only three months later by news that her beloved Margaret had succumbed to a congestion of the lungs and died at last, giving orders that her heart be buried in her beloved husband Walter’s coffin at Aconbury in the rolling hills of the border march.
So, they were all gone now. Luned, Gruffydd and Senena, Dafydd and Isabella, Gwladus, Angharad, Gwenllian and Margaret. She was the only one left of the brood of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and Joan the daughter of John of England.
She frowned, lost in thought, the pouch dangling from her finger-tips. Henry of England had also died, nine years ago now; her Uncle Henry, the man who had declared her dead. In his eyes, in the eyes of England she had been dead for nearly thirty years! She had felt little sorrow when he had gone, he who had treated her as a pawn, to be handed without a second thought to a man like Robert de Quincy. She shivered. Even after all these years the thought of Robert could still make her skin crawl. The power of a king was frightening – a power of life and death; a power to treat his subjects like so many possessions. The great charter her grandfather had been forced to sign had changed little in the long run. And now another king ruled England: her cousin Edward. Unofficially he recognised her existence; he knew she was there and the thought filled her with unease. For a long time she had known that Edward regarded her as an enemy.
She gazed thoughtfully at the bag of letters.
Donald and his father were at Roxburgh with the Scots court. The letters were undoubtedly from them, full of last-minute instructions to do a thousand things on the estates which she had probably done two weeks ago. Her face cleared; smiling fondly, she picked up one sealed with Donald’s seal.
The letter did indeed contain news. As Donald’s father was still unwell Donald had been called to act as a witness to the marriage agreement between little Princess Margaret, King Alexander’s youngest child, and Eric, King of Norway. The earl was, he said, travelling back to Kildrummy in easy stages. William, who had always been such a robust and energetic man, had been growing old visibly over the past few months, his decline speeded by Muriel’s sudden death of congestion of the lungs. Eleyne put the letter down. Next to it on the pile was a letter in a hand she didn’t recognise. It bore the seal of de Bohun; her heart began to thump uncomfortably.
‘Mama! the story!’ Isabella prompted. At twelve she was tall and slim as a sapling but showing at last the signs of great beauty to come. ‘Please.’
‘In a minute, my love.’ Eleyne turned the letter over and over in her hands, then finally she broke the seal. When she looked up at last, there were tears in her eyes.
‘Mama! Mama, what is it?’ Isabella dropped her work and ran to put her thin arms around her mother’s neck.
Eleyne smiled, barely able to speak for emotion. ‘It’s from your sister.’
‘My sister?’ Isabella looked uncertainly at Marjorie – at eleven, still a chubby tomboy.
‘No, not your little sister, your big sister.’ Eleyne drew her daughter down on to the seat near her. ‘Long before you were born, I lived in England and I had two little girls, much like you and Marjorie. But when I came to live in Scotland with Macduff ’s father, I had to leave them behind.’
‘You wouldn’t leave me behind, would you?’ Marjorie, sitting plumply on a stool of her own, sounded only half confident as she too put down her sewing ready for the new story.
‘No, darling, I wouldn’t leave you behind.’ Eleyne smiled, hiding the terrible sadness those memories still brought back.
‘What is she called. Our sister?’ Isabella asked, eyeing the letter clutched in her mother’s hands.
‘She is called Joanna, and her sister is Hawisa.’
‘What does she say?’ Marjorie interrupted. ‘Is she coming to see us?’
‘She wants to see us, but she hasn’t been very well,’ Eleyne said slowly.
She did not say how ill she was, nor did she mention her sister.
‘When will she come?’ Marjorie asked eagerly. Scrambling to her feet, she came and leaned against her mother’s knees and picking up the letter, she began to spell out some of the words. ‘How old is she? Her writing is difficult to read. Or did she use a clerk?’ The girl smiled. Her own writing had been condemned as execrable by the boys’ tutor who had remained at Kildrummy after his charges had gone so that twice a week he could give the girls a lesson in reading and writing.
‘She is grown up, my darling. I don’t know when she’ll come or if she’ll be able to travel so far,’ Eleyne said. ‘It may be that I shall ride south to see her.’
‘Then we won’t meet her!’ Isabella scowled. ‘I know! You can take us to see Cousin Llywelyn in Wales. We’ll meet her there and we can see Aber. Can we?’
It was a tempting idea. ‘We’ll see. I’ll speak to your father. I would like to go to Aber again.’ She sighed wistfully and stood up and stretched. Aber and Joanna. That would be perfect.
III
The heatwave which followed the rain broke in a massive storm. Lightning flashed across the mountains, turning heather and rock to blinding silver as the thunder reverberated over the moors and echoed around the corries.
Eleyne surveyed the women in her solar. They were restless, made uneasy by the thunder. At the table Isabella and Marjorie were squabbling quietly over a game of pick-a-sticks.
Eleyne went to stand in the window embrasure, flinching as a flash seemed to angle directly through the eighteen-foot-thick walls.
Donald and his father had still not returned to Mar. There had been no further word from them, and she was unsettled. Something was wrong. She closed her eyes; her head was throbbing dully and, in spite of the heat of the chamber, there was a strange coldness across her shoulders.
She caught her breath. The whisper had been in her head, inside her brain.
Her eyes flew open and she looked across the room. In spite of the heat, they had had to light candles to sew by. She could see the perspiration on the faces of the women, the dampness of the clinging wimples, dark stains spreading on thin silk. The rankness of their bodies was beginning to fill the room, overpowering the floral scents they used and the sweetness of the beeswax candles.
Eleyne spun around. A dozen faces turned towards her, then turned back to their work.
There it was again. Clearer this time, stronger.
She couldn’t breathe. ‘Blessed Virgin. Holy Mother of God.’ Soundlessly her lips framed the words. Another lightning flash illuminated the room and she saw Isabella flinch, her hand across her eyes. The child looked near to
