‘Did you enjoy the hunt?’ John asked wearily. His eyes were sore from reading and his head ached.
‘Not very much.’ Eleyne tossed her head. ‘I don’t think I like it here, my lord.’ Her pride was still stung by the king’s rebuke and her temper dangerously high.
John frowned. ‘You have not annoyed the king or his henchmen, Eleyne? You know how important it is for them to like me.’
‘Do you not think to ask if they might have annoyed me?’ she flung back at him.
John stood up, and threw down his pen. ‘What happened?’
‘The Earl of Fife forced me to kiss him; he tried to touch me, to force me – ’
‘Oh, surely not. The Earl of Fife is one of the most influential men in the kingdom – ’
‘And he tried to force your wife!’ she repeated. ‘When my father found another man in bed with my mother, he hanged him like a common thief!’
‘De Braose was your father’s enemy, when all is said and done, Eleyne. The cases are not the same. And Lord Fife was not in bed with you. He snatched a kiss, that’s all.’
‘And you don’t mind?’
‘Yes, I mind.’ He folded his arms beneath his cloak. ‘But I am not going to be foolish about it. No harm was done. He paid you a compliment. Just make sure you are not alone with him in future.’
‘And that is all you are going to say?’ She was almost speechless with indignation. Her cool, stern husband was not even ruffled by her news. ‘You are like the king. You think it a joke! The great Earl of Fife tried to kiss Lady Chester in the woods. Oh, she’s not dishonoured, she’s not even supposed to be angry! She is supposed to laugh it off and consider herself flattered!’
‘You told the king?’ John frowned. ‘Eleyne, I don’t want him to think you are going to cause trouble among his followers.’
‘Cause trouble!’ Eleyne was incensed. ‘Perhaps, my lord and husband, if you had been there, hunting with everyone else, it would not have happened! Perhaps if you were in the great hall more often after supper it would not happen – ’
‘That is enough!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘May I remind you that neither would it have happened if you had remained here with me! In future you will stay here, at my side, and behave like a dutiful wife. Then men will remember that is what you are.’
That night he slept with his back to her, a bed cloak wrapped around his thin shoulders against the damp and cold of the rain which had swept north across the Forth in the darkness and which seeped in through the very stones of the building. At dawn he began to cough again.
VII
The great castle of Edinburgh was black on its rain-soaked rock. Staring up at it, Rhonwen felt her heart clench with fear. Was this where Eleyne would spend the rest of her days? Her carefree, bright child a prisoner in this cold northern land. She huddled into her cloak and looked around intently. Her servants and horses were as tired as she was after the long ride north, and now they were disappointed. The court, they had been told, had been in Dunfermline across the broad River Forth for many weeks. They had farther yet to go.
It was already growing late. They had to find somewhere to sleep in Edinburgh and in the morning go on to find the Queen’s Ferry which, they had been told, would take them on their journey. They were fighting their way down the busy high street with its market crowds, and Rhonwen was mentally counting out the last of her precious hoard of silver coins. Were there enough left to buy bread and meat and sleep tonight in a clean bed with a minimum of others to share it? And then to pay for a guide and the ferry in the morning?
She watched wearily as one of her servants stopped a tall, thin-faced man with high cheekbones and dark hooded eyes, asking him for somewhere to stay. She saw the puzzled looks on both their faces as they struggled to understand one another’s tongues, then the Welshman turned, nodding. He waved ahead down the street. ‘We are to go out of the town by the Nether Bow Port and on through the canon’s burgh, then we’ll find a guesthouse at the Abbey of the Holy Rood on the edge of the forest,’ he called. ‘It’s not far to the ferry in the morning.’
Rhonwen kicked her horse on down the steep road through the thronging market crowds. Now that she was so close to Eleyne, she was beginning to feel nervous; what would Eleyne say when she saw her and when she heard, as she must, that Rhonwen had burned Einion’s letter with all its urgency, and – the fact which had terrified Rhonwen into starting her frantic journey north – that the old man was dead and with him the message which had been so important it needed Eleyne’s immediate return to Mo n?
VIII
That night Eleyne dreamed again about the king. She awoke, her husband’s implacable back turned towards her in the darkness, aware that her body was alive with longing, that her skin was warm and eager beneath the sheets, her nipples hard, her thighs flaccid and welcoming. It was the third time she had dreamed of Alexander in as many nights, and each time she had buried her face, hot with shame, in the pillows. What kind of wanton was she that she dreamed of her husband’s cousin – her aunt’s husband – in such brazen detail? She stroked her hand surreptitiously across her flat belly and up to her breasts, feeling them tense beneath her fingers. Outside she could hear the heavy summer rain pouring endlessly on to the lead roofs of the guesthouse and gurgling from the gutters. The rich smell of the earth, newly drenched, rose through the open windows and filled the room. Beyond the bed curtains she heard a movement from one of the truckle beds which lined the room, then a whisper and the creak of wood followed by a stifled giggle.
She turned over, staring towards the heavy tester over the bed. Beside her was John’s deep regular breathing. Cautiously she reached out and touched his back, running her fingers down the length of his spine. He moved slightly and groaned, then he slept again. Beyond the curtains the room had grown silent.
IX
‘Lady Chester!’
Sometimes the king addressed her formally; sometimes he called her Eleyne and sometimes he addressed her, as he addressed his wife, as ‘lass’. She never knew which was coming or, when she looked into his face, if he were serious or teasing.
‘We have a visitor who will interest you.’
Beside him on the dais Joanna was sitting near the smouldering fire, attended by Robert Bruce, Eleyne’s nephew, newly raised from page to squire in the queen’s household and celebrating the fact by sticking his tongue out at Eleyne when he thought no one else was looking. The queen’s face was pale and she had grown even thinner over the last few weeks, but her eyes were calm now, and no longer red with weeping. Robert alone was sometimes able to make her smile.
The visitor, as Eleyne made her way across the hall beside her husband, was a tall man, dressed in a black gown and mantle, his white hair and beard moving silver in the light of the flickering candles. He’s a bard, she thought, like Einion. Perhaps he’s a seer – and she was afraid.
She walked towards the dais at John’s side, aware that many eyes had followed her from the moment she entered the hall, aware that she was being gossiped about, her name linked with the Earl of Fife even though she had never been alone with him again or hunted since that fateful day. And even though she slept every night with her husband and seldom left his side at all, by his decree.
She raised her eyes and met those of the queen, who smiled at her. The two had become friends after a
