Eleyne stood looking out of the deeply embrasured window, clutching her mantle around her as if she were cold, her embroidery – a panel of Margaret’s wedding dress – discarded on the stone seat near her. The day was hot and airless. Behind her in the body of the room the queen and her ladies chatted listlessly over their work. There had been no word from Galloway.
Torn with guilt about his sister’s safety and his nieces’ inheritance, and knowing he should be there with the king and his brother-in-law, Lord Annandale, John had closeted himself in the guesthouse with the officials who travelled regularly from Chester and the lands of Huntingdon, immersing himself in day-to-day administration. He was there now, gaping up at the stone vaulting above his head. What if the king should die? What if a messenger should come that very morning with the news that Alexander had been mortally injured? He closed his eyes and brought his mind back to the business in hand.
Eleyne could not focus on the fine stitches of her embroidery. Her head ached. Even in the cool stone of the old keep the air was unpleasantly humid, and she had given up trying to listen to the conversation around her. It faded into the distance and for a moment she felt her eyes close.
At seventeen she had blossomed into a composed, beautiful young woman, outwardly confident, popular with her servants and her companions. She was eccentric still in her love of her own company, her passion for her horses and her strange abstracted moods, but she was kind and thoughtful and she was a princess and they were prepared to forgive her much. But she was still childless. That preyed on many minds, not least her own.
The sound of the watchman’s horn from the high gatehouse brought all talk to a halt. The embrasure was suddenly crowded as Margaret and three of the other ladies craned past her to try to see out of the window. Behind them the queen sat unmoving; Eleyne saw that her knuckles were white.
The messenger was weary and covered in dust, and still out of breath from his long ride as he knelt before Joanna.
‘The king was attacked, madam, after he entered Galloway. The rebels fell on our men as they were making camp.’ He gulped for breath. ‘But the rebels have been defeated. By God’s mercy the Earl of Ross was delayed in joining the main body of the army with his men. He was able to attack them from the other side and take them by surprise. Their defeat is total.’
‘And the king?’ Joanna’s voice was flat and hard. ‘Is the king all right?’
‘He is safe, your grace. He has ordered Walter Comyn to remain and complete the rebels’ defeat. He bid me return to tell you that he and his lords are on their way back for Princess Margaret’s wedding.’
Joanna closed her eyes as relief swept over her: ‘The Blessed Virgin be thanked.’
Eleyne silently echoed her prayer; she hadn’t realised that she had been holding her breath.
Rhonwen was standing by the table where she had been sorting silks. Eleyne saw that she was watching her closely, a thoughtful expression on her face, and suddenly she was afraid: it was almost as though the other woman had guessed her secret. But how could she? It was a secret so terrible that Eleyne barely acknowledged it to herself. A secret which bit deep into her soul: that she had fallen in love with the man who was her aunt’s husband and so her own uncle – Alexander of Scotland.
Later, before the shrine of Queen Margaret in Dunfermline Abbey, the court lit candles and gave thanks. At Joanna’s side Eleyne raised her eyes to the great carved crucifix upon the altar. Had her husband secretly prayed for Alexander’s death? If so, she had not known about it. In her heart she was giving thanks over and over again that the man of whom she dreamed so often was alive.
III
King Alexander had held a meeting of his council at Berwick. He needed money to pay for the campaign in Galloway and money for the wedding which – the better to defy King Henry who had not yet given it his blessing – was to be a splendid and royal affair.
He and John had talked long and privately once more about Llywelyn’s proposals. The possibility of an informal Celtic alliance against England’s predatory king was becoming more and more viable, and both had known that they had the perfect go-between. Intelligent, energetic and impetuous enough to escape suspicion should she take it into her head to ride about the country, Eleyne would make the ideal messenger between the parties involved. ‘If she returns from Chester to see her father it would not be remarkable,’ Alexander said slowly, leaning back in his chair.
‘She’ll be glad of the excuse, I’ll warrant,’ John smiled. ‘Each time she goes home my hothead wife gets chased away for yet another misdemeanour. She has enemies in the English faction in Gwynedd.’
Alexander raised an eyebrow: ‘Her mother?’ His own wife had never meddled in politics the way her half-sister did, and for that he was profoundly glad.
John shook his head. ‘I have a feeling things are better with her mother. It is the little de Braose. Friendship gone sour is always the worst kind of enmity.’
Alexander laughed. ‘Nevertheless, your wife will find a way to her father’s ear, I’m sure. She has a winning way with her.’
‘Perhaps it would be better if it were less winning.’ John scowled. ‘There are those among your lords who still fawn on her too much.’
‘But you guard her well.’ The king spoke lightly. ‘Almost as though you did not trust her.’
John pushed his chair back abruptly as if he were about to rise. Then, remembering he was in the presence of the king, he subsided once more on to the embroidered cushion. ‘I trust her with all my heart,’ he said coldly, ‘she would never dishonour me. Not with any man.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘I am glad to hear it, cousin,’ the king replied. ‘Then you have no need to worry when she comes to Scotland without you.’
August the first was the date fixed for the wedding of the king’s youngest sister to the Earl Marshal of England, an act of defiance against King Henry worthy of Llywelyn himself, and an occasion to which the court had been looking forward with much excitement.
The rumour was that King Henry had fallen in love with Margaret four years earlier and had wanted her for his queen. She too had been much smitten by the handsome young King of England, but her elder sister was married to Henry’s justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, a man now rapidly falling out of favour in England, and Henry’s advisers persuaded him that it would not be suitable for the king to marry de Burgh’s wife’s younger sister. Margaret was heartbroken, but with the passing of time it seemed her heart was willing to be mended.
The first part of the wedding feast over, the guests were wandering across the meadow which lay at the foot of the castle walls. Beyond it flowed the Tweed, silver in the afternoon heat, and beyond it the border with England. Nearby a group of minstrels played a selection of the latest popular dances as they side-stepped and dipped across the turf, a group of people dancing and clapping to the noisy refrains.
Rhonwen had stopped to supervise a servant who was pinning up Eleyne’s hem, caught beneath the enthusiastic foot of the lady next to her in the ring dance. The repair completed to her satisfaction, she waved the girl away.
‘What is wrong between you and Lord Chester,
Eleyne pulled her arm away. ‘Nothing is wrong. What could be?’
‘The handsome Lord Fife for one?’ Rhonwen narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ve seen him watching you.’
‘Oh, him.’ Eleyne dismissed him with a shrug. ‘The king my uncle has told him to stay away from me.’ She felt the colour rise in her cheeks and turned away to look at the river. The tide was low and the sun reflected on the
