She looked at him sadly. 'This time it is different. This danger is from within - from where you least expect it. Oh - look, over there.' She pointed to a handsome castle on the hillside.
'That's Ford.' And obviously glad to change the subject, 'King James the Fourth spent the night before Flodden there.'
'Not, I suspect, as it looks now.'
'Well, the old tower still remains, they tell me. His room with its secret staircase leading down into Lady Heron's. They were enemies; her husband and their sons were prisoners of James. Rumour has it that she was more than hospitable to the King. She wanted to get on his good side, so she used woman's only weapon. She seduced him with her charm and he was so captivated by her that, before they made love, he removed the chain of penitence that he had sworn to wear about his body until his death. True or not, it was a fatal decision.
'We don't know what happened afterwards. Perhaps he fell in love with her and she rejected him. But when he left there was ill-will between them, a sense of betrayal - so much so that he gave orders to set her castle to the torch, a poor thanks for all her kindness. Fortunately it wasn't destroyed.'
She was silent, watching the road ahead. 'But enemies they were.' And turning to him, 'You can't really ever love your enemy, despite the Sermon on the Mount, can you?'
'Why are you telling me all this? Was this part of your gypsy woman's warning?' he asked.
She smiled. 'No, I am telling you a story, that is all.'
Suddenly he remembered her book with its revealing flyleaf and that he must return it to her. He did not feel like mentioning it at that moment and he urged on the horse. She spoke no more until they climbed down the steep hill to where Miss Gilchrist's house looked down on the village of Branxton with its smoking chimneys.
To their right lay the battlefield of Flodden. Its closeness made Faro uneasy, as if the carnage of that September day lingered still, never to be obliterated by even the rains of three hundred years. Nor could the blood spilt and the weeping be healed by a million larks and their rapturous song of hope and joy.
He looked down and thought that the screaming ghosts of dead and dying must forever haunt the rafters where the first swallows swooped, filling the air with their gentle excited cries. And that the pale wild flowers opening in the hedgerows must be forever crimson, blood-tainted.
As they approached the house, there were voices in the garden. Miss Gilchrist, the twins and Vince were seated under a shady tree. There was the rattle of teacups, sounds of laughter.
Imogen Crowe looked at Faro, frowning. She understood. Neither were ready to exchange this sombre past for the jollity and the light-hearted banter of the present occupants of that sunny garden.
'Come with me.' Faro led the way down the hill towards the site of the battle. 'Here ten thousand men - fathers, sons, brothers - entire families - the flower of Scottish nobility - fell, wiped out in a few hours.'
At his side she said: 'Can you take it so calmly, you a Scot?'
Faro smiled. 'I'm no more Scottish that you are. I've told you that. I'm Orcadian by birth.'
She looked at him sharply. 'Of course, that's why you're so different from the rest.'
'Am I? In what way?'
She jabbed a finger at him. 'You are Viking - pure Viking. I thought that the very first day I saw you. Put a horned helmet on him, I said, and every woman within miles would run screaming -'
'I didn't realise I was such a monster as all that,' Faro interrupted in wounded tones.
'You didn't let me finish - I hadn't said in which direction they were running,' she ended impishly with a mocking coquettish glance that left him feeling not only contrite but highly vulnerable.
Chapter 26
Their arrival in the garden was greeted warmly and their long absence commented on, but as the maid brought out refreshments the weather was changing, grey skies, like an army of vengeful ghosts, creeping over the battlefield.
Miss Gilchrist shivered and said they had better go indoors.
The house was welcoming, alive with flowers, the smells of ancient wood well waxed and polished. Everything gleamed with a lifetime's devotion to crystal, pictures and furniture.
But as Faro sat in that cosy atmosphere, his eyes strayed constantly to the window overlooking the battlefield, astonished that such peace and tranquillity could exist alongside such memories of bloody carnage. A few hours that with the death of King James and his nobles altered the course of Scotland's history for ever.
After luncheon, they played at cards and, losing as he invariably did, Faro retired somewhat aggrieved to examine the well-filled bookshelves. Laughter and teasing comments echoed from the card table and he looked at the old lady so sensitive and charming, marvelling that she had lived here alone all her life. That for her each day and night would pass untroubled by the scenes the very stones on her doorstep had witnessed and remembered.
'Lucky at cards, my dear,' she said consolingly, as she also retired from the fray. 'You know what they say.'
'I don't seem to be lucky in either,' said Faro.
But Miss Gilchrist didn't hear, her eyes on Imogen Crowe who frowned intently over her hand and then, with a whoop of triumph, threw them down, fanned wide and called: 'Game - to me!'
'Imagine Miss Crowe being an authoress,' said Miss Gilchrist admiringly.
'Depends on what - or who - she writes about,' Faro said drily. Writers made him nervous. He did not want to find himself pilloried in her next romance. A Viking indeed.
'I am sure she will be very kind to her friends. And discreet too. Perhaps she'll marry Hector.'
'You think so?'
'Yes, of course. Everyone notices
