Child of the Phoenix (123 page)

Donald looked down at the babies. They were indeed alike and he had to admit they were like Gratney too. His eldest son had no qualms at all about his little brothers. He adored them and spent long hours with his nurse gazing at them in awed silence.

Donald turned back to the bed. ‘You would swear on holy relics?’ he asked uncertainly.

‘I would swear on anything you like.’

He still looked doubtful. ‘Mother was so sure.’

‘Your mother was mistaken.’ Eleyne’s voice, though still weak, took on a firmness which he recognised. He smiled in spite of himself.

‘I think perhaps she was.’ He sighed. ‘As she was mistaken about her illness. The physicians have told me she brought her death upon herself. The shock of the cold water on top of the exertion of the journey stopped her heart. There was nothing wrong with it until then.’ He looked questioningly at the two cribs. ‘But you have given birth to twins. How did it happen?’

Eleyne gave a tight unhappy laugh. ‘How do you think, husband mine? We made love too much, that’s how. I’m surprised it didn’t happen when Gratney was born as well!’ She raised an eyebrow at him provocatively and was relieved to see an answering light in his eye.

III

‘I want the phoenix!’ Eleyne fixed Rhonwen with a furious stare. ‘How dare you hide it from me!’

‘The king told me to hide it,’ Rhonwen repeated stubbornly. ‘He wants it near you, so that he can reach you.’

‘I could have this castle torn apart,’ Eleyne said slowly. ‘And I’ll do it. Rhonwen,’ she appealed, ‘I thought you loved me.’

‘I do love you,
cariad
, I love you more than life itself. That’s why I serve the man who is your destiny.’

‘Donald is my destiny – ’

‘No,
cariad
.’ Rhonwen raised her voice. ‘He is an obsession – a passing passion. He is nothing. Einion Gweledydd knew. That is what he tried to tell you …’

‘No – ’

‘Oh, yes,
cariad
, he knew. Donald of Mar is no one. So much thistledown, tossed on the wind.’ She snapped her fingers in the air. ‘And now you have the king’s son, Alexander, a child of royal blood – ’

‘No!’ Eleyne raised her voice at last. ‘I forbid you ever to say such a thing again, ever. Sandy and Duncan are both Donald’s sons. Donald’s, do you hear? Now give me the phoenix.’

Rhonwen shook her head.

Exasperated Eleyne took a deep breath, her anger mounting. ‘Rhonwen, I have loved you for a very long time. I have stood by you and helped you when you have caused me nothing but heartache and trouble. You have not done me any favours by claiming all over the castle that Sandy is a dead man’s son. My husband doubts my faithfulness and half the household think I am a whore or a witch or both. Now, give me the phoenix.’

‘I haven’t got it any more.’ Rhonwen stared at her defiantly. ‘It’s gone.’

‘You think I’d believe that?’ Eleyne’s voice was hard. She folded her arms wearily.

‘Believe it or not,
cariad
,’ Rhonwen said slowly, ‘it’s the truth.’

She curtseyed with only the smallest hint of mockery as Donald walked into the room and then she fled.

Eleyne stared after her in helpless fury.

‘You look tired.’ Donald’s voice was gentle but there was still a certain constraint between them.

‘I am tired.’ Eleyne wanted to go to him, to touch his face, to feel his arms around her, but she sensed his distance from her. ‘Rhonwen continues to make trouble.’

‘Why don’t you send that mad old baggage packing? Back to London? Didn’t you say Mistress Luned had offered her a home?’

‘It would break her heart.’ Eleyne sat down at the table. She put her face in her hands. ‘She won’t give me the phoenix.’

‘So.’ His voice was bleak.

‘We can fight him, my love.’ She looked up at Donald pleadingly. ‘Just as we have always fought him. Please.’ She held out her arms.

‘Has he come back to you?’ Donald did not move.

She shook her head.

He shivered. ‘Yet I feel him. He watches over you all the time.’

‘No.’ She went to him and put her arms around his neck. ‘I am yours, Donald. Gratney, Duncan and Sandy are your sons. I have sworn it and I will swear it again.’

She reached up to the neck of her gown and pulled it open at the back, slipping the dark green velvet from her shoulders. She saw his eyes go at once to her heavy blue-veined breasts. He had begun to breathe deeply. ‘Lock the door,’ she whispered. She let her gown and then her shift fall slowly to her knees. He hesitated, then walking like a man in a dream, he did as she bid, and she opened her arms.

At dead of night in the cold moonlight she had traced a circle of protection around the castle walls: phoenix or no phoenix, Alexander was outside it, in the darkness. He could not come near her or her sons.

IV
FALKLAND CASTLE
1268

The visit was not a success. Bethoc, Agnes and Rhonwen had remained behind to look after her three sons at Kildrummy, but Eleyne missed the children desperately. Colban and Macduff were reserved, though polite; Anna was hostile; Eleyne’s grandson, Duncan, did not remember her at all. On her last evening at Falkland, Eleyne followed Colban to his father’s countinghouse, set in the thickness of the grey wall which overlooked the Lomond Hills.

‘Are you and Anna still content?’ She put her hands on his shoulders and held him at arm’s length, forcing him to meet her eye.

‘We rub along well enough, mama.’

‘And your brother, is he happy?’ After greeting her happily enough, Macduff had disappeared. He had not been present at supper the night before.

Colban shrugged. ‘I think so. Don’t worry, mama, we’re grown men. In two years I come of age. You worry about your new family.’

She held his eye a little longer, overwhelmed with love for her proud, independent boy, then she looked away. ‘I love all my children equally, Colban, but there is always a special place in a mother’s heart for her eldest son.’ She smiled. ‘I’m very proud of you.’

He looked embarrassed, then at last he put his arms around her and gave her a quick, tight hug.

From Falkland they rode to Dunfermline, where they spent some time in private with the king. When they left, Eleyne had letters for her nephew, for they were to ride on south to Wales.

She was torn: she badly wanted to go back to her boys, but the chance to go south again to Wales, the chance to show Yr Wyddfa to Donald was a temptation hard to resist. And the king’s orders were clear. As his father had before him, he wanted her to be his go-between, his royal messenger, riding south on the pretext of visiting her family to discuss a Welsh–Scottish Celtic alliance with her nephew.

V
ABER 
June 1268

By Midsummer’s Day, Eleyne was once more home at Aber.

‘Well, has it changed?’ Llywelyn, resplendent in the
talaith
, the gold coronet of the Welsh princes, stepped down off the dais in his great hall and hugged her.

She gazed around and shook her head. ‘Yr Wyddfa is still there, and the strait and beyond it the island. I can still smell the mountains; I can still hear Afon Aber in the valley.’ She looked at Rhonwen, who had cried as once again they crossed the border into Wales. Ostensibly it had been a last-minute act of kindness to send for Rhonwen before they set out, so that she could visit her native Gwynedd again, but Eleyne had two other reasons: she did not want the old woman left in charge of the nurseries at Kildrummy; especially she did not want her near Sandy. Also, she wondered secretly whether she could prevail upon her nephew or one of her remaining sisters, Gwenllian or Margaret, to keep Rhonwen in Wales.

Llywelyn grimaced. ‘You loved it here as a child, I remember. Whereas I spent most of my childhood as a prisoner!’ He sighed.

‘Tell me about Isabella.’ He had only said that she had died.

He shrugged. ‘There’s nothing to tell. She had a wasting disease.’

‘And you were with her when she died?’

He nodded.

‘Did she speak of me at all?’

‘No,’ he said abruptly.

She watched him thoughtfully as he walked away from her, aware of a slight shiver down her back. She did not question him on the subject again.

VI

‘Donald.’ She shook his shoulder gently. ‘Donald, are you awake?’ They had made love long and passionately the night before and now he slept heavily, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed. Smiling fondly, she crept from beneath the bedcovers. The servants on the truckle beds were all asleep; it was barely light.

Pulling on her shift and then her gown and cloak, she tiptoed to the door. Nodding at the dogs to follow her, she let herself out on to the dark stairs. Meg opened a sleepy eye and watched her, debating whether to get up, but Eleyne was already outside. No doubt her lady was going riding. Had she wanted a companion she would have woken someone, not tiptoed from the room like a lover off to a secret meeting.

It was a long time since Eleyne had slipped from the prince’s hall, through the gate, past the night guard and out down the hill past the forge and the church and the mill and out through the village. With a rueful smile as she thought of all the years which had passed, she walked along the river, the dogs gambolling at her side. She was not tempted to go to the horses after spending the last three weeks in the saddle. All she wanted was to walk quietly along the river, watching the cold colourless early morning suffuse with light. And she wanted to think; think about the past and the people who had gone. Her father, her mother, Dafydd, Gruffydd, both buried with their father at Aberconwy, even Isabella.

She wandered out of sight of the village, following the valley. The air was cold beneath the trees, rich with the scent of rotting wood. The path, though well trodden, was deserted.

Behind her, Rhonwen paused, keeping well out of sight. She shivered in the cold dawn, and looked up through the trees at the slopes of the hillside which were still covered in mist. Almost, she decided to turn back.

Eleyne walked on, slowly and dreamily, smiling as she saw the blue flash of a kingfisher beneath the trees. She stopped, peering at the place it had vanished, and for the first time she realised how cold it was in the shady ravine. She pulled her cloak round her more tightly, and looked behind her. The mist had advanced through the trees, drifting closer, lapping around the gossamer-hung bushes, curling among the old rotting vegetation which hung over the path. Both dogs had disappeared, eagerly exploring the scents of the morning. The birds were silent, the mist drifting closer, and with it came the cold, suffocating aura of menace.

She hesitated, then firmly she walked on a few steps and stopped again. She pulled her cloak tighter still, glancing up at the hillside. The earlier patches of thin sunlight on the high western flanks of the mountain had gone – all she could see was the mist.

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe. The mist was all around her, touching her face, soaking her clothes. Someone was near her, but she could see nothing. The silence beat against her eardrums.