Kingdom of Shadows

Something crossed her mind suddenly. ‘Why did you ask him to send his letter here, Rex? Why not straight to the office?’

He scowled, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Not a word of this must get out, Mary. Not one word. I sometimes think not everyone in that office is entirely loyal. No!’ He raised his hand as she was about to protest. ‘No, I can tell. Ever since I was ill they’ve been watching, waiting to see if I’m still on top of things. Nothing is said. To my face they’re all great guys, but I can sense it. And I’m not going to lose this opportunity to prove that old Rex Cummin is still one step ahead. And I am not going to lose that castle! That is why I’m going to Houston in person.’

Mary sighed. ‘What if Mrs Royland turns down your offer?’ she couldn’t resist asking.

‘I’ll make a bigger one.’ He flipped open his black leather attaché case, deftly checking that passport and documents were in place. ‘The lady is a Scot. I’m sure she appreciates the value of money.’ He smiled wryly.

‘Even if she doesn’t you can make sure you get in the best tender later,’ she said quietly.

He snapped his case shut and stared at her for a moment out of very blue eyes. ‘I don’t just want the licence, Mary. I want to own that land. I want Duncairn.’

Paul Royland had agreed to join one of his junior partners for lunch in the City Club. Both tall, impeccably clad in the city uniform of dark suits, striped shirts and sober ties; Paul dark, Henry very fair, they made a striking pair as they threaded their way towards their table. Henry Firbank was on edge. Several times as they ate their hors d’oeuvres he glanced across at Paul as though trying to pluck up the courage to say something. Finally he managed it. ‘Old Beattie asked me in for a chat yesterday. He –’ He paused, chewing on a mouthful of melon. ‘He mentioned you several times.’

‘Oh?’ Paul looked up, his fork halfway to his mouth.

‘He was a bit concerned about some of the deals you’ve been involved in over the last few months. I can’t think why. I told him everything was going fine. I told him you’ve always had an idiosyncratic way of handling things, that’s all.’ Henry gave an embarrassed smile, his florid face even more pink than usual. ‘But he did seem a bit worried. I thought you’d better know.’ He looked down at his plate apologetically.

Paul gave a grim smile. ‘Beattie should worry about getting himself measured up for a bath chair. The bank’s getting beyond him.’

‘Right.’ Henry grinned amiably, obviously relieved to have got his remarks off his chest.

‘I must get Penny to check that my filing is up to date, I can see that,’ Paul went on sarcastically. ‘I had no idea I was being investigated.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing like that, I’m sure.’ Henry became quite agitated. ‘There has been some muddle over old Mrs Barlow’s investments, I gather, and –’ He broke off. ‘What is it, old boy? Is something wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ Paul closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He put his fork down and pushed aside his plate. He had hardly touched his food. ‘I’d better have a word with Beattie about this. You forget it, Henry. I know what’s happened. There’s been a cock-up between the old girl and her broker. She’s reluctant to change over to BCWP.’ He took a long drink from his glass of wine and changed the subject. ‘You’re coming to this reception at the Guildhall tonight, I hear. Clare is driving up from Bucksters for it. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to see you there.’

‘How is Clare?’ Henry looked up, his face alight. ‘It’s ages since I saw her.’

Paul, beckoning the waiter to take away their plates, gave Henry a hard look. ‘She is well. Radiant as always.’

‘Radiant?’ Henry echoed. ‘She’s not – that is, you’re not – I mean, I know she hoped –’ He floundered to a standstill, embarrassed.

Paul frowned. He closed his eyes for a moment as a wave of anger and despair swept over him. ‘If the word you’re looking for is pregnant, the answer is no. She’s not.’

Clare had arrived in London late that morning. She drove straight to their house on Campden Hill. Easing the Jaguar into a parking space in the narrow street, she climbed out and stood for a moment looking up at the house front. It was a pretty, white-painted Regency cottage, hung with clematis. In front of it there was a small paved area, starkly bare save for an Italian stone urn which contained an ornamental bay tree and two large terracotta pots overflowing with geraniums and lobelia. Letting herself into the hall she paused and listened. She had left Casta at Bucksters with Sarah Collins, otherwise the small elegant rooms would have been filled immediately with bouncing, grinning retriever. Without Casta the house felt very quiet and empty, but London was no place really for such an energetic animal, not when she could stay at home with Sarah whom she adored almost as much as she loved her mistress.

Shutting the door behind her Clare carried her case straight upstairs to the main bedroom and hung up her dress for the Guildhall, then she made her way back downstairs. She was exhausted by the long drive and there were dark rings under her eyes.

She had had the nightmare again last night, waking at three in the morning to the sound of her own screams.

It was the third time in as many weeks. Again and again the dream had come back since she had gone to Duncairn in June, as if somehow that lonely ruin had stirred some sleeping demon in her brain. If only Aunt Margaret were there. She had understood. Once, when Clare was a child, they had talked about the dream. Clare, tearful, and shaking after it had come again, had run, not to her mother’s bed – Archie had long ago forbidden that – but to Margaret Gordon’s, snuggling into her great aunt’s arms in the four-poster in her room in the cold north wing at Airdlie. ‘One day I’ll explain, Clare,’ Margaret had whispered. ‘Dear God, the nightmare is mine, not yours! You shouldn’t have to suffer it as well. Be brave, my child. Remember, morning always comes, the sun returns, and it will stop. I promise, one day it will stop.’

And for several years it had not returned. Not until that midsummer night at the Duncairn Hotel; since then she had had it four times, and then again, last night.

As she sat up in bed trembling Clare had heard the creak of floorboards on the landing. She held her breath, desperately trying to calm herself, praying it wasn’t Sarah coming down from her top-floor flat, but the urgent scratching at the door, followed by a pleading little yelp, reassured her.

She shot out of bed and ran to let Casta in, flinging her arms around the dog’s neck as she wept into the thick golden fur. She had spent the rest of the night with the light on, the dog lying next to her on the bed.

Paul rang her at the house in Campden Hill just after lunch. ‘I thought I’d see if you’d arrived safely,’ he said. His voice was strained. ‘What sort of journey did you have?’

‘Tiring.’ She was sitting at the Queen Anne bureau in the front room. ‘I left later than I meant to, so the traffic was bad. Where shall we meet this evening?’

They talked almost as strangers these days. Polite – there had been no more quarrels – but slightly distant, as though those unpremeditated words hurled at each other in the bedroom of the Edinburgh hotel had unlocked some secret hostility which neither had recognised before, and which they were both terrified they might let loose again. Even the intimacy of the visits to the doctor, and the terrible embarrassing tests and all that went with them, had been conducted on a strangely impersonal level.

‘Why don’t you come to the bank at about six, and we’ll go on from here, then I’ll take you out to dinner afterwards, if you like.’ Suddenly Paul was sounding more relaxed.

Clare brightened. ‘I would like that, darling.’

‘Good. By the way, John Stanford rang yesterday with the results of our tests. They all proved normal. And I agree with him, now, that we should leave things there. Give it a rest. Leave it up to chance. Stop worrying. Forget about doctors. Forget about having a baby. Let the whole thing go, now. Get on with our lives.’

‘But, Paul –’

‘No, I mean it, Clare. This has all been too much strain on you. I don’t want you cracking up. I don’t even want to discuss it any more, do you understand? We have both been in danger of becoming obsessed by the subject, so let us drop it for good. No babies. No children. I’ve come to think we’d be happier without them in the long run anyway.’ His voice tightened. ‘Right? Now, I’ll see you later, and we’ll have a pleasant evening without that subject hanging over us. Agreed?’

It was only after she had hung up that it dawned on her to wonder if he had sounded slightly drunk.

Carefully she unpacked the candle and set it on the floor of the bedroom. A bath, then half an hour’s meditation would restore her energy before she changed for the reception. She walked into the bathroom and threw open the window. It looked out on to the tiny garden with its trellised roses and mossy paving stones. One or two rather dog-eared blooms still clung to the wall below the window-sill.

Turning on the bath water she tipped in some essence, then she stepped in, lay back and, closing her eyes, she thought about Paul.

He very seldom drank. Unlike his two brothers who were men who indulged their appetites, if not to excess then at least without too much soul-searching, Paul had an almost ascetic approach to food and drink. In spite of this, however, he was a large man – all three Royland brothers were tall and broad-shouldered – but unlike the other two his late thirties had not produced a paunch or a thickening of the flesh. She couldn’t believe he had been drinking. Of course it was hard to tell, sometimes, over the telephone. Perhaps it was euphoria because the tests had proved normal after all their worries. If so, she desperately hoped it would last.

Drying herself slowly, Clare wandered back into the bedroom. The room was hot and stuffy after the country in spite of all the open windows, but at least she was alone. She had to admit that the presence of Sarah Collins, constantly tip-toeing around the old Suffolk farmhouse, got on her nerves. She longed to be alone – really alone. To be able to do what she wanted, to strip off her clothes and run down to the pool or anywhere else in the house naked if she chose. Just to be relaxed.

She dropped the towel now and stood in front of the long mirror scrutinising her figure critically. At twenty-eight, ten years younger than her husband, she was as slim and taut as she had been when she was eighteen.

She lit the candle solemnly and raised her arms as Zak had told her, to signal the start of her meditation. Then slowly she sank down into the half-lotus position.

She had written back to the solicitor the afternoon before, a considered, firm letter in the end, politely informing him that Duncairn was not, and never would be, for sale, and she had driven into Dedham with it and caught the evening post. As far as she was concerned the matter was closed. Duncairn was safe. Her haven, her refuge. As Zak had promised, the problem, once faced, had gone away.

For a moment, on the brink of closing her eyes, she hesitated. Her last visualisation of Duncairn hadn’t been as she intended. It had brought back unbidden memories of Midsummer’s Day. She shivered. That experience she did not want to relive. This time she would be more careful. She would picture the moors beyond the castle and perhaps, if she concentrated, she could summon Isobel back, the Isobel of Aunt Margaret’s stories … The Isobel who had been the heroine of all her daydreams as a child; her imaginary playmate in her loneliness. Carefully she began to construct a picture in her mind of the moor near the castle as she had seen it so often when she was a child. She saw the blaze of heather beneath the torrid sky and the hills, misty in the distance. Overhead, slowly rising on the invisible spirals of the wind a buzzard was mewing, the lonely call echoing across the moorland. She could feel the sun on her back, smell the soft honey of the wild thyme and moss, even hear the gentle ripple of the brown water in the burn at her feet. Now, with the scene set, perhaps the story could start again …

Shaking her long hair back from her face the child threw herself down full length on the grass and began to scoop the cool water into her mouth. The young man standing behind her eyed her bare legs and naked brown feet doubtfully. ‘You’ll be in trouble when your nurse finds out where you are,’ he said, his face unwillingly relaxing into a smile.

‘Nurse!’ She sat up. Some of her hair had slipped into the water and it dripped on to the shoulders of her thin woollen gown. ‘I don’t have a nurse. I’m a grown woman, Robert of Carrick, and don’t you forget it.’

‘You are?’ The young man laughed out loud. ‘I beg your pardon, my lady Isobel. But all the ladies I know have bevies of maids and attendants following them everywhere, and men-at-arms to watch over them when they stir from their castles!’

‘I do too.’ She clasped her knees with a shiver. ‘I ran away from them when I knew you were riding up here. I wanted to come too. I get so bored doing what Lady Buchan tells me all day long, Robert.’

‘Nevertheless, you should obey her.’ Robert looked troubled. ‘If you are to marry the earl it is important that his mother teaches you all she knows. Lord Buchan is a great and powerful man, Isobel. He will expect much from his wife.’

‘Pooh.’ Isobel flung herself backwards on the grass, shading her eyes to stare up at the sky. ‘He’ll never marry me! He barely knows I exist. Do you know, when he comes to Duncairn or Slains to see his mother he sometimes takes me on his knee and tells me stories. He gives me presents and sweetmeats, just like the children of his brothers. I’m sure he thinks I must be one of them.’

‘I doubt it.’ Robert stood looking down at her. ‘You and he have been betrothed since you were a small child. He’s only been waiting for you to grow up. That is why your mother gave you to Lady Buchan to bring up, when your brother was sent to England after your father died.’

There was a long silence as his words sank in. She sat up again, pushing the hair back off her face. It was a small oval face with huge grey eyes, set below straight dark determined eyebrows, a face which promised great beauty. Defensively she hugged her arms around herself, unconsciously hiding the budding breasts which barely showed yet beneath the loose folds of the dusty gown. ‘Then perhaps I’m not grown up,’ she said at last in a whisper. ‘Perhaps I never will.’

The betrothal had taken place before her brother was born. She remembered vividly the day at Falkland Castle when her father had told his wife what he had arranged. Neither the earl nor the beautiful Joanna de Clare had realised that their small daughter was listening and taking in every word of their conversation. It had been after Duncan of Fife, young and inexperienced as he was, had been chosen as one of the two earls on the small council appointed to rule Scotland after the death of King Alexander. He had received the news of his appointment confidently, attributing it to his own undoubted qualities, becoming since that day more conceited than ever, flaunting his position, using it everywhere to his own advantage. Later Isobel had learned the truth: that the earldom of Fife had to be represented because of its pre-eminence amongst the seven ancient earldoms of Scotland; before she had believed it was because her father was a great and good man.

The earl had glanced down at his daughter as she played near him. ‘I have been speaking to my lord of Buchan. He is willing to agree to her betrothal to his heir.’ Duncan had preened himself, waiting for his wife’s reaction. Isobel too had waited; and she had seen the horror and disbelief on Joanna’s face. ‘You wish to betroth that child to John Comyn?’ Her eyes had grown enormous. ‘But, my lord, she is only a baby, and he a grown man. He would never want a child for a wife!’

‘He will wait.’ Duncan had given a snort of laughter, throwing back his head so that Isobel could see even from where she sat on the ground the gaping hole in his gum where the surgeon had pulled a great aching molar. ‘By the saints, he’s waited long enough to take a wife as it is!’ He had grown serious suddenly, sitting forward on the edge of the wooden bench, resting his chin on his hand so that he could gaze into his wife’s face. ‘Don’t you see what a marvellous union this will be? The Comyns are the richest and most powerful family in the land. The old earl is with me one of the six guardians, but when he dies, which must be soon, Joanna, it would be expedient if our two families were linked by more than just friendship. Our lands in the north march together – what could be better than to bring them closer. After all,’ he had added bitterly, ‘it looks as though that puny girl will be my only heir.’ He had paused, and Isobel, hugging herself with sudden devastating misery, saw the sparkle of tears in her mother’s eyes as he rushed on in a bluff attempt to cover his cruel remark. ‘Think, Joanna, think of the power this will bring us. If it hadn’t been for this little queen of ours far away across the water, it might well have been a Comyn chosen as king. Think of that.’

And now that little queen had died without ever coming to Scotland, and as Duncan had predicted, a member of the huge Comyn family had been chosen as king – John Balliol, Lord Buchan’s cousin.

Only six weeks after that terrifying news of her impending betrothal had come tidings of the death of the old Earl of Buchan. Joanna had been afraid that now he was free of his father’s influence John Comyn would repudiate the agreement. She had heard, and so had Isobel, all eyes and ears as usual, how he had sworn and flown into a rage when told that his father’s choice for his bride was only four years old; but then he too had seen the strength which would lie in such an alliance and only two weeks after his father’s death he had come to Fife for the betrothal ceremony and Isobel had seen him for the first time. He had brought a fine filigree brooch of silver for Joanna and a heavy ring, engraved with the Buchan seal, for Isobel; her small finger had not even the strength to hold it. Once the ceremony was over he had galloped out of the castle courtyard, followed by his retinue. Two days after that a messenger had arrived from him bearing a doll. The riders had, it seemed, passed a travelling packman, and the earl had found a gift more suited for his little bride. They had heard nothing of him after that until Isobel’s father died.

Robert rode ahead of her to within sight of the castle, then he drew rein. ‘You go on, back to your attendants,’ he said. ‘I think it better that we’re not seen together. I’ll ride on south to Mar, as I intended in the first place.’ His smile softened the rebuke.

‘If you see my great grandmother at Kildrummy will you give her a kiss from me.’ Isobel smiled suddenly. Malcolm, Earl of Fife, had died some twenty years before, long before Isobel was born, and his widow Helen had remarried, taking as her husband the powerful Earl of Mar, but she had kept her interest in her Fife family, particularly Isobel, in whom she recognised much of herself when she was young; and Isobel, in a world devoid now of close family, loved her dearly.

‘Why don’t you get into trouble if you ride without attendants?’ Isobel asked Robert suddenly. ‘It’s just as dangerous for you to ride the hills alone.’

‘My attendants are waiting for me, as you well know.’ He slapped the neck of his horse affectionately. ‘Besides, I am a man.’ He frowned. ‘Will you get into bad trouble when you go back?’

‘I’m bound to.’ She looked up at him unrepentantly. ‘But Mairi, who has charge over me, never does very much, even though she says she will. She says I’m uncontrollable.’

‘I can believe it!’ He laughed. ‘I’m glad I’m not to have the marrying of you, cousin. I doubt if I could cope.’

She giggled. ‘No, you couldn’t. I shall be a shrew and a scold and no man will want anything to do with me! I shall ride the hills dressed in men’s clothes and be my own mistress. Then my Lord Buchan will wash his hands of me and marry an old docile lady who can give him ten fat babies!’

This time they whipped her. They took her into the great hall at Duncairn where Elizabeth, Dowager Countess of Buchan, was sitting on the low dais.

Isobel stood before her defiantly, her fists clenched in the folds of her skirt, as Lady Buchan distastefully looked her up and down, taking in the ragged gown hitched up in her girdle revealing her muddy, scratched legs and feet.

‘So, where did you find her this time?’ she asked. ‘In the byre with the animals?’

Mairi, a stout woman of indeterminate years and unswerving loyalty to her young charge, shook her head miserably. ‘She went out riding alone, my lady. She told her escort to go back without her.’

‘And they obeyed her?’ Lady Buchan’s eyebrows shot upwards towards her fashionably plaited and netted coils of hair.

‘Oh yes, my lady. The men always do as Lady Isobel says.’ Mairi bit her lip. ‘She’s awful determined, for a lass.’

‘Is she, indeed?’ Lady Buchan’s face was growing more and more grim. ‘And did you set off to ride looking like that, my lady?’

Isobel coloured a little at the sarcastic tone ‘I took my kirtle and my stockings and shoes off and bundled them up in the heather so that they’d not be spoiled,’ she said defiantly.

‘I see. And what were you intending to do, that they might get spoiled?’ The older woman rose to her feet suddenly. Her face had sharpened with suspicion. ‘Was there someone with you, out there?’

‘No, my lady,’ Isobel blurted, suddenly guilty. ‘There wasn’t anyone there.’

‘Are you sure?’ Taking a step towards her, Lady Buchan seized her by the wrist. ‘No young man? No love to amuse you? Where is my son?’ She turned abruptly to the attendants who encircled them.

‘He’s just returned to the castle, my lady,’ a voice replied. ‘He said he’d be in to greet you directly.’

John, Earl of Buchan, was as good as his word, striding in to the castle hall only a few minutes later, his spurs ringing on the stone flags.

‘So, what is this? A trial with so small a prisoner?’ He dropped a kiss in the air some inches above his mother’s head and then straightened to look at Isobel, standing before Elizabeth, her arm still firmly clasped by the wrist.

He was a tall, hirsute man in his late thirties, good-looking, with hard brown eyes. Isobel took a step back as his gaze fell on her.

‘This child has been roaming again. She behaves like a strumpet.’ Although near sixty, Lady Buchan was still a slim, graceful woman, without a streak of grey in her dark lustrous hair. She was almost as tall as her son as they stood facing each other across Isobel’s head.

‘A strumpet, is it?’ John looked down at Isobel with sudden interest, his eyes travelling down her slight form.

‘Aye, a strumpet. And her maidenhood will be long gone before you get around to making her your wife!’ Elizabeth of Buchan tightened her lips primly. ‘She is uncontrollable.’

‘Surely not.’ John stepped forward, and taking Isobel’s arm, pulled her away from his mother. ‘How old are you, sweetheart? I thought you were still a child, but I gather you are not content with a child’s games any longer.’

Too proud to shrink away from him, Isobel straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chin. ‘I am fourteen, my lord.’

‘So you are indeed. Old enough to be bedded it seems, so old enough to be wedded. Who did she lie with?’ He shot the question over her head at the unfortunate Mairi. ‘Whoever it was, he’ll pay for it with his life.’

‘There was no one, my lord.’ It was Isobel who answered, her eyes blazing. ‘Your lady mother seems to think I would lie with stable boys and serfs – I, the daughter of the Earl of Fife, a descendent of the ancient house of Duff!’

‘Hoity toity!’ The dowager countess gave a humourless laugh. ‘If you behave like a strumpet, madam of Duff, you may expect to be treated as one. She has disobeyed me too often, John. She should be whipped.’