Turn of the Tide Read online

Hugh’s legs were bent almost in half as he kicked encouragingly at the pony’s flanks. Whether it was his firmness or that she disliked the smell of the dock, the pony sprang away, and they made the tail of the party quicker than either of them expected. They skirted round until they found Maitland.

  ‘You took your time. James wasn’t for waiting.’

  ‘Aye, well. Hugh had a mind to send word home.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There is a bairn expected . . . they have lost two, so it is to be hoped . . .’

  ‘It’ll be a long winter then, for we can’t expect much word.’

  Hugh dug his heels into the pony, which, having caught up with the rest, now seemed to have lost all impetus.

  Maitland couldn’t hide his amusement. ‘Is it the man over hefty or the beast over small?’ Then, ‘You needn’t fret. The journey would be a mite much for that beast, but I dare say you can improve on it. This is but a short hop to where we lie for the night and then we sail the first leg to Langesund. After that it won’t be just days to Oslo, but likely a week, and plenty hard ground in it.’

  ‘It’s hard enough already.’ Hugh shifted in the saddle, ‘and I feel every jar.’ The wind was picking up, blowing across them from the west. Hugh felt the chill of it like toothache. ‘And nippy with it.’

  ‘This is nothing.’ Maitland indicated the clouds scudding across the horizon. ‘When the wind turns to the north, then we’ll know. We’re lucky there isn’t snow the now, but we can’t expect our luck to hold much longer.’

  A clutter of buildings reared ahead of them: homely looking, with angles and jut-outs and crow-stepped, cream-washed gables topped by red pantiled roofs.

  ‘I shan’t be sorry to stop.’ Hugh flexed his ankle to relieve the stiffness and, paradoxically, the pony found a burst of speed, perhaps sensing the warmth of the stable and the feed and water to come.

  ‘He’s surely as keen to be shot of you as you are of him.’

  James was already dismounting. ‘Montgomerie, I thought we’d lost you. We press on in the morning. I have waited long enough to meet my Queen.’

  Alexander bowed, ‘And she you.’

  Maitland spoke into Hugh’s ear. ‘Be grateful for your uncle, Braidstane. There are those who would envy his place by the King and the credit you gain by it. In a long winter much may be achieved.’

  It was so like Alexander’s sentiment that Hugh wondered how much he had been talked of. Something of his thoughts must have shown in his face, for Maitland lowered his voice further.

  ‘Glencairn isn’t here, nor William: an opportunity not to be missed. And mark you, most will be despatched home so soon as the wedding feast is past. Play it right and you may be among the few who stay. In your shoes, bairn or not, I’d wish for that.’

  The journey overland began well enough, the air crisp and clear, with little wind; the sound of horse-shoes ringing on hard ground, magnified in the stillness. But on the third day the snow came, the first flakes settling on their caps and shoulders like flakes of wood ash; clinging to their clothes and the horses’ rough winter coats. Then the sky was full of it, a whirling mass that turned the whole procession into a long line of white knights, surrounding the white King. With the snow came silence, in which every jangle of harness rang out like a bell. Hugh, who had shed the first pony, was now mounted more appropriately on a piebald of sixteen hands, with a gratifyingly soft mouth and the will to run. He turned his face upwards thinking on the oddity of the rise in temperature that snow always seemed to bring and glad of it, for cold as Scotland was, Norway had it beat.

  It continued to fall throughout the day, gradually slowing their progress and Hugh, coming on one of their guides that led the column, noted the straight set to his mouth.

  ‘Have we far to go before we halt?’

  ‘A fair way.’

  Tired of the same company and thinking on the weeks ahead, Hugh persevered. ‘Now that the snow has come how long will it last?’

  ‘Till Spring.’

  ‘You’ll be used to travelling in the worst of weathers?’

  ‘When need be.’ The Norwegian, who had turned his face to scan the pewter clouds as if to gauge how much, if any, daylight was left to them, muttered as if to himself, ‘Not that travelling half way across the country because a fool of a King hasn’t the sense to wait fair weather is the kind of need I look for.’

  Hugh risked, ‘We can all be fools over women, King or not.’

  Unexpectedly, the man smiled and Hugh was struck by a resemblance that he couldn’t place. He ducked his head in formal introduction, ‘Hugh Montgomerie, Laird of Braidstane.’

  ‘Ivar Ivarsen, Flekkefjord, pressed into service as a guide, a way of passing the winter that I hadn’t looked for.’

  ‘You have a brother? A captain?’

  ‘Sigurd?’ Ivar’s smile spread. ‘You know him?’

  ‘Met him,’ Hugh corrected. ‘Briefly. When we first docked. I looked to find someone to carry a message of our safe arrival to home. I couldn’t believe my luck that he made for Leith.’

  Ivar laughed. ‘He always makes for Leith – it is our best market, though why you should want paving stone from here rather than from England is hard to understand.’

  ‘Many Scots would rather buy anything from anywhere but England, even if, and this you may believe or not as you please, it means paying a mite more for it.’

  ‘Our gain then.’ Ivar was still smiling, but the combination of poor light and the steadily thickening snow that swirled around them clearly concerned him.

  ‘Is there a danger that we might not make our destination by dark?’

  ‘A danger that we miss it altogether. If you’ll excuse me.’ Ivar turned his horse and ploughed backwards, encouraging the file of riders to quicken their pace.

  By morning the snow had stopped. To be replaced by a wind that whipped up drifts the height of a man and made any chance of progress impossible. Even the King accepted the inevitable and settled to enjoy the hospitality provided. For six days they waited, until the winds abated and the snow gradually packed down, the skies turning a clear, rinsed blue. As they left, in the twilight that precedes the dawn, Hugh thought on the food and drink that had been consumed during their prolonged halt and pitied the family on whom the burden had fallen, speculating that their generosity might stretch them thereafter.

  At Borre, James’ frustration increased in pace with the storm that put paid to his plans to cross the fjord, so that they turned inland again, reaching Vaale by nightfall. Intermittent flurries of hail and snow left them chilled and damp, but nothing worse, so that they halted but briefly to eat and rest the horses and grab a few hours’ sleep before tumbling again into the half-darkness. The local guides watched the sky with an unease that increased as the temperature dropped, and even without a wind, the air bit at their cheeks and made their jaws ache. They covered the remaining distance, not in the four days that both sound sense and consideration for men and horses should have dictated, but in two: no one, either of the Scots or their Norwegian hosts daring to question the madness of the pace. And so, aching and sweated, their faces grey with tiredness and grime, they came to Oslo three weeks after leaving Flekkefjord.

  Akerhus reared above them, the cream and red of the buildings complementing the Danish flag flying proudly from the water tower sitting astride the sea wall. Despite the length of the journey, and that a messenger had preceded him to give warning, James, obeying his notion of seeming haste, waited only long enough for a groom to take his horse before bursting in upon the court, still booted and spurred, his followers behind him, the sweat and stour of the journey carried with them.

  The company parted, and the young princess, her ladies around her, swept a deep curtsey. When James raised her up, Hugh saw that her face, initially pale, like skimmed milk, had flushed a sweet, apple red under the King’s scrutiny. To her obvious embarrassment, James made to plant a kiss on her cheek and for a moment she demurred, then submitted to th
e embrace.

  Alexander had dropped back to Hugh’s side, ‘We aren’t the most savoury to be greeting our new Queen.’

  ‘Nor does she look altogether comfortable.’

  ‘Do you blame her? Warning she may have had, but she might be forgiven for expecting a more formal greeting. Customs differ, but James is aye one for the grand gesture and doesn’t stop to think how others will view it.’

  ‘Ha, Montgomerie,’ James beckoned Alexander forward. ‘The verse man, the verse.’

  Alexander pulled a roll of parchment, slightly crumpled, from inside his doublet. It was a pretty piece and well received, not so much, Hugh thought, for its quality, but because of the chance it gave the court to recover somewhat from their rough arrival. Afterwards, James and Anne conversed in French, his dark head bent close to her fair. Hugh was half-listening to the stilted conversation, glad that he did not have to pick the words to say to a bride, chosen for her marriage portion and her portrait, now met for the first time. She was prettier than her picture, no doubt a bonus for James. He admired her demeanour: though clearly nervous, she knew what was expected of her and made the effort to fulfil it. Does she think James handsome? Perhaps. She was holding her head up, her smile fixed. Impossible to tell what she thinks, good or ill. His admiration increased.

  Alexander had retreated from James’ side, his palms damp, the parchment darkened by the imprint of his thumb. ‘A canny lass and game. She has the makings of a queen. Slim she may be, but not, I think, delicate. And young. Strong blood will be no bad thing.’

  Hugh was looking about him, wondering how many of the Norwegian court would make their way to Denmark for the winter and if, among them, he would find congenial company. He had had little opportunity to speak with Ivar again, but hoped that he at least would accompany them. In dress there were plenty who appeared to match his preferences: for the plain and serviceable rather than the showy, which perhaps augured well. Thought of dress took his mind to the Cunninghames. And the opportunity to stay close to the King without the inconvenience of passing pleasantries with those that he couldn’t but despise.

  The King was speaking in Latin. ‘That we might be truly joined to our earthly Juno and our gracious Queen.’

  Alexander half turned so that only Hugh had a clear view of his face. Not that anyone watched them, but nevertheless. . . ‘For Anne to be driven by adverse weather to shelter in Norway is one thing, for Oslo so unexpectedly to have to host her wedding ceremony quite another.’

  ‘Lucky then that James is impatient – they can’t be expected to provide much spectacle.’

  ‘Did you not know? Granted they weren’t on our ship. James has brought his own entertainment: a troup of four dancers, dark as the devil himself. His intention is that they dance in the snow and thus be the more striking.’

  The main door to the hall opened and a blast of air lifted the hair that curled on Hugh’s collar. ‘Striking maybe, but it’s to be hoped that they don’t dance for long, else we all may perish with the cold.’

  Chapter Five

  Elizabeth and Grizel sat either side of a small table in the solar at Braidstane; between them a jumble of embroidery threads, the colours a splash of cheer in an otherwise grey afternoon. Making sense of the tangle was a job that Grizel had been meaning to tackle for some time. But an autumn blessed with fine dry weather had kept her in the garden that now thrived on the west side of the castle. When she did finally look to inside work, there were plenty more pressing jobs than the sorting of a mess of thread. For three weeks Elizabeth had blown through the castle like a gale, brushing and scrubbing with a will that gave Grizel fright for the bairn she carried, and so, with a thought to keep her to a more sedate task, she had brought the box from her chamber and tipped it out onto the table.

  ‘It’s fine time I made some sense of this,’ she said, and, casting a glance to the rain that slanted against the window, ‘. . . it may brighten up the day.’

  They sorted the strands into their separate colours, curling them into neat twists, Elizabeth’s half-smile evidence that she took some pleasure in the mundane task and in the sense of order conveyed by the rows of thread lined up like multi-coloured soldiers. It was a new found pleasure in domesticity that Grizel supposed sprang from the pregnancy, a thought which sharpened the accustomed pang in her own chest. As much to distract herself as anything she made a careless reference to the weather and the likely rough seas that the King’s fleet might encounter. A remark she wished back so soon as it was made. In the three years since Hugh and Elizabeth’s marriage, they had grown used to his irregular excursions to court, carrying the gossip that came from England by their brother George’s hand, accepting the wisdom of them, despite that there was little to show for it. But this gallivant was different. Hugh and Alexander had stressed the honour in his being bid to accompany James to Norway, but Hugh had gone with an alacrity that, however hard he tried to hide it, showed how much he chafed at home. Since his departure, they had avoided the subject, a tacit agreement not to air the issue. Elizabeth’s pregnancy was now in its seventh month and, though likely safe, it was an unnecessary foolishness to fret her.

  Elizabeth twisted a thread more tightly than she had the others. ‘It isn’t the season for travel. If the King didn’t know that, Hugh at least should.’

  ‘He is a soldier and has a soldier’s need for excitement.’ Grizel tried to make it sound reasonable.

  ‘He is a husband and should have a husband’s feeling for a wife near her time.’ There was an uncharacteristically petulant note in Elizabeth’s voice, her guilt immediate. ‘I’m sorry, Grizel. It isn’t fair that you should bear the brunt of it.’

  ‘I have a broad back. Besides that you have an excuse to be vexed . . .’ Grizel broke off, flushing.

  ‘I won’t lose this one, whether Hugh is here or not, but I would have liked him by me.’

  ‘We’ll do fine on our own. Menfolk are more often in the way at a birth than anything else.’

  ‘It isn’t so much the birth that vexes, but the thought that the bairn may be half-grown before he sees his father.’

  Grizel pounced on the ‘he’. ‘Have you been dangling a ring over your belly? And it swung for you?’

  ‘He or she then. I haven’t tried any of Ishbel’s tricks, though I wouldn’t like to swear that she hasn’t done it herself and me asleep.’

  The idea of plump Ishbel creeping about in the night to test the superstition made them both smile and when, moments later, the door opened to admit Ishbel herself, to burst out laughing.

  She said tartly, ‘It’s well you’ve time to sit and laugh. There’s some of us have more than enough work to do and little help to do it.’

  ‘I felt the need of a wee bit rest. Grizel but kept me company and sought to drive away my doldrums over Hugh’s absence with the thought that he’d likely be troublesome at the birth if he was here.’

  ‘Men are aye troublesome.’ A spinster who had no wish to be anything else, Ishbel didn’t think much of men’s abilities in any sphere, far less one clearly women’s work. She moved to the hearth and was clicking her teeth as she swept back the ashes that had spilled out onto the stone flags, and poked vigorously at the smouldering logs, daring them to refuse to blaze. Her reward a few small flickers of flame which she fed from the box of kindling.

  ‘Well seen I came when I did, else the fire would have been far gone and the pair of you half-starved. But I didn’t trail up here to sort the fire, which you could have dealt with yourselves,’ she creaked to her feet. ‘Rather, to cry you a visitor.’

  Grizel rose. ‘Where is he then?’

  ‘I saw him into the hall.’

  It was clear from Ishbel’s voice that it wasn’t someone she welcomed.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A wee foreign mannie, who can barely talk, or not so I can understand. From Norway, he says.’

  ‘Word from Hugh. And it barely a month since he went away.’ Heedless of the thread still twi
sted around her finger, Elizabeth flew for the stair.

  ‘Though why Braidstane would send a queer foreign body I don’t know.’

  ‘Because those who are with him are to swell the King’s company. We mustn’t show ourselves ungrateful, nor our hospitality poor.’

  ‘Hospitality is all fine,’ Ishbel grumbled at Grizel’s retreating back, ‘but I don’t trust foreigners and that’s the truth.’

  ‘Wee’ was hardly the word Grizel would have used to describe the man they found waiting for them in the hall. He was standing by the north window, his hands resting on the sill, his fingers drumming in time to the rain, his back bent like a bow because of the height of him. At the sound of their footsteps, he turned and crossed to meet them, water dripping from his hair.

  ‘Mistress Montgomerie.’ His voice, despite Ishbel’s claim, was accented just enough for the sound of it to be a pleasant novelty. He smiled, showing even, white teeth that suggested a younger man than the rest of his face, lined and comfortable like old leather, implied.

  Elizabeth curtsied awkwardly, one hand on her stomach.

  ‘I trust I do not intrude. Braidstane mentioned your condition, but not that you were so near your time.’

  ‘News is aye welcome – doubly so the nearer my time comes.’

  She stepped back and he turned to Grizel, his grip on her hand firm. She felt a constriction in her throat and said the first thing that came into her head.

  ‘Have you ridden from Leith? And in this weather?’

  ‘As to the weather, there is nothing that Scotland can throw at me that Norway cannot better.’ Again the smile, wider this time, ‘and skin doesn’t hold the rain.’

  She coloured under his scrutiny, but irritated at her own weakness, refused to drop her gaze. ‘We can’t keep you standing here and no fire lit. You’ll be hungered, I’m sure.’ And to Ishbel, who hovered in the background, ‘Set supper in the solar.’ She had a suspicion he laughed at her, ‘I’ll cry you to a chamber.’

  ‘A towel is all I need. Lest I drip on you further.’