Free The Fire in the Flint by Candace Robb

patted the bench beside her.
    ‘Come, my son. Sit beside me and tell me how you bide upriver.’
    ‘You know how, Ma. The houses were searched before your messenger arrived to warn me. Who is searching, Ma, and for what?’
    ‘Fergus, Fergus, you have ever been hasty in speech and too quick to anger. Calm yourself. Speak first of the little things. Give people ease before you attack them.’
    He knew his approach was clumsy, but she made it necessary. Years of being diverted by her had forced him into blunt tactics. She had made him tenacious. Gathering his mental armour about him, he sat down beside her and took her hand. Here her age had begun to work, enlarging the joints, raising the veins. He was sorry for that too.
    ‘How goes the household?’ his mother asked, easing her hand from his and angling herself so she might see his face.
    ‘Jonet and I are managing, though we have not enjoyed meat in some time.’
    ‘You were never one for the hunt.’
    ‘Ma, there are soldiers in the wood – ours and theirs.’
    ‘Ours and theirs? You mean the Scots and the English?’
    ‘You know that I do. Do you have any idea what documents someone is after?’
    ‘Do we know they are after documents?’
    ‘That is what they searched through in both houses,’ Fergus said, relieved that she had at last addressed the matter, though her eyes looked vague. ‘Did they not search for them here?’
    ‘It was impossible to ken what they hoped to find, or what they took. But they have not returned, praise God.’
    ‘You might better praise the prioress,’ Fergus said, ‘engaging her kinsmen in standing watch over Elcho’s gates.’
    His mother reached out, touched his knee. ‘What? She has set guards at the gates?’
    ‘She did not tell the community?’
    ‘Perhaps the others, but not me.’ His mother covered her face with her ageing hands for a moment, then pressed her palms together and bowed her head, murmuring a prayer.
    ‘You had not thought there might be further danger?’ Fergus asked. He should not be surprised by his mother’s lack of comprehension, but he had thought that seeing her belongings tossed about, and considering the state of the kingdom, she might have understood that she was in danger.
    ‘Dame Agnes believes that my visions are personal,’ she said, ‘that they do not apply toothers and so I am wrong to share them. Yet she seemed angry that I had not gone to her at once when I woke with a vision of intruders.’
    ‘Were you frightened?’
    ‘Yes. So frightened that I ran out of the postern gate down to the river. I feared that they were at my heels, ready to – But when at last I stopped I realised that it could not be real, because Marion had not awakened. Do you see? I had no cause to rush to Dame Agnes.’
    For once, he agreed with her. ‘What is Da doing in Bruges?’
    ‘Avoiding the English, I thought. Hoping to avoid all the unpleasantness and protect some of his wealth.’
    ‘You know of nothing in his possession that might be evidence against him, from either side? Or that might reveal secrets of either side?’
    ‘Why are there sides? Why must men always take sides?’
    Fergus closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and asked her again. And again. The conversation meandered on for a long while, but the only thing that he learned was that his mother lacked any curiosity about his father’s activities. He left her meditating on mankind’s failure to heed Christ’s message of love, which would render war unnecessary. He thought her a strange one to speak of love.

5
     

V OWS
     
    Margaret had made excuses to Roger and climbed High Street to St Giles Kirk, where she might have some peace in which to think. Her warring feelings confused her too much to make sense of anything at the moment.
    In different circumstances she might have been unconditionally delighted by Roger’s suggestion that they set out for Perth together. Only yesterday she had sought an escort for a homeward journey