16. Phoebe

P HOEBE Cawfields, Northumberland, the same night

T HE STONES AGAINST MY back blocked some part of the wind, but not enough. I drew the folds of Logan's mother's plaid around me tightly as I sat there in the moonlight, wishing we could have a fire. I understood why Logan had forbidden it – a fire was too great a risk, if we were being followed. On these heights, we might as well have lit a beacon. But I still felt cold.

I seemed to be alone in my discomfort. Logan sat a little distance from me, uncomplaining, diligently working on a broken bit of horse harness. The others were all lying on their backs upon the rough ground, in a contemplation of the stars.

That was my father's doing. Had I been a better daughter, I would no doubt have reminded him that he was far too old to lie directly on the ground. It did his health no good. But earlier this evening, when we'd climbed the steep path up this hill, he'd brushed my hands aside when I had offered him support to hold him steady. ‘I am not an invalid,' he'd told me then. And now, he looked so happy that I held my tongue.

It was a revelation how the boy coaxed from each man a different aspect of their character. Logan, when he dealt with Hector, showed uncommon patience. It was plain the boy considered him the next thing to a god and wanted only to be near him, and while some men might consider that a burden, Logan seemed unbothered by it, taking time to answer every question Hector asked. Sir David dropped his careful guard, allowing his dry wit to slide through, as it no doubt did when he was with his friends. And my father was again the teacher, as he'd been for all the years when he'd worked as a writing master, and as he'd have been with both my brothers, had they lived.

He was in full cry now upon the subject he loved best. ‘See there, my boy, those stars that sit above Orion form the charioteer. And that bright star—'

‘Who was he?' Hector asked.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Well, ye telt me that Orion was the sea god's son and the best hunter in the world.'

My father smiled. ‘That he was.'

‘So the charioteer must have been someone special,' Hector reasoned, ‘to have been turned into stars.'

‘Ah.' I could see my father thinking, but the day had been a long one and his memory, although strong, seemed to be failing him on this one point, so I stepped in.

I raised my voice so that I would be heard above the wind, and said, ‘In ancient Greece, they thought the charioteer was Phaeton, son of Helios, the sun god. Every day the sun god had to drive his chariot of flames across the sky, to bring the daylight, and one day his own son, Phaeton, begged to do it in his place.' I'd heard this tale told countless times. I kept it to the bare essentials. ‘But Phaeton, in the chariot, could not control the horses, so they flew too low above the earth and set it all aflame. And Zeus – the highest god of all the gods – was angry, and struck Phaeton with a thunderbolt and killed him. But in the end Zeus set him in the sky, among the stars.'

Logan had fixed the harness. Setting it aside, he went across to lie beside the others, so that now there were the four of them stretched out like toppled logs upon the turf, with blowing grasses at their heads and feet.

I was half tempted to leave my cold, lonely seat and join them, but my father, at the furthest end, lay close against a ridge of stone and earth, which left no open space except that beside Logan.

Hector, with Sir David on one side and Logan on the other, let his hero-worship show. When Logan put one hand behind his head and let the other rest upon his stomach, Hector did the same. He even crossed his ankles just as Logan's were, which made me smile, because it was exactly like the children's game in which you tried to mirror your opponent's every move, only Logan did not know he was a player in the game.

My father said, ‘The stars have a great influence upon our lives. For instance, Hector, that star high upon the shoulder of the charioteer, the brightest one, is called Capella, and it is a most auspicious star, but sadly, Mercury did shadow it too closely at the moment of my birth, which has resulted in much difficulty in my life.' I could barely see his features, but I knew he turned his head and looked across to where I sat. ‘My Phoebe, now, she'll have a better life than I had, for the stars that did attend her birth were fortunate. She'll marry a fine man of—'

For some reason, I did not want him to finish the whole prophecy. Not here, in front of everyone. And Logan.

I cut in with, ‘Do you put faith in astrology, Sir David?'

‘Very little, I confess. Though I'll allow that there are things in life we may not understand.'

My father said, ‘But it is proven science, practised by respected doctors.'

Hector asked, ‘How do they ken which stars were where when ye were born?'

My father summarized the way a doctor of astrology might cast a figure for the hour of someone's birth, and Hector asked, ‘But how would they find out the hour?'

‘You tell them,' said my father.

Hector said, a little sadly, ‘Then I'll never learn what stars were in my sky, for no one kens when I was born.'

‘Your mother surely knows,' my father said.

‘I have no mother,' Hector reminded him. ‘Nor a father, either.'

Logan did not let the silence last. ‘Then ye may freely choose your own star.'Tis the rule.'

‘It is?' Hector was dubious.

‘Aye. Just ask Master Westaway.'

My father, for the softness of his heart, did not dispute the claim. ‘It is indeed.'

‘Ye see?' said Logan. ‘Look up in the heavens, lad, choose any star ye like, and ye can have it for your own, to guide your destiny.'

Hector looked long and hard and searchingly into all corners of the sky, and then at last he pointed upwards and said, ‘That one, there.'

My father praised his choice. ‘That is the brightest star in Leo, or the constellation of the lion, and that star is called by some the lion's heart.'

Sir David said, ‘Its proper name is Regulus, which means "the little king".'

My father turned his head. ‘I thought you said that you believed not in astrology.'

‘That doesn't mean I wasn't made to study it,' Sir David told him. And, to Hector, ‘Regulus is truly the most fortunate of all the stars, and it will bring you honesty, nobility of spirit, and great courage.'

‘All good qualities,' said Logan, ‘for a Messenger.'

‘A good star,' Sir David said.

But there was something in the way he said it, and the way he fell to silence for a moment after, that made me think that maybe looking at a star known as ‘the little king' had raised sad memories of the prince he had so lately lost.

Hector remarked, ‘It's very bright.'

Sir David murmured, ‘Aye. Some say the brighter stars do faster fall, but I've observed the brightest of them steal the light from all the others in the sky, which makes those lesser beacons envious.'

This time, his silence held, and he remained lost in his private thoughts.

Hector's own thoughts had travelled down another road. He looked around at the dark ruins of the Roman wall, now overgrown by grass and turf, and turned to Logan. ‘And ye're sure there are no wraiths here?'

‘Aye, lad. Very sure.'

But Hector inched a little closer to the side of Logan anyway, before he fell asleep. And once again, I found I envied him, because my own sleep, when it came, was full of dreams and fitful, and it did not last.

I spent a long time in the darkness, lying lonely by myself and looking upwards at the lion's heart that stole the light from all the lesser stars.

I was awake when Logan rose. The sun had barely shown itself above the hills, and even with its efforts the damp air still had a chilling bite, but Logan stood bareheaded and without a coat for so long at the wall's edge, with his gaze fixed on the line of the horizon in the west, that it intrigued me. Rising too, I hastily restored some order to my hair and clothing, took the plaid that I'd been using as a blanket and re-wrapped it round me as a mantel, and made my way over the rough ground to join him.

It wasn't a silent approach and I thought he would hear me, but his whole attention was still on the far hills when I came to stand at his shoulder. His eyes had the unfocused look that I'd witnessed before, when he looked at my father, or on that day when I had gone to his house, to his stables, and asked him to let me come north with them. Maybe it was the way Logan looked when he was worried.

I tried not to startle him, keeping my voice calm. ‘Good morrow.'

The unfocused look disappeared in an instant. His head turned towards me. ‘Good morrow.'

I never could hold his gaze long, but for some reason I found it harder this morning. My own attention wandered to the way his brows were drawn together and the hard set of his jaw. I asked, ‘Is something wrong?'

‘Aye, there is.' He said it bluntly. ‘They are coming – Patrick Graeme and his men. We have to go.'

I looked where he had just been looking, to the west. ‘But I see nothing.'

Logan was sure. ‘They'll be here by midday.' He was already moving away from the wall. ‘We'll have no time to waste. Wake your father.'

‘My father,' I told him, ‘has yet to recover from yesterday's ride. You cannot be forcing him into the saddle again before he's had a chance to find his strength.'

‘He'll have to find it on the road,' said Logan, but he briefly met my eyes with something touching sympathy. ‘We'll break the journey when we can. I promise.'

There was little point in arguing, I knew, especially since my own father would not take my part.

My father, being wakened, stretched his weary limbs to cure their stiffness, and remarked, ‘Well, I for one will trust to Logan's feelings, since they served him well when he did bring us safely through the Tarras Moss.' He did not even change his mind when, opening his almanac, he found a red ‘D' marked beside this day.

I told him, ‘There you are. Your Mr Parker thinks you should not travel.'

Hector asked, ‘What is the "D" for?'

‘Danger,' I said.

But my father qualified, ‘I think, my boy, that Mr Parker's warning us there will be danger for us if we linger here, so we should lose no time in leaving.'

Hector seized upon the chance to try persuading Logan once again to let him have a pistol. ‘I'd not need to carry it. I'd hang it in a holster on my saddle, same as ye do.'

‘No,' said Logan.

‘But ye telt us that the Graemes were fair deadly.'

‘So they are. But I've no doubt Sir David will persuade them not to shoot ye.' Logan's face was serious, yet when he came to lift me to the pillion, I saw the effort he was taking to conceal his smile. He hadn't fully managed it within his eyes, and when they met my own, I noticed for the first time they weren't purely grey, but were instead shot through with unexpected flecks of pale brown – tiny glints of bronze against the silver.

‘What?' he asked me.

‘It is nothing.'

But as we started southwards I was thinking of those eyes. They rose unbidden in my mind.

‘You seem distracted,' said Sir David.

Sharing a horse with Sir David was different from riding with Logan. For one thing, Sir David talked often and pleasantly. And whether from his own nature or from his long years spent at court, he was finely attuned to the minor moods of those around him, and his eyes missed nothing.

I told him, ‘I slept poorly, that is all. I'm over tired.'

He sympathized. ‘But I implore you to not fall asleep in the saddle. I know that you managed it on the way down into Langholm, but I can assure you my shoulders aren't nearly as broad as the Messenger's, and if you fall while you're riding with me, he'll not let me reach London alive.' He glanced at me over his shoulder. ‘I'll sing to you, if that helps keep you awake.'

‘Would that not be more likely to lull me to sleep?'

‘Not my singing.'

I laughed. ‘And you're wrong about Logan. If I were to fall and be lost on the journey, I doubt he would care at all.'

‘Then you'd be gravely mistaken.'

‘We have a long history,' I said, ‘Andrew Logan and I, and there is little love lost between us.'

‘Forgive me,' said Sir David, ‘but that's not what I've observed.'

I felt my cheeks flush and it was not from the wind. ‘You refer to my behaviour at the blacksmith's house in Langholm, I presume. I can explain. The blacksmith's mother was a pious woman, and while you were seeing to the horses she was telling us – my father and myself – a lively story of the travellers she turned away last week. A lady and two male companions. An unmarried lady,' I said.

‘Ah,' Sir David said.

‘Exactly that. The blacksmith's mother had most strong opinions on the morals of unmarried women who did travel in the company of men. And so you see why I behaved the way I did with Logan.'

‘Yes, of course. And he did not deny you. That was very gallant.'

I supposed it was. ‘Yes.' I had not foreseen the blacksmith's offer of the bed, and Logan could have made that difficult as well, but he had not.

Sir David asked, ‘This long history you share – where did it have its start?'

His tone was conversational, not prying, and for that I did not mind trying to sift back through my memories for the answer.

‘The first summer that the king came down from Scotland.'

‘So ten years ago. You both would have been young.'

‘I was fourteen. Logan was two years older. We disliked each other at first sight.'

But even as I spoke the words, they didn't have the ring of truth. He had intrigued me at the first – the tall and quiet Scottish boy who'd stood apart from all of us within the Close; who'd nodded so politely to me when I'd passed, and who had seemed a different person when I'd seen him laughing with his sisters. In honesty, I'd been more than intrigued.

How had we gone from that beginning to our current state?

Sir David said, ‘No doubt he did you some great injury.'

I tried, but while I could recall a number of our arguments, I couldn't think of what began them, other than, ‘He did insult a friend of mine at their first meeting.'

‘Naturally, to witness such a thing would stir your loyalty.'

‘I wasn't there,' I said, ‘but I was told…' My voice trailed off, as it occurred to me I'd never actually seen Logan being insolent to Valentine, I'd only ever heard about it, and believed the tales. If they weren't true, then I'd done Logan an injustice.

For an instant I felt touched by guilt, but I quickly recovered when I realized Valentine had little cause to tell me lies, while Andrew Logan had been insolent to me on more than one occasion.

‘Anyway,' I told Sir David, ‘you're wrong to think Logan would care if I fell.'

‘If you say so,' he said. ‘Only I am much older than you. And I'm never wrong.'

We did not have to test the point. I stayed awake, or nearly so, for the remainder of the day. Sir David did not even have to sing.

At length we came into a little town set on the heights, with views of the surrounding hills. The road wound uphill past plain houses shouldered round a church whose steeple rose above them all, a spear of stone against the sky of gathered cloud.

I felt uneasy here, aware of all the eyes that watched us from the shuttered windows, and the woman standing in a doorway further up the street from where she stared at us more openly. It made me feel exposed.

For once, when Logan stopped outside a proper inn, I did not think it a particularly good idea.

When he came to lift me from the mare, I asked, ‘Where are we?'

‘Alston.'

I clung tightly to the handle of the pillion. ‘Perhaps we should go further on, and try to find a farmhouse?'

Logan studied me. ‘Your father needs the rest.' His hands closed firmly round my waist, and I had no choice but to let him lift me down, or look a fool. ‘And so do you. Ye barely slept, last night.'

It surprised me that he'd noticed. With my feet on the ground, I was forced to look up at him, robbing me of any air of authority. And it had started to rain, lightly. None of my efforts to gather the plaid in the form of a hood helped to keep my face dry, with my chin tilted upwards, though Logan did block a good part of the wind.

He was too close. The woman who stood in her doorway was frowning.

Which were the only reasons I could think of later why I lost my reason altogether. ‘I've decided it would serve me well to have you as my husband,' I told Logan.

He looked at me in that impassive way that let me know he thought I'd lost my mind.

I stammered, ‘I do mean that we should play the parts of man and wife, not that we should be truly married.' And I summarized the explanation that I'd given to Sir David of why I'd behaved the way I had when we'd stayed with the blacksmith, ending with, ‘There may be others who will harbour the same prejudices when it comes to maidens travelling with men.'

He said, ‘Ye may be right.'

And then he did a thing I found astonishing – with both his hands, he carefully unwrapped the plaid I'd tangled round my head and shoulders, and re-wrapped it deftly so it shielded me from both the wind and rain, and tucked its folds in expertly so that the whole stayed fastened.

When he met the question in my eyes, he said, ‘No Scotsman would neglect his wife's well-being in such weather.'

Then he turned and, just like always, Logan took the last word with him, while I stood and watched his back and couldn't find one thing to say.

I hadn't expected his touch to be gentle. It was so at odds with his size and his rough nature and with the force with which we'd always clashed, and it caught me so unawares and off my guard that I still felt off balance that night after supper. My father, who'd taken the chair at the small table next to me close to the fireplace of our lodgings' parlour, guessed the cause of my silence.

‘What has he done this time?' he asked.

‘Who?'

My father glanced up once, but meaningfully, from his work on his papers. ‘Young Logan. Or should I more properly say, your new husband? I must confess, I did not think to have gained a new son on this journey, and all of it done with no need of a dowry.'

‘I'm glad that you find it amusing.'

‘I do. I agree with your purpose, of course, in the pretence, but watching the two of you carry it out can be quite entertaining. You've had your first newlywed argument, have you?'

‘No.' I didn't choose to enlighten him further. Instead I leaned closer to study the pages that he'd started work upon. ‘What are you writing?'

‘Sir David's account of his meeting with Prince Henry at Stirling Castle. The one he related to us at the Roman wall.'

‘Surely,' I said, ‘he was telling that story to Hector? That can't be of interest to anyone else.'

But my father did not cease his writing. ‘My orders, directly from my lord Northampton, are to keep a record of whatever Sir David says on our journey to London. It isn't for me to decide what parts might be of interest to those who will judge him.'

‘But don't you think that—?'

‘Phoebe.'

There would be no further argument, I knew. I left it there and went to bed. Our lodgings in the inn consisted of two separate bedchambers connected by this parlour, so that, as in Leith, I had a room unto myself for sleeping, while the men all shared the other.

The day had been a long one and my thoughts were tossed and troubled, so I knew the dream would find me, and it did.

I rose, as I had done in Leith, and went into the parlour, wanting only to be free of the confinement of the bedchamber. And, as in Leith, I found that I was not alone.

This time, Logan was not lurking in the shadows. He had left a candle burning and was standing by the window, looking out.

Surprised, I asked, ‘Are not you worried Patrick Graeme and his men will see you?'

He shook his head slowly, without turning round. ‘No. He isn't behind us the now.'

‘But you said—'

‘Aye, I ken what I said. He was nearly on top of us, so if he chose not to follow us down from the Roman wall, he had a strategy.' Logan turned then, and I saw the frustration writ plain on his features. ‘He's cunning, the Laird of Inchbrakie. He couldn't have missed our trail. Not with the five of us riding, he couldn't have. He thinks to cut us off.' I'd never heard this tone in Logan's voice. It sounded almost like defeat. ‘He thinks to get ahead of us and lie in wait and cut us off. And I've lost the advantage.'

I suspected he was talking more to himself than to me, and that my presence in the room made little difference to him, but I felt the strangest need to try to reassure him.

‘Were I to place a wager, I'd still place it upon you to bring us safely through whatever bars our path,' I said. ‘You are a match for any cunning laird.'

His eyebrows lifted slightly, and he took so long to answer that I braced myself for something mocking, but he only told me, ‘Thank you, Phoebe.' Then he paused and turned the subject as though setting a clock's hands to a new time. He asked, ‘Was Nicholas one of your brothers?'

Startled, I met Logan's eyes. Behind their grey impassiveness I saw a kind of cautious curiosity. I nodded. ‘Yes. My younger brother.'

Logan said, ‘I thought he must be. You did call to him when you were dreaming.'

I nearly disputed this by telling him I never cried out when I dreamt – that I'd been told so many times by my Aunt Agnes and my father, who would know. But then I faltered in my certainty, remembering Aunt Agnes slept most soundly, and my father snored, and Logan, for his faults, was not a liar.

‘Did I say aught else?' I asked.

‘No.' When he saw my great relief, he added, ‘Have no fear, you're not the only one among us plagued by dreams. At least ye only have to see yours when you're sleeping.'

I didn't understand. ‘What does that mean?'

‘Nothing.' He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, and turned away again. ‘It will be dawn soon. You should try to sleep another hour if you're able to. I'll see nothing disturbs ye.'

He was as good as his word.

When I awoke I discovered the day was a Sunday, and so we could not travel anywhere but the few steps to church.

At home, Great St Bartholomew's Church in our Close saw visitors so often from its placement near the hospital and markets and the fair that it was possible for strangers to both come and leave unnoticed. Here, there was no chance of that. We entered quietly and kept well to the back, yet from the stares and whispers we attracted, I feared that the minister himself might stop his sermon to remark upon our presence. I was grateful for the steady shield of Logan at my side, his back so broad that nothing harmful could get by him, and the instant that the service ended and we stepped outside and once more freely breathed the non-judgemental air, I felt a rush of pure relief.

‘If the woman standing just behind you was a witch,' Sir David said to Logan later in the parlour of our lodgings, as we ate the dinner of cold meat and bread sent up to us by the inn's landlord, ‘then the both of us are done for. She did stare at us so fiercely that her eyes were bulging, and – no, Hector, don't be frightened. I am not in earnest. She was not a witch. But it does almost make me wish I'd still been in my fetters, for that might have proved so scandalous she would have fallen in a faint.'

I saw the twitch of Logan's mouth. He said, ‘If ever ye find yourself missing your fetters, just tell me, and I'll gladly put them back on.'

‘You needn't bother. If I feel the need to escape, I'll be certain to give you fair warning.'

He spoke the words lightly, but Hector looked troubled. ‘But ye wouldnae try to escape, would ye?'

Sir David gave the boy his whole attention. ‘No. I gave my word as a gentleman that I would not, and that means something.'

Hector considered this. ‘Do ye have to be a gentleman to give your word?'

Sir David shook his head, and would have answered him, had Logan not stepped in with, ‘No, lad. Anyone can do it. But once done, ye have to honour it.'

Sir David seemed to be in full agreement, but his eyes were very calm as they met Logan's cool and wintry gaze, and I thought I glimpsed something at the back of them that made me wonder if Sir David might be thinking, as I was, about his cousin, Patrick Graeme of Inchbrakie, who with all his men was even now somewhere behind us or ahead of us, and riding to the rescue. And I wondered whether gentlemen who gave their word and honoured it considered being rescued to be different from escaping.