A Cruel Courtship Read Online Free PDF Page B

chair with back and armrests and Margaret invited David to sit. She took a seat on a bench, James beside her.
    ‘Andrew is well?’ Margaret asked.
    ‘He is,’ said David, ‘and respected by all the men. All trust him and find comfort in his presence, which is as it should be with a priest, I’m thinking.’
    ‘All the men,’ Margaret said softly, ‘even the commanders? The master of the spital?’
    David nodded. ‘It is plain to all that Father Andrew was called by God to be a confessor to men. He chooses no sides.’
    Celia brought ale and they were quiet as she poured.
    ‘He spoke of you, Dame Margaret,’ said David after a good long drink. ‘He said if I made it, and if by some blessed chance I saw you, that I should tell you he is glad he went to the castle.’ The man kept his eyes on his cup as he spoke the words, as if he did not wish to know how they were received.
    Margaret crossed herself. ‘Bless him,’ she said softly. Andrew’s subtle message was that he did not blame her for being sent to Soutra. Ah, but she still blamed herself. She had asked Andrew to go to the English sheriff at Edinburgh Castle, the father of an acquaintance from his time at Oxford, to inquire about her husband. Andrew had disobeyed hisabbot in granting her wish. It was this defiance that had sealed his fate.
    ‘Father Andrew knew of your plans to desert?’ James asked, half rising to reach for more ale.
    ‘I had much on my mind, and Father Andrew listened. He sometimes talked about God’s kingdom on earth, how men should all join together in community, and how it’s our greed and jealousy and fear that divide us. He is a holy man, Father Andrew is,’ David said, nodding down at his cup.
    For a moment, no one spoke. Margaret was moved and not a little surprised by the man’s description of her brother. She had never doubted Andrew’s vocation, but she had never heard anything so profound and all-encompassing from his mouth. ‘How do the other priests regard him?’
    ‘He and Father Obert seem easy with one another. I think Father Obert worries that he will lose Father Andrew to a more important post.’
    ‘In truth?’ Margaret murmured, glad that Andrew had a friend in his fellow priest. At least he had that companionship, and perhaps protection.
    ‘It is men like Father Andrew who helped me see the evil in King Edward’s ambition.’
    ‘I should have thought a Welshman would have learned to hate Longshanks while in swaddling clothes,’ said James.
    Something in James’s tone caught Margaret’s attention, and she realised how restless he was, playing with his cup, shifting on the bench. Jameswas not easy about David. Neither was Margaret. She did not believe his last statement.
    ‘My da said that Scots fought with Longshanks against us, so it was fair to return the favour,’ David said, ducking his head. ‘But Father Andrew helped me see it differently.’
    ‘Did he encourage your desertion?’ Margaret asked, anxious about her brother’s trust of this man.
    ‘He – no,’ David shook his head. ‘He made sure I understood the danger. Not that he knew how I meant to sneak away. He forbade me to tell him that.’
    ‘You said he is well. Does he seem – content there?’ Margaret asked.
    ‘Not when he talks of home. And how nothing is as it might have been. But as I said, he is respected and the soldiers are grateful for his readiness to hear confession at any time.’
    Later, Margaret learned that James was indeed uncertain whether to trust the Welshman, so he was keeping David in a shed in the backlands with a midwife to attend him.
    ‘He’ll not fight with the Wallace?’ Margaret asked.
    ‘I would not risk it,’ said James. ‘He escaped too easily for my comfort.’
    ‘The rash, Jamie, and the fever – his escape brought him great hardship.’
    ‘It smells wrong to me, Maggie.’
    ‘Except for his suffering, I’m uneasy about himtoo, Jamie.’ Margaret admitted. She wondered whether