The Renegade(15)

Marjorie smiled as she saw Angus Mohr himself walking with her uncle Nicol, both of them strolling head down, their hands clasped behind them, and she wondered what they were discussing; wondered, too, if she were giving the Lord of Islay too much credit for his suspected subtlety.

There was no sign of the two boys, she noted, for young Robert had taken his new friend to explore the seaside caves in the high cliffs a mile to the north. Her eyes moved onward, scanning the space beyond the men and taking in the arrangements that had been made there, where a formally outlined military encampment, complete with horse lines, cooking pits, and piles of fuel, now stretched along the gently sloping meadow that led down to the river about a quarter of a mile away from where she stood, just before the riverbed began its final curl westward towards the sea.

Murdo and his crew of workmen had achieved a miracle within the day and a half that had elapsed since he’d told her of finding her father’s forgotten trove in the oar bothy. The enormous tents had been carried outside and spread out over the stout, wide frames on the beaches where the fishermen dried and repaired their nets, then left to air in the July sun while the men set about making sense of the mountainous coils of rope—more than fifty of them in varying lengths and thicknesses—and the bound stacks of sturdy poles that had been stored with them, some of them more like tree trunks than poles, six paces long and a foot thick at the base. It was a daunting task, and the men might never have succeeded in making sense of the profusion at all had Murdo not had the presence of mind to invite the oldest man in the Turnberry community to come and offer his guidance. Thorgard One-Arm, as he was called, had come to Arran from Norway seven decades earlier as a babe in arms, and in his youth had worked in Turnberry as a sailmaker for Earl Niall. He had also been the man responsible for turning the massive, carefully stored sails into tents almost forty years earlier. Too old now to share in the work himself, Thorgard was puffed up with renewed pride to find his skills and knowledge in demand again. Under his supervision the masses of poles and supports were quickly sorted into the correct order, and soon the first postholes were being dug.

Watching the pavilions being hauled laboriously into place by teams of sweating, cursing men, old Thorgard had sniffed disapprovingly at their stained condition and suggested that they should be treated with a coat of weatherproofing. And though far from happy with the delay, Murdo, a pragmatist above all else, had set his people to yet another task to which they were unaccustomed: preparing a mixture of diluted glue and whitewash as dictated by the old sailmaker, and brushing it over the coarse woollen fabric of the tents. It had been almost dark by the time the last of the peaked and now sodden pavilion roofs was hauled into place atop its poles, but when the morning sun rose the following day, its beams reflected warmly from the four magnificent pavilions in the meadow beyond the castle gates.

“Right,” Marjorie murmured, more to herself than to her factor, “there doesna seem much else we could do. The pavilions are ready and everything that’s to go in them will come wi’ our visitors. The kitchens are stocked, the cooks are set to go, and the hall’s set, wi’ the tables in place and the floor freshly rushed. From now on, whatever happens will be out o’ our hands. Our lives are going to be dictated for the next while by kings and bishops.”

She met Murdo’s eye when he turned to look at her curiously. Murdo, she knew, had no interest in the protocols governing visiting dignitaries. To him, kings were merely men of a different rank, and left to his own devices, he would, in his dour Scots manner, treat them as almost equals. That thought brought a tic of a smile to her lips as she envisioned Edward Plantagenet’s reaction to being spoken to bluntly by her factor. Alexander, a Scot himself, might deal easily enough with it, accustomed as he was to the Scots lack of deference, but Edward’s majesty would be severely challenged were he addressed truculently by a menial.

“Ye’d better go down and assemble the folk, Murdo. Make sure they’re clean and presentable to welcome our guests, then line them up in front o’ the gates. I’ll go and tidy mysel’ up while ye’re at that, and then I’ll come down and wait wi’ ye.”

“Aye … ” Murdo’s hesitation was almost unnoticeable. “Angus Mohr has two pipers wi’ him. D’ye think it might be fitting to hae them playin’ as the King arrives?”

Marjorie of Carrick grinned mischievously. “A Gaelic welcome for the King of Scots? And why no’? It was Alexander’s idea to invite Angus Mohr to the mainland, and I know he likes the sound o’ the pipes, for I’ve heard them played in his own great hall in Dunfermline. So be it the pipers are willing, then let them blow away. But be sure ye ask them properly. We canna let them think we expect it o’ them. It must be their choice.”