“But where will we put them a’?”
“Come, and I’ll tell you.”
The countess led the way through a heavy doorway that was padded with felt to keep out drafts, into her private dressing chamber, which had no ceiling and so was open to the daylight that streamed in through the high, narrow windows overhead on the east and west walls of the castle tower.
“Now, let’s see,” she said and quickly began sorting through the hanging garments in the heavily carved wooden wardrobe that dominated the room. There was hardly a profusion of clothes there, and most of them were gowns of vibrant colours, but a highly unusual collection of accessories was tucked into boxed shelving beside the wardrobe: silken scarves and woollen wraps and leather belts and jewelled accoutrements of all colours, shapes, and sizes, for Marjorie of Carrick intuitively understood the feminine art of making less appear like more through the simple means of ornamenting her basic clothing.
“What were we talking about? Oh aye, where to put the camp followers, as Earl Robert calls them. We’ll put them where they’ve always been put.” Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the hanging gowns and assessed the options available to her. “This isna the first time Carrick has played host to the King o’ Scots, and we’ve never had any trouble in the past, so there’s nae use in frettin’ about it.” She picked out a few choices and passed them to Allie before starting to remove the gown she was wearing.
“The King’s chamber is ready for him, I’ve seen to that already, and Angus Mohr will have the other big guest room. Apart from that, I couldna care less.” She picked out a long, narrow ribbon of pale yellow with a pendant attached and held it against one of the two gowns she had chosen. Satisfied that her eye had been true, she handed it, too, to Allie and turned back to her undressing. “The earls and bishops will sleep in the great hall, where there’s room to spare for them a’, and the rest, the followers and the hangers-on, can sleep outside on the grass. They’re used to that, and it’s high summer.
“I remember the time my cousin Janet was married here—I was just a bairn. We had so many people here we couldna keep them a’ inside the gates and they ended up building what seemed to be a whole new town o’ tents along the riverbank. An’ they were a’ here for a week and more. So folk can go, and will go, where they need to go. It’s no’ my job to be hostess to all o’ them, especially when I invited none o’ them. This is a house. It’s a big house, I’ll grant ye, but it’s no’ a hostelry.” She undid the last of the buttons holding her gown and let the garment fall around her ankles. She stepped out of it, wearing only a simple, knee-length shift, and turned to face the wall beside the wardrobe, where she had had Murdo hang a long, framed and polished mirror made from a single flawlessly smooth sheet of brass that Earl Robert had bought for her years earlier, in York, on one of his visits to England. It was her pride and joy and the single concession in all of her household to her womanly vanity.
She stood silently for a few moments, looking at her reflection, still amazed, after all those years, at the fidelity of the mirror, and gazing critically at the changes that those years—and seven healthy, breast-fed children—had wrought on her body. She was still well shaped, she knew, and still attractive to the man she loved. Her waist, despite a decade of bearing children, was still remarkable, and she worked every day to keep her belly taut between pregnancies, short though those intervals had been. There were stretch marks, inevitably, on her abdomen beneath the shift, but they were few, considering the realities of life, and the paunch her pregnancies had caused was smaller than it might have been, barely noticeable beneath her clothing. Her thighs, legs, and buttocks were strong and well formed and, like her arms, devoid of fat or sagging flesh, because she walked for miles almost every day, visiting her tenants, and worked as hard as any of her people in the upkeep of the castle estates. Since girlhood, she had never shied away from physical labour, be it bringing in the harvest from the fields outside the castle walls or turning her hand to cleaning out the stables and the byres.
She raised one hand and poked her fingers into her hair, testing it for cleanliness and deciding she would have to find time to wash it before the men arrived. Marjorie of Carrick was proud of her hair and of the fact that it had been the subject of more than a few songs and tributes from visiting bards over the years. Her eyes were startling, too, a gift from her mother’s side, wide and arresting beneath arching brows, and more green than blue, with lustrous whites that often appeared to be a pale, pale shade of blue against the natural darkness of her skin. Sighing, she gathered up one of the gowns she had selected, shrugging into it quickly and shimmying as she pulled it into place.