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cared he would not have left Perth. As for the soldiers, she had not thought of them as a danger to her unless she threatened them. She must have a care. But it did not sway her. “I’ve sat at home since Martinmas, worrying. Imagining all the worst. That Roger is injured and has no one caring for him. Taken prisoner. That he has left me and begun another life.”
     
    “He will come home, I am sure of it,” Murdoch said absently, turning his attention to Andrew. “Could you not find Maggie fit lodgings in Canongate?”
     
    Andrew threw up his hands. “I did not know she meant to come until last night. I have not had time to make arrangements for her, but I shall do so.”
     
    Risking irritating her uncle, but recalling how he had encouraged decisiveness in her, Margaret said, “I will bide here, Uncle.”
     
    She watched for Murdoch’s reaction to her determination as Sim shuffled in with a flagon of wine and four cups. “I’ll bring a pie by and by,” the man muttered as he withdrew. A lad carried in some peat, began to fuss with the brazier. Celia told him she could manage and quickly set to it.
     
    A TRUST BETRAYED                                                             37
     
    Murdoch did not outwardly react to her comment. When the servants departed, he nodded toward the wine. “Drink up, Father Andrew. You will have little good wine at the abbey. Your abbot has no doubt sent it to King Edward’s captains at Soutra Hospital, and what is left will be rationed among their wounded troops.” Edward had taken over the great Hospital of the Trinity on Soutra Hill, which straddled the highest point on the King’s Highway between the border and Edinburgh.
     
    “There is precious little good wine left this side of the Forth,” said Andrew. “Where do you find yours—on Edward Longshanks’s ships?”
     
    Murdoch growled.
     
    Margaret had had enough of their contention. “What say you, Uncle? Will you turn us out, Celia and me?”
     
    Murdoch dropped his eyes to hers, touched her chin with his rough hand. “I have not convinced you to go home, lass? What do you need to hear?”
     
    “News of my husband.”
     
    A shadow flickered across Murdoch’s face. “We shall talk in the morn. You are a woman in need of bed.”
     
    “Do you have clean linen?” Celia demanded.
     
    The woman did not seem aware of how precarious their situation was. Margaret told her to be still.
     
    Murdoch snorted. “Find me a laundress and I will. Women are fearful to go down to the water with all the soldiers about.”
     
    “Dry clothes, that is what I need,” Margaret said. “And to warm myself down in the tavern for a while.”
     
    The men withdrew so she might change. But when the hide fell in place over the doorway behind them, Margaret did not move. She had expected to fall back on the bed, exhausted. Instead she just sat there, benumbed by the horrible turn life had taken since she had last seen her uncle. Her husband was missing, Jack was dead, she had traveled a long way, with a difficult crossing, with little plan but to resolve Roger’s disappearance, the town was so changed, so broken and subdued, and her uncle, whom she had not seen since her wedding, plainly wished her anywhere but here. She could not remember a worse time in her life.
     
    “Mistress, you wished to change?” Celia said.
     
    Margaret shook herself. She unhooked her scrip from her girdle, drew out the few coins she carried and the weight she had found in Jack’s shroud. The coins she poured back in—she would keep the scrip hidden beneath her kirtle at all times, or beneath her pillow at night. Every penny was precious to her.
     
    “Pay my uncle no heed, Celia. He will come round to understanding why I came.” She studied the weight. It might be a fishnet weight, though it was small and far too clean, unless it was new. It was also too small for a thatching weight.