The Fire in the Flint by Candace Robb

something about James Comyn that made her stubborn. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. My mistress is asleep, and I was still hungry.’ She forced herself to wait for her food and drink, and then gave it her full attention. When she must look elsewhere she gazed around the room. She noticed the servant Aylmer. He sat away from the others. She noted that he was simply but tastefully dressed – she had made it her business to notice such things.
    ‘Has his master arrived?’ she asked James.
    He followed her gaze. ‘Him? He arrived with the man I’d mistaken for Roger Sinclair. I did not think your mistress would entertain any other man in her chamber.’
    Celia did not like Comyn’s smirk. She thought him like many well-born folk, seeing servants as simpletons, people to be teased and ridiculed when he wasn’t ordering them about. She made no attempt to retort. He would only smirk more. Shewas also dumbstruck by the news that Aylmer was Roger Sinclair’s servant.
    Fortunately Comyn soon wearied of her silence and returned to his former spot by the fire. In a little while, full and now almost too warm, Celia withdrew, thinking to retire early. But as she drew near the maid’s cottage she heard voices from within. Thoughts of Old Will’s murder made her heart pound. But stubborn curiosity made her creep closer, until she could make out the quiet murmur of a man’s voice and a woman’s sigh and giggle. She could guess who the lovers were, Roy, the tavern cook, and Belle, a former chambermaid who had been forbidden on the premises. Celia went to the tavern kitchen where she found Geordie, the cook’s helper, sullenly cleaning.
    ‘So it’s Roy and Belle next door?’ she asked him.
    ‘Aye. It will be bad for them both if Master Murdoch finds out.’
    Belle had left Roy for another, then returned heavily pregnant with the cook’s child, or so she said. Murdoch had not banned her because of her morals, but rather because he could ill afford Roy’s destructive tantrums whenever Belle crossed him. Foodstuffs were too difficult to replenish.
    ‘Well I’ll not be the one to betray them,’ Celia said. ‘Could you give me a warm stone?’
    Geordie drew one out of the fire.
    She carried it across to the stairs, her eyes searching the dark corners, then hurried up. Allwas quiet in her mistress’s chamber, and no light shone beneath the door. She chose the smaller room on the right and put the hot stone beneath the covers, then returned to the kitchen for another for Aylmer’s room. He, too, would be sleeping alone tonight.
    Throughout the night she woke, thinking she heard her mistress call, but she was loath to knock on the door. She hoped Margaret was resting more easily than she was.

4
     

H ER C OMFORTABLE S ANCTUARY
     
    Fergus applied himself to the task of tidying the documents in both his father’s and his sister’s homes. None seemed of much importance, most merely recording business contacts and deals made, or proposing future arrangements. He knew there must be more. He was experienced enough to know that Roger and his father, Malcolm, must have records regarding the less respectable dealings necessary to evade a tax or buy a councilman or a courtier. He conducted a second, more thorough search of both the houses and the warehouses, not holding out much hope for finding indiscretions, but thinking he might find inventories that would allow him to determine what items, if any, were missing. But he found no such lists in either house, or indeed any lists of the property stored in them or in the warehouses.
    His frustration fuelled what had been a slow-growing anger directed at his family. They had trusted him with little while they were in residence, no matter how much he had begged for inclusion in the business, if not assisting in the purchase and sale of wine, leather items, cloth and various other goods then at least keeping the shipping records. Bored with Perth, he had rejoiced when his