The Fire in the Flint by Candace Robb Page A

uncle Thomas Kerr had sent word that he needed a secretary in his shipyard and had hoped Fergus might come to Aberdeen. But before Fergus could depart his mother had withdrawn to the convent, his father had decided to sail for Bruges, and suddenly Fergus was needed in Perth to run what remained of his father’s business. Even his hope to accompany his father to Bruges as his apprentice factor had been killed. At first Malcolm had encouraged him in his expectations, but when the time came for Fergus to be outfitted, his father had inexplicably bowed to his wife’s advice for perhaps the first time in his marriage and had agreed that Fergus must remain in Perth to assist Maggie and watch over the family’s warehouses. Fergus had been furious; his mother had chosen a fine time to notice her youngest child. If she was so concerned about Maggie she could come out of her comfortable sanctuary and see to her herself. But his father would not be moved, and Fergus had nursed a bruised face for his insolence.
    He had once adored his mother. She had ever been distant – he could not recall a single instance of her gathering him in her arms and comforting him. Her preoccupation with her visions had seemed to prevent such intimacy. But he had held her in his heart as a boy does his mother. He had judged all women against his mother’s beauty and found them wanting, against her religious devotion and found them worldly. Maggie had often teased him about his mother worship, pointing out the problems they had that other families did not, such as how impossible it seemed for Christiana to recall where she had put things, how frequently she lay abed for days, even weeks, after a vision, and how some of her predictions caused chaos in the town. But despite Christiana’s failings as a mother, Fergus had steadfastly maintained his devotion to her. It was only when she withdrew to Elcho saying little more to him than ‘Pray for me, and respect your father’, that his love had finally turned to resentment.
    So when the shock of the intruders eased, he had wondered at his mother’s effort to warn him by sending the cleric David. A day later he had rowed downriver to see her and enquire whether she had any idea what had motivated the search.
    The hosteleress sent a servant to inform his mother of her visitor.
    ‘Was anyone injured the other evening?’ Fergus asked.
    The nun had drawn paternoster beads out of her sleeve and begun to mouth prayers. She did not answer at once, but completed a decade before lifting her gaze to him. ‘Dame Christiana’s maidservant has a bruised arm, but that was the worst of it, God be praised. Many things were spilled or torn, that is all.’ She intoned ‘things’ as if of the opinion that his mother had too many possessions. ‘And what of your intruders?’
    David apparently had not confined his report of the incident to Fergus’s mother.
    ‘No one saw them, but they left a jumble of deeds and correspondence.’
    The door opened. Marion, his mother’s maid, bobbed her head to him. ‘Dame Christiana says she is too ill to see anyone, but assures you that the messenger told you all she knows. The vision took all her strength. I am sorry.’
    The hosteleress straightened up, looking nonplussed. ‘But her son has come all the way from Perth.’
    Marion hung her head and shrugged.
    Overcome with embarrassment and anger, Fergus had not trusted himself to speak. With a stiff bow to the hosteleress, he had departed. He was halfway home, struggling against the currents, before his mind cleared and he realised he’d behaved like a disappointed child. He might have treated Marion more courteously, for it was not her fault that his mother snubbed him.
    For a day he had moped, having Jonet purchase twice the customary amount of ale for the two of them and proceeding to drink through his anger and humiliation. In the morning, covering his head with a pillow in a futile attempt to stop the hammering, he cursed