The Lion at bay

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Closeburn Castle, Annandale

Ferial Day following the celebration of the Sancti Quatuor Coronati (Four Crowned Martyrs) November, 1306

Cheese and sobbing. Not the best of the world, Isabel thought, to take into Eternity but fitting enough for this prison which might see the end of me.

She tossed the half-round of hard cheese away and laboriously heaved at the sack it had lain on until she had struggled it across the floor in arcs, leaving little trails of barley from the gnawed holes. Mildewed, she thought, which is why it was left when they emptied this place to use as a prison. Now it will be a pillow, at least. She blew a tendril of hair from her face and fretted at the untreated grey in the russet.

‘In the name of God, girl, shut up.’

Mary Bruce was stern as a stone Virgin, but her French was pitch perfect and precise; Marjorie was past all that, the fear rippling her body with weeping.

‘Auntie, they will kill us all,’ she wailed and Mary slapped her shoulder, then gathered her into her bosom in the next moment.

‘Swef, swef,’ she soothed. ‘They will not kill us — and speak French. You are the daughter of a king, girl, not some Lothians cottar.’

Isabel, who knew some fine Lothians cottars, thought of Sim Craw and Dog Boy and what they would do if imprisoned in the undercroft of Closeburn among the remains of old stores. Would think themselves well off, Isabel was sure, being warm and dry and finding old cheese rind and mildewed barley with which to make a meal.

Marjorie subsided to hiccups, for which Isabel was glad at least. Mark you, you could scarcely fault the girl, a child on the edge of womanhood, from being a gibber of fear after what had happened at Tain.

It had been a bad idea, as far as Isabel was concerned, to head north of Inverness and the chance of a boat to Orkney, where Norway held sway — and another Bruce sister was queen. That sanctuary led through Buchan and Ross lands, both those earls on the hunt for rebels; it came as no surprise to Isabel when wild-bearded men snarled out of the wet, foggy bracken of the hills and stampeded the column into flight.

They had reached St Duthac’s shrine, with its four weathered pillars marking the sanctuary of the garth and, by that time, four men had already been lost. The Duthac garth had been an illusion, for the Earl of Ross himself had curled a lip and strode into it, his men overwhelming the last resistance in a welter of blood; it was then Marjorie had started into screaming and sobbing and was only now subsiding.

Mary Bruce had drawn herself up to her full height, which was taller than the cateran who approached her, licking lascivious lips; she had stared down her nose at him, then dared him, in good Gaelic, to lay a finger on the sister of Scotland’s king.

Whether the cateran was impressed or not would remain a mystery, since the Earl of Ross had beaten his liegeman to a bloody pulp with a flute-headed mace and hanged the remains from a pillar at St Duthac’s shrine to remind the rest of his prowling wolves that he meant what he said when he told them to leave off the women.

The setting for this slaughter only emphasized that the Earl of Ross did not even consider God held power greater than himself.

‘Take a good look,’ Mary Bruce had said to Ross when the bloody remains were hauled up. ‘That is your fate for having violated this shrine and laid hands on a queen.’

The Earl of Ross had merely shrugged and smiled; his deference was all kept for the Queen herself, strangely aloof from all this and Isabel knew then that she would go one way and all the other women another — that the Queen would not be harmed because she was the daughter of Ulster.

Which was exactly what happened; without a backward glance, Elizabeth de Burgh had gone off, bundled up warmly and ridden away, while Mary, Marjorie, Isabel and the tirewomen had been huckled into carts to be transported south.

Isabel had seen Niall Bruce and Atholl, with chains at wrist and ankles, being dragged along in the wake of the carts, but only once, and when they arrived at a nunnery in the dark, the pair of them were gone. With grim irony, the nunnery was Elcho, though the prioress and all the nuns she had known had been replaced.

Now they were here in Closeburn and Isabel was no wiser as to their fate. South, probably — Carlisle or further still, away from any possible rescue.

She heard the familiar jingle, then the grate of a huge key in a fat lock: Dixon, their shuffling old gaoler, his great blued lips pursed.

‘Ye have a veesitor,’ he said, and nodded his fleshy head towards Isabel. ‘The Maister entertains him with wine and sends me to allow time to be presentable.’

Isabel snorted.

‘And how, pray, am I to achieve that?’ she demanded. ‘Empty this barley sack and wear it? Certainly that is more presentable than the dress I have on.’

‘Aye, aye, betimes,’ muttered Dixon, mournfully.

‘Suitable for this guest room, mark you,’ Isabel scathed.

‘Aye, aye,’ Dixon replied and turned one glaucous eye on her, the other shut as if considering.

‘The reason ye have this room is not because we cleared it out,’ he mourned, ‘but because it has been ate oot, rind an all, by the chiels we have crowding in. It will be a hard winter for us, ladies, when ye have passed on from here, since you and all those with ye have ruined us from hoose and hame.’

‘Then it seems clear I should hang on to the sack with the barley in it,’ Isabel replied tartly. ‘Bring on my “veesitor”, gaoler.’

‘Who could it be?’ Marjorie asked when the man was gone, and Isabel heard the hope of rescue or ransom in her voice; she looked at Mary Bruce and they shared the unspoken knowledge that it was unlikely to be either.

It was, as Isabel suspected, her husband.

He came in fur-wrapped against a chill that the women had grown used to but clearly bothered him and followed by the loathsome shadow of Malise Bellejambe. Her husband stood straight, Isabel saw, with a squared hint of the powerful shoulders left, his dirty grey grizzle of beard cocked haughtily.

Yet he was yellowed and gaunt, the hair on his head lank and the fur wrapping made him look like he had been caught in the embrace of a mangy, winter-woken bear and was struggling to break free.

She felt a leap of pity then, and an echo of feeling at his eyes, pouched and rheumed and unutterably weary — but it was an old statue, that feeling, the marble glory of it worn and weathered, clogged and smothered with the moss of neglect and anger.

Yet the death of Badenoch must have hit him hard, she thought, not to mention the forced alliance with the English he had always struggled against, because the Bruce stood on the other side.

Their endless feud was killing them both, she thought.

‘ Ma Dame,’ he said icily. ‘You are fair caught. I am vindicated at last.’

She heard the cold in him and felt only sadness at it.

‘A great nation of vindicated corpses, that’s us,’ Mary Bruce answered and he turned his wet fish eyes to her, raking over the trembling Marjorie on the way.

‘Quiet you,’ he said with a stunning calm and a chilling dismissal of any deference to her rank. ‘You are bound for Roxburgh, lady, while the child is bound for a nunnery somewhere south. Count yourself fortunate to be alive — though you will not think it when you find the plan Longshanks has for you.’

Marjorie started to wail at the thought of being parted and Buchan grimaced with distaste, then turned his gaze back on Isabel.

‘You are bound for Berwick, where you will share the same fate, but on my own terms,’ he said, which was sinister but left Isabel none the wiser. He jerked his head and, obedient as a belly-fawning mastiff, Malise moved to her, his grin feral in the dark ruin of his face.

‘Malise will see to it. I commend you to his care, ma Dame. I commend you to God, for this is the last time you will see me. Never ask to do so, for it will be refused.’

He saw her, still lush and ripe — yet her face was haggard and there was snow in the autumn russet of her hair. She was, Buchan thought, a woman in the same way that a lion could be called a cat.

The memory hit him of the power he had had over her, the punishments he had inflicted for her transgressions, when he had gloried in her being stripped to ‘twa beads, yin o them sweat’. Her transgressions…

‘The last gift I shall give you will be the head of your lover when we find him, which you may care to look on before it is put on a spike.’

Which at least let her know that Hal was alive and free — and that she would live herself, though the triumphant sickle on Malise’s face made her wonder if that was preferable. When she turned to her husband again, there was only a hole in the air where he had been.

‘Come, lady.’

It was not a request and the hand Malise held out was not an invitation. With a chilling stone sinking in her belly, she looked into his too-bright eyes and realized she had been handed to her worst nightmare.

Closeburn Vill, Annandale

Vigil of St Athernaise of Fife, December, 1306

They came down to the English-dominated lands of the Bruce in a mourn of snow and sleet, stumbling from abbey to priory through brutal, metalled days of silvered frost and skies of iron and pewter. They were deferential and pious or garrulously merry when circumstances demanded it and no-one spared a single suspicious glance for two packmen, sweating south like snails with their lives on their backs.

Kirkpatrick had purchased the cheapjack wares from two delighted mongers paid more than they could earn in a year; one of them announced that he was quitting the travelling life for good and now Hal knew why, even as he applauded the disguise in it.

‘It is perfect,’ Kirkpatrick enthused, watching Hal eye up the hide packs, black with old grease against the weather. ‘We are travelling at the right time, coming up to the Christ’s Mass.’

He had that right, too, for they were in great demand for ribbons and silk thread and needles from folk who could ill afford the cost. It had become the fashion for burghers, cottars and serfs to give gifts to the manor ‘for the glory of Christ’s Mass’ and, though an acorn tied with bright ribbon, or a sacking purse sewed up with silk thread seemed nothing, it was a sacrifice to folk who had little to begin with. And was done, Hal saw, out of only the hope of future favour.

So they tramped, horseless, down the days towards Closeburn, where Kirkpatrick had said Isabel lay.

‘Three women,’ he had told Hal. ‘Taken to my kinsman’s holding, together with Niall Bruce and the Earl of Atholl.’

‘The women might be gone,’ Hal had answered morose and hopeful at the same time. The ‘or worse’ was left unsaid, for he could not be sure, in his sinking cold belly, that a vengeful King Edward could kill Niall and an earl of the realm and yet spare the women.

‘Aye, right enough,’ Kirkpatrick had declared, ‘but I am charged to seek out the King’s sister and wee daughter, so that is what I will do. Will you come?’

There was no refusing it and he had made what provision he could for those he left behind. He remembered the thrashing Sim Craw, soaking his pallet branches with sweat and steaming in the cold air, while Dog Boy and Chirnside Rowan looked on.

‘Take him to the King,’ he had said. ‘Neil Campbell will help. When that is done, go where ye will.’

Chirnside Rowan, who wanted home, nodded agreement, but Hal could hardly find the courage to look Dog Boy in the face and, when he did so, his heart creaked like a laden bridge.

‘I ken,’ he said softly, ‘that there is little left at Herdmanston, less at my kinsman’s Roslin. I may never return to it, even if this venture is a success, for I am outlaw and there is nothing for me there.’

Dog Boy felt stunned by it, could not move nor speak.

‘I took you from Douglas,’ Hal went on, speaking faster now, as if to rid himself of the words, ‘at the behest of Jamie’s stepma and never regretted it for an eyeblink. Now I release you. Find Jamie and tell him this — he will take you into his care and, Heaven willing, you will both be back at Douglas when God and all His Saints wake up in this kingdom.’

The youth’s face was with him now, as he stood in the snow-humped riggs of a backcourt, feeling the wet cold seep up through his ruined soles. Pale and stricken at the thought of never seeing Hal again, the Dog Boy had brimmed his tears over and they had clutched briefly; the ache of it now was sharper than the keening snow wind.

Kirkpatrick tapped on a door, then again, then stood away from the faint light that would be spilled when someone came to answer it. He was grinning to himself when he saw it was her, her hand raised with a smoking crusie in it, the other clutching the wrap of warm wool to her as she stood, peering uncertainly.

‘Who is it there?’

He stepped forward, into the falling faintness of the crusie’s glow.

‘Annie,’ he said. ‘Bigod, yer as lovely as ever ye were.’

Hal was astounded at the sharp yelp and the plunge of darkness as the crusie fell to sizzle in the snow. There was a pause and all their eyes adjusted.

‘You…’ she said and Kirkpatrick, still grinning, nodded. The blow took him by surprise, a calloused round-house slap that whipped his head sideways. Then Hal heard her burst into tears and Kirkpatrick felt the soft warmth of her, flung into his arms.

‘Annie,’ he said, working the jaw to see if any teeth had been loosened.

‘Ye cantrip, reeking dungheap,’ she replied and sprang from him, hands on hips and the wrap flowing free so that Hal saw the considerable matronly curves of her through a dress too thin for the biting wind. She will catch chill, he thought wildly, then looked right and left to see if any of the nearest of her neighbours had come to spy.

‘I will return, ye said,’ she accused. ‘And so ye have — a dozen years later.’

‘Fifteen,’ Kirkpatrick corrected and then wished he had not piled the truth on it.

‘I was a lad,’ he added weakly. ‘With scarce any chin-hair.’

Her voice lowered too, with a swift backward glance — o-ho, thought Hal, there is a husband in this mix.

‘And I scarce had quim fluff,’ Annie hissed, ‘neither of which stopped ye.’

‘Ye were not unwilling,’ Kirkpatrick replied desperately, for this was not entirely on the track he had planned. But he and Hal saw her face soften. It was plumped and blurred a little from the heart-stopper Kirkpatrick remembered, but still brought a stirring in him. First love, he thought with a sudden ache of loss and a leap of envy at what the hidden man in the house behind her had achieved over him.

‘Weesht on that,’ she said, with another quick, birdlike flick over one shoulder. ‘I have a man noo — a good man who makes a fair livin’ from shoemaking and merchanting in charcoal and I am Mistress Annie Toller. I dinnae want to present him with an auld love on his threshold.’

‘Then do not,’ Kirkpatrick declared with a rueful smile. ‘Present me as Rab o’ Shaws, a cheapjack in need of shelter. This is Hal o’ Herdmanston likewise. Tell him we will give fair pay in ribbons and geegaws for warmth and whatever food he can spare.’

She shivered and not entirely from the cold.

‘Black Roger,’ she said softly and Kirkpatrick jerked at the name while Hal cocked his head with interest; this name was new.

‘We hear of ye from time to time,’ Annie went on. ‘And that is the name that comes with it. If ye are back here on dark business, Roger, ye can go your way.’

‘Nothin’ o’ the kind,’ Kirkpatrick lied. ‘I need ye to find Duncan, all the same. I need his help on a matter.’

‘What matter?’

Kirkpatrick bridled.

‘Annie, it is freezin’ cold — yer turnin’ blue on the step here.’

‘What matter?’

Kirkpatrick turned and indicated for Hal to come forward.

‘This is Hal o’ Herdmanston,’ he said. ‘Sir Hal, no less. He and I are here after his light o’ love, the Coontess o’ Buchan.’

She had heard the tale of it, which raised eyebrows on Hal, for he had not realized. My love life is a bliddy geste, he thought savagely, for all to gawp at.

Kirkpatrick knew Annie would have sucked up the story of it and now she stared at the troubadour tale turned reality, standing with his soaked boots and mournful face on her doorstep. She bobbed a curtsey as one hand went to her mouth to keep her heart from surging out of it.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘The poor man. The lady. Oh. Come away in. In, afore ye freeze.’

Hal glanced sideways at Kirkpatrick and caught the sly grin and wink as he ducked through the door.

Her husband, Nichol, was a bluff-faced barrel of a man, at once suspicious of two strangers within his house and eager for their news and the payment promised, which would sweeten his wife for weeks to come.

‘Ye can sleep in the coal shed,’ he declared and shot a sharp glance to silence the start of protest from his wife. ‘And eat separate an’ what ye are given.’

Yet, while he pressed them for news of the roads and whether carts laden with coal could go up and down from Glasgow, he took Hal’s boots and worked on them, almost as if his hands were separate from his nature.

In the end, of course, he gave more than he got in news and Hal marvelled at the subtle cunning of Kirkpatrick that unveiled the presence of too many English soldiery in Closeburn and that it had to do with the prisoners within.

‘The Maister o’ Closeburn is seldom seen,’ Nicholl informed them, stitching quietly and speaking with an awl in one corner of his mouth, ‘at table or elsewhere. He plays chess and has found himself a clever opponent he is reluctant to give up, it is said, even though the others who came there at the same time have moved on.’

‘A wummin?’ asked Hal before Kirkpatrick could stop him; Nichol glanced up, beetling his brows.

‘I never said so,’ he replied, then lost the frown and shrugged.

‘There were wummin arrived,’ he admitted. ‘The sister of King…’

He stopped, looked at them and carried on working needle through leather; Hal knew he was in a fury of worry about having started to mention Bruce and the word ‘king’ in the same breath among strangers who might report him. Kirkpatrick chuckled reassuringly.

‘Dinna fash,’ he soothed. ‘No tattle-tongues here. It is to be hoped the sister does not share the fate o’ her wee brother, God wrap him safe from further harm.’

There was a flurry of hands crossing on breasts, but Nichol grew taciturn from then on and, eventually, the conversation died; Hal and Kirkpatrick went off to the dubious comfort of the coal shed — which, Hal pointed out, was mercifully emptied, save for old dust.

‘Aye,’ Kirkpatrick mused. ‘Poor commons, it seems. Too many to heat in Closeburn these days. To feed, too, for certes.’

‘Which means it is stappit full of folk we need avoid,’ Hal replied uneasily, knowing that the task they had set themselves was made harder.

‘It can be done,’ Kirkpatrick said out of the coal dark of the place. ‘We need Duncan.’

Hal had been told of Duncan of Torthorwald, another Kirkpatrick but one who had followed Wallace and now suffered for it; he was outlawed and Torthorwald held now by the Master of Closeburn.

‘He is prospering, is my namesake,’ Kirkpatrick had declared. ‘Closeburn and Auchencas and now Torthorwald, with Lochmaben handed to him to hold, on behalf of the Bohuns.’

And Hal had heard the bitterness there.

‘Will this Duncan help?’ Hal asked, wondering if a man who had fought in support of a Balliol king — and so a Comyn — would offer assistance to a Bruce. There was no reply and, eventually, Hal fell asleep.

He woke to the sound of rustle and grunt, a throaty sound bordered between shriek and hoarseness, so that he lay quiet in the velvet dark, unlatching the dirk from inside his tunic. The rhythm of it ended in the rasp of mutual breathing and then a faint, whispered voice.

‘Did we wake him?’

‘Naw. He dreams of his lost love and what he will do when he gets her back.’

Kirkpatrick slid out of the warm depth of Annie and silently blessed Hal and his countess for it had been that honeyed tale, as much as his hand at her fork, which had persuaded her to part with her old charms while they waited at the coal-shed door for Duncan.

He did not know of her desperate need to find a little of what had been lost between then and now, in the compromise of poverty and the grief of bairns lost in birthing, but he felt a little of it touch him, a tendril of something sharp and sweet.

It brought the knowledge, complete and out of the casket, of what he had given up all those years ago, sacrificed to the lure of the wider world and all its possibilities. His hand idled back to her wetness and she slapped his arm.

‘Enough,’ she hissed. ‘We have been fortunate that my man sleeps like an auld log. I will risk no more. Never again, Roger — that was for sweet memory and auld times.’

Yet the fierce kiss she gave revealed the lie in it and choked his throat with all he wanted to say. The sudden arrival of a shadowed figure relieved him of the moment.

‘Mistress,’ said the shape, nodding to Annie.

‘Duncan,’ Kirkpatrick said.

‘Black Roger,’ the shadow acknowledged.

‘Good,’ said Hal, emerging from the black of the coal shed into the clear night, brilliant with stars and moon. ‘I am Hal of Herdmanston, knight. Now we’re all introduced, perjink and proper.’

Duncan nodded at Hal, stepping forward so that he was silvered by moonlight, a ghost in the dark. He was tall and broad, with a great bush of black beard grown against the cold and a cloak wrapped round him — as much to hide the weapons, Hal thought, as for heat.

‘Ye had best go back, Mistress,’ he said to Annie. ‘Lest yer man miss ye.’

She bobbed a curtsey and half-paused as if to say something to Kirkpatrick, then ducked away; Hal could feel the heat of her emotions as her face disappeared into the dark.

‘Ye are a muckhoond,’ Duncan said, soft enough so that only Hal and Kirkpatrick could hear it; Kirkpatrick wondered how long Duncan had been waiting in the cold shadows, listening to him and Annie and said as much, adding, viciously, that he was sorry if he had strayed on to Torthorwald territory.

Duncan was suddenly close enough for Kirkpatrick to have the warm smoke of his breath on his face.

‘Nichol Toller is a good man and, until ye arrived, Annie was a well-conducted wife,’ he said. ‘They dinna deserve the likes of you.’

‘You will back off a step,’ Hal said gently, though his voice held a rasp and Duncan felt the nudge in his ribs and looked down at the moon-silvered wink of steel.

‘We are off to a bad start,’ he declared and Hal nodded.

‘Let us begin again, then,’ he said. ‘I am Sir Hal of Herdmanston. You address me as “my lord” an’ you ask what you can do to assist us both and His Grace, the King.’

‘What king is that, then?’ Duncan demanded with a sneer.

‘The one ye will wish as a friend in the future,’ Kirkpatrick answered, recovering himself. ‘The one who is not in France with his empty cote and no wish to return to these shores, having been pit aside by the nobiles o’ this kingdom. Nor is it the covetous English one, whose death heralds the freedom of our realm — if ye believe the prophecies of Merlin. Have ye tallied it up yet, Duncan?’

‘Whit why are ye here?’

Kirkpatrick smiled and laid out the meat of it and what he needed — good horses and supplies enough for five, for they hoped to have three women in tow when they came out of the castle of Closeburn. Duncan was no fool; he had heard of the prisoners and said so, rubbing his beard with the idea of such a blow being struck.

‘That was weeks since. They may not be there still,’ he added warningly. ‘There has been a deal of skirrivaigin’ by folk since then and a deal of it in secret, to foil such attempts.’

‘Yet the Master of Closeburn plays chess with a prisoner,’ Hal pointed out and Duncan’s eyes narrowed.

‘Ye have good intelligencing,’ he answered, nodding. ‘He is the man for that game, right enough, and complains of havin’ no good players here. Until recently.’

‘Isabel plays chess,’ Hal answered, fixing Duncan with a grapple of eyes. ‘So does Lady Mary Bruce.’

Duncan stroked his beard, frosting with his own breath in the night chill. Then he nodded.

‘Five horses. Garrons only, nothin’ fancy — those days are long gone,’ he said, the last added with a grue of bitter ice.

‘How will ye get in?’

Kirkpatrick smiled and winked.

Berwick Castle

At the same time

Isabel tallied up the number of years a body spent in growing, then in dying. Then she thought how long a person spent in bed, asleep or awake, sick or well, fevered with lust or bad dreams. In her real world, only sickness or love justified daylight hours in a bed — yet this was not the real world and she knew that.

Snow-white sheets, a sable-fur covering, a red-velvet waterfall of privacy hangings, her head on down and linen — she dreamed of Balmullo and lay on filthy straw as if nailed. She had the imperative to move, knew she could not make her limbs work and felt like a laired toad, a salamander caught by the tail.

The room was hazily outlined and she knew people came and went, but she could not speak or even move her eyes and the panic this had first created in her — oh, what a lurch of heart, of shrieking terror that had been — was gone, replaced only by the calm slant of faint light on the stinking floor.

She could hear the sound of hammering. The cage. Malise had taken delight in telling her of it all the long journey across from Closeburn and she was not surprised, that first night they had stopped at Devorguilla’s abbey in Dumfries, when he had come to her.

Sweetheart Abbey, they called it and the irony was not lost on her. She had fought and he had beaten her almost senseless, then forced his way into her. It had been mercifully short that first time, but he had done it since and more than once in the same night; she knew it was as much to do with the power he had now as with the act itself.

Malise would have been surprised at this, for he thought he was secret with his thoughts. The first time — Lord, that first time; after all the fervid dreams he’d had, he thought he would die of pleasure, especially when she fought and he had her, as he had always imagined it, naked and helpless and trembling at his feet.

She would have been surprised, too, that the foulness he spilled on her, thought and deed, was not from vicious hate but the opposite — Malise had found his love at last. She was his and his alone. At last, he could share all his thoughts and dreams with her, for she was not shared with anyone, saw no-one else.

So she had it all from him, all the things he could not tell anyone else, the cruel and obscene things he had kept to himself and now emptied on her like spilled seed.

Tortures of men and women, killings of them and children, too, in the name of her husband and for the greater furtherance of the Comyn and Badenoch and Balliol — and for his own pleasure and interest.

He knew bodies as well as any Bologna surgeon, she realized in that part of her mind which was turning as feverish as her body. He spoke of nerves laid bare, muscles racked or slashed, breasts torn off, the monstrosity of forced couplings.

Once, musing on whether he would fare better than his master and get her with child, he revealed how such a creature did not amount to very much.

‘If you have it in your belly,’ he marvelled, ‘everyone lauds you for it, but the truth is that it is hardly anything of interest. I cut such a lady open once and it was such a frog of a thing with a big head, all curled and sticky. I threw it to the dugs.’

By the time they were crossing the Tweed into Berwick, she was littered up and barely conscious; the castellan, Robert de Blakebourne, took one look at her and savaged Malise away, cursing him.

Malise, concerned that he had gone too far, took to gnawing his nails and making his mind to be more circumspect while the castellan, a good man, tried to prise the lady loose from him entirely — and failed, with orders from an earl and King Edward himself.

A girl, Agnes, fed Isabel bread soaked in watered wine and she had been grateful for that because of the thirst — then watched the girl steal her last jewel, a locket with his hair; she hoped Malise did not catch the quine, for there would be blood.

She wondered where Malise was. There had been too much blood already and she knew now that what had happened to her was the punishment of God for all her sins. She tried to call out her own name, but could not speak and all that came into her head was ‘ Ave Maria, gratia plena ’ and then ‘ panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie ’.

She lay in the tower room while they took away the shutters and made the window into a door leading to the cage they were fixing on the wall. When she was better — and the weather warmer, the castellan had insisted — she would be forced into the cage, in full view for most of the day, though she could retire ‘for purpose of her privies’ by asking her gaoler, Malise.

Blakebourne had also, for mercy, insisted that the cage be on the inside wall of the Hog Tower, so only the castle would see and not all the gawpers who chose to come up from the town itself.

Apart from the workmen, no-one came. When they had gone for the night, leaving her in the chill dark with the cold swooping talons through the open door-window, she breathed softly, easily, regularly. Started to count them — one, two. Out, in. Measuring her life.

She knew the dark was closing in. She liked the dark. In the dark she could dream up the sun of Hal and bask in it.

Closeburn Vill, Annandale

The day after…

They walked the market on a day of blue and gold and cheesecloth clouds, where breath still smoked and people bundled themselves up and stamped their feet. Closeburn was too small for a decent market and seemed to consist mainly of deals being done for the staples, the fleece skins of sheep slaughtered at Martinmas. Hal, who knew the business well, reckoned the clip would fetch a good price when it, in turn, was sold in the spring.

Kirkpatrick, chaffering and huckstering, dispensed good cheer and sold well, while Hal scowled and tried to keep his new-soled boots out of the worst of the mud. He felt guilty that Nichol had waterproofed them with pig fat while Kirkpatrick had been swiving his wife.

By the middle of the afternoon the glory of the day was gone back to iron and pewter, the dark closing in — but the deed, as Kirkpatrick said with satisfaction, was done; two cheapjacks had been seen plying their trade in the market and would now, unremarked, seek the hospitality of the castle, in the name of Christ and for a consideration to the Steward.

The Steward was a fat, harassed wobble and looked them up and down with some distaste. They had smeared fat on their faces against the cold and the charcoal dust had blackened it, while the rags wrapped round their hands against the freeze were grimy, the nails half moons of black.

‘For God’s Grace I cannot turn ye away,’ he grumbled, ‘but ye will eat at the end of the table and will share each other’s platters — I cannot see another wanting yer mucky fingers in his gruel.’

Hal knew that it was more the gift of silver than God’s Grace that had landed them at the Master of Closeburn’s table, while Kirkpatrick hoped the reference to gruel was a jest and not a reality in this place of poor commons.

The hall was well lit and Kirkpatrick slid in, mouse quiet and head down, keeping his pack close to him when he sat and taking it all in. Hal dumped his in a corner and joined Kirkpatrick at a bench, where they exchanged wordless information on what they saw.

The top table was dominated by empty high seats — the Master of Closeburn was absent again and Hal drew attention to it with a sharp nudge in Kirkpatrick’s ribs.

‘Chess,’ he whispered.

Kirkpatrick was scanning faces, relieved to see a few he knew slightly and who would know him only when he was not dressed so badly, or blackened of face. He had been more worried about the Closeburn women, but had suspected — correctly — that Closeburn’s fortalice was too dominated by soldiery for their taste; they would be in Auchencas, peaceful and unmolested.

Most of those at the low table, above and below the salt, were soldiery of some sort, or travellers like themselves. There were a peck of wool dealers from the Italies, a friar and a deal of rough-faced men that Kirkpatrick thought to be garrisoned here rather than passing through.

The top table held three only, one of them a knight of St John, dark and sinister in his black surcote with its white cross. Kirkpatrick did not know any of them and nudged Hal in turn.

‘The thin one with the fancy beard,’ Hal whispered. ‘ Or, a fesse between two chevrons, gules. That’s Fitzwalter’s arms — the crescent on it makes him a second son.’

‘There is a John, I believe, who did not go to the Church,’ mused Kirkpatrick softly. ‘All the Fitzwalters are retinued to King Edward’s son, the Caernarvon, so that explains them being here. How about the other — the younger one?’

Hal squinted while the noise washed the hall; a servant brought them dishes and slapped them down with poor grace, no doubt considering himself a cut above the ones he catered to.

‘ Or, three bougets sable,’ Hal said with a frown. ‘Again with a crescent. I know the device, but it should be three silver water butts on red, not black on gold — the arms of Ross.’

‘Ah,’ said Kirkpatrick, spooning pottage — surprisingly good — into his mouth. ‘The Wark end of the Ross family, not the Tain end. But the end is the same — where a Ross is, there are his captives.’

Hal felt a leap inside him — yes, of course. The Ross had holdings in England, at Wark on the Tyne, so perhaps this sprig of the family tree was here to escort Isabel and the others further south. The idea gripped him, almost sprang him to his feet to rush off and search — the wet nose of a questing hound brought him sharply out of the moment and he looked down.

It was a rough-coated talbot and the feel of it, the smell of the pennyroyal rubbed in its coat against fleas, brought the Dog Boy so harshly back to Hal that he had to bow his head to hide the unmanning of his eyes. He would never see the boy, or Herdmanston again, that much he was sure of. Once Isabel was rescued, he and she were gone from this God-forsaken realm…

There was a ripple down the length of the hall; the high table had called for entertainment and declared that all the lower orders must provide some form of it for their supper. The friar had started to sing in a surprisingly good, if unsteady voice and folk beat the tables appreciatively. One by one the wool dealers started in, with songs and capers and jests of varying success; Hal started to shrink his neck into his shoulders as the wave of it washed towards them.

Then the young Ross was peering the length of the table and pointing his eating knife.

‘You. You there — the babery at the foot.’

Folk laughed and Kirkpatrick immediately sprang to his feet and bowed, then capered with his arms long and his jaw thrust out, exactly like the baboon he had been compared to. There was a raucous roar of laughter and Kirkpatrick, from the corner of his mouth, hissed at Hal.

‘Jakes. Search.’

Hal slithered away, clutching his stomach and those that bothered to see him at all jeered. Kirkpatrick watched him go, then capered further, picking up plate, eating knife and, finally, the priest’s wooden spoon, juggled them briefly, then bowed again as people thumped the table.

The priest took back his spoon, staring at the imagined grime on it with distaste; Kirkpatrick bowed like a pretty courtier and apologized.

‘You should think before you act, my son,’ the friar sniffed piously.

‘As to that, Father, I have to say that it is God’s fault,’ Kirkpatrick answered. ‘For he gave Adam the means to think and a stout pizzle — but the ability only to work one at a time.’

The laughter was loud and long, inflamed by the rash of the friar’s outraged face.

‘Good,’ declared the knight of St John in French. ‘Do you perform other magicks? You are as black as any saracin.’

‘Not as skilled as any of those you have just called “robber” in their own tongue,’ Kirkpatrick replied in good English and saw the eyes of the Fitzwalter narrow. Good, he thought bitterly, let him know I understand French and the paynim tongue and am not the cheapjack I seem — well planned, Kirkpatrick.

In the same moment, he had heeled round on to the new road and spurred up it with a fresh plan.

‘I can, however, reveal where you have lately come from,’ he went on and the Hospitaller frowned a little at that, then shrugged.

‘Well — speak on.’

‘Let me know when I am wrang-wise,’ Kirkpatrick said. ‘From… Carlisle.’

Folk jeered, for that was hardly a feat given that anyone passing through Closeburn was either coming from or headed to that place.

‘Before that — York,’ Kirkpatrick added and had a murmur when the Hospitaller stayed silent. ‘Before that…’

He paused and folk strained expectantly.

‘London.’

Folk laughed. If York had been correct then London was less of a struggle for anyone to work out.

‘Afore that,’ Kirkpatrick went on. ‘Bruges.’

The knight’s forearms, straight on either side of his trencher, flexed under the tunic and his knuckles went white; folk murmured at it, but most — who could not see that far — applauded this feat.

‘Before that… Genoa,’ Kirkpatrick went on smoothly and now the knight was leaning forward, snarling like a dog on a leash.

‘Before that,’ Kirkpatrick declared with a flourish, ‘Cyprus.’

The knight rose with a scrape of chair, his face thunderous. He crossed himself.

‘Heathen magicks,’ he bellowed. ‘Heresy…’

‘Christ’s bones, Sir Oristin — sit.’

It was the Fitzwalter, waving a languid hand and shaking his head. The Hospitaller sat, glowering into the easy smile of Fitzwalter, who turned appreciatively to Kirkpatrick, narrowing his eyes.

‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Now explain the trick of it. I hope you do it well, for this brother in Christ has burning faggots in his eyes.’

There was silence now at how this had transpired and even the drunks were dry-mouthed — though Kirkpatrick would have wagered all his day’s profits that one or two would count a burning heretic as fair entertainment to end with.

‘No magic,’ he said easily, spreading his hands. ‘Carlisle is simple enough — no great spell needed to thasm up that. A one in two chance that the lord was coming and not going.’

His confidence unlatched the tension a little; a soldier, drunker than the rest, sniggered and was then cut off by a neighbour.

‘Once Carlisle was sure, it is easy to pin York, because there is a commanderie of St John there,’ Kirkpatrick went on and nodded deferentially to the knight. ‘A good and pious knight of the Order would wish to have himself excused for spending too many nights away from any commanderie, to commend his soul to God before travelling onward.’

Now the knight was mollified and eased, Kirkpatrick saw; Fitzwalter was nodding and stroking his thinly razored beard.

‘London is obvious, because it is where all travellers come from the ports of the south,’ Kirkpatrick went on and paused, which was partly the showman in him, partly because this was the tricky part.

‘Bruges,’ he said slowly, knowing this was the tricky part, ‘because it avoids Paris and a deal of France, which is an unhappy place thanks to King Philip the Fair. Or unfair, if you are a Templar or a Jew.’

Folk laughed at this — the Italies wool dealers mostly, who knew of the French king’s plots against the Templars and of his banning all Jews so that he could seize their holdings and goods. No-one made much comment on the latter, all the same, since the king of France was simply copying the king of England and for the same reason.

‘Indeed,’ Fitzwalter mused. ‘So far, so reasoned — Sir Oristin wishes to avoid the… awkwardness… of association with the Poor Knights in a country already fired with crusading fervour for proscribing heathen Jews.’

He turned to the Hospitaller.’

‘Does he have the right of it so far?’

The Hospitaller, who was not proud of his avoidances, admitted it with a grudging nod.

‘How did he know I have come from abroad at all,’ he said in a sepulchral voice, ‘let alone Genoa.’

Kirkpatrick shrugged.

‘You were never born as dark,’ he said with a laugh to take the sting from it, ‘so acquired such a slap from a sun you do not find in these lands.’

‘And Genoa is first and most common port for anyone coming from Cyprus,’ he added with a lofty flourish, ‘where the Knights of St John have had their largest commanderies since they left the Holy Land.’

Now there was laughter, from relief Kirkpatrick thought. The young Ross of Wark shifted in his seat as though cocking a buttock to fart and scowled at Kirkpatrick.

‘You are well informed for a cheapjack,’ he pointed out suspiciously and Kirkpatrick beamed back at him.

‘I make as much from news and the reasoning of it as from ribbons and needles,’ he answered and those who knew business well enough nodded agreement and grinned. Kirkpatrick, buying time for Hal, nudged the stallion of this up into a canter.

‘It is such reasoning that lets me reveal, if the bold knight of St John allows, why he is here in Closeburn.’

Fitzwalter’s eyebrows went up and the Hospitaller shifted uneasily.

‘Well,’ Fitzwalter declared slyly, ‘this is better entertainment — what say you, Sir Oristin? Can he magick out your secrets?’

‘Reason, not magic,’ Kirkpatrick corrected hastily and Fitzwalter acknowledged it with a mocking bow while the heads of all the others swung to and fro between them; some had even worked out the danger of the game being played.

The Hospitaller was clearly unhappy at the prospect, but he could not admit it under Fitzwalter’s eye and eventually nodded. Silence fell and people waited eagerly.

‘Your commanderie in this kingdom is Torphichen,’ Kirkpatrick declared, ‘which is far from here — yet you would be there now if you had travelled from the one in York. You did not and will pay penance for it — so your reason for being here is pressing.’

The Hospitaller stiffened.

‘A lady?’ the drunken soldier called out and the celibate knight was halfway out of his seat seeking the culprit with glaring eyes; young Ross wisely soothed him sitting again.

‘Not lady, nor pursuit of personal gain,’ Kirkpatrick went on, as if thinking it out — though he had done that long since. ‘So a quest then. The Holy Grail perhaps.’

The Hospitaller relaxed in his seat a little and some of the audience applauded, thinking he had got it right. One or two called out ‘God be praised’ and the rote reply sibilated round the table.

‘Yet,’ Kirkpatrick declared like a knell and let it hang there for a moment.

‘The Grail has remained hidden for many hundreds of years,’ he went on. ‘They say the Templars have it and that Order does not deny it, so knights seldom quest for it these days — and knights of St John are forbidden to do it, out of the sin of pride.’

‘True enough,’ Fitzwalter confirmed. ‘So — no Grail discovered in Closeburn then.’

Kirkpatrick held up one grimy, wrapped hand and brought the laughter to a halt.

‘There are other reasons for a knight of St John to be abroad from his commanderie,’ he continued, ‘but almost all of them are because he is on the business of the Order.’

‘Which should remain the business of the Order,’ the knight growled warningly.

‘As it will,’ Kirkpatrick answered smoothly. ‘Though this is not the business of the Order.’

‘You dare…’

‘Let him speak,’ Fitzwalter declared and there was enough steel in his voice for the Hospitaller to glance at him with a threat of his own.

‘The business you have with the Order is at Torphichen,’ Kirkpatrick went on while the two knights locked glances; he saw it was the Hospitaller who looked away, ‘and you are a confirmed and pious and loyal knight of St John.’

‘I am,’ growled the knight. ‘You would do well to remember that.’

‘You are also Sir Oristin Del Ard,’ Kirkpatrick went on, ‘and have retained the arms of your house on the hilt of that fine eating knife. Not permitted by your Order, of course, for the sin of pride and avarice and a few others no doubt. But excusable — you are not alone in it.’

The knight was all coil now, like a snake waiting to pounce.

‘The Del Ards are in the retinue of the Earl of Ross in the north,’ Kirkpatrick went on and then waved one hand to the young scowl on the other side of the Hospitaller.

‘And here is your liege lord’s kin, from Wark. No doubt he will be pleased with the news you bring to him first, before you take it to Torphichen.’

Now both the knights were on their feet and snarling demands for this to end. Fitzwalter thumped the table until the noise of that beat down the cries and shouts; the young Ross and the Hospitaller subsided, scowling.

‘Well,’ said Fitzwalter with a thin smile. ‘That was more entertainment than any imagined. I am sure these two nobiles are pleased that it is over, before the curiosity of their very heads is brought out for our amusement.’

There was laughter and the talk flowed back, soft as honey; Kirkpatrick was not surprised when Fitzwalter sent a man down with coin — more than was necessary for the amusement provided. He wants to know the news the Hospitaller brings to Ross, he thought to himself, and will be disappointed, for I am not about to reveal it.

Kirkpatrick was almost sure — and revealing it would unveil his own standing in places too high for his disguised station — that the knights of St John were planning an attack on heathen-held Rhodes. That had been the talk in the quiet of the Bruce night, between brothers and those as trusted. Partly, they had worked out, because the Hospitallers needed a new base, not dependent on the good graces of the Lusignan who owned Cyprus, and because such an attack would show the Pope and others that they, unlike the Templars, were still capable of striking a blow against the infidel.

Knowledge of the when and where of all that would be financially advantageous to the Ross, who had trading concerns in Cyprus.

‘What does your companion do?’ demanded the young Ross loudly, cutting through the chatter. ‘Is he as gifted with reason?’

‘Almost the opposite, my lord,’ Kirkpatrick said, standing and bowing deferentially, ‘since he has not the sense to avoid drinking water from streams, which accounts for the state of his belly. Never drink water in preference to small beer, my ma said to me.’

There was laughter at that, but Kirkpatrick was sweating at the attention drawn to the absent Hal. Yet he had his own plan and started to put it out.

‘In truth, I hardly know the man. I met him on the road two days since and we travelled for the safety in it.’

‘You say?’ murmured Fitzwalter thoughtfully, but Ross of Wark had the recent bitterness of plots revealed still stuck in his craw and wanted to bring this mountebank cheapjack down.

‘I reason,’ he said triumphantly, ‘that you are a lute player, since you wrap those grimy rags round each individual finger, so allowing you to strum.’

‘A good bowman does the same,’ Kirkpatrick pointed out and Ross dismissed it with a scornful wave.

‘You never drew one well,’ he sneered.

‘A lockpick does the same,’ Fitzwalter offered. ‘Or a light-fingered dip.’

‘Heaven forfend,’ Kirkpatrick answered, crossing himself piously and hoping that no-one worked out that a good man with a dirk needed his fingers nimble, too. Then he smiled.

‘Or a wee chiel who sells fiddly needles and thin thread and needs pick them out o’ a pack,’ he added and Fitzwalter acknowledged it with a thin smile, while the rest of the table laughed.

‘Your reason is flawed,’ Fitzwalter said to the sulking young Ross. ‘Your monger here wraps his fingers to preserve his fortune. Pity — I would have welcomed a good lute player.’

‘Reason and Fortune were ever rivals,’ Kirkpatrick declared, while the food wafted in and out of his nostrils, clenching his belly with desire. ‘I have tale on it, if your lordship pleases — and is disposed to make a wee bit meat come my way, by way of recompense.’

‘A tale? Good enow. Steward, I daresay you have mutton, hung for the right amount of time and now cooked — hung since Martinmas if these wool dealers are any mark. I am expecting it on my own trencher and am sure you can find a bone or three for this man.’

The steward managed a smile and a deferential bow. The hall silenced, looking at Kirkpatrick, who took a breath.

‘Once,’ he began, ‘Reason and Fortune argued over who had rank on the other. Fortune declared that the one who managed to do more would be the better. “See that ploughboy there?” he said to Reason. “Get inside him and if he is better with you than with me, I will stand aside for you anywhere we meet.” So Reason got inside the boy’s head.

‘When the boy felt Reason in his head, he began to think: “Why should I plough field all my life? I could be happy somewhere else, too.” He went hame then and telt his da, who promptly beat him for his impudence and ignorance, since serfs bound to the land cannot just do as they wish.’

‘And with good reason,’ the friar announced, then realized what he had said and subsided, face flaming, amid a welter of laughter.

Good, good, Kirkpatrick thought as he waited for it to die. Now they have forgotten the wee Lord o’ Herdmanston; I hope he takes due advantage.

Hal had gone out and up the spiral of worn stairs, for all jakes were up and there was a servant nearby who could see him on the stairtop. He wanted to go down, for captives were more likely to be down — but there was the chance that the chess-playing lord of Closeburn would not be pushing rooks and pawns in the cellar, but in his own comfortable solar. With Isabel.

He went up, reached the next floor. Left or right — he went right, along a flagged corridor, narrow enough to make him weave along it to avoid the sconces. Well lit, he thought, feeling for the hidden dagger — then recoiling from the hilt as if it stung.

Foolishness. Try anything with a blade in it and they were lost…

He stepped cautiously round a corner — this was the keep at Closeburn, square and solid as a stone block — and came face to face with an astonished servant, his hands full of bowls and a brass ewer. Food and wine, Hal noted swiftly, for those who were behind the door, open enough to spill out yellow light — expensive yellow light, Hal noted, from beeswax candles, which turned the helmet of the guard to gold.

‘Who… whit why in the name o’ God are ye up here?’

The servant was astounded and truculent, his round face indignant. Hal clutched his belly and whimpered.

‘That way, ye jurrocks,’ the servant declared, pointing with his chin back the way Hal had come. ‘An’ dinna you mess the floors afore ye get to it.’

Hal, obedient and scurrying, whipped round and left, his mind racing with the certainty that he had found the Master’s refuge. Behind him, he heard the servant berating the guard to follow Hal and make sure of him; in turn, the guard stolidly defended his remaining where he was, as ordered.

He reached the spiral stair and went down, back to the level of the hall, paused to make sure the servant could no longer see him and darted downwards. Incongruously, he heard only one voice and knew it was Kirkpatrick’s but did not know why — if he had heard it right — the man would be discoursing about ploughboys.

‘The ploughboy,’ Kirkpatrick declared to his rapt audience, ‘whose name was Tam, then ran off, never thinking of what ruin this brought on his da and his brithers, left to pay the price to their liege lord. Tam ran to the nearest toon, for it is kent that if ye can stay hidden in a toon for a year and a day, ye escape the punishment o’ yer rash disregard for God’s plan for the world.’

Kirkpatrick paused, to allow for the head-shaking and tutting of noble and friar.

‘He sleekit himself into work at the castle, though it was of the meanest kind — he became a gong farmer, covered in shite crown to toe every day. But paid well for it — as much as a good latch bowman.’

The crossbow soldiery took the jeers of their comrades well enough, though some sharp words from the top table had to stop the drunken worst from rabbling there and then. Kirkpatrick waited patiently, ticking off the seconds and hoping Hal made the most of them; the sweat was trickling icy trails down his back and pooling where his tunic belt cinched.

‘The castle never smelled as sweet wi’ Tam at the cesspits, so that the Earl declared it a pleasure to turd and it was to be hoped that this sweet-smelling addition to life would please his daughter. She was a ripe beauty, right enow, with a chest o’ treasures in more ways than just the one — but had stopped speaking entire when she was nine and had not peeped once since then. Not a single person kent the why of it, neither.’

The soldiery perked up at this — beautiful damsels with large chests of treasure made for a good tale in their eyes and Kirkpatrick, who had known this — and even tailored his speech from the neat southern English to the rawer north, where most of the men-at-arms came from — saw Fitzwalter had also noted this, was stroking his beard, thoughtful and considered.

He is a creishie wee fox, that yin, Kirkpatrick thought, hoping he did not go dry-mouthed, hoping — Christ save us — that Hal remembered his place. One slip and we are spiked on some city gate.

Hal had no idea of his place save that it was in the dim of the undercroft, a maze of cellars, most of them emptied. He knew the kitchen was on the other side of the hall and surmised that these cellars had been emptied to take captives, but the doors of most of them were locked tight.

Then, in the grey gloom, he heard a door rattle open, the jingle of keys and a burst of red-gold light. He froze, trapped, then fell into the belly-curled whimper he had been adopting all along, so that Dixon stared, amazed, his blue bottom lip wobbling with the surprise of it.

‘Jakes,’ Hal groaned and Dixon stirred and frowned.

‘A garderobe in an undercroft?’ he growled. ‘Are ye slack-wittit? Go up, ye daftie. Get ye gone…’

He lashed out with his only weapon, the heavy keys and Hal took it on a shoulder, wincing as he backed away and scuttled back up the stairs, to where a troubled earl wanted his daughter to speak.

‘The Earl declared that whoever teased his daughter to speak would be married on to her,’ Kirkpatrick declared. ‘Many tried — clivver nobiles from all the airts and pairts — but the lovely quine stayed silent.’

‘Now there’s a blissin’,’ called out one of the soldiers. ‘A perfect wummin…’

The laughter allowed Hal to scurry into the hall again, but Kirkpatrick saw Fitzwalter staring past him and, when Hal arrived back at the table, knew the knight had been marking the return.

‘So Tam was busy digging out the cess this day when the Earl’s daughter passed, walking eechsie-ochsie with her wee pet dug, which was a four-legged clevery and seemed to ken what his mistress wanted without her speakin’.

‘So Tam began to talk to the dog: “I heard that you are very smart and I want advice from you. We were three travellers — a carver, a tailor and me, who journeyed on as yin. At camp that night, the carver took first watch and, because he had not much to do, he took a piece of wood and made a nice wee girl of it.

‘“Then he woke the tailor. The tailor saw the wooden girl and took scissors, needle and thread and began to sew a dress, which he put it on the girl. Then it was my turn to watch — and I taught her to speak, so that she came into life. In the morning, when they woke up, everybody wanted to have the girl. The carver said: ‘I made her.’ The tailor said: ‘I dressed her.’ I also wanted to have the girl. Tell me, wee smart dug, who should have the girl?” And Tam waited, cocking his head as if expecting a real reply from the wee dug.’

There was silence in the hall as everyone mulled the problem; Kirkpatrick could hear Hal’s ragged breathing, glanced quickly down to see him nurse his shoulder and did not like what that revealed or the unease it crawled into him.

‘Well?’ demanded the young Ross truculently and Kirkpatrick was jerked back to the moment.

‘Well,’ he declared, spreading his hands, ‘of course the wee dug did not speak — but the Earl’s daughter did. “Who else than you should have her?” she says, tart as you please. “What is a carver’s wooden girl? What is tailor’s dress without speech? You gave her the best gift — life and speech — so you should have the girl.”’

There was laughter at that, for they all knew Tam the gongfermor had won.

‘That put fox in the henhoose,’ Kirkpatrick declared, sweating now. ‘“So you have decided for yourself,” Tam said to the Earl’s daughter. “I gave you speech and life, so you should be mine.” Needless to say, the Earl had other ideas about his precious quine getting married on to a shit-covered chiel. He offered another good reward, but Tam had Reason in him, telling him that an earl’s word was law in his own domain and if the Earl wanted people to behave according to law, he must behave in that way too. The Earl must give up his daughter.’

‘This will not turn out well,’ the friar mourned and folk shushed him. Kirkpatrick acknowledged the priest with a wave.

‘You are right,’ he said, ‘for the Earl announced that Tam would lose his head for his impudence and the poor boy was bound and led to the block. The best axeman turned up and spat on his palms, then raised his weapon high.’

Kirkpatrick paused for the effect and had gratifying silence.

‘Fortune stepped in. “Get well out of him,” Fortune declares to Reason. “See what a pass ye have brought the lad to.” So Fortune got in the boy, the axe swung — and the shaft snapped. Before he could fetch another weapon, the daughter had prevailed on her da to relent, that she would marry the lad.

‘So there was a grand wedding,’ Kirkpatrick declared with a flourish, ‘to which all were invited, Reason included, and most came. But seeing he would meet Fortune, he ran away — and, since that time, when Reason meets Fortune, Reason stands aside so Fortune can pass.’

There was applause and laughter; with an airy wave, Fitzwalter had the steward deliver meat to the two packmen and the hall washed with new chatter and arguments over Fortune and Reason.

‘What was all that?’ Hal hissed, head down as if concentrating on his trencher.

‘Smoke and mirrors,’ Kirkpatrick answered grimly. ‘I hope it was worth the work — did you find anything?’

Hal was suddenly ravenous, turned his black, greased, beaming face on Kirkpatrick as he reached for bread and meat.

‘I ken where your named kinsman is,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘So there she will be also.’

Kirkpatrick nodded, chewing and thinking of the fulfilment of his mission to his king — and the revenge he would take at the same time.

He thought of the ring, the one he had taken from Creishie Marthe at Methven, the one she had cut from the hand of a throat-slit man-at-arms.

The ring now snugged up in a purse under his armpit. Such a wee bauble, he marvelled, to bring such ruin to lives.