The Lion at Bay

CHAPTER SEVEN

Herdmanston Tower, Lothian

Six days to Midsummer Eve, June, 1305

Hal and the Dog Boy came up on Herdmanston under a low sky like a bruise, the weather hot and heavy and the garrons moving as if underwater. Thunder growled behind the hills.

Hal came, pale as milk from the fever which had forced him off the road from York to Whitby and into the care of the Augustinians at Kirkham. It was there that the questing Dog Boy found him and brought the news of how Wallace had red-murdered Bangtail Hob.

Now the pair of them rode down into the huddle of buildings clustered round Herdmanston, where children left off making a fat straw man for the midsummer bonfire to run up and gawp. I am a stranger, Hal realized, looking at a fat-legged toddler with a finger stuck up one nostril. There are bairns here too young to have ever laid eyes on me in the flesh.

Herdmanston bustled, all the same, was scattered with sawdust fine as querned flour and smelled of new wood and pitch; men waved to the lord of Herdmanston from the roof where they were making the trapdoor watertight.

Some matters were the same; Alehouse Maggie, all bosom and folded arms, gave him a wide grin and then swaddled him as if he was a bairn and not her fealtied lord; men in sweat-darkened serks jeered and chaffered, as much glad for the excuse to stop work as the sight of the bold knight of Herdmanston gasping for breath and demanding Maggie leave off and watch his ribs, which were tender yet.

Sim Craw arrived, his iron-grey curls and beard frosted with wood shavings, his own grin wide and his wrist-grip iron hard; Hal, for the first time in a long run of days, felt a glow of peace descend on him.

Yet not all was the same. Bet The Bread was gone, taken by the bloody flux — now her daughter, as willow-wand slim as Bet had probably been in her own youth, bobbed nervously at Hal, announced herself as ‘Bet’s Meggy’ and went away beaming and strutting when she was confirmed as Herdmanston’s cook and baker, the place her mother had once occupied.

‘There are some other matters,’ Sim said, when they were in the cool of the big hall and left alone with bread, cheese and leather mugs. ‘Yon Malenfaunt has had to end his legalling ower his writ, for one.’

Hal nodded; it had hardly been a surprise. Longshanks had confiscated Herdmanston years before from the rebel Hal and handed its care to Malenfaunt, though the ownership was a parchment gift only. Malenfaunt, in all the years since, had never been capable of claiming it — but, since peace had broken out he had agitated through wee canting lawyers for the exercise of his rights.

It had been a nagging stone in Herdmanston’s shoe — but defeat at the hands of Bruce had stripped Malenfaunt of honour, dignity and support and now he had quit the case. At least some good came of that ill-fated joust, Hal thought, remembering the sickening sight of Bruce’s cheek.

‘Earl Patrick has refused the use of his mill — happily, Sir Henry is letting us mill at Roslin,’ Sim went on, spraying bread as he spoke.

Hal was not surprised at Patrick of Dunbar’s decision — the Herdmanston Sientclers were supposedly fealtied to Patrick, Earl of March, but had defied the determinedly English-supporting lord at every turn. The Earl had had to grit his teeth and welcome Hal back at every turn, too, as part of the peace terms with Longshanks, so any petty slight he could visit was grist to his mill, as Sim declared, proud of his cleverness.

‘Dog Boy needs confirming as a cottar,’ Sim continued when Hal seemed not to have recognized his word skill, ‘now that ye have manumitted him from bondage. He would not ken ploughshare from auld heuch, so I have kept him working with the dugs for money payment — Sir Henry sent a brace o’ braw wee deerhound pups which have grown leggy since an’ Dog Boy loves yon animals.’

Hal, feeling at ease from pain and care, sitting in his own rebuilt hall, could only smile at it all, the comforting balm of the familiar, of Herdmanston at work and far removed from the maelstrom it stood in — yet the next words drove the old chill back in him.

‘Kirkpatrick came,’ Sim said, frowning over his mug. ‘There was a stushie in Lunnon, it appears, where yon wee pardoner was killed dead an’ that hallirakus likkie-spinnie Bellejambe seems as good as. I would surmise so, since Kirkpatrick looked like a week-auld corpse himself and he the victor of the tourney atween them.’

So the pardoner was dead. Hal felt relief that it had happened, more that it had not been him who’d had to do the deed — and guilt at feeling both.

‘Christ be praised,’ he said.

‘For ever and ever,’ Sim replied, then cleared his throat.

‘Kirkpatrick is now away to Sir Henry at Roslin,’ he went on, ‘charged with pursuing “the other matter” — I jalouse this is the same matter Bangtail died for.’

Hal met his eye with one of his own, as hard as glass so that Sim’s eyebrows seemed suddenly to shoot up to avoid colliding into a frown. Curved as Saracen scimitars they stayed that way for a long moment, then he nodded.

‘Aye, weel,’ he growled. ‘I have had men out, making discreets and riskin’ nothing. Every spoor says that Wallace has gone to ground and his men scattered. He has not been seen since he arrived at Roslin a while back. Mayhap this is the end of him.’

‘Wallace is never ended,’ Hal replied tersely, then forced a smile.

‘Wallace came to Roslin?’ he asked and shook his head. ‘So even Sir Henry keeps secrets from me — is there any good news in this dish of grue?’

He paused apologetically, then waved a hand which encompassed Herdmanston and everything done to it.

‘Apart from all this, which is sweetening indeed — more power to you for it, Sim Craw.’

Sim, muttering pleased, waved a dismissive hand, then laid his leather mug down, slow and careful, a gesture Hal did not miss.

‘There is a last matter,’ Sim said, ‘but I leave it to yourself as to the good or bad news in it.’

Hal paused, then forced a smile.

‘Weel, I am sittin’, so the shock will no’ throw me on my back. Speak on.’

‘Sir Henry kept the news of it until now, when he thought you better suited to the receipt of it. Wallace brought the Coontess to Roslin and, if ye send word, she is almost certes headed here.’

Herdmanston Tower, Lothian

Midsummer Eve, June, 1305

He sent word, would have dragged Hermes from Olympus to deliver it faster if he could. Then he waited, limping up and down and fretting, leashed only by the certainty that, if he stormed over to Roslin, he would shatter something delicate as a glass web.

The days slid away, thunder-brassy and hot and still she did not come. Tansy’s Dan and Mouse lugged four of Herdmanston’s fat porkers to the barmkin green and cut their throats.

Then they, Ill-Made Jock, Dirleton Will, Sore Davey and others skinned and jointed them, cramming them into cauldrons for boiling while the grass grew greasy and red; Dog Boy whipped up a pig’s head and danced with it, rushing at the young bairns and roaring while they ran away with squeals of delight.

Tansy’s Dan strung entrails round him like ribbons and joined in, dancing barefoot with the Dog Boy on the blood-soaked grass, the pair of them shrieking with laughter, gore splashing them to the knees. For a time, the lust of it leaped from head to head like unseen lightning so that the knowledge of the feast to come and the peace to enjoy it and the dizzying freedom from work sent everyone giggling mad; they grabbed pig heads from one another, pretended to be charging boars, swung them by the ears and sprayed crimson everywhere.

Toddlers, sliding and slipping on unsteady legs, were blood-drenched head to toe. Young babes sucked on kidneys, their mums red-lipped as baobhan sith from eating liver.

And still she did not come.

Donachie, the Earl Patrick’s man, rode over with a black-eyebrowed scowl and a demand for owed tolts and scutage, but that was simply the Earl’s latest stirring of the byke he saw in Herdmanston; Hal sent him off home empty-handed and reminded him of the legality of matters.

The children promptly added scowling black eyebrows to their straw effigy and Father Thomas, though no Herdmanston man born and bred, preached a sermon in his rough-walled church about how Adam and Eve did not have to plough, sow or weed for any lord, then had to add enough embellishment to show how Sir Hal of Herdmanston was practically kin to Jesus and should be so served.

And still she did not come.

Then, in the dark of Midsummer Eve, the fire was lit, the straw man burned, the boiled and roasted pigs eaten and the ale drunk. Bet’s Meggy, in a green dress festooned with madder ribbons, pranced barefoot with the straw stallion mummer head in the Horse Dance, elegant and feral.

She led the procession of flaming brands into the fields, Father Thomas stumping determinedly after with his fiery crucifix, so that God was not forgotten in it; everyone was festooned with garlands of mugwort, vervain and yarrow, cheering and reeling and beaming, greasy-cheeked and red-faced.

Later still folk leaped the bonfire flames, or daringly rubbed fern seed on their eyelids in the hope of seeing the sidhean on this night when the veils between worlds were thinnest — with rue clenched in their fists to prevent them being pixie-led and never seen again.

And, finally, she came.

Slowly, up the steps from the hall, where a visiting Kirkpatrick greeted Sim Craw and others with a twisted smile and accepted strong drink, she climbed to the folly of the topmost room in the tower, her feet leaden and her heart fluttering like a trapped bird. She felt breathless and had to stop once for fear of fainting and wished she could loosen the barbette and goffered fillet on her head.

It was dim. There was a crusie flickering, but the light in the room was mainly the full, bright moon and the flare of the bonfire through the tall unshuttered folly of window, so that he was a stark shadow there and no more. She stopped then, one hand to her throat.

He saw her head come above the floor level, caught the flame glint in the russet of it so that his breathing stopped entirely for a moment and his heart, which had been thundering so loudly he was sure they could hear it outside, seemed to catch and cease.

‘Isabel,’ he said, his voice a rasp.

She backed away, not ready for this, not ready for any of it. Five years since she had been here… five years since she had even set eyes on him at all, or he on her; she smoothed her dress, touched her hair with an unconscious gesture.

She heard him move, then the crusie flared more brilliantly and he set it down on top of the kist at the end of the great canopied bed; new, she thought wildly. Not the one she remembered, though she remembered the nights in it. Could not move any further than the first step into the room.

He was thin, the fine perse tunic loose on him. His hair had more grey in it than she remembered and she touched her own again, as if to feel that the artifice that held it to its old colour still worked. His eyes, though, were the same grey-blue, but it seemed as if more ice had crept into them than before and they were fixed on her with an intensity that made her reach one hand to her throat.

He said nothing and they stood there, while the midsummer shrieks and laughter echoed faintly and the amber shadows danced.

‘Am I so changed?’ she managed at last and was irritated by the tremble in her voice, like some maid clutching St John’s Wort for the promise of a future lover.

There was silence, so long she felt the crush of it.

‘Lamb,’ he said eventually, soft as a lisp. ‘My wee lamb.’

It broke her, closed her throat, sprang tears. She did not know who moved, but she felt the strength of him, the wrap of his arms, the smell of sweat and wool, woodsmoke, vervain, leather and horse.

Then they were half-weeping, half-laughing, telling each other what they had missed, how they still loved, babbling into one another’s speech so that, in the end, the words themselves did not matter, but simply trilled like a stream of balm.

Like music, he thought, drenched and drowning. Like music.

They talked and loved, laughing because the long, full gown had sleeves she had been sewn into and he had to cut them free, while the elaborate fillet which had taken so painstakingly long to arrange in her hair, was sloughed away like the years between them.

Later, she learned of Lamprecht and Bruce; he learned of her put-aside by Buchan. They swore never to be parted, even if the world went up in flames.

She found out his doings with Kirkpatrick, who had brought her here. He found out about her rescue from Elcho by Wallace; she saw the grim set of those iced eyes at the mention of his name and knew why.

‘Bangtail,’ she said and heard him grunt in the dark. Then she sparked life into a tallow and, by the guttering yellow of it, showed him the Apostles, six baleful red eyes staring back at them as they both huddled, half-naked and half-afraid in the flickering dim.

‘A generous gift,’ he admitted grudgingly, stirring the blood-drop rubies, ‘but against the life o’ Bangtail Hob, it weighs less than a cock feather in the pan.’

‘It was a hard thing for the Wallace to have done,’ she admitted, shivering in the fresh breeze that swept suddenly through the tall unshuttered windows, a relief from the leprous heat that, just as quickly, puckered skin to gooseflesh. ‘Yet there is good and honour in the man, as you know.’

He drew a bedspread tenderly round her shoulders.

‘Aye, lass, I ken it — God forbid I have ever to face Wallace in person, though it is what we are charged with, Kirkpatrick and I. Better us than men from English Edward.’

There was a long silence, broken only by the slough of wind and the sudden rattle of rain, bringing distant shrieks from those still hooching and wheeching round the dying midsummer bonfire.

Then she stirred, as if gentled to life by the wind itself.

‘I know where Wallace is,’ she said, almost sadly.

The thunder slammed a seal on her betrayal.

St Bartholomew’s Priory, Smoothfield, London

Feast of the Visitation, July, 1305

Red John Comyn stood hip-shot beside the elaborate tomb to Rahere, first Prior of St Bartholomew’s, tapping one high-heeled, booted foot impatiently. Around him were shadowed figures, far enough away not to overhear if voices were kept low, close enough to intervene if it became necessary.

It could easily become necessary. Ostensibly buying prime horseflesh at Smoothfield, one of the premier markets of Europe, Red John was here to meet Bruce — at his request. An elaborate ritual dance of exchanged messages, barely disguised hostages and the agreement of neutral ground had brought Red John here, beside the black-robed recumbent figure of Rahere, stone hands piously clasped.

There were no other folk here, kept away even during such an important feast day in one of the popular priories of London, which showed the power of the Comyn and Bruces. Plantagenet will hear of it, all the same, Red John thought, which is a risk worth taking to find out what happened.

Above all he wanted to know what had happened — Bellejambe had arrived back, staggering and broken, having dragged himself away from St Olave’s before the King’s men came down on it and found outraged priests and the dead body of a pardoner. Bellejambe did not know how the pardoner had died — or how Bruce’s man had survived — but what information Lamprecht had was now lost to them.

Which was an annoyance Red John thought with a sharp pang of bitterness. But at least droop-eyed Edward Longshanks knows nothing of any Comyn involvement in the matter — else I would not be here, he thought. There was annoyance, too, at how he had been left to pick up the pieces while the Earl of Buchan, ostensibly seeking out his wayward countess yet again, had used the lie of it to flee to his own lands, just in case.

There was a flurry, a clack of leather on smoothed flagstones; Red John’s men, bland in plain clothing, stiffened like scenting hounds.

Bruce had arrived.

He came up swiftly, with the air of a man with better things to be doing, but that was mummery — Bruce was swift because he wanted this dangerous liaison over with, for a whole ragman roll of reasons.

Yet there was savour in the moment, handed to him from the wreck of a bad day which had brought Kirkpatrick hirpling home with tales of riot and chase, brawl and murder — and a Templar, who had arrived in time to kill Lamprecht and save Kirkpatrick.

‘The Templar knight has the Rood and the contents of the pardoner’s scrip, gilt reliquary, Apostle jewels and all,’ Kirkpatrick had said, once James of Montaillou had finished tutting and treating and left them alone.

‘He tells me his name, which is Rossal de Bissot, and that he will bring the Rood when the time is right.’

He paused and eased himself gingerly in the chair; the sweat popped out on his forehead, fat drops that he dashed away with an irritated hand.

‘It seems the Templars are up to their neck in this.’

A neck on the block, beset by rumours of papal displeasure and French spies actively seeking proof of heresy, as Bruce pointed out. Which was no soothe to Kirkpatrick’s bruised pride and cracked ribs, Bruce saw. The taste of failure was bitter in the man’s voice; Bruce heard and it was best that he knew all was not lost — just the opposite, in fact.

‘Rossal de Bissot is clearly working for the safety of his Order,’ he informed the whey-faced Kirkpatrick. ‘Bissot is a much-revered name within the Poor Knights.’

‘Aye, weel — revered or not, he will not be backwards in coming forwards,’ Kirkpatrick answered sourly. ‘He will want advantage from handing you what you seek, my lord — it is not wise to mire yourself in the doings of the Poor Order.’

Bruce said nothing, merely stroked his injured cheek, perpetually hidden now under a plain hood. It was clear that this Rossal was holding Lamprecht’s loot; the Apostles were gone — save the one the pardoner had handed over in a loaf — and, worse still, the Rood was gone and it was little comfort that it lay in the hands of the Templars. Still, the Bruce involvement in all of it was safely locked up behind the kist of Lamprecht’s dead mouth.

Best of all, the Comyn had been left floundering and, shortly after speaking with Kirkpatrick, Bruce had sent out word for a meeting with that family — and then dispatched his brothers and Kirkpatrick back to Scotland.

He had also sent off Elizabeth and her women, which had been a more disagreeable task altogether; he had not even seen his wife, only Lady Bridget her tirewoman, who had informed him that her mistress was not inclined to leave the comfort of London for the cold north.

He had bitten down on his angry tongue, though enough anger spilled into his eyes to set the tirewoman back a step and pale her cheek. His quietly delivered ultimatum had been taken to his wife, and very soon he could hear the flurry of them packing — but the victory in it was a sour taste.

Now he clacked across the floor to Red John, leaving a suitable hem of his own mesnie at the fringes of Rahere’s tomb. He studied the frowning wee man with his red-gold curve of beard quivering as if he barely held some unseen force in check. He looked like a man in the wrong clothing, from the foppish hat on his close-cropped head down the silk and fine wool to his vainly-heeled boots — Bruce was wary; this was the man who had sprang at his throat before and the memory of it burned shame in him still.

‘Was he one of yours, the man killed in the riot in the Cheap?’ he asked and Red John curled his lip in something which might have been sneer or smile.

‘He was not. That was one of Buchan’s own, a fine man from Rattray who will be much mourned — how is your own man? I hear he was much battered about.’

‘He is in good health. More so, I understand, than your Bellejambe.’

Red John smiled, warmly this time.

‘Again, Buchan’s man — and he is sore hurt, but will survive with Heaven’s help and good broth.’

‘Christ be praised,’ Bruce replied laconically.

‘For ever and ever.’

‘I suspect God’s Hand will be withdrawn from him, all the same,’ Bruce went on, flat and vicious. ‘Failure is a poor option in Buchan lands.’

‘Go dtachta an diabhal thu,’ Comyn hissed, looking right and left.

‘If the Devil does choke me,’ Bruce answered, also in Gaelic, ‘it will be a Comyn hand he uses.’

Which was enough of a reminder of Red John’s previous throttling anger to bring the fiery lord of Badenoch to the balls of his feet; he sucked in a deep breath.

‘What do you wish in this matter?’ he demanded, still bristling like a ginger boar. ‘Why for did you call this meeting?’

They sibilated in Gaelic now, the better to confuse any passing monk who, consciously or accidentally, breached the glowering ring of faces and came close enough to hear; there was chanting somewhere, for the celebration of the Visitation, and monks scurried to and fro with little flaps of sound.

Bruce waved one hand and, despite himself, Red John followed it with his eyes until he saw it was empty of blade.

‘Longshanks is no fool and will have learned of what happened. It is enough for him to leave off wondering and descend on vigorous seeking of answers,’ Bruce replied viciously. ‘He will see where your thoughts run, my lord. The Comyn looking to foil the Bruce? He may not consider this another tourney in our personal quarrels — he may think one or either of us plot against him, which has ever been his way. I am loyalty writ large and gilded, my lord — but yourself and Buchan have been a single thorn to him not long since and he will consider you are about to fight him again.’

‘We were fighting for Scotland before you and will after you,’ Red John replied savagely, then slapped his silk-quilted chest. ‘Comyn and Balliol, my lord Carrick, holding true while you waver and turn whenever it suits you. Titim gan eiri ort.’

May you fall without rising — a good old Gaelic curse that Bruce recalled his mother uttering, so that the memory of it made him smile a little; the sight threw Red John off his course.

‘Aye, you have resisted Longshanks fiercely,’ Bruce agreed, ‘so that your wife will be no guard against his belief that you will do so again.’

Red John’s eyes flickered at that; his wife was Joan de Valence, sister to Aymer and daughter of the King’s own uncle. Red John Comyn must be a fretting annoyance to the de Valence family, Bruce thought — almost as much as he is to me.

‘This must end,’ he said flatly. ‘Enough is enough — our feud is ruining the Kingdom, which needs a strong hand. It needs a king, my lord.’

‘It has a king,’ muttered Red John. ‘A Balliol, not a Bruce.’

‘Unmade by the same hand that raised him up,’ Bruce answered and saw the bristling over this old argument; he waved it away with a dismissive gesture.

‘We may debate it until Judgement Day,’ he growled, ‘but the Gordian Knot of it can be cut simply enough.’

They stared at each other and Red John grew still and quiet, leaning back slightly to look at Bruce — pale for such a dark man, Red John saw, with the tight dark green hood framing his face tightly, the spill of it like moss dagged on his shoulders. To hide the scar on his cheek, he thought, from Malenfaunt’s blow — marbhaisg ort, a death shroud on you, Malenfaunt, he thought. If you had done your work as you were paid to this man would not be such a stone in my shoe.

‘You have such a sharp edge, then? One to cut away a king?’

The question made Bruce’s eyes glitter and Red John caught his breath. God’s Bones, he has, right enough, he thought. This Bruce is planning to usurp a kingdom.

‘There is support for it,’ Bruce replied guardedly, seeing the astonished curve of Red John’s eyebrows. ‘More than you perhaps realize. Together we will be a stronger flame than apart — but even without that, it would be better, at least, if our fire was not being thrust in one another’s face.’

‘Are you saying you will stop plotting against us? That there will be peace — or a truce at least — between our families?’

‘I am.’

‘So that you can make yourself king of Scots and usurp my kin?’

Bruce hesitated.

‘So that a king might be found who is better fitted to the task than John Balliol,’ he replied carefully.

‘What do the Comyn and Balliol get from this?’ Red John asked with a sneer. ‘Apart from a royally angered kinsman and a dangerously powerful Bruce.’

‘No mention of your plotting beyond these walls,’ Bruce declared, waving the document. ‘A free hand with your own lands and rewards from a grateful sovereign.’

‘Do I seem afeared to you?’ Red John sneered, waving one wild arm. ‘Tell your tales to Longshanks and see if he has the belly for another fight in Scotland, which is what it will cause. See then how your careful wooing of the gullible will stand when it is known that you have plunged them back into war and, yet again, waver on where to stand. And we have a free hand in our own lands already, as well as a grateful sovereign in John Balliol.’

‘It is not Longshanks you should fear,’ Bruce answered, his cold eyes on Red John’s hot face, so that the air between them seemed to sizzle. ‘It is the Community of the Realm.’

That made Red John blanch a little and Bruce saw it with a savage leap of pleasure that he had trouble disguising. Red John was silent for a long time, staring at the effigy and its elaborate tomb, the armorials all faded beneath the flaking wood of the ogee arches.

‘Did you know Rahere was a wee clerk in the service of auld King Henry?’ he asked suddenly, breaking from Gaelic to braid Scots. ‘Steeped in venery, it is said, but he proved useful to the sovereign and so was raised up.’

He turned to the tomb, one encompassing arm taking in the kneeling canons, reading their stone Bible at the feet of the recumbent figure.

‘Proof positive that any chiel of poor account can rise to the greatest if he is willing to any sin.’

Bruce clenched his teeth on his anger, the sickening tug of the cicatrice like a dash of iced water down his veins. He waited.

‘I will consult with the Earl of Buchan on the matter,’ Red John declared eventually in French.

‘You are the Comyn who matters,’ Bruce answered and Red John nodded, almost absently, then offered a terse, thin smile.

‘You will hear from us, never fear.’

Bruce watched him walk away on his vain boots, to be folded into his cloak of hard-faced men. Incense wafted in the air and the chanting grew louder as Bruce’s men waited, tense.

He had not been a clerk, Bruce knew. Prior Rahere, founder of St Bartholomew’s, had been a jester and laughter had raised him up. That and the advice of a wise fool.

Bruce peered at the words on the stone Bible — Isaiah, Chapter 51, ‘The Lord shall comfort Zion…’ — wondering if he had been wise or a fool to reveal so much to the Lord of Badenoch. He wondered if the Lord of Badenoch had been moved from his position any. Or if he dared move himself, in pursuit of kingship and despite the Comyn.

‘You will have to move soon, lord of Annandale,’ said a voice and Bruce whirled to find the sub-prior close by, arms folded into his robes and seemingly blissfully unaware of the wolves hovering at his back.

‘God wills it,’ the sub-prior said piously.

As Bruce continued to stare, blinking in wonder at this strange prophet, he added apologetically, ‘You are blocking the processional, my son.’

St Mary’s Loch, near Moffat, Scottish Border

Vigil of St Palladius, July, 1305

They came along the shore of the loch, with the bare hump of Watch Law on their right and the darkly wooded Wiss across the mirror mere, reflected dizzyingly so that the world seemed upside down.

It was a long cavalcade which made those who encountered it leap to their feet, thinking that so many riders could only herald the return of red war to their little part of the world. The half-dozen of the English garrison at Traquair had run off at the sound, only returning, half-ashamed and not speaking of it at all, when they found that the mounted horde of Wallace consisted of five men, a woman and a herd of some fifty horses, sound and stolid stots and affers being driven to the market at Carlisle.

‘Every venture I take with you,’ Kirkpatrick muttered to Sim Craw, not for the first time, ‘seems to consist of starin’ at the spavined arse of livestock that God has forsook. Nags or kine with shitey hurdies.’

‘Ca’ canny,’ protested Stirk Davey. ‘There is some prime horseflesh here — Fauberti will wet himself at the sight, like a wee ravin’ dug.’

Stirk was as rangy and lean as a stag on the rut, all nervous energy and concern for his charges, one of which was the prime horseflesh he spoke of. This was a fine, cold-bred destrier called Rammasche, which was the name you gave to a wild hawk. An entire — a stallion — he was not exactly destined for the fine hands of top dealer Fauberti in London, but would still fetch good money in Carlisle.

The rest — palfreys, rounceys, everyday stots and carter’s affers — were a good cover for a group trying to creep into Moffat to find out if the Countess was right and Wallace was secreted at Corehead Tower — the horse droving road to Carlisle and the south led straight past the place.

Being here nagged Kirkpatrick, because it was a lick and spit away from Closeburn, seat of the Kirkpatricks and held by his namesake, who had no love for the rebel Wallace and would as soon hang them both side by side.

Isabel, however, merely smiled at his fears, though she was the other rub on the fluffed fur of Kirkpatrick’s nerves — the Countess of Buchan, striding along in ungainly leather riding boots and a plain dress, which she tucked up to ride astraddle when the fancy took her.

Wearing a threadbare hooded cloak, red-eyed from woodsmoke, having cooked for all of them over an open fire, like any auld beldame wife of a horsecorser.

It was a perfect disguise, admittedly — Buchan would not be looking for his wife here — but not only was it simply delaying the inevitable, it was not right that a noblewoman of the realm should be chaffering and handing out bowls to the likes of Dog Boy and Stirk and himself.

Hal, of course, didn’t mind — it had been his idea — and Kirkpatrick, not for the first time, shook his head over how the lord of Herdmanston was mainly for sense, save over this woman.

Still, he thought, she has at least one good use in her for me and he had put it to her one night when she was alone at the smoking fire where she was cleaning bowls and horn spoons. Squatting companionably beside her, at length he said, slow and careful as a man walking on eggs, ‘It would be better, do ye ken, if I saw to the Wallace alone.’

She wiped the last bowl clean, tucked a stray tendril of hair back under her hood and looked at him for the first time, waving away insects drunk on woodsmoke.

‘Hal did not come all this way to stand by while you speak,’ she said.

‘Why did he come?’ demanded Kirkpatrick, low and urgent. ‘That is the question begging here.’

‘No harm will come to Wallace,’ she answered firmly — more firmly than she was actually sure of, if the truth was known. But it was known only to her and to Hal and Kirkpatrick simply had to take the face of it — which he did, scowling.

‘I will hold you to it, mistress,’ he said. ‘I do not want any brawl between Hal and the Wallace over Bangtail Hob, for there is no telling which of them will come out the other side of it alive and no matter which it is, all will be in ruin.’

‘I wish this was for the concern of the lord of Herdmanston,’ she answered sharply, ‘but I know it is because of Bruce’s plans, whatever they are. You forget how well I know him.’

‘I do not forget how well you know him,’ Kirkpatrick answered. Others were moving towards the fire.

‘I pray the blessin’ o’ heaven on ye, lady, that the lord o’ Herdmanston has forgot that fact entire,’ he added viciously as he wraithed away.

They had not spoken since, in all the long days down through Peebles and Traquair, into the forest vastness that had been the Wallace stronghold and was now no more than a lair for the ragged remnants, gone back to brigandage.

By the time they circled the animals near St Cuthbert’s Chapel, while Stirk Davey was haggling grazing payment with the monks, it was clear that word of them had gone out; among the Moffat gawpers were two or three riders, who came no closer than long bowshot, looked and left.

Patient as a stone in a river, Kirkpatrick moved among the chiels and monks, chaffering and exchanging news, dropping the name Wallace in now and then to see whose eyes narrowed or widened.

As dusk crept in, he came to the fire as they gathered for thick soup and oat bread. Red-dyed by the embers he spoke without looking at any of them, as if he muttered into his bowl.

‘We will be visited tonight and they will come armed, though they will do us no harm unless we leap up and threaten them. Hal and I will go with them and if we are not returned within two hours, you must talk among yourselves as to what is best.’

Then he looked up into the great broad grin of the Dog Boy and managed one in reply.

‘Get quickly to the meat of it, where you come looking to lift us safely out of their donjean,’ he added and had back a low laugh or two for his pains.

The visitors came later than Kirkpatrick had expected, shadows against the black, a faceless voice thick with suspicion and menace.

‘Bide doucelike. If as much as the hair on the quim o’ yer wummin twitches, ye will rue it.’

For a moment, all was still, frozen — then the slim rill of a woman’s voice sluiced away the terror.

‘Lang Jack Short,’ Isabel said, firm and fierce. ‘At our last meeting, ye would no more have discussed my nethers than you would have refused the meat and ale of my hospitality at Balmullo the night we fixed Will Wallace’s leg.’

Hal almost cried out with the delight of it; if he was not already in thrall to her, he would have loved her for this moment alone; there was a pause, then a face, broken-nosed ugly, shoved itself into the embered glow of the fire,

‘Coontess?’

‘The same,’ she answered tartly. ‘Here to see Sir William. So less of your sauce, Lang Jack and do what you have been bid.’

‘Bigod,’ Sim Craw admired, ‘it never fails to maze me how such a well-bred wummin kens every low-born chiel from here to beyond The Mounth.’

It was a slash through Long Jack’s spluttering and Hal broke in before it boiled up to something ugly.

‘Take us to Wallace,’ he said. ‘Myself, the Countess and Kirkpatrick.’

‘A Bruce man?’ Long Jack spat back, leaping on this fact to save his face. ‘I am as likely to shove my dirk in the Wallace hert.’

‘Ye are skilled at that,’ Hal replied, losing his own temper. ‘Bangtail Hob will testify to it afore God.’

‘Swef, swef.’

The new voice rolled over the tension like a flattening boulder and the figure who stepped out of the dark was as large, a barrel-shaped man whose hair furzed out from under a confection of hat. He had a face dominated by a fat nose that drooped like a pachyderm’s over a sprawl of moustache, shrewd, heavy-lidded eyes and a way of swinging his head like a blind, hooded hawk when he turned. Hal knew him at once.

‘Sir Tham Halliday,’ he said and had back a nod before the head swung back, the gaze almost as heavy as the hand he laid on Long Jack’s shoulder.

‘Bring them, as Will bidded.’

Scowling, Long Jack turned and led the way, while Sim, Stirk Davey and the Dog Boy looked at each other and then into the dark, which hid a multitude of sins clenched in a horde of unseen hands.

The meeting, when it finally came, was a strange affair and Isabel noted it mainly because of the shock at the sight of Wallace and for the reversal of characters between Kirkpatrick and Hal.

Wallace was slumped in a curule chair, a pose that Hal remembered well enough for it to pain him; the hand-and-a-half, he noted, was hung, scabbarded, on a wall and that was a difference from before, for Wallace would once never have allowed the hilt of that weapon more than a fingertip from him. Hal wondered if the belt that it hung from was really made from the flayed skin of Cressingham, the English Treasurer of Scotland who had died at Stirling Brig.

Wallace was gaunt, wasted, galled with too much bone at knee, elbow and cheeks. His eyes were the worst part of him and everyone saw it. They were the washed-out eyes of a netted fish in opaque waters, slightly bewildered and infinitely weary. They brightened at the sight of Isabel and a smile split the close-cropped beard; his hair, too, was all but shaved and he saw the shock this gave the Countess.

‘Shorn,’ he said ruefully, ‘like an old wether. Nits and lice — it is good to see you, Countess. I see you have leaped the dyke.’

She could not reply for the sight of him and Hal stepped into the silence.

‘You have my thanks for the rescue of her,’ he said in the French Wallace had offered up. The poor coin of his voice rang hollow even to his own ears.

‘Aye, well,’ Wallace replied laconically. ‘I think that comes true from the Countess and only from politeness out of yourself.’

‘Bangtail Hob,’ Hal said and Kirkpatrick sighed, started forward with his mouth opening to block the breach of the conversation. Wallace spoke over him, silencing him before a word got out.

‘Aye, Bangtail was a sadness,’ Wallace admitted. ‘Necessary, all the same, else he would have told where we were. I had tired and sick folk who couldn’t spend another night in the cold and wet.’

‘He fought for you once,’ Hal reminded him savagely. ‘He would have said nothing.’

‘He would have told the next hoor he lay wi’,’ Wallace replied wearily, breaking into Scots. ‘And if ye were no’ blind with grief ye would ken this.’

‘Ye might have held him for a day or two,’ Hal insisted hotly. ‘He helped save yer life, in the name of Christ.’

The eyes flashed, the old fire escaping from under hooded lids, but diffused like pump water from a spout blocked by a finger.

‘Long hundreds have done so. Thousands. The dead pile up round me like leaves in November.’

He leaned forward a little, tense as a hound on a leash.

‘Freedom,’ he said hoarsely, ‘is never got for free. It is paid for in suffering, more by some than others. Yet “ dico tibi verum, libertas optimum rerum ” — which is, afore ye say it yerself, everything I ever learned training as a priest. And these words ye ken already, Hal of Herdmanston.’

I tell you the truth, the best of all things is freedom. Hal had no answer to it.

‘Fine words,’ interrupted Kirkpatrick, the Latin lost on him, dropping the bag into the silence with a heavy, solid shink. Wallace turned the weary gaze on him.

‘The Earl of Annandale and Carrick,’ Kirkpatrick said softly in French, ‘sends this for your regard. Enough coin to pay for passage to France.’

‘Why would the Bruce think I need his coin?’

Kirkpatrick smiled thinly.

‘To add to the safe conduct letter the Comyn extracted from the Pope, in the name of King John Balliol,’ he replied. ‘Now you can flash the Bruce coin back at them and avoid being shackled by obligements to either one.’

‘Or end up manacled to all of ye, in the mire of yer damned feud,’ Wallace countered.

Kirkpatrick shrugged.

‘Bruce has made his peace with the Lord of Badenoch. There is no feud.’

That was news to everyone, including Wallace, who sat and scratched the remains of his beard, so clearly wanting one long enough to stroke that Isabel almost laughed.

‘There is, it seems,’ he said, the aloes of it so thick that every mouth could taste the bitterness, ‘no good reason for my remaining in the Kingdom. Everyone wishes me quit of it.’

He offered a twisted smile.

‘One day you may find as I do, gentilhommes, that it is not so easy to be quit of this kingdom. Only in death.’

Kirkpatrick took in a deep breath. Wallace would do it; he would go. In all probability he would go to France and use the same method he had used before, tried and true; for a moment, he felt the sharp, sick pang of what he was doing — then shoved it ruthlessly to one side and pushed the heavy bag forward.

‘My task is done,’ he declared and Wallace laughed, though it was cold.

‘I would thank you for it,’ he replied lightly, ‘but here I am, thinking you had a sharper argument if I had refused.’

Kirkpatrick did not even blink, merely held out his arms, hands dangling loose at the wrist, in an invitation to be searched. Isabel knew there was no hidden steel on him and, with a leap of fear, realized she could not be so sure of Hal, even though everyone had already been examined, save her.

Wallace caught her eye as he turned his head. There was a pause, then he focused on Hal.

‘And you, lord of Herdmanston,’ he said heavily. ‘Is your task done?’

Hal felt the moment, the iron rods of Bangtail and Falkirk’s wood and Stirling’s brig all twisting and forging to a point, sharp as the weapon hanging on the wall. He felt the hilt of it in his hand already, burning his swordfist as if suddenly fired red hot by the rage in him. He wondered if he could get to Wallace’s own sword in time, before the battle-honed Wallace reacted. He was weakened and weary, but he was still Wallace, a giant with fast hands and strong wrists; Hal remembered him at Scone, whirling the hand-and-a-half in one fist.

The moment passed; the tension deflated and Kirkpatrick found he needed to breathe.

‘In the name of Bangtail Hob, my task is not done and I will needs live with that,’ Hal hoarsed out, meeting Wallace’s gaze. ‘But yours is. Get ye gone, Sir Will. Your price for freedom has cost too many good folk their lives and the promise you made for it stays unfulfilled.’

He turned and left like a cold wind. Isabel saw that the slash of those words had wounded Wallace deeper than any dagger could, saw the stagger in the man, like a ship caught sideways in a gale. Then he recovered and drew up a little in his seat, managed a shaky smile.

‘Ye’ll need a strong hand with yon yin,’ he said to Isabel and she nodded, his face blurring through the springing tears, so that she turned away.

Kirkpatrick was left alone with him and the thought was bitter irony. Once this would have been an opportunity needing only a moment and a blade…

Instead, he nodded to the fallen giant and left. The true weapon was snugged up under the real coin in the bag, as vicious as any knife, a winking red eye of betrayal. Wallace would nurse his pride against need and would never consult the innards of that bag until forced to it. In truth, Kirkpatrick thought, he would not consult it at all; the men who would come in the night, sooner rather than later, would do that.

Outside in the drenched night, Kirkpatrick sucked in a breath and twisted a small, half-ashamed smile on his face. He now knew the true name of at least one of those jewelled Apostles — a ruby called Judas.