The Lion Wakes

Chapter Thirteen

Herdmanston

Feast of St Merinus, September 1297

She stood between the merlons and looked out and down to where the riders sat, patient as stones, while a crow circled like a slow crucifix in the grey-blue. The rider in the centre looked up as it racked out its hoarseness and, even from this height, she saw the red-gold of his beard and hair. She knew who he was and glanced sideways at Bangtail Hob.

‘Ye were right, Hob,’ she said.

‘No’ me, Lady. Sir Hal sent me to warn ye this might occur – him and the rest of the men are running and hidin’ with The Wallace.’

He was matter-of-fact about it, but Isabel knew that the running and hiding he spoke off hid a wealth of hurt, fear, blood and rough living. The fact that Bangtail Hob had managed to slither his way unseen to Herdmanston with the message was not the only miracle in it.

Below, the man with the red-gold head waved.

‘I can shoot the een oot of his head from here,’ muttered Wull The Yett, nocking an arrow to the hunting bow and getting a scathe of glance back from Bangtail Hob.

‘Away. Ye could not hit a bull’s arse at five paces when ye could see clear, Wull The Yett. Ye have not seen clearly the length of your own arm in years.’

‘Go down and tell Sir John Comyn he can come up to the yett,’ Isabel said. ‘Then escort him into the hall.’

Wull shot them both a black scowl and slid the arrow from the string.

‘Oh aye, no bother,’ he declared bitterly, hirpling his way to the stairwind. ‘Open the yett to our enemies – let the place scorch betimes, for it seems there is no respect left for a hauflin’ like myself, the least of a clekkin’ of bairns to a poor widow wummin.. .’

They ignored him, as folk always did, while his long, bitter murmur trailed behind him like damp grey smoke.

The Red Comyn heard the invite and dismounted, then handed his sword to the nearest of his men, smiling back into their warnings and anxiety. He went up the steep, cobbled incline, across the laid plank bridge and into the short arch with its opened, iron-grilled yett. There was the scent of woodsmoke and new-baked bread fighting with the headiness of broom in his nose.

Briefly, in the dim of the small hall, he was blind and took a few breaths to accustom himself before following the shuffling old servitor to where the lady sat in the high seat, as neatly arranged in Lenten grey and snowy barbette as any nun, while the glowing brazier of coals and freshly lit sconces bounced the light back off the too-brilliant gentian of her eyes.

But her hair and skin were damp from fresh grooming and her rings were loose enough on the fingers he kissed for him to know she had thinned, while the marks of sleeplessness told him much.

‘Countess,’ he said, with a formal bow.

‘My lord.’

The voice was steady, even musical, but the strain was evident in it and the Red Comyn was suddenly irritated by the whole business – he had more to do these days than play advocate in the life of his kinsman Earl of Buchan and his wayward wife.

‘I am told your father is unwell.’

The solicitous inquiry stumbled him off the track of matters, but he recovered, swift as a russet fox.

‘His humour is turned overly choleric,’ he declared, which was a bland description of the paralysis which had twisted one side of the Lord of Badenoch’s body and exchanged his power of speech for a constant drool from one side of his mouth. His own temper, folk said, that had given him the name Black John, had finally choked him – but his son knew better and his voice was thick and bitter when he said.

‘Imprisonment in the Tower did that.’

‘He is fortunate, then,’ Isabel replied steadily, ‘since most of those sent to the Tower never come out alive at all.’

She was baiting him, he knew, but he held himself in check and nodded to the man at her side.

‘I do not know your man, there,’ he said in sibilant French, ‘but I know what he is, so I am certain you have been told of the events that bring me here.’

‘His name is Hob,’ she replied and felt Bangtail’s head come up at the name, the only part he understood. She switched to English, deliberately to include him.

‘MacDuff is dead, Hob tells me,’ she said, the harsh crow-song of it raking her, for all that she had disliked the man.

‘Bravely,’ Red Comyn replied, also in English, ‘together with others. Wallace is fled and resigned his Guardianship. New Guardians have been appointed by the community of the realm.’

What was left of a nobility not scrabbling to kneel at Edward’s footstool, she shought. Yet the way he said it made her breath stop a moment.

‘Yourself?’

He acknowledged it with a haughty little nod and, at last, she realised the duty that had brought him here. Not just for the Earl of Buchan’s pride, then.

‘The Earl of Carrick is the other,’ he declared and she almost laughed aloud but he saw her widening eyes and her lip-biting and smeared a wry twist on to his face.

‘Aye,’ he admitted. ‘The Bruce and myself. Unlikely beasts in the same shafts, I will allow – but the Kingdom demands it.’

‘Indeed,’ Isabel replied softly. ‘To what does Herdmanston owe for the honour of your presence here?’

He grew more irritated still, at her presumptious sitting there as if she was lady of this pawky manor, as if she spoke for the absent lord of Herdmanston as a wife.

‘Ye know well enough,’ he replied shortly. ‘I am to return you to the good graces of your husband, the earl.’

‘Others attempted that,’ she retorted bitterly. ‘One in particular decided force was best. Is that in your instruction from my husband?’

‘If necessary,’ he replied bluntly and leaned his short, barrelled body towards her a little, so that Isabel felt Bangtail start to bristle like a hound.

‘The lordship of Fife is invested in your wee brother, currently held by the English – so Fife has reverted to the Crown, lady,’ he said coldly. ‘In the absence of a king, it reverts to the Guardians – namely myself and the Earl of Carrick. Your presence with the Earl of Buchan is now desirable less for reasons of his passion than reasons of Comyn honour, dignity and estate. I am here, as a Guardian of Scotland, to impress upon you the need for it. You should know also that my lord earl wants the bladder that is Hal of Herdmanston dipped in dark water.’

She looked at him, this stocky, fiery wee man; his boots had high heels and that little vanity robbed him of some of his menace. God’s Wounds, he had enough of it just by looking like a smaller version of Buchan.

It was undignified, she thought, sitting here within sight of this small, blurred image of her husband, so like him in colour and temper and discussing her intimacies. She had known her husband’s rage was enough for him to injure her but lately had hoped that it was enough for him just to detach from her.

Now, eyes blank and fogged, she saw the stupidity of that. He had been cuckolded, made a fool over the business of ransom – when he need not have ransomed her at all – and now needed to stamp the imprint of the Buchan lordship firmly on the lands of Fife. With a wife who was the last noble MacDuff in Fife and the backing of his kinsman, an appointed Guardian, he would be able to gain control.

Shame and anger flushed her, sank into her belly and twisted all the weary organs. Like beads on a rosary, all the slights she had given her husband, small and large, winked in her memory. Worse, with a chill that flushed goosing on her skin, she thought of the grim little Comyn of Badenoch’s words regarding force. If necessary.

There was no way out of it. It was no longer a wayward wife Buchan wanted, but the key to unlock the rents of a powerful earldom and he would not let Isabel or Hal alone. If she remained, Herdmanston would feel the wrath of Buchan and she knew, as she knew her own palms, that Bruce would not prevent it – even if he felt like it – for he would be persuaded that Hal of Herdmanston was not cause enough to break the uneasy pact with the Comyn.

‘A bladder may be dipped,’ she said flatly, ‘but not drowned. I will have your word on that.’

The Red Comyn shrugged; he did not care one way or the other and said so.

‘Betimes,’ he added with a wry twist, ‘I would not put yer faith in the wee lord of Herdmanston. I hear he’s eating grass and living like a slinking dog in the wild. The Plantagenet has punished him for his rebellion and appointed these lands to one of his deserving others – a certain Malenfaunt, who was lately your… host. He has a way with the vicious that you cannot help but admire, has Longshanks – have you heard how they are calling him Hammer of the Scots now?’

‘Malenfaunt’s is a parchment gift,’ she replied stonily and he acknowledged that much; Longshanks had parcelled out a deal of lands belonging to rebellious Scots, but with no way to enforce their titles, the new owners were left clutching a roll with seals and were no better off than before.

He saw the thin hemline of her lips and allowed his temper a slip of the leash.

‘Regardless of the fate of this fortalice, lady, my task is to impress on you the necessity of the inevitable – Christ’s Wounds, woman, ye sit in this mean hall as if you were married on to its owner. Have ye no shame?’

She had not.

‘I will have your word on matters. You are Guardian. You can persuade my husband not to exercise the full of his anger on Sir Hal of Herdmanston and, if the Bruce agrees nothing else with you, he can be persuaded to add his weight to this. Have I your word on it?’

He was struck, then, by what it revealed of her feelings. It does not matter, he thought to himself, if Buchan has her body back, for someone else has her heart. Usually, that would not matter to a powerful lord only interested in lands but Badenoch knew that it mattered to the Earl of Buchan. There would be more trouble over it, he knew – but he was sick of the business and had more important matters than arguing with a well-bred hoor. It was a deal of persuasion – but he was flattered that she thought him able to fulfil it, so he spoke the formal words she wanted and saw her jaw knot.

‘Have you a spare mount?’ she managed, the words ash in her mouth.

‘Ach, no – coontess…’

Bangtail was silenced by the bright-eyed stricken look she turned on him. The Red Comyn, wise enough to stay silent, merely inclined his head.

‘I shall make arrangements,’ she said and he nodded silently again, turned and clacked his high-heeled way back to the yett.

‘Mistress,’ Bangtail began desperately, but stopped again, for the upright lady had slumped and buried her dissolving face in the sieve of her loose-ringed fingers.

Roslin

Feast of St Andrew Protoclet, November 1298

They watched the long-haired star throwing off beams to the east and, for a long time, no-one spoke. Then Bruce hunched himself into his fur collar, his breath a white stream.

‘The Blessed St Andrew sends a sign,’ he declared portentously. Kirkpatrick nodded and agreed with a smile, though he had to bite his tongue to stop himself, viperishly, from suggesting that it was probably more of a sign from St Malachy.

‘Let us hope this means that Hal of Herdmanston’s news is good,’ Bruce added and Kirkpatrick shivered.

‘My teeth are chittering,’ he said in a passable imitation of the the Lord of Herdmanston, who rode far enough behind them to be out of earshot. Bruce grinned whitely at him; they moved on up the road to Roslin’s shadowed bulk, the Carrick entourage falling in behind with a clatter of hooves and metal.

The great black storm of Longshanks had finally blown itself out. Roger Bigod, the Earl Marshal, had taken his forces home, as had Hereford, and, though they were entitled to do it, having served their tenure for king and realm, Edward was brooding foul over it.

Forced to turn south himself, he came howling through Ayrshire, sacking towns and villages – save for Ayr, which Bruce burned for him, in order to prevent any aid from it. Spiteful as an old cat, Longshanks, with the staggering remains of an army already eating its own horses, took the Carrick holding at Lochmaben. Then, with a graceless final swipe of his claws, Longshanks spoiled Jedburgh and reeled off back into England, already summoning troops for a new campaign in the summer.

It had all, Bruce thought, been ruinously expensive – for both sides. Thousands of Scots had died at Falkirk, among them some of the best of the Kingdom’s community – Murray of Bothwell, Graham of Abercorne, the MacDuff of Fife. It was no way to fight the power of the English and had been a bad slip by Wallace to try to do so. Moray would not have been so foolish.

Yet matters had not turned out badly, he added to himself. His father’s influence exempted Annandale from punishment by Edward, so only the Carrick lands suffered. Wallace was discredited and, though he had to walk in a trace with the hated Red John, Bruce was a Guardian, a step nearer the seat he craved and, at last, a power in the land.

Enough of one to pluck Hal from the outlaw wilderness and back under the Bruce wing and Herdmanston remained in his hands simply because Edward’s new appointment to it, Sir Robert Malenfaunt, did not have the force to impose the royal writ against a Guardian of Scotland.

Or the balls, Bruce thought. He glanced towards the hunched shadow that was the Lothian lord. I need this wee Herdmanston man and everyone knows my interest in him, so that even Buchan balks. You would think, he added bitterly, he would at least smile over it.

Hal’s world was all bad as spoiled mutton as far as he was concerned, so that he said nothing at all on the long ride to Roslin. Once in the hall, he squatted like a brooding spider, while Henry Sientcler chattered and his children played and his wife, Elizabeth, drifted gracefully, moving like a swan to prepare for the visit of the Earl of Carrick.

All of it, Sim knew, only added to the loss of her and he felt alarm, more than he had done in the days after his lord had lost wife and bairn. Then he had offered Hal what he had always offered – a stolid friendship, a loyalty he could trust and an expertise with horse and weapons that allowed them in and out of trouble. In return, Sim got the only home he had ever known and the only man he felt he could call a friend, despite the difference in their station.

It nagged now that none of it was of any use – Isabel had gone like a morning mist and they had only found out after months of slipping and slithering round the forests and hills, avoiding the English – and Scots in their pay – who hunted Wallace.

The arrival of Bruce’s messenger to pluck them from Wallace’s last remnants came as a blessed relief, tinged with shame at feelin it.

Wallace himself, disgraced, discredited and with the old brigand settling back on him like a familiar cloak, simply shrugged and wished them God speed. Not long after, they had all the news of what had happened, at Herdmanston as well as elsewhere.

‘An ill-favoured chiel came for her,’ Bangtail told them. ‘The wee Guardian, the Red Comyn himself. Her uncle was slain at Falkirk and it made the difference.’

Hal had known it, of course, in the aftermath of the battle, in the sweating, fevered nights when he had woken from the spill of dead, white faces, the screams and the steel. MacDuff was dead and he had been the Buchan link to a say in the control of the Fife estates.

‘She told me to say it was no use,’ Bangtail went on, his face twisted with grief. ‘She said her husband would not let matters stand still now and that Herdmanston was in danger.’

Hal acknowledged Bangtail’s words and the man went off, droop-shouldered at the loss and angry at his own impotence in the matter. Hal stood there, numbed by it; Isabel was gone back to Buchan.

Ironically, he knew that, even as she returned to her gilded prison, she was safer than before and had leverage of her own – he had no doubt that part of the price for her compliance would be that neither he nor Herdmanston would suffer.

But the price was high and, even when he returned to Herdmanston to prove to all there that it was his yet, he felt the bitter cost of it every time he looked at the lonely tower chamber, the dress folded neatly, the bed – and the pardoner’s medallion she had left on the pillows.

Bruce, of course, offered sympathic noises and was struck by the darkness in Hal. Who would have thought Isabel could engender that? He had seen her, too, when Red Comyn and the Buchan had come to the Parliament at Scone to oust Wallace and redesign the power in the Kingdom.

The florid Earl had brought the Countess with him, flaunting her like some stag with a returned hind. Bruce had noted the hawk-proud bearing of her and the despair behind her eyes and felt a stab of anger – there was no doubt Buchan had burned his mark anew on his wayward wife. Yet there was defiance there, too – and loss. Who would have thought the likes of Hal could bring out that in her?

Because of what they had once been, he could see the clench of her and felt a wash of sympathy at her plight – yet the love in it was a mystery he dismissed with a head shake. Almost as much a mystery as the one which had married him and the Red Comyn to Scotland’s fate. The only reason the wee popinjay had been so elevated was because he held a claim to the Kingdom’s throne and the Comyn wanted to wave him as a taunt to Bruce.

Still – he was glad Hal had not been there to see Isabel with Buchan, for blood would have been spilled

‘A strange marriage that,’ Henry Sientcler offered as they ate, and Bruce, still thinking of Red John, acknowledged it with a wave of one hand.

‘Wishart says God may still make it work,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I had word from him in his Roxburgh prison.’

Sir Henry shifted and made a moue.

‘He has more ken of the mind of woman than I gave him credit for then,’ he replied and, for a moment Bruce’s food hung, half chewed in his open mouth.

Kirkpatrick chuckled.

‘I believe the lord of Roslin was referring to the marriage of the Buchans,’ he answered, ‘rather than yer hand-fasting to the Red Comyn as joint Guardians.’

‘Ye are unlikely to plough a straight furrow with that wee man at your shoulder,’ Hal suddenly declared. ‘A more mismatched brace of oxen it wid be hard to find.’

‘Indeed,’ Bruce offered with a fixed smile, neither liking the comparison with an ox or the flat-out brooding moroseness of the man.

‘Are you enjoying the fare, my lord earl?’ asked Elizabeth, anxious to sweeten the air. Bruce nodded graciously, though the truth of it was that he thought the Lady of Roslin too pious for comfort – especially his. Broiled fish and lentils with oat bannocks might be perfect Biblical food for the occasion, reminding everyone that St Andrew was the patron saint of poor fishermen, but it was marginally better than a fast and no more.

He managed to keep the smile on his face, all the same, while he watched Sir Henry and his wife exchange loving glances. Well, Kirkpatrick thought as he witnessed this, you arranged for this loving reunion and I daresay you thought to get effusive thanks and pledges for it – at the very least a decent meal. More fool you, my lord earl

… there are too many folk who still regard you with suspicion.

‘Where is Wallace?’

Hal’s voice was a knife through the soft chatter.

‘Gone,’ Bruce replied shortly.

Hal lifted his head.

‘Gone where?’

‘France, I hear,’ Kirkpatrick said and Bruce nodded, chewing.

‘Fled,’ he managed between forced swallows of clotted bannock, and Hal frowned. Fled did not sound like Wallace and he said as much, though he was surprised by the thoughtful nod he had back from Bruce. He had been expecting the sullen lip and the scowl.

‘Indeed. The Red Comyn is ranting about him not asking permission of the Guardians – namely himself, of course – to quit the realm after he resigned the Guardianship. I suspect this is because he has designs on Wallace holdings.’

‘Resigned,’ Sir Henry said with a twist to his voice which was not missed. When he caught Bruce’s eye, he flushed a little.

‘Hardly freely done, my lord earl,’ he added.

‘They forced him out,’ Hal said, blunt with the black-dog misery of what he had heard of it. ‘The bold nobiles in conclave at Scone. Not content with runnin’ like hares at Falkirk, they then turn on Wallace, as if it was all his doing. Betrayed because he was not the true cut of them. Now ye tell me they squabble over his wee rickle of lands.’

‘I trust,’ Kirkpatrick said sharply, ‘ye are not casting anything at my lord earl. Your liege lord.’

‘Now, here, enough,’ Sir Henry bleated and his wife stepped into the breach of it, bright and light as sunshine.

‘Frumenty?’ she asked and, without waiting, clapped her hands to send a servant scurrying. Bruce grinned, half-ashamed, across at Hal.

‘Scotland betrayed itself,’ Bruce answered flatly. ‘Ye all ran at Falkirk, even Wallace in the end. That’s the fact and the shame – and the saving grace of it, for if you had stayed and fought, you would be dead. In my own defence, I had business enough in Ayrshire to keep me occupied – but I would have galloped from that field, same as everyone else.’

Hal felt the sick rise of it in his gorge, knowing he was right and having to admit it with a curt nod. They had all run and, because of it, proud Edward had his slaughter, but no real victory. The Kingdom had its back to the wall more than ever before, but though the struggle was more grim, the realm was no more subjugated than before.

Now the resistance was what it had always been – strike from the forest and hills, then run like foxes for cover. Bruce had occupied the English in Ayrshire with the tactic and showed a surprising aptitude for the business. He had learned well from Wallace, it seemed to Hal, and, by the time had finished, a desert seemed like a basket of cooked chicken compared with the desolation he made.

This was a new ruthlessness, which allowed Bruce even to destroy his own holdings if it hindered the enemy – he had burned Turnberry Castle to ruin and Hal well knew he had loved the place, since he had been born there and it had been his mother’s favourite. There was new resolve and a growing skill in the man, Hal saw, and his next words confirmed it.

‘Wallace fled to France,’ Bruce added, frowning at the bowl in front of him, ‘because he could not be sure that he would not be betrayed by his own. There will be no peace for Wallace. Edward will have his head on a gate-spike.’

Hal regarded the Earl of Carrick with a new interest, seeing the sullen face of two years ago resolved into something more stern and considered. There was steel here – though whether it would bend and not break alongside the Red Comyn was another matter.

Bruce stirred and looked up at Sir Henry, then pointedly at Hal, who nodded and levered himself wearily up from the table.

‘It is time.’

Sir Henry stood up and a flutter of servants brought torches. They left Elizabeth and the servants behind, moving into the shifting shadows and the cold dark of the undercroft, descending until the stairwind spilled them out into the great vaulted barrel that was Roslin’s cellars. Their breath smoked; barrels and flitches gleamed icily.

‘This has been finished a little, since I was last home,’ Henry Sientcler mused, holding up the smoking torch.

‘As well your Keep is now stone,’ Hal said. ‘I would do the rest, and swift, my lord of Roslin, now that your ransom money is freed up – if Edward comes back, Roslin’s wooden walls will not stand and that Templar protection we Sientclers once enjoyed is no longer as sure as before.’

Henry nodded mournfully while Bruce, his shadow looming long and eldritch, waved a hand as if dismissing an irrelevant fly.

‘Castles in stone are all very fine – but only one stone matters now,’ he said, then turned to Hal. ‘Well, Sir – ye claim to have the saving of us. Do you ken where Jacob’s Pillow lies?’

Hal fished out the medallion and handed it to the frowning earl, who turned it over and over in his gloved hand.

‘A medal of protection,’ he sniffed. ‘Sold by pardoners everywhere. Like the one we took from yon Lamprecht fellow.’

Hal watched while Kirkpatrick and Sim, suitably primed, moved down the length of the vaulted hall, shifting bundles and barrels, peering at the floor and tallying on sticks. Bruce and Sir Henry watched, bemused.

‘It is the very one,’ Hal said, watching the two torches bobbing across the flagged floor. ‘It was the pardoner explained the significance of the marks.’

Bruce turned it over and over, then passed it to Sir Henry, who peered myopically at it.

‘A fish?’ he hazarded and Hal fumbled out the ring corded round his neck.

‘The same one is on this,’ he declared, ‘which the Auld Templar bequeathed me on his deathbed. An auld sin he called it.’

Bruce looked steadily at Hal and he was struck, again, by the absence of the sullen pout, replaced by a firm, tight-lipped resolve and an admitting nod. Sim appeared and shook his head; Hal felt his stomach turn.

‘Reverse it,’ he said and Sim nodded. The torches started to bob again, the tallying began anew.

‘A mason’s ring,’ Hal went on. ‘Belonging to Gozelo, who worked here before he became involved in your… scheming, my lord. And died for it.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Bruce muttered as he frowned, muttering half to himself. ‘If he had not run… a sad necesssity for the safety of the Kingdom. The ring went to the Auld Templar and then to you. It is the Christian fish symbol from ancient times -what has this to do with locating the Stone?’

Henry, who had only recently been told of all this, blinked a bit and shook his head with the sheer, bewildering stun of it all. Plots were nothing new in this Kingdom, nor the killing that invariably went with them, but, even so, the careless way the Earl of Carrick dismissed a murder was disturbing.

The torches bobbed to a sudden stop and Sim and Kirkpatrick both cried out.

Hal moved swiftly, the others following, drawing into a breathless ring round a single broad flagstone, the faint chiselled mark gleaming in the torchlight.

‘A fish,’ Hal said pointedly and Bruce agreed, then pointed to his left.

‘There is another. And one over there. Every flagstone is marked – there are scores of them.’

‘Just so,’ Hal said. ‘Gozelo’s mark, which all masons leave behind – if it seems he was excessive fond of making it here, he had reason, my lords.’

Sim and Kirkpatrick, their breath mingling as they struggled, shoved pry bars into the grooves of the flagstone as Hal spoke.

‘Not an original mason’s mark,’ Hal said, speaking in rapid French, spitting the words out as if they burned him. ‘Gozelo was not that imaginative and thought to find a good Christian symbol of this land, to suit the tastes of his customers. He took the fish mark from the same place the makers of wee holy medals took it and for the same reason – to impress and because it is simple to make.’

He held up the medallion.

‘Taken from the Chalice Well in Glastonbury,’ he said as they peered at it. ‘See – the circumference of one circle goes through the centre of the other, identical circle. The bit in the middle is called the vesica piscis, which is the name of the mark.’

‘Bladder of the fish,’ Bruce translated thoughtfully. ‘Of course – I had forgotten the Chalice Well had it.’

There was a grating sound and the flagstone shifted, the two men sweating and panting to slide it with a long grinding slither, leaving a dark hole. The dank of it seemed to leach chill into Hal’s breath of relief.

‘The Holy fish symbol of Christians from the times of the Romans,’ Hal explained. ‘Lamprecht knows his business and told me the Holy nature of it – and it became clear why masons fancy the symbol. I am no tallyer, nor was he – but he knows his relic business well enough and the holy fish measures a ratio of width to height which is the square root of three – 265:153. The number 153 is the amount of fish Our Lord caused to be caught in a miracle, so there is the work of Heaven in it.’

‘Gospel of St John,’ Kirkpatrick breathed, astounding everyone with that knowledge, so that he blinked and bridled under the stares.

‘Two hundred and sixty-five fish-marked stones one way, a hundred and fifty-three the other and you have this,’ Hal said and held the torch over the hole, allowing the light to fall, golden as honey on the ancient sandstone snugged inside.

‘The Auld Templar’s secret place,’ Hal said, then glanced at Henry’s open-mouthed stare. ‘I hazard there are deeds and titles and Roslin secrets you will want from there, Henry -but first you will have to lift a heavy cover.’

‘The Stone,’ Bruce declared and gave a sharp bark of delight.

‘Not easily moved by two men – but done all the same,’ Kirkpatrick added and there was a pause as they saw how the Auld Templar and Roslin’s Steward, John Fenton, had struggled the Stone into the undercroft and hidden it.

‘Yon Gozelo was a clever man,’ Sim offered and glanced into the scowl of Kirkpatrick. ‘Just not very fast on his feet when it came to the bit.’

‘Aye, well,’ Bruce said and straightened. ‘Once you have taken what you need, Sir Henry, cover it up anew.’

He glanced round at the faces, all blood-dyed in the light, their breath like honeyed smoke.

‘Here we all are, then, party to the future of the Kingdom,’ he said. ‘In the absence of Bishop Wishart, I call upon us all to kneel and pray for the strength to hold to our resolve, to keep this secret until the time is right.’

This piety took even Kirkpatrick by surprise, but he dutifully sank to his knees. Bruce and Hal were the last to descend to the chill stones and looked at each other for a moment over the heads of the penitents. When the time is right, Hal echoed silently. The time for Bruce to make his move.

‘Welcome to your Kingdom,’ Hal said to him, savage and morose. ‘A bloodier place these days, my lord earl.’

The sun of Bruce’s smile was a bright uncaring knife that cut through Hal’s bitter grief and the Kingdom’s turmoil of pain.

‘Hectora quis nosset, si felix Troia fuisset? he answered, leonine with new dreams, and then added, in perfect English:

‘Who would know Hector if Troy had been happy?’

Author’s Note

In light of the collective nouns used in this book, I should add another which is particularly apt – a roguery of historians.

Unlike the earlier Dark Ages, there is no paucity of sources for the Scottish Wars of Independence, or the lives of Wallace and Bruce – what there is instead is a contradiction of times, dates, places and people, sometimes accidental, more often deliberate, from those being paid to enhance the reputation of their subjects.

That, coupled with the general attempts to revise history in favour of the various protagonists, has polished the personae of Edward I, Wallace and Bruce almost beyond recognition, while creating the impression that the war which culminated in the battle of Bannockburn was one of the freedom-loving Scots against the tyranny of England.

Ask any Scot in a pub and they will tell you chapter and verse on Bruce and on Wallace – they may even pour scorn on Mel Gibson and Braveheart, while admitting that they thoroughly enjoyed the movie, even the pseudo-kilts, face-painting (now almost de rigueur at any Scottish event) and waggling of bare arses at opponents.

The truth is harsher and more misted. Braveheart is a dubious interpretation of already dubious history, while relative sizes and composition and exact location of the armies at Stirling Brig and Falkirk is supposition and best-guess, depending on whom you read.

There is no doubt that the major protagonists were genuine heroic figures to a large body of opinion, in their own lifetimes and since. Equally, they were regarded as the blackest of terrorists to much of the rest of the population of both Scotland and England.

The legend had made Bruce into the hero king, liberator of Scotland, and any grey areas of his life have been airbrushed. Wallace, of course, is painted in easy black and white, as the giant with an anachronistic two-handed claymore, fighting to the very end and never giving in.

The truth – or what can be seen of it now – is different, but open to interpretation. This period was Scotland’s civil war more than anything, with the powerful Comyn, Buchans and Balliols against the determined Bruces for the possession of the Kingdom of Scots. Edward, the opportunist, tried to muscle in and soon realised his expensive mistake, for both sides used him unashamedly to further their own ends.

Nor is he the out-and-out villain, the ‘proud Edward sent hame to think again’ about trying his tyranny on the Scots; to the English he was one of the best kings they ever had and they feared – rightly – his passing, knowing the son was not the father.

I have tried to give Bruce and Wallace and Edward I back their original lives, after a fashion, to show them against the backdrop of the times while also unveiling some of the people, great and small, fictional and historical, who struggled to live in that emerging Scotland.

There are those I have maligned, or used for my own ends. Isabel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, for one. All that is known, for certain, is that she existed, was married to the Earl of Buchan and, at one crucial moment in history, deserted marriage and party to side with her husband’s enemies, by becoming the hereditary MacDuff, Crowner of Scottish kings, and helping to legitimise Bruce.

She suffered for it, being subsequently captured and imprisoned in a cage on the walls of Berwick. Her later life is debatable, the best theory being that she was huckled off to a nunnery, her husband, the earl, having died.

The rest is my intepretation and invention – even her age is a confusion of accounts; her marital status is based on the evidence of her turning her back on her husband in favour of the Bruce faction. That and her lack of children told me much about her personal relationship with Buchan. Her supposed love affair with Bruce is mentioned as a rumour in some sources, probably scurriously anti-Bruce propaganda; her love affair with Hal of Herdmanston is pure invention.

Kirkpatrick is another invention and, though I have based him on the real Sir Roger Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, I have deliberately made him a fictional figure, since the real one crops up, irritatingly, on the English side far too often to be the firm Bruce henchman I needed for the story. Until, that is, he appeared on the scene to complete the murder of the Red Comyn in Greyfriars Church. That killing persuaded me of his darkly murderous character, though he is invention, as is his counterpart, the vicious Malise Bellejambe. Another villain, Malenfaunt, is a legitimate family name, but the saturnine and dubious Sir Robert does not exist.

Hal of Herdmanston, of course, is also fiction – though the Sientclers (or St Clairs, St Clares, Sinclairs or any other variant spelling you care to dream up) are not. They and Roslin became renowned, not least for Rosslyn Chapel – but Herdmanston, though it existed, is now no more than a rickle of unmarked stones in a field in Lothian. The other Sientclers are real enough, save for the Auld Templar, who rode into my head at the start of this tale and was just too magnificent to wave on.

Why the Sientclers at all? Because I needed a powerful Lothian family who could be opposed to the dominant force in the area, Patrick of Dunbar, who, with his son, was a committed supporter of the English right up until the aftermath of Bannockburn. Why Lothian? Because that was the battleground of the Wars of Independence, more so than any other part of Scotland.

There are other lights, lesser or greater, who may or may not be fictional – I hope I have written this well enough to leave the reader guessing most of the time.

Lastly – Edward I was never known as Hammer of the Scots in his lifetime. That name was given to him in the sixteenth century when it was carved on the unsubtle square slab of his tomb. Yet I prefer to believe that it did not spring, full-formed at the time, but came from all the whispers that had gone before.

The start of this is purportedly written by an unknown monk in February of 1329, three months before Robert the Bruce is finally acknowledged as king of Scots by the Pope – and four months before his death.

Think of this as stumbling across a cache of such hidden monkish scribblings which, when read by a flickering tallow candle, reveal fragments of lives lost both in time and legend.

If any interpretations or omissions jar – blow out the light and accept my apologies.