The Kingdom Series – The Lion at Bay

by Robert Low

  ‘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 a
s 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.’