Kingdom 01 - The Lion Wakes

by Robert Low

  ‘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 bec
ause 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.’