by Robyn Young
‘But if we are caught . . .?’
Donnell moved down the chamber, his eyes on something that shimmered up ahead. He had glimpsed it earlier, but had thought it the reflection of his candlelight on one of the many barrels or coffers. Now he was accustomed to the gloom he realised that the glow in his cupped hand was too feeble to penetrate that far. Whatever it was, it was standing in its own source of light.
Drawing closer he saw a stone plinth, like an altar, the top of which was covered with brocaded cloth. He could smell the smoky perfume of incense. The chanting of the canons was louder here, the psalms of the dawn office rippling down to him. Upon the plinth lay a slender, gem-encrusted crosier.
‘Praise be.’
Looking up, Donnell saw an aperture cut into the roof of the crypt, tunnelled through the rock right up to the floor of the choir. Beyond the bars of an iron grate he made out the pillars of the choir aisle stretching to the far ceiling, bathed in candlelight. The Staff of Jesus lay hidden at the cathedral’s heart, displayed only to the canons who worshipped above.
According to their abbey’s records, one hundred and sixty-four years had passed since St Malachy had wrested the staff from Niall mac Edan. In all the time since it had rested on this hallowed hill, the cathedral, the city and Ireland itself changing around it. If sentient the staff would have perceived the distant convulsions of war as the English had come, first as adventurers, then under the command of their kings. It would have smelled the fires of destruction and heard the marching footsteps of the conquerors as they took the east coast from Wexford to Dublin and Antrim; felt the hammer blows as the earth was quarried for stone to construct new towns and castles that were heaved up to dominate the country they now controlled. Would Malachy, their blessed founder, even recognise what had become of the land outside these walls? Donnell turned, his eyes shining in the candlelight, as his brothers emerged from the darkness he had left behind.
Murtough moved past him, slowing as he approached the plinth, his gaze going from the staff to the iron grate above. Cautious, but eager, he stepped forward and took hold of the crosier. One of the others opened a cloth bag for him to lower the relic into. With the staff secured and Donnell lighting the way, the men hastened through the crypt, leaving the psalms of the cathedral’s canons to fade behind them.
By a door in the east wall, a figure was waiting. His pale face came into view with the approaching candlelight. ‘Do you have it?’
Murtough nodded, his eyes on the prone form of the doorkeeper his companion was crouched beside. There was a smear of blood on the man’s forehead. His sword was still in the scabbard at his side. He had not been expecting the attack. Why would he, from men in the garb of a holy order? ‘Has he stirred?’
‘No, brother. I fear we wounded him gravely.’
‘We will pray for him and suffer penance for the sins we have committed tonight.’ Murtough’s voice was gruff. ‘When the staff is safe.’ He nodded to Donnell, who pinched out the candle flame as the door was opened into the crisp dark of a spring dawn.
Leaving the body in the crypt, the six men stole across the grass, threading silently between the wooden crosses and memorials of the saints, their black habits making them one with the great shadow cast by St Patrick’s cathedral.
Antrim, Ireland, 1300 AD
The horse plunged through the forest, snorting steam and kicking up clods of earth. All around the trees surged, scattering rainwater through the canopy. Snatches of white sky flickered between webs of brown and brittle leaves. November’s fury had flayed the branches and the valley floor was covered in a rustling shroud.
Robert leaned into the furious pace, the wooden pommel jarring his stomach as he compelled the animal on through the trees. Fleet, a dappled grey courser, was so responsive to the bit that the merest tug of the reins would compel him up and over fallen boughs or across the narrow cuts of streams. The horse was smaller, but far swifter than Hunter, the destrier he had left back in Scotland in the care of his friend and ally, James Stewart.
The hood of Robert’s green cloak had slipped back miles ago and rain drenched his cheeks. His ears were full of the rushing wind and his own fierce breaths. Exertion raised a metal taste in his mouth. A small branch whipped his face, but he barely felt it, all his attention on the backs of the twelve running-hounds as they veered up a steep bank, barking furiously. Robert pricked his spurs into Fleet’s sides, urging him to follow.
Cresting the rise, he put his horn to his lips and blew several rapid bursts, indicating the change of direction to the others, whom he’d left some distance behind. Through a break in the trees he glimpsed a bald sweep of headland rearing over the mouth of the wooded valley. Beyond, the sea filled the horizon, slate grey beneath a sky ragged with clouds. Across the expanse of water, visible as a faint, broken line, was the coast of Scotland. Robert felt his chest tighten at the sight of his homeland. Then, he was goading Fleet on.
Ahead, through the tangle of oak and rowan, he got his first glimpse of the quarry – a flash of light-coloured rump with a darker stripe down the tail. Determination shifted to anticipation as the blind pursuit delivered the prospect of reward. The hounds had picked up the trail of a good-sized fallow buck. It switched this way and that, trying to elude the dogs, but they were fixed on its scent now, blood-lust impelling them through their exhaustion. The deer was following the natural line of the valley, through which a river ran down to the sea. Robert blew the horn again. Answering calls echoed from different parts of the forest, some behind, some ahead. Without warning the buck turned and reared, hooves striking the air. It wasn’t as big as the great red harts they had hunted until the season ended, but its antlers would still maim, even kill any hound that got too close.
Robert pulled on the reins, bringing Fleet to a wheeling halt as he shouted commands to the circling dogs. Uathach, his faithful bitch, was at the front of the pack. Despite having recently given birth to a litter of six she was fearless in her ferocity, her sinewy body hunched forward as she snarled at the buck, which lowered its head and tossed its antlers this way and that, raking the soil. Robert glanced over his shoulder, hearing the mad ringing of horns as the rest of the hunting party converged on his position. He caught sight of his brothers, Edward and Thomas, at the front of the company. The buck veered away through the undergrowth, but it was too late. The huntsmen, lying in wait further along the valley, had let slip the mastiffs.
Robert spurred the courser on, pursuing the deer in its final, desperate flight as from the left hurtled two massive dogs, the spikes on their collars flashing like metal teeth. The buck raced on despite the danger. Robert admired its tenacity, even as the mastiffs emerged from the trees and threw themselves upon it, one leaping up and under to tear at its throat, the other raking its hind. The buck’s bellow became a roar of pain as it crashed into the mud, limbs thrashing. Bringing Fleet to a stop, Robert swung down from the saddle, shouting for the huntsmen. They came sprinting through the bushes, sticks at the ready to whip away the mastiffs who had pinned the buck, their jaws embedded in its flesh. The animal snorted deeply and shuddered. As Robert went forward through the line of hounds he slid the silver-ringed horn back into its silk baldric – both gifts from his foster-father. The buck’s legs were twitching. Robert nodded to the huntsmen, who beat the ground menacingly with their sticks, until the dogs released their hold, licking bloody slaver from their jaws.
As Robert crouched by the deer he saw himself reflected in its eyes: wet hair falling in dark hanks around a strong-boned face, green cloak hanging heavy from broad shoulders, sodden with rain. The buck snorted again, blood trickling from its nostrils and pumping from the mortal wound in its neck. Robert eased off his glove and placed a hand on one of the antlers. He ran his palm along the curves of velvet bone and remembered his grandfather telling him that some believed an animal caught in the hunt would imbue its captor with its properties. Words, long forgotten, sang in his mind.
From the hart power
and nobility; from the buck swiftness and grace.
From the wolf cunning and agility; from the hare the thrill of the race.
Drawing his broadsword, balanced by its ball-shaped pommel, he rose and placed the tip of the forty-two-inch blade over the buck’s fluttering heart. He pushed down hard.
The rest of the hunting party gathered, squires taking the reins of horses as the noblemen dismounted, calling their congratulations to him. Seeing Nes had arrived and was taking care of Fleet, Robert pulled a rag from the pouch at his belt and wiped the blood from his sword. The wood filled with the sound of frenzied barking as the running-hounds were allowed to take it in turns to tear at the buck’s neck – an incentive for the next hunt – before they were coupled by the varlets. Uathach was among them, panting steam into the frigid air. As the huntsmen surrounded the buck to prepare it for the unmaking, Robert’s foster-father came over.
Lord Donough’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he clamped a hand on Robert’s shoulder. ‘Well run, my son.’ He looked at the buck, nodding appreciatively. ‘He’ll make a fine feast for our table.’
Robert smiled, pleased by the old man’s admiration. As he stuffed the soiled cloth through his belt, Cormac, one of his foster-brothers, handed him a jewelled wine skin. Two years younger than Robert, at twenty-four, he was a mirror of Donough, without the crow’s feet or the white in his red hair, which he wore in the cúlán, the front thick and hanging in his eyes, the back shorn short.
Cormac grinned as Robert drank deep. ‘I thought you might leap off Fleet and sink your own teeth into the beast’s rump the haste you were in to catch it.’
Donough’s voice cut across him. ‘Mind your tongue, son. You speak to your elder and better.’
‘Elder anyway,’ Cormac murmured, as his father moved to oversee the huntsmen’s preparations.
‘Old enough at least to grow a man’s beard.’ Robert snatched out before his foster-brother could move and tugged hard at the whiskers Cormac was cultivating, causing him to pull away, protesting. Robert chuckled as the younger man sauntered off, rubbing his chin. Cormac reminded him so much of Edward. As Robert looked over at his brother, who was talking to Christopher Seton, his smile faded.
Fostered to Donough as children, as was the Gaelic custom, Robert and Edward had spent a year with the Irish lord and his sons, learning to ride and to fight, in training for knighthood. But while Cormac had retained his carefree insouciance, Edward’s spirit had been dampened in the time since. Robert had found the return to the Antrim estates after fifteen years had only served to accentuate the changes the war had wrought in his brother, and in him.
‘For the unmaking, sir.’
Robert turned as one of the huntsmen offered him a leather pouch in which were inserted five knives, each with a different blade, one for cutting through bone and sinew, another for flaying the hide, others for more delicate butchery. He gestured to his foster-father. ‘I’ll pass the honour to the master.’
Donough laughed contentedly and pushed up the sleeves of his shirt. Choosing a knife, he crouched with a wince and went to work on the buck, which had been turned on its back, antlers pushed into the mud to hold it steady. The hounds had quietened. Knowing their reward would be coming soon they watched the blood flow as the lord made the first cut.
As the men gathered to witness the unmaking, Robert’s gaze drifted over them. Edward was lounging against a tree, arms folded. Christopher Seton was following Donough’s brisk movements intently. Close by, Niall, at nineteen the youngest of Robert’s four brothers, rested an elbow on Thomas’s shoulders, the two so unlike one another it was impossible to guess they shared the same blood. While Niall had been blessed with the dark good looks and merry temperament of their mother, Thomas took after their father: bull-shouldered and beetle-browed. The varlets and the local men who had joined in the hunt stood apart from the nobles, watching their lord work. All their faces were flushed with exhilaration, every one of them satisfied by a hunt that had concluded with a clean kill and no injury to horse or hound. Every one, that was, but him.
The pursuit might have ended, but none of Robert’s impatience had diminished. It remained in his belly, hot and unsated. That broken coastline he had glimpsed during the chase filled his mind. Scotland taunted him with its proximity. It was a year since he resigned as guardian of the kingdom and seven months since he had come to Antrim. Seven months absent from the war that ravaged his country. Seven months away from his home and his daughter, chasing a ghost.
Robert glanced round at a snap of twigs to see Alexander Seton move up beside him. His muscular form was swathed in a hunting cloak and rainwater trickled steadily down his hard face. He appraised Robert with a knowing look, as if he’d read his thoughts.
‘Another good hunt.’
Robert nodded curtly, wary of the tone in his companion’s voice, which augured contention. He wasn’t wrong.
‘But I’ll say again, however good the sport, I’d rather my sword was bloodied for a greater purpose. How long do you plan to stay here?’
Robert didn’t respond, but the lord from East Lothian who had been in his company for over three years, fighting at his side, wasn’t to be dismissed so easily.
‘We should go home where we’re needed, Robert. This was a fool’s errand.’
Anger flared in Robert, the words pricking him with a truth he didn’t want to hear. ‘Not until I’ve exhausted every possibility. We haven’t heard from the monks at Bangor yet. It’s little over a week since Donough sent word to the abbey. I want to give them more time.’
‘More time?’ Alexander kept his voice low beneath the conversations going on around them. ‘The monks didn’t respond to the first message we sent three months ago and even if they do know where the staff is, why would they tell us? It’s clear from what we know – the theft in the night, the murder of the doorkeeper – that whoever took it from the cathedral intended for it to vanish without trace. The Earl of Ulster hasn’t found it despite the fact his knights have been scouring the length and breadth of Ireland. By God, if a man such as Richard de Burgh, with all his power and resources, cannot find this relic, how can we?’
Robert stared at the carcass of the buck as Donough pulled the hide back from its stomach, ripping skin from muscles. His pride fought against the sense in Alexander’s words. He had to believe he had been right to come here, no matter the doubt that had wormed its way in. ‘You can return to Scotland. I won’t stop you. But I’m staying.’
‘I have nothing to return to. I gave up everything to join you and your cause. We both did.’ Alexander stared across the gathering at his cousin. ‘Longshanks would have Christopher and me clapped in irons the moment either of us set foot in our lands.’
Robert looked over at Christopher Seton. The Yorkshireman, whom he’d knighted two years earlier, was talking animatedly to Edward and Niall. ‘Your lands may yet be won. We took back a great deal of territory before we left and James Stewart and the others will have continued the fight in our absence.’
‘Territory will mean nothing if King Edward returns in strength. His last campaign almost annihilated us. We lost ten thousand men on the field at Falkirk. With William Wallace in France and you here, who will stand against the English? Tell me, are you content to leave the fate of our kingdom in the hands of a man like John Comyn?’
Robert’s jaw tightened. The months absent from Scotland had not dulled his hostility towards his enemy. If anything, time had heightened it, his mind darkened by the knowledge that the longer he stayed away the more Comyn would consolidate his own position.
Two years ago, almost to the day, after William Wallace resigned as guardian of Scotland, Robert and John Comyn, the same age and heirs to the fortunes of their families, had been elected in his place. Together they had governed the king-less, war-torn realm, presiding over the fractured community of earls, lords, knights and peasants who sought an end to Edward Longshanks’ English dominion. It had not been an easy alliance.
There was enmity enough between the two men, but worse still was the bitterness between their families. Poisoned by an act of betrayal decades earlier that bad blood had seeped through the years since, flowing from father to son.
In invoking Comyn, Alexander Seton played a clever move. But he missed the fundamental point. When Robert left, his place as guardian had been taken by William Lamberton, but even the appointment of the formidable Bishop of St Andrews wouldn’t have stopped Comyn bolstering his support among the men of the realm. In order to restore his own authority in Scotland, Robert knew he had to return with something that could prove his greater worth, something that could win them their freedom. John Comyn was just another reason he could not return without the prize he sought: St Malachy’s staff.
‘You told us our country needed a new king,’ Alexander continued gruffly, mistaking Robert’s silence for indifference. ‘One who would defend our liberties, where John Balliol failed. You told us you would be that king.’
Now, Robert turned to him. The memory of the words he had spoken in the courtyard of Turnberry Castle three years ago – the year he broke his oath of fealty to King Edward to fight alongside William Wallace – was still vivid. He had addressed his men back then with fire in his heart, promising to defend their freedom and pledging to be their king. Not only did his veins flow with the royal blood of the house of Canmore, but his grandfather had been named heir presumptive by Alexander II. Before his death, the old man had passed that claim to him and Robert had sworn to uphold it, no matter the pretenders who sat upon the throne in defiance of the Bruce family’s right.
His voice strengthened. ‘And I will be.’
Chapter 2
The hunting party made their way across the fields in the deepening gloom. The huntsman carried the buck’s severed head, trailing a bright line of blood that had summoned the crows which circled in their wake. After the hounds had been given their reward the rest of the carcass had been dismembered, the best bits of venison going to Lord Donough for his table, the rest to the men who had participated in the chase. Even the local lads who jogged alongside the mounted nobles had leaf-wrapped parcels of meat and bone to take home to their families. Donough always saw that everyone was fed.
