by Robert Low
It had been a harsh judgement on a victory which had cost so much blood; Hal mentioned it now for the enjoyment of seeing Kirkpatrick wince at the memory of his attempts to hush her as politely as could be managed.
In the end, only Dog Boy had soothed Isabel. He had moved up from below the salt, seeing her distress from down the length of the table, and brought his new wife, the smiling Bet’s Meggy, to be reminded to her. They had fallen at once to talk of Bet’s Meggy’s mother, whom Isabel had known; Hal had nodded his thanks and relief to Dog Boy, marvelling at what the years had created: a tall, dark copy of Sir James Douglas in the livery of a royal houndsman, with his round-eyed son taking care of his wee sister down at the end of the feast table and trying to miss nothing of this glorious night.
Hal had been sorry to leave them, if nothing else at court.
‘How is your lady?’ Kirkpatrick asked with a lopsided smile, breaking Hal’s reverie. He was leaning back, at ease and with one foot carelessly thrown over the arm of his seat, dangling and bobbing to some unheard music; his boots smoked gently from the heat of the fire.
‘Fine as the sun on shiny water,’ Hal answered and Kirkpatrick heard the uncertainty, cocking an eyebrow.
‘She talks to God a wee bit more than she did,’ Hal added, almost defiantly, and Kirkpatrick nodded as if he had known that all along. He had not and the knowledge of it made him need to hide his frown; there was nothing worse, in his opinion, than a good woman gone to piety. A cage would do that, all the same, and he said as much.
‘These surroundings are safer and more of a comfort,’ he added, waving his cup to encompass Herdmanston and all in it. ‘You have restored a deal of it.’
The smell of cut wood and stone dust permeated the air and every time he breathed it in Hal was reminded of Sim, who had worked so hard before to restore a burned-out Herdmanston. The absence of that great soul was still an unbalmed sore.
‘There is a roof over us,’ he said, to chase away the memory, ‘but the floor above that is unfinished, while the top still opens to the sky. And the outbuildings are being redone in stone – harder to tear them down.’
Kirkpatrick nodded soberly at this pointed reminder that war still lurked, an unseen beast just beyond the hill, capable, he knew, of sweeping back and destroying all this and his own place at Closeburn, for all the victory at Bannock’s burn.
‘Must have cost a fair sum,’ he added, innocent as a nun’s headsquare. ‘The King is convinced that you achieved it with the rents from his gift of Cessford.’
Hal stuck his nose in his cup and said nothing. The barony of Cessford was the Bruce reward to Herdmanston for his service, a poisoned chalice of burned-out manor and ruined fields whose folk needed as much help as Herdmanston or they, too, would starve.
‘Or using rents from Lady Isabel’s wee holding at Balmullo, which is hers by right,’ Kirkpatrick added gently, swinging his foot still and seeming to take great interest in it. ‘Of course, that is also long burned out by a wrathful Buchan when he lived. So both it and Cessford needs money more than sends it.’
‘God provides,’ Hal replied carefully and Kirkpatrick laughed softly.
‘He does, I am sure of it.’
‘Your point, Kirkpatrick?’
Hal’s voice was sharp as the spice in the lees of Kirkpatrick’s cup and, before he could reply, another voice cut across.
‘His point concerns God’s provision.’
Isabel came the last few steps up to the fire, having entered the hall unheard and unseen. She wore soft wool in a colour of green which perfectly set off her autumn bracken hair, left daringly loose under a simple white kertch. Kirkpatrick started to his feet for a polite bow and she graciously waived the honour.
‘The King himself sends his good wishes,’ Kirkpatrick said, resuming his old position. ‘He asks if you would attend the court and himself with your expertise and grace, though he does not insist on it.’
‘Nicely put, Kirkpatrick,’ Isabel answered. ‘And well delivered. I will not, of course, attend the King but I will give you an ointment he can physick his face with. There is no balm I can offer for him and his Queen – he will have to find that cure for himself. You may tell him that.’
Kirkpatrick managed a wan smile. The Queen, newly returned with the Bruce sister and his daughter, Marjorie, had swept into a court unused to her and a king who had never known what to do with the luscious young Elizabeth de Burgh.
Obsessed with the imperative for a legitimate heir, he had thought to put her at her ease regarding what he considered the most important trouble to their marriage – the rumour of his leprosy, whose very breath could kill. So he had brought out the women he had sought comfort from in the Queen’s years of captivity, adding a dash of wee bastards like a sprinkle of bile to it.
It was designed to put the newly arrived Queen at ease, since it showed that the women the King had been ploughing – and the offspring circulating, all self-aware and defiant – were fine and healthy and that rumours of leprosy were just that.
Of course the women, younger by far and sweeter and more proud, had rotted the moment with their own display and Isabel, there at Hal’s side for the Christ’s Mass feast, had shaken her head in sorrow and muttered: ‘Fenêtre d’enfer.’
Window of Hell was apt enough, Hal thought, to describe the sewn-into dresses, slit daringly up to the thigh, fox tails hanging underneath at the back so that the strained fabric did not fold into the crack of their buttocks, front cut to the navel, so tight on the hips and groin, to show off their little fecund round bellies, that folk called them mumble-cut because ‘you can see their coney-lips move, but you cannot hear what they say’.
Isabel knew then, from the purse-mouthed, fake-gracious smile on the Queen’s face, that the court was no place to be from now on; Elizabeth would scourge the mistresses from it, for she was no longer the naïve girl Bruce had known and her English captivity had robbed her of what sweetness she’d had and replaced it with intrigue.
Kirkpatrick watched Isabel fold into composure on a stool brought by Mintie, hands arranged neatly in her lap, fur-trimmed gown draped round her shoulders against the draught. No fenêtre d’enfer here, Kirkpatrick thought, and a wheen of years on her – but still a woman to take your breath away.
‘So,’ she declared eventually, sweet as new honey. ‘You did not come here with the King’s wishes or requests, for he made the same at Edinburgh and had the same answer. So why are you here?’
Kirkpatrick nodded slowly and took a deep breath, as if about to plunge under cold water.
‘God’s provision,’ he answered, echoing Hal’s earlier answer and seeing the Lothian lord’s bewildered frown.
‘A provision,’ Isabel added, lowering her voice, ‘made possible by His Apostles. Is that not why you are here, Black Roger?’
That name, so redolent of the dark nature of the man, coupled to the conjuration of the Apostles, chilled the air and made the wine lees even more bitter. Kirkpatrick’s foot stopped swinging and Hal lost the frown as the realization washed him.
‘The King’, Kirkpatrick said slowly, ‘was curious as to why Hal went to Glaissery with twenty armed men. He thought it overly solicitous of some wee Order relics, but was not unduly worried when I told him the history of de Bissot’s sword. Which is why you had that blade gift from him. He values loyalty and friendship these days, does King Robert.’
‘You ken different, of course,’ Isabel answered flatly.
‘The Kingdom is not yet cleared of trailbaston and worse,’ Kirkpatrick answered. ‘They would have use for some expensive wee gems on the way up to Glaissery, more so for the money those baubles fetched and which was brought back to pay for all this reordering.’
Hal was silent. He had hoped that the last remnants of the Templars, now simply Benedictines in the wilds of the north, would have kept a close mouth on the matter. He had hoped that bringing two of the fat rubies known as the Apostles to them, under the guise of returning Ros
sal de Bissot’s Templar blade – and the Beauseant banner – to its final rest, would be a shrewd move, since they had contacts still who could get a good price for them, even allowing for a donation to their wee church. He had not liked the secrecy, but bowed to Isabel’s sense when she pointed out that the gems had once graced a holy relic and a king need not be reminded of it.
The two Apostles were from six Isabel had acquired, from Wallace himself no less. Originally, they had formed part of the cross on the reliquary that held the Holy Rood, taken south by Longshanks and subsequently stolen from his Minster treasury. Twelve gems had formed the reliquary cross, pigeon-egg rubies so perfectly matched and red it was said each bore the blood of a different Disciple.
‘I had six,’ Isabel said suddenly. ‘A gift from Wallace, who had them from his kin, Jop. In turn, he had them as his share of the loot for helping in robbing the Minster. He thought to sell them to Will Wallace, not being able to rid himself of them and thinking of all the loot Wallace must have accumulated.’
‘And Will simply took them, for the Cause,’ Kirkpatrick added and chuckled, shaking his head admiringly. ‘I was there when Jop said this.’
‘I recall it well – you knifed him,’ Hal reminded him and Kirkpatrick heaved a sigh and shrugged.
‘Aye, well,’ Kirkpatrick said slowly. ‘If you need to sell more, you would be best to do it through me. I want nothing from it – but as long as I remain in the King’s service, your secret is safe.’
‘Why would you do this?’ Hal demanded and Kirkpatrick shifted a little in his seat and waved a dismissive hand.
‘For the same reason I helped free your lady. I owed both you and she thanks and service.’
For seven years of my life, Hal thought viciously, but let the bad air of it hiss away, so that he sagged with relief and a strange kind of freedom.
‘With this I am quit of it,’ Kirkpatrick added and Hal saw that the thing mattered to him, too.
‘Is the King so fashed about the Rood jewels?’
Isabel’s question slashed Kirkpatrick’s eyes away from Hal; he swung round to sit properly in the chair, as if to concentrate on the answer.
‘It is long since the relic was lost and the Rood itself is returned, kisted up in a new reliquary – if you believe that it is the true one.’
‘It has been longer still since that Minster theft,’ Isabel went on into Kirkpatrick’s stone stare. ‘Wee baubles of the Plantagenet treasure pop up over all the lands abroad and few bother about it – not least the present Edward. If he does not share the wrath his father had for having been so robbed, why would King Robert?’
Kirkpatrick stayed silent and Isabel, bland as old porage, studied her hands for a moment, and then stared Kirkpatrick in the face.
‘Their worth, perhaps? It is an expensive business, raising a new army for what he expects will come in the spring. And the famine bites. There are wee merchants stirring from Flanders and elsewhere thanks to the victory at Stirling, but mayhap trade is too slow for our king’s liking.
‘Besides,’ she added with a wry twist of smile, ‘Robert was never good with siller – liked getting it, certes, but could never keep it long.’
Hal, blinking, looked at Isabel, who was locked in a stare with Kirkpatrick so intense he swore he could see blue sparks.
‘The King’, Kirkpatrick answered softly, ‘knows nothing. He will remain in that state of bliss if I have my way – but wee monks in Glaissery tell me matters because they wish it to reach the ears of the King, for his safety and concern.’
Of course they would, Hal thought miserably. The wee monks of Glaissery, trying hard to pretend they never belonged to the Poor Knights, owe the Bruce everything they have in this kingdom. So they would tell him, through Kirkpatrick, his ferret of secrets, his doer of black deeds in the Royal Cause.
‘Let me guess why Robert would care if he knew,’ Isabel went on softly. ‘Not because those gemstones are from the lost relic of the Holy Rood, nor because they are worth siller. There are four Apostles remaining with me now that two are sold. There were six. Wallace’s six, which he had from Jop. The other six went to Lamprecht. Folk think they were taken by the Order when they killed him and then recovered by the English later …
‘But not all six,’ she added, gently vicious as the kiss of a razor on a cheek. ‘Five only came from Lamprecht, for the sixth had been given away …’
‘To Bruce.’
Hal’s almost-shout snapped the stares. He remembered the day, the ruby thumbed into a cheap loaf by Lamprecht as his provenance for inveigling his way into Bruce’s confidence. It had been a plot, of course, only discovered later and at risk of their lives.
‘Bruce had the sixth. He kept it.’
Kirkpatrick seemed to tip a little, like a bag of grain with a leaking hole. He looked at Hal and smiled wanly.
‘You remember it. Of course you would.’
‘That Apostle is the only one whose name I know,’ Isabel said, almost in a whisper. ‘It is the only one Longshanks ever got back – delivered to him when it was plucked from Wallace’s scrip, together with his safe conduct from the King of France. The latter ignored as the former never could be.’
Judas.
That ruby made sure Wallace would never be forgiven at the last after he had been betrayed to the English and put on trial – Longshanks might have been persuaded to clemency for a repentant rebel, but never for a Minster thief. And it had to have been put there by Kirkpatrick, given to him by Bruce. A rich, unfortunate gift or a cynical betrayal?
Hal stared at Kirkpatrick, the sick horror of it swamping him as he looked from the man to Isabel and realized that she had known of it for a longer time. Kirkpatrick, too, saw it all stripped bare, breathed in deeply enough to raise his shoulders, set the cup down gently and got stiffly to his feet.
‘Well, there you have it,’ he said. ‘If you wish my help, you need only ask. I had better take these old bones back to Roslin. Then on to Edinburgh – or Perth if I am unlucky and have missed the court entire.’
‘Did he know what he did when he ordered the gem into Will’s scrip?’
Hal’s hoarse question flapped in like a red kite on a corpse and Kirkpatrick paused briefly in wrapping himself back in his woollens, not even looking at Hal.
‘Not what you should ask,’ he replied in a voice rasped as a hidden reef. ‘Ever.’
Hal and Isabel looked at each other and felt the old fear close on them like a claw. If it was true and the King suspected someone knew of it … Out of one cauldron into the fire, it seemed a great weariness engulfed Hal and he almost staggered under the weight of it. He did not want to believe it of the Bruce, but neither could he discount the possibility – the man had it in him to commit any sin for the furtherance of his destiny.
Kirkpatrick saw Hal’s horror and felt it, a deep pang as if it had just happened to himself.
‘As long as you deal the stones through me, you are safe,’ he said. ‘After that, let them sink into legend and oblivion. The King does not know anything of the Apostle stones now and need not ever be remembered of them, to his undoubted troubling. Besides, he has enough to concern him in the getting of an heir and mending at least part of the life between himself and his queen.’
He turned and smiled at them both.
‘He would give crown, Kingdom and all for a lick of what you pair possess,’ he added and that stunned them both to silence until he had reached the yett, the miserable Rauf trailing coldly in his wake.
‘Stay well,’ Kirkpatrick said at the door, pulling on his gauntlets as Horse Pyntle led their mounts to the foot of the stairs. ‘I will dance at your wedding.’
Hal watched him go, even gave the lie of a cheerful wave. There never was an end to it, he thought, never a happy after. For all their loving life together, he and Isabel had lived in the shadow of a vengeful Earl of Buchan and Badenoch and red war.
Now, just as it seemed they could walk to a wedding in a sunlit meadow with no
shadows at all, there was the old thundercloud, black and fresh with menace, rimmed with uneasy crowns and bloated with a war that did not seem sated with slaughter and dubious victory at Stirling.
Under it was a king, whose every act to preserve the Kingdom could be no sin, and the faithful dark-hearted hound he sent to commit it was the dog Hal now had to trust to keep them safe in a world where only the sword and the tower could be truly relied on.
‘O Lord, Heavenly Father,’ Isabel murmured into the seeping cold from the open door, ‘let Your angels watch over Your servants that they may reach their destination in safety, that no enemy may attack them on the road, nor evil overcome them. Protect them from fast rivers, thieves, wild beasts – and troubled kings.’
‘Amen,’ Hal answered vehemently, sure that her prayer was not simply one for Kirkpatrick and Rauf’s safe journey.
The cold swept in the yett; Hal put his arm round Isabel like a fortress and led her into the thickness of Herdmanston’s walls.
‘Parcy,’ he called out over his shoulder. ‘Double bar the door.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The problems of Scotland in 1297 are not strangers to most of the Scots of the twenty-first century, not to the ones who voted in the SNP for five more years in 2011, nor those who may well vote us out of the Union some time within that span.
Certainly not to all those with an enormous chip on their shoulder, born out of a strong sense of grievance and a casual, institutionalized racism on both sides.
But that has always been the problem with Scots – dominated by England, Scotland has resented, struggled, died, bristled impotently at being so treated and retained a legacy of striving for freedom, however nebulous the chance or the reality.
The memories run deep. On one glorious day in the year this book is set, the Scots won a great victory against all the odds, cocked two fingers at English ambitions – and, of course, only managed to annoy its more powerful neighbour, who recovered sufficiently to make the Kingdom suffer for it for the next several hundred years.
