by Robert Low
That was news – the fall of Stirling had been imminent for some time, but the sudden capitulation was a shock, all the same. And, thought Hal wryly, Bruce announces it and so links himself with the glory.
No-one spoke for a moment, then the Auld Templar shifted.
‘He had a mother living, and brothers,’ he said. Bruce looked bemused and the Auld Templar turned his long-moustached wail of a face on him, like black light.
‘Fitzralph,’ Hal added and Bruce, seeing he was being corrected, thrust out his bottom lip; he had been expecting beams of approval and effusive thanks and been rapped across the knuckles instead, but he managed a smiling face on matters.
‘You are over-solicitous of a wee knight’s death,’ he countered, ‘brave though it might have been. There is more at stake than this – your own grandson.’
‘God is gracious and merciful,’ the Auld Templar growled. ‘He is also watching.’
Bruce acknowledged the fact with a display of crossing himself, though his face was a stone.
‘The exchange will be conducted at Hexham. I will take Carrick men and Fitzwarin,’ Bruce went on, ‘once we have all the writs we need to traverse the country peacefully. Sir Hal – it would be good of you to join us… I am sure the young Henry will be glad to see a kinsman.’
Hal looked at the impassive Kirkpatrick, then to the Auld Templar and finally to Bruce. It was clear the Auld Templar was not up to the travel and that Bruce knew it. Proposing Hal into his retinue for the affair was a considerable honour, though one Hal could have done without.
He managed to stumble out enough thanks to draw the Carrick lip in and Bruce gathered his dignity round him like a cloak then left, trailing Kirkpatrick in his wake.
There was a long pause while the Auld Templar looked mournfully at Hal and seemed about to speak. After working his mouth like a fish for a moment or two, he suddenly clamped it shut, nodded brusque thanks and left.
There was silence afterwards, then Wallace sighed and rubbed his beard.
‘Young Bruce means well,’ he said, shooting a sideways look at Hal, ‘though he cannot help but seek some advantage from it.’
‘Which is?’ Hal asked, still brooding about Malise Bellejambe and how unassailable he seemed to be.
‘Leverage with yourself,’ Wallace replied and Hal blinked at that. For what end?
Wallace shrugged when it was put to him.
‘You will ken by and by. He will not be backward in coming forward on it. He will find something in exchange for him using Fitzwarin to ransom yer kinsman. Besides -he is stinging over his own father, who was removed from command of Carlisle because of his son’s antics. Not to be trusted now, it seems. So Bruce The Elder has gone off with his face trippin’ him and the young Bruce is facing the prospect of his Comyn rivals triumphant and does not care for it.’
He stopped and shook his head in weary, wry admiration.
‘Christ’s Bones,’ he added, ‘the Bruces have a mountain of prideful huff at their disposal, have they not?’
‘I thought Fitzwarin was yours to dispose,’ Hal responded. ‘Since it is yourself who is Guardian. Him and Sir Marmaduke Thweng both belong to the Kingdom and so to you.’
Wallace chuckled grimly, a rumble of sound Hal swore he could feel through his feet.
‘Bruce takes pleasure in removing Sir Marmaduke to spend the Christ’s Mass with himself; keeps me in my place, ye ken. Reminds me that I am, for all the new dubbing, not anythin’ like a nobile, no gentilhomme with lands north and south. Like Sir Marmaduke, who is Bruce kin by marriage. So I am constrained to give him to the care of the Bruce, which infuriates the Comyn.’
He broke off and worried his beard with one hand, almost thinking aloud rather than speaking directly to Hal.
‘In turn, mark ye, I have ordered that Sir Marmaduke will be ransomed for Comyn’s cousin, Sir John de Mowbray, instead of being set ransom-free as Bruce wishes – and that is only to put the Earl of Carrick in his place, for I have a strong regard for yon Sir Marmaduke.’
He twisted his beard and matched it with a wry smile.
‘Ye see the glaur I have to step through? So Fitzwarin’s exchange is fine by me, even if the bold Bruce takes credit for it.’
‘Ye are Guardian of Scotland,’ Hal answered, astonished and Wallace’s smile was bitter.
‘Aye. As I was pointing out when ye came in – few of the nobiles like the idea. Christ’s Wounds, the Steward is the ox pulling this along and you heard him at Cambuskenneth, the night afore that melee? How did it go? “A landless jurrocks with a strong arm and no idea of what to do with it until yer betters tell ye” if I recall. Spat from a face like a bag of blood.’
He stopped and sighed.
‘I need Bruce and I need Comyn both. It was fine when Moray stood at my shoulder. Sir Andrew was their first choice and, by Christ’s Wounds I wish he had lived, for I would rather it were him here and me in the grave.’
His vehemence and clear pain at Moray’s loss stunned Hal to silence and it stretched like a shadow at sunset, to the point of painful. Then Wallace broke it with a growl that cleared his throat.
‘Go to Hexham, get yer kin hame and then forget this business entire,’ he said in a sudden, savage hiss.
‘The Savoyard…’ Hal began.
‘He is dead or fled abroad, it seems to me. Yet wee Bisset, God rest his soul, was red murdered and put to some hard questioning first. If it was Malise Bellejambe, as we all suspect, then Buchan is on the track of matters.’
‘So – all this footering after the Savoyard has gone for nothing,’ Hal pointed out bitterly.
‘It may be no more than another red murder for profit, by trailbaston long vanished. Or it may be Bruce’s men. Or Red John, or the Earl of Buchan, or even Sir William The Hardy afore he was carted away to the Tower,’ Wallace answered moodily.
‘The community of the realm is a snakepit of plots, as I am findin’ – and even Bishops are not abune poking their nebs in. My money is on Bruce, though the why of it eludes me yet – and probably will forever now. Best ye keep away from it, like me.’
He stopped and stared into the middle distance.
‘Anyway – Longshanks is coming and, win or lose, everything will be birled in the air by that.’
The name itself seemed to chill the air. Longshanks was coming and when he reached the north, he would, for certes, raise the Dragon Banner and declare no quarter. Everything, as Wallace said, would be birled in the air. Including the Countess.
‘Isabel,’ Hal murmured and suddenly found the great grave-shroud face of Wallace close to his own.
‘That especial you should forget,’ the Guardian declared firmly. ‘Bad enough ye should be trailing after another man’s wife like a wee terrier humpin’ a leg – but that it should be the Earl of Buchan’s wife is a writ for ruin. Nor does he need Malise Bellejambe to commit his next red murder on you, for there are laws and rights that will break you just as readily.’
‘There is him, too,’ Hal said, recovering himself and feeling a cold slide into him, as if steel had been thrust into his belly. ‘If I was to tak’ tent with everything else ye say, I would not forget the business of Malise Bellejambe.’
Wallace sighed and waved a dismissive hand.
‘Weel, I have done my duty,’ he said, ‘and warned you, both as the Law of the Kingdom and as a friend.’
‘The Law?’ Hal repeated and glanced sideways, to the great sheathed sword beside Wallace’s chair. Wallace flushed; the tale of Cressingham’s flaying had whirled like a spark, become an ember, then a fire that said Wallace now used a strip of the dead Treasurer’s flesh as a baldric – other strips had been dispensed all over Scotland. The fact that Wallace never denied it told a deal about how the Kingdom was changing him, even as he changed the kingdom.
He paused and then grimed a weary, slack smile across his bearded face.
‘Get ye gone. Do what ye must and I will likewise. It is better that ye forget the business o
f the Savoyard, but I jalouse that your neb is longer than your sense. So, if ye find the wee Savoyard and the secret he holds, I trust ye will let me ken it. Mark me – if this places a rope on yer neck for breaking the law of the land, I will kinch it tight myself.’
Hal saw the gaunt pain behind his eyes at that and nodded, then managed a smile as he turned to leave.
‘Fine turn, this,’ he said, grinning bleakly over his shoulder, ‘when a brigand like yourself becomes the Kingdom’s Sheriff.’
Spital of St Bartholomew, Berwick
Feast of St Athernaise the Mute of Fife, December 1297
The wind battered on the walls like a sullen child on a locked door, the chill haar-breath of it guttering the candles so that shadows swung wildly. The two men stood by the pallet bed and listened to the man thrash and groan.
‘Stone,’ he said. ‘Stone.’
‘He has been saying that since you brought him in,’ the priest said, almost accusingly. He had a square face with a truculent, stubbled chin and eyes that seemed as black and deep as catacombs.
The wool merchant did not like to meet those eyes, but he did it anyway, with as blue-eyed and smiling a stare as he could manage, for he needed this priest, this place.
‘He is a carver of stones,’ the merchant answered blandly, ‘for the church at Scone. An artist. Scarce a surprise that it should be in his fevered mind a little.’
‘A little? He has been repeating it more thoroughly than any catechism.’
‘A facet of his illness,’ the merchant soothed, then frowned. ‘What exactly is wrong with him?’
The priest sighed, lifted the crusie higher, so that the flame danced wildly.
‘Best ask what is not,’ he replied, then looked squarely at the merchant.
‘I do not ask how you came by him, Master Symoen. I ken you brought him here because of the nature of his condition, but there are worse matters than leprosy and I have to ask you to remove him.’
Symoen stroked his neat beard, trying to cover his alarm. The arrival of a half-babbling Manon de Faucigny, smelling like a dog’s arse and clearly diseased, had been shock enough, but this was… disturbing.
‘Worse than leprosy?’ he said and the priest laughed to himself as he saw the merchant put a hand to his mouth and step back a pace. He had seen it all in his years serving the Spital of St Bartholomew, which even the ravaging English had avoided – the lipless, noseless, rotting, foul souls who pitched up at the leper hospital were old clothes and porridge to the likes of Brother John.
Yet this Savoyard had everything. His blood was viscous, hot, greasy and tasted of too much salt. He had lacerations, ulcerations, abscesses, skin affections, partial paralysis, at least four festering bites from vermin and, almost certainly, a fever from one or more agues, each capable of killing him on its own.
‘And intestical worms,’ Brother John finished, seeing the wool merchant’s eyes widen until his brows were in his hairline.
‘Worms,’ Symoen repeated, hearing the dull clank of the word in his head, like a cracked bell. ‘Intestical.’
Manon was his nephew… he’d had hopes for the boy.
‘I can do little,’ Brother John said. ‘All I do here is mop brows and pick up the bits that drop off.’
Symoen stared at the priest, who broadened his lips in a smile.
‘A jest,’ he said pointedly, but saw that Master Symoen was not laughing. Still, the man was a considerable patron of St Bartholomew’s, so Brother John did what he knew he must. He offered every help.
‘I will do what I can,’ he said slowly. ‘But it is as if he opened the gates of Hell and guddled inside it. Every sin has been visited on him.’
The wool merchant nodded, licking his lips and breathing through his fingers, while the gaunt, sheened face of Manon swung wildly on the yellowed pillow.
‘Oh Dayspring, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice; come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,’ Brother John intoned, and Master Symoen, in a daze, descended to his knees and clasped his hands, grateful not to be looking at the tortured face of his nephew.
‘Oh King of the Kingdoms and their Desire; the Cornerstone who makest both one: Come and save mankind, whom thou formedst of clay. Come, Oh Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all kingdomss and their Salvation: Come and save us, Oh Lord our God.’
‘Stone,’ babbled Manon. ‘Stone.’
Nunnery of Saint Leonard, Berwick
Vigil of the Nativity, December 24, 1297
The woman with the cross sat at the head of the table, where the head man would usually sit; many other women, in similar grey clothes, sat around her. Isabel had seen brides of Christ before, though not in their setting and was shocked at the removal of headcovers, the shrieking laughter, the splashes of wine.
The woman who had brought her in saw her face and laughed as the woman with the cross got up and came to Isabel, dragging her from the room by an elbow. The door was closed on the gull-chatter.
‘You were instructed to take her to my quarters,’ the woman with the cross snapped at Isabel’s guardian, who gave back a sullen pout. The sharp crack of palm on cheek made Isabel leap and her grey guardian reeled back and fell, her headcover awry; she cowered on the flagstones, whimpering and holding her face.
‘Obey,’ the woman with the cross said, soft and sibilant, then turned to Isabel. If she strikes me, Isabel thought, I will rip the face from her.
The woman saw the fire in those eyes and smiled at it. Not for long, lady, she thought viciously.
‘I am Anna, Prioress of Saint Leonard’s,’ she said. ‘You will be taken to my quarters and made comfortable.’
The other nun climbed to her feet, nursing her face with one hand.
‘This way, mistress,’ she said numbly and Anna’s voice was a lash.
‘Countess. She is a countess, you dolt.’
The nun cringed and bobbed apologies, then scuttled off so fast that Isabel had to walk swiftly to keep up, through a bewilder of barely lit stone corridors sparkling with cold rime.
The nun led her through a door into an astonishment. Isabel stared at the fine hangings, the clean rushes, the benches, chairs and chests, the fine bed – and the fire. This was the warm room of a great lady, not a nun, even a Prioress.
‘Countess,’ the nun said in a dead voice and Isabel felt some pity then.
‘That was a hard blow,’ she said and the nun looked bitter as a thwarted rat, then to the left, then right. Finally, she moved to the wall, holding the light high and, satisfied, turned back to Isabel.
‘This place,’ she said in a whisper so soft Isabel could barely hear it, ‘is cursed.’
The light made mad shadows dance on her face as she indicated the wall she had just peered at.
‘There is a hidden way to watch,’ the nun said. ‘He likes it. All the women here are his.’
Isabel felt a sudden deadening sickness, for she knew the ‘he’ the nun spoke of, had endured the company of him since he had plucked her from the burning bridge at Stirling. A demon she had seen him as then and though sense and better light had revealed him to be a dark, saturnine man, that first impression was not far from the truth.
‘Sir Robert Malenfaunt,’ she said and saw the nun shiver, so that tallow from the candle spilled down on to the back of her hand; she never flinched.
‘All the women are for his pleasure,’ she declared suddenly and half-sobbed. ‘They are brought here and never allowed to leave.’
Isabel remembered the griming eyes of Malenfaunt, surveying her in better light. They had lit like balefires when he learned who she was and she had disliked him from that point, even though he had given her no cause and treated her with scrupulous politeness.
She watched the nun scurry out into the dark and sat on a bench while the tallow sputtered. She tried not to be beaten by the crush of loneliness, the realisation that she would go from here but only back to Buchan. She tried not to think of Br
uce and failed, so that the added weight of that sagged her head limply on her neck. She tried not to cry and failed.
Then, to her own surprise, she thought of Hal of Herdmanston.
In a chamber off the main refectory of the nunnery, the Prioress listened to her charges laugh in wild shrieks, flamed by the wine brought by their benefactor, who stood half in shadow, half in the blood of the sconce light.
‘Keep her fed, wined and secure,’ Sir Robert Malenfaunt declared. ‘And away from those harpies.’
‘Special, is she?’ sneered the Prioress and Malenfaunt smiled.
‘A Countess. From Scotland, admittedly, but an important one. From a powerful family in her own right and married into another.’
He leaned forward, so that his sharp, shadowed blade of a face cut close to her own.
‘Special, as you say. Worth her weight in shilling, so keep her fattened and untouched.’
He took her chin in cruel fingers then.
‘Untouched,’ he repeated. ‘I want none of your charges to put their grimy fingers near that quim.’
She pulled away from him, though her heart thundered, even as he peeled off her headcover and ran his hands over her stubbled scalp; it excited him, that style, so she kept it close-cropped for that reason. Fear and lust made her breath shorten to gasps and she knew he would bend her over the only chair in the room, throw her grey habit up and over her head and take her, grunting and panting like a dog. He did it each Christ’s Mass, to as many of the nuns as his strength and fortified wine would allow.
She was at once repelled and frantic for it.
Herdmanston, East Lothian
Ash Wednesday, March 1298
Hal watched the plough from the roof of the square block of Herdmanston, feeling the smear of ash on his forehead itch. He watched it with a warmth that had only partly to do with the sun, was as happy as any man can be on the first day of Lent, seeing his fields being turned back like bedcovers.
The ploughman was Will Elliot’s da, his two brothers darting in and out to heel exposed worms back into the ground, or watching for the twitch of an ox tail that showed dung was coming, so the brace could be brought to a halt, to dump their precious cargo into the furrow.
