The days slid away, thunder-brassy and hot and still she did not come. Tansy’s Dan and Mouse lugged four of Herdmanston’s fat porkers to the barmkin green and cut their throats.
Then they, Ill-Made Jock, Dirleton Will, Sore Davey and others skinned and jointed them, cramming them into cauldrons for boiling while the grass grew greasy and red; Dog Boy whipped up a pig’s head and danced with it, rushing at the young bairns and roaring while they ran away with squeals of delight.
Tansy’s Dan strung entrails round him like ribbons and joined in, dancing barefoot with the Dog Boy on the blood-soaked grass, the pair of them shrieking with laughter, gore splashing them to the knees. For a time, the lust of it leaped from head to head like unseen lightning so that the knowledge of the feast to come and the peace to enjoy it and the dizzying freedom from work sent everyone giggling mad; they grabbed pig heads from one another, pretended to be charging boars, swung them by the ears and sprayed crimson everywhere.
Toddlers, sliding and slipping on unsteady legs, were blood-drenched head to toe. Young babes sucked on kidneys, their mums red-lipped as baobhan sith from eating liver.
And still she did not come.
Donachie, the Earl Patrick’s man, rode over with a black-eyebrowed scowl and a demand for owed tolts and scutage, but that was simply the Earl’s latest stirring of the byke he saw in Herdmanston; Hal sent him off home empty-handed and reminded him of the legality of matters.
The children promptly added scowling black eyebrows to their straw effigy and Father Thomas, though no Herdmanston man born and bred, preached a sermon in his rough-walled church about how Adam and Eve did not have to plough, sow or weed for any lord, then had to add enough embellishment to show how Sir Hal of Herdmanston was practically kin to Jesus and should be so served.
And still she did not come.
Then, in the dark of Midsummer Eve, the fire was lit, the straw man burned, the boiled and roasted pigs eaten and the ale drunk. Bet’s Meggy, in a green dress festooned with madder ribbons, pranced barefoot with the straw stallion mummer head in the Horse Dance, elegant and feral.
She led the procession of flaming brands into the fields, Father Thomas stumping determinedly after with his fiery crucifix, so that God was not forgotten in it; everyone was festooned with garlands of mugwort, vervain and yarrow, cheering and reeling and beaming, greasy-cheeked and red-faced.
Later still folk leaped the bonfire flames, or daringly rubbed fern seed on their eyelids in the hope of seeing the sidhean on this night when the veils between worlds were thinnest — with rue clenched in their fists to prevent them being pixie-led and never seen again.
And, finally, she came.
Slowly, up the steps from the hall, where a visiting Kirkpatrick greeted Sim Craw and others with a twisted smile and accepted strong drink, she climbed to the folly of the topmost room in the tower, her feet leaden and her heart fluttering like a trapped bird. She felt breathless and had to stop once for fear of fainting and wished she could loosen the barbette and goffered fillet on her head.
It was dim. There was a crusie flickering, but the light in the room was mainly the full, bright moon and the flare of the bonfire through the tall unshuttered folly of window, so that he was a stark shadow there and no more. She stopped then, one hand to her throat.
He saw her head come above the floor level, caught the flame glint in the russet of it so that his breathing stopped entirely for a moment and his heart, which had been thundering so loudly he was sure they could hear it outside, seemed to catch and cease.
‘Isabel,’ he said, his voice a rasp.
She backed away, not ready for this, not ready for any of it. Five years since she had been here… five years since she had even set eyes on him at all, or he on her; she smoothed her dress, touched her hair with an unconscious gesture.
She heard him move, then the crusie flared more brilliantly and he set it down on top of the kist at the end of the great canopied bed; new, she thought wildly. Not the one she remembered, though she remembered the nights in it. Could not move any further than the first step into the room.
He was thin, the fine perse tunic loose on him. His hair had more grey in it than she remembered and she touched her own again, as if to feel that the artifice that held it to its old colour still worked. His eyes, though, were the same grey-blue, but it seemed as if more ice had crept into them than before and they were fixed on her with an intensity that made her reach one hand to her throat.
He said nothing and they stood there, while the midsummer shrieks and laughter echoed faintly and the amber shadows danced.
‘Am I so changed?’ she managed at last and was irritated by the tremble in her voice, like some maid clutching St John’s Wort for the promise of a future lover.
There was silence, so long she felt the crush of it.
‘Lamb,’ he said eventually, soft as a lisp. ‘My wee lamb.’
It broke her, closed her throat, sprang tears. She did not know who moved, but she felt the strength of him, the wrap of his arms, the smell of sweat and wool, woodsmoke, vervain, leather and horse.
Then they were half-weeping, half-laughing, telling each other what they had missed, how they still loved, babbling into one another’s speech so that, in the end, the words themselves did not matter, but simply trilled like a stream of balm.
Like music, he thought, drenched and drowning. Like music.
They talked and loved, laughing because the long, full gown had sleeves she had been sewn into and he had to cut them free, while the elaborate fillet which had taken so painstakingly long to arrange in her hair, was sloughed away like the years between them.
Later, she learned of Lamprecht and Bruce; he learned of her put-aside by Buchan. They swore never to be parted, even if the world went up in flames.
She found out his doings with Kirkpatrick, who had brought her here. He found out about her rescue from Elcho by Wallace; she saw the grim set of those iced eyes at the mention of his name and knew why.
‘Bangtail,’ she said and heard him grunt in the dark. Then she sparked life into a tallow and, by the guttering yellow of it, showed him the Apostles, six baleful red eyes staring back at them as they both huddled, half-naked and half-afraid in the flickering dim.
‘A generous gift,’ he admitted grudgingly, stirring the blood-drop rubies, ‘but against the life o’ Bangtail Hob, it weighs less than a cock feather in the pan.’
‘It was a hard thing for the Wallace to have done,’ she admitted, shivering in the fresh breeze that swept suddenly through the tall unshuttered windows, a relief from the leprous heat that, just as quickly, puckered skin to gooseflesh. ‘Yet there is good and honour in the man, as you know.’
He drew a bedspread tenderly round her shoulders.
‘Aye, lass, I ken it — God forbid I have ever to face Wallace in person, though it is what we are charged with, Kirkpatrick and I. Better us than men from English Edward.’
There was a long silence, broken only by the slough of wind and the sudden rattle of rain, bringing distant shrieks from those still hooching and wheeching round the dying midsummer bonfire.
Then she stirred, as if gentled to life by the wind itself.
‘I know where Wallace is,’ she said, almost sadly.
The thunder slammed a seal on her betrayal.
St Bartholomew’s Priory, Smoothfield, London
Feast of the Visitation, July, 1305
Red John Comyn stood hip-shot beside the elaborate tomb to Rahere, first Prior of St Bartholomew’s, tapping one high-heeled, booted foot impatiently. Around him were shadowed figures, far enough away not to overhear if voices were kept low, close enough to intervene if it became necessary.
It could easily become necessary. Ostensibly buying prime horseflesh at Smoothfield, one of the premier markets of Europe, Red John was here to meet Bruce — at his request. An elaborate ritual dance of exchanged messages, barely disguised hostages and the agreement of neutral ground had brought Red John here, beside the black-robed recumbent figure of Rahere, stone hands piously clasped.
There were no other folk here, kept away even during such an important feast day in one of the popular priories of London, which showed the power of the Comyn and Bruces. Plantagenet will hear of it, all the same, Red John thought, which is a risk worth taking to find out what happened.
