‘You have such a sharp edge, then? One to cut away a king?’
The question made Bruce’s eyes glitter and Red John caught his breath. God’s Bones, he has, right enough, he thought. This Bruce is planning to usurp a kingdom.
‘There is support for it,’ Bruce replied guardedly, seeing the astonished curve of Red John’s eyebrows. ‘More than you perhaps realize. Together we will be a stronger flame than apart — but even without that, it would be better, at least, if our fire was not being thrust in one another’s face.’
‘Are you saying you will stop plotting against us? That there will be peace — or a truce at least — between our families?’
‘I am.’
‘So that you can make yourself king of Scots and usurp my kin?’
Bruce hesitated.
‘So that a king might be found who is better fitted to the task than John Balliol,’ he replied carefully.
‘What do the Comyn and Balliol get from this?’ Red John asked with a sneer. ‘Apart from a royally angered kinsman and a dangerously powerful Bruce.’
‘No mention of your plotting beyond these walls,’ Bruce declared, waving the document. ‘A free hand with your own lands and rewards from a grateful sovereign.’
‘Do I seem afeared to you?’ Red John sneered, waving one wild arm. ‘Tell your tales to Longshanks and see if he has the belly for another fight in Scotland, which is what it will cause. See then how your careful wooing of the gullible will stand when it is known that you have plunged them back into war and, yet again, waver on where to stand. And we have a free hand in our own lands already, as well as a grateful sovereign in John Balliol.’
‘It is not Longshanks you should fear,’ Bruce answered, his cold eyes on Red John’s hot face, so that the air between them seemed to sizzle. ‘It is the Community of the Realm.’
That made Red John blanch a little and Bruce saw it with a savage leap of pleasure that he had trouble disguising. Red John was silent for a long time, staring at the effigy and its elaborate tomb, the armorials all faded beneath the flaking wood of the ogee arches.
‘Did you know Rahere was a wee clerk in the service of auld King Henry?’ he asked suddenly, breaking from Gaelic to braid Scots. ‘Steeped in venery, it is said, but he proved useful to the sovereign and so was raised up.’
He turned to the tomb, one encompassing arm taking in the kneeling canons, reading their stone Bible at the feet of the recumbent figure.
‘Proof positive that any chiel of poor account can rise to the greatest if he is willing to any sin.’
Bruce clenched his teeth on his anger, the sickening tug of the cicatrice like a dash of iced water down his veins. He waited.
‘I will consult with the Earl of Buchan on the matter,’ Red John declared eventually in French.
‘You are the Comyn who matters,’ Bruce answered and Red John nodded, almost absently, then offered a terse, thin smile.
‘You will hear from us, never fear.’
Bruce watched him walk away on his vain boots, to be folded into his cloak of hard-faced men. Incense wafted in the air and the chanting grew louder as Bruce’s men waited, tense.
He had not been a clerk, Bruce knew. Prior Rahere, founder of St Bartholomew’s, had been a jester and laughter had raised him up. That and the advice of a wise fool.
Bruce peered at the words on the stone Bible — Isaiah, Chapter 51, ‘The Lord shall comfort Zion…’ — wondering if he had been wise or a fool to reveal so much to the Lord of Badenoch. He wondered if the Lord of Badenoch had been moved from his position any. Or if he dared move himself, in pursuit of kingship and despite the Comyn.
‘You will have to move soon, lord of Annandale,’ said a voice and Bruce whirled to find the sub-prior close by, arms folded into his robes and seemingly blissfully unaware of the wolves hovering at his back.
‘God wills it,’ the sub-prior said piously.
As Bruce continued to stare, blinking in wonder at this strange prophet, he added apologetically, ‘You are blocking the processional, my son.’
St Mary’s Loch, near Moffat, Scottish Border
Vigil of St Palladius, July, 1305
They came along the shore of the loch, with the bare hump of Watch Law on their right and the darkly wooded Wiss across the mirror mere, reflected dizzyingly so that the world seemed upside down.
It was a long cavalcade which made those who encountered it leap to their feet, thinking that so many riders could only herald the return of red war to their little part of the world. The half-dozen of the English garrison at Traquair had run off at the sound, only returning, half-ashamed and not speaking of it at all, when they found that the mounted horde of Wallace consisted of five men, a woman and a herd of some fifty horses, sound and stolid stots and affers being driven to the market at Carlisle.
‘Every venture I take with you,’ Kirkpatrick muttered to Sim Craw, not for the first time, ‘seems to consist of starin’ at the spavined arse of livestock that God has forsook. Nags or kine with shitey hurdies.’
‘Ca’ canny,’ protested Stirk Davey. ‘There is some prime horseflesh here — Fauberti will wet himself at the sight, like a wee ravin’ dug.’
Stirk was as rangy and lean as a stag on the rut, all nervous energy and concern for his charges, one of which was the prime horseflesh he spoke of. This was a fine, cold-bred destrier called Rammasche, which was the name you gave to a wild hawk. An entire — a stallion — he was not exactly destined for the fine hands of top dealer Fauberti in London, but would still fetch good money in Carlisle.
The rest — palfreys, rounceys, everyday stots and carter’s affers — were a good cover for a group trying to creep into Moffat to find out if the Countess was right and Wallace was secreted at Corehead Tower — the horse droving road to Carlisle and the south led straight past the place.
Being here nagged Kirkpatrick, because it was a lick and spit away from Closeburn, seat of the Kirkpatricks and held by his namesake, who had no love for the rebel Wallace and would as soon hang them both side by side.
Isabel, however, merely smiled at his fears, though she was the other rub on the fluffed fur of Kirkpatrick’s nerves — the Countess of Buchan, striding along in ungainly leather riding boots and a plain dress, which she tucked up to ride astraddle when the fancy took her.
Wearing a threadbare hooded cloak, red-eyed from woodsmoke, having cooked for all of them over an open fire, like any auld beldame wife of a horsecorser.
It was a perfect disguise, admittedly — Buchan would not be looking for his wife here — but not only was it simply delaying the inevitable, it was not right that a noblewoman of the realm should be chaffering and handing out bowls to the likes of Dog Boy and Stirk and himself.
Hal, of course, didn’t mind — it had been his idea — and Kirkpatrick, not for the first time, shook his head over how the lord of Herdmanston was mainly for sense, save over this woman.
Still, he thought, she has at least one good use in her for me and he had put it to her one night when she was alone at the smoking fire where she was cleaning bowls and horn spoons. Squatting companionably beside her, at length he said, slow and careful as a man walking on eggs, ‘It would be better, do ye ken, if I saw to the Wallace alone.’
She wiped the last bowl clean, tucked a stray tendril of hair back under her hood and looked at him for the first time, waving away insects drunk on woodsmoke.
‘Hal did not come all this way to stand by while you speak,’ she said.
‘Why did he come?’ demanded Kirkpatrick, low and urgent. ‘That is the question begging here.’
‘No harm will come to Wallace,’ she answered firmly — more firmly than she was actually sure of, if the truth was known. But it was known only to her and to Hal and Kirkpatrick simply had to take the face of it — which he did, scowling.
‘I will hold you to it, mistress,’ he said. ‘I do not want any brawl between Hal and the Wallace over Bangtail Hob, for there is no telling which of them will come out the other side of it alive and no matter which it is, all will be in ruin.’
