Kirkpatrick knew Red John was dying, that all the padded linen cloths, sodden with blood, were not choking the flow of life from him. His own fluted dagger seemed an irrelevance, but he slid it in anyway, so that Red John gave a little jerk, a final flicker.
‘Da.’
The voice snapped heads up and they all saw the youth, half-sheltered behind a whey-faced Malise Bellejambe. Two panting men-at-arms stood to one side, blades bloody and faces desperate — Mouse was already closing on one.
The boy. Red John’s boy, a gawky seventeen-year-old, brought to say his farewells… the realization of it hit Hal and Kirkpatrick at the same moment, but Lyndsay of Donrod was quicker still.
‘Ach, no — would ye?’ he gasped out, clutching Kirkpatrick’s arm and half-hauling the man back to his knees as he rose, grim as a rolling boulder and the knife bloody. With a savage curse, Kirkpatrick swept his free hand like a closing door, slapping Lyndsay in the face and sending him arse over tip to the flagstones.
Malise saw him coming, his worst nightmare, blood-dripping blade and all and he shrieked, backing away, almost thrusting the boy at him. Hal saw it and, in a flicker of time, curled a sneer into the wide eyes of Bellejambe — then turned and slammed his fist into Kirkpatrick’s face.
He was holding his sword when he did it, and it was only fate that made the flat of it slam Kirkpatrick forehead to chin, while the hilt-hardened fist knocked teeth from him and sent him spilling backwards to join Lyndsay.
The pair of them struggled like beetles until they righted themselves, Lyndsay scrabbling away from Kirkpatrick, who came up bellowing and blowing blood from his split lip.
‘Would you?’ demanded Hal, his blade held pointedly at Kirkpatrick. ‘A boy, now. Why no’ hunt out the mother and cousins, bring them to the altar and drown it in Comyn blood?’
Kirkpatrick saw, out of the corners of his eyes, the Herdmanston men moving subtly to defend their lord and realized he would make no headway here, though the anger and pain thundered in him. Dog Boy stepped closer to him, his face set as a quernstone and his foot on Kirkpatrick’s spilled dagger. Kirkpatrick glared, then lashed it back to Hal.
‘I will remember this, Herdmanston,’ he spat. Dog Boy tipped the dagger towards him with the toe of one shoe, a tinkle of sound that was suddenly bell-loud in the silence. Kirkpatrick scooped it up, whirled like a black cloud and spun away.
Hal turned to the men-at-arms, half-crouched and wary; Malise had gone, but Red John’s son still stood, pale and determined, his mouth a thin seam. The footless man had passed out or died, his final whimpers trailing echoes round the chapel.
‘Take the boy an’ run,’ Hal told the men-at-arms, ‘’afore Kirkpatrick has mind to return.’
He stood while they hurried off, looking at the bloody bag that had been the Lord of Badenoch; he saw the boy’s face again, grey with that shock of having your world reel and tip, of having the great tower and rock of someone you thought immortal vanish like haar. Hal knew that loss well and the needle of it was still sharp.
Lyndsay of Dornod let out his breath.
‘Christ be praised,’ he growled.
‘For ever and ever,’ everyone replied.
Hal’s added laugh was a mirthless twist at this parody of piety in a place drenched with blood and sin.
Tibbers Castle, Dumfries
Feast of St Kevoca of Kyle, February, 1306
Thrushes and blackbirds and fluttering white doves spun the black smoke from the burning thatch of the outbuildings while a handful of grim, blackened men lounged against the remains of a stable wall and watched, chewing crusts.
Yet the hall of Tibbers had dogs gnawing bones and chickens scratching hopefully among the rushes; somewhere in the rafters baby sparrows were learning to fly, as if the world had not turned upside down.
Hal sat and watched Bruce and a huddle of others scatter vellum, plucked from the Rolls Chest with its brightly-painted coat-of-arms, a white trefoil-ended cross on black — sable, a cross flory argent, he said by rote to himself.
The owner sat at the far end of his own hall, face blank as scraped sheepskin, hands resting on his knees and flanked by two more of the Bruce men. Hal felt sorry for Sir Richard Siward, sitting there tasting the ashes of his outbuildings and the bitterness of defeat.
Tibbers had been added to Dalswinton and Caerlavrock, all castles swept up by the Bruce mesnie, as if desperate to stamp authority on what had happened — all but this one had been burned entirely, which would have made Tibbers singular enough.
More importantly, it was where Bruce woke up as if from a sleep, started issuing orders to his scowling brother, who had become used to independent command and now had to knuckle to it; he had been sent off with the other Bruce brothers to secure Ayr as a sop.
Now Bruce was feverishly explaining to a barely comprehending John Seton that Tibbers must be held by him, for it could not easily be slighted. The faces the desperate John Seton glanced at were less than helpful — the Lindsays, Bruce’s taciturn nephew Thomas Randolph, Crawford of Ayr all presented the same stare, flat and iron as a shield. Even his own kin, Alexander and the grim Christopher Seton, seemed to grin ferally back at him, offering no help.
He is out of his depth, Hal thought, seeing John Seton’s white face. We all are — burning out the Comyn stronghold of Dalswinton, capturing Tibbers and all the rest was simply thrashing about and achieving nothing. They could not afford to garrison other than Tibbers and had ruined the rest, which only annoyed the owners into the English camp.
Blinded by Comyn, Hal thought and did not realize he had muttered it aloud until the silence fell and he became aware of the eyes on him.
‘You have something to say, my lord of Herdmanston?’
The voice was clenched as a fist, the hood-shrouded face glowering and both were the mark of the new Bruce, emerged like a foul phoenix from the aftermath of Red Comyn’s murder.
‘You are fixed on the Comyn,’ Hal declared, realizing the mire he had walked himself into but plootering determinedly on, aware of Kirkpatrick’s burst-lip sneer at the far end of the table. ‘You are forgetting the English, who will simply come and take back everything here.’
Bruce needed Hal, so he was prepared to be patient, aware that his two hunting hounds had finally snarled and bit one another and well aware of why.
‘Fhad bhitheas craobh ‘sa choill, bithidh foill ‘sna Cuiminich,’ he said with a grim smile, then translated it for those who did not have the Gaelic. ‘While in the wood there is a tree, a Comyn will deceitful be.’
Those surrounding him chuckled dutifully and Bruce let a parchment roll snap shut with a flutter of seals.
‘You must never lose sight of the Comyn, my lord of Herdmanston,’ he said, still smiling. ‘They will come at you sideways, like a cock on a dungheap.’
He saw Hal jerk at that and knew why — Kirkpatrick had shared that confidence with him, a quote from Hal’s father warning of how Buchan would strike in revenge for his wife. He heard Kirkpatrick’s crow laugh harshing into the silence that followed.
‘We lost sight of one Comyn, certes,’ he growled bitterly, ‘who should not have been allowed out of it.’
Bruce spoke quickly into Hal’s rising hackles.
‘The Comyn will require to be rooted out,’ he said smoothly, ‘the young son of Badenoch among them, so Kirkpatrick is right enough in that. Perhaps not there and then, all the same. There was enough blood spilled to affront the Lord in that wee chapel.’
‘Christ be praised,’ muttered John Seton uneasily.
‘For ever and ever.’
It fluttered round the room like the fledgling sparrows and Bruce stood for a moment, what could be seen of his face etched with lines. Then he shook himself like a dog.
‘We ride north,’ he declared, ‘to meet with Bishop Wishart and try for Dumbarton Castle as well.’
