through the archway to the metal grill of the yett, but had succeeded only in scabbing stone from round the entrance and putting everyone’s nerves on edge.
Sim promised himself that he would shoot one of the springald bolts up the arse of the wee hired mannie who had brought the bits and pieces of it to Herdmanston for the Earl of Buchan’s revenge.
He would like to have put a bolt from his own crossbow in him, but the range was too great — peering out cautiously he could see the timber-box shape of the springald, three clever wee Flemings painstakingly rewinding the contraption, checking the chucked tilt of it to raise it by another quim hair. Near it, proud on a prancing destrier draped with dripping heraldry, Patrick of Dunbar waved his arms and made suggestions which the Flemish ingeniators ignored.
Sim slithered round to sit, shoulder to shoulder with Hal in the wet misery of the roof.
‘The Earl o’ March’s boy himself, the wee speugh o’ Dunbar, sent to puff out his chest feathers on our fortalice,’ he voiced bitterly and left the rest hanging, thick as aloes in the wet air. Patrick of Dunbar was here because his da, the Earl of March, was too old for the business — and his mother Marjorie was a Comyn, sister to Buchan himself.
‘So — the Earl of March’s boy and Himself the Earl o’ Buchan. If a man is made great because of his enemies, then ye are the finest knight in Christendom, lord Hal. I hear Longshanks is comin’ here, too,’ Sim growled.
‘I hear he is in Berwick,’ Hal countered wryly. ‘And at Lochmaben, Stirling and Perth. And that he has grown horns to match his English tail.’
‘Still,’ growled Sim, ‘a brace of the Kingdom’s high nobiles is more than enow and a pair too many. D’ye think they have come for the Coontess — or the other?’
The very question that haunted Hal and the reason he had not fled and would stubbornly defend to the last. Below in the hall was Isabel and alongside her was a covered slab of sandstone — the ‘other’ Sim spoke of.
It seemed an age since Bruce had called him into the arched shadows of St Mungo’s, where the stretched shapes of Wishart and Bernard of Kilwinning argued with Lamberton, recently fled from Berwick and full of reports of stunned English unable, it seemed, to agree on what to do.
Bruce, full of fresh resolve and newly absolved of any Red Comyn murder by the old mastiff Bishop Wishart himself, was wry and sanguine about the supposed inability of the English.
‘Edward’s wrath may be slow, but it will be scorching when it comes. I have sent him a letter by the Lord of Tibbers, asking his forgiveness for certain matters and warning him that I will defend myself with the longest stick I have if he comes after me. I am not expecting forgiveness.’
None of which was what the bishops needed to hear while Wishart, all purpling indignation, was preparing sermons excusing Bruce’s actions and justifying his imminent coronation.
‘It is essential that the King is divorced from these actions. A king of this realm is not involved in low acts and red murder,’ he had pontificated at one of the many meetings and Kirkpatrick, with a bitter bravery that took even Hal by surprise, gave a bark of mirthless laughter.
‘No indeed — he has me for that.’
It was a truth no-one wanted to admit and the faces round the table blanked, then pretended it had not been said at all; Hal felt a sudden rush of sympathy for Kirkpatrick, saw the mesnie of new lords look sneeringly at his back and call him the ‘auld dug’ when they were sure he could not hear, because no-one was as feared as Black Kirkpatrick, or as close to the Bruce.
Yet Hal saw that the closer Bruce got to climbing on the throne, the more he distanced himself from his ‘auld dug’.
Hal, useless in the maelstrom of all this and more aware of Kirkpatrick’s smoulder than anything, was almost relieved when Bruce finally called him aside.
‘I have a service,’ he said and explained it. Wishart had rescued the rich royal vestements and even the royal banner and one of the crowns — but they lacked the meat of the matter. They even had, miraculously, the Rood which had been returned to Lamberton in Berwick by a stranger the bishop was certain was a Templar, a man called de Bissot, who had brought the relic ‘in the peace of Christ and for the return of the relic to its home in God’.
But one of Wishart’s notaries had been arrested, which had persuaded Lamberton to quit Berwick; he had no doubt the poor man would be put to the Question and did not want to be around when he told all he knew.
Hal and Kirkpatrick locked eyes at this revelation, knowing the chip of dark wood had been ripped from Lamprecht’s neck and when and where; for a moment there was a shared, intimate ghost of old friendship, which just as suddenly shredded away.
‘I have the Rood and a decent crown,’ Bruce said to Hal when he had drawn him aside. ‘But I need the Stone. And the Crowner, which should be a MacDuff. Because the MacDuff himself is a boy held by the English, there is only one candidate left.’
Isabel, Countess of Buchan. Bad enough that she was hunted by her husband because she had run off, Hal thought bitterly — now Bruce wishes her put beyond any mercy by having her actually place the crown on his head, legitimizing the entire affair as much as the Stone and the Rood and the blessings of bishops. There was not much left for Isabel to affront her husband with, Hal thought — but that would do it.
He had gone to Roslin with the Herdmanston men, riding hard for the place and welcomed by his kin and namesake Sir Henry, thirsting for news, raising men and preparing his castle. Once Hal had been fussed by Henry’s wife and assaulted by delighted bairns, Sir Henry and he and Ill-Made had descended to the dark, chill undercroft and the secret niche built in the floor. There, nestling, glowing red-gold in the torchlight, lay the smuggled Stone of Scone, not having seen daylight for a decade at least. Red murder and treachery had helped bury it from the English — now it was lugged up, wrapped in sacking and loaded on a cart.
Wiping sweat that was not all from his labours, Sir Henry of Roslin took Hal’s wrist in a firm, almost desperate clasp.
‘I am glad, mind you, to be rid of the burden of keeping that,’ he said, nodding towards the cart. ‘I don’t envy you the task of it now. I will come to Scone myself, all the same, bringing men for the King.’
The King. King Robert. The sound of it was strange as a death knell and, seeing the pale, stricken face of Henry’s wife, bairns half-grown clutched to her, Hal finally realized the full measure of snell wind blowing through the Kingdom. Another rebellion — Hal cursed Bruce for it, and for wanting Isabel dragged into his maelstrom.
He said as much to Isabel, heating himself by the big hall fire in Herdmanston after labouring the cart and Stone from Roslin with Dog Boy, Ill-Made, Mouse and the others, buffeted by a howling gale and driving rain so that they had been grateful to roll the wretched affair into the garth and be done with it for a day at least.
She had smiled at him then, all russet hair and green gown and gentian eyes.
‘There was always going to be a moment when this would be thrust on us,’ she replied, with more surety and bravery than she felt. Trembling, she added more to the sickle of her smile.
‘How often is it that a wee Lord of Herdmanston holds two of the three adornments to the coronation of a king?’
For a moment the kings and princes, the great and good, loomed over them, golden, invincible, filling the room like a drone of chanting with the hidden haar of their power. Then, with the defiant tilt of her head, they smoked away and were gone; Hal knew that if he raked the earth and searched through the bright hair of every star he would not find a greater love than the one he felt for her now.
The warmth of it had vanished in the chill, drookit dawn, when Scabbit Wull tumbled down the ladder from the roof, shivering and damp and full of news.
The enemy was almost at the gates.
Hal shook himself from the memory and the wet from his face, while the rain lisped on the stones; in Scone, Bruce was impatient to be crowned king and Hal wondered how long he would wait for the Stone and the Crowner before going ahead anyway. He might desire all the trappings of the Old Style as he could garner — but, in the end, he would prefer the crown alone on his head.
Even now Hal could not be sure if the secret of the hidden Stone was what had brought Buchan and Dunbar to his door, or revenge for Isabel. The one surety was that it had nothing to do with Malenfaunt’s spurious claims and that he was the string-worked mommet in this.
Not that it mattered much, since the cursed slab of sandstone, painfully and frantically manhandled up the stairs, across the plank bridge and into the keep, now lay in the Yett Hall, covered with a linen cloth and used as a table for Isabel’s accoutrements for treating the wounded. Both it and she would be paraded in triumph if
