a slip of a girl yet.’
Edward frowned, then shrugged.
‘True. I shall send them to a convent. But the others — his sister and that harlot of Buchan’s who crowned him — them I shall have in cages, by God.’
He sucked his fingers again, then winced and shifted as his stomach flickered with pain — anger flooded him at his own betraying body.
‘If any of those bastards dare return from their French tourney,’ he added, ‘I shall find more cages for them…’
He broke off as a tendril of chill circled his feet like an anklet and he rounded on the hapless servant.
‘God’s Holy Arse, you sludge — will you get that fire going or I will burn YOU in it.’
Baleful as a wet cat, he turned savagely to Thweng.
‘I want Bruce. Go back to my son and make him hunt the usurper out.’
Thweng smiled wanly, looked at the finger-ruined pie, then pushed it away.
Near Dunaverty Castle, Kintyre
Feast of St Malachy, November, 1306
The fires were small, but a welcome warmth to the men huddled in heavy wool cloaks in the bowl-shaped depression. The snow had been driven back by the flames, but it still fell in soft, slow drifts, so that the men were warm at the front and felt the cold bite their backs, even through the layers they wore. The surrounding trees sighed and creaked under a rising wind.
There were ponies, too, stamping nearby as they kicked hopefully at the ground to try to dig up a little to eat and Dog Boy wanted to leave the men and go to his with a handful of oats he still had in his pack. He dared not, for it would mean admitting he had a peck of oats in the first place and he was sure these wild men of the north would have something to say on it.
He and Sim Craw, Hal and Chirnside were all that was left of the Herdmanston men, who had been running and fighting since Methven, driven north and dependent now on the good graces of these Campbells and MacDonalds and even wilder tribal trolls from beyond The Mounth. He did not want to seem to be getting above himself.
Hal caught Dog Boy out of the corner of one eye, watched him fret and saw his eyes move to where his horse was, saw him shift, but not dare move. He did not like to think of the boy… God save us, hardly that these days… fretted by the presence of these Kintyre growlers. They were fighters, these men of Neil and Donald Campbell, Angus Og of the Isles and others, loyal still to King Robert, where the earls of Ross and Sutherland had turned.
Ross especially, who had broken into the sanctuary shrine at Tain and dragged out the Queen and all her women. Isabel… Hal felt the rising heat of it, was almost driven to his feet by it and fought to sit still, though it trembled him to do it.
All anyone else saw, if they looked, was a lean, grim man, all planes and shadows, made darker by the greasy black wolf cap he had taken from a dead man and the thick cloak he had filched at knife-point. His maille and hardened leather were hung about him, wrecked and rusted by weather and hard use; with his gaunt, unsmiling face he looked like a cadaver, newly surfaced from the forest mulch.
Neil Campbell appeared and men stirred. He wore simple clothes and a furred cloak, affected a fox hat — ears and all — while his own hair was as red as the hat and he wore gold in a thick braid round his neck, like one of the Old Norse.
Hal and his men — a dozen when they had set out weeks ago — had been making for Dunaverty in Kintyre, where it was said King Robert had taken refuge, but the English were already sieging it when they arrived.
They had then fought running battles in and around the steep glens and forests until, cut to shreds by disease and half-starved, they had fallen in with men barely clothed never mind armoured, with slings and short spears and long knives.
A lot of Herdmanston men had thrown up their hands then and Hal had sent them away, back to whatever life they could make round the ruin of his old tower, or at Roslin. There was no such possibility for him — and, besides, he needed to find out if Isabel had escaped the Earl of Ross’ wrath, or had been taken with the Queen; in the sinking stone that was his heart these days, he was sure he knew the truth.
Now himself, the ague-trembling Sim, Dog Boy and the grim Chirnside Rowan were what was left, living more and more like animals with these hillmen, who spoke in their own way and knew little or no other tongue. It wasn’t until Neil Campbell turned up, with as much easy command of French as he did the Gaelic, that Hal caught up with the news.
It was grim enough — the King had escaped from Dunaverty and was gone, almost certes out of the Kingdom and probably for good. Isabel was taken. The King’s brother, Niall, was dead. Even the Earl of Atholl was dead.
Yet the Campbells and MacDonalds, as much fighting against old enemies the MacDougalls as the Invaders, had at least a thousand bare-footed, bare-arsed fighting men, which was a feat considering the time of year and the fact that they had been at war since the summer. No harvest had been gathered and the families of these men hungered — though that seemed the lot of these people, Hal saw.
Here, though, there were barely a hundred, the leaders and what passed for a mesnie, met to try and sort out what to do now that their king seemed to have vanished, as if taken by Faerie. They gathered in a circle round the fires, the flames dangerously close and unheeded at their own cloaks, passing a jug of something harsh as burned wine and glaring at each other, for old tribal grievances lurked just under the surface of them all.
Not that it mattered much to Hal, now that his worst fears were confirmed; all he wanted was to find the King and plead for whatever help he could raise on Isabel’s behalf.
Neil Campbell, big and splendid and grinning, raised the jug, drank deep, smacked his lips and began the matter by raising the oak branch he held in one hand. At once someone rose and took it from him and the others subsided, growling and waiting for him to finish having his say.
The man spoke Gaelic and Neil Campbell waited, then translated it for the benefit of Hal and his handful of men; the wild men glowered impatiently and the speaker curled a hairy lip. He had braided hair and missing teeth, a Lennox man Hal recalled vaguely, from some wild cleft above Loch Lomond.
‘I have heard,’ the translation said, ‘that the siege at Dunaverty has failed to locate our King Robert. Yet the Invaders are still there and so we must be after deciding — do we fight them, or go home.’
No-one spoke. No-one passed the jug to Hal, whose grin turned feral and snarling at this rudeness. This was a farce, he thought. These men had no choice but to fight, since anything else returned the English raids to their pathetic little lives. He almost said so, but chewed on it, thinking of Sim Craw lying, sweating and groaning in a thick fever and needing their care.
‘The power of hills and isles will destroy them in the end,’ Neil Campbell translated, as a man took the stick and spoke. It was Grann, a MacDonald islesman Hal had been fighting with for several weeks, a black-avowed killer with a tangle of hair and beard who gralloched captives like stags in case they had swallowed their coin and trinkets.
According to Neil Campbell, Grann came from some island to the north and west and thought himself something because of that and the fact that he had a fine weapon, a sword, taken from some old Viking pirate, with a tarnished and worn-smooth silver cross set in a fat pommel. It did not make Grann any less of a heathen.
‘Only the power of the arm will halt them,’ Hal growled, unable to stop himself. ‘Our arm, with steel in it.’
There was a silence, for some were chilled by the teeth-grinding delivery and others embarrassed that Hal had dared to speak without the stick, or dared to at all, for he was a southerner with so few men that he was of no account.
Neil Campbell translated for those who had no Southron, glancing at the dark scowl of this Lord of Herdmanston, but showing nothing in his face as he did so.
He saw the corded sinews and old scars on the back of the man’s hands, the tangle of grizzling hair and beard, the whole of him hung about with tattered links and old leather. Somewhere in these hills, he thought to himself, this Lothian lord has become like darker, older folk, even older than the one in Ma-ruibhe ’s sacred oak grove, like the ones who had blood-sacrificed to gods. He reached for the oak stick and held it up.
‘The Lord of Herdmanston is correct,’ he said, in English and Gaelic, and that brought heads up.
