‘You persuaded Wallace to attack Scone, so you could go there and destroy the evidence,’ he said, half in a breathy hiss of wonder. ‘That’s what Kirkpatrick was up to in Ormsby’s room – but how will you persuade folk that the Stone you have hidden is the real one?’
Bruce nodded, as if he had expected the question.
‘It does not matter – folk will believe it when the time comes. Will want to believe it – it only remains to ensure the secret of it is kept until that moment comes.’
Until you need to sit on it, Hal thought. To be crowned.
‘Burning Ormsby’s investigations should have been the end of it,’ Bruce added bitterly. ‘Save for the Savoyard stone carver we forgot about, because he was of no account.’
‘And Wallace,’ Hal added pointedly, ‘who did not trust you. Does not still.’
Bruce shrugged.
‘That is of no matter. Wallace is a brigand, for all his elevation. If he finds out, he will approve, in the end.’
Which might have been true enough once, Hal thought coldly, though while Wallace has changed the Kingdom, it has changed him, too. Wee Bisset and a Savoyard were two deaths that might not sit well with the new knight that was Sir William Wallace growing into his estate as Guardian. He said as much and saw Bruce stroke his chin and admit it grudgingly.
‘Bisset was no work of mine,’ Kirkpatrick growled. ‘That was yon ugly bastard Malise, seeking answers for the Earl of Buchan, who is no yin’s fool.’
He broke off and looked sadly at Hal.
‘You were too noisome in pursuing the Savoyard, too careless with yer use of Bisset, so that it did not take much for Buchan to latch on to matters. Particularly Bisset – Malise spoored after him from the moment he left your care. I came on it too late to prevent it.’
He paused, his eyes bleak.
‘It was a charnel hoose,’ he added, half to himself, and Hal was chilled at what the man must have seen to make such a wasteland behind his eyes. The stone of it sank into Hal’s bowels; he had left a trail a blind man could follow, let alone the sharp-eyed, cunning Malise Bellejambe. He had killed Bartholomew Bisset as surely as if he had stuck the knife in himself.
Bruce saw some of that in Hal’s face and laid the comfort of a hand on his arm, though the smile on his face did not reach beyond his too-tight cheekbones.
‘This is an old quarrel of great families of this kingdom,’ he said. ‘It is always to be expected that, whatever I do, I will have a Comyn breathing on me to find out the why and where of it.’
‘Now they have the Savoyard,’ Hal said, seeing matters for the first time. ‘Using him to lure you to them. And you need the Savoyard stone carver dead, of course, to preserve your secret.’
‘Almost,’ Bruce declared grimly. ‘They have the Savoyard, for sure, but I do not wish him dead. I want him alive. He is the only one who possibly knows where the Stone now lies. Unless you do.’
Hal blinked – then saw it, as if a curtain had been raised. The Auld Templar and John Fenton had taken charge of the Stone in Roslin and had hidden it – now both were dead and the secret with them.
Bruce saw the look and sighed wearily, passing a hand over his face.
‘I see that the Auld Templar handed you the ring and no more,’ he declared. ‘So, unless the secret is with this stone carver, then all we have done is for naught – the Stone is hidden in Roslin and no-one knows where.’
He broke off and laughed bitterly.
‘A stone lost among stones. There is some message from Heaven in this, is there not?’
From St Malachy, Kirkpatrick almost said, but clicked his teeth.
‘We must get to the leper house,’ he said instead and Hal felt a sudden thrill of fear.
‘To a trap?’ he said. ‘Where the Earl of Carrick is faced with his enemies? We can scarcely ride the whole entourage into the town – the English still hold the castle of it – so we will be alone…’
Bruce smiled, suddenly, warmed, Hal saw, by this burst of concern. He reached out and clapped a hand on Hal’s shoulder.
‘Now you know the truth of matters,’ he declared, ‘yet you still, it seems, esteem me well enough to be concerned by my fate. I am glad of that for I would have you as a friend, young Hal. The Sientclers are noted for protecting kings, after all – did not one take an arrow for King Stephen?’
‘Sir Hubert,’ muttered Hal, remembering the family history dinned into him by his father. Young Hal – God’s Bones, he had five, even six years on the Bruce and the man pats me like a new pup. He glared back at him and then at Kirkpatrick.
‘I am no shield and ye are no king,’ he replied and saw Bruce scowl at that.
‘I esteem you well enough as a belted earl of the kingdom, my lord. Even if you were a poor cottar, I would not want you walked into the teeth of your enemies. I cannot wish the same for your henchman, all the same.’
Kirkpatrick growled, but Bruce laughed, as mirthless as a wolf howl and both their gazes turned on him.
‘It is not me they want,’ he said and leaned a little into Hal’s uncomprehending frown.
‘They have the wrong Sir Henry Sientcler,’ he declared and sent Kirkpatrick off to fetch horses while the haar of that settled like a raven on Hal’s soul and a name thundered in his head like a great bell.
Malise Bellejambe.
Chapter Ten
Berwick
Feast of St Opportuna, Mother of Nuns, April 1298
They had the wrong Henry Sientcler. Malise would have split the little pardoner in two, save that he thought the foul little turd might still have a use. Now he and the thugs he had hired had to huddle in the leper house, holding to ransom monks already frightened by the deaths of Sir Henry’s two escorts. For ease of guarding, Sir Henry had been put in the same room as the gasping Savoyard, the priest who was caring for him and the bewildered uncle.
‘This is idiocy,’ Henry Sientcler had puffed, when matters had become clearer to him. ‘You will have the young Bruce down on you, not to mention Fitzwarin. Christ’s Bones, man, if you do not let me go free, you will have the English and Scots lords both coming at you. Your head is already on a spike, though you do not know it yet.’
Malise, gnawing his knuckles, could believe it – the Red Comyn, entrusted by the Earl of Buchan with this mission, had sent Malise into Berwick to seek out a certain Robert de Malenfaunt and hand over the ransom for the Countess Isabel. He would not do it himself, for he feared capture by the English, being Lord of Badenoch in all but name, but he had curled a lip when Malise expressed the same concern.
‘You are of no account to them,’ he declared with cutting assurance. ‘Take the Templar writ, hand it to Malenfaunt, take the Countess and return to me. This is a task a trained mastiff could carry out.’
Malise remembered the Red Comyn’s sneer, smeared on his freckled, red-haired face. Like all the Comyn, he was short, barrel-bodied, with the sort of fiery red hair that would turn, like his kin the Earl of Buchan, to wheat- straw with age. Like all the Comyn he was full of himself.
The Earl was another problem, Malise thought moodily. Unknown to the Red Comyn, who had been waiting a while and would fret for longer, the Earl had given further, private instructions to Malise regarding the Herdmanston lord who had been escorting the Countess all over Scotland until he had lost her at Stirling.
‘It is inconcievable, of course,’ the Earl declared silkily, ‘but even the rumour of a liaison is damaging to the honour of Buchan. Bad enough to have her linked to the young Bruce – but a ragged gentilhomme of no account? The Countess must be returned and shown the error of her ways. It is important that the lord of Herdmanston understand his own. Forcibly. And that the young Bruce, who is clearly this Herdmanston lord’s patron, receives a message he cannot fail to understand.’
Berwick was, ostensibly, controlled by the English, but they huddled in the castle, the town going about its business with little hindrance, couvre-feu or even law. Malise had tracked the Savoyard to it and thought, at last, to put the stupid little chiseller to the question – only to find him sicker than Pestilence on his Plague Horse. The idea of using the man to trap Hal of Herdmanston here had been too good to pass up… save that an idiot pardoner could
