She stood between the merlons and looked out and down to where the riders sat, patient as stones, while a crow circled like a slow crucifix in the grey-blue. The rider in the centre looked up as it racked out its hoarseness and, even from this height, she saw the red-gold of his beard and hair. She knew who he was and glanced sideways at Bangtail Hob.
‘Ye were right, Hob,’ she said.
‘No’ me, Lady. Sir Hal sent me to warn ye this might occur – him and the rest of the men are running and hidin’ with The Wallace.’
He was matter-of-fact about it, but Isabel knew that the running and hiding he spoke off hid a wealth of hurt, fear, blood and rough living. The fact that Bangtail Hob had managed to slither his way unseen to Herdmanston with the message was not the only miracle in it.
Below, the man with the red-gold head waved.
‘I can shoot the een oot of his head from here,’ muttered Wull The Yett, nocking an arrow to the hunting bow and getting a scathe of glance back from Bangtail Hob.
‘Away. Ye could not hit a bull’s arse at five paces when ye could see clear, Wull The Yett. Ye have not seen clearly the length of your own arm in years.’
‘Go down and tell Sir John Comyn he can come up to the yett,’ Isabel said. ‘Then escort him into the hall.’
Wull shot them both a black scowl and slid the arrow from the string.
‘Oh aye, no bother,’ he declared bitterly, hirpling his way to the stairwind. ‘Open the yett to our enemies – let the place scorch betimes, for it seems there is no respect left for a hauflin’ like myself, the least of a clekkin’ of bairns to a poor widow wummin.. .’
They ignored him, as folk always did, while his long, bitter murmur trailed behind him like damp grey smoke.
The Red Comyn heard the invite and dismounted, then handed his sword to the nearest of his men, smiling back into their warnings and anxiety. He went up the steep, cobbled incline, across the laid plank bridge and into the short arch with its opened, iron-grilled yett. There was the scent of woodsmoke and new-baked bread fighting with the headiness of broom in his nose.
Briefly, in the dim of the small hall, he was blind and took a few breaths to accustom himself before following the shuffling old servitor to where the lady sat in the high seat, as neatly arranged in Lenten grey and snowy barbette as any nun, while the glowing brazier of coals and freshly lit sconces bounced the light back off the too- brilliant gentian of her eyes.
But her hair and skin were damp from fresh grooming and her rings were loose enough on the fingers he kissed for him to know she had thinned, while the marks of sleeplessness told him much.
‘Countess,’ he said, with a formal bow.
‘My lord.’
The voice was steady, even musical, but the strain was evident in it and the Red Comyn was suddenly irritated by the whole business – he had more to do these days than play advocate in the life of his kinsman Earl of Buchan and his wayward wife.
‘I am told your father is unwell.’
The solicitous inquiry stumbled him off the track of matters, but he recovered, swift as a russet fox.
‘His humour is turned overly choleric,’ he declared, which was a bland description of the paralysis which had twisted one side of the Lord of Badenoch’s body and exchanged his power of speech for a constant drool from one side of his mouth. His own temper, folk said, that had given him the name Black John, had finally choked him – but his son knew better and his voice was thick and bitter when he said.
‘Imprisonment in the Tower did that.’
‘He is fortunate, then,’ Isabel replied steadily, ‘since most of those sent to the Tower never come out alive at all.’
She was baiting him, he knew, but he held himself in check and nodded to the man at her side.
‘I do not know your man, there,’ he said in sibilant French, ‘but I know what he is, so I am certain you have been told of the events that bring me here.’
‘His name is Hob,’ she replied and felt Bangtail’s head come up at the name, the only part he understood. She switched to English, deliberately to include him.
‘MacDuff is dead, Hob tells me,’ she said, the harsh crow-song of it raking her, for all that she had disliked the man.
‘Bravely,’ Red Comyn replied, also in English, ‘together with others. Wallace is fled and resigned his Guardianship. New Guardians have been appointed by the community of the realm.’
What was left of a nobility not scrabbling to kneel at Edward’s footstool, she shought. Yet the way he said it made her breath stop a moment.
‘Yourself?’
He acknowledged it with a haughty little nod and, at last, she realised the duty that had brought him here. Not just for the Earl of Buchan’s pride, then.
‘The Earl of Carrick is the other,’ he declared and she almost laughed aloud but he saw her widening eyes and her lip-biting and smeared a wry twist on to his face.
‘Aye,’ he admitted. ‘The Bruce and myself. Unlikely beasts in the same shafts, I will allow – but the Kingdom demands it.’
‘Indeed,’ Isabel replied softly. ‘To what does Herdmanston owe for the honour of your presence here?’
He grew more irritated still, at her presumptious sitting there as if she was lady of this pawky manor, as if she spoke for the absent lord of Herdmanston as a wife.
‘Ye know well enough,’ he replied shortly. ‘I am to return you to the good graces of your husband, the earl.’
‘Others attempted that,’ she retorted bitterly. ‘One in particular decided force was best. Is that in your instruction from my husband?’
‘If necessary,’ he replied bluntly and leaned his short, barrelled body towards her a little, so that Isabel felt Bangtail start to bristle like a hound.
‘The lordship of Fife is invested in your wee brother, currently held by the English – so Fife has reverted to the Crown, lady,’ he said coldly. ‘In the absence of a king, it reverts to the Guardians – namely myself and the Earl of Carrick. Your presence with the Earl of Buchan is now desirable less for reasons of his passion than reasons of Comyn honour, dignity and estate. I am here, as a Guardian of Scotland, to impress upon you the need for it. You should know also that my lord earl wants the bladder that is Hal of Herdmanston dipped in dark water.’
She looked at him, this stocky, fiery wee man; his boots had high heels and that little vanity robbed him of some of his menace. God’s Wounds, he had enough of it just by looking like a smaller version of Buchan.
It was undignified, she thought, sitting here within sight of this small, blurred image of her husband, so like him in colour and temper and discussing her intimacies. She had known her husband’s rage was enough for him to injure her but lately had hoped that it was enough for him just to detach from her.
Now, eyes blank and fogged, she saw the stupidity of that. He had been cuckolded, made a fool over the business of ransom – when he need not have ransomed her at all – and now needed to stamp the imprint of the Buchan lordship firmly on the lands of Fife. With a wife who was the last noble MacDuff in Fife and the backing of his kinsman, an appointed Guardian, he would be able to gain control.
Shame and anger flushed her, sank into her belly and twisted all the weary organs. Like beads on a rosary, all the slights she had given her husband, small and large, winked in her memory. Worse, with a chill that flushed goosing on her skin, she thought of the grim little Comyn of Badenoch’s words regarding force. If necessary.
There was no way out of it. It was no longer a wayward wife Buchan wanted, but the key to unlock the rents of a powerful earldom and he would not let Isabel or Hal alone. If she remained, Herdmanston would feel the wrath of Buchan and she knew, as she knew her own palms, that Bruce would not prevent it – even if he felt like it – for he would be persuaded that Hal of Herdmanston was not cause enough to break the uneasy pact with the Comyn.
‘A bladder may be dipped,’ she said flatly, ‘but not drowned. I will have your word on that.’
The Red Comyn shrugged; he did not care one way or the other and said so.
‘Betimes,’ he added with a wry twist, ‘I would not put yer faith in the wee lord of Herdmanston. I hear he’s
