him, unmarked by Carrick livery so that no-one could be sure who they belonged to.
He looked them over; well armed and mounted on decent garrons. They looked like they had bitten hard on life and broken no teeth – none more so than their leader, the young lord from Herdmanston.
Hal felt the eyes on him and turned to where the Earl sat on his great, sweating destrier, swathed in a black, marten-trimmed cloak and wearing maille under it. The face framed by a quilted arming cap was broad, had been handsome before the fat had colonised extra chins, was clean-shaven and sweating pink as a baby’s backside.
The Earl of Buchan was a dozen years older than Bruce, but what advantage in strength that gave the younger man was offset, Hal thought, by the cunning concealed in those hooded Comyn eyes.
Buchan acknowledged the Herdmanston’s polite neck-bow with one of his own. Bradacus pawed grass and snorted, making Buchan pat him idly, feeling the sweat-slick of his neck even through the leather glove.
He should have begged a palfrey instead of riding a destrier to a hunt, he thought moodily, but could not bring himself to beg for anything from the Douglases or Bruces. Now a good 25 merks of prime warhorse was foundering – not to mention the one his wife had appropriated, and he was not sure whether he fretted more for her taking a warhorse on a jaunt or for her clear, rolling-eyed flirting with Bruce at table the night before.
Brawn in mustard and a casserole of wheat berries, pigeon, mushrooms, carrots, onions and leaves – violet leaves and lilac flowers, the Lady Douglas had said proudly. With rose petals. Buchan could still feel the pressure of it in his bowels and had been farting as badly as the warhorse was sweating.
It had been a strange meal, to say the least. Old Brother Benedictus had graced the provender and that was the last he said before he fell asleep with his head in his rose petals and gravy. The high table – himself, Bruce, the ladies, wee Jamie Douglas, the Inchmartins, Davey Siward and others -had been stiffly cautious.
All save Isabel, that is. The lesser lights had yapped among themselves, friendly enough save for those close to the salt, when the glowering and scowling began at who had been placed above and below it.
Conversation had been muted, shadowed by the distant cloud that was King Edward – even in France, Buchan thought moodily, Longshanks casts a long shadow. He had put Bruce right on a few points and been pleased about it, while giving nothing away to clumsy probings about his intentions regarding the rebelling Moray.
‘Exitus acta probat,’ he had answered thickly, choking on Isabel’s smiles and soft conversation with the Lady, talking right across him and ignoring him calculatedly.
‘I hope the result does validate the deeds,’ a cold-eyed Bruce had answered in French, ‘but that’s a wonderful wide and double-edged blade you wield there.’
Hal would have been surprised to find that he and Buchan shared the same thoughts, though his had been prompted by the sight of the Dog Boy, whose life had been wrenched apart and reformed at last night’s feast as casually as tossing a bone to a dog.
‘Your hounds are settled?’ Eleanor Douglas had called out to Hal, who had been placed – to his astonishment – at the top of the lesser trestle and within touching distance of the high table. He thought she was trying to unlatch the tension round her and went willing with it. Then he found she only added to it.
‘Yon lad is a soothe to them, mistress,’ he had replied, one ear bent to the grim, clipped exchanges between Buchan and Bruce.
‘It pleases me, then, to give you the boy,’ the Lady said, smiling. Hal saw the sudden, stricken look from Jamie, spoon halfway to his mouth, and realised that the Lady knew it, too.
‘Jamie will have me a wicked stepma from the stories,’ she went on, not looking at her stepson, ‘but he spends ower much time with that low-born chiel, so it is time they were parted and he learns the way of his station.’
Hal had felt the cleft of the stick and, with it, a spring of savage realisation – the hound-boy is a byblow of The Hardy, he thought to himself, and the wummin finds every chance to have revenge on wayward husband and her increasingly fretting stepson. Gutterbluid was one and now I am another – a dangerous game, mistress. He glanced at Jamie, seeing the stiff line of the boy, the cliff he made of his face.
‘I shall take careful care of the laddie,’ he had said, pointedly looking at Jamie and not her, ‘for if he quietens those imps of mine, he is worth his weight.’
He realised the worth of his gift only later and, staring at the scrawny lad, marvelled at the calm he brought to those great beasts; the Berner’s mean spirit came back to make Hal frown harder and he suddenly became aware that he was doing it while glaring at the Earl of Buchan.
Hastily, he formed a weak smile of apology, then turned away, but he realised later that Buchan had not been aware of him at all, had been concentrating, like a snake on a vole, on the arrival of his wife.
She appeared, a spot of blood on the vert of the day, smiling brightly and inclining her head graciously to her scowling husband, the huntsmen and hound boys. She sat astraddle, on a caparisoned palfrey – at least she is not riding my other warhorse this time, Buchan thought viciously – while the Lady of Douglas, demure and aware of her rank, rode sidesaddle and was led by Gutterbluid, who had her hawk on his wrist.
Isabel wore russet and gold and, incongruously to Hal, worn, travel-stained half-boots more suited to a man than a Countess, but the hooded cloak was bright as a Christmas berry. Hal realised all of it was borrowed from the Lady Douglas – save the boots, which were her own and all she had arrived with bar a green dress, an old travel cloak and a fine pair of slippers.
Jamie rode alongside her, a lute in one hand; he winked at Dog Boy, who managed a wan smile and the pair of them shared the sadness of this, their final moments together in all their lives to this point.
‘Wife,’ growled Buchan with a nod of grudged greeting and had back a cool smile.
‘La,’ she then said loudly, cutting through all the noise of dogs and horses and men. ‘Lord Robert – finches.’
Buchan brooded from under the lowered lintel of his brows at Bruce and his wife, playing the same silly game they had played all through last night at table. He felt the temper in him rising like a turd in a drain.
‘Easy. A chirmyng,’ Bruce replied. ‘Now one for you – herons.’
Hal saw the way Isabel pouted, her eyes sapphire fire and her hair all sheened with copper lights; he felt his mouth grow dry and stared. Buchan saw that too, and that irked him like a bad summer groin itch that only inflamed the more you scratched it.
‘A siege,’ she answered after only a short pause. ‘My throw – boys.’
Bruce frowned and squinted while the hunt whirled round them like leaves, not touching the pair of them, as if they sat in a maelstrom which did not ruffle a hair on either head. But Hal watched Buchan watching them and saw the hatred there, so that when Bruce gave in and Isabel clapped her hands with delight, Hal saw the Comyn lord almost lift off his saddle with rage.
‘Ha,’ she declared, triumphantly. ‘I have come out on top again.’
Then, as Bruce’s face flamed, Hal heard her add, ‘A blush of boys.’
‘If ye are done with your games,’ White Tam growled from the knotted root of his face, ‘we may commence the hunt.
‘My lord,’ he added, seeing Bruce’s scowl and managing to invest the term with more scathe than a scold’s bridle. Since White Tam was the Douglas head huntsman and more valued than even Gutterbluid the Falconer, Bruce could only smile and acknowledge the man with a polite inclination of his head.
‘Now we will begin,’ White Tam declared and flapped one hand; the cavalcade moved laboriously off, throwing clots up over the grass from the track that led into the forest alongside the Douglas Water. Dog Boy watched Gib being pulled into the wake of the hound cart by the deerhounds.
‘Peace, o my stricken lute, warbled Jamie shakily and plucked one or two notes, though the effect was spoiled by his having to break off and steer the horse.
‘Bloody queer battue this,’ Sim Craw growled, coming up to Hal’s elbow. Buchan and Bruce were armed and mailled, though they had left helms behind as a sop to false friendship and because what they wore was already a trial in the damp May warmth.
Buchan even rode his expensive warhorse, Sim pointed out, as if he expected trouble, while the shadow of Malise Bellejambe jounced at his back on a rouncey fitted with fat saddle-packs on either side.
‘Or would mak’ trouble,’ Hal answered and Sim stroked his grizzled chin and touched the stock of the great bow slung to one side of his rough-coated horse, watching the constantly shifting eyes of Bellejambe. Kirkpatrick, he noted, was nowhere to be seen and the entire fouled affair made him more savage at the mouth of the barrel- chested Griff, a foul-tempered garron, small, hairy and strong.
All his men rode the same mounts, small horses ideally suited for rough trod and long rides in the dark and
