Arundel visits, and shares news that he and Captain Wekesa had found the French captain. The man absolutely refused to talk, holding his tongue against both offers of gold and threats of violence. Captain Wekesa says the man was terrified, the sort of terror that comes from being accidentally complicit in a great crime.
As winter eases into spring, Harry vacillates between believing Iain will appear at any moment, all brooding pale eyes and quicksilver grin, and knowing in his heart that Iain will never return. Eventually, for his sanity, he has to let go of his hope. Even though it feels like he is killing something inside him.
The roof is on in time for the May Day celebrations. They have a grand party, all the vassals for miles around, and all the knights he and Alys have befriended, coming to inaugurate the new hall with a feast and good cheer. Harry’s body smiles and chats and goes through all the motions of the great lord and the good host, while inside he feels nothing.
He counts the days until he can go back north, to meet the King’s army in Newcastle for the new Scottish campaign. He only feels anything, any more, when he’s at war. It terrifies him a little, but not enough to change. War is simple.
Harry thinks back to Halidon Hill often, to the naïve boy who rode to war like it was another game, with stewards and rules and clear winners. Now he knows it’s just a tangled, horrid mess with no law except that of the winners. He wonders if he, now, would have wetted his sword at Loch Doon.
He shudders. He’s not that man. Not yet.
‘So when will Dartington have an heir?’ Sir Gervase calls from down the table. Harry’s cheeks flame red as he’s brought back to the present, to the celebratory dinner for their new stone hall. He glances at Alys, panicked. They haven’t talked about this. He’s been in mourning. It’s not been—
‘Well, now that I know the baby won’t be born in a barn,’ Alys tosses back at Sir Gervase.
Harry rises to the occasion, crossing his arms and pantomiming displeasure. They can joke their way out of this. ‘I don’t know what you’re objecting to, Alys. It’s a very nice barn.’
Alys winks at him, and he feels a genuine smile cross his face. ‘We missed our chance at a tournament pavilion,’ he jests.
‘Alas,’ Alys groans in mock horror, then pats his arm. ‘No more tournaments for you.’
‘No,’ Harry whispers, sober again. ‘Only the real thing, now.’ He looks at Alys, how her new gorget and wimple hide her dark hair but frame her delicate face and warm brown eyes. ‘You don’t have to stay here, you know,’ he says. ‘If you don’t like it.’
‘Odsbodkins, my entire life seems to be spent wanting to stab idiot boys from Devonshire with my eating knife,’ Alys says. ‘Have you ever considered that I will have my family’s own estates returned to me in a few years, and I jolly well need to know how to run them?’
‘Uh,’ Harry says.
‘Quite,’ Alys replies, reaching for a plate of honey cakes that Annie is placing on the table. ‘Now if you’d stop trying to decide what’s best for me and instead focus on not dying in Scotland, I’d appreciate it.’
Harry survives the dinner. He also survives, barely, Alys informing him that they will try for an heir when he returns from the war, because Annie (who is also present for the conversation, up in the new solar) says that any competent midwife can help a woman conceive without penetration. It’s by far the most embarrassing conversation Harry’s ever had.
He breaks down when Alys suggests they call the child Iain, if it’s a boy.
Through his sobs, he apologises to her for the man he’s become. Alys just hugs him and tells him it will stop hurting one day. Harry doesn’t admit to her that is what he fears most.
The hurt is all he has left. Once it’s gone, he won’t feel anything at all.
Harry departs one gentle, drizzly May morning for the North. He rides alone. The idea of taking another squire with him is nauseating. He’ll make do. War is, after all, not nearly as complicated as a tournament.
The army meets at Newcastle in June of 1335. They march north across the Scottish border shortly thereafter. Montagu has, damn him, delivered what he promised: a huge force. The King favours him with a new crest in the form of an eagle, and a fine horse with that eagle crest embroidered on all the tack and clothing.
Arundel is still in the South, messing about with boats.
Their new, larger army burns through Scotland from west to east, and Harry hears tell of an equally large force under Balliol riding to meet them from Galloway. Of all places, Balliol had to choose Galloway.
It’s not even fighting this time. It’s just punishment. They encounter small Scottish forces, they slay them, they burn their towns. Harry volunteers to ride ahead with the scouts, so at least when he faces bands of Scottish patriots it feels more like a fair fight.
He sees Iain in them sometimes. In their dress. Their ferocity. Even when they scream at him in Gaelic, it’s familiar, a fond memory. He still does his duty and kills them.
The two English armies meet in Perth in August, and King Edward instals himself in the city with only occasional punitive forays out into the countryside. As the bulk of the English army streams home to harvest, a fragile truce is negotiated.
Harry heads back to his manor too, away from the ash and the blood and the stink of burning hair and gut-stained steel.
The international politics he shunned so long now follow him, the talk of taverns and travellers, a mocking shadow of his past ignorance. Threats fly between the French and English kings.
