Authors: Robert Low
It washed over him like fire, sank and ebbed, leaving him trembling and bitter with the reality. Seven years detached from swordplay or even wearing maille or riding a horse. Nothing left of his Herdmanston lands but the title. No men at his back and no future at his front. Some gallant rescuing knight, he thought, who has even been forgotten by the King I helped put on the throne.
But not by Isabel. He was sure of that and it nagged him like a knife in the ribs, the knowledge that she had squatted in her cage for seven years, willing him to her rescue. It was a scorching force that, every now and then, drove him to his feet as if to rush there alone and beat the walls down. The effort of staying shook him like ague and it had been this way for all of the seven years; the old weals on his knuckles told of the blood he had spilled hammering uselessly on stone and door.
An hour later, the world changed again when a squire came up and declared that the King requested Sir Hal of Herdmanston’s presence in his chambers. The boy said it politely enough, for he was court-skilled enough to realize that there might be more to this old man than poor clothes and a bad haircut, since the King was not only seeing him in private, but had requested it.
‘Come as you are,’ the servant added, seeing Hal hesitate and look down at his tunic. Sim laid a hand on Hal’s wrist as he started to move after the servant.
‘Dinna fash when you see him,’ he hissed, his Lenten fish-breath close to Hal’s ear.
Which was not a comfort to a man anxious about meeting a king he had not seen for so long. Eight years ago, the Bruce had been freshly crowned, awkward under it and hag-haunted by what he had done to the Red Comyn in Greyfriars.
Even behind Roxburgh’s walls, Hal had heard the argument, the monks of Bishops Wishart and Lamberton piercing the stones with their shouted debates, that it had not been red murder because there was no ‘forethocht’ in it. Rather, according to the carefully primed monks, it was a
chaude-melle
, a ‘suddenty of temper’ brought on by the lord of Badenoch’s provocations. Besides, Hal thought as he clacked into the great nave on his thick-soled shoes, the new Joshua of Scotland could not be so base as to have deliberately sought the murder of a rival.
But he remembered the stricken Bruce, seemingly struck numb and appalled at his act of temper. Seemingly. Even now, Hal was hagged by the possibility of mummery, for the speed of Bruce’s recovery, the smoothness with which Kirkpatrick and himself had been sent to make sure the Red Comyn was indeed dead, all left an iced sliver of doubt.
The bloody altar and the high, metal stink rolled out of Hal’s old thoughts, so that he paused and stood, mired in memory. The way Badenoch’s heels, those vain, inch-lifted heels on his fancy boots, had rattled like a mad drummer as he kicked his way out of the world, splashing his own puddled gore up even as Kirkpatrick made sure …
‘Sir Henry.’
The familiar voice wrenched him back and he stood in front of a clean altar under the great bloom of stone and glass that formed the nave window of the abbey. A figure, silhouetted against the stain of light, walked forward and the servant boy stepped back, bowing.
‘Hal. God be praised.’
‘For ever and ever,’ Hal repeated by rote and then, remembering too late, bobbed his head and added: ‘Your Grace.’
He was aware of figures and the servant, dismissed with a wave, sliding off into the shadows, then he looked up from the floor, blinking, as Bruce swung round into plain view.
The height and the body were the same, tall and hardened, unthickened by age – he must be in his fortieth year, Hal thought wildly, yet his hair is still mostly dark.
But the face. Hail Mary, the face …
It had coarsened, the lines of age in it deepened to grooves, the skin lesioned and greyish, so that he looked older than his years – Christ’s Wounds, Hal thought, he looks older than Sim. The right cheek – that old wound, Hal remembered, given to him by Malenfaunt in a tourney
à l’outrance
– was a thick weal of cicatrice. As if in balance there was the slash taken in the fighting round Methven, a gully of old scar tissue that began above the left brow, broke over the eye and continued down the inside of his cheek almost to the edge of his mouth.Two such dire wounds would have been bad enough, but there was more in that face than hard usage, Hal realized with a sudden shock. There was now clear reason for the whispers of sickness – or even the famed Curse of Malachy.
Yet the eyes were clear and quizzical, the smile a wry lopsided twist as he saw Hal’s shock. He should look at himself, Bruce thought, and was not as sure as he had been when Kirkpatrick convinced him that Hal was the very man for the task he had in mind.
Seven years had not been kind to the lord of Herdmanston; he was too lean, too stooped, too grey – Christ in Heaven, too old. And had not handled weapons for all that time, so that the rawest squire could probably beat him.
He had pointed this out to Kirkpatrick, who had waved it away with a dismissive ‘tschk’.
‘He will muscle up and recover his skills as we go,’ he had argued, then put the only argument likely to win the moment. ‘Who else can you trust for a task like this, my lord king, but the auld dugs?’
So Bruce took Hal’s hands in his own and smiled into the recovering eyes.
‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Your king is pleased to see you back in the world and back in his service.’
It was the ritual jig of kingship, played for long enough now that Bruce had forgotten any other way and the next words were an old part of it.
‘What reward can your king bestow on his faithful subject?’
The answer should have been a low bow and something about how new freedom was the only reward required, with a profuse bouquet of thanks for it.
‘The Countess of Buchan.’
There was a sharp suck of breath that turned Hal’s head to the prelate who made it, standing with his eyes shock-wide in his smooth, bland face. The one next to him was older, more seamed, less shocked; he even seemed to be smiling.
The silence stretched as Bruce blinked. No one had spoken like this for some time and his mind was whirled back to the times when he and Hal’s Lothian men had shared fires in the damp mirk. The one who now served Jamie Douglas – Dog Boy – had been one of them and they had all been plain speakers; he had taken delight in that then and the memory of it warmed him now.
‘I should have expected no less from you,’ he answered with a slight bark of laugh. Then he indicated the two prelates.
‘This is my chaplain, Thomas Daltoun, and Bernard of Kilwinning, former abbot of that place and now my chancellor. Sirs, this is the bold Sir Hal, proving that seven years’ captivity has not dulled him any.’
The prelates nodded and then, sensing the mood, made their obeisances to the King and left, whispering away across the flags with an armful of seal-dangled scrolls. Bruce watched them go – waiting until they were out of earshot, Hal saw.
‘The Countess of Buchan’, he said, turning the full weight of his blunt-weapon face on Hal, ‘is married to Henry de Beaumont.’
He waited, viciously long enough to see Hal’s stricken bewilderment, and then laughed again, a sound like shattering glass.
‘Alice Comyn inherited the title when the Earl died, for he repudiated Isabel at the last. The lands are actually held by me, as king, of course. Henry de Beaumont married Alice and now claims to be Earl of Buchan, a vellum title only. He does not care for me much and not only over his Buchan lands – he was twice handed Mann by the Plantagenet and twice had it removed by the Ordainers. Since I took it last year, he has precious slim chance of ever getting that isle back and less of claiming the lands of Buchan.’
He paused, his face now looking like a bad clay mask.
‘Isabel MacDuff is now no more than a lady from Fife,’ he went on. ‘Though I am sure the title was never the attraction between you and her.’
Bruce did not add – did not need to – that he once had an interest there himself when he was younger and Hal, who had known it then and come to terms with it well enough since, simply nodded.
He wondered, though, if kingship had driven all obligation for Isabel’s sacrifice out of him.
‘A lady of Fife in a cage,’ he dared, aware that this exchange was Bruce’s revenge for his bluntness and fighting the anger it brought, at the easy way Bruce assumed he was ‘back in service’, with no questions asked of seven years’ captivity. More galling yet was the realization that it was true, since there was little else for him and no other way to set about freeing Isabel.
‘Indeed,’ Bruce answered smoothly. ‘As was my sister until recently. And she and my wife and daughter are all held captive – but we shall soon have release for them all.’
He lost the frost in his voice, fuelled it with a smile.
‘I have not forgotten Isabel’s bravery in defying husband and Comyn entire to be a hereditary MacDuff Crowner,’ he added gently, and then drew himself up a little, shaking the soft from him like a dog coming out of a stream.
‘Events are moving,’ he said portentously. ‘I have issued an ultimatum to those Scots lords still serving King Edward, so that they have until November of this year to swear fealty to me or be dispossessed of their Scots lands.’
Hal thought about it, but could only see that this would bring the English down on their heads, which was no help to taking Berwick or freeing Isabel, and said so. Bruce’s smile widened; the cheek stretched and seemed almost to be parting.
‘Just so. King Edward will have no choice. He must muster an army and come at us. And I shall take his last fortresses from him, so they cannot be used in the furtherance of his rampage.’
Hal saw it then, acknowledging it with grudging admiration. The English would plooter north in the old style, achieve nothing and, because they had no firm bases or supply, would suffer even more quickly than usual and retire, because Bruce would not face them in the field.
‘Indeed,’ Bruce confirmed, touching two fingers to the cheek, as if to reassure himself that it was not split and leaking. It was an old habit, Hal saw, ingrained over the years.
‘When Edward Plantagenet fails again, it may be that his own disaffected will round on him,’ the King went on. ‘The Scots lords who follow him will see sense and abandon him. The Kingdom will be secured.’
Your crown will sit steadier, certes, Hal thought; he wondered if he had said it aloud and was flustered enough to say the next thing that came into his head. ‘A decent enough plan. If they ask a truce, then the release of captives will be part of it.’
Bruce, eyebrows raised, offered him a slight mocking bow, so that Hal flushed with his own presumption.
‘I need your service, Lord Hal,’ Bruce went on but Hal was not sure what use he could be and said as much, adding – again forgetting he addressed a king – that he was equally unsure if he had the belly for the work now.
Bruce nodded, as if he had considered the matter, which was true. He also knew that he had already captured the man, yet the triumph of bending Hal to the royal will was not as savage a joy as with others he had snared; it seemed like calming a fine stallion you must geld.
‘If it will provide belly, let me tell you that the reward will be our utmost effort to free Isabel and her safe delivery into your care,’ he answered. ‘If events work out as planned, Berwick will fall to us. At worst, we will negotiate the freedom of all captives.’
He saw the gaff of that go in.
‘As for your abilities,’ he went on, ‘they are well remembered.’ He paused and smiled, lopsided so as not to strain the cheek. ‘Betimes, someone vouches for you.’
He raised one hand into the red and gold stain of light from the nave window. There was a pause, and then a figure stepped forward from the shadows, limping a little, moving slow and silent across the flagged floor.
An auld chiel, Hal thought. Another wee monk?
Then the light poured through the nave on to the iron-grey head, turning it to blood and honey and a shock of the familiar.
‘Ah, Hal,’ said Kirkpatrick, almost sadly. ‘You were ever a man for good sense, save ower that wummin.’
ISABEL
He came to me in the night. He does not do it often these days – so little that, may God forgive me, I was almost glad to see him in my loneliness, for he has long since ceased to pain me with his foulness, which is harder for him to achieve each time. He blames me and beats me for it, but even that strength is going from him. You gave me Malise Bellejambe, Lord, an image of Man in my world, for there is no other here save those I can remember. Is it my own sins that make You even more cruel than he is? I do not understand, O God, for what he does to me is surely cruelty to Yourself. May it be that this is a mirror to make me understand that nothing can protect me, O God, unless it is the shield on which there is no device, but all the heavens and the sun displayed. The only pure thing I have to offer You is my mind. Take it, Lord, and offer me that shield.
Palais du Roi, Paris
Feast of St Joseph of Arimathea, March 1314
The stink of it swamped from the Île des Juifs, pervasive and acrid, wrapping round them like snake coils so that the Queen of England had to raise a scented hand to her nose. It was an irony that the fire which had burned Isabella’s hands and arms so badly the year before should now be of a help; the wounds had festered and she wore scented gloves to hide the glassy weals.
Out on the Seine, the daring were collecting the ashes of her godfather, Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Temple, burned the day before alongside Geoffroi de Charney, Master of Normandy. They had recanted their confessions publicly and her father had ordered the pyre built and the two Templars roasted slowly on it. Too slowly, as it turned out, for de Molay had uttered a long and pungent curse prophesying that his tormentors would be in Hell within the year.
Isabella thought her godfather’s name would live a long time in memory, as a martyr to the Order and not least because of the Curse he had brought down on the Pope and her father. She said it aloud, which made Beaumont, Badlesmere and the young Earl of Gloucester shift a little at the daring in it. They were well used to this slip of a queen having the cunning of a fox and more backbone than her husband, but they kept those thoughts to themselves.