Kingdom 01 - The Lion Wakes (39 page)

‘Message?’ Hal repeated and Elton blinked.

‘Aye, sir. Came looking for Sir Henry by name. Said he had a message for him to get to the spital in Berwick. Life and death, he said.’

‘Life and death?’ repeated Kirkpatrick slowly, then curled his lip in a savage smile.

‘Death, certes – the only spital I know of in Berwick is a leper house.’

‘Christ be praised,’ muttered Bruce, crossing himself.

‘For ever and ever,’ intoned the others and did the same.

‘What could a leper house want with Sir Henry?’ Bruce added, half to himself.

‘A Savoyard,’ declared Elton, nodding and admiring his lead amulet. It took a moment for him to realise the air had frosted and he looked up to see haar-harsh faces looking back at him and then each other.

‘Savoyard,’ repeated Hal in a voice full of tomb dust and echoes. Elton nodded uncertainly, the throat suddenly constrained.

‘You are sure of this name?’

Again the nod. Kirkpatrick shifted and gave a grunt.

‘Life and death,’ he muttered.

Hal snapped from the moment and glared at him, all his suspicions flooding up in a rush.

‘Aye, right enow – death for the Savoyard if ye get yer hand on him.’

Kirkpatrick’s curse was pungent and the hand that flew to his dagger hilt was white at the knuckles. Elton gave a sharp cry and stepped back, fumbling for his own weapon – then Bruce slapped Kirkpatrick hard on the shoulder.

‘Enough.’

He turned to Elton and thanked him for his information, then waited, saying nothing, until the captain took the hint and scuttled off, muttering. Bruce turned to where Hal and Kirkpatrick glared at each other like poorly leashed dogs.

‘Sir Henry is in danger,’ he said and Hal rounded on him, ruffed up and snarling, sure now that he was right, that Bruce and Kirkpatrick were responsible for the death of the master mason and that they done it to hide some other sin.

‘Not him alone – d’ye kill us all, my lord earl, to keep your secret?’

‘Hist,’ said Bruce warningly, then let his glare dampen. ‘Time ye were told some matters.’

‘My lord,’ Kirkpatrick said warningly and Bruce waved his hand dismissively.

‘Christ’s Bones, what does it matter now?’ he declared savagely, resorting to French. Taking the hint, Kirkpatrick shrugged and fell silent.

Bruce looked around; they stood as a little knot out of earshot of everyone else. It was a sun-dappled garth, drenched with morning birdsong and bursting with budding life. Not the place for this, he thought to himself. This should be delivered in a tight-locked room of shadows and a guttering candle. He took a breath.

‘When it was clear what Longshanks intended for John Balliol and this kingdom,’ he began, ‘myself and Bishop Wishart decided to forestall him. Edward planned to strip King John Balliol and the realm of its kingship and he managed the first well enough – so well that King John, shamed wee man that he is, never wants to return here even if we conquered the English tomorrow.’

You would wish, Hal thought. Better still if King John Balliol melted away like haar in sunshine, rather than hag-haunt the throne you want for yourself. He said nothing, simply tried not to tremble with excitement and apprehension while watching Bruce scowl and search for suitable words.

‘Longshanks took the regalia of the realm,’ Bruce went on, ‘the Stone and the Rood and vestements for coronation. He broke the Seal into pieces.’

‘We all saw it,’ Hal declared, bleared with the sudden misery of remembrance. ‘A harsh day for the kingdom.’

‘Aye, well,’ Bruce declared. ‘He did not get the Stone.’

Hal blinked. Everyone had seen it, cowped off its twin plinths and sweated on to a cart to be taken south to Westminster. They had built a throne round it he had heard, so that every time Edward put his arse on the seat, he consecrated himself anew as Scotland’s rightful king.

‘You saw another stone,’ Bruce declared and his face was bright with triumph. Hal felt Kirkpatrick’s eyes burn on him, a clear threat; he preferred not to look into them.

‘Wishart had the idea from the Auld Templar,’ Bruce went on, ‘who knew this master mason, a Fleming who had been overseeing work at Roslin until matters brought it to a halt. The mason went to work at Scone to wait and see if Roslin’s ransoms left enough to resume rebuilding and was glad of the interest of a Bishop – glad, too of the promised purse, just for choosing a stone that looked the same as the one Longshanks planned to take. Then he used his Savoyard carver to make some of the marks expected and they switched it with the real one.’

‘This worked?’ Hal declared, astonished and Bruce’s chin came truculently up.

‘Why not? Few have seen the Stone up close and none of the English who took charge of it. They saw what they expected to see – a block of sandstone, with strange wee weathered and worn marks here and there, sitting where it was supposed to be.’

Right enough, Hal thought, his excitement rising. Which of those who knew would have risked speaking out?

‘The master mason, Gozelo,’ Bruce declared as if in answer, then continued: ‘He, in company with Kirkpatrick here, took the stone to the Auld Templar at Roslin, where it would be secreted away until the day it was needed.’

The day you sat on it, Hal realised, seeing Bruce’s face. The day you would need as much of the kingdom’s regalia as you could recover, to make you legitimate, especially if John Balliol still lived, sulking in the protective shadow of the Pope. By God’s Wounds, Hal marvelled, you had to admire the mountain of the man’s ambition and the length of his plans – he would not even be eligible to be crowned until his own father died.

Then he went cold. The mason, Gozelo, had been killed; Bruce saw the look and transferred it, with a brief glance, to Kirkpatrick, who had the grace to flush slightly.

‘The mason ran,’ Kirkpatrick growled. ‘An hour or two from Roslin, he panicked and ran. He did not wait for any promised purse.’

‘No doubt he thought you would pay him in steel,’ Hal snapped, reverting to Scots.

‘I had no such plans,’ Kirkpatrick snarled back. Bruce soothed them both like a berner with hounds.

‘No matter what was thought,’ he added, ‘the mason fled. Kirkpatrick had to take the Stone on to Roslin himself, where the Auld Templar and John Fenton took charge of it – the less folk involved, the easier the secret of it could be kept.’

‘The Auld Templar gave me a horse and told me to go after Gozelo,’ Kirkpatrick added sullenly. ‘He pointed out – rightly, for sure – that once he thought he was safe away, the mason would look to recompense himself and the only way to do that was get reward from the English by telling them how they had been duped.’

The Auld Templar – had he persuaded Kirkpatrick to red murder, or had that been Kirkpatrick’s own idea? Hal saw the truth of it, bleak as a wet dog, and remembered his father’s advice on the day of the battle at Stirling’s Brig: do not trust anyone, he had said. Not even the Auld Templar, who is ower sleekit on this matter.

Kirkpatrick saw the bleakness and shrugged.

‘Mak’ siccar, the Auld Templar said. So I did.’

Make sure. Hal glanced at the dagger hanging at Kirkpatrick’s waist; fluted, thin and sharp.

‘I took that ring from him,’ Kirkpatrick went on, his stropped razor of a face pale. ‘Took it back to the Auld Templar as proof the deed was done. He asked for such proof in particular.’

Hal glanced to where Kirkpatrick looked. The ring round his neck was Gozelo’s own, plucked from his dead finger and returned to Roslin. An auld sin . . .

‘Now you ken my interest in it,’ Kirkpatrick added wryly. ‘Rather than your dubious charms.’

‘The mason is to be regretted,’ Bruce broke in, frowning. ‘He was never meant to be found either, yet up he popped, like a fart at a feast, on a day’s hunting at Douglas.’

And there was the Curse of Saint Malachy at work, he added to himself, tangling my sin up with my own reins, to be hauled out for the world to witness.

Hal saw the Earl’s face and wanted to believe the shame and regret he saw there. Regretted only because he did not stay decently hidden, Hal thought bitterly, rather than because you had to red murder him. Hal remembered the hunt where Gozelo had surfaced – recalled, too, where the body had been taken and marvelled anew at the width and breadth of Bruce.

‘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.