‘There is an island in his loch,’ Campbell had told Hal, ‘where Saint
Mael Ruaba
has a shrine and where many folk are buried. There is a tree there, an oak and on it are nailed many bull’s heads, for they sacrifice there in the old way. To get to this island you have to brave the loch’s monster, the
muc-sheilch
. Truly, these folk are not like us.’
Coming from the likes of Neil Campbell, that was almost laughable, but Hal was chilled to the marrow by the tale of Alexander the Elder and had no mirth left in him. For all his lightness, Neil himself was careful around the old chief.
‘You should have demanded the stick, Alaxandair Oigh,’ Neil Campbell said sternly, though Hal heard the deferential politeness in his voice. The old man waved a hand.
‘Aye, aye. A Campbell puts me right, so he does – yet the question remains, wee stick or no wee stick.’
The silence fell like the sift of snow. A Wallace or a Toom Tabard – a fighter or a kneeler? Hal marvelled at how far and fast the legend of Sir Will had gone – and how the future of the King himself depended on it. Trolls or not, these were the only forces left.
‘He is the King,’ Hal replied carefully. ‘Wallace was Wallace, Balliol is his own man still. King Robert is also his own man – but if you want to know if he will fight, then let me say that his knees do not bend and the only way his cote will be stripped is from his dead body.’
There were approving growls when Neil translated that and Alaxandair Oigh nodded thoughtfully; amazed at himself, Hal realized that he actually believed what he had told them and the rest of it spilled from him, unbidden.
‘Your folk are gathering for this,’ Hal went on to his face. ‘It will be a foolish leader who, in years to come, has to tell his children that he missed out on the saving of the Kingdom and its king because he was cold and did not like his neighbours.’
That brought laughter and Hal handed the stick back to Neil Campbell and stepped away, glad to be rid of the whole matter. He went swiftly to Sim Craw’s sickbed, followed by the padding faithful of Dog Boy and Chirnside Rowan; they all looked down at Sim, seeing the pale of him and the fat sweat drops popping out on his forehead like apple pips.
Then they looked at each other, these last three and could find nothing to say. Hal tucked the blankets tighter round Sim, hoping that what he felt on them was cold and not damp, though it was hard to tell with his numbed fingers.
He glanced up at the rough canvas and branch roof of the bower, praying the snow did not turn wet, or even to rain and that the wind did not rise enough to blow this mean roof away. Dog Boy fed sticks to flare their fire to warmer life.
‘Bigod,’ said a growl of voice. ‘Ye turn a fair pretty speech – His Grace the King will be pleased to hear that his esteem is being lauded in these wild hills.’
They all whirled to see the familiar, dark, gaunt figure hirple out of the shadows, a lopsided grin on his face.
‘Kirkpatrick,’ Hal managed weakly.
‘The same,’ Kirkpatrick declared, hunkering stiffly by their fire and peering briefly at Sim Craw. He tutted and sucked his teeth.
‘He is looking poorly, certes,’ he said. ‘Jesu – the snaw is early this year. Another bad blissin’ frae Saint Malachy, whose day this is.’
Hal stared blankly back at Kirkpatrick’s revelation of what day it was, as numbed by his appearance as by cold.
‘What brings ye here?’ demanded Chirnside truculently and Kirkpatrick held out his hands to the flames and rubbed them, unconcerned by Chirnside’s scowls or the frank amazement of the others.
‘I am here telling these chieftains that His Grace is alive and well and will return in the spring,’ Kirkpatrick said. ‘This will be greeted with smiles by these sorry chiels, since it means they can go home for the winter.’
He rubbed his hands more vigorously, as if the mention of the word had brought more cold, though it might have been the sudden swirl of snell wind.
‘Then I am headed south on a mission for … someone else,’ he said mysteriously.
‘So he is alive and well,’ Hal declared. ‘Himself, the King.’
‘A wee bit battered and bruised,’ Kirkpatrick admitted, ‘after taking a dunt at Methven. He and others have been scrambling ower these hills since, runnin’ an’ fightin’ like hunted wolves.’
‘Where is he?’ demanded Chirnside Rowan roughly and Kirkpatrick placed a shushing finger on his lips.
‘Safe. Last I saw of him he was smiling like a biled haddie at Christina Macruarie of Garmoran and his dunted face seemed no hindrance to her liking of it. He is in the care of a wheen of Islesmen of that rare wummin’s
mesnie
, including a fair fleet of galleys. Mind you, I suppose he will be on his knees most of this day, begging the forgiveness of Malachy in the hope of better advancement.’
‘Christ’s Bones,’ Chirnside breathed admiringly. ‘He is sparkin’ a new wummin? Yin with galleys?’
Hal poured a scowl on him.
‘With his queen fresh taken by his enemies,’ he pointed out scathingly. ‘And us sitting chittering oor teeth in the cold and wet. Others are even worse, with necks in a kinch or on a spike.’
‘Ach, you’re a bowl o’ sour gruel, man,’ Kirkpatrick scoffed. ‘At least the King is safe.’
‘Unless he dies from labouring at the tirlie-mirlie,’ Chirnside laughed. Dog Boy offered his own scowl at this shocking vision of the King swiving Christina Macruarie to terminal exhaustion. Then he looked at Kirkpatrick like an eager dog.
‘Jamie?’ he asked and grinned delightedly when Kirkpatrick nodded.
‘Safe with His Grace. It was young Jamie Douglas who found the only wee boat for miles that let us row away from Dunaverty afore the English arrived.’
Hal wondered if there was a boat still waiting for Kirkpatrick after his mission and whether it would take four more; Sim Craw, he thought bitterly, would benefit from some of this Macruarie hospitality, if only the bed and her lovenest blanket. Distantly he heard the murmur of Neil Campbell’s sibilant voice, telling the others the news Kirkpatrick had brought.
It was over, he thought dully. Another failed rebellion. More blood and ashes – and where did that leave him and the others in his care? That brought memory on him and he turned to Kirkpatrick, who was exchanging more of his news with Chirnside and Dog Boy.
‘Where are ye headed?’ he demanded and Kirkpatrick smiled soft and slow, for he had not arrived here by accident and he now gathered in the Herdmanston lord, gentle as tickling trout.
‘Ah – I wondered when ye would recall that. South. To where a certain countess is being held.’
Hal stared and Kirkpatrick tried not to be irritated at the blankness of it; Christ’s Bones, the man was mainly for sense save ower this wummin.
‘Isabel,’ he persisted, as he would to a child. ‘I ken where she is being held. I thought you and I might go there.’
Closeburn Castle, Annandale
Ferial Day following the celebration of the Sancti Quatuor Coronati (Four Crowned Martyrs) November, 1306
Cheese and sobbing. Not the best of the world, Isabel thought, to take into Eternity but fitting enough for this prison which might see the end of me.
She tossed the half-round of hard cheese away and laboriously heaved at the sack it had lain on until she had struggled it across the floor in arcs, leaving little trails of barley from the gnawed holes. Mildewed, she thought, which is why it was left when they emptied this place to use as a prison. Now it will be a pillow, at least. She blew a tendril of hair from her face and fretted at the untreated grey in the russet.
‘In the name of God, girl, shut up.’
Mary Bruce was stern as a stone Virgin, but her French was pitch perfect and precise; Marjorie was past all that, the fear rippling her body with weeping.
‘Auntie, they will kill us all,’ she wailed and Mary slapped her shoulder, then gathered her into her bosom in the next moment.
‘Swef, swef,’ she soothed. ‘They will not kill us – and speak French. You are the daughter of a king, girl, not some Lothians cottar.’
Isabel, who knew some fine Lothians cottars, thought of Sim Craw and Dog Boy and what they would do if imprisoned in the undercroft of Closeburn among the remains of old stores. Would think themselves well off, Isabel was sure, being warm and dry and finding old cheese rind and mildewed barley with which to make a meal.
Marjorie subsided to hiccups, for which Isabel was glad at least. Mark you, you could scarcely fault the girl, a child on the edge of womanhood, from being a gibber of fear after what had happened at Tain.
It had been a bad idea, as far as Isabel was concerned, to head north of Inverness and the chance of a boat to Orkney, where Norway held sway – and another Bruce sister was queen. That sanctuary led through Buchan and Ross lands, both those earls on the hunt for rebels; it came as no surprise to Isabel when wild-bearded men snarled out of the wet, foggy bracken of the hills and stampeded the column into flight.
They had reached St Duthac’s shrine, with its four weathered pillars marking the sanctuary of the garth and, by that time, four men had already been lost. The Duthac garth had been an illusion, for the Earl of Ross himself had curled a lip and strode into it, his men overwhelming the last resistance in a welter of blood; it was then Marjorie had started into screaming and sobbing and was only now subsiding.
Mary Bruce had drawn herself up to her full height, which was taller than the cateran who approached her, licking lascivious lips; she had stared down her nose at him, then dared him, in good Gaelic, to lay a finger on the sister of Scotland’s king.
Whether the cateran was impressed or not would remain a mystery, since the Earl of Ross had beaten his liegeman to a bloody pulp with a flute-headed mace and hanged the remains from a pillar at St Duthac’s shrine to remind the rest of his prowling wolves that he meant what he said when he told them to leave off the women.
The setting for this slaughter only emphasized that the Earl of Ross did not even consider God held power greater than himself.
‘Take a good look,’ Mary Bruce had said to Ross when the bloody remains were hauled up. ‘That is your fate for having violated this shrine and laid hands on a queen.’
The Earl of Ross had merely shrugged and smiled; his deference was all kept for the Queen herself, strangely aloof from all this and Isabel knew then that she would go one way and all the other women another – that the Queen would not be harmed because she was the daughter of Ulster.
Which was exactly what happened; without a backward glance, Elizabeth de Burgh had gone off, bundled up warmly and ridden away, while Mary, Marjorie, Isabel and the tirewomen had been huckled into carts to be transported south.
Isabel had seen Niall Bruce and Atholl, with chains at wrist and ankles, being dragged along in the wake of the carts, but only once, and when they arrived at a nunnery in the dark, the pair of them were gone. With grim irony, the nunnery was Elcho, though the prioress and all the nuns she had known had been replaced.
Now they were here in Closeburn and Isabel was no wiser as to their fate. South, probably – Carlisle or further still, away from any possible rescue.
She heard the familiar jingle, then the grate of a huge key in a fat lock: Dixon, their shuffling old gaoler, his great blued lips pursed.
‘Ye have a veesitor,’ he said, and nodded his fleshy head towards Isabel. ‘The Maister entertains him with wine and sends me to allow time to be presentable.’
Isabel snorted.
‘And how, pray, am I to achieve that?’ she demanded. ‘Empty this barley sack and wear it? Certainly that is more presentable than the dress I have on.’
‘Aye, aye, betimes,’ muttered Dixon, mournfully.
‘Suitable for this guest room, mark you,’ Isabel scathed.
‘Aye, aye,’ Dixon replied and turned one glaucous eye on her, the other shut as if considering.
‘The reason ye have this room is not because we cleared it out,’ he mourned, ‘but because it has been ate oot, rind an all, by the chiels we have crowding in. It will be a hard winter for us, ladies, when ye have passed on from here, since you and all those with ye have ruined us from hoose and hame.’
‘Then it seems clear I should hang on to the sack with the barley in it,’ Isabel replied tartly. ‘Bring on my “veesitor”, gaoler.’
‘Who could it be?’ Marjorie asked when the man was gone, and Isabel heard the hope of rescue or ransom in her voice; she looked at Mary Bruce and they shared the unspoken knowledge that it was unlikely to be either.
It was, as Isabel suspected, her husband.
He came in fur-wrapped against a chill that the women had grown used to but clearly bothered him and followed by the loathsome shadow of Malise Bellejambe. Her husband stood straight, Isabel saw, with a squared hint of the powerful shoulders left, his dirty grey grizzle of beard cocked haughtily.
Yet he was yellowed and gaunt, the hair on his head lank and the fur wrapping made him look like he had been caught in the embrace of a mangy, winter-woken bear and was struggling to break free.
She felt a leap of pity then, and an echo of feeling at his eyes, pouched and rheumed and unutterably weary – but it was an old statue, that feeling, the marble glory of it worn and weathered, clogged and smothered with the moss of neglect and anger.
Yet the death of Badenoch must have hit him hard, she thought, not to mention the forced alliance with the English he had always struggled against, because the Bruce stood on the other side.
Their endless feud was killing them both, she thought.
‘
Ma Dame
,’ he said icily. ‘You are fair caught. I am vindicated at last.’
She heard the cold in him and felt only sadness at it.
‘A great nation of vindicated corpses, that’s us,’ Mary Bruce answered and he turned his wet fish eyes to her, raking over the trembling Marjorie on the way.
‘Quiet you,’ he said with a stunning calm and a chilling dismissal of any deference to her rank. ‘You are bound for Roxburgh, lady, while the child is bound for a nunnery somewhere south. Count yourself fortunate to be alive – though you will not think it when you find the plan Longshanks has for you.’