‘Wallace kens what is hid in Roslin,’ Hal said flatly. Bruce said nothing, though the problem had nagged him. He had arranged for the Stone of Scone to be supplanted by a cuckoo and the real one carried off to Roslin. Murder had been involved in it and, in the end, Wallace had found out. He had done nothing then – Falkirk fixed that – and said nothing since; Bruce now wrestled with the problem of whether he would keep his silence.
The Earl eventually shrugged, as if it no longer mattered.
‘Mak’ siccar,’ he said to Kirkpatrick and then turned away.
Later, in the cool breeze of a summer’s night, Hal stood with Kirkpatrick and watched the flaring fire from Stirling, heard the sometime thump as the wind veered.
‘Edward will be getting a lashin’ from his young queen,’ Kirkpatrick noted wryly, ‘for keeping the royal bairns up wi’ such racket.’
‘He is not short of pith for an auld man,’ Hal answered. ‘I fear our earl will have to be doucelike patient if he waits for Longshanks to get kisted up afore he makes his move.’
‘If Wallace remains it will be longer than that,’ Kirkpatrick answered. ‘So we had better be on the trail of it.’
‘What did he mean,’ Hal said, ‘by his parting words?’
‘Mak’ siccar?’ Kirkpatrick smiled sharply. ‘Make sure. Make sure Wallace is found and given the message, of course. That he stands in the way.’
Hal watched Kirkpatrick slide into the shadows and wondered.
Stirling Castle
Vigil of Saint James the Apostle, July, 1304.
He knelt in the leprous sweat of full panoply, hearing the coughs and grunts of all the other penitents suffering in the heat – yet ahead of him, Bruce saw the straight back and brilliant white head of the King, rising up from the humble bow to look to where the prisoners knelt, humbler still; he could imagine the smile on Edward’s face.
Oliphant’s face was a grey mask, not all of it from the ashes dumped on his head; together with the hemp noose round his neck, it marked his contrition and the final humiliation of surrender. Behind him, as suitable a backdrop as a cross for Jesus, the great rearing throwing arms of the Berefray, the parson, Segrave and the notorious Warwolf leered triumphantly at the pocked and blackened walls of Stirling.
‘O gracious God, we remember before thee this day thy servant and apostle James, first among the Twelve to suffer martyrdom for the Name of Jesus Christ …’
The Bishop of Ross was a pawky wee man with a matching voice, Hal thought, and then offered apology to God for the impiety, true though it was.
Still, he was also a prelate trusted by the English, more so than the ones he and Kirkpatrick and Bruce had quit only weeks before at Cambuskenneth. Better still, being full of his own self-importance, he had handled the entire affair of the surrender of Stirling fortress with suitable gravitas.
Just as well, for a single snigger would have undone the wonderful mummery of it – the stern, implacable Edward, ordering the gralloching of Oliphant and the other supplicants staggering out of Stirling with their hempen collars, draped in white serks and ashes. The lisping French of the beautiful young Queen, begging her imperious husband to relent and spare them, for the grace of God and on this day of days, the Vigil of St James the Martyr.
Three times she and her women, Bruce’s Irish countess among them, had pleaded and twice Edward had loftily refused, perfectly coiffured silver head and rouged cheeks tilted defiantly skywards, while everyone watched and tried to remain suitably dignified.
And then, when the weeping and wailing had worked its inevitable magic and the rebels were spared, the collective sigh exhaled by everyone watching all but rippled the trampled grass.
‘God be praised,’ finished the bishop.
‘For ever and ever.’
The reply from a host of murmured lips was like a covey of birds taking flight and the rest of the Augustinians went off into chant and slow march, swinging their censers; the acrid thread of incense caught Bruce by the throat and Hal heard the subtle little catch of breath next to him.
Head bowed, draped so that Bruce could only see the half-moon of eyelash on cheek, his wife was young and beautiful. Creamed flesh and black hair, a true Irish princess was Elizabeth and Bruce tried to think of her and not her powerful father, the de Burgh Earl of Ulster.
She was polite and deferential in public, a delight in private, so that love with Elizabeth de Burgh was no sweating work of grossness. He did what he wanted, feeling her writhe and knowing that she took pleasure in it, so that there was for him, too.
Yet, afterwards, there was always the memory of his first wife, Belle, his hand on her small, heaving bosom, feeling her life drain away, seeing the baby she left. Poor Marjorie, he thought with a sharp pang of guilt and regret, I have not done well by that child.
And before, with Belle, there had been times when he felt he could believe in the power of sheean magic, in that lazy hour of lying together when outlines hazed and a sunbeam slant, danced with golden motes.
In the day Elizabeth de Burgh was dutiful. In the night, she was wanton and that was workable – in the night, he thought, I lose my ability to see. But Belle was slim as a wand, with breasts like nuts. Elizabeth is as lush as the lands she brings to me, Bruce thought, so that even the dark cannot turn back time. The Curse of Malachy, he thought, to have the world and taste only ashes – would it be like this even when he was king?
Elizabeth rose, smoothing her dress, adjusting her wimple, smiling at him gently, making an expression of winsome regret as she began to move to the side of the equally young Queen, who smiled with bland eyes below a pale forehead and brows almost blonde. For all her youth, three faint lines already touched that brow, as if the age of her husband was leaching her youth.
Ashes. The taste drifted to his mouth, palpable, so that he turned in time to see a brown-hooded figure signing the cross at a man in white, neck-roped and clouded with flying ashes where he had shaken himself free of them. The ceremony over, Oliphant was smiling at the chance to wash and get back into decent clothes.
‘Ave Maria, gratia plena,’ intoned the monk. ‘Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae …’
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Not that Oliphant faced death now or anything near it, Bruce thought. He had won himself a deal of fame by holding out so long and even managed to avoid serious injury or penance; Bruce nodded acknowledgement to the man and had back a grin that bordered on sneer from the grey-smeared face.
Bruce felt movement at his elbow and turned into the curious stare of Hal, felt unnerved as he often did when he found the man looking at him. He did it more and more these days, as if silently accusing, though Bruce did not know for what – unless the Countess Buchan, of course, the poor wee man’s lost light of love, who had been Bruce’s initiation into the serious arts of the bedchamber once.
Hardly that, for he has known of that since the beginning and made his peace with it. Herdmanston, then? Burned out, it needed rebuilding and I promised him aid in it, but God’s Blood, the man was on wages for himself and thirty riders which took the rents of a couple of good manors. Surely he realized that rebuilding his wee rickle of stones in Lothian was no great priority when a throne was a stake?
Yet he smiled, at him and Kirkpatrick both; they were useful, though not the pillars to support a man who would be king. Still, he needed their questing-dog purpose even if, so far, it had come to nothing; he knew they smarted over their failure to find Wallace, knew also that they would not give up if only because of their rivalry in it. Bruce’s smile widened; divide and conquer, the first rule of kings.
The monk and Bruce watched the prisoners stumble off, then the monk turned and Bruce gave a start, for he knew the face. So did Hal, coming up on