‘Even if they all fall, the English will still have Berwick and Bothwell,’ he’d said and Edward nodded.
‘Aye, and Dunbar, but none are as brawlie as the great fortalices of Stirling, Edinburgh and here. Besides, taking them throws most of the last garrisons of English out of the Kingdom and sends a sign to English Edward’s enemies that, once again, he is the weak son. Not a Longshanks, for all his length of leg.’
He’d paused, swilled wine in the goblet, frowning at it as if some clegg had flown in.
‘I know why you speak of Berwick,’ he’d said suddenly and Hal jerked with the gaff of his words. They stared at each other for a moment.
‘She is there still?’
The question hunched itself like a crookback beggar with a hand out and was not answered for a long time. Then, however, Edward had shifted slightly.
‘Isabel MacDuff is there still. In a cage hung from the inside wall. The King ordered us to try Berwick’s castle two years since. Got one of Sim of Leadhouse’s fancy ladders up and disturbed a dog on the same battlement. It set up a din of howling and barking, so that the guard came to kick its arse and found us.’
He’d stopped, shaking his head at the memory of the mad scrambling retreat.
‘You left her because of a wee dug,’ Hal had said and it was not a question; it had enough bleak censure in it for Edward’s eyes to blaze and his head to snap up.
‘My sister Mary was in a similar cage – Christ’s Bones, if ye had looked up at any time ye would have seen her hanging on Roxburgh’s battlements. My other sister Christina is held in a convent. My niece is held in yet another and the Queen’s whereabouts is not even known. D’ye think we do not care, Lord Henry?’
Hal saw he had gone too far and with no justice in it, so he’d nodded grudgingly.
‘For the first year they kept me close and mainly in the dark,’ he’d told Edward blankly, and for all the light his tone made of it his eyes were as smoked as the locked dim he’d had to endure for so long.
‘They hourly expected word from English Edward,’ Hal had gone on, hearing his voice as if it belonged to someone else, conscious of his pathetic attempt to be wry and matter-of-fact, ‘but he was busy dying, so it never came and the son became too busy with his catamite and his annoyed barons. In the end, they brought me out and treated me better – but Princess Mary was gone by that time.’
Mollified, Edward Bruce had subsided a little, finishing his wine and pouring more.
‘Aye. Beyond our reach – so you know the taking of Roxburgh was not on her account,’ he had growled.
Nor on mine, Hal had thought grimly to himself, for all Jamie Douglas gave out that it was. When he’d said it aloud, Edward had agreed with a curt nod.
‘So also with Berwick,’ Edward had added pointedly, ‘which will be taken in the end and the doing of it will be less about Isabel MacDuff and more to deny it to the English.’
He’d then thrown himself into a curule chair, draping one leg over the arm.
‘Yet we care about our womenfolk, Lord Hal. I would not be so free and easy with the King as regards these matters. He is not the man you knew, being fresh to the kingship then.’
He’d stared moodily, glassily, into the wine and had spoken almost to himself.
‘Now he is fixed on securing matters, on ensuring that everyone kens he is king. Nothing else matters but that and you step soft round him these days.’
‘I have read the Declaration of the Clergy,’ Hal had told him and had back a surprised look.
‘Have you indeed? They were solicitous of your welfare in the end, to fit you with a copy of that in your cell. Shame we had to poke out Sir William’s best eye, then, for it seems he did not deserve it – what did you think of that document?’
Hal remembered what that question had raised in him. Aggie, the girl who had served him meals, had brought it and she had plucked it from the kirk door, one of the many expensive and laboriously made copies nailed there. She had wanted to know what was in it but could not read, nor dared take it to anyone in Roxburgh who might.
What was in it? At first, the joyous honey of a candle, the first Hal had seen up close in an age and even the blur of tears it brought to his squinting eyes was a joy. The second was the smell: the musk of the parchment, the sharpness of the oak-gall ink – the breath of Outside. That, in the end, was worth more than the Declaration of the Clergy itself, a pompous piece of huff and puff to make Robert Bruce seem the very figure of a king and his sitting on the throne far removed from any hint of murderous usurping.
‘Smoke and shiny watter,’ Hal had told Edward eventually. ‘Bigod, though, they almost convinced me that the Bruce is descended from Aeneas o’ Troy himself. A Joshua and white as new milk on a lamb’s lip.’
Edward had laughed then, sharp and harsh, spilling wine on his knuckles and sucking it off. It came to Hal that the Earl of Carrick was mightily drunk and that it was no strange thing for him.
‘Ah, Christ’s Wounds, we have missed you, Lord Hal – but it is as well you were safe locked up, for plain speaking is not the mood of now, certes. I would not share your view of the bishops’ fine work with my brother. If you even get to see him.’
He’d paused moodily.
‘I mind you were close to him, mark you. You and Kirkpatrick. Like a brace of clever wee dugs working sheep for their master.’
There was old envy and bitterness there, which Hal had decided was best to ignore.
‘How is Kirkpatrick?’ he’d asked, suddenly ashamed that he had not thought of the man since he had been released.
‘Auld,’ Edward had replied shortly. ‘You may not see the King at all,’ he then said. ‘And if you do, it will not be a straight march in to where the Great Man sits, taking your ease in the next seat. Naw, naw. There are steps, neat as a jig: walk forward and stop. Kneel. Never look at him. Never speak to him unless invited.’
This kingdom is not large enough for the pair, Hal had thought, hearing the savage bile in his voice. Then Edward had recovered himself and smiled, drained the goblet and risen.
‘Well, good journey to you. I am away to kick the stones out of Roxburgh. Pity – it is a pretty place.’
Prettier than here, Hal thought now, looking up at the rotting-tooth rock of Edinburgh Castle, while they wound a way through the siege lines.
They passed tents, a black Benedictine who was crouched like a dog to hear confessions, a sway-hipped gaud of shrill, laughing women who stared brazen invites at the newly arrived heroes of Roxburgh. Somewhere behind them a pair coupled noisily while the camp dogs circled, looking to steal anything vaguely edible.
Hal felt the heat of forges, tasted the sweat and stale stink of a thousand unwashed, the savour of cook and smith fire as they picked their way through the tangle and snarl of a siege camp. He was fretted and ruffled by the place even as it seemed to him that he moved in a dream, too slowly and somehow detached from it all.
Too much, too quick after seven years of being a prison hermit, he thought, yet the sights and sounds flared his nostrils with old memories.
The world passed him like a tapestry in a long room: a ragged priest singing psalms; squires rolling a barrel of sand through the mud to flay the maille in it of rust; a hodden-clad haughty with his lord’s hawk on one wrist; two men, armoured head to toe but without barrel-helms, running light sticks at each other in practice tourney, pausing to raise greeting hands to Jamie. Only their eyes could be seen in the face-veiled coifs of maille.
Out beyond them, close under the great rock and walls, was a line of hurdles, pavise protection for the crossbows and archers.