Robert Low - The Lion Rampant

‘Cauld. Ride. Long way frae Roslin.’

‘Why suffer it?’ Hal asked pointedly and Kirkpatrick, unwrapping himself, waved an insouciant hand.

‘I was passing.’

It was a lie so blatant that the cold Hal felt on him was more chilled than anything God had handed the world so far. He waved Mintie away, waved all of them away, so that they moved off, reluctant and sullen at leaving the fire. In the end there was himself, Kirkpatrick and Rauf, who became aware of the eyes on him, looked from one to the other and grunted his way upright, clutching the precious warmth of the cup; melting droplets sparkled in the slight of his beard as he turned and lumbered off, trailing woollens.

‘A good lad,’ Kirkpatrick noted. ‘Nephew to my wife and raised to squire, a station he could hardly have realized afore.’

‘I heard you got wed,’ Hal replied easily, taking the sting out of the reminder that neither he nor Isabel had been invited to the September affair. Kirkpatrick had the grace to look embarrassed.

‘It was hastily arranged,’ he said, but did not elaborate on why. ‘I hear your own is due in the spring,’ he added by way of balm and Hal nodded. He and Isabel had planned it for May and he added, for the politeness of it, that Kirkpatrick was welcome.

‘Aye, it will be a rare event, I am sure,’ Kirkpatrick added. ‘The King was pleased to sanction it. You will be equally pleased to know that he will not attend it and so save you a deal of expense.’

Hal raised his cup to that; the arrival of the King meant the arrival of the court, newly freed Queen, sister and all: a host of mouths eating like baby birds in a land of famine. They had been in Edinburgh for the Christ’s Mass feast, which Hal had attended with Isabel because it was expected of him; he had, to his surprise, been given the gift of a sword, fancy-hilted and engraved on the blade with the words ‘ Le Roi me donne, St. Cler me porte ’.

‘To replace the one you delivered to Glaissery with the Beauseant banner,’ the King had said and Hal had acknowledged it with a bow of thanks and a concern that his visit there had been so noted. His own gift — a silver medallion of St Anthony, said to have been worn by his namesake, the blessed Anthony of Padua — seemed less than worthy after that, particularly in the light of St Anthony being the patron saint of lepers and the scabby peel of the royal face.

‘The court now moves to Perth,’ Kirkpatrick went on, ‘afore it eats Edinburgh down to the nub. Yet we fair better than the English, since oats and barley are a hardy crop and wheat is not. They are starving beyond the Tweed.’

‘They are starving because Randolph and Jamie and the King’s brother scourge them of all they have left,’ Hal pointed out. Kirkpatrick waved a placating palm.

‘The winter has done for all that stravaigin’,’ he reported. ‘They have gone to their own homes. Jamie is back in Douglas, putting it in order.’

Hal had seen Douglas and Randolph at the Christ’s Mass feast, red-faced and greasy with joy and victory, reeling to their feet every so often to throw toasts at Bruce, the hero king. Isabel, as ever, had been quietly scathing.

‘You would think they had fought the Philistines,’ she muttered. ‘Instead, they took a kingdom from the son when, in all his life, they never managed to take as much as an ell of good Scots dirt from the father.’

It had been a harsh judgement on a victory which had cost so much blood; Hal mentioned it now for the enjoyment of seeing Kirkpatrick wince at the memory of his attempts to hush her as politely as could be managed.

In the end, only Dog Boy had soothed Isabel. He had moved up from below the salt, seeing her distress from down the length of the table, and brought his new wife, the smiling Bet’s Meggy, to be reminded to her. They had fallen at once to talk of Bet’s Meggy’s mother, whom Isabel had known; Hal had nodded his thanks and relief to Dog Boy, marvelling at what the years had created: a tall, dark copy of Sir James Douglas in the livery of a royal houndsman, with his round-eyed son taking care of his wee sister down at the end of the feast table and trying to miss nothing of this glorious night.

Hal had been sorry to leave them, if nothing else at court.

‘How is your lady?’ Kirkpatrick asked with a lopsided smile, breaking Hal’s reverie. He was leaning back, at ease and with one foot carelessly thrown over the arm of his seat, dangling and bobbing to some unheard music; his boots smoked gently from the heat of the fire.

‘Fine as the sun on shiny water,’ Hal answered and Kirkpatrick heard the uncertainty, cocking an eyebrow.

‘She talks to God a wee bit more than she did,’ Hal added, almost defiantly, and Kirkpatrick nodded as if he had known that all along. He had not and the knowledge of it made him need to hide his frown; there was nothing worse, in his opinion, than a good woman gone to piety. A cage would do that, all the same, and he said as much.

‘These surroundings are safer and more of a comfort,’ he added, waving his cup to encompass Herdmanston and all in it. ‘You have restored a deal of it.’

The smell of cut wood and stone dust permeated the air and every time he breathed it in Hal was reminded of Sim, who had worked so hard before to restore a burned-out Herdmanston. The absence of that great soul was still an unbalmed sore.

‘There is a roof over us,’ he said, to chase away the memory, ‘but the floor above that is unfinished, while the top still opens to the sky. And the outbuildings are being redone in stone — harder to tear them down.’

Kirkpatrick nodded soberly at this pointed reminder that war still lurked, an unseen beast just beyond the hill, capable, he knew, of sweeping back and destroying all this and his own place at Closeburn, for all the victory at Bannock’s burn.

‘Must have cost a fair sum,’ he added, innocent as a nun’s headsquare. ‘The King is convinced that you achieved it with the rents from his gift of Cessford.’

Hal stuck his nose in his cup and said nothing. The barony of Cessford was the Bruce reward to Herdmanston for his service, a poisoned chalice of burned-out manor and ruined fields whose folk needed as much help as Herdmanston or they, too, would starve.

‘Or using rents from Lady Isabel’s wee holding at Balmullo, which is hers by right,’ Kirkpatrick added gently, swinging his foot still and seeming to take great interest in it. ‘Of course, that is also long burned out by a wrathful Buchan when he lived. So both it and Cessford needs money more than sends it.’

‘God provides,’ Hal replied carefully and Kirkpatrick laughed softly.

‘He does, I am sure of it.’

‘Your point, Kirkpatrick?’

Hal’s voice was sharp as the spice in the lees of Kirkpatrick’s cup and, before he could reply, another voice cut across.

‘His point concerns God’s provision.’

Isabel came the last few steps up to the fire, having entered the hall unheard and unseen. She wore soft wool in a colour of green which perfectly set off her autumn bracken hair, left daringly loose under a simple white kertch. Kirkpatrick started to his feet for a polite bow and she graciously waived the honour.

‘The King himself sends his good wishes,’ Kirkpatrick said, resuming his old position. ‘He asks if you would attend the court and himself with your expertise and grace, though he does not insist on it.’

‘Nicely put, Kirkpatrick,’ Isabel answered. ‘And well delivered. I will not, of course, attend the King but I will give you an ointment he can physick his face with. There is no balm I can offer for him and his Queen — he will have to find that cure for himself. You may tell him that.’

Kirkpatrick managed a wan smile. The Queen, newly returned with the Bruce sister and his daughter, Marjorie, had swept into a court unused to her and a king who had never known what to do with the luscious young Elizabeth de Burgh.