Robert Low - The Lion Wakes

Neither of them missed the rain-pebbled exultation that was Bruce, grinning as he turned to them.

‘God’s Wounds, I only wish I could see his face when he is told of it.’

His laugh drowned out the mad tolling of the bell. Breaker of worlds, Hal thought wildly.

Herdmanston Tower

Feast of St Theneva, Mother of Kentigern, July 1298

She woke to the sound of birds and the soft scent of broom from the fresh rushes, wafted from the tall window where the shutters were open against the stifle of the night. It had rained, though, so the heat had gone and insects buzzed in and out. The harsh wickedness of woodsmoke scattered the brief heaven of the moment.

Her leg was over his, the coverlet thrown back and he woke, slowly, as she watched the pulse in his neck, the trough of a slight pox scar dragging her eyes down to the muscled shoulder and another scar, a deeper, pale cicatrice. Lance wound from a tiltyard tourney, a mercifully glancing blow which, if it had struck full would have ripped the entire arm off.

Isabel’s flesh crept and tightened at the thought. Even in such a short time, she knew this man’s body almost as well as her own, each mole and scar of it – there were a lot of scars, she saw, and had mocked him for being careless.

‘None on my face, lass,’ Hal had answered, almost half-sorrowful. ‘Every man who is thought of as a great knight has a face like a creased linen sheet as far as I can tell.’

He stirred awake to her playful fingers, finally grunting as she clasped the rise of him.

‘Christ’s Bones woman – are there not Church laws that govern this?’ he growled throatily as she moved over him. ‘If so, we are condemned.’

‘Feast days, fast days and menses,’ she murmured. ‘Gravid, weaning and forty days after birthing.’

She stopped mouthing him and looked up.

‘I know them all, since it enabled me to avoid my marital duties more than once a week by canon law and more than that by contrivance.’

‘Condemned already,’ Hal muttered weakly, ‘so it would be a sin to stop now.’

‘Sheldrakes,’ she mumbled and Hal fought with his senses, eventually reaching the answer.

‘A dopping,’ he gasped and countered at once, before he lost it.

‘Harlots.’

Isabel stopped then and ignored Hal’s plaintive yelp of loss.

‘Under the circumstances,’ she declared primly, ‘you might have chosen better.’

‘You do not ken it,’ he accused and she frowned, started idly back to what she had been doing, though he could tell it was half-hearted and that she was concentrating on the puzzle.

‘A byre,’ she said eventually and then screamed when Hal whirled her round and on to her back.

‘No,’ he said, adjusting the curve of his hips until she gave a little gasp. ‘I win. It is a haras of harlots.’

A stud farm for stallions – apt, she thought, gasping as he began ploughing the long, deep furrow of her, and then her mind turned into white light for a long time. In the dreaming aftermath, the sweat cooling deliciously on her, there was a stamping and throat-clearing from below.

The lord’s room at Herdmanston was the top of the square tower block and the only thing higher than it was the narrow, crenellated walkway reached by a ladder. The lord’s room had no door and was reached by a stone wind of stair from below, coming up to a solid fretwork of balustrade.

It had its own privy hole, a strong oak four-post bed with heavy, faded hangings – blue, with gold owls, she saw – a table, a chair, a bench and two large kists but, best of all for Isabel, it had one window as tall as a man, inset with seats where someone could perch and sew in the light and sun.

A woman had wanted that and she had it confirmed from Hal.

‘My mother,’ he said. ‘She died when I was young, but even by then I knew my father could refuse her nothing – even the folly of such a window making a hole in a good stout wall.’

A fair hole it was, too, with cushions of velvet, faded from the original crimson to a dusted pink. It was also armed with stout shutters for those days – more often than not – when the rain lashed the Lothians.

Below, at the foot of the top landing, the Dog Boy slept like a guarding hound and, if he heard their frantic gasps and her squeals it scarcely mattered, for this, to Isabel, was more privacy than she had known and more, she thought, than she deserved.

Beneath that was the main hall and the main entrance, fortified with a steel yett and a thick door, twenty feet up the thick wall, reached by a cobbled walkway and, at the last, across a removable wooden platform.

Deeper yet were the under-levels, two deep floors of cool, dark storage and, surrounding the thick square of it was a barmkin wall four feet high, enclosing stables, a brewhouse and the bakehouse and kitchens among others. Nearby was the stone chapel, isolated save for the tall cross beside it.

The throat-clearing got louder.

‘Come up, ye gowk,’ Hal growled, already into tunic and hose and casting a warning glance at Isabel, who pouted at him and drew the sheet up just as Sim’s great tousled black head rose above floor level.

‘Ready, Lord Hal? Ye wanted an early start, ye told me,’ he said, then nodded and grinned companiably to Isabel.

‘Coontess,’ he added with a nod. ‘I see why he is laggardly.’

‘Cannot send my man off to war half-cocked, like a badly latched bow,’ she replied as lightly as she could manage and had the gratification of a Sim laugh, a bell of sound from his flung-back throat.

‘Weel said, Coontess,’ Sim declared and dropped out of sight again.

She watched Hal drape all the panoply round him, from maille to jupon – freshly sewn by the two main women of the place, Alehouse Maggie and Bet the Bread – and finally turn to her, awkward and tongue-tied.

‘Ye need to break your fast,’ she chided and he nodded like a child.

‘If trouble comes,’ he began and she placed a finger on his bearded lip.

‘I am safe here,’ she said, ‘whether it be the English or the Scots of my husband. Ye have left me Will Elliott, who is a fine man – not to mention the Dog Boy.’

They both paused at the name. The Dog Boy looked the same, yet both Hal and Isabel knew he was not, that the killing of the man in the lazar had snapped something of the boy away and the man replacing it was not yet comfortable with the slaying. They had heard him yelping in his sleep like a troubled pup; it had been the main reason Hal had decided to leave him behind.

To his surprise, he found he had not thought of John for a long time, nor his wife for longer than that; the knowledge flushed him with shame. Yet he had more on his mind these days, he said to himself by way of excuse. He was Lord of Herdmanston now, summoned to war by Bruce to serve in the host commanded by Wallace.

Longshanks was here, rolling north like a storm, and Hal had delayed, selfish as any callow youth, because of Isabel. He had missed joining the Roslin men under Sir Henry, released back into the love of wife and weans only to go off yet again, as a rebel.

Now Henry was with Bruce in Annandale, cut off from the main host under Wallace – and the Sientclers of Herdmanston would ride north to find the host, near Falkirk, before the English arrived in a tide that would cut Hal off from everyone.

The first lappings of that tide were already here – English under Bishop Bek, sent like the first blast of Longshanks’ wrath, were rampaging through Lothian, set on taking the rebel-held castles of Dirleton and Tantallon. Roslin was too strong for them and Herdmanston too little a bother so far; Will, Dog Boy and old Wull the Yett were enough to keep the tower safe.