Robert Low - The Lion Wakes

‘His humour is turned overly choleric,’ he declared, which was a bland description of the paralysis which had twisted one side of the Lord of Badenoch’s body and exchanged his power of speech for a constant drool from one side of his mouth. His own temper, folk said, that had given him the name Black John, had finally choked him – but his son knew better and his voice was thick and bitter when he said.

‘Imprisonment in the Tower did that.’

‘He is fortunate, then,’ Isabel replied steadily, ‘since most of those sent to the Tower never come out alive at all.’

She was baiting him, he knew, but he held himself in check and nodded to the man at her side.

‘I do not know your man, there,’ he said in sibilant French, ‘but I know what he is, so I am certain you have been told of the events that bring me here.’

‘His name is Hob,’ she replied and felt Bangtail’s head come up at the name, the only part he understood. She switched to English, deliberately to include him.

‘MacDuff is dead, Hob tells me,’ she said, the harsh crow-song of it raking her, for all that she had disliked the man.

‘Bravely,’ Red Comyn replied, also in English, ‘together with others. Wallace is fled and resigned his Guardianship. New Guardians have been appointed by the community of the realm.’

What was left of a nobility not scrabbling to kneel at Edward’s footstool, she shought. Yet the way he said it made her breath stop a moment.

‘Yourself?’

He acknowledged it with a haughty little nod and, at last, she realised the duty that had brought him here. Not just for the Earl of Buchan’s pride, then.

‘The Earl of Carrick is the other,’ he declared and she almost laughed aloud but he saw her widening eyes and her lip-biting and smeared a wry twist on to his face.

‘Aye,’ he admitted. ‘The Bruce and myself. Unlikely beasts in the same shafts, I will allow – but the Kingdom demands it.’

‘Indeed,’ Isabel replied softly. ‘To what does Herdmanston owe for the honour of your presence here?’

He grew more irritated still, at her presumptious sitting there as if she was lady of this pawky manor, as if she spoke for the absent lord of Herdmanston as a wife.

‘Ye know well enough,’ he replied shortly. ‘I am to return you to the good graces of your husband, the earl.’

‘Others attempted that,’ she retorted bitterly. ‘One in particular decided force was best. Is that in your instruction from my husband?’

‘If necessary,’ he replied bluntly and leaned his short, barrelled body towards her a little, so that Isabel felt Bangtail start to bristle like a hound.

‘The lordship of Fife is invested in your wee brother, currently held by the English – so Fife has reverted to the Crown, lady,’ he said coldly. ‘In the absence of a king, it reverts to the Guardians – namely myself and the Earl of Carrick. Your presence with the Earl of Buchan is now desirable less for reasons of his passion than reasons of Comyn honour, dignity and estate. I am here, as a Guardian of Scotland, to impress upon you the need for it. You should know also that my lord earl wants the bladder that is Hal of Herdmanston dipped in dark water.’

She looked at him, this stocky, fiery wee man; his boots had high heels and that little vanity robbed him of some of his menace. God’s Wounds, he had enough of it just by looking like a smaller version of Buchan.

It was undignified, she thought, sitting here within sight of this small, blurred image of her husband, so like him in colour and temper and discussing her intimacies. She had known her husband’s rage was enough for him to injure her but lately had hoped that it was enough for him just to detach from her.

Now, eyes blank and fogged, she saw the stupidity of that. He had been cuckolded, made a fool over the business of ransom – when he need not have ransomed her at all – and now needed to stamp the imprint of the Buchan lordship firmly on the lands of Fife. With a wife who was the last noble MacDuff in Fife and the backing of his kinsman, an appointed Guardian, he would be able to gain control.

Shame and anger flushed her, sank into her belly and twisted all the weary organs. Like beads on a rosary, all the slights she had given her husband, small and large, winked in her memory. Worse, with a chill that flushed goosing on her skin, she thought of the grim little Comyn of Badenoch’s words regarding force. If necessary.

There was no way out of it. It was no longer a wayward wife Buchan wanted, but the key to unlock the rents of a powerful earldom and he would not let Isabel or Hal alone. If she remained, Herdmanston would feel the wrath of Buchan and she knew, as she knew her own palms, that Bruce would not prevent it – even if he felt like it – for he would be persuaded that Hal of Herdmanston was not cause enough to break the uneasy pact with the Comyn.

‘A bladder may be dipped,’ she said flatly, ‘but not drowned. I will have your word on that.’

The Red Comyn shrugged; he did not care one way or the other and said so.

‘Betimes,’ he added with a wry twist, ‘I would not put yer faith in the wee lord of Herdmanston. I hear he’s eating grass and living like a slinking dog in the wild. The Plantagenet has punished him for his rebellion and appointed these lands to one of his deserving others – a certain Malenfaunt, who was lately your… host. He has a way with the vicious that you cannot help but admire, has Longshanks – have you heard how they are calling him Hammer of the Scots now?’

‘Malenfaunt’s is a parchment gift,’ she replied stonily and he acknowledged that much; Longshanks had parcelled out a deal of lands belonging to rebellious Scots, but with no way to enforce their titles, the new owners were left clutching a roll with seals and were no better off than before.

He saw the thin hemline of her lips and allowed his temper a slip of the leash.

‘Regardless of the fate of this fortalice, lady, my task is to impress on you the necessity of the inevitable – Christ’s Wounds, woman, ye sit in this mean hall as if you were married on to its owner. Have ye no shame?’

She had not.

‘I will have your word on matters. You are Guardian. You can persuade my husband not to exercise the full of his anger on Sir Hal of Herdmanston and, if the Bruce agrees nothing else with you, he can be persuaded to add his weight to this. Have I your word on it?’

He was struck, then, by what it revealed of her feelings. It does not matter, he thought to himself, if Buchan has her body back, for someone else has her heart. Usually, that would not matter to a powerful lord only interested in lands but Badenoch knew that it mattered to the Earl of Buchan. There would be more trouble over it, he knew – but he was sick of the business and had more important matters than arguing with a well-bred hoor. It was a deal of persuasion – but he was flattered that she thought him able to fulfil it, so he spoke the formal words she wanted and saw her jaw knot.

‘Have you a spare mount?’ she managed, the words ash in her mouth.

‘Ach, no – coontess…’

Bangtail was silenced by the bright-eyed stricken look she turned on him. The Red Comyn, wise enough to stay silent, merely inclined his head.

‘I shall make arrangements,’ she said and he nodded silently again, turned and clacked his high-heeled way back to the yett.

‘Mistress,’ Bangtail began desperately, but stopped again, for the upright lady had slumped and buried her dissolving face in the sieve of her loose-ringed fingers.

Roslin

Feast of St Andrew Protoclet, November 1298

They watched the long-haired star throwing off beams to the east and, for a long time, no-one spoke. Then Bruce hunched himself into his fur collar, his breath a white stream.