Robert Low - The Lion Wakes

‘The Blessed St Andrew sends a sign,’ he declared portentously. Kirkpatrick nodded and agreed with a smile, though he had to bite his tongue to stop himself, viperishly, from suggesting that it was probably more of a sign from St Malachy.

‘Let us hope this means that Hal of Herdmanston’s news is good,’ Bruce added and Kirkpatrick shivered.

‘My teeth are chittering,’ he said in a passable imitation of the the Lord of Herdmanston, who rode far enough behind them to be out of earshot. Bruce grinned whitely at him; they moved on up the road to Roslin’s shadowed bulk, the Carrick entourage falling in behind with a clatter of hooves and metal.

The great black storm of Longshanks had finally blown itself out. Roger Bigod, the Earl Marshal, had taken his forces home, as had Hereford, and, though they were entitled to do it, having served their tenure for king and realm, Edward was brooding foul over it.

Forced to turn south himself, he came howling through Ayrshire, sacking towns and villages – save for Ayr, which Bruce burned for him, in order to prevent any aid from it. Spiteful as an old cat, Longshanks, with the staggering remains of an army already eating its own horses, took the Carrick holding at Lochmaben. Then, with a graceless final swipe of his claws, Longshanks spoiled Jedburgh and reeled off back into England, already summoning troops for a new campaign in the summer.

It had all, Bruce thought, been ruinously expensive – for both sides. Thousands of Scots had died at Falkirk, among them some of the best of the Kingdom’s community – Murray of Bothwell, Graham of Abercorne, the MacDuff of Fife. It was no way to fight the power of the English and had been a bad slip by Wallace to try to do so. Moray would not have been so foolish.

Yet matters had not turned out badly, he added to himself. His father’s influence exempted Annandale from punishment by Edward, so only the Carrick lands suffered. Wallace was discredited and, though he had to walk in a trace with the hated Red John, Bruce was a Guardian, a step nearer the seat he craved and, at last, a power in the land.

Enough of one to pluck Hal from the outlaw wilderness and back under the Bruce wing and Herdmanston remained in his hands simply because Edward’s new appointment to it, Sir Robert Malenfaunt, did not have the force to impose the royal writ against a Guardian of Scotland.

Or the balls, Bruce thought. He glanced towards the hunched shadow that was the Lothian lord. I need this wee Herdmanston man and everyone knows my interest in him, so that even Buchan balks. You would think, he added bitterly, he would at least smile over it.

Hal’s world was all bad as spoiled mutton as far as he was concerned, so that he said nothing at all on the long ride to Roslin. Once in the hall, he squatted like a brooding spider, while Henry Sientcler chattered and his children played and his wife, Elizabeth, drifted gracefully, moving like a swan to prepare for the visit of the Earl of Carrick.

All of it, Sim knew, only added to the loss of her and he felt alarm, more than he had done in the days after his lord had lost wife and bairn. Then he had offered Hal what he had always offered – a stolid friendship, a loyalty he could trust and an expertise with horse and weapons that allowed them in and out of trouble. In return, Sim got the only home he had ever known and the only man he felt he could call a friend, despite the difference in their station.

It nagged now that none of it was of any use – Isabel had gone like a morning mist and they had only found out after months of slipping and slithering round the forests and hills, avoiding the English – and Scots in their pay – who hunted Wallace.

The arrival of Bruce’s messenger to pluck them from Wallace’s last remnants came as a blessed relief, tinged with shame at feelin it.

Wallace himself, disgraced, discredited and with the old brigand settling back on him like a familiar cloak, simply shrugged and wished them God speed. Not long after, they had all the news of what had happened, at Herdmanston as well as elsewhere.

‘An ill-favoured chiel came for her,’ Bangtail told them. ‘The wee Guardian, the Red Comyn himself. Her uncle was slain at Falkirk and it made the difference.’

Hal had known it, of course, in the aftermath of the battle, in the sweating, fevered nights when he had woken from the spill of dead, white faces, the screams and the steel. MacDuff was dead and he had been the Buchan link to a say in the control of the Fife estates.

‘She told me to say it was no use,’ Bangtail went on, his face twisted with grief. ‘She said her husband would not let matters stand still now and that Herdmanston was in danger.’

Hal acknowledged Bangtail’s words and the man went off, droop-shouldered at the loss and angry at his own impotence in the matter. Hal stood there, numbed by it; Isabel was gone back to Buchan.

Ironically, he knew that, even as she returned to her gilded prison, she was safer than before and had leverage of her own – he had no doubt that part of the price for her compliance would be that neither he nor Herdmanston would suffer.

But the price was high and, even when he returned to Herdmanston to prove to all there that it was his yet, he felt the bitter cost of it every time he looked at the lonely tower chamber, the dress folded neatly, the bed – and the pardoner’s medallion she had left on the pillows.

Bruce, of course, offered sympathic noises and was struck by the darkness in Hal. Who would have thought Isabel could engender that? He had seen her, too, when Red Comyn and the Buchan had come to the Parliament at Scone to oust Wallace and redesign the power in the Kingdom.

The florid Earl had brought the Countess with him, flaunting her like some stag with a returned hind. Bruce had noted the hawk-proud bearing of her and the despair behind her eyes and felt a stab of anger – there was no doubt Buchan had burned his mark anew on his wayward wife. Yet there was defiance there, too – and loss. Who would have thought the likes of Hal could bring out that in her?

Because of what they had once been, he could see the clench of her and felt a wash of sympathy at her plight – yet the love in it was a mystery he dismissed with a head shake. Almost as much a mystery as the one which had married him and the Red Comyn to Scotland’s fate. The only reason the wee popinjay had been so elevated was because he held a claim to the Kingdom’s throne and the Comyn wanted to wave him as a taunt to Bruce.

Still – he was glad Hal had not been there to see Isabel with Buchan, for blood would have been spilled

‘A strange marriage that,’ Henry Sientcler offered as they ate, and Bruce, still thinking of Red John, acknowledged it with a wave of one hand.

‘Wishart says God may still make it work,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I had word from him in his Roxburgh prison.’

Sir Henry shifted and made a moue.

‘He has more ken of the mind of woman than I gave him credit for then,’ he replied and, for a moment Bruce’s food hung, half chewed in his open mouth.

Kirkpatrick chuckled.

‘I believe the lord of Roslin was referring to the marriage of the Buchans,’ he answered, ‘rather than yer hand-fasting to the Red Comyn as joint Guardians.’

‘Ye are unlikely to plough a straight furrow with that wee man at your shoulder,’ Hal suddenly declared. ‘A more mismatched brace of oxen it wid be hard to find.’

‘Indeed,’ Bruce offered with a fixed smile, neither liking the comparison with an ox or the flat-out brooding moroseness of the man.

‘Are you enjoying the fare, my lord earl?’ asked Elizabeth, anxious to sweeten the air. Bruce nodded graciously, though the truth of it was that he thought the Lady of Roslin too pious for comfort – especially his. Broiled fish and lentils with oat bannocks might be perfect Biblical food for the occasion, reminding everyone that St Andrew was the patron saint of poor fishermen, but it was marginally better than a fast and no more.