Robert Low - The Complete Kingdom Trilogy - The Lion Wakes, The Lion at Bay, The Lion Rampant

He broke off, breathing heavily, then nodded grimly at Wallace.

‘No offence.’

‘None ta’en,’ Wallace replied, suddenly cheerful. ‘You have the right of it, for sure – mine are men best fighting out of the hills and woods, my lords. So that is where we will go.’

Wishart looked as if he would protest and Bruce felt a sharp stab of anger at the presumption of Wallace, about to up and go without so much as a by-your-leave bow – but he swallowed the bile of it and nodded soberly.

‘Aye, that will be the way of it – but you should go with what men you have and what will go with you who are free of obligation to myself and the other nobles.’

Wallace turned narrowed eyes and gazed at Bruce from under lowered brows.

‘And yourself, lord of Carrick?’

‘I will gather up the Douglas, the Bishop here and others and we will make what resistance we can from our fortresses. The English will have to deal with us and that will buy you time to cause havoc.’

Wallace stared at Bruce a long time, then slowly nodded.

‘Longshanks is coming. This will cost you dear,’ he said, looking from Wishart to Bruce and back.

‘In the noble cause,’ Wishart declared and Wallace clasped them both, wrist to wrist, then went out, silent as a wraith for all his bulk. It suddenly seemed to the others that the room had doubled in size. No-one spoke for a moment, then Wishart cleared his throat.

‘And the truth?’ he demanded. Bruce looked coldly at him.

‘My purpose in joining this now-failed enterprise has already been achieved,’ he said pointedly. ‘The mason is buried anew.’

Wishart nodded weary agreement.

‘So we will get ourselves to Irvine with what men we have and prepare to negotiate,’ Bruce added. Wishart’s belly quivered under the armour as he dragged himself haughtily upright. ‘Ye’d yield? Without a fight?’

Bruce’s bottom lip stuck out like a shovel and Wishart, who knew the sign well, found some caution.

‘The king himself will come north,’ Bruce growled angrily. ‘Like the black wind he is. Wallace will fight – he has to, for he has no lands to his own name and is an outlaw, no more. You lose nothing bar some dignity for having to kneel and kiss Edward’s ring, for the Church lands are sacrosanct.’

He thrust his mace of a face into Wishart’s own.

‘But we,’ he said, slapping the chevroned jupon, ‘risk losing everything. We, the community of the realm you depend on to free it. Edward will come north with his scowl and his evil eye – I could lose Carrick and my father Annandale. God’s Blood, Wishart, I place my rights to the crown in jeopardy here. Douglas will lose his Lanark lands – do you want us all fastened up in Berwick, or the Tower?’

More to the point of it, Wishart thought bitterly, is that Buchan and the rest of the Comyn, ostensibly supporting Edward but covertly allowing Moray’s rebels free rein, would come out smelling as if they’d been dipped in crushed rose petals. They play this game of kings more skilfully than the young Bruce, he saw, who needed some cunning heads round him.

‘Of course,’ he said, bowing to the inevitable, ‘negotiation is tricky business. Involved and sometimes lengthy. And what of Wallace?’

Bruce grunted sourly.

‘Wallace owes nothing save allegiance to a deposed king who wishes nothing to do with his kingdom,’ he growled. ‘He owns no lands, suffers the worry of no tenant and looks down his sword at each man he meets, asking only if he is for The Wallace. If not, he is against him.’

‘No bad thing in these days,’ Wishart countered defiantly.

‘Simplistic,’ Bruce spat back over his shoulder as headed for the door. ‘And probably brief. Whether negotiations are long or short, it will come out as it always does – with us on our knees.’

He paused and turned.

‘Save for Wallace,’ he added. ‘He is of little account. Longshanks will never forgive him.’

I am of account, he was thinking as he spoke. God Made Me – and he made me to be a king.

The liberators of Scone toasted each other, their hero Wallace and even Bruce and the bishops. The alehouse was the only building not ransacked or burned, more sacred than any church to men with a thirst on them. Dark save for a few sconced torches gasping for breath in the cloy of the place, it heaved with bodies, stank of vomit and piss and stale sweat.

Sim, by main force, had found a corner and two scarred horn cups to blow the froth off, but Hal took time drinking his, squinting at the damp yellowed, blackened scraps he had pulled out from under his jack.

‘What does it say, then?’ the unlettered Sim demanded, loosening the ties of his own studded, padded jack and trying to struggle out of it in the roasting heat of the place.

‘If there was light I would tell ye,’ Hal muttered. It was too dark to see other than that the writing was cramped and in Latin. Still, he was fairly sure it concerned the death of the mason and was an investigation of his clothing, which had included a beaver hat tucked into his belt and cut in the Flemish style. Apart from that and a signature – Bartholomew Bisset – Hal could make out nothing more; he would have to wait for daylight.

‘Kirkpatrick was burning this?’ Sim muttered and paused as a loud jeering and catcalling erupted. A woman had come in.

‘Aye, so it seems,’ Hal said. The why of it escaped him, which he mentioned, sipping the beer and grimacing, for it was the temperature of broth. He felt the sweat sliding down him – the summer night was muggy and the rough walls of the place were leprous and dripping.

‘Christ, I cannot think in here,’ Hal said and started to rise, only to find the woman in front of him, so sudden that he recoiled.

‘My son,’ she said, her face twisted and worn with grief. ‘Have ye seen him? A wee boy only. I have looked everywhere. Ye’ll know him clear, for he has a wish-mark on his face.’

She paused and managed a wan smile, but it was clear the tears had not all been wrung out of her on a long, fruitless night of search.

‘Strawberry,’ she added. ‘I ken well wishing for strawberries afore he was born. I had a wee passion for them …’

The boy’s face, smeared with dung and midden filth, the strawberry stain bright in the flames …

‘No,’ Hal said desperately. ‘No.’

The lies choked him and he dived headfirst into anger, the sudden face of his own dead son a knife-sharp image etched so bright he was blinded by it.

‘Get away, wummin,’ he blustered, ducking past her grief and hope, heading out of the linen-thick fug into the smoke-stained breath of the street. ‘Am I the fount of knowledge? What do I ken of your son, mistress … ?’

He banged past her into the rutted street and stood, trembling like a whipped dog, sucking in air lashed with char and burned meat; after the inside of the alehouse, even that seemed nectarine. He gulped it and shook his head. Johnnie … the loss of him was an ache that only added to the misery of this night, this entire enterprise.

Christ’s Bones – could matters get worse?

‘Wallace sends for us,’ said the growl of Sim’s voice, and his blackness bulked up at Hal’s shoulder, his face pale and sheened, his stare pointed. Over his shoulder a man waited, dark and impatient, to take them to The Wallace.

‘He wants to ask aboot a dead mason,’ Sim added mournfully.

Wallace was in Ormsby’s chambers, stirring the half-burned papers with the tip of a bollock dagger, while bare-legged kerns grinned savagely at a trembling canon. Outside, the rest of Wallace’s army had muted itself to a roar.

‘I have had a wee chance to consider matters,’ Wallace said, slowly and in good English, Hal noted, so that the priest could follow it easily enough. Wallace jerked his head at the priest, but kept his eyes on Hal and Sim.