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

‘This is Brother Gregor,’ he said, while Hal stood, feeling like he was six and in trouble with his da. ‘Brother Gregor has been … persuaded … to help. He reads Latin and had it dinned into him in Hexham Priory.’

He broke off and grinned at the shaking English monk.

‘I well ken how that feels,’ he said with some sympathy, ‘though I never learned as much as I should, for my teachers were not inclined to belt me more than the once.’

Hal flicked a look at Brother Gregor, who stood with his eyes down and his hands trembling; he had an idea what sort of persuasion had been used – but why would you need to threaten a priest to read some documents? Why would a priest refuse in the first place?

‘Brawlie,’ Wallace said admiringly when Hal muttered this out. ‘Your mind could cut yourself, it is that sharp – and so ye are the very man for what I have in mind.’

‘Which is?’ Hal ventured.

Wallace turned to the nearest kern and whatever he did with eyes and nods got Brother Gregor huckled out, leaving Wallace alone with Hal and Sim; the night wind sighed in through the unshuttered window, stirring the Ormsby wall hanging which Sim had replaced.

‘I guddled about in the slorach of this,’ Wallace said, indicating the charred, damp mess of papers that Hal had not dared take once Wallace had spotted them, ‘and fished out some choice morsels – but the canons of this place refused to read them.’

He paused and looked at them.

‘Only yin man could put the fear of God into them over this and that is the wee English Prior. Now where did he find courage for that?’

Bishop Wishart, Hal thought at once, and said so. Wallace nodded slowly.

‘Aye. Promises made atween Christians, as it were. Well, I then sought Brother Gregor and almost had to hold his feet to the fire to persuade him to the work,’ Wallace went on. ‘In the end, he came up with a Scone mason red-murdered near Douglas and a report in a wee, crabbed hand by some scribbler called Bartholomew Bisset. That man is a notary to Ormsby. He has gone out the window as well but I will get him and put him to the question.’

He broke off and looked steadily at Hal until the eyes seemed to be burning holes; Hal fought not to look away and eventually Wallace nodded.

‘Ye are joined to Bruce,’ he said and then grinned and picked the polished table idly with his dagger point. ‘But not willing. Nor favouring me neither.’

‘I thought we were all on the same side,’ Hal lied and then felt ashamed at the scornful stare he had back for his false naivety, admitting it with a shrug.

‘Bruce and the Bishops and others are off to Irvine,’ Wallace declared and cocked one eyebrow to show what he thought of that.

‘Percy and Clifford are coming with an English army and Wishart has made a right slaister of matters, so Scotland’s gentilhommes are waving their hands and sounding off like a kist of whistles. I am away to the hills and the trees and most of the fighting men are with me – sorry, but a wheen of yer own are among them.’

Hal knew this already; the fealtied Herdmanston men, all five of them, were with him as well as one or two of the sokemen – free men holding lands under Herdmanston jurisdiction -but the bulk of Hal’s March riders, out for plunder, had joined Wallace.

‘Welcome men,’ Wallace admitted, smiling. ‘Nearest I have to heavy horse.’

‘They will run at the sight of such,’ Sim growled and Wallace nodded.

‘As will I,’ he answered vehemently and laughed along with Sim.

‘Here’s the bit,’ he went on, losing the smile. ‘Ye can come with me or go with Bruce. He says he an’ the rest of the bold community of the realm are away to put their fortresses in order.’

He looked sideways, sly as a secret.

‘That’s as may be.’

Hal looked at him and saw the truth – felt the truth in the kick of his insides. They would truce their way out of it and the relief washed into his face.

Wallace saw that Hal had worked it out – saw, too, the reaction and nodded slowly.

‘Aye,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Ye have lands to lose, same as they. Not me, though. I do not think there will a kiss of peace for me, eh?’

Hal acknowledged it with a blank face and the shame-sickness that drove bile into his throat. Sim, realist that he was, merely grunted agreement; it was the safest way out of the mire they had plootered into – truced back into the King’s peace and forgiven all their sins on a promise not to do it again.

‘Well,’ Wallace said. ‘Go with Bruce then and go with God. Still – I wish I had yer help. I would like to root out why Kirkpatrick tried to burn these papers, why Wishart bound these wee priests to keep their lips stitched – and what the bold Bruce interest is in it.’

‘Ye want my help?’ Hal asked. ‘Even though I am in the Bruce camp?’

‘In,’ Wallace pointed out, ‘but not of.’

‘For a man who sees everyone not for him as against him, that’s a quim hair of difference to put yer trust in,’ Hal answered and Wallace grinned and raised the dagger, so that the torchlight stepped carefully along the razor edges.

‘An edge as thin as this,’ he admitted, ‘which I have been entrusting my life to for a while now.’

‘Still,’ he added, standing suddenly and shoving the dagger back in its belt-sheath, ‘ye are done with the business. Go with God, Sir Hal – though admit to me, afore ye do, that you are curious ower this matter.’

Hal did so with a grudging nod.

‘I will not be a spy against Bruce,’ he added firmly, ‘nor for him against yourself.’

Wallace towered over him, placing one grimed ham-hand on his shoulder; just the weight of it felt like a maille hauberk.

‘Aye, I jaloused that and would not ask. But mark me, Sir Hal – soon ye will needs decide what cote ye will wear. The longer ye take, the more badly it will fit.’

Hal and Sim had stumbled back into the chares and vennels of the priory garth, where light was spilling a sour stain on the horizon as dawn fought the dark over ownership of the hills.

He could scarcely believe that he had stumbled into rebellion so easily and offered a prayer of thanks to God that there was a way out of it; all he had to do was sit at Irvine with The Bruce and the others and make sure that the lesser lords such as himself were not overlooked in the negotiations.

Then it was back home, where he would closet himself with his auld da and they’d ride out this new dawn, he thought wildly, and Roslin be damned. Yet he wondered if even Herdmanston’s thick walls would survive the harsh, cold hope of it. He said the bones of that to Sim, who shrugged, looked up, then hawked and spat his own pronouncement on matters.

‘It will rain like pish from God,’ he growled moodily, then paused, stiffening. Hal followed his gaze and they watched the boy’s mother flit from kern to cateran, hard-faced roarer to grim growler, patient as stone and as relentless as a downhill roll.

‘Have ye see ma boy? He has a wish-mark …’

Chapter Four

Douglas Castle

Feast of The Visitation of Our Lady with the Blessed Saint

Elizabeth, July 1297

The Dog Boy watched the slipper bounce with every jerk of the foot it was barely attached to. The leg, bagged with red hose, flexed and spasmed with every grunting thrust of the unseen force pounding between it and the twin on the side, beyond Dog Boy’s vision.

Oh Goad, Agnes was saying. Ohgoadohgoadohgoad, a litany that rose higher and more urgent with each passing second.

Dog Boy had seen the dogs made blind and frantic by this, so much so that he’d had to reach down and guide their thrusting stiffness into the right hole when they were being bred. He knew the mechanic of it, but the madness of it was only just touching him, so that he only half understood what he was feeling.