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

She sank on a long bench. ‘No worse than having to be restrained by outraged monks from actually putting a mulch of leaves on a sick man’s navel.’

‘I was not expecting the hair,’ Hal said.

‘I admit it needs a comb and a wash,’ she answered, ‘but surely it is not as ravaging as a basilisk to the eye?’

‘No … no,’ began Hal, then saw her wry little smile. ‘No. I was not expecting so much of it – I only saw it once down and in the …’

He stopped, realising the mire he had blundered into and the widening of her eyes.

‘When was this?’

He felt himself prickle and flush.

‘Douglas,’ he admitted. ‘I saw you and The Bruce … young Jamie’s shield and gauntlet …’

It was her turn to redden.

‘You were spying on me,’ she accused and he denied it, spluttering, then realised she was laughing at him and stopped, scrubbing his own head ruefully.

‘Aye,’ she said, seeing this, ‘the pair of us will have to shave like clerics to rid ourselves of all that is living in it.’

‘Like your spital,’ Hal answered, straight-faced, ‘it seems to have offered space to all the poor souls who can cram in.’

Now it was her turn to smile and the sight warmed Hal. Outside, someone started to scream and Isabel’s head came up.

‘Maggie of Kilwinning,’ she said, frowning. ‘Her man is with Moray’s mesnie. She was brought in raving about tigers of flame tearing her body. Four other pregnant women were brought in, spontaneously aborting. Three of them will probably die.’

Her shoulders slumped and he found his hand on her head before he knew he had even done it. She straightened and looked at him, halfway between flight and astonishment. He took it away and then she stirred and smiled.

‘I would wash that if I were you,’ she said.

‘There are those who will say it is possession by demons,’ Hal offered cautiously. ‘A punishment for the sin of rebellion. A sign, perhaps, that God has forsaken us.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Isabel savagely and Hal jerked. Their eyes met and both smiled.

‘So,’ Hal said finally. ‘A sickness. Of the mind, perhaps? The madness of the doomed?’

It was shrewd and Isabel acknowledged it with a nod of approbation into those cool, grey eyes. Then she shook her head.

‘There are herbs that do that, though not so violently as this.’

‘Poison, then?’ Hal suggested and they looked at one another. She knew he was thinking of his dogs and Malise; for a moment she shivered, then shook it off.

‘No,’ she answered, ‘nothing so murderous – St Anthony’s Fire.’

Hal had heard of it though he did not know what it was.

‘The curse of a saint,’ she said. ‘Which is never dismissed lightly. Ask the Earl of Carrick.’

she sighed and rubbed her tired eyes.

‘One day we will find how the saint does it and why it is always the poorest of the sma’ folk who suffer. I have no proof of it, but I suspect the bread. Or the herbage they put in potage. The poor do not have the luxury of refusing even the stuff that looks worst.’

‘You know a deal on medical matters,’ Hal said and she looked sideways at him.

‘For a Countess, you mean? Or for a woman?’

‘Both.’

she sighed.

‘Well, remember I was once the daughter of MacDuff. My father was murdered, by his own kinsmen. The true lord of Fife is a a wee boy and a prisoner in England. I had no great expectations, even of a good marriage and, certes, not one by choice of my own hand.’

‘Unlike Bruce’s mother,’ Hal said tentatively and saw the flicker of her lips at the memorable tale of how the Countess of Carrick had kidnapped the young man, Bruce’s father, come all the way from the Holy Land to tell her that her first husband, Adam de Kilconcath, had died.

‘Aye – maybe I should have followed her and locked up the son until he agreed to carry me off,’ Isabel sighed. ‘Then, he is not his father and holds that kidnapping up as yet another indication of how little spine his father has, to be so overcome by a woman.’

‘Would it have been worth it, such a kidnap?’ Hal asked cautiously.

‘No, for certes,’ she answered with a frankness that stunned him. she saw his face and managed a grim little smile.

‘Once I thought there was love in it, but I always thought the Earl of Carrick was as good a refuge from the Earl of Buchan as I would find,’ she said and her face darkened as she spoke of Buchan. ‘That one behaves as if I was a dunghill hen to his rooster – the day he realises I cannot give him the egg he wants will be the one that dooms me to a convent, I am thinking. As you can see, lord Hal, I am not suited to a cleric life.’

‘You cannot have childer?’ he blurted and the concern in it was balm enough for her to reply without anger.

‘It would seem not,’ she answered. ‘I am young yet, but women with those years on them have a brood and more.’

The bitterness in it was a wormwood Hal could almost taste himself, so he sought to dilute it.

‘Or are dead in the birthing,’ he pointed out, then saw the bleak that scorched her eyes grey as ash.

‘Better that,’ she said softly and he saw the lip tremble, just the once.

‘So – this is why you study the medical?’ he asked hastily, levering matters back on track.

‘At first,’ she answered flatly, ‘but that was not for a daughter, let alone one of Fife. I contrived a deal of it on my own, though books and treatises are hard to come by – and none of it was any help. Strangely, as the Countess of Buchan I had better freedom to indulge it and my own house at Balmullo.’

She stopped and he saw the beautiful eyes of her pool with tears, which she shook away with an impatient gesture.

‘I have books there and kept Balius stabled at it,’ she went on. ‘My husband will want to burn it to the ground after this unless I prevent him.’

Hal did not want to know how she would prevent him. He did not want to know that she was returning to Buchan at all, or that he was the jailer taking her. Yet the thought of what might happen if the English stormed into this camp, all vengeance and victory, made him take her by the hand, so suddenly that it was moot who was more surprised by it.

‘We could leave,’ he declared. ‘Tonight – afore the battle …’

She blinked once or twice, disbelieving – then the great warm rush of it hit her like a wave and it did not matter if they stayed or left, only that he had offered. She took her hand back, gently.

‘You have done enough, Lord Hal,’ she said and meant it. ‘Go home. As I must.’

There was silence, long and aching.

‘I even contrived to have a master from Bologna visit once,’ she declared, suddenly brittle bright. ‘The Earl was pleased, since it would keep me from shaming him at home.’

‘Bologna?’

‘Buchan no doubt hoped I would find humility, but I was gulling him. I said he was a priest from Rome.’

She broke off, sighed and shook her head.

‘I have treated Buchan poorly and have sympathy for the man,’ she added bleakly, ‘but only to the point when he goes red in the face and punishes me, one way or another. Yet I have treated him as ill, in my way.’

‘Does this excuse beatings?’ Hal growled. ‘A knight is supposed to protect a lady.’

Isabel smiled sadly.

‘Ah, would it not be nice if the world was Camelot,’ she answered. ‘It is not, of course, so I cheated him to get this Master Schiatti from Bologna, for the best medical teachers are there at the University. What in the name of God and all His Saints I thought to do with what he taught I do not know -but I learned, among other matters, that even the most recalcitrant can be persuaded, for a price, to teach some of their art to a woman. Some of it was valuable, other aspects less so. I was good with the astrology, but mediocre with pigs at best.’