Nigel Tranter - The Path of the Hero King

She glanced down in turn. Admittedly her firm and pointed breasts were heaving slightly, and each stirring with its own individual motion in a rhythm intriguing as it was apparent. The jigging violence of the reel had rather disarranged the already somewhat precarious balance of her gown’s bodice, so that on the left side fully half of the large and dark red-brown aureola was revealed at each quiet surge of breath.

“Does my … difference offend Your Grace?” she asked, making shift to adjust her dress, though by no means drastically.

“No, no. Let it be, Tina-let it be.” He not exactly slurred his words, but spoke with a thickened intonation. He did not often use the diminutive of her name, either.

She looked at him sidelong, from beneath lowered lids, not coquettishly but thoughtfully. They had not slept together since that day in Aberdeen a year before, when Elizabeth de Burgh’s letter had reached him from Yorkshire.

All around them the gaily-dressed crowd eddied and circled and swayed, laughing, calling, chattering-though some sprawled or lay on benches, even on the floor, overcome by too much or too sudden unaccustomed good cheer-while from the moment gentler music came from the gallery, and a hairy Muscovite with a pair of dancing bears paraded ponderously round the huge hall, the great shaggy brutes holding each other close, rubbing snouts, and occasionally pawing each other in obscene parody of human caressing. The smells of bear, sweating humanity, women’s perfume, wine, lamp-oil, wood-smoke and horses-for one of the earlier masques had included white jennets bearing damsels representing the Graces-was heady indeed.

“What of a mercy have you as rod for our backs next?” the King demanded.

“Any more of your mad Hieland can trips and you will have all decent men on their backs! Like my lord of Crawford, there.” He pointed to the recumbent Sir Alexander Lindsay near by, mouth open and snoring.

“Even Angus Og and the MacGregor are far through with it! Worse than I am, I’ faith!” James Douglas was in fact Master of Ceremonies tonight, but Christina had been largely responsible for compiling the programme.

“You have not done too much, Robert?” she asked, quickly concerned.

“None intended that the King should dance all measures. You have been a sick man. You must not tax yourself…”

“Tush, woman-I am well enough. It is but your Highland notions of dancing. A battlefield is kinder on the human frame, I vow, than your antic flings!”

“We of the Hebrides are of a lusty humour, perhaps,” she conceded.

“Our blood not watered down with Sasanach degeneracy!

But, never fear-you shall have your wind back. There follows another masque, an allegory for the times. Demanding naught of you save open eyes…”

“Open eyes!” he took her up.

“So long as certain eyes do not open too wide! In especial churchmen’s eyes, in this house! Our Scots clerics are not inordinately nice, I think-but that last allegory of yours, whatever you named it, was scarce of monastic quality!”

“Save us, our Celtic churchmen would not have turned a hair at that! And your Master Bernard helped to devise it. Besides, most of the bishops and such-like are gone.”

“But some are not. Nicholas Balmyle yonder. And David of Moray … though Davie, I swear, will shock hard! Did you see him dancing? Like a blackcock at a lek!”

“He is of good Celtic stock,” she pointed out.

“But … see you another of good Celtic stock, there. Of my own sex. And the fairest in this room, I judge. Have you noted, my lord King?”

He followed the direction of her glance, and nodded.

“I have noted,” he said shortly.

“Edward was ever a lady’s man. As you have reason to know, Tina.”

“To be sure. But I can handle my good lord of Carrick. Can she? Her brother, I think, mis doubts it.”

Over in a window alcove of the hall, hidden frequently by the circling throng, Edward Bruce had the beauteous Lady Isabella Ross, and was laying siege to her with the direct tactics and urgency which he used in the field-and apparently with some success. Clearly the contempt in which he held her menfolk was neither here nor there.

Bruce shrugged.

“He is a man, is Edward-all man. And a grown man. In such matters I cannot harry him, as though a child. God forgive me, I harry him enough! And in this … in this he is not the only one, by the Rude!” That was true. In almost every corner and window-embrasure visible and no doubt elsewhere likewise-similar activities were afoot.

“Can you blame them? We have had little enough of this, for long

years”

“Far be it from me to blame any, in such matters. Your brother or

other. You know that, Robert But I think I see two who do! “”Sir

John Ross, maybe. That one is sour, and will bear watching, I agree.

But not Sir Hugh, surely?”

“Not Sir Hugh, no. Hugh Ross has other concerns in mind! Has had, all evening!” And she nodded.

“Eh …?” He looked where she did, to see the Earl’s eldest son, not huddling in any unseemly corner but nevertheless paying rapt attention to another personable young woman, and that the King’s own youngest sister, Matilda Bruce. A mere child throughout most of the prolonged period of war, she had been sent for safety to the house of an aunt in deepest Galloway. Edward, after his recent successful campaign in that province, had brought her here to the Court, no longer a coltish gawky girl but a roving-eyed and attractive seventeen-year-old-and evidently one more problem for the King of Scots.

“Aye,” he said heavily.

“So that is the way of it, now! It must be the spring, ‘fore God!”

“Perhaps. But it is not the Lady Matilda and Sir Hugh that concerns me-for he is an honourable man, I think. Despite his father! But another lady, less fortunate. No gallant knight fondles Isabel de Strathbogie this night, you will perceive!”

Frowning, the King once more followed the percipient Christina’s regard to where alone, neglected, the new Earl of Atholl’s sister stood. The Earl himself was not present-for he was married to the Red Comyn’s daughter and had taken the English side after Dumfries, remaining so even after his father’s shameful hanging by King Edward. But his two sisters continued loyal. That they had turned up at St. Andrews was gratifying, for the earldom could raise many men-but perhaps more than loyalty had brought at least this Isabel. For Edward Bruce had been paying court to her for some time, off and on, as campaigning permitted. Now, it seemed, he had found alternative attraction.

“Would you have me play nurse to them?” he demanded.

“Not nurse. Midwife, perhaps!”

“What! You mean …?”

“Rumour has it that the Lady Isabel is with child. By your brother.

She looks to be so, would you say? And he looks elsewhere.”

“Damnation!

You think it true? I had not heard of this. I knew they saw each other. But Edward plays with any woman. Here’s a coil, then! Atholl’s sister…!”

“A coil, yes. A woman is entitled to look heavy in more than body, earl’s daughter or no! But when her lover shows his preference, before all, for the daughter of the man who betrayed her father to death, as Ross did old Atholl -then there could be trouble.”

“M’mm. I will have a word with Edward on this. But not now. I cannot well reprimand him on such matter, in front of all. I will go speak with her. Though, God knows what I may say…!”

The King strolled over to the young woman, unhurriedly, exchanging a word or two with others on the way. He would not have noticed that she was pregnant for she was no sylph anyway. a strapping creature, high-coloured and comely enough but with no claims to beauty. She and her sister were notably good horsewomen, and many a hunt they had ridden with the Bruce brothers-for they were kin to the King in a sort of way, their mother having been elder sister to his own first wife, Isabel of Mar, after whom this girl was named.