Lion at Bay (20 page)

There was a flurry, a clack of leather on smoothed flagstones; Red John’s men, bland in plain clothing, stiffened like scenting hounds.

Bruce had arrived.

He came up swiftly, with the air of a man with better things to be doing, but that was mummery – Bruce was swift because he wanted this dangerous liaison over with, for a whole ragman roll of reasons.

Yet there was savour in the moment, handed to him from the wreck of a bad day which had brought Kirkpatrick hirpling home with tales of riot and chase, brawl and murder – and a Templar, who had arrived in time to kill Lamprecht and save Kirkpatrick.

‘The Templar knight has the Rood and the contents of the pardoner’s scrip, gilt reliquary, Apostle jewels and all,’ Kirkpatrick had said, once James of Montaillou had finished tutting and treating and left them alone.

‘He tells me his name, which is Rossal de Bissot, and that he will bring the Rood when the time is right.’

He paused and eased himself gingerly in the chair; the sweat popped out on his forehead, fat drops that he dashed away with an irritated hand.

‘It seems the Templars are up to their neck in this.’

A neck on the block, beset by rumours of papal displeasure and French spies actively seeking proof of heresy, as Bruce pointed out. Which was no soothe to Kirkpatrick’s bruised pride and cracked ribs, Bruce saw. The taste of failure was bitter in the man’s voice; Bruce heard and it was best that he knew all was not lost – just the opposite, in fact.

‘Rossal de Bissot is clearly working for the safety of his Order,’ he informed the whey-faced Kirkpatrick. ‘Bissot is a much-revered name within the Poor Knights.’

‘Aye, weel – revered or not, he will not be backwards in coming forwards,’ Kirkpatrick answered sourly. ‘He will want advantage from handing you what you seek, my lord – it is not wise to mire yourself in the doings of the Poor Order.’

Bruce said nothing, merely stroked his injured cheek, perpetually hidden now under a plain hood. It was clear that this Rossal was holding Lamprecht’s loot; the Apostles were gone – save the one the pardoner had handed over in a loaf – and, worse still, the Rood was gone and it was little comfort that it lay in the hands of the Templars. Still, the Bruce involvement in all of it was safely locked up behind the kist of Lamprecht’s dead mouth.

Best of all, the Comyn had been left floundering and, shortly after speaking with Kirkpatrick, Bruce had sent out word for a meeting with that family – and then dispatched his brothers and Kirkpatrick back to Scotland.

He had also sent off Elizabeth and her women, which had been a more disagreeable task altogether; he had not even seen his wife, only Lady Bridget her tirewoman, who had informed him that her mistress was not inclined to leave the comfort of London for the cold north.

He had bitten down on his angry tongue, though enough anger spilled into his eyes to set the tirewoman back a step and pale her cheek. His quietly delivered ultimatum had been taken to his wife, and very soon he could hear the flurry of them packing – but the victory in it was a sour taste.

Now he clacked across the floor to Red John, leaving a suitable hem of his own
mesnie
at the fringes of Rahere’s tomb. He studied the frowning wee man with his red-gold curve of beard quivering as if he barely held some unseen force in check. He looked like a man in the wrong clothing, from the foppish hat on his close-cropped head down the silk and fine wool to his vainly-heeled boots – Bruce was wary; this was the man who had sprang at his throat before and the memory of it burned shame in him still.

‘Was he one of yours, the man killed in the riot in the Cheap?’ he asked and Red John curled his lip in something which might have been sneer or smile.

‘He was not. That was one of Buchan’s own, a fine man from Rattray who will be much mourned – how is your own man? I hear he was much battered about.’

‘He is in good health. More so, I understand, than your Bellejambe.’

Red John smiled, warmly this time.

‘Again, Buchan’s man – and he is sore hurt, but will survive with Heaven’s help and good broth.’

‘Christ be praised,’ Bruce replied laconically.

‘For ever and ever.’

‘I suspect God’s Hand will be withdrawn from him, all the same,’ Bruce went on, flat and vicious. ‘Failure is a poor option in Buchan lands.’

‘Go dtachta an diabhal thú,’
Comyn hissed, looking right and left.

‘If the Devil does choke me,’ Bruce answered, also in Gaelic, ‘it will be a Comyn hand he uses.’

Which was enough of a reminder of Red John’s previous throttling anger to bring the fiery lord of Badenoch to the balls of his feet; he sucked in a deep breath.

‘What do you wish in this matter?’ he demanded, still bristling like a ginger boar. ‘Why for did you call this meeting?’

They sibilated in Gaelic now, the better to confuse any passing monk who, consciously or accidentally, breached the glowering ring of faces and came close enough to hear; there was chanting somewhere, for the celebration of the Visitation, and monks scurried to and fro with little flaps of sound.

Bruce waved one hand and, despite himself, Red John followed it with his eyes until he saw it was empty of blade.

‘Longshanks is no fool and will have learned of what happened. It is enough for him to leave off wondering and descend on vigorous seeking of answers,’ Bruce replied viciously. ‘He will see where your thoughts run, my lord. The Comyn looking to foil the Bruce? He may not consider this another tourney in our personal quarrels – he may think one or either of us plot against him, which has ever been his way. I am loyalty writ large and gilded, my lord – but yourself and Buchan have been a single thorn to him not long since and he will consider you are about to fight him again.’

‘We were fighting for Scotland before you and will after you,’ Red John replied savagely, then slapped his silk-quilted chest. ‘Comyn and Balliol, my lord Carrick, holding true while you waver and turn whenever it suits you.
Titim gan éirí ort
.’

May you fall without rising – a good old Gaelic curse that Bruce recalled his mother uttering, so that the memory of it made him smile a little; the sight threw Red John off his course.

‘Aye, you have resisted Longshanks fiercely,’ Bruce agreed, ‘so that your wife will be no guard against his belief that you will do so again.’

Red John’s eyes flickered at that; his wife was Joan de Valence, sister to Aymer and daughter of the King’s own uncle. Red John Comyn must be a fretting annoyance to the de Valence family, Bruce thought – almost as much as he is to me.

‘This must end,’ he said flatly. ‘Enough is enough – our feud is ruining the Kingdom, which needs a strong hand. It needs a king, my lord.’

‘It has a king,’ muttered Red John. ‘A Balliol, not a Bruce.’

‘Unmade by the same hand that raised him up,’ Bruce answered and saw the bristling over this old argument; he waved it away with a dismissive gesture.

‘We may debate it until Judgement Day,’ he growled, ‘but the Gordian Knot of it can be cut simply enough.’

They stared at each other and Red John grew still and quiet, leaning back slightly to look at Bruce – pale for such a dark man, Red John saw, with the tight dark green hood framing his face tightly, the spill of it like moss dagged on his shoulders. To hide the scar on his cheek, he thought, from Malenfaunt’s blow –
marbhaisg ort
, a death shroud on you, Malenfaunt, he thought. If you had done your work as you were paid to this man would not be such a stone in my shoe.

‘You have such a sharp edge, then? One to cut away a king?’

The question made Bruce’s eyes glitter and Red John caught his breath. God’s Bones, he has, right enough, he thought. This Bruce is planning to usurp a kingdom.

‘There is support for it,’ Bruce replied guardedly, seeing the astonished curve of Red John’s eyebrows. ‘More than you perhaps realize. Together we will be a stronger flame than apart – but even without that, it would be better, at least, if our fire was not being thrust in one another’s face.’

‘Are you saying you will stop plotting against us? That there will be peace – or a truce at least – between our families?’

‘I am.’

‘So that you can make yourself king of Scots and usurp my kin?’

Bruce hesitated.

‘So that a king might be found who is better fitted to the task than John Balliol,’ he replied carefully.

‘What do the Comyn and Balliol get from this?’ Red John asked with a sneer. ‘Apart from a royally angered kinsman and a dangerously powerful Bruce.’

‘No mention of your plotting beyond these walls,’ Bruce declared, waving the document. ‘A free hand with your own lands and rewards from a grateful sovereign.’

‘Do I seem afeared to you?’ Red John sneered, waving one wild arm. ‘Tell your tales to Longshanks and see if he has the belly for another fight in Scotland, which is what it will cause. See then how your careful wooing of the gullible will stand when it is known that you have plunged them back into war and, yet again, waver on where to stand. And we have a free hand in our own lands already, as well as a grateful sovereign in John Balliol.’

‘It is not Longshanks you should fear,’ Bruce answered, his cold eyes on Red John’s hot face, so that the air between them seemed to sizzle. ‘It is the Community of the Realm.’

That made Red John blanch a little and Bruce saw it with a savage leap of pleasure that he had trouble disguising. Red John was silent for a long time, staring at the effigy and its elaborate tomb, the armorials all faded beneath the flaking wood of the ogee arches.

‘Did you know Rahere was a wee clerk in the service of auld King Henry?’ he asked suddenly, breaking from Gaelic to braid Scots. ‘Steeped in venery, it is said, but he proved useful to the sovereign and so was raised up.’

He turned to the tomb, one encompassing arm taking in the kneeling canons, reading their stone Bible at the feet of the recumbent figure.

‘Proof positive that any chiel of poor account can rise to the greatest if he is willing to any sin.’

Bruce clenched his teeth on his anger, the sickening tug of the cicatrice like a dash of iced water down his veins. He waited.

‘I will consult with the Earl of Buchan on the matter,’ Red John declared eventually in French.

‘You are the Comyn who matters,’ Bruce answered and Red John nodded, almost absently, then offered a terse, thin smile.

‘You will hear from us, never fear.’

Bruce watched him walk away on his vain boots, to be folded into his cloak of hard-faced men. Incense wafted in the air and the chanting grew louder as Bruce’s men waited, tense.

He had not been a clerk, Bruce knew. Prior Rahere, founder of St Bartholomew’s, had been a jester and laughter had raised him up. That and the advice of a wise fool.

Bruce peered at the words on the stone Bible - Isaiah, Chapter 51, ‘The Lord shall comfort Zion …’ - wondering if he had been wise or a fool to reveal so much to the Lord of Badenoch. He wondered if the Lord of Badenoch had been moved from his position any. Or if he dared move himself, in pursuit of kingship and despite the Comyn.

‘You will have to move soon, lord of Annandale,’ said a voice and Bruce whirled to find the sub-prior close by, arms folded into his robes and seemingly blissfully unaware of the wolves hovering at his back.

‘God wills it,’ the sub-prior said piously.

As Bruce continued to stare, blinking in wonder at this strange prophet, he added apologetically, ‘You are blocking the processional, my son.’

St Mary’s Loch, near Moffat, Scottish Border

Vigil of St Palladius, July, 1305

They came along the shore of the loch, with the bare hump of Watch Law on their right and the darkly wooded Wiss across the mirror mere, reflected dizzyingly so that the world seemed upside down.

It was a long cavalcade which made those who encountered it leap to their feet, thinking that so many riders could only herald the return of red war to their little part of the world. The half-dozen of the English garrison at Traquair had run off at the sound, only returning, half-ashamed and not speaking of it at all, when they found that the mounted horde of Wallace consisted of five men, a woman and a herd of some fifty horses, sound and stolid stots and affers being driven to the market at Carlisle.

‘Every venture I take with you,’ Kirkpatrick muttered to Sim Craw, not for the first time, ‘seems to consist of starin’ at the spavined arse of livestock that God has forsook. Nags or kine with shitey hurdies.’

‘Ca’ canny,’ protested Stirk Davey. ‘There is some prime horseflesh here – Fauberti will wet himself at the sight, like a wee ravin’ dug.’

Stirk was as rangy and lean as a stag on the rut, all nervous energy and concern for his charges, one of which was the prime horseflesh he spoke of. This was a fine, cold-bred
destrier
called Rammasche, which was the name you gave to a wild hawk. An entire – a stallion – he was not exactly destined for the fine hands of top dealer Fauberti in London, but would still fetch good money in Carlisle.

The rest – palfreys, rounceys, everyday stots and carter’s affers – were a good cover for a group trying to creep into Moffat to find out if the Countess was right and Wallace was secreted at Corehead Tower – the horse droving road to Carlisle and the south led straight past the place.

Being here nagged Kirkpatrick, because it was a lick and spit away from Closeburn, seat of the Kirkpatricks and held by his namesake, who had no love for the rebel Wallace and would as soon hang them both side by side.

Isabel, however, merely smiled at his fears, though she was the other rub on the fluffed fur of Kirkpatrick’s nerves – the Countess of Buchan, striding along in ungainly leather riding boots and a plain dress, which she tucked up to ride astraddle when the fancy took her.

Wearing a threadbare hooded cloak, red-eyed from woodsmoke, having cooked for all of them over an open fire, like any auld beldame wife of a horsecorser.

It was a perfect disguise, admittedly – Buchan would not be looking for his wife here – but not only was it simply delaying the inevitable, it was not right that a noblewoman of the realm should be chaffering and handing out bowls to the likes of Dog Boy and Stirk and himself.