Lion at Bay (24 page)

Feeding the Hungry. Clothing the Naked. Burying the Dead. The bright hangings wafting gently in the thin breeze of the cathedral glowed with a piety that could not balm the anger of the droop-lidded king of England.

‘Is he likely to say more?’ Edward demanded and Monthermer looked apologetic.

‘He has been put to the Question at length,’ he answered carefully, ‘but all we know is that he is called Guillaume of Shaws and was a notary in the service of Bishop Wishart. If he had not gotten himself stinking drunk in Berwick and babbled, we would not even know that much, your Excellent Grace.’

‘A notary,’ Edward muttered, sitting in the wool-swathed chair of Lancelot, both hands flat on the table. Somewhere, drifting on the iced wind, the slow, rolling chant of the monks celebrating the feast day clashed with the clamouring masses begging for the alms that had brought them in ragged flocks.

Edward wished they would shut up, but did not voice it aloud; he was already aware that his reputation for magnanimity, piety and regal magnificence had been badly damaged by Wallace. He had been matched up against a rebel outlaw from the wild land of Scotland and ended up looking mean and petty; the thought burned him, an ember irritation in his bowels which even the thought of this great Round Table he’d had made could not balm.

A splendid thing, the table. For a tourney in celebration of Arthur and the Grail, though Edward could not remember when that had been. When he had been enthused for tourneys and the ideals of Arthur, he supposed, which had all dissipated after Eleanor died.

‘With respect, father, surely all we know is that this man spoke rebellion in his cups. Why is he considered as more?’

Edward looked at his son, taking in the violet silk of him. Before this one, he thought. I had this table made before he was born, when I was young and strong and the best knight in Christendom, when I thought of all the powerful sons I would make to glorify the Kingdom I would create here.

Now there is this one, the only one God saw fit to leave standing, so no doubt He has a plan for him. I cannot see it, he added to himself and sighed, taking on the wearisome burden of educating the boy in the staringly obvious.

‘A notary of Wishart? Young, well-educated with a neat, perjink beard, a knowledge of letters and Latin and with ambitions thwarted and a deal of resentment. He did not growl rebellion, he babbled of plots, involving folk of high degree.’

His voice, rising as he spoke, was finally brought under control, but with difficulty, so that his son took a step back, then recovered himself.

‘Gaveston says …’

‘Gaveston says, Gaveston says.’

It had been a mistake and the younger Edward knew it as the spittle flew from his father’s lips.

‘Gaveston can kiss my arse,’ Edward thundered. ‘As I hear he has been doing to your own.’

‘The prince,’ Monthermer interjected smoothly, ‘simply means, I am sure, that we have no firm proof that this man plots anything other than vague vengeance against Bishop Wishart, who dismissed him, it seems, for repeated drunkenness. The man actually laughed when he was accused of plotting with the Comyn against Your Grace.’

‘Laughed?’

Monthermer inwardly winced; wrong revelation for the time, he thought and began feverishly to summon a way out of it.

‘Laughed,’ Edward repeated ominously. ‘If you cannot even put a man to the Question but that he finds humour in it, it is hardly surprising we have no evidence. I suggest you wipe the smile from the man’s face – take his damned notary beard with it if needs must.’

‘He is dead,’ Monthermer blurted out. ‘Such was the questioning we put him to that he decided to stand before God rather than admit anything, my liege. We certainly have no firm evidence we can use as justification for dismissing the Earl of Carrick from Your Grace’s pleasure.’

He allowed his voice to tail off, knowing the King would pounce on this, as a string dangled to a cat; Monthermer looked pointedly at the young prince, who nodded brief thanks and stepped away from the conversation.

‘Bruce,’ Edward said, staring at nothing. He liked the Earl of Carrick, but did not trust him in anything other than to oppose the Comyn.

‘The Comyn,’ he said aloud.

‘Indeed, my liege,’ Monthermer agreed. ‘It seems uncommonly like it is that family who are still bent on causing trouble. But it is hard to tell – the Bruce and Comyn are at each other’s throats.’

‘They are all plotting,’ Edward rasped. ‘I can hear them, like mice in the rushes.’

Monthermer spread his hands and offered nothing better than an insincere blandness of smile.

Edward glanced up at the smooth, urbane Earl of Gloucester and did not trust him one whit more than any of the others, even those who professed unstinting loyalty. He trusted Monthermer at all because he held the title Earl of Gloucester only during the lifetime of his wife, Joan de Clare; it would revert to her son when she died and Monthermer’s only hope of advancement then was for the King’s benifice. Edward trusted in ambition and greed.

The Earl’s advice was sound, all the same. Nevertheless, the thought of rebellion soured Edward; he was sixty-six years and eight months old, the oldest king England had ever had. His many territories were at peace, his authority was supreme and, for all his age, he was fit and healthy. God, he thought, has seen to it that I am preserved. For a higher purpose, surely.

The long-held urge for Crusade still fired his veins, held back by war and the rumour of war – by Christ’s Wounds it would not erupt again like some festering ulcer and keep him from God’s purpose.

He rose, stoop-shouldered and draped in a fur which failed to keep the cold from him, then scraped the heavy Lancelot chair back from the table. It came to him that the only time he had ever been warm in this place was when he and the Queen had almost died in the fire that ravaged it three – no, four – years since.

He’d pondered on it having been deliberately started, but eventually concluded that, like all plots, no-one would dare connive against his throne while he was alive. The idea sprang up like a soldier sown from Cadmus’ dragon teeth.

‘The mark of a man,’ he declared suddenly, his smile fox-feral, ‘is what he would do if he knew he could get away with it.’

‘Indeed,’ Monthermer answered, wary and none the wiser.

‘I am due in Dumfries soon,’ the King declared suddenly.

‘A sheriff court,’ Monthermer agreed. ‘A mean affair, but a statement of matters so that all the great and good Scots lords will attend, to prove their devotion to your liege.’

‘And the not so good,’ Caernarvon interjected, though he was ignored save for a warning glance from Monthermer.

‘I will not attend,’ Edward declared, drawing the fur round him. ‘I feel a chill in my bones. I feel close to death’s door, so that relics must be fetched for their efficacy and relief.’

Monthermer, puzzled, hovered uncertainly, then the light broke on him and he smiled admiringly.

‘Indeed,’ Edward declared like a lip-licking cat. ‘Let us see what mice scurry out when they think this old puss is too done up to hunt them. Meanwhile – gather up every name this notary gave out. Put them all to the Question and see if they find laughter in it.’

Greyfriars Kirk, Dumfries

Feast of St Scholastica, February, 1306

His breath smoked, blue-grey in the frosted chill of the kirk and Dog Boy wondered why it was that holy places were never heated, as if it was a sin to be warm. In truth, Dog Boy was trying hard not to think of the wee Lincluden nun with the sweet smile and big eyes, the one who had giggled at him before being hurried off by an outraged matron with a face like a winter apple.

They should never have been at Lincluden at all, but Dumfries was stuffed to the rafters with the great and the good and all their entourage, so that the English justiciars had taken over the castle and the Vennel and the Comyn were in Sweetheart and Greyfriars, which belonged to them.

In truth, the Bruce had come with too many men – a hundred or so and few of them servitors, which was twice as many as anyone else – and so the Benedictine nuns of Lincluden, a mile up the Nith from the town, had had to scurry off and double up in their cells, clucking protest and outrage as they were descended on.

In truth. Was there such a thing as truth left? Dog Boy doubted it, for all was mummery here; the retinues of the Comyn and Bruce, with their lesser and greater supporters, all walked round each other, stiff-legged and ruffed as hounds while smiling and calling out greetings through gritted teeth. They all openly snarled at the English, all the same.

And Hal, for all he stood wrapped in a warm cloak, hand on the hilt of a sword and guarding the back of the Bruce, had not wanted to be here at all. Dog Boy knew this because he had heard him say so, loudly and at length, when the rider had come to Herdmanston.

‘I am his liege man, so he can summon me for service without thought. But each time I do this I put myself more at the mercy of the Earl in Dunbar.’

Dog Boy knew, vaguely, that Herdmanston belonged to Roslin first and the Earl Patrick second, but was not sure exactly how this worked. He knew, also, that Hal was talking to the Countess, because he always spoke clear English to her rather than Braid. Dog Boy also knew he should not be listening, but did so all the same, pretending to fuss with the deerhounds in case anyone happened by.

‘Besides,’ Hal went on, ‘what of the other matter? Did he have a hand in Wallace?’

Isabel’s voice was soothing and strong, laced with good sense and tinged with love – as good a balm as any Dog Boy had treated cracked paws with.

‘If he did we will never know of it, so best not to dwell on that. Besides – we have our own guilt there.’

‘I could refuse.’

Hal’s voice was flat and cold as a blade in winter.

‘He offers the usual pay,’ he added, ‘but we do not need it with what you brought. I could tell him to go to the De’il.’

‘Best leave that hoarded up where we hid it,’ she declared. Her voice was soft, yet there was steel in it, like the fangs at the edge of a velvet maw, Dog Boy thought, afore it bites you. ‘It is more dangerous in the light of day than in the dark and so cannot be of value in these times at least. Yet there is more to supporting Robert Bruce than siller, my Hal, and you know it. There is what happened in the deer park to set the seal on it, if even seal were needed.’

Hal had given in, of course and, when Dog Boy heard it, he turned his fondling of the hounds to a farewell. Next day, they had left Herdmanston – Hal, Dog Boy, Mouse, Ill-Made Jock and Sore Davey, leaving Sim Craw as reeve and having to ride off under the sour arch of his scowl at being left behind.

Now Hal stood watching the Bruce’s back, feeling the cold seep up through the worn Greyfriars flagstones and wondering at the greeting he had had when he’d arrived, straggling into Lincluden under a pewter sky and a rain fine as spray.

‘Stay close,’ Bruce had said, the welted cicatrice on his cheek writhing like a lilac worm as he spoke. ‘I will have need of good men I can trust here.’

The flickering rushlight did nothing for his face, nor that of Kirkpatrick at his back and the three of them sat in a sparse nun’s cell like plotters.

Afterwards, Hal wondered how much had actually been plotted before he had arrived – or why he was needed in it. Once he might have gathered fifty good riders to him, hobilars all – but that was ten years gone and most were dead or too old and worn by war, while the young went with other commanders. Younger ones, Hal thought morosely, with more belly for the work of
herschip
raiding.

Belly, he realized, was what he lacked these days and nothing made it plainer to him than the day he rode a handful of men to Greyfriars, to find Bruce slithering himself into a maille shortcoat, hidden under the loose length of a brown wool
gardecorps
. The hood of it was drawn up and tightened under his chin to hide the cheek-scar from view; it wept still, that scar and Hal marvelled at how it never healed. Perhaps there had been poison on Malenfaunt’s blade?

He dismissed that, remembering that Bruce had plucked the dagger from his cheek and rammed it under Malenfaunt’s chin, into his mouth, pinning and slitting his tongue. Malenfaunt spoke in mumbles these days, Hal had heard, but had not suffered from any poison.

At the time, Bruce’s hidden maille had seemed more than prudent, for this was an awkward meeting in a town dominated by Comyn and their supporters – the very kirk, Greyfriars, had been founded by Red Comyn’s grandmother, the formidable matriarch Devorguilla, at the same time as she had laid the stones of an abbey so she could be kisted up alongside her husband. Sweetheart Abbey it had become as a result and a powerful icon of the Comyn.

Yet Bruce need not even have been here, sheriff’s court or not, for Longshanks himself would not be attending – sick in a monastery, surrounded by the arm of St David, a portion of the chains of St Peter and a tooth said to be proof against the thunder and lightning of God’s wrath.

‘Mayhap he has over-exerted himself,’ Kirkpatrick had said wryly when this news reached the Bruce cavalcade and those who knew that Longshanks’ queen was pregnant again laughed.

Yet Bruce had sent riders off to request a meeting with the Lord of Badenoch not long after and no-one was the wiser over it – not least the Lord of Badenoch, standing there as straight and tall as he could make himself, arms behind his back to thrust out his chest and the red badge on it.
Gules, three garbs, or;
Hal smiled, as he always did when he recalled his father dinning the lessons of heraldry into a boy who only wanted away to the trout and calling fields.

Badenoch stood near the altar, watching the brown-clad Bruce cross the flagstones towards him. Like a monk’s arsehole, he said to himself. Does he think dressing in a parody of piety would allay suspicion?

He was also aware of the men Bruce had brought into the church with him – three, as was permitted on either side, armed as befitted their rank, but unarmoured. Behind him, Red John had his uncle Robert, big and bluff with what appeared to be a squirrel settled in a dangled curve under his nose. Then there was Patrick Cheyne of Straloch, the best tourney fighter the Comyn had – and, for the provocation in it, the battered scowl that was Malise Bellejambe.