The Complete Kingdom Trilogy (68 page)

The visitors came later than Kirkpatrick had expected, shadows against the black, a faceless voice thick with suspicion and menace.

‘Bide doucelike. If as much as the hair on the quim o' yer wummin twitches, ye will rue it.'

For a moment, all was still, frozen – then the slim rill of a woman's voice sluiced away the terror.

‘Lang Jack Short,' Isabel said, firm and fierce. ‘At our last meeting, ye would no more have discussed my nethers than you would have refused the meat and ale of my hospitality at Balmullo the night we fixed Will Wallace's leg.'

Hal almost cried out with the delight of it; if he was not already in thrall to her, he would have loved her for this moment alone; there was a pause, then a face, broken-nosed ugly, shoved itself into the embered glow of the fire,

‘Coontess?'

‘The same,' she answered tartly. ‘Here to see Sir William. So less of your sauce, Lang Jack and do what you have been bid.'

‘Bigod,' Sim Craw admired, ‘it never fails to maze me how such a well-bred wummin kens every low-born chiel from here to beyond The Mounth.'

It was a slash through Long Jack's spluttering and Hal broke in before it boiled up to something ugly.

‘Take us to Wallace,' he said. ‘Myself, the Countess and Kirkpatrick.'

‘A Bruce man?' Long Jack spat back, leaping on this fact to save his face. ‘I am as likely to shove my dirk in the Wallace hert.'

‘Ye are skilled at that,' Hal replied, losing his own temper. ‘Bangtail Hob will testify to it afore God.'

‘Swef, swef.'

The new voice rolled over the tension like a flattening boulder and the figure who stepped out of the dark was as large, a barrel-shaped man whose hair furzed out from under a confection of hat. He had a face dominated by a fat nose that drooped like a pachyderm's over a sprawl of moustache, shrewd, heavy-lidded eyes and a way of swinging his head like a blind, hooded hawk when he turned. Hal knew him at once.

‘Sir Tham Halliday,' he said and had back a nod before the head swung back, the gaze almost as heavy as the hand he laid on Long Jack's shoulder.

‘Bring them, as Will bidded.'

Scowling, Long Jack turned and led the way, while Sim, Stirk Davey and the Dog Boy looked at each other and then into the dark, which hid a multitude of sins clenched in a horde of unseen hands.

The meeting, when it finally came, was a strange affair and Isabel noted it mainly because of the shock at the sight of Wallace and for the reversal of characters between Kirkpatrick and Hal.

Wallace was slumped in a curule chair, a pose that Hal remembered well enough for it to pain him; the hand-and-a-half, he noted, was hung, scabbarded, on a wall and that was a difference from before, for Wallace would once never have allowed the hilt of that weapon more than a fingertip from him. Hal wondered if the belt that it hung from was really made from the flayed skin of Cressingham, the English Treasurer of Scotland who had died at Stirling Brig.

Wallace was gaunt, wasted, galled with too much bone at knee, elbow and cheeks. His eyes were the worst part of him and everyone saw it. They were the washed-out eyes of a netted fish in opaque waters, slightly bewildered and infinitely weary. They brightened at the sight of Isabel and a smile split the close-cropped beard; his hair, too, was all but shaved and he saw the shock this gave the Countess.

‘Shorn,' he said ruefully, ‘like an old wether. Nits and lice – it is good to see you, Countess. I see you have leaped the dyke.'

She could not reply for the sight of him and Hal stepped into the silence.

‘You have my thanks for the rescue of her,' he said in the French Wallace had offered up. The poor coin of his voice rang hollow even to his own ears.

‘Aye, well,' Wallace replied laconically. ‘I think that comes true from the Countess and only from politeness out of yourself.'

‘Bangtail Hob,' Hal said and Kirkpatrick sighed, started forward with his mouth opening to block the breach of the conversation. Wallace spoke over him, silencing him before a word got out.

‘Aye, Bangtail was a sadness,' Wallace admitted. ‘Necessary, all the same, else he would have told where we were. I had tired and sick folk who couldn't spend another night in the cold and wet.'

‘He fought for you once,' Hal reminded him savagely. ‘He would have said nothing.'

‘He would have told the next hoor he lay wi',' Wallace replied wearily, breaking into Scots. ‘And if ye were no' blind with grief ye would ken this.'

‘Ye might have held him for a day or two,' Hal insisted hotly. ‘He helped save yer life, in the name of Christ.'

The eyes flashed, the old fire escaping from under hooded lids, but diffused like pump water from a spout blocked by a finger.

‘Long hundreds have done so. Thousands. The dead pile up round me like leaves in November.'

He leaned forward a little, tense as a hound on a leash.

‘Freedom,' he said hoarsely, ‘is never got for free. It is paid for in suffering, more by some than others. Yet “
dico tibi verum, libertas optimum rerum
” – which is, afore ye say it yerself, everything I ever learned training as a priest. And these words ye ken already, Hal of Herdmanston.'

I tell you the truth, the best of all things is freedom
. Hal had no answer to it.

‘Fine words,' interrupted Kirkpatrick, the Latin lost on him, dropping the bag into the silence with a heavy, solid shink. Wallace turned the weary gaze on him.

‘The Earl of Annandale and Carrick,' Kirkpatrick said softly in French, ‘sends this for your regard. Enough coin to pay for passage to France.'

‘Why would the Bruce think I need his coin?'

Kirkpatrick smiled thinly.

‘To add to the safe conduct letter the Comyn extracted from the Pope, in the name of King John Balliol,' he replied. ‘Now you can flash the Bruce coin back at them and avoid being shackled by obligements to either one.'

‘Or end up manacled to all of ye, in the mire of yer damned feud,' Wallace countered.

Kirkpatrick shrugged.

‘Bruce has made his peace with the Lord of Badenoch. There is no feud.'

That was news to everyone, including Wallace, who sat and scratched the remains of his beard, so clearly wanting one long enough to stroke that Isabel almost laughed.

‘There is, it seems,' he said, the aloes of it so thick that every mouth could taste the bitterness, ‘no good reason for my remaining in the Kingdom. Everyone wishes me quit of it.'

He offered a twisted smile.

‘One day you may find as I do,
gentilhommes
, that it is not so easy to be quit of this kingdom. Only in death.'

Kirkpatrick took in a deep breath. Wallace would do it; he would go. In all probability he would go to France and use the same method he had used before, tried and true; for a moment, he felt the sharp, sick pang of what he was doing – then shoved it ruthlessly to one side and pushed the heavy bag forward.

‘My task is done,' he declared and Wallace laughed, though it was cold.

‘I would thank you for it,' he replied lightly, ‘but here I am, thinking you had a sharper argument if I had refused.'

Kirkpatrick did not even blink, merely held out his arms, hands dangling loose at the wrist, in an invitation to be searched. Isabel knew there was no hidden steel on him and, with a leap of fear, realized she could not be so sure of Hal, even though everyone had already been examined, save her.

Wallace caught her eye as he turned his head. There was a pause, then he focused on Hal.

‘And you, lord of Herdmanston,' he said heavily. ‘Is your task done?'

Hal felt the moment, the iron rods of Bangtail and Falkirk's wood and Stirling's brig all twisting and forging to a point, sharp as the weapon hanging on the wall. He felt the hilt of it in his hand already, burning his swordfist as if suddenly fired red hot by the rage in him. He wondered if he could get to Wallace's own sword in time, before the battle-honed Wallace reacted. He was weakened and weary, but he was still Wallace, a giant with fast hands and strong wrists; Hal remembered him at Scone, whirling the hand-and-a-half in one fist.

The moment passed; the tension deflated and Kirkpatrick found he needed to breathe.

‘In the name of Bangtail Hob, my task is not done and I will needs live with that,' Hal hoarsed out, meeting Wallace's gaze. ‘But yours is. Get ye gone, Sir Will. Your price for freedom has cost too many good folk their lives and the promise you made for it stays unfulfilled.'

He turned and left like a cold wind. Isabel saw that the slash of those words had wounded Wallace deeper than any dagger could, saw the stagger in the man, like a ship caught sideways in a gale. Then he recovered and drew up a little in his seat, managed a shaky smile.

‘Ye'll need a strong hand with yon yin,' he said to Isabel and she nodded, his face blurring through the springing tears, so that she turned away.

Kirkpatrick was left alone with him and the thought was bitter irony. Once this would have been an opportunity needing only a moment and a blade …

Instead, he nodded to the fallen giant and left. The true weapon was snugged up under the real coin in the bag, as vicious as any knife, a winking red eye of betrayal. Wallace would nurse his pride against need and would never consult the innards of that bag until forced to it. In truth, Kirkpatrick thought, he would not consult it at all; the men who would come in the night, sooner rather than later, would do that.

Outside in the drenched night, Kirkpatrick sucked in a breath and twisted a small, half-ashamed smile on his face. He now knew the true name of at least one of those jewelled Apostles – a ruby called Judas.

Herdmanston Tower

Invention of St Stephen, August, 1305

Lammas came and went, with trestles on the green groaning with meat, bread and cheese. The harvest had involved everyone, lines of men with scythes, gaggles of women and bairns gathering and tying and stooking.

Hal, stripped to the waist, joined in and, for some hours, reduced his world and the problems in it to a green wall and an avenue of amber stubble. Sim Craw on his right, Ill-Made on his left. Blisters swelled and broke on his hands, life became pain, in the back, across the shoulders.

At the end of it, Hal was sorry to have to leave, drenching himself with water from a bucket handed by a giggling Bet's Meg, while the men competed for the kirn, the last cut of corn, and drank deep of Maggie's new brew, frothed and thick as soup.

Increasingly mazed, they threw their scythes at the last stand until Dog Boy cut it through; grinning, he presented the sheaf to Bet's Meg, who would make it into the kirn-baby, a sure sign that she was next for wedding.

Next for bairning, Hal thought, for sure – Dog Boy was ploughing that willing furrow already, he was sure, just as Sim Craw and Alehouse Maggie could be heard all over the tower.

The whole world was rutting, he thought, including himself. He lay with her russet spill of hair across his chest, aching and exhausted in the best way, from work and love. The wool was good, the harvest was good, the only deaths were those expected and the rents for Roslin ready for the start of next year, in March.

Yet the nag was there, of when the blow would fall and how hard and who Buchan would get to do it. There was no question of the Earl openly demanding his wife back; she had been put aside in a nunnery, after all, like a discarded pair of shoes. Still, they were Comyn shoes and stepping into them gained parts of Fife, so they would not be left in a corner of a tower in Lothian for long.

A hoolet screeched, threading the night with terror. A wind blew, cool and holding the promise of rain, rattling the shutters of that folly of a window, built by his father for his mother and a breach in the defence of a tower. Hal thanked his da for it, all the same, as his mother had when she sat in the nook of it, sewing and looking out. Now Isabel did the same.

If there was no war, he thought, sliding towards sleep, I would not worry so much about that silly window. But Bruce is moving and war is on the wind …

He wondered, sinking into the sweet softness of sleep, where Kirkpatrick was.

Next day, he tried to slough off the unease with a deer hunt, though the chances of success were slight and the manner of it was not to his liking – a ‘bow and stable', which was usually the province of the old and infirm. I am both, he had to admit to Sim Craw, who merely grunted as he climbed aboard his garron and heaved up his monster crossbow across one shoulder. Only Dog Boy, young and fit, revelled in the moment of it, in sole charge of the deerhounds he had been training.

They rode out to Roslin's deer park through a glory of stubbled gold where rooks and crows rose up, protesting loudly. They nodded to wardens and shepherds while clouds swelled over the land from the Firth.

‘Weather is comin',' Sim noted, when they were in the deer park's coppiced edges, negotiating the formidable earth barriers and leaps that allowed the roe and hart in but not out.

‘Is it now?' Hal noted mildly and with some humour, for Sim Craw fancied himself a foreteller of rain and storm though the truth was he would know it poured at the same time as everyone else.

They paused at the entrance to a long, coppiced stretch, while the two deerhounds panted with lolling tongues, tasting the stink of the wolf head nailed high on an oak. It was a warning to poachers on two or four legs, Hal knew and would have paid it no regard – save that the sight reminded him of Wallace.

‘It is how every wolf's head ends up,' Sim declared when Hal spoke his thoughts. ‘Unless it is wise enow to run out o' the country entire.'

It was then that the roe leaped from one side of the wood, paused to stare at them, no more than a lance-length away, so that Hal swore he saw himself reflected in the beautiful deep pool of perfectly-fringed glaucous eye.