by Robert Low
And before, with Belle, there had been times when he felt he could believe in the power of sheean magic, in that lazy hour of lying together when outlines hazed and a sunbeam slant, danced with golden motes.
In the day Elizabeth de Burgh was dutiful. In the night, she was wanton and that was workable – in the night, he thought, I lose my ability to see. But Belle was slim as a wand, with breasts like nuts. Elizabeth is as lush as the lands she brings to me, Bruce thought, so that even the dark cannot turn back time. The Curse of Malachy, he thought, to have the world and taste only ashes – would it be like this even when he was king?
Elizabeth rose, smoothing her dress, adjusting her wimple, smiling at him gently, making an expression of winsome regret as she began to move to the side of the equally young Queen, who smiled with bland eyes below a pale forehead and brows almost blonde. For all her youth, three faint lines already touched that brow, as if the age of her husband was leaching her youth.
Ashes. The taste drifted to his mouth, palpable, so that he turned in time to see a brown-hooded figure signing the cross at a man in white, neck-roped and clouded with flying ashes where he had shaken himself free of them. The ceremony over, Oliphant was smiling at the chance to wash and get back into decent clothes.
‘Ave Maria, gratia plena,’ intoned the monk. ‘Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae …’
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Not that Oliphant faced death now or anything near it, Bruce thought. He had won himself a deal of fame by holding out so long and even managed to avoid serious injury or penance; Bruce nodded acknowledgement to the man and had back a grin that bordered on sneer from the grey-smeared face.
Bruce felt movement at his elbow and turned into the curious stare of Hal, felt unnerved as he often did when he found the man looking at him. He did it more and more these days, as if silently accusing, though Bruce did not know for what – unless the Countess Buchan, of course, the poor wee man’s lost light of love, who had been Bruce’s initiation into the serious arts of the bedchamber once.
Hardly that, for he has known of that since the beginning and made his peace with it. Herdmanston, then? Burned out, it needed rebuilding and I promised him aid in it, but God’s Blood, the man was on wages for himself and thirty riders which took the rents of a couple of good manors. Surely he realized that rebuilding his wee rickle of stones in Lothian was no great priority when a throne was a stake?
Yet he smiled, at him and Kirkpatrick both; they were useful, though not the pillars to support a man who would be king. Still, he needed their questing-dog purpose even if, so far, it had come to nothing; he knew they smarted over their failure to find Wallace, knew also that they would not give up if only because of their rivalry in it. Bruce’s smile widened; divide and conquer, the first rule of kings.
The monk and Bruce watched the prisoners stumble off, then the monk turned and Bruce gave a start, for he knew the face. So did Hal, coming up on his elbow and seeing the smeared smile of the little man, whom he remembered as one less than holy.
‘Benda ti istran plegrin: benda, marqueta, maidin. Benda, benda stringa da da agugeta colorada,’ the monk intoned with a grin as brown as his robe.
‘Kirkpatrick,’ Bruce called and the shadow was beside him instantly, scowling; Hal became aware of the rest of Bruce’s mesnie, suspicious and sullen, closing in.
‘Lamprecht,’ Kirkpatrick said, as if the name was soiled fruit in his mouth. The man admitted his name with a bow and a quick flick of his head left and right, to see who was within earshot; he did not like the presence of so many armed men and said so, then repeated the phrase he had used before.
‘Andara, andara, o ti bastonara,’ Kirkpatrick growled in response, and Hal saw the looks that passed between Bruce’s noblemen – but none asked what they all wanted to know, namely what tongue the man used.
Hal knew, from the last time he had met the little pardoner; it was lingua franca, the old crusader language, a patois of every tongue spoken along the Middle Sea, with more than a dash of heathen in it. Pilgrims used it and the last time Hal had seen this Lamprecht – at least six years ago – he had been claiming himself to be one, with shell badge in a wide-brimmed hat and a collection of relics and indulgences. The meeting had not been profitable for him, nor the ones he had been involved with and Kirkpatrick had, Hal recalled, threatened him with a knife. What had brought the skulking wee pardoner back here, of all places?
‘What is he saying?’ Bruce demanded and Kirkpatrick, who was the only one who spoke the tongue, revealed that the little man, his pouched face shrouded in rough brown wool, was begging alms. Kirkpatrick had told him to go or be beaten.
‘Peregrin taybo cristian, si querer andar Jordan, pilla per tis jornis pan que no trobar pan ne vin.’
‘Good Christian pilgrim, if you want to journey to the Jordan, take bread with you, for you will find no bread or wine,’ Kirkpatrick translated it and someone laughed as the priest held out one grimy hand with half a chewed loaf in it.
‘Is he trying to sell you bread?’ demanded Edward Bruce, his voice rising with incredulity. ‘Be off, priest,’ he added though he did it politely, for there was no telling what powers a pilgrim friar had – or what such a one might become after death. The Curse of Malachy, Bruce thought wryly, seeing his brother’s scowling fear.
Hal saw the gleam in Lamprecht’s eyes, like animals in the dark of the cowl. He glanced at Bruce and saw he had seen the same. There was a moment – then Bruce reached out, took the bread and turned to Kirkpatrick.
‘Give him a coin.’
Pilgrim Lamprecht, with obvious delight, took the coin from under Kirkpatrick’s scowl, frowned at how small it was, then made it disappear.
‘Cambuskenneth,’ he said, clear as new water, then he was gone, leaving bemused men looking at his scuttling back. Edward Bruce looked at the bread, then smiled his broad, slit-eyed grin, his cheeks knobbed as late apples.
‘I would not eat that if I were you, brother.’
He went off, hooting, while the others trailed after him. Bruce looked at the half-loaf, rough maslin with a grey dough interior, indented as if someone had poked a finger in it. He scooped, found something hard and pulled it out; Kirkpatrick whistled, then looked right and left while Bruce closed his fist on the object and moved on, nodding and smiling as if it was the everyday thing for the powerful lord of Carrick and Annadale to be holding one half of a poor loaf.
But all of them had seen the red gleam of a ruby, big and round as a robin’s egg and that itself would have been marvel enough. Bruce knew more, had known that ruby and its eleven cousins when they had been snugged up next to each other along the length and breadth of a reliquary cross last seen tucked under the arm of an English knight heading south to Westminster.
Inside the jewelled and gilded crucifix-casket, Bruce knew, had lain the Holy Black Rood of Scotland, the holiest relic of the Kingdom and, together with the Stone of Scone, as much the mark of a coronation as the crown itself.
CHAPTER TWO
Riccarton, Ayrshire
Transfiguration of Christ, August, 1304
Mattie Broon first caught sight of them as he plodded through the drizzle, his idiot son lumbering awkwardly at his side and jumping in puddles. Late in a wet August afternoon for Mattie to be heading out to his sheep, folk said later. Too long in Creishie Jean’s alehouse, the knowing said. Too slow and indulgent with that daftie boy said those who knew better.
Mattie saw the cattle first, small black shapes with long, curved horns. Being a sheepman he did not care for cattle much and was surprised to see them, for this was no drover’s road. The dogs came next, rough-coated slinkers moving the score or so stirks along the road.
First came long shadows, eldritch as Faerie, from men walking determinedly on foot, four of them – no five. One a priest, or a pilgrim lay brother – Mattie had never known such a thing before. His original thought, that they had stolen the beasts, was
now thrown into confusion, for surely no priest would be party to cattle-lifting?
The cattle lumbered over the low ground, a seemingly disorganized mob of shaggy bodies and wickedly curving horns. The topsman – Mattie presumed – lifted one hand in greeting and to show it was empty, that they meant no harm.
No harm, Mattie snorted to himself. It was clear they were circling the beasts, planning to make camp and he shifted away from them, ignoring the plaintive repeat of questions from his son. He moved off a little way and hunkered, hearing their rough laughter, the lowing of cattle and sharp barks of the dogs clamouring to be fed.
When the breeze brought the smell of onions and oatmeal with the whisper of grass Mattie rose up, chivvied his son from digging in the mud and moved off. His sheep would be untended, but he knew that this would have to be told to Heidsman. He would know what to do.
The drovers watched him go from under the loops of rough wool drawn up over their heads, eating stolidly from horn spoon and wooden bowl, save for the young, dark one who was making a fuss of the fawning hounds.
‘Is he away?’ asked Hal, who had his back to the man. Kirkpatrick flicked his eyes up and toed a loose brand back towards the fire.
‘Heading away, fast,’ he growled. ‘Herding the boy like a coo. No right in the head, that boy.’
‘Away to fetch the maister,’ Sim Craw said and looked over at the Dog Boy. ‘Leave the dugs, man. Sit and eat – nivver miss a meal, for ye dinna ken when the next will appear.’
Dog Boy gave a last friendly cuff to the fawning beasts and then went to the fire, taking his bowl and spoon from Sim and offering a wide grin in payment. Hal smiled with him – the Dog Boy was enjoying himself, even if it was only a couple of sleekit cattle dogs he worked with and the price for it was spending the last weeks looking at the shitty arses of a dozen scrubby kine. He was the only one with any joy of the affair.
‘I said,’ Kirkpatrick muttered, ‘that this idea of pretending to be drovers was bad. We are nowheres close to a drove road, so any who spy us will think we stole the baists.’
‘Which is for why we brought our own wee priest,’ Sim replied, bowing his neck to Lamprecht and having back a brown sneer for it. ‘No stolen kine here, wi’ a wee friar in tow.’
It was one reason they had brought Lamprecht from Stirling weeks since and not the most important, Kirkpatrick thought. He caught himself staring at Sim, taking in the slab of a face, the span of shoulder, the grizzled beard. More iron than black in that beard, he thought and that monster crossbow he used to span constantly with a heave of those shoulders is now latched back with the belly hook and belt more and more these days. We are all getting old, he thought moodily.
Sim Craw felt the eyes on him and spared Kirkpatrick a brief flick of glance, which took in the sharp, long-nosed mummer’s mask of a face, little knife points of dagged hair, wintered here and there, plastered wetly to hollowed cheeks. Bigod the wee man was ugly.
The only one uglier, Sim Craw agreed with himself, was yon murderous Malise Bellejambe, the Earl o’ Buchan’s man just as Kirkpatrick was Bruce’s murderous wee man. It seemed to Sim that every highborn in the land needed a murderous wee man like a shadow and he was ruffled as a wet cat at the idea that he and Hal were somehow included in that mesnie.
‘Farthing for that thought,’ Hal offered, seeing Sim’s familiar glazed scowl. The man blinked and grinned loosely.
‘Malise Bellejambe,’ he answered and saw the cloud darken Hal’s face. He wished he had not answered so truthfully now, for Malise was dark and unfinished business, a man who, for sure, had killed Tod’s Wattie and two prime deerhounds as well as a yielded English lord waiting for ransom. There were other killings that could be laid at his feet, though none of them could be proved – but the worst about Malise Bellejambe was that he was Isabel’s keeper, the Earl of Buchan’s snarling guard dog on his wife and one reason why Hal had kept away from her these past years.
Hal was spared the brooding of it by the arrival of the Heidsman, with a bustle of curious and concerned locals at his back, one of them the local priest. In his pretend role of topsman of the drovers, Hal stood up and moved to greet him, being polite but not fawning.
‘Christ be praised,’ the priest announced.
‘For ever and ever,’ Hal responded and there was a slight ease of the tension now that it was established that the strange drovers were neither Faerie nor imps of Satan, who could never get such words past their lips. He saw the idiot boy laughing with the fawning dogs and Dog Boy grinning with him, the shared delight in hounds an instant bond.
After that, matters were established quickly enough – that this was an overnight camp only and that the cattle would not be allowed to stray into plots of beet, or the fields of uncut hay. The priest, Hal saw out of the corner of one eye, moved to greet his brother in Christ and Hal felt a momentary stab of concern.
‘Whit where are ye drivin’ the baists?’
The question took him by the chin and forced his head back into the frowning chap-cheeked concern of the Heidsman’s face. He grinned without parting his lips.
‘Here an’ there. To those who might need the comfort of good beef.’
It was as clear as waving a saltire who the cattle were meant for and Hal had hopes that the Heidsman in Riccarton, a Wallace stronghold, would be sympathetic. He was not wrong, but a few idle questions later had determined that, supporters though they were, no-one in Riccarton knew where the Wallace was – or even his uncle Adam, who was also on the outlaw. Riccarton’s wee keep was now garrisoned by English, which made it doubly unlikely that Wallace would be nearby.
The priest appeared puzzled.
‘He speaks awfy strange, yon friar,’ he said to the Heidsman and Hal forced his smile wide, a satchel of innocence.
‘He is a pilgrim, from the Holy Land,’ he replied and that was enough, it seemed, not only to answer the puzzle of his strange way of speaking, but to gain Lamprecht a measure of spurious respect.
Dog Boy heard the boy’s father call him and the daftie turned reluctantly away, then smiled, innocent as God himself, at the scowl that was Lamprecht.
‘Shell,’ he said and the pardoner waved him away like an annoying fly. Sulkily, the boy turned away, muttering about how he wanted the shell and was never given it.
The deputation moved away, satisfied; Hal returned to sit by the fire, where he told them that Wallace was not lurking around here.
‘Aye well, it was a poor chance at best,’ Sim sighed. ‘Still – we have the other matter.’
The other matter felt the eyes on him and stopped, spoon halfway to his gums, food sliding on to the raggle of his beard. I take it back, Sim thought to himself, Lamprecht is uglier even than Malise Bellejambe.
Lamprecht saw the faces, knew what they were thinking and hoped they had not worked out that he was about to take himself off very soon; hoped, even more fervently, that they would not discover the truth of it all until it was too late and his revenge sprung. He remembered the time five years ago at least he and the lord and his retinue had met, in the lazar at Berwick. The one with Satan’s face, the Kirkpatrick who spoke the lingua, had held a knife at his throat then.
The prick of it burned yet and it took all his will not to reach up one comforting hand to the spot, thus giving away his thoughts to the same Satan. Now the revenge was his. Dar cinquecento diavoli, che portar tua malora …
Five hundred devils made no appearance to take the curse that was Kirkpatrick, so Lamprecht finished the action of spoon and mouth, chewed, swallowed and grinned.
‘Non andar bonu?’
‘Speak a decent tongue, ye wee heathen,’ growled Sim and Lamprecht scowled back at him.
‘Questo diavolo ignorante non consoce il merito,’ Lamprecht began, stopped, took a breath and began again, speaking deliberately to Hal, his English wavering like a sailor finding his land-legs. ‘This devil does not know talent when he sees it. I am to help. I have the thing. You want the thing.
Capir?’
He had the thing. Truth was, Hal thought, he had a portion of the thing, which he had brought out like a cradled bairn when Hal and Kirkpatrick had come with the Earl Bruce, chasing the promise of that single ruby.
Lamprecht had unwrapped the sacking lovingly in the amber light of wax candles and the dancing shadows of the pilgrim’s cell he had claimed at Cambuskenneth.
Even half the thing took Hal’s breath away and the whole, an ell length at least, must have been an ache on the eye.
Bruce had taken the gilded fragment, the lower end of a cross lid, badly hacked off. Five similar rubies studded it and the nest for the prised-out sixth revealed the depth of beaten gold. Bruce, slow with wonder, nestled the ruby Lamprecht had given him into it, watched the perfect fit for a moment, then removed it again.
‘It is from the Westminster,’ Lamprecht had said, his voice reverently low. ‘From the furfanta – the swindler. Pardon … the robbery. Of the King’s treasure.’
In the quiet of the cell no-one had spoken, for they had all heard of this, taken delight in it if truth was told. While Longshanks ravaged up and down Scotland, a nest of thieves – his own canons of the minster among them – had stolen the Crown treasure from Westminster. That had been almost a year ago and the howling rage that was Edward had not diminished, if the arrests and racks and beheadings were anything to go by.
Nor had it all been recovered. Pieces of it were turning up all over the country – and abroad, too, Bruce had heard. Yet this was singular. This was part of the reliquary of the Black Rood, taken from Scone on the day Longshanks stripped John Balliol of everything that made him a king and a man and the Kingdom of everything that made it a realm.
‘Si,’ Lamprecht had said, as if reading Bruce’s thoughts. ‘I have this from Pudlicote man. For … some small services.’