The Complete Kingdom Trilogy

by Robert Low

  Yet the eyes were clear and quizzical, the smile a wry lopsided twist as he saw Hal’s shock. He should look at himself, Bruce thought, and was not as sure as he had been when Kirkpatrick convinced him that Hal was the very man for the task he had in mind.

  Seven years had not been kind to the lord of Herdmanston; he was too lean, too stooped, too grey – Christ in Heaven, too old. And had not handled weapons for all that time, so that the rawest squire could probably beat him.

  He had pointed this out to Kirkpatrick, who had waved it away with a dismissive ‘tschk’.

  ‘He will muscle up and recover his skills as we go,’ he had argued, then put the only argument likely to win the moment. ‘Who else can you trust for a task like this, my lord king, but the auld dugs?’

  So Bruce took Hal’s hands in his own and smiled into the recovering eyes.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Your king is pleased to see you back in the world and back in his service.’

  It was the ritual jig of kingship, played for long enough now that Bruce had forgotten any other way and the next words were an old part of it.

  ‘What reward can your king bestow on his faithful subject?’

  The answer should have been a low bow and something about how new freedom was the only reward required, with a profuse bouquet of thanks for it.

  ‘The Countess of Buchan.’

  There was a sharp suck of breath that turned Hal’s head to the prelate who made it, standing with his eyes shock-wide in his smooth, bland face. The one next to him was older, more seamed, less shocked; he even seemed to be smiling.

  The silence stretched as Bruce blinked. No one had spoken like this for some time and his mind was whirled back to the times when he and Hal’s Lothian men had shared fires in the damp mirk. The one who now served Jamie Douglas – Dog Boy – had been one of them and they had all been plain speakers; he had taken delight in that then and the memory of it warmed him now.

  ‘I should have expected no less from you,’ he answered with a slight bark of laugh. Then he indicated the two prelates.

  ‘This is my chaplain, Thomas Daltoun, and Bernard of Kilwinning, former abbot of that place and now my chancellor. Sirs, this is the bold Sir Hal, proving that seven years’ captivity has not dulled him any.’

  The prelates nodded and then, sensing the mood, made their obeisances to the King and left, whispering away across the flags with an armful of seal-dangled scrolls. Bruce watched them go – waiting until they were out of earshot, Hal saw.

  ‘The Countess of Buchan’, he said, turning the full weight of his blunt-weapon face on Hal, ‘is married to Henry de Beaumont.’

  He waited, viciously long enough to see Hal’s stricken bewilderment, and then laughed again, a sound like shattering glass.

  ‘Alice Comyn inherited the title when the Earl died, for he repudiated Isabel at the last. The lands are actually held by me, as king, of course. Henry de Beaumont married Alice and now claims to be Earl of Buchan, a vellum title only. He does not care for me much and not only over his Buchan lands – he was twice handed Mann by the Plantagenet and twice had it removed by the Ordainers. Since I took it last year, he has precious slim chance of ever getting that isle back and less of claiming the lands of Buchan.’

  He paused, his face now looking like a bad clay mask.

  ‘Isabel MacDuff is now no more than a lady from Fife,’ he went on. ‘Though I am sure the title was never the attraction between you and her.’

  Bruce did not add – did not need to – that he once had an interest there himself when he was younger and Hal, who had known it then and come to terms with it well enough since, simply nodded.

  He wondered, though, if kingship had driven all obligation for Isabel’s sacrifice out of him.

  ‘A lady of Fife in a cage,’ he dared, aware that this exchange was Bruce’s revenge for his bluntness and fighting the anger it brought, at the easy way Bruce assumed he was ‘back in service’, with no questions asked of seven years’ captivity. More galling yet was the realization that it was true, since there was little else for him and no other way to set about freeing Isabel.

  ‘Indeed,’ Bruce answered smoothly. ‘As was my sister until recently. And she and my wife and daughter are all held captive – but we shall soon have release for them all.’

  He lost the frost in his voice, fuelled it with a smile.

  ‘I have not forgotten Isabel’s bravery in defying husband and Comyn entire to be a hereditary MacDuff Crowner,’ he added gently, and then drew himself up a little, shaking the soft from him like a dog coming out of a stream.

  ‘Events are moving,’ he said portentously. ‘I have issued an ultimatum to those Scots lords still serving King Edward, so that they have until November of this year to swear fealty to me or be dispossessed of their Scots lands.’

  Hal thought about it, but could only see that this would bring the English down on their heads, which was no help to taking Berwick or freeing Isabel, and said so. Bruce’s smile widened; the cheek stretched and seemed almost to be parting.

  ‘Just so. King Edward will have no choice. He must muster an army and come at us. And I shall take his last fortresses from him, so they cannot be used in the furtherance of his rampage.’

  Hal saw it then, acknowledging it with grudging admiration. The English would plooter north in the old style, achieve nothing and, because they had no firm bases or supply, would suffer even more quickly than usual and retire, because Bruce would not face them in the field.

  ‘Indeed,’ Bruce confirmed, touching two fingers to the cheek, as if to reassure himself that it was not split and leaking. It was an old habit, Hal saw, ingrained over the years.

  ‘When Edward Plantagenet fails again, it may be that his own disaffected will round on him,’ the King went on. ‘The Scots lords who follow him will see sense and abandon him. The Kingdom will be secured.’

  Your crown will sit steadier, certes, Hal thought; he wondered if he had said it aloud and was flustered enough to say the next thing that came into his head. ‘A decent enough plan. If they ask a truce, then the release of captives will be part of it.’

  Bruce, eyebrows raised, offered him a slight mocking bow, so that Hal flushed with his own presumption.

  ‘I need your service, Lord Hal,’ Bruce went on but Hal was not sure what use he could be and said as much, adding – again forgetting he addressed a king – that he was equally unsure if he had the belly for the work now.

  Bruce nodded, as if he had considered the matter, which was true. He also knew that he had already captured the man, yet the triumph of bending Hal to the royal will was not as savage a joy as with others he had snared; it seemed like calming a fine stallion you must geld.

  ‘If it will provide belly, let me tell you that the reward will be our utmost effort to free Isabel and her safe delivery into your care,’ he answered. ‘If events work out as planned, Berwick will fall to us. At worst, we will negotiate the freedom of all captives.’

  He saw the gaff of that go in.

  ‘As for your abilities,’ he went on, ‘they are well remembered.’ He paused and smiled, lopsided so as not to strain the cheek. ‘Betimes, someone vouches for you.’

  He raised one hand into the red and gold stain of light from the nave window. There was a pause, and then a figure stepped forward from the shadows, limping a little, moving slow and silent across the flagged floor.

  An auld chiel, Hal thought. Another wee monk?

  Then the light poured through the nave on to the iron-grey head, turning it to blood and honey and a shock of the familiar.

  ‘Ah, Hal,’ said Kirkpatrick, almost sadly. ‘You were ever a man for good sense, save ower that wummin.’

  ISABEL

  He came to me in the night. He does not do it often these days – so little that, may God forgive me, I was almost glad to see him in my loneliness, for he has long since ceased to pain me with his foulness, which is harder for him to achieve each time. He blames me and b
eats me for it, but even that strength is going from him. You gave me Malise Bellejambe, Lord, an image of Man in my world, for there is no other here save those I can remember. Is it my own sins that make You even more cruel than he is? I do not understand, O God, for what he does to me is surely cruelty to Yourself. May it be that this is a mirror to make me understand that nothing can protect me, O God, unless it is the shield on which there is no device, but all the heavens and the sun displayed. The only pure thing I have to offer You is my mind. Take it, Lord, and offer me that shield.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Palais du Roi, Paris

  Feast of St Joseph of Arimathea, March 1314

  The stink of it swamped from the Île des Juifs, pervasive and acrid, wrapping round them like snake coils so that the Queen of England had to raise a scented hand to her nose. It was an irony that the fire which had burned Isabella’s hands and arms so badly the year before should now be of a help; the wounds had festered and she wore scented gloves to hide the glassy weals.

  Out on the Seine, the daring were collecting the ashes of her godfather, Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Temple, burned the day before alongside Geoffroi de Charney, Master of Normandy. They had recanted their confessions publicly and her father had ordered the pyre built and the two Templars roasted slowly on it. Too slowly, as it turned out, for de Molay had uttered a long and pungent curse prophesying that his tormentors would be in Hell within the year.

  Isabella thought her godfather’s name would live a long time in memory, as a martyr to the Order and not least because of the Curse he had brought down on the Pope and her father. She said it aloud, which made Beaumont, Badlesmere and the young Earl of Gloucester shift a little at the daring in it. They were well used to this slip of a queen having the cunning of a fox and more backbone than her husband, but they kept those thoughts to themselves.

  As they did their views on the Templars – but publicly at least, the Order had been condemned at Vienne two years since and England’s king had followed the Pope’s instructions on it. Now the Knights of St John were taking over the Templar holdings and, for all he might gnaw his nails, Edward could do nothing about it without annoying the Holy Father, whom he needed.

  ‘Will my father see us?’ Isabella asked and the envoy, bland face setting itself like a moulded pudding into regret and sadness, began to expound on why King Philip of France would not. The curt wave of the scented glove cut him off in mid-flow and no one marvelled at the 18-year-old girl’s poise and command.

  Well, there it was. Her father, it seemed, was in mourning for what he had had to do and she wondered if it was genuine contrition, or because he had been cursed. If she knew her father at all, he would be gnawing his knuckles with concern, as much about the macula on his glory as on his soul. Both agonies, she thought, will last long after the smell and the ashes have blown away.

  This was the Philip the Fair she remembered, the handsome, cunning, treacherous, vain father and king she had known. The one who could commit the vilest acts, yet agonize over the stain on his relationship with God – but even that man seemed strangely diminished by what had happened, as if this last act of spite had sucked all the juice from him. That and the six-year search for the Templar treasure which Isabella knew had spawned this plot in the first place, a search which had uncovered … nothing.

  She had no doubt that the news of the latest outrage on the last Grand Master of the Order of Poor Knights would be speeding to all the hidden ears; she wondered what they would do with their hidden treasure, these last angered Templars of the Order.

  Not hand it over to her desperate husband for his wars, certes, so he would have to rely on Isabella, who had to persuade her ailing father to permit King Edward of England to mortgage the ducal dues of Gascony to the Pope, since Philip of France was Edward’s liege lord for those lands. In return, the Pope would loan Edward the money to help finance his latest enterprise, a war against the Scotch.

  It was a complex dance that Isabella knew well, the intricate gilded steps that took in the wool-eager mercantile houses of Pessagno in Genoa, the Bardi and Peruzzi of Naples. None of them bothered in the slightest that their biggest rival, the Florentine Frescobaldi, had ruined themselves with similar speculative loans to Edward I.

  It was simply the work of mercantiling, where a mistake would plunge you to the depths and a success make you richer than God. It was, as Isabella had long realized, the true sinew of war: gold into a muscle to fight with.

  So it would be no fault of hers if the entire intricate cat’s cradle of it failed and her husband never got the money for his new invasion. So sad. A great pity that he would then have to suffer the bit and bridle on his powers by his own barons. Not her fault …

  Yet, even as she flirted with the indecent treachery of it, she knew that her husband’s curbing and the fall of his latest detested favourite would need to be better planned. In the end, she would get him what he needed – God send her a sign – but let him fret a little first, as he fretted her with so many small humiliations …

  ‘Isabella.’

  The voice turned her into the smiling face of Blanche, her brother’s wife. She smiled in return, embraced her, admired her prettiness and her dress and all the time wondered if the rumours about her adultery were true – and how God seemed so speedily to answer her.

  Both Blanche and Marguerite, her brothers’ wives, were vapid creatures, bored and beautiful. She would find out the truth of the rumours, she determined, and they would tell her, for she was young and could play bored and smile and nod, clap her hands at the thought of diversion and pretty young men. Perhaps what she discovered would further keep her father from discussing loans from the Pope a little longer and that would suit her. So sad. Not her fault …

  Beaumont watched the exchange, the fox-sharp smiles of his queen, the eager Blanche, anxious to ingratiate and to be diverted by something new.

  Beware, little chick, he thought, my king’s wife is a snake who will swallow you whole.

  The tang of burned flesh trailed through the window, bringing back the sorry mess of the Templar burnings and de Beaumont wished he also had a scented glove. He wondered what rich secrets de Molay had taken into the flames rather than hand over to Philip of France, the accursed king.

  Where had all the wealth of the Poor Knights gone?

  Edinburgh

  Octave of St Benedict of Montecassino, March 1314

  The air thrummed and cracked with the roars from hundreds of throats, enough to filter through the slit window and raise Bruce’s head a little, so that he smiled; Jamie Douglas was drilling his block. Again.

  ‘He is keen,’ Abbot Bernard commented wryly when Bruce voiced this and did not betray anything on his bland face when fixed with a challenging, quizzical stare. Instead, he merely moved the document a little closer and hinted that the wax was cooling.

  ‘He is furious,’ Bruce went on, studying the scroll. ‘Randolph has taken Edinburgh’s fortress and by as rare a stratagem as the Black himself concocted at Roxburgh. If he does not vent his spleen, young Jamie will explode.’

  He looked up at his Chancellor, who was searching out a bar of wax.

  ‘When I seal this, the Brothers who cannot be called by name will have the fortress at Glaissery. Much good may it do them.’

  ‘It may do you much good,’ Bernard replied portentously and Bruce levered himself up from the table; his bones ached more and more.

  ‘Besides,’ Bernard continued smoothly, ‘they are known only as the Benedictine Brothers in Christ these days.’

  ‘So you and others of your like have convinced me – but you are Abbot of Arbroath and must make it clear to your brothers in Christ that they may call themselves whatever they choose provided there is no mention of the Poor Knights of the Temple in it. This is not a commanderie, nor will there be a new Templar Order with me as Grand Master.’

  He stared at the charter and shook his head.

  ‘No one will be fooled b
y these supposed Benedictines, who wear a sword underneath their scapular – unless folk can be persuaded that the penance of Hail Mary has been replaced by something harsher and more sharp.’

  The Chancellor laughed dutifully but Bruce was serious.

  ‘The Templars believe that because this kingdom is under interdict I can defy the Pope and give them succour. Remind them that I am not under interdict by choice, Abbot Bernard; sooner, rather than later, I will be reconciled to Mother Church and will not make it harder by giving comfort to every condemned heretic in the world.’

  ‘They know this, my lord,’ the Chancellor replied softly and with a taint of bitter steel in the tone, not missed by Bruce. ‘That is why they offer what they offer. There is no Order of Poor Knights in Scotland, as anyone will confess, only some mendicant Benedictines in the wilds of the north. With a deal of coin to lend and the whereabouts of an armoury to purchase with it.’

  ‘Whisht on that,’ Bruce declared, breaking from French in his alarm. ‘No mention here of siller or arms.’

  ‘Even between us alone?’

  ‘Voices travel, Chancellor,’ Bruce muttered, hearing the distant cries. And God is listening, he added morosely to himself. Worse still, Malachy is listening and that wee saint hates me.

  His curse on the Kingdom was the unsteadiness of the crown on my head, he brooded, which makes all the folk who should be trading with us less than eager to commit. For certes, it was not possible to find one wee cunning merchant willing to loan the rebel King of Scots any sum, on any promise.

  So I am fallen back on heretics and fables of Templar treasures, he thought, pushing away from the table and walking to the slit window, hands behind his back and twisting this way and that. And two auld dugs …