The Lion at bay tk-2

by Robert Low

  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.

  Red John had planned this last because he had expected Bruce to bring his shadow, Kirkpatrick — but his eyes narrowed when he saw Bruce’s chosen men precede him into Greyfriars, stiff-legged as wary dogs. Seton was to be expected, a dark eagerness of a Lothian man married to Bruce’s sister — but then came the Herdmanston lord, cuckolder of Buchan, which brought a surge of rage lancing through Red John. Followed by a youth of no account at all, one Red John knew to be no more than a kennel lad for Herdmanston and that was an additional slap of insult.

  But his face was stone as Bruce came up, opening his arms wide to receive the kiss of peace.

  Bruce saw the wee papingo that was the Lord of Badenoch, reaching on to the tippy-toes of his high-heeled, blood-red half boots to match Bruce’s height for the purse-lipped lie of the cheek kiss, which only bussed air on both parts.

  Red John wore a brimmed hat and a bag-sleeved wool cotte in dark green, with his badge on the heart side — the three gold wheatsheaves on red. Since the Buchan badge was blue, this red blazon gave the Badenoch Comyn lord his nickname.

  ‘I understood we had a truce,’ Bruce said when they had stepped back from one another and the launch into it took Red John by surprise, for he had been expecting more in the way of effusive pleasantries.

  ‘Nothing was agreed,’ he answered warily, then shrugged, ‘but nothing has been done to you and yours.’

  ‘Sir Henry of Herdmanston was set on by four men,’ Bruce said, whacking the words out like blades whetting on stone. ‘He was fortunate to escape with his life.’

  Now he knew why the Herdmanston lord was here; Badenoch’s eyebrows went up and he had half-turned towards Bellejambe before he could stop himself. Bruce realized that Red John had known nothing of the attack, which meant it had been arranged by Buchan on his own; the Lord of Badenoch would not like that, Bruce thought. He was the power in his family by virtue of his royal claims — but it must be hard to keep an earl leashed.

  ‘Losing grip on your own hounds, Badenoch?’

  Red John swallowed his temper and managed a shaking smile.

  ‘Are the Comyn to be responsible for every brigand and trailbaston in the Kingdom?’ he countered.

  ‘No brigands these,’ Bruce answered sharply, ‘with the same amount of coin in each of their purses — payment for a deed. The price for them was high, mark you, since all are killed.’

  ‘No doing of mine,’ Badenoch replied, stung as much by the failure of the ill-planned event as by the event itself — and the fact that Buchan had embarrassed him with it. ‘Besides — the Herdmanston lord has a private quarrel, as well you know.’

  ‘Such quarrels risk much and gain little,’ Bruce replied. ‘A strong king in the realm would put an end to them, if he valued his crown.’

  Red John sighed. Here was the meat of it, the same old litany.

  ‘We have a king, my lord. He is called Edward. And if there is not him, then there is another, a Balliol one called King John, lest you had forgotten.’

  Bruce leaned forward a little, his voice hoarse, his face, framed by the cowl of the hood, strained and seemingly anxious.

  ‘The truth of that is clear,’ he answered. ‘King John is a broken reed, unlikely ever to return to sit on a throne in this kingdom.’

  Which was, Red John had to agree, a palpable truth but one to which he would never admit, least of all to a Bruce.

  ‘The clergy of this kingdom require a king,’ Bruce went on, galloping along on an argument which, Red John realized, he had long rehearsed. ‘They demand one, for a kingdom with no king is not a kingdom at all — Longshanks has reduced Scotland to a land, my lord, subject to the laws of England and the bishops here will not have an English-appointed archbishop. They will not have a king interfering with the right of the Pope alone to sail in the Sees of this realm.’

  ‘Sail in the Sees,’ repeated Badenoch with a wry smile. ‘Very good, my lord. Very good.’

  ‘Not my own,’ Bruce answered at once, which rocked Badenoch’s boat once again; he was not enjoying the pitch of this conversation and fought to bring the helm of it back to a course he was more comfortable with.

  ‘Bernard of Kilwinning,’ Bruce went on, ‘pronounced the words of that, together with the doctrine that a king of this realm has a contract with the community of it — and, if he does not fulfil it, the community is entitled to remove him.’

  ‘I have heard all the wee priests of Kilwinning and Wishart and Lamberton cant this from every pulpit and market square they can reach,’ Red John replied laconically. ‘It makes little difference to the reality of matters.’

  Now it was Bruce who was brought to a halt, blinking.

  ‘The community are unlikely to choose a new king from any but a legitimate line,’ Badenoch went on smoothly. ‘Else any horsecoper or cottar — or a wee lord from Herdmanston — could put himself forward for it.’

  He paused, looked at Bruce with a sly peep.

  ‘Or Wallace,’ he added poisonously.

  ‘Agreed,’ Bruce countered swiftly. ‘You should know, my lord, that the clergy favour myself.’

  Now there was a flat-out treason, breathtakingly brazen as a lolling whore, so that Red John had a moment, of which he was all too aware, of working his mouth like a fresh-caught fish.

  ‘Wishart, Lamberton…’ Bruce counted off the clergy of the realm on his gloved fingers, while Red John’s mind raced. This had to have been agreed in a meeting. A plot, by God.

  ‘So you see it clear, my lord of Badenoch. The tide flows in my favour. I realize that you have your own claims to this, but our feud with it defeats the purpose our bishops urge us to fulfil. That God urges us to fulfil. For the good of the realm, my lord, we must resolve this matter.’

  Red John found his voice at last, though it was a twisted, ugly parody of it, hoarse with anger.

  ‘You dare preach to me of the good of the realm,’ he said, his voice so low and trembling that Bruce could barely hear it. ‘You? You forget who it was who defended this kingdom, who put life and fortune at risk to fight. While you turned and twisted and bowed and scraped. What did we get from it, this honourable fight? Near ruin and imprisonment — I am only lately returned to freedom. Others are yet in peril, who would not bow the knee — Wallace is betrayed and murdered for one — while you, my lord of Annandale, gained a wife and all her lands.’

  He paused, breathing heavily; he and Bruce locked eyes like rutting stag horns.

  ‘Yet I would do it all again,’ Red John added in a growl, ‘for a rightful king of this realm. And neither you nor your threats nor your promises will keep me from it.’

  There was silence for a moment, which was only because Bruce was fighting his own temper, beginning to realize that Red John was not about to be swayed and that revealing his compact with the bishops had been a step too far. Yet he was on the path and the only way was forward…

  ‘There can be a rightful king of this realm,’ he answered carefully, ‘though it requires your consideration, my lord, as leader of the Comyn. If I am crowned, with Comyn approval, I will not be slow with reward — Carrick and Annandale would be laurels to the Comyn.’

 
Red John’s eyes narrowed; he knew Bruce’s brother coveted those titles, so the bribe was daring, if not a little desperate.

  ‘Do not oppose the bishops’ choice, whatever it may be, at the very least,’ Bruce added.

  ‘The bishops’ choice?’

  It was hissed out, with all the venomous bile released by a knife in a dead sheep’s belly.

  ‘Yourself, of course,’ Red John went on, his face ugly with sneer. ‘You consider yourself a rightful king, chosen by God Himself.’

  It was not a question and Bruce did not quite know how to reply, caught between his desire to shout it out and the shackles of prudence that had kept it secret for so long. In the end, he opened and closed his mouth a few times and said nothing.

  Red John climbed up on to the tips of his toes and leaned a little, his scythe of red beard quivering as vibrantly as his voice.

  ‘Even if John Balliol is a broken reed,’ he declared, soft and vicious, ‘he has a son. Even if the son fails, there is myself. Even if I fail, there are other Comyn more fitting to be rightful king of this realm than you, my lord of Annandale. This you must know, for even if Plantagenet, that Covetous King, took advantage of the moment, the conclave that decided you were not fit to rule was fair and legitimate even then.’

  He flicked one hand, no more, on to the Bruce shoulder, a sneering dismissal.

  ‘God has a plan for this realm,’ he spat, ‘but you do not feature in it as king, my lord. If you declare yourself openly as the usurping bastard you are in secret, you will find a Comyn opposing you at every turn.’

  The flick tipped the pan of it, the arrogant sneer of it bringing the memory of when Red John had grabbed him by the throat — Jesu, actually laid hands on an Earl of Carrick. The rage filled Bruce, consumed him, for what he had failed to do then and what had burned him ever since when he thought of it.

  He was aware of a bright, white light with a voice at the centre, which might have been God or Satan but was polite as a prelate’s servant as it put the question to him. He felt the dagger hilt under his hand, had it out and slammed into the ribs of the posturing little popinjay who opposed him, all in the time it took to answer ‘yes’.