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‘No offence.’
‘None ta’en,’ Wallace replied, suddenly cheerful. ‘You have the right of it, for sure – mine are men best fighting out of the hills and woods, my lords. So that is where we will go.’
Wishart looked as if he would protest and Bruce felt a sharp stab of anger at the presumption of Wallace, about to up and go without so much as a by-your-leave bow – but he swallowed the bile of it and nodded soberly.
‘Aye, that will be the way of it – but you should go with what men you have and what will go with you who are free of obligation to myself and the other nobles.’
Wallace turned narrowed eyes and gazed at Bruce from under lowered brows.
‘And yourself, lord of Carrick?’
‘I will gather up the Douglas, the Bishop here and others and we will make what resistance we can from our fortresses. The English will have to deal with us and that will buy you time to cause havoc.’
Wallace stared at Bruce a long time, then slowly nodded.
‘Longshanks is coming. This will cost you dear,’ he said, looking from Wishart to Bruce and back.
‘In the noble cause,’ Wishart declared and Wallace clasped them both, wrist to wrist, then went out, silent as a wraith for all his bulk. It suddenly seemed to the others that the room had doubled in size. No-one spoke for a moment, then Wishart cleared his throat.
‘And the truth?’ he demanded. Bruce looked coldly at him.
‘My purpose in joining this now-failed enterprise has already been achieved,’ he said pointedly. ‘The mason is buried anew.’
Wishart nodded weary agreement.
‘So we will get ourselves to Irvine with what men we have and prepare to negotiate,’ Bruce added. Wishart’s belly quivered under the armour as he dragged himself haughtily upright. ‘Ye’d yield? Without a fight?’
Bruce’s bottom lip stuck out like a shovel and Wishart, who knew the sign well, found some caution.
‘The king himself will come north,’ Bruce growled angrily. ‘Like the black wind he is. Wallace will fight – he has to, for he has no lands to his own name and is an outlaw, no more. You lose nothing bar some dignity for having to kneel and kiss Edward’s ring, for the Church lands are sacrosanct.’
He thrust his mace of a face into Wishart’s own.
‘But we,’ he said, slapping the chevroned jupon, ‘risk losing everything. We, the community of the realm you depend on to free it. Edward will come north with his scowl and his evil eye – I could lose Carrick and my father Annandale. God’s Blood, Wishart, I place my rights to the crown in jeopardy here. Douglas will lose his Lanark lands – do you want us all fastened up in Berwick, or the Tower?’
More to the point of it, Wishart thought bitterly, is that Buchan and the rest of the Comyn, ostensibly supporting Edward but covertly allowing Moray’s rebels free rein, would come out smelling as if they’d been dipped in crushed rose petals. They play this game of kings more skilfully than the young Bruce, he saw, who needed some cunning heads round him.
‘Of course,’ he said, bowing to the inevitable, ‘negotiation is tricky business. Involved and sometimes lengthy. And what of Wallace?’
Bruce grunted sourly.
‘Wallace owes nothing save allegiance to a deposed king who wishes nothing to do with his kingdom,’ he growled. ‘He owns no lands, suffers the worry of no tenant and looks down his sword at each man he meets, asking only if he is for The Wallace. If not, he is against him.’
‘No bad thing in these days,’ Wishart countered defiantly.
‘Simplistic,’ Bruce spat back over his shoulder as headed for the door. ‘And probably brief. Whether negotiations are long or short, it will come out as it always does – with us on our knees.’
He paused and turned.
‘Save for Wallace,’ he added. ‘He is of little account. Longshanks will never forgive him.’
I am of account, he was thinking as he spoke. God Made Me – and he made me to be a king.
The liberators of Scone toasted each other, their hero Wallace and even Bruce and the bishops. The alehouse was the only building not ransacked or burned, more sacred than any church to men with a thirst on them. Dark save for a few sconced torches gasping for breath in the cloy of the place, it heaved with bodies, stank of vomit and piss and stale sweat.
Sim, by main force, had found a corner and two scarred horn cups to blow the froth off, but Hal took time drinking his, squinting at the damp yellowed, blackened scraps he had pulled out from under his jack.
‘What does it say, then?’ the unlettered Sim demanded, loosening the ties of his own studded, padded jack and trying to struggle out of it in the roasting heat of the place.
‘If there was light I would tell ye,’ Hal muttered. It was too dark to see other than that the writing was cramped and in Latin. Still, he was fairly sure it concerned the death of the mason and was an investigation of his clothing, which had included a beaver hat tucked into his belt and cut in the Flemish style. Apart from that and a signature – Bartholomew Bisset – Hal could make out nothing more; he would have to wait for daylight.
‘Kirkpatrick was burning this?’ Sim muttered and paused as a loud jeering and catcalling erupted. A woman had come in.
‘Aye, so it seems,’ Hal said. The why of it escaped him, which he mentioned, sipping the beer and grimacing, for it was the temperature of broth. He felt the sweat sliding down him – the summer night was muggy and the rough walls of the place were leprous and dripping.
‘Christ, I cannot think in here,’ Hal said and started to rise, only to find the woman in front of him, so sudden that he recoiled.
‘My son,’ she said, her face twisted and worn with grief. ‘Have ye seen him? A wee boy only. I have looked everywhere. Ye’ll know him clear, for he has a wish-mark on his face.’
She paused and managed a wan smile, but it was clear the tears had not all been wrung out of her on a long, fruitless night of search.
‘Strawberry,’ she added. ‘I ken well wishing for strawberries afore he was born. I had a wee passion for them . . .’
The boy’s face, smeared with dung and midden filth, the strawberry stain bright in the flames . . .
‘No,’ Hal said desperately. ‘No.’
The lies choked him and he dived headfirst into anger, the sudden face of his own dead son a knife-sharp image etched so bright he was blinded by it.
‘Get away, wummin,’ he blustered, ducking past her grief and hope, heading out of the linen-thick fug into the smoke-stained breath of the street. ‘Am I the fount of knowledge? What do I ken of your son, mistress . . . ?’
He banged past her into the rutted street and stood, trembling like a whipped dog, sucking in air lashed with char and burned meat; after the inside of the alehouse, even that seemed nectarine. He gulped it and shook his head. Johnnie . . . the loss of him was an ache that only added to the misery of this night, this entire enterprise.
Christ’s Bones – could matters get worse?
‘Wallace sends for us,’ said the growl of Sim’s voice, and his blackness bulked up at Hal’s shoulder, his face pale and sheened, his stare pointed. Over his shoulder a man waited, dark and impatient, to take them to The Wallace.
‘He wants to ask aboot a dead mason,’ Sim added mournfully.
Wallace was in Ormsby’s chambers, stirring the half-burned papers with the tip of a bollock dagger, while bare-legged kerns grinned savagely at a trembling canon. Outside, the rest of Wallace’s army had muted itself to a roar.
‘I have had a wee chance to consider matters,’ Wallace said, slowly and in good English, Hal noted, so that the priest could follow it easily enough. Wallace jerked his head at the priest, but kept his eyes on Hal and Sim.
‘This is Brother Gregor,’ he said, while Hal stood, feeling like he was six and in trouble with his da. ‘Brother Gregor has been . . . persuaded . . . to help. He reads Latin and had it dinned into him in Hexham Priory.’
He broke off and grinned at the shaking English monk.
‘I well ken how that feels,’ he said with some sympathy, ‘though I never learned as much as I should, for my teachers were not inclined to belt me more than the once.’
Hal flicked a look at Brother Gregor, who stood with his eyes down and his hands trembling; he had an idea what sort of persuasion had been used – but why would you need to threaten a priest to read some documents? Why would a priest refuse in the first place?
‘Brawlie,’ Wallace said admiringly when Hal muttered this out. ‘Your mind could cut yourself, it is that sharp – and so ye are the very man for what I have in mind.’
‘Which is?’ Hal ventured.
Wallace turned to the nearest kern and whatever he did with eyes and nods got Brother Gregor huckled out, leaving Wallace alone with Hal and Sim; the night wind sighed in through the unshuttered window, stirring the Ormsby wall hanging which Sim had replaced.
‘I guddled about in the slorach of this,’ Wallace said, indicating the charred, damp mess of papers that Hal had not dared take once Wallace had spotted them, ‘and fished out some choice morsels – but the canons of this place refused to read them.’
He paused and looked at them.
‘Only yin man could put the fear of God into them over this and that is the wee English Prior. Now where did he find courage for that?’
Bishop Wishart, Hal thought at once, and said so. Wallace nodded slowly.
‘Aye. Promises made atween Christians, as it were. Well, I then sought Brother Gregor and almost had to hold his feet to the fire to persuade him to the work,’ Wallace went on. ‘In the end, he came up with a Scone mason red-murdered near Douglas and a report in a wee, crabbed hand by some scribbler called Bartholomew Bisset. That man is a notary to Ormsby. He has gone out the window as well but I will get him and put him to the question.’
He broke off and looked steadily at Hal until the eyes seemed to be burning holes; Hal fought not to look away and eventually Wallace nodded.
‘Ye are joined to Bruce,’ he said and then grinned and picked the polished table idly with his dagger point. ‘But not willing. Nor favouring me neither.’
‘I thought we were all on the same side,’ Hal lied and then felt ashamed at the scornful stare he had back for his false naivety, admitting it with a shrug.
‘Bruce and the Bishops and others are off to Irvine,’ Wallace declared and cocked one eyebrow to show what he thought of that.
‘Percy and Clifford are coming with an English army and Wishart has made a right slaister of matters, so Scotland’s gentilhommes are waving their hands and sounding off like a kist of whistles. I am away to the hills and the trees and most of the fighting men are with me – sorry, but a wheen of yer own are among them.’
Hal knew this already; the fealtied Herdmanston men, all five of them, were with him as well as one or two of the sokemen – free men holding lands under Herdmanston jurisdiction -but the bulk of Hal’s March riders, out for plunder, had joined Wallace.
‘Welcome men,’ Wallace admitted, smiling. ‘Nearest I have to heavy horse.’
‘They will run at the sight of such,’ Sim growled and Wallace nodded.
‘As will I,’ he answered vehemently and laughed along with Sim.
‘Here’s the bit,’ he went on, losing the smile. ‘Ye can come with me or go with Bruce. He says he an’ the rest of the bold community of the realm are away to put their fortresses in order.’
He looked sideways, sly as a secret.
‘That’s as may be.’
Hal looked at him and saw the truth – felt the truth in the kick of his insides. They would truce their way out of it and the relief washed into his face.
Wallace saw that Hal had worked it out – saw, too, the reaction and nodded slowly.
‘Aye,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Ye have lands to lose, same as they. Not me, though. I do not think there will a kiss of peace for me, eh?’
Hal acknowledged it with a blank face and the shame-sickness that drove bile into his throat. Sim, realist that he was, merely grunted agreement; it was the safest way out of the mire they had plootered into – truced back into the King’s peace and forgiven all their sins on a promise not to do it again.
‘Well,’ Wallace said. ‘Go with Bruce then and go with God. Still – I wish I had yer help. I would like to root out why Kirkpatrick tried to burn these papers, why Wishart bound these wee priests to keep their lips stitched – and what the bold Bruce interest is in it.’
‘Ye want my help?’ Hal asked. ‘Even though I am in the Bruce camp?’
‘In,’ Wallace pointed out, ‘but not of.’
‘For a man who sees everyone not for him as against him, that’s a quim hair of difference to put yer trust in,’ Hal answered and Wallace grinned and raised the dagger, so that the torchlight stepped carefully along the razor edges.
‘An edge as thin as this,’ he admitted, ‘which I have been entrusting my life to for a while now.’
‘Still,’ he added, standing suddenly and shoving the dagger back in its belt-sheath, ‘ye are done with the business. Go with God, Sir Hal – though admit to me, afore ye do, that you are curious ower this matter.’
Hal did so with a grudging nod.
‘I will not be a spy against Bruce,’ he added firmly, ‘nor for him against yourself.’
Wallace towered over him, placing one grimed ham-hand on his shoulder; just the weight of it felt like a maille hauberk.
‘Aye, I jaloused that and would not ask. But mark me, Sir Hal – soon ye will needs decide what cote ye will wear. The longer ye take, the more badly it will fit.’
Hal and Sim had stumbled back into the chares and vennels of the priory garth, where light was spilling a sour stain on the horizon as dawn fought the dark over ownership of the hills.
He could scarcely believe that he had stumbled into rebellion so easily and offered a prayer of thanks to God that there was a way out of it; all he had to do was sit at Irvine with The Bruce and the others and make sure that the lesser lords such as himself were not overlooked in the negotiations.
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