A tale of marvels, for sure, Kirkpatrick offered wryly, and Sir Marmaduke smiled.
I hear he ran out of a window, he said and had it confirmed by a nod. Thweng laughed, shaking his long head.
The wolves gather, then, Bruce said moodily. None more ravening than Edward himself, the Faerie mist of him drifting steadily, mercilessly northward like a pall. Longshanks, Bruce thought, will not be pleased at having this Scots boil erupt on his kingdoms neck and still remain unlanced. His interests are in France further still, if truth be told, in the Holy Land.
Yet he was old and such temper was not good for an old man
How is the English Justinian these days? Choleric as ever?
Sir Marmaduke smiled at the new name given to King Edward, only half in scathing jest, as he rampaged through the laws of the land creating and remaking them to suit himself as he went. It was not, Thweng was sure, anything approaching the legendary codifying of the Roman emperor.
Liverish, he replied diplomatically. The wool business has caused him problems as you might imagine, while he will not debase the sterling coinage against all the crockards and pollards from abroad. That decision, at least, is a good one.
Bruce stroked his beard in need of trim, Thweng noted and pouted, thinking. The wool business seizing the entire countrys output on the promise to pay for it later -had caused most of the dissent in Scotland, mainly because it was Cressingham as Treasurer who had ordered the Scots to conform to it and no-one believed his promises of future payment, never mind Edwards. The profit from it had been eaten by armies for all the wars King Edward seemed to embroil England in and his own barons were growing tired of it. Wisharts timing had not been out by much, Bruce realised.
The Jew money will have run out, he mused and Thweng nodded. The Jews of England had been summarily thrown out of the country not long since and all their assets taken for the Crown again, eaten by armies.
At least you are returned to the loving grace of the English Justinian, Thweng declared, so proving that you are not so reckless as the youth I traded lances with at Lille.
Just so, Bruce replied and Kirkpatrick saw his eyes narrow a little, for he could sense a chill wind blowing from Sir Marmaduke. When it came, it was pure frost.
I also came bringing a visitor, Thweng went on, savouring the wine. One who asked for you particularly. Before I deliver your guest, let me once again congratulate you on maturing into a man and leaving the furious, reckless boy behind.
Now the hairs on Kirkpatricks arms were bristled and you could stand a cup on the thrust of Bruces bottom lip.
You will do right by this guest, Thweng declared, leaning forward and lowering his voice. The sensible course. You will know what it is.
He rose, idly tossed the empty cup to a frantically scrabbling squire, then stuck his head out of the tent flap. When he drew back, Isabel entered.
Bruce saw her, the hood of her cloak drawn back to reveal the copper tangle of her hair, the damp twisting it tighter still, the eyes bright and round, blue as sky and feverish he thought with longing.
He was, as ever, wrong. The wet had soaked her to the bone and the long ride on Balius had made her weary to the marrow, yet none of that had dented the hope she felt, the hope that blazed from her eyes.
His face shattered it.
She saw him blink and, in the instant before he spread a great, welcoming smile on it, saw the flickers of annoyance and irritation chase each other like hawk and heron across it. It had been forlorn hope, of course and she had known it in the core of her. Love was not anything deep between them but she had hoped for a better affection than what she saw. He would not take her into the safety of his arms, his castle and away from Buchan, and the weight of that descended on her.
She had taken her chance on the road back to Buchan, knowing that her refuge at Balmullo was probably gone from her, that she would be cloistered in some lonely Keep until such time as arrangement were made to cloister her somewhere more holy and uncomfortable. The aching memory of the bruises and angry lust Buchan had inflicted added urgency to her escape; getting away from the oiled skin-crawl of Malise only sauced the affair.
Yet it was all for nothing Bruce would not help. Even as it crushed her, she cursed herself for having given in to the foolishness of it. There had been similar in her life an older knight and, after him, the ostler boy, neither of whose names she could remember. All she recalled was the delicious anguish, the laborious subterfuge to be in that part of the world at the same time as they were. The smile to be treasured, the fingertip touch that thrilled, the sticky paste in a pot that was valued simply because his fingers had touched it.
She had, she remembered, thought such tender secrets were her own, hugged them to herself because of that fact alone with a murdered father and all her other kin seemingly uncaring, it was a slim path picked through thorns to the vague promise of a distant garden.
Only her old nurse had noted it all and the truth of it came out later too late, when Trottie lay, dying slowly and gasping out her last secrets. Then there was shared laughter over the wonder and worry of a nurse confused by her charges seemingly bad fetlocks that needed such a pot of evil-smelling ointment.
The self-inflicted pain of it, married to the pleasure, had been a game. You need suffer only as much as you need and the promise of something real a finger-length away was an awareness that grew less innocent the closer you approached to it. When it came to losing that innocence, she knew what to do with it and put away, she thought, the foolishness of love.
Until Bruce. Until she dared hope for the distant promise of that garden.
Even as she stepped into the sun of that smile, she felt the hope shred away, like a mist before a cold wind, and it made her sag against the length of him so that, for him, it felt like a flirting.
Over her head, Bruce looked at Thwengs long mourn of a face and knew now what the knight had meant Isabel had to be returned, quietly and without fuss, to her husband.
There had been a time when she helped salve the loss of his wife, Marjories mother, and the thrill of bedding her and cuckolding his enemy had been heady. Now the first was palling and the second was, as Thweng had hinted, too much of a risk in awkward times.
He nodded and Thweng returned it. Isabel felt his chin move on the top of her head and almost wept.
It was her right enow, eh? Sim growled, hunched up with a corner of cloak over his head and the drips sliding along it like bright pearls. Beside him, the exhausted Bartholomew Bisset snored and they could do nothing with him until he woke, that was clear.
Hal and Sim now knew who he was, for he had managed to get that out, voice slurred with fatigue Ormsbys scrivener and notary, the one Wallace had sworn to find and the signature on the documents pertaining to the masons death.
Hal had almost forgotten about the entire affair and the arrival of Bisset was an amazement in more than one way he been sent on his way under a writ from Wallace that promised, in return for his life, that he put his tale at the disposal of Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston. When the said Sir Henry was satisfied and quit him of his obligation, Notary Bisset was free to go.
I am told to speak to you and no-one else, not even The Bruce, the fat little man had said, swaying with weariness and drenched to the bone. I beg you let me sleep before you put me to the question.
Hal had almost forgotten about the entire affair and the arrival of Bisset was an amazement in more than one way he been sent on his way under a writ from Wallace that promised, in return for his life, that he put his tale at the disposal of Sir Henry Sientcler of Herdmanston. When the said Sir Henry was satisfied and quit him of his obligation, Notary Bisset was free to go.
I am told to speak to you and no-one else, not even The Bruce, the fat little man had said, swaying with weariness and drenched to the bone. I beg you let me sleep before you put me to the question.
Sim had been astounded, but Hal had more than a touch of admiration, both for Wallaces unshakeable trust in certain folk and the fact that the little scrivener, who could simply have run off, seemed to have more chivalric honour in his butter-barrel body than any of the nobles who had spent weeks here haggling like horse-copers.
It was her, for sure, Sim repeated, dragging Hal away from studying the sleeping Bisset.
Hal said nothing. It had been her. Run away yet again and come straight to The Bruce. He felt a sharpness in him at that thought and quelled it viciously. Stupid, he thought, to go rutting after an earls leman. It was only what old Barnabus, the local priest, had said would happen time had healed over the scars of his wife and woken his loins.
Any lass with her clothes inside out, as the law demanded of whores, would do, he thought viciously, while the nag of Isabel, Countess of Buchan, fern-tendrilled hair dripping like wet autumn bracken, blue eyes weary, her smile still warm on his face, all made the dreich of this place even harder to bear.
That and Bisset, who snored softly, each one a tearing nag at Hals heart, for he sounded like wee John when he slept. Well, his son slept now and made no sound at all. Slept forever
Christ, Hal thought savagely, can matters get worse?
Sir Hal. Sir Hal.
The voice brought their heads round and they stared in wonder at the pair, lurching out of the dark, propelled by the stiff, haughty Sir Gervaise.
More little barking dogs, the knight said and pulled the head of his mount round and away. Hal stared at Tods Wattie, the Dog Boy a shadowed skelf close behind, hugging himself against the rain.
Christs Bones, Tods Wattie bellowed, am ah glad to see ye. Ye will nivver ken whit has happened.
Chapter Five
Roxburgh Castle
Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ, August 1297
A groan; the coverlet stirred. Ralph de Odingesseles waited warily with tunic, judging tenor and temper before stepping forward to the half-asleep figure who rolled over in a rustle of straw and feather mattress to sit upright, blinking, on the edge of the canopied box bed.
Ralph moved to a covered pitcher of heated water, which he poured into a basin and brought forward. He discreetly handed his master a gilded pot and watched it vanish beneath his nightshirt; water splashed and Ralph stood patiently holding the basin, a towel and a clean tunic draped over either forearm; his master grunted, groaned and cocked one buttock to let out a squeaky fart.
Yawning, Hugh Cressingham handed the chamberpot back to Ralph, dabbed water from the basin on his face and his close-cropped head, then dried his meaty jowls on the presented towel. Slowly, he woke up and blinked into a new day.
Ralph de Odingesseles watched him, dispassionate but cautious Cressingham was not tall, running to fat, had eyes that bulged like a fish and his cheeks were stubbled because a skin complaint made it painful to pumice off a beard and irritating to grow one. Nor did he keep his hair fashionably neck length and curled, as Ralph did Cressingham paid lip service to his prebendery stipends by affecting the look of a monk, though untonsured, and that left him with a hairstyle like an upturned birds nest.
He seemed, in his crumpled white nightserk, as bland as plain frumenty, but Ralph de Odingesseles knew the temper that smouldered in the man, stoked by pride and envy.
By the time Cressingham was in tunic, hose and a cote embroidered with the as yet unregistered swans he claimed as his Arms, the whole sorry mess of life had descended on him afresh and Ralph de Odingesseles, coming forward with the gardecorps, was more cautious still. Experience had taught him that the storms forming on Cressinghams brow usually resulted in a sore ear, which was the lot of a squire, he had discovered.
Sufferance, on the other hand, was better than the alternative for the son of a poor noble. Ralph de Odingesseless only claim to fame was that he was related to an archdeacon and his grandfather had been a well-known knight on the Tourney circuit, who had once been beaten into dented metal by the then kings French half-brother, Sir William de Valence.
Eventually, Ralph would be made a knight and take no blows he would not return. The thought made him forget himself and smile.
Cressingham looked sourly at the smirking squire holding the gardecorps. The garment was elegant and in the new shade of blue which was so admired by the French king that he had adopted it as his colour. Not diplomatic, Cressingham thought, and made a mental note never to wear it in the presence of Longshanks.
He did not much want to wear it at all and, in truth, hated the garment, for the same reason he was forced to wear it he was fat and it hid the truth of it. It was, he knew, not his own fault, for he was more of an administrator than a warrior, but you did not get knighted for tallying and accounts, he thought bitterly, for all the kings admiration and love of folk who knew the business.
As always, there was the moment of savage triumph at what he had become, despite not being one of those mindless thugs with spurs Treasurer of Scotland, even though it was a Gods-cursed pisshole of a country, was not only a powerful position, but an extremely lucrative one.
As ever, this exultant moment was followed by a leap of utter terror that the king should ever discover just how lucrative; Cressingham closed his eyes at the memory of the huge tower that was Edward Plantagenet, the drooping eyelid that gave him a sinister leer, the soft lisping voice and the great, long arms. He shuddered. Like the grotesque babery carved high up under cathedral eaves and just as unpredictably vicious as those real apes.
He slapped Ralph de Odingesseles for it, for the smirk, for Edwards drooping eye and this Pit-damned brigand Wallace and for having to wait in this pestilential place for the arrival of De Warenne, the Earl of Surrey.
He slapped the other ear for the actual arrival of De Warenne, the hobbling old goat complaining of the cold and his aches and the fact that he had been trying to retire to his estates, being too old for campaigning now.
Cressingham had no argument with this last and slapped Ralph again because De Warenne had not had the decency to die on his way north with the army, thus leaving Cressingham the best room in Roxburgh, with its fire and clerestory.
Worst of all, of course, was the mess all this would leave and the cost. Gods, the cost Edward would balk at the figures, he knew, would want his own inky-fingered clerks poring over the rolls. There was no telling what they might unveil and the thought of what the king would do then almost made Cressinghams bowels loosen.
Ralph de Odingesseles, trying not to rub his ears, went to the kist in the corner and fetched out a belt with dagger, purse and Keys, the latter the mark of Cressinghams position as Treasurer, designed to elicit instant respect.