In turn, he thought bitterly, that act, for Bruce at least, was revenge for the time when Red Comyn had taken Bruce by the throat in public and threatened to knife him. Now it came to Hal, sudden as sin and just as thrillingly blasphemous, that perhaps English Edward was the best strong hand the unruly kingdom of Scots needed for, without it, the realm was already in a war with itself, played out in a mating-snake writhe of plot and counterplot, dark knifings and treachery.
Matters are not lost, Kirkpatrick said into Hals thoughts. I can find Lamprecht but not with Sir Hal in tow.
He looked into Hals outrage and shrugged.
Your idea of stealth and cunning in these matters is limited to not shouting who you are at the top of your voice, he said, half apologetically and in French, which softened the bile of it. Besides you are hurt.
Bruce looked from one to the other, removed the linen square and studied the stains, then replaced it.
Bruce looked from one to the other, removed the linen square and studied the stains, then replaced it.
Kirkpatrick, he said, shall stay in London and seek out this Lamprecht. Hal go back north. The men you sent must have found some trace of Wallace by now. Find Wallace, and take care of your wound, for I have need of you yet.
Hal nodded; he had had enough of Londons stew of streets and alleys, while his ribs ached and burned in equal measure, so he leaped on Bruces suggestion like a fox into a coop. He and Kirkpatrick headed for the door, pausing to offer passage to one another with exaggerated courtesy.
Bruce watched them go, shoulder to shoulder like two padding hounds who snarled and growled at each other, yet seemed capable of springing to each others defence in an eyeblink.
He sent Edward off with some soothing words about his prowess and sighed when the door closed on his back, leaving him with Alexander. The youngest and yet the one he trusted most.
The Curse of Malachy, he thought bitterly, is to have all the attributes of greatness handed to you by God and have to accept recklessness with it. Thank Christ and all His angels that he was not as reckless as brother Edward, who had been slathered with most of that but the sudden stab of pain from his missing tooth was a reminder of his own rash fight with Malenfaunt.
Does it hurt? Alexander asked and Bruce felt a wash of panic and revulsion at the reality of the stained linen square and his cheek.
My tongue burns like the very Deil, Bruce replied laconically. At least the rough edge of that tooth is no longer a nag on it.
The careful answer masked the truth. Alexander nodded, then flicked his fingers in an impatient gesture for his brother to remove the pad. He bent, inspected, then straightened with a sombre nod and face so at odds with his youth that Bruce almost grinned. Almost. A smile stretched the cicatrice into a gape; in all the weeks since the tourney, it had barely managed to close on itself and Bruce knew that Alexander and his physician feared infection.
The Curse of Malachy, Bruce said suddenly, though he contrived to make it light and laughable. Alexander did not laugh and finally voiced the truth of matters.
The cheek does not hurt at all?
Bruce shook his head, swallowed the rising panic. No pain when the knife had gone in. No pain when he had plucked it out. None at all when James of Montaillou had apologetically pulled his mouth aside to file down the pinked tooth, though the pain of that was a screamingly agonizing memory. Folk had marvelled at the stoic bravery of the Bruce, who felt no pain.
No pain in a cheek deadened. The irony, of course, was that it had saved his life, for Malenfaunts blow should have reduced him to a blinding agony of tears and snot, leaving him at the mercy of a killing stroke.
Lepry, Alexander said, a slapped blade on the table of Bruces wild thoughts. Bruce said nothing, but the bleak truth of it was part of the Curse of Malachy.
Only you and I and James of Montaillou are party to that suspicion, he answered at length. Alexander, the scholar, had worked it out almost as swiftly as Bruce and the physician; he nodded, his eyes welling with a sympathy Bruce did not care to see. Too much like the look you give a dog you have to put down, he thought.
No-one else must know, he managed to rasp out and saw Alexanders eyebrow raise.
Not your wife, brother?
Not her, with her coterie of tirewomen spying for her, and her wee personal priest sending back the doings of the Bruces to the Earl of Ulster. From there, Bruce was sure, it arrived in the hands of Edward Plantagenet in short enough order.
He felt a crushing sadness at the mire she and he were in, how their life had become polite in public and distant now in private; the excuse of his wounds kept them in separate bedchambers as much as Bruces fear of the sickness he might have a lepers very breath was poison.
Alexander knew all this and required only a sour glance from his brother.
Not Edward? he persisted and now the glance was alarmed.
Especially not brother Edward.
Especially him, the rash hothead who would ride through the fires of Hell to fetch Holy Water to heal his big brother and turn every head to watch the glory of it as he did so.
Leprosy. Bruce pressed the linen to his cheek and stared blindly at the yellowed window, as if he could see through it to the street of the Grass and Stocks markets, the new, still-scaffolded houses of the Lombard goldsmiths and on up to Poultrey.
Where Buchan had his own house, lair of all Comyn activity in London; they would pay any amount, dare any dishonour, to discover that their arch-rival had even the suspicion of such an affliction.
Moffat, Annandale
Feast of Saint Kessog, March, 1305
Wallace was woken by the cow struggling to her feet. By the gleam of daylight smearing through the smoke-hole he saw Paties woman kneel by the firepit to blow life back into the banked peat smoulder.
One of the brood of bairns wailed as he shrugged out of the door into a muggy morning where colour slid back to the land. For a moment he stood, listening, turning his head this way and that, but only the chooks moved, murmuring in their soft way.
Eventually, he unlaced his braies with one hand and, grunting with the pleasure of it, pissed on the dungheap; it was the first time this year, he noticed, that it did not steam.
The sound shut off his stream like a closing door and he half-turned, but it was Patie, coming up to join him and, for a moment of still peace, they both wet the dungheap.
Fine day comin, Wallace growled and Patie nodded.
A seven-day o this, he answered thoughtfully, an I will sow peas in my own strip. Mayhap even oats. Pray to Goad there is no blight.
Then he turned his big heavy face into the crag of Wallaces own.
There is gruel to break yer fast.
Wallace nodded, then rubbed the greasy tangle of his chin ruefully.
I have no siller left to offer ye, he said and Patie nodded sorrowfully, as if he had expected the news.
An ye a dubbed knight, no less, he answered, shaking his mournful head on the inequity of it. Whit happened to yer siller, then? Wager or drink?
Wallace laughed, remembering.
The most o it went on a wummin, he said and Patie sniffed. Hawked and spat.
Worth it, was she?
She was, Wallace agreed, the image of her sharp and blade-bright in his mind when he had come to the priory weeks before with his handful of scarred, filthy army.
A coontess, no less.
It was the last shine of glory and tarnished even then and he had known it was all over even as he stood, hip-shot, while the nuns of Elcho squealed and ran. He had tossed the red robins-egg ruby carelessly back to Isabel as she clasped her exhausted, trembling tirewoman, Ada, with her free hand.
I will take ye to Roslin, he had told her. Ye will have to make yer own way to Herdmanston I am no welcome there in these days.
She had nodded, not knowing the why of it and too relieved to be free to do any asking. Wallace did not offer an explanation.
Paties final grunt shook him back to the moment and the dungheap; he saw the man was looking at the scarred pewter sky with a calculated, expert squint.
A good crop, if there is little rain and less war.
A good crop, if there is little rain and less war.
No war, Patie, he answered and could hear the sorrowed loss of it in his voice, so that he was almost ashamed. No war, for his men were scattered and gone after taking Isabel, Countess of Buchan, to Roslin Long Jack Short, Ralf Rae and the worst of them were briganding out of that old stronghold of outlaws, the Selkirk forests. Jinnets Jean and others were probably hooring with the English in Carlisle and robbing them blind when they could.
And he was here. Once he had ruled the Kingdom as sole Guardian, now he sheltered in the mean holding of a sokeman of his sisters man, Tham Halliday, Laird of Corehead, because the castle itself was under watch. Soon, he knew, he would move to a house in Moffat, or another near Glasgow, those hiding him risking the penalty of harbouring, lying low until
What? The thought racked him, as it had done from the moment he had woken to find most of the remaining men gone. Those left, he had realized, were starving and wasted, so he had given them what coin he had and watched the last of them melt away.
France, perhaps. The Red Rover, de Longueville, would get him away as he had done in the past and he and that old pirate had fought there before but the French had given up as well and now no-one opposed the English; the idea of that burned him, but the old fire of it had little left of the great body to feed on save heart.
There was nothing in France for him other than the relief of the Bruce; he almost managed a smile at that, but could not quite manage it, or the spit that went with it.
No war, Patie, he repeated.
Patie fumbled himself shut, wiped his fingers on his tunic and nodded meaningfully.
I would lay that aside, then, while ye break yer fast, he grunted. Ye are scarin the bairns.
Wallace looked down, was almost astonished to see the hand-and-half sword clasped in his right fist, so much part of him for so long that he no longer recognized it as a presence. He had woken with it clenched there, walked out of the mean hut with it and stood pissing with it. He had learned to do so many things left-handed, because the right was always occupied by that weapon. Naked, notched and spotted with rust, it was as done up as he was himself yet sharp and ready.