Sim glowered.
He barely had fluff on his balls then, but I should cuff his lug again for this, which is no little insult to a lord of Sientclers. Ignored by the King ye served fine well and stuck in a corner of the Douglas panoply like lumber? It is not proper. And where is your kin of Roslin in this, eh?
That was then, Sim Craw. This is now. Now I am lord of nothing at all, for Herdmanston is still a ruin, you tell me. Roslins Sientclers have done enough in keeping the wardship of the place alive at all. Besides, even a corner of this is better and lighter than the stone room I have lived in until recently.
Sim had no answer to that. He sat with his head bowed, bleared by the memory of the last time he had seen Herdmanston, still black with the seven-year-old stain of fires, the floors fallen in and the weeds sprouting from the rotting-tooth of it. All the Herdmanston folk had gone to Sir Henry Sientcler of Roslin, yet their own field strips were at Herdmanston and too valuable to let lie, so some were back at the plough and the harvest, living in cruck houses under the ruins of the old tower.
It would not take much to return it, he added after telling Hal this, but then fell silent. None of the old riders remained, the ones who had once followed Hal, sure of that lords ability to pluck gold out of a cesspit; they had died at Stirlings brig and Callendars woods and on every herschip since. Those who had survived had long since grown too old for the business after Christs Wounds fifteen years of fighting.
It would not take much to return it, he added after telling Hal this, but then fell silent. None of the old riders remained, the ones who had once followed Hal, sure of that lords ability to pluck gold out of a cesspit; they had died at Stirlings brig and Callendars woods and on every herschip since. Those who had survived had long since grown too old for the business after Christs Wounds fifteen years of fighting.
Nearer twenty, Hal corrected when Sim hoiked this up and Sim grew even more morosely silent at the truth of it. Out of all that time, Hal thought bleakly, Isabel and I have had no more than a year and a day in total together, tallied in months here, a week there.
Yet he would give as much for the same again.
The new lord of Badenoch keeps her fastened, Sim said suddenly, as if reading Hals mind. Hal looked up and saw the grim gimlet of Sims eyes, pouched and rheumy, but hard enough still.
The new lord, Hal thought, and almost laughed aloud. The youth Kirkpatrick had almost killed in Greyfriars, until Hal had prevented it, thinking enough blood had been spilled on a holy altar with the death of the father, the Red Comyn.
Aye, Sim agreed, seeing that chase itself across Hals face. The stripling is grown to man and come into his lordship of Badenoch and all the attainments thereof. Mind you, the most of it he can actually lay his hands on without an army at his back consists of Malise Bellejambe and Badenoch has confirmed that man in the duty once given him by the Earl of Buchan: keep her in her cage.
Bellejambe. Sim saw Hals eyes turn to haar on grey water.
I had hoped Malise Bellejambe was gone down the brae, Hal said flatly. Then hoped the opposite, for I want to end his life myself.
He lives yet, Sim said, and then laughed dryly. Greyer, as we all are these days, but his heart is as black as ever, I hear.
Bellejambe, who was guilty of murder by knife and poison, who had snaked his way after Isabel on behalf of her husband until, finally, he had coiled round his capture. Hal did not want to think of what he had done to her, was almost rushed off the bench he sat on with the mad, frantic urge to charge down to Berwick.
It washed over him like fire, sank and ebbed, leaving him trembling and bitter with the reality. Seven years detached from swordplay or even wearing maille or riding a horse. Nothing left of his Herdmanston lands but the title. No men at his back and no future at his front. Some gallant rescuing knight, he thought, who has even been forgotten by the King I helped put on the throne.
But not by Isabel. He was sure of that and it nagged him like a knife in the ribs, the knowledge that she had squatted in her cage for seven years, willing him to her rescue. It was a scorching force that, every now and then, drove him to his feet as if to rush there alone and beat the walls down. The effort of staying shook him like ague and it had been this way for all of the seven years; the old weals on his knuckles told of the blood he had spilled hammering uselessly on stone and door.
An hour later, the world changed again when a squire came up and declared that the King requested Sir Hal of Herdmanstons presence in his chambers. The boy said it politely enough, for he was court-skilled enough to realize that there might be more to this old man than poor clothes and a bad haircut, since the King was not only seeing him in private, but had requested it.
Come as you are, the servant added, seeing Hal hesitate and look down at his tunic. Sim laid a hand on Hals wrist as he started to move after the servant.
Dinna fash when you see him, he hissed, his Lenten fish-breath close to Hals ear.
Which was not a comfort to a man anxious about meeting a king he had not seen for so long. Eight years ago, the Bruce had been freshly crowned, awkward under it and hag-haunted by what he had done to the Red Comyn in Greyfriars.
Even behind Roxburghs walls, Hal had heard the argument, the monks of Bishops Wishart and Lamberton piercing the stones with their shouted debates, that it had not been red murder because there was no forethocht in it. Rather, according to the carefully primed monks, it was a chaude-melle, a suddenty of temper brought on by the lord of Badenochs provocations. Besides, Hal thought as he clacked into the great nave on his thick-soled shoes, the new Joshua of Scotland could not be so base as to have deliberately sought the murder of a rival.
But he remembered the stricken Bruce, seemingly struck numb and appalled at his act of temper. Seemingly. Even now, Hal was hagged by the possibility of mummery, for the speed of Bruces recovery, the smoothness with which Kirkpatrick and himself had been sent to make sure the Red Comyn was indeed dead, all left an iced sliver of doubt.
The bloody altar and the high, metal stink rolled out of Hals old thoughts, so that he paused and stood, mired in memory. The way Badenochs heels, those vain, inch-lifted heels on his fancy boots, had rattled like a mad drummer as he kicked his way out of the world, splashing his own puddled gore up even as Kirkpatrick made sure
Sir Henry.
The familiar voice wrenched him back and he stood in front of a clean altar under the great bloom of stone and glass that formed the nave window of the abbey. A figure, silhouetted against the stain of light, walked forward and the servant boy stepped back, bowing.
Hal. God be praised.
For ever and ever, Hal repeated by rote and then, remembering too late, bobbed his head and added: Your Grace.
He was aware of figures and the servant, dismissed with a wave, sliding off into the shadows, then he looked up from the floor, blinking, as Bruce swung round into plain view.
The height and the body were the same, tall and hardened, unthickened by age he must be in his fortieth year, Hal thought wildly, yet his hair is still mostly dark.
But the face. Hail Mary, the face
It had coarsened, the lines of age in it deepened to grooves, the skin lesioned and greyish, so that he looked older than his years Christs Wounds, Hal thought, he looks older than Sim. The right cheek that old wound, Hal remembered, given to him by Malenfaunt in a tourney à loutrance was a thick weal of cicatrice. As if in balance there was the slash taken in the fighting round Methven, a gully of old scar tissue that began above the left brow, broke over the eye and continued down the inside of his cheek almost to the edge of his mouth.Two such dire wounds would have been bad enough, but there was more in that face than hard usage, Hal realized with a sudden shock. There was now clear reason for the whispers of sickness or even the famed Curse of Malachy.
Yet the eyes were clear and quizzical, the smile a wry lopsided twist as he saw Hals 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 Hals 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 Hals 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 Hals 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.