The Complete Kingdom Trilogy: The Lion Wakes, The Lion at Bay, The Lion Rampant. Robert Low
had been expecting beams of approval and effusive thanks and been rapped across the knuckles instead, but he managed a smiling face on matters.
‘You are over-solicitous of a wee knight’s death,’ he countered, ‘brave though it might have been. There is more at stake than this – your own grandson.’
‘God is gracious and merciful,’ the Auld Templar growled. ‘He is also watching.’
Bruce acknowledged the fact with a display of crossing himself, though his face was a stone.
‘The exchange will be conducted at Hexham. I will take Carrick men and Fitzwarin,’ Bruce went on, ‘once we have all the writs we need to traverse the country peacefully. Sir Hal – it would be good of you to join us … I am sure the young Henry will be glad to see a kinsman.’
Hal looked at the impassive Kirkpatrick, then to the Auld Templar and finally to Bruce. It was clear the Auld Templar was not up to the travel and that Bruce knew it. Proposing Hal into his retinue for the affair was a considerable honour, though one Hal could have done without.
He managed to stumble out enough thanks to draw the Carrick lip in and Bruce gathered his dignity round him like a cloak then left, trailing Kirkpatrick in his wake.
There was a long pause while the Auld Templar looked mournfully at Hal and seemed about to speak. After working his mouth like a fish for a moment or two, he suddenly clamped it shut, nodded brusque thanks and left.
There was silence afterwards, then Wallace sighed and rubbed his beard.
‘Young Bruce means well,’ he said, shooting a sideways look at Hal, ‘though he cannot help but seek some advantage from it.’
‘Which is?’ Hal asked, still brooding about Malise Bellejambe and how unassailable he seemed to be.
‘Leverage with yourself,’ Wallace replied and Hal blinked at that. For what end?
Wallace shrugged when it was put to him.
‘You will ken by and by. He will not be backward in coming forward on it. He will find something in exchange for him using Fitzwarin to ransom yer kinsman. Besides -he is stinging over his own father, who was removed from command of Carlisle because of his son’s antics. Not to be trusted now, it seems. So Bruce The Elder has gone off with his face trippin’ him and the young Bruce is facing the prospect of his Comyn rivals triumphant and does not care for it.’
He stopped and shook his head in weary, wry admiration.
‘Christ’s Bones,’ he added, ‘the Bruces have a mountain of prideful huff at their disposal, have they not?’
‘I thought Fitzwarin was yours to dispose,’ Hal responded. ‘Since it is yourself who is Guardian. Him and Sir Marmaduke Thweng both belong to the Kingdom and so to you.’
Wallace chuckled grimly, a rumble of sound Hal swore he could feel through his feet.
‘Bruce takes pleasure in removing Sir Marmaduke to spend the Christ’s Mass with himself; keeps me in my place, ye ken. Reminds me that I am, for all the new dubbing, not anythin’ like a nobile, no gentilhomme with lands north and south. Like Sir Marmaduke, who is Bruce kin by marriage. So I am constrained to give him to the care of the Bruce, which infuriates the Comyn.’
He broke off and worried his beard with one hand, almost thinking aloud rather than speaking directly to Hal.
‘In turn, mark ye, I have ordered that Sir Marmaduke will be ransomed for Comyn’s cousin, Sir John de Mowbray, instead of being set ransom-free as Bruce wishes – and that is only to put the Earl of Carrick in his place, for I have a strong regard for yon Sir Marmaduke.’
He twisted his beard and matched it with a wry smile.
‘Ye see the glaur I have to step through? So Fitzwarin’s exchange is fine by me, even if the bold Bruce takes credit for it.’
‘Ye are Guardian of Scotland,’ Hal answered, astonished and Wallace’s smile was bitter.
‘Aye. As I was pointing out when ye came in – few of the nobiles like the idea. Christ’s Wounds, the Steward is the ox pulling this along and you heard him at Cambuskenneth, the night afore that melee? How did it go? “A landless jurrocks with a strong arm and no idea of what to do with it until yer betters tell ye” if I recall. Spat from a face like a bag of blood.’
He stopped and sighed.
‘I need Bruce and I need Comyn both. It was fine when Moray stood at my shoulder. Sir Andrew was their first choice and, by Christ’s Wounds I wish he had lived, for I would rather it were him here and me in the grave.’
His vehemence and clear pain at Moray’s loss stunned Hal to silence and it stretched like a shadow at sunset, to the point of painful. Then Wallace broke it with a growl that cleared his throat.
‘Go to Hexham, get yer kin hame and then forget this business entire,’ he said in a sudden, savage hiss.
‘The Savoyard …’ Hal began.
‘He is dead or fled abroad, it seems to me. Yet wee Bisset, God rest his soul, was red murdered and put to some hard questioning first. If it was Malise Bellejambe, as we all suspect, then Buchan is on the track of matters.’
‘So – all this footering after the Savoyard has gone for nothing,’ Hal pointed out bitterly.
‘It may be no more than another red murder for profit, by trailbaston long vanished. Or it may be Bruce’s men. Or Red John, or the Earl of Buchan, or even Sir William The Hardy afore he was carted away to the Tower,’ Wallace answered moodily.
‘The community of the realm is a snakepit of plots, as I am findin’ – and even Bishops are not abune poking their nebs in. My money is on Bruce, though the why of it eludes me yet – and probably will forever now. Best ye keep away from it, like me.’
He stopped and stared into the middle distance.
‘Anyway – Longshanks is coming and, win or lose, everything will be birled in the air by that.’
The name itself seemed to chill the air. Longshanks was coming and when he reached the north, he would, for certes, raise the Dragon Banner and declare no quarter. Everything, as Wallace said, would be birled in the air. Including the Countess.
‘Isabel,’ Hal murmured and suddenly found the great grave-shroud face of Wallace close to his own.
‘That especial you should forget,’ the Guardian declared firmly. ‘Bad enough ye should be trailing after another man’s wife like a wee terrier humpin’ a leg – but that it should be the Earl of Buchan’s wife is a writ for ruin. Nor does he need Malise Bellejambe to commit his next red murder on you, for there are laws and rights that will break you just as readily.’
‘There is him, too,’ Hal said, recovering himself and feeling a cold slide into him, as if steel had been thrust into his belly. ‘If I was to tak’ tent with everything else ye say, I would not forget the business of Malise Bellejambe.’
Wallace sighed and waved a dismissive hand.
‘Weel, I have done my duty,’ he said, ‘and warned you, both as the Law of the Kingdom and as a friend.’
‘The Law?’ Hal repeated and glanced sideways, to the great sheathed sword beside Wallace’s chair. Wallace flushed; the tale of Cressingham’s flaying had whirled like a spark, become an ember, then a fire that said Wallace now used a strip of the dead Treasurer’s flesh as a baldric – other strips had been dispensed all over Scotland. The fact that Wallace never denied it told a deal about how the Kingdom was changing him, even as he changed the kingdom.
He paused and then grimed a weary, slack smile across his bearded face.
‘Get ye gone. Do what ye must and I will likewise. It is better that ye forget the business of the Savoyard, but I jalouse that your neb is longer than your sense. So, if ye find the wee Savoyard and the secret he holds,