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Hal had half expected something like this and was not so surprised by it, though the bleakness wasted his heart.
He and the other Herdmanston men had quit the herschip in mid-October and gone home. Wallace had permitted it, Hal knew, because he had seen the sickness in Hal’s soul over the capture of his father, the death of Tod’s Wattie and the knight, Fitzralph – and the loss of Isabel, who had simply disappeared from view. Not even Wallace knew if she lived or died – but offered the consolation that she had last been seen in the company of a knight fleeing Stirling, which meant ransom sooner or later. No-one would pass up the cost of a Countess.
The army had wandered, seemingly aimless, with little discipline and only one purpose – to winter itself on the English. After a few weeks of mindless burning and harrying had scorched the anger out of him, Hal wanted away and Wallace agreed, his own gaunt face blazoned with eyes as haunted as a midnight graveyard.
Hal and the others had ridden home with their share of plunder, to the cold comfort and tears of those left to care for the solid square tower and barmkin of Herdmanston. Tod’s Wattie, wrapped and kisted up, had been delivered weeks before and decently buried at Saltoun, so the Herdmanston men trooped out to pay their respects and then shouldered their bags and burdens, nodded to one another and went home to their pinch-faced weans and wattle-and-daub hovels.
The Auld Templar, wasted by cold and effort to a husk of himself, rode over from Roslin because he knew the burning concern folded into Hal’s soul – knew also that the young lord blamed him for the capture of his father.
He tried to make some amends, with news he knew Hal would want and, if the truth was told, had called in favours with Templars everywhere to find it out, driven by his own sense of guilt that Hal was right, that he had asked too much of others in pursuit of his own devisings. Pride, anger and worse, he thought, while he knelt in the cold of Herdmanston’s wee church, aware of the garishly painted tree, each branch holding one depiction of the Seven Deadly Sins.
God save me, he prayed, but there was no comfort in it and less in Hal’s face when, eventually, they met in Herdmanston’s hall.
‘Taken south, I hear,’ he said into the flat, cold stare of Hal’s welcome. ‘Her and yer father both. We have Stirling Castle under siege and, with a tait of luck, it will fall sooner rather than later, which will give us Sir Marmaduke Thweng, Fitzwarin and a wheen of lesser lights to trade.’
When Hal said nothing at all, the Auld Templar bowed his head.
‘We will get the Auld Sire back, never fear, and mayhap the Countess Buchan as well – whoever holds her will demand ransom soon enough.’
Then he raised it up, for nothing could keep him staring at the floor for long.
‘Though I doubt ye will find much happiness returning her to her husband.’
Then came the litany of deaths that left Hal in the great grey emptiness that was now Herdmanston and sent the Auld Templar south on his pilgrimage to fetch the body, scourged by guilt. He stopped at Herdmanston to tell Hal what he planned and spoke only to Sim, riding away with two servants and a cart, no more than dark figures on a rimed landscape.
On that same day, of hissing wind and snow swirling into the half-frozen mud, Hal stood by the grey stone cross and watched a robin sing lustily, flaming breast puffed out as if it was spring.
Nearby, the small, half-built stone chapel that his father had petitioned the Franciscans at Saltoun to build was a rime of ice, no more than a cold catacomb for his mother’s bones and a mortuary jar with her heart. Now her husband would lie beside her and Will Elliott patiently, painstakingly, carved out the marks that Father Thomas, the Franciscan from Saltoun who had been part of the price for the chapel, had scratched as a guide on the kist.
Hic est sepultus Sir John de Sientcler, miles militis.
In time, the bones of Hal’s wife and son would be translated into the chapel. In time, he was to enlarge it for the glory of the Sientclers of Herdmanston and, in time, he would lie in it himself. Yet, for all the black dog of it, Hal could not think fully on that chill place, or the cross itself, for thinking of where Isabel was and how she fared.
Sim had no-one waiting for him, save a brace or two of women who would welcome him, and no other home but the tower at Herdmanston. He found, to his surprise, that he and the others were greeted as lions and heroes, that anyone who had fought with Wallace at Cambuskenneth was entitled to respect and a fete.
The Dog Boy found the delight of a straw mattress by a fire and two hot meals a day, mean though they were. Yet he missed Tod’s Wattie, like the nag of something valuable mislaid.
When they clacked into Balantrodoch, they found the Auld Templar standing over the kisted up remains of Hal’s father, the lid off to show his swaddled body, bared face stiff with rime, sunken and blue … it was so cold there had been little need of the lead lining for the box, but the Auld Templar had done it anyway and rumour had it he had stripped it from the gutters and roof of Hexham Priory.
His own face shocked all who saw it, for the death of his son, following hard on the loss of John Fenton, chewed on him, harsh as a dog’s jaw. His pale cheeks were sunk, the eyes violet rimmed and, to those who had always thought the Auld Templar indestructible, the stoop of his bony shoulders frightened them. Hal remembered him, scant few months before, charging over the bridge with his hammer swinging left and right and, for a moment, felt some of the old love he’d had for this man.
It came to Hal that, if he thought grief hugged Herdmanston, then it must be throttling Roslin, where a woman wept now for her dead brother, her missing husband and the husband’s dead father, while her weans stood, bewildered. The Auld Templar, Hal thought, was the mortar that kept Roslin from dissolving into tears and for all I find him guilty of driving my da to his doom, I cannot hate him entirely.
And all this to the victors.
The Auld Templar greeted Hal with a nod, was surprised at the brief, shared moment of warmth that was no longer than the beat of a bird’s wing.
‘Christ be praised,’ the Auld Templar managed to husk out.
‘For ever and ever,’ came the litanied response and men crossed themselves.
There was precious little else to be shared round at Balantrodoch – when they came out of the crowded entrance to the Temple precincts, a sullen crowd, half begging, half resentful, watched them and their horses hungrily.
‘Stay here,’ Hal said to the Bangtail Hob, looking round. ‘Sim and I will find out if there is a possibility of quarters here. If we leave our mounts they will be eaten by the time we get back.’
Bangtail nodded, looking at Ill Made Jock, the Dog Boy, Will Elliott and the handful of others who made up the party; he wished they had come properly armed.
Inside, his breath smoking in the chill stone of the place, Hal came to a halt in mid-step, so that Sim had to dance to one side to avoid walking up his heels. He glared, then saw what had stopped Hal in his tracks.
‘Herdmanston,’ said Bruce, nodding in a grim way. He looked groomed and trimmed, healthy and young in his swaddling, fur-collared cloak, his shadow Kirkpatrick behind him. There were grim, spade-bearded knights behind him, crow-black save for the white cross that marked the Order of St John and that made Hal pause.
‘You made good time, my lord,’ Hal managed, ‘seeing as how my father is not more than a five-day dead.’
Bruce grunted, his lip pensive, thought about the lie of it, then decided Hal needed better.
‘I did not come for your father,’ he declared, ‘though it is a sore loss, all the same. A good man lost – though the cause he fought for was fine.’
He cocked his head sideways a little and smiled.
‘Ye fought in it, I hear,’ he added. ‘A born rebel Scot, it appears, Sir Hal – ye even contrived to rebel against me at the time.’
‘A happy anticipation,’ Hal answered flatly, which made Bruce lose his smile.
‘As well ye won, then,’ he countered, ‘otherwise you would not be back in the fold of my care.’
Hal said nothing, aware that he was still shackled to Bruce thanks to his fealty to Roslin. For all his passion to oppose the captors of his kin, the Auld Templar was not fool enough to attach himself to Wallace, victor or not. After what had transpired, Hal thought bitterly, it is good, if a little late, that the Lord of Roslin reins in his nature.
Bruce mistook Hal’s silence for passive acquiesence to his censure, which mollified him. He smiled at Hal, nodding his head to where a familiar figure, bulked in wool, rolled through the clamouring press of begging hands, ignoring them all with a bland, fixed smile.
‘I came down from the parliament at Torphichen with John the Steward there,’ Bruce said, his face like an ice wall, ‘to tell Wallace that Moray died. Since it seems he is too busy to attend it in person.’
‘Died on St Malachy’s day,’ the Steward boomed, coming into the tail end of this; Hal saw Bruce wince and wondered at it, but only briefly. Another death – but he was now so numbed by them that the loss of Sir Andrew Moray, who had been hovering at the edge of it since the battle at Cambuskenneth, was muted.
‘It was a curse for him, if no-one else,’ the Steward said pointedly and Bruce managed a wan smile, while inwardly heaping another curse of his own on the pile dedicated to all those who offered continual, harping references to St Malachy.
‘A curse for everyone,’ Kirkpatrick muttered, ‘since it leaves Wallace as the realm’s sole hero and commander of the army.’
The Steward shot him a glower, then drew his cloak round him, shivering.
‘Just so. Now we will confirm him a sole Guardian, as we agreed at Torphichen.’
‘In the name of King John Balliol,’ Bruce added, his voice slathered with bitterness.
‘Indeed,’ the Steward replied blandly. ‘Bishop Wishart would say the same were he not fastened up in Roxburgh, prisoner of the English – which is a sore loss to the Kingdom.’
He smiled into the storm of Bruce’s face.
‘At least all the nobiles of the Kingdom are together at last. You and the Earl of Buchan, the Comyn of Badenoch and all the rest of us gentilhommes will stand side by side as we did at Torphichen’s parliament, smile and agree to it. God’s Wounds, if I can thole it, then you can as well.’
They would, since the alternative, Hal saw, was either the Red Comyn of Badenoch or The Bruce as Guardian, and neither faction would agree on that. Small wonder that the parliament had been held at Torphichen, with its preceptory to the Knights of St John a long-known sanctuary unlikely to be breached by murder. He wondered what Wallace had to say and wished he had not come here at all, plootering back into the mire of it all. At least Herdmanston had been a relief from that.
He made enough small talk to be polite then left, conscious of the gimlet eyes of Kirkpatrick following him, making the small of his back itch. Hal did not care for Kirkpatrick, thought him no better than Buchan’s man, Malise. The death of Fitzralph and Tod’s Wattie both burned and haunted him, for he knew who had done it – Christ’s Wounds, they all knew who had done it – but had no proof to offer that would bring the man to justice.
It was a day for the black dog to howl, a dreich, frozen world of misery, from the hungry suffering of the living, to the cowled loss of the dead. Loading his father on to a cart was almost an afterthought in the swirl of events, for the real business of Balentrodoch was for the great and good to agree that Wallace be made sole Guardian now that Moray had died.
It was not an easy business for anyone, especially Hal and the Herdmanston men, for the Earl of Buchan stood no more than a score of paces away with his kinsman, the little stiff-faced Red John Comyn standing in for his father, the sick Black John, Lord of Badenoch.
For all Buchan was an Earl, it was the vain little strut of Red John who mattered, since he was, after Balliol himself, invested with the main claim to the Scots throne in opposition to the Bruces.
The Buchans and Comyn glowered at Bruce and Hal alternately, while Hal and the others had to stand, ruffed as guard dogs and barely leashed, watching Buchan and the skulker at his back – Malise Bellejambe. It gave them no pleasure to see his battered, broken-nosed face, though he had the sense to stay quiet and keep it out of the line of sight of men he knew trembled on the brink of springing at him with blades.
They had come to append seals to previous agreements, now written up in crabbed writing by a slew of inky-fingered clerks. There were few surprises in the entire affair save one and it was clear that it was not a surprise to the Steward or the Bruce entourage, though it stunned everyone else, even Wallace. Numbed with a genuine grief over the death of Moray, he walked like a man underwater, saying little while argument, mostly for the sake of it and to score points one off the other, rolled over his head between Bruce and the Comyn.
In the end it came down to a half-hearted excuse by the Comyn that Wallace was not a knight, so could hardly be elected sole Guardian, commanding the gentilhommes of the community of the realm.
‘A fair point,’ the Steward admitted, stroking his neat beard, his shaved-fresh cheeks like spoiled mutton in the cold of the Temple chapel. Buchan looked at Red Comyn and they both scowled suspiciously back at the noble; they had not been expecting agreement.
‘Time he was made a knight, then,’ the Steward decreed and Bruce, on cue, stepped forward grinning, to be handed a naked sword unsheathed by Kirkpatrick in a slither of noise that made everyone give ground a little and clap hand to hilt.
‘Kneel, William Wallace,’ Bruce commanded and the man did so, like some stunned ox about to be slaughtered. Hal saw the Comyn faces blazing with anger at having been so outflanked and upstaged – and having to swallow it until they choked.
The ceremony was over in an eyeblink. No vigil, or final blow either – even Bruce could not find it in himself to strike Wallace. Someone should, Hal thought, if only to wake the man up; he turned away, ruffled as a windblown cat by the whole affair.
He had planned on finding lodging for the night at the Temple, but that seemed unlikely and it was now late; it would be a long night’s ride back to the nearest shelter, a farmstead with a decent – and starving-empty – cruck barn on the road back to Herdmanston.
Hal was giving orders for it when the Chaplain came up, white robes bright in the twilight.
‘Sir William requested lodging for you and your party,’ he said. ‘He would deem it a considerable favour if you would stay and attend him later. Of mutual benefit, he says.’
For a moment, Hal was confused, then realised the ‘Sir William’ was Wallace. The title did not sit well even with the man himself, who was with three others in a cramped room of the guest quarters. One was Bruce, the second was the brooding Kirkpatrick and the third, Hal saw with some surprise, was the grim hack face of the Auld Templar.
‘Well,’ Wallace was saying as Hal was ushered in by a hard-faced kern, ‘ye have had your wee bit fun – now ye will have to live with it.’
Bruce flapped a dismissive hand.
‘That was Buchan and Badenoch,’ he answered curtly. ‘They will say black if I say white. I would not put much stress on what they think of your knighting.’
‘Sheep dressed as lamb,’ Wallace spat back. ‘At best. Gild it how ye will, tie what bright ribbons ye care on it – I am still the brigand Wallace, landless chiel of no account.’
He paused then and offered a lopsided grin out of the haggard of his face.
‘Save that I am king in the name and rights of John Balliol,’ he added softly. ‘And the commonality of this realm esteem me, even if the community does not.’
Hal saw Bruce’s eyes narrow at that; the idea of Wallace being king, in any name, was not something he liked to dwell on even if he saw that Wallace was being provocative.
The Auld Templar saw it too and tried to balm the wounded air.
‘Ye would have a hard time at a crowning, Sir Will,’ he said lightly. ‘No Rood, no Crowner – and no Stone of Scone.’
Wallace, taking the hint, offered a wan smile of his own.
‘That last is an especial loss to the Kingdom,’ he said. ‘Though it guarantees the surety of any Guardian – without the Stone there can never be a new king, only the one we have already.’
Hal braced himself for a snarling storm from Bruce, always jealous of his claims to Balliol’s crown, and was rocked back on his heels when the Earl smiled sweetly instead.
‘Indeed,’ he said, then turned to the Auld Templar. ‘As you say, Sir William – such a loss cripples kingship.’
‘Just so,’ the Auld Templar muttered, his face strange enough to make Hal look more closely, before the old man’s next words drove curiosity out of him.
‘Young Hal,’ he said with a bow, which Hal gave back. ‘I am right sore about your father. I hear he fought bravely.’
‘He is … was … an an auld man,’ Hal answered brusquely, which was as far as could go in forgiveness. The Auld Templar acknowledged it with a nod and a wry smile, though his eyes were still and steady on Hal’s face.
‘It was an ill day.’
‘For some more than others,’ Hal replied, sullen with the memory of Tod’s Wattie and John Fenton.
‘Fitzralph was also a hard loss to bear,’ the Auld Templar replied pointedly and saw Hal bristle; he cursed inwardly, for he did not want an enemy of this young man.
‘Come, come,’ Bruce clucked. ‘There was blood let on both sides and no blame accrues to you for the death of Fitzralph.’
‘We all ken who killed Fitzralph,’ Hal spat back. ‘And Tod’s Wattie. And my dogs at Douglas.’
‘Aye, aye, just so,’ Bruce interrupted. ‘And yon wee scribbler Bisset in Edinburgh, I have learned. And his sister and her man. And others, no doubt.’
He paused and turned his fist of a gaze fully into Hal’s face, which was cold and flattened by the news of Bisset. Another stone to the cairn, he thought bitterly. He had liked wee Bisset.
‘Unless ye have proof, or witnesses, ye might as well add the crucifixion of St Andrew, the betrayal of Our Lord and the forging of every crockard in the country at the man’s door,’ Wallace was saying. ‘None of it will stick to him.’
Hal winked on the brim of it for a moment, then the reality pricked him and he sagged. Bruce saw it and patted his shoulder, patronisingly soothing.
‘Aye, the loss of Fitzralph was sad,’ he said jovially, ‘but I am here to put some of that right – we have taken Stirling and can offer Fitzwarin as ransom for Henry Sientcler of Roslin.’
That was news – the fall of Stirling had been imminent for some time, but the sudden capitulation was a shock, all the same. And, thought Hal wryly, Bruce announces it and so links himself with the glory.
No-one spoke for a moment, then the Auld Templar shifted.
‘He had a mother living, and brothers,’ he said. Bruce looked bemused and the Auld Templar turned his long-moustached wail of a face on him, like black light.
‘Fitzralph,’ Hal added and Bruce, seeing he was being corrected, thrust out his bottom lip; he 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.’
