‘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 – Christ’s 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 l’outrance – 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 Hal’s 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 Hal’s 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 Hal’s 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 Hal’s 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.
‘This is my chaplain, Thomas Daltoun, and Bernard of Kilwinning, former abbot of that place and now my chancellor. Sirs, this is the bold Sir Hal, proving that seven years’ captivity has not dulled him any.’
The prelates nodded and then, sensing the mood, made their obeisances to the King and left, whispering away across the flags with an armful of seal-dangled scrolls. Bruce watched them go – waiting until they were out of earshot, Hal saw.
‘The Countess of Buchan’, he said, turning the full weight of his blunt-weapon face on Hal, ‘is married to Henry de Beaumont.’
He waited, viciously long enough to see Hal’s stricken bewilderment, and then laughed again, a sound like shattering glass.
‘Alice Comyn inherited the title when the Earl died, for he repudiated Isabel at the last. The lands are actually held by me, as king, of course. Henry de Beaumont married Alice and now claims to be Earl of Buchan, a vellum title only. He does not care for me much and not only over his Buchan lands – he was twice handed Mann by the Plantagenet and twice had it removed by the Ordainers. Since I took it last year, he has precious slim chance of ever getting that isle back and less of claiming the lands of Buchan.’
He paused, his face now looking like a bad clay mask.
‘Isabel MacDuff is now no more than a lady from Fife,’ he went on. ‘Though I am sure the title was never the attraction between you and her.’
Bruce did not add – did not need to – that he once had an interest there himself when he was younger and Hal, who had known it then and come to terms with it well enough since, simply nodded.