One at least was accounted for and de Valence was soured to his belly at what he would have to tell his sister, Joan. Your son, the young lord of Badenoch, is not coming home – slain by the same God-damned Scotch rebels who murdered your husband.
Faced with that, the canting cadaver that was Jean de Beaune, piously name-changed to Brother Jacobus, was a misery de Valence could have done without, but the matter the Dominican had thrown at him would not be lightly dismissed. Yet de Valence vowed he would scourge the Cathar-hunting little prelate back to Carcassonne if he had to wield the whip himself.
‘The lady Isabel,’ he persisted, ‘is within the King’s Peace.’
More so now than ever, he said to himself, for she could easily become a counter in the game of ransom.
‘She has been accused,’ Jacobus growled. ‘You shall not suffer a witch to live.’
‘The accuser is more of a Devil’s spawn than the lady in question,’ de Valence spat back. ‘Malise Bellejambe has been the creature of the Comyn for as long as I can remember, God forgive my kin for it. I know him well enough for he came to me only recently, hoping to slither his way into my patronage, and I sent him away as I would the serpent in Eden.’
‘God be praised,’ Brother Jacobus intoned at this last, crossing himself piously.
‘For ever and ever,’ de Valence answered by rote. ‘Now this Malise seeks your patronage – is there not a reward for exposing a witch? Apart from the love of Christ and Mother Church?’
‘You stand in the path of the Inquisition,’ the Dominican persisted.
‘I obey my king,’ de Valence replied savagely, weary of the whole business. He saw his clerks hovering, arms full of rolls that almost certainly continued the litany of ruin for his king’s cause.
‘She is a heretic.’
‘You have proof? Other than the word of a disenfranchised, dismayed worm like Bellejambe?’
‘I … that is …’
‘You mean no,’ de Valence interrupted roughly, and waved a hand so that the candles guttered in the wind of its passage. ‘Get you gone, Brother.’
‘I will investigate further …’
De Valence glared at the Dominican.
‘You will not go against the King’s Peace. Three miles, three furlongs and three acre-breadths, nine feet, nine palms and three barleycorns – within that, Brother, Lady Isabel MacDuff is inviolate until the King himself decides her fate.’
‘Or God,’ Brother Jacobus persisted. ‘You may find that the good folk of this town consider the Lord’s Will takes precedence over suffering a witch to live in the King’s Peace.’
De Valence’s ravaged hawk of a face made Jacobus recoil a little.
‘Should the good folk of this town voice this opinion,’ de Valence said, soft as a blade slice on skin, ‘I will know where to look for the cause. Fomenting discord and riot in a town under my command is treason, Dominican, and I have been given the writ of Law here.’
He leaned forward a little, the candlelight turning his face to a twisted mask of shadows.
‘Break it, Brother, and you will discover that, for all there is no torture permitted in England, your Inquisition is a squalling baby compared with what I can inflict on those who thwart the King’s writ. Pleading a knowledge of Latin will not help you.’
For a moment, they were locked in stares, and then Brother Jacobus turned on his heel and swung away. De Valence waited until he was almost at the door, the trailing wind of his fury making the sconces dance madly, before calling out.
‘Jacobus.’
The Dominican whirled, his face a scowl.
‘You forget your station.’
The prelate’s face flushed so that the veins stood out, proud as corded rope. Then he bowed.
‘My lord earl.’
‘You may leave.’
The Dominican’s face was a beautiful thing and de Valence took some vicious comfort from it before he turned from the closed door into the bustle of the clerks. For all that, he knew that Isabel MacDuff was in danger. If the game of kings being played out above their heads did not include her as a vital piece, then she would fall to the flames.
The clerks moved in with their blizzard of bad news in vellum and the room seemed suddenly stifling, every candle flame a sear. De Valence moved to the shuttered slit of window and pulled them open, so that the night breeze, sodden with damp, snaked in to shiver the sconces.
He stood for a moment, hearing the muffled noises of the castle settling for another night, saw the red eye of brazier coals flaring in the breeze and the figures moving past it, no more than shadows. A wall guard shifted into the lee of a merlon and left his dog to trot the walkway; de Valence felt a spasm of irritation at this slackness, just because the King had quit the place.
Then, however, he heard the dog bark and was reassured: a good dog more than made up for a bad guard.
Out in the cloaking dark, Jamie Douglas gave a muffled curse at the sound. No one needed reminding of the last time the Scots had attempted to stealth their way up the walls of Berwick’s fortress – foiled by a barking dog.