He wondered, having recently seen the King’s face as everyone else must have seen it, if the murder to cover up whether Bruce had lepry or not had been worth seven years behind Roxburgh’s stones. He wondered it aloud now, sitting on the tarred deck under the flapping belly of the sail, staring into Kirkpatrick’s face.
There was silence for a moment, smeared with the creak of rigging and rope, the slap of wave on the cog’s hull and the dull flap of the huge square sail, puffing with weak breath, like a man dying.
‘Well,’ answered Kirkpatrick at length, ‘it seemed so at the time, with our backs to the wall and the ram at the gates. Later, when the King fell ill – near to death, in fact – the rumours grew stronger than ever. Worth it? Not for you, I am thinking, but you will have a warmer welcome at Closeburn these days.’
Hal had heard how Bruce had handed the liberated Closeburn lands to his faithful dog, Roger Kirkpatrick, so that he was now Lord Roger Kirkpatrick. Same name as the kin he had killed on that night and there was the Devil’s hand in that contrivance.
‘All I need is a knight’s dubbing, promised this very year, and I am achieved of all,’ Kirkpatrick went on proudly. ‘Nigh on twenty years’ service to the Bruce, mark you.’
‘Aye,’ Hal answered slowly. ‘You have been raised.’
Kirkpatrick fell silent, realizing how far Hal of Herdmanston had fallen and ashamed and angry at himself for letting his pride get in the way of appeasement. He smiled, trying to recover a little.
‘I will change my device,’ he said, attempting to make amends. ‘Those fat sacks on a shield are too arrogant and mercantile for my taste.’
‘Arrogant and mercantile,’ Hal repeated and found himself smiling at this new-found knightly fire from Kirkpatrick, who had the decency to flush a little and make a wry smile of his own.
‘I hear you are eyeing up a wife as well,’ Hal added and Kirkpatrick nodded, trying to make light of it, though the lady in question was an heiress with a good few acres.
‘What happened to the wummin whose man stabbed you for yer dalliance?’
The question was, as usual from Hal, a bolt that took away Kirkpatrick’s breath, though he reeled away from it and recovered quickly, the memories fleeing through him like panicked deer. He had used an old love as cover for their task and shamelessly taken advantage of her former regard. He remembered Annie and himself in the cellar before they gained entrance to Closeburn’s castle. Nicholl, her man, coming out of the dark later, weeping angry at Kirkpatrick’s ruining of his nice life and taking revenge.
He was supposed to have horses for their escape, but delivered a dagger instead; Kirkpatrick felt the burning memory of where it had gone in his back and all but crippled him. It had taken a long time to recover and he never fully had – but it had given him time to plan vengeance.
‘Fled,’ he answered thickly, though it was only half the truth and he had spent a deal of time and silver tracking them both down. ‘He could scarce remain in Closeburn with me as lord and master.’
‘And the wummin – what was her name? Annie?’ Hal queried and saw the flat stare of Kirkpatrick, so that he knew the truth of it; Annie’s man, Nicholl, had not survived Kirkpatrick’s wrath. It was the mark of the man that Hal could not be sure that Annie had, childhood sweetheart or no. Blood and blood, Hal thought, a trail of it, thick and viscous as a snail track, leading always back to Kirkpatrick.
‘For your new device,’ he said harshly, ‘you should consider a hand with a bloody dagger in it. Fitting.’
Kirkpatrick did not even blink.
‘You must take better care of that maille,’ said a voice in French, splitting the moment like a wedge in a tree; they both turned into the spade-bearded face of Rossal de Bissot.
‘The sea air will rust it unless you do,’ he went on blandly, ‘though it is good that you wear it constantly, to get used to the weight again.’
Hal, in the act of heaving it up and slithering back into its cold embrace, was less smiling about the affair, but de Bissot’s approval was genuine and his enthusiasm uplifting.
‘By the time we reach Crunia,’ he beamed, clapping Hal on his metalled shoulder, ‘you will be as before – fit to be a Poor Knight of the Order.’
‘Slight chance of that these days,’ Hal replied shortly and Rossal nodded.
‘God wills,’ he answered, and then smiled again, thinly. ‘There was a time when you were considered for such an honour,’ he went on, to Hal’s astonishment. ‘Your kinsman, Sir William, approached your father on the matter.’
‘Sir William? The Auld Templar?’
De Bissot frowned at the term, but nodded.
‘Yes, so you called him. It was shortly after the loss of your wife and child. Sir William asked to approach you and was refused, since you were sole heir to Herdmanston and your father did not want to lose you as well.’