There was a pause, then a calmer, deeper voice, growing stronger as it moved closer, fought the wind to be heard.
‘Indeed? You claim the friendship of Niall mac Cailein, which is no little thing and a double-edged blade if you are proved false to it.’
The speaker was better dressed, surrounded by a clutch of bare-legged snarlers, crouching like dogs round him. He squinted, and then grinned.
‘I recall you now: Hal of Herdmanston. I was with you when Neil, son of Great Colin, brought you to the meeting in the heather we had when King Robert fled to the Isles.’
Hal remembered it, though not this man. It had been a low point.
The shadow-man paused and then bowed his neck slightly towards Kirkpatrick.
‘And yourself, who brought the news of our king’s escape and survival. The King’s wee man, though I have forgot your name entire.’
‘Kirkpatrick.’
‘That was it, right enough.’
He made a brief move and the caterans shifted back, lowering their weapons. The man stepped forward and bowed a little more.
‘Dougald Campbell of Craignish,’ he said. ‘You have the hospitality of my house.’
‘That’s a bloody relief,’ Kirkpatrick said as the man turned away to shout a liquid stream of Gaelic to his unseen men.
To Somhairl he said: ‘Gather up those we have found. When it is light, we will return and search for more.’
‘The cargo …’ Hal said and Kirkpatrick patted his arm.
‘Away you and get your face seen to. The cargo will be brought, safe and untouched. You heard the man; we have the hospitality of the Campbell of Craignish.’
‘Aye,’ Hal said. The pain seemed to ebb and flow with the tide now; a sudden thought lanced through it, sharp with the fire of guilt, and jerked his head up into Kirkpatrick’s concerned face.
‘Sim … where is Sim?’
Kirkpatrick’s bloodless lips never moved, his greased face never quavered. Yet Hal felt the leaden blow of it, hard as the rope’s end which had smacked his face, and he reeled, felt the great burning light explode in his head and bent over to vomit.
Then the light went out.
ISABEL
He came to gawp, the de Valence who is called Earl of Pembroke, hearing that I was a witch or worse. Even earls are not immune to scratching the scabs of their itching minds, to look on the strange wonders of the caged. Malise, fawning and bobbing his head like a mad chook, brought him to the Hog’s Tower, but even this rebounded on him, for Aymer de Valence’s distaste for what had been done to me was clear. Dark and scowling he was, so that I was reminded of the name everyone called him behind his back, the one Gaveston gave him: Jacob the Jew. I will resolve this, he said to Malise, after midsummer, when the current tribulations are settled. Malise did not like that and I should have been pleased for an earl’s help, like a thirsty wee lapdog for water. Of course I was not. Immediately after the tribulations of those days, I answered like a prophecy and before Malise could speak, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from Heaven and the power of the Heavens shall be shaken. Gospel of Matthew, I added as the Earl crossed himself. Chapter twenty-four, verse twenty-nine, I called after him as he fled; I saw the punishments flaming in Malise’s eyes.
It is almost midsummer.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Black Bitch Tavern, Edinburgh
Feast of St Columba, June 1314
The Dog Boy pushed through the throng and wished he was not here at all, nor headed where he was going; the one was altogether too crowded, the other such a trial that the setting for it was aptly named.
Edinburgh stank of old burning and feverish, frantic desperation. The castle bulked up like a hunchback’s shoulder, blackened and reeking from where it had been slighted; carts still ground their iron-shod wheels down the King’s Way, full of stones filched from the torn-down gate towers and bound for other houses or drystane walls.
Without a garrison, the town itself filled up with wickedness, with men from both sides of the divide and every nook in between, with those fleeing from the south and those filtering in from the north seeking loved ones or an opportunity. It packed itself with whores and hucksters, cutpurses, coney-catchers, cunning-men and counterfeiters, while the beadles and bailiffs struggled to keep order with few men and less enthusiasm.
What Dog Boy and the others had brought, of course, did not help, even though it was a handful of parchment, no more. Delivered to the monks of St Giles with instructions from their king, it was a spark to tinder, as far as Dog Boy was concerned.